Once upon a time in a swamp somewhere, a spider and mosquito locked eyes and in that one look, knew they were made for each other. I was love at first sight, or, in the case of the spider, love at all 8 of the sights. They knew their families would never approve. But, through some adventures, they proved that the power of love is more powerful than any obstacles.

And they lived happily ever after.

In my bedroom.

Slowly eating me alive.

The end.

I cannot think of any other explanation for the current situation I have found myself in. Every morning, I wake up with either a new mosquito bite or a new spider bite. Never both. They are seriously taking turns. And I vacuum everything and move the furniture around and change the sheets and none of it helps.

I know how they’re doing it. The spider shows the mosquito how to crawl around under the sheets so that it can bite me even when I’m tucked tightly under the blankets. Then the mosquito flies the spider around so that it doesn’t get tangled in the sheets when I’m removing them and neither of them can get sucked into the vacuum.

Also, the mosquito has gotten a silencer from somewhere because I never, ever hear it.

How do you combat that? My only chance is to find their families and hope that their families getting involved cause a Romeo and Juliet situation.

Anybody know any spiders who have been complaining about the type of insects their progeny are hanging around lately?

But that’s not the end of my problems.

I’ve been without internet for two days.

Everyone gets 15 minutes of a near-death experience and this is mine.

It’s like the internet has become Amish and was shunning me. It’s like the rapture had happened and everyone on the internet was taken. That would certainly be unexpected if you’ve ever read what’s on the internet.

I never realized how much time I spend on the internet. I suddenly have a whole lot of time to fill. I had to watch my OWN cat do funny things.

I don’t even have a cat.

I had to dress my dog up like a cat and wait for her to do funny things. Mostly she laid on the floor in her cat costume looking at me with sheer annoyance. She’s a method actor. I never knew that about her before.

I also asked friends to randomly stop by and either call me a nazi or throw an advertisement at my face. It isn’t the same.

Life is hard off-line. I was going to call my internet provider’s customer service line, but I couldn’t look up the phone number because I didn’t have internet. Luckily I have a phone book for just such an emergency. I keep it somewhere safe so I’ll always be able to find it. I cannot now find where that place is. I bet people on the internet would have good ideas of places to look.

I called a friend of mine who’s an engineer. That phone conversation went like this:

Me: Can you fix my internet. I need to blog.

Friend: Who is this?

Me: Oh, sorry. This is Veronica. Fix it!

Friend: I can’t.

Me: What kind of engineer are you?

Friend: A chemical engineer.

Me: So can’t you just come up with some sort of chemical potion to make my internet work?

Friend: Someday you’re going to have to learn what I do.

Me: I don’t think so.

Friend: Did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in?

Me: Every hour for the past 36 hours.

Friend: I don’t know. Maybe you’ve got a bug in the system.

And that’s when I realized: this was no accident. The mosquito and the spider are trying to cut me off from outside contact. I think they’re going to try to kidnap me or hold me for ransom or possibly force me to perform some sort of insect wedding ceremony.

As soon as my internet is back up, I’m going to start a crowd funding campaign to raise money for my potential ransom/a wedding reception.  Either way, I’d like to be prepared.