Not everything is a sign.

 First, a couple of housekeeping things:

• After I shared last week's post about Medicare, folks who've been through the gantlet reminded me about a couple of things:
• Not everybody pays the same monthly premium for Part B. It's tied to income, so some folks pay more. But I think a majority of folks on Medicare pay the base rate, which is $170.10 for 2022.
• It's a really good idea to shop for a Part D (prescription) plan every year. Insurance companies change their drug formularies at the drop of a hat, so the plan you have this year may not cover your meds next year at the same rate -- or at all, even. You can only change your Part D plan during open enrollment, which runs from October 15 through December 7 every year.
• Today is the 21st anniversary of 9/11. If you're interested in reading (or re-reading) what I experienced that day, here's a link to the blog post I wrote a couple of years ago. (Linking to it saves me from having to type it all out again.)

Okay, onward.

PxHere.com | CC0

If you thought, by looking at the photo, that I was going to write about politics again, you're forgiven. I'm not, though.

A couple of nights ago, I attended a small gathering of fellow Pagans at someone's house. She's kind of out in the country, with a good-sized chunk of land around her house, and so she gets a lot of local fauna roaming through. She also has a permanent labyrinth set up just the other side of her driveway, which is a cool feature that I wish I had enough room to do myself.

We were sitting outside in lawn chairs, socially distanced, next to the labyrinth. And as we talked, various critters made their way around us. This has happened before; during our get-togethers, we've seen a lizard and a few types of birds. It's their land, too, right? They were here before humans got here.

This time, as we chatted, a tarantula trucked across the labyrinth behind us, making for a copse of trees on the far side. It was a good-sized critter, about the size of your hand with your fingers extended. Some of the women got up to get a closer look, but I stayed in my seat. (Now I wish I'd gotten a photo; if I had, I wouldn't have have to resort to a stock photo for this post. Hindsight is 20/20, etc.)

Here's the thing: Our host was convinced that the tarantula was a sign -- for her. She'd never seen one on her property before, and here it was, crossing her labyrinth. And during our meeting, too! She was both fascinated and kinda scared, I think. 

This group tends to talk about animal sightings and What They Could Mean anyway, so I'd brought along my copies of Ted Andrews's books, which I mentioned in a post not too long ago. I looked up tarantulas and found them mentioned in the section about spiders. Andrews says the bite of a tarantula is poisonous, but the effect on an average human is no worse than a bee sting. He also says tarantulas don't weave webs, per se. Rather, they live in holes in the ground and catch food that comes near the rim of their hole. Of spiders in general, he says, their keywords are creativity and the weaving of fate.

A few of the other women at the meeting told our host that autumn is mating season for tarantulas. The females stay in their holes, and the males go walkabout in search of them. They said there was probably a female in a hole in the copse, and our boy was just heading over for a little boom chicka wow.

But our host would not be dissuaded. That tarantula was meant for her. Never mind that there were nearly a dozen of us at the meeting, so it could have been for any of us -- except that it stayed well away from our circle.

As I said last time this came up on the blog, "The biggest trick...is to not read too much into what you're seeing." It was cool to see a tarantula in person. But given the season, I'd say this was a spider doing spider things -- not any sort of message from the Universe.

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These moments of spidery blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. The omicron vaccine is available -- get boosted!