Open window nights

This is a topic I never expected to write about. As some of you might know, my aversion to spiders is real. So, why would I even consider sleeping with a (part-)open window if that gives them an eight-hour window for sneaking into my bedroom, protected by the darkness of the night and my closed eyes? Those were my thoughts exactly when, out of the blue, I suddenly had the urge to sleep with a partly open window a few months ago. Sure, I had slept with an open window before, when the fear of waking up as a perfectly baked cookie was greater than that of waking up to a party of spiders surveying the sight of “sleeping human and duck” in awe. The night in question, however, was not particularly hot. Well, it was a pleasantly cool night in summer that did promise a nice breeze if I were to sleep with the window open. But it was also so pleasantly cool that I knew I would probably wake up in the middle of the night because I was cold. That didn’t stop me, though. It seems that having spent more time outside this year and a newfound (blind) trust in my insect screen (that did feel like it protected me from uninvited guests a bit better this year than it had last year) were the winning combination in making me more fearless and fresh-air-craving than I had been before. I’ve even come to accept the not-so-peaceful sounds of the night, like passing cars and groups of drunken teenagers, I used to think disturbed the more natural sounds of waking birds or chirping insects. I wonder if this novel appreciation for the occasional open window night will roll over into the next few years.
Only time and spider sightings will tell! (Or the duck in one of those frantically-whispering-in-my-ear-at-night-sessions.)

The reason why our bedroom sometimes smells like toothpaste

It’s spring! The temperatures are getting warmer, and nature’s color scheme is shifting from browns to greens. The birds are building nests, the flowers are starting to wake up, and the spiders are busy plotting how to intrude into your bedroom so that they can crawl into your mouth when you’re asleep (I doubt that that actually happens, but just the idea is enough to send shivers down my spine). The duck and I have a tumultuous relationship with spiders. There was a time when I had told myself that they won’t do me harm enough to actually not mind them, somehow the irrational fear of spiders inside my bedroom returned – possibly when my bedroom had floorboards with gigantic gaps between them; one day I observed a rather big specimen of a spider casually crawling out of the floor and back in again. Yikes! That was the first time my bedroom began to smell like toothpaste. Across the years, the duck and I tried several methods to keep spiders out. Here’s a photo of the duck posing with a few items from our current bye-bye-spider-kit – so that I shall never again awake in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat because I dreamed about a massive spider on the side of the wardrobe (which, I am ashamed to admit, might have been the only nightmare that ever had that effect on me). Anyway, here’s how we attempt to keep our bedroom an insect-free zone: