Red line on back. Standardized testing has confirmed that I have both a studious bend and outstanding retention in study which she would not even deny. I have evolved the theory that the driver peruses his newspaper and reluctantly refolds it and replaces it in the hutch on green to signal the paralyzed dislike he feels about his paid job and a court-appointed psychologist might diagnose the newspaper as a cry for help. Our customary habitat now is the lateral seat that is on the same side as the bus’s door minimizing any likelihood that someone boarding will have a sudden frontal view of her expression. This too being a lesson learned the old-fashioned way. The only lighthearted interlude was that when they brought her the mirror and the first surgery’s bandages came off then one could at first not ascertain whether the face’s expression was a reaction to what she saw in the mirror or if it itself was what she saw and this was the stimulus causing the noises. Mother herself who is a decent-hearted if vain, bitter and timid female specimen but who is not a colossus of the roads of the human intellect, to put it frankly, could herself not ascertain at first if the look of insane terror was the response or the stimulus and if it was a response then a response to what in the mirror if the response itself was the expression. Causing no end of confusion before they got her sedated. The surgeon was leaning forward against the wall with his face to the wall a behavioral reaction which signaled, Yes there was an objective problem in the surgery’s results. The bus is because we have no car, a situation this new attorney says he can now remedy in spades. The whole thing was carefully contained and screened off and even the state conceded that if he had not been up fiddling around on the roof of someone else’s garage there is no way he could have come in contact with them in any form. This factoring into the terms of probation. At the outset too it was of interest on the bus to see the way passengers upon catching any glimpse of her expression will by reflex turn to look out whichever of the bus windows Mother appears to them to be responding to with such facial alarm. Her fear of the phylum arthropodae is long-standing which is why she never ventured in the garage and could contend ignorantia facti excusat, a point of law. Ironically also hence her constant spraying of R — d© despite my repeatedly advising her that these species are long-resistant to resmethrin and trans-d allethrin. The active ingredients in R — d©. Granted widow bites are a bad way to go because of the potent neurotoxin involved prompting one physician all the way in 1935 to comment, I do not recall having seen more abject pain manifested in any other medical or surgical condition whereas the painless loxoceles or recluse toxin only causes necrosis and severe sloughing of the area. Recluses however exhibiting a native aggression which widow species never share unless actively disturbed. Which he did. The bus’s interior is flesh-colored plastic with promotions for legal and medical services arrayed above the windows. Many par Español. The ventilation varies according to such criteria as fullness. The phobia becomes so extreme she will carry a can in her bag of knitting until I always find it before leaving and say firmly, No. In one or two regrettable moments of insensitivity also I have joked about taking the bus all the way through into Studio City and environs and auditioning Mother as an extra in one of the many films nowadays in which crowds of extras are paid to look upwards in terror of a special effect which is only later inserted into the film through computer-aided design. Which I sincerely regret, after all I’m all the support she has. To my mind however it is quite a stretch to say that an area of weakness in a twenty-year-old garage roof equals failing to exercise due diligence or care. Whereas Hitchcock and other classics used only primitive special effects but to more terrifying results. To say nothing of him trespassing and having no business up there anyhow. In the deposition. To say nothing of claiming that not foreseeing a trespasser falling through a portion of a garage roof and wholesale wrecking a complex and expensive tempered-glass container complex and crushing or otherwise disturbing a great many specimens and inevitably, due to the mishap, leading to some partial decontainment and penetration of the surrounding neighborhood amounts to my failing due exercise of caution. This then being my argument for preferring the classics of older film terror. Declining to ever place the briefcase under the seat I keep it on my lap throughout the frequent rides. My position throughout the proceedings was a natural deep regret for the kid and his family but that the misfortune of what happened as a result did not justify hysterical or trumped-up charges of any kind. Quality counsel would have been able to translate this reasoning into effective legal language in legal briefs and arguments in camera. But the reality is counsel proves to be abundant if you are the aggressor but not if you are merely prey, they’re parasites, daytime TV is infested with their commercials urging the viewer to wait patiently for the opportunity to attack, handled on a percentage basis, no fee of any kind if you are the aggressor! One could see them come right out of the woodwork after Mother’s original product liability. Objectively no one even knows how the widow’s neurotoxin works to produce such abject pain and suffering in larger mammals, science is baffled as to evolutionarily what advantage there is for a venom well in excess of required for this unique but common specimen to subdue its prey. Science is often confounded by both the luminous widow and the more average-looking recluse. Plus the ones who say they will really get down in the dirt of the trench and really fight for