On the healthy eating front, I find I eat better overall if I don't worry about calories and just try to be mindful of what I eat. Which, since I keep reading about the studies that suggest middle aged adults should eat less protein and animal fats, means that my meals end up vegetarian or vegan by default.

Wait, what is it that you call daddy long-legs in Australia? Because the ones we have in America have bodies the size of small peas and no fangs, claws, venom, or any other weapons with which to kill and eat prey. basically their only tactical strategy is clumping together in big hairy masses that gross out anything that happens across them.

Ah, well, there are three different families of invertebrates that get called daddy long-legs by someone somewhere. There's the crane fly. Then there's the harvestman, which sounds like what you mean by it: [link] Then there are the cellar spiders: [link] Those are the ones we mean here in Australia, and the ones that eat redbacks.

Like Matt said, I'm concerned about the size. I won't be able to unsee that.

Similar size to black widows too. Really, very closely related. Venom's about the same too. This is one area where Australia is no worse off than you guys. (The Sydney funnelweb, on the other hand...)

There are two key differences. First, red stripe on their back as well as the abdomen. Makes them easier to identify. Second, they're if anything more widowish. Not only does the female eat the male, but the males will actively cooperate in their own demise, and fight each other for the privilege.

There's another relative from New Zealand, the katipo. Katipos and redbacks are close enough to interbreed. More precisely, male redbacks can breed with female katipos. But male katipos can't interbreed with female redbacks. They're too heavy. The female automatically sees them as prey and eats them before they can get close enough.

bt, has the Australian Tourist Board considered putting together an area of your country as Certified Drop Bear And Horrifying Insect Free (Snakes And Crocs Optional)? Though that might encourage visits from people less tough-willed than Australia wants to allow.

They have! It's called Customs. After that you're on your own.

They have! It's called Customs. After that you're on your own.

Well, if they set up a pool and a hotel, I'm there.

There's nothing worse than when you have more black bile than spleen.

Right? I'm used to the phlegm and blood being all out of whack, but unbalanced bile just messes me up.

I think cellar spiders are what I have, and what I picture when I think of Daddy Long-legs.

I use MyNetDiary for tracking food (when I track food, which I haven't and should really start again although that conflicts (sort of, not really) with my desire to just eat takeout until I get my kitchen cleaned top to bottom and arranged the way I want it), it let's you put in recipes, has an iPhone app. I somehow ended up with a premium package (one of them, there are several tiers) but i can't remember why, so I'm not sure what you can and cannot do with the free version. The one I have is, you know, fine, it does what I want it to, I don't know that there's anything to really recommend it over any other similar thing, though.

Kinda want a Marvel Redback costume for next Halloween.

The American ones are more like this: [link]

Oh, sure, that looks right.

So fried.

My friend in the hospital died last night. It was a very long day. He'd coded on Tuesday night and they had to perform CPR and shock his heart; before that, he'd pulled out his feeding tube and they had his wrists tethered to the sides of the bed to keep him from pulling anything else out. His daughter had collapsed at her stepmom's house (dad's ex-wife, but will be her stepmom for life) late that night and was heading back in and hated the thought of him being alone for even a minute.

So I waited until the early AM shift change was over and then sat with him and read to him from a book of George Macdonald fairy tales, thinking she'd be there any minute and her mom and stepmom and maybe the most recent ex-girlfriend would follow, and I'd hop the intercampus shuttle and be at work just a little late. But she didn't get there until 10, her moms were trapped in meetings in two different cities and the ex-GF was MIA, and the cardiology attending (whom I knew slightly) gave her the warning I'd known was coming for several days, that she'd have to make difficult quality-of-life decisions in the near future.

(Before that, she stepped out to go to the bathroom, and the attending, who knew I'd worked for her colleagues, gave me the most serious look I've ever seen and said, "You understand that he's very sick." But she didn't mean sick, she meant the other thing.)

And then S came back in, and the attending told her, and then I hugged her and rubbed her back, and then she remembered that she hadn't actually eaten since the day before. So I went down to the cafeteria to get her fruit and a bagel, and on the way back her stepmom called to say that she was trapped in meetings but had canceled her entire afternoon and would be there by 3 (she's also pump-and-BFing a 3-month-old and had to go home first for a feed). So I checked in at work, got the okay to stay, and stayed.

And the whole world telescoped down to us and the sleeping body in the bed, with her curled up at his side or petting his face or reading to him while I talked with the medical team and texted her stepmom with updates and got her more food because she forgot lunch. Whenever she got up for a bathroom break I'd take her place and put a hand on him, and then she'd come back and curl up again, but he never woke. Not even when the services coming in for this or that evaluation pulled his eyelids open and yelled in his ear.

The surgeon on whose opinion everything depended kept not showing up and not showing up, and the stepmom's baby got sleepy and then cranky and she was delayed again and again, and the mom couldn't get out of work at all, but there was no freaking way I was leaving a college junior alone fending off an avalanche of subspecialists and medical jargon and fear for however many more hours it'd take for family to come.

(I seriously, actually thought, "What would Buffy do?" and the answer was clearly "Not leave.")

And her stepmom finally, finally came at 4:30, and she and I huddled to talk and debrief while S and the baby (not in fact a blood relation, but still a sister, and it was clear from watching them together that she is already this kid's Emmett) snoodled each other up. Then I left to get Matilda, and an hour after that the surgeon finally came and rendered his opinion, which was that my friend was not a candidate for the ventricular assist device the other services had been considering, was not a transplant candidate, and was shutting down, system by system. So they transitioned him to comfort care, and he died while Matilda and I were watching Paget Brewster snarking it up on "Grandfathered."

And my FB flist has been CRAZED, and I just feel pithed. But I can't even imagine how S and her stepmom and her mom (who, despite being an ex, loved him dearly as a friend and respected him utterly as a coparent) are managing.

First, yay baby!!! Welcome, Alexandra!!!

And, JZ, I'm so sorry for your loss. But how wonderful for your friend's daughter that you could be there with her.

JZ, you are mostly heart, and very dear. Death and dying are part of living, we're taught, but there are no lessons in how to do it, or how to help ones we love, or even those we merely know and are our professional charges, do it. I don't believe words exist to describe the air in such a room as you're describing. Breathing it for an hour is shattering, doing it for a day in support of someone else is something almost numbing--but just below that is the quivering nerve awareness that this is universal, that everyone breathing comes to this. And sometimes, being witness to it is the only aid we can offer.

Pithed is surely an accurate term. You need someone to pull a soft blanket around you and ply you with tea and quiet music, and possibly gentle, distracting conversation. Life seeps back into those spaces that have been leached of it by the experience. Be gentle with yourself in the transition.

So hard, JZ. Dang.

Rationally, I know that if I get more sleep, my cravings for bad things are greatly reduced and therefore the best thing I can do for me health is sleep more.

Getting a 5:50AM shuttle would make that nigh impossible for me. Ew.

I'm supposed to do my benefits by tomorrow. Got billions of emails. So of course, the website is down now.