Delicious and nutritious

Mary watched with fascination as the large spider webbed up her meal.

Difficult to tell exactly what sort of insect it was, perhaps was it sort of small beetle or large louse? The spider, having industriously captured it in her web, was busily poisoning it with digestive enzymes and scrambling over and around it, beginning the process of cocooning and preserving. This one would almost certainly become the host for her babies, once properly prepared.

Mary rapaciously watched the motion within the web. Regardless of the taxonomies involved, both spider and insect looked delicious to her—a western European hedgehog.

Inspired by this Friday Fictioneers photo prompt.

Copyright – Douglas MacIlroy.

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Meh

Ambivalence.

Over the years, my attitude toward the “holiday season” has changed pretty often.

Every kid loves Christmas, right? I mean, Christmas is a great thing, especially for kids.

But then you learn to drive… And you get to experience the joys of winter storm driving…

I worked in Hotels (for about 15 years), I worked every single New Year’s Eve. If you ever want to earn a bitter, cynical viewpoint toward mankind—spend some time working the Front Desk on NYE night and dealing with the “happy” drunks destroying the hotel, annually. Nothing could possible make you more disgusted with the way alleged adults misbehave.

(Except maybe the average Wedding party.)

There’s no question that I’m still “down” on the Drinking Holidays. I simply do not, and will never, approve of them. Drunks are just plain sad. But at least Hotel-confined drunks aren’t on the highways killing people!! Better to be destroying a hotel room than somebody else’s life, I suppose.

Christmas. I don’t like how commercialized it is, or how early we start Selling It here in America. So I’m certainly much more negative towards Christmas than I once was.

Still.

The holidays are not all bad. Seriously, there are some good things about the holiday season. More time spent with your families, time off from work! People aren’t all bad, all the time—aside from shopping crowds, they’re less grumpy generally during the holidays.

So…okay, maybe to be honest, I don’t get a lot of joy from holidays, but that’s probably because I’m grumpy and cynical and jaded. An old curmudgeon. Hey you kids, get off my lawn!

Give me a hug, Mom. I wish I could get more of those.

Oh, wait. Christmas is right around the corner. I totally can. Sweet.

It really is the little things

The holiday season: can’t get enough of it, or can’t wait for it all to be over already? Has your attitude toward the end-of-year holidays changed over the years?