you are sleazeballs such as this supposed Van Nuys negligence specialist Mother has lined up. From another context the hysteria would have almost been humorous as any environs as unkempt as our surrounding neighborhood will already be naturally infested with them in all the clutter and run-down homes. Clutter’s abundant shelter being their native element. Specimens of widely varied size and aggression are to be found in basement corners, beneath shelves of sheds, garages and linen closets, behind large appliances and in the innumerable crevices of cast-away litter and unkempt weeds. Widows in particular favoring ill-lit right angles for their web’s construction. In the right angles of most structures’ shaded sides up under the eaves for example in summer months. If you know what to look for. Hence the clear goggles and polyurethane gloves are indispensable even in the shower stall whose right angles can be infested in just so many few absent hours. Widows being long noted as industrious weavers. Or outside the moving bus in the palm trees they stand so naively beneath in the shade to await their buses, Rent a ladder and carefully examine the undersides of those fronds sometime! one is tempted to shout through the window. Once conditioned to know what to look for they are often observable everywhere hiding in plain sight. Patience being another hallmark. This habitat and also further inland both contain the more exotic variety of red widow whose ventral hourglass is brown or tan as well as one of the hemisphere’s two smaller brown or gray species in the further-inland desert regions which prefer arid climes. The red widow’s red lacking however the spellbinding lustre of the familiar household black variety, it is more a dull or dullish red, and they are rare and both specimens escaped in his mishap and have not been reacquired. Here as so often in the arthropod realm the female dominates as well. To be frank Mother’s pain and suffering appeared somewhat inflated in the original product liability claim and in reality she coughs less than during her own deposition. Far be it from me to deny her however due to the thickness of blood. Sitting at home in dark glasses as ever knitting while monitoring my activities her mouth parts working idly. Scientifically however a large mammal would have to inhale a great deal of trans-d allethrin for permanent damage to result which as predicted did impact the modesty of her settlement. The true facts are less than a centimeter either way is the difference between smooth youthful eyes and the chronic expression of Vivian Leigh in the shower in the 1960 classic of that name. The briefcase is aerated at select tiny points in each corner and 2.5 dozen polystyrene chocks distributed throughout the interior can protect the contents from jostling or trauma. Her new case’s complexity is exactly how to distribute the liability claim between the original surgeon whose negligence gave her the frightened eyes and forehead and the second whose repair’s callous butchery left her with a chronic mask of crazed suffering and terror that now can fortunately only possibly cause incidents in the case of someone in the opposing lateral seat. Directly behind the driver. Because the sole exposure to liability of Mother’s placement here is that any such individual in the opposing seat hence will have the vantage of gazing frontally at us throughout the ride. And on select occasions such a specimen will, if predisposed by environmental conditioning or instinctive temperament, appear to assume that the stimulus causing her expression is me. That with my size and distinctive mark that I have kidnapped this horror-stricken middle-aged female or behaved in a somehow threatening manner toward her saying, Ma’am is there some problem or, Why don’t you just leave the lady alone as she sinks lower in her knitted scarf in self-discomfort over their reaction but my own evolved response is to calmly smile and raise my gloves in puzzled bemusement as if to say, Why who knows for certain why anyone wears the face they do my good fellow let us not leap to conclusions based on incomplete data! Her original liability was that a worker at the assembly plant actually glued a can’s nozzle on facing backward, I submit a clear-cut case of failing to exercise due care. The fifth condition of the settlement being to never under any circumstances mention the trade name of the common household spray in any connection to the liability suit which I am resolved to honor on her behalf, the law is the law. Respecting mating I have been on dates but there was insufficient chemistry, Mother is blackly cynical in matters of the heart referring to the entire spectrum of mating rituals as a disaster waiting to happen. Recently as the bus crossed Victory Boulevard as I looked down to check the status I saw accidentally protruding from one of the ventilation holes at the case’s corner the slender tip of a black jointed foreleg, it was moving about slightly and possessed the same luminous coloration as the rest of the specimens, moving tentatively in an exploratory way. Unseen against the more inorganic black of the briefcase’s side. Unseen by Mother whose reaction’s expression I must lightheartedly say would not change in the least, once you get accustomed it is like a poker face. Even if I opened up the entire case right here on my lap and tipped it out into the central aisle allowing rapid spreading out and penetration of the contained environs. The worse-case scenario only occurring if one confronts some young duo of punks or hostile organisms in the opposing seat whose reaction to Mother might be an aggressive challenging stare or aggressive, What the f — k are you looking at. It is for such a case that I am her sematic accessory or escort, with my imposing size and goggles one can tell beneath the gaping rictus she believes I can protect her which is good.