My back pain is still ongoing, and the usual steps I take to manage things have not been terribly effective. That sort of pain is draining, and I’ve been falling asleep at odd times.

Like yesterday afternoon, when I fell into bed and lay there like a stone in a riverbed.

But when I woke up, I was astonished to see the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life (and Seattle has some bigass spiders) crawling along a horizontal thread over my bed. With it’s legs curled around it as it moved, it was about the size of a tennis ball. It was so big I shouted “WOW!”

My wife heard from the other room and rushed to find out what had happened. By the time she got there, the spider had become indistinct and then disappeared. It was a hypnopompic hallucination, something I’ve never had before.

That was hard to explain to her, in part because she was standing beside the bed asking me what was wrong before I understood how to answer. It was only later that I thought I might be afraid of the spider, that it might have dropped down a web line toward me, but then I think spiders are cool.

Rats, on the other hand…