Of spider poop and dog barf

A.K.A

The Karma Project, Week 2

Last week I launched a personal Karma Project to encourage myself to practice more good deeds and fewer bad ones, all the while keeping track of how it affected my mood and life in general.

I’d planned, this week, to write a really funny and poignant story about my project, but, after a week of good-deed doing, I’ve realized two things about myself.

1. Nothing much happens during my typical day. There are days when the only live beings I come in contact with are my daughter, my husband and my dog.
2. I’m a terrible scorekeeper. I should have known this going into the project. After all, I never keep score when I play putt-putt or air hockey or anything else. I just play, and whenever my daughter says she’s won? The game is over. That piece of paper that I promised to tally all of my good and bad deeds and keep track of my mood? It has all of 4 things written on it, most of which took place on the project’s initial day—when I must have been filled with New Year’s Resolution style motivation. Oops.

That said, the past week has taught me a few things about bugs, doing good, doing bad, and the gray area that lies in between.

Let me tell you. Trying to be Kind to Bugs in a world where people take great pleasure in Being Unkind to Bugs? Not easy. Even my daughter seems to be bent on getting me to practice bad acts of karma as far as bugs are concerned. One evening last week, we were eating outside and a fly was moseying around on the table. She said, “Mommy, kill it! Kill it!” Without a second thought, I raised my hand in preparation of smacking the life out of the thing. And it was one of those rare slow-moving flies, too. I could have flattened it in an instant, and the flattening would have felt Oh So Satisfying. I’m sure of it. But then I remembered my project. I lowered my hand and said to my daughter, “Honey, we’re outside. This is where flies live. He has a right to be here.” She said, “He does? But he’s yucky and I don’t like him.” So I shooed him away.

A few days later, I noticed some strange black gunk on a framed picture that is very special to me. My literary agent made it for me after my latest book collaboration appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. It has the book cover plus that week’s Times list encased in glass. I look at it whenever I’m feeling washed up, to remind myself that I really can write my way out of a paper bag. “What IS that crap?” I wondered. I looked up. In the corner of the ceiling, just above the picture, I saw a humongous spider web. It had all sorts of insects encased in it.

The blacks specs? Spider poop.

I stared at that spider web for a while, mulling over the concept of Karma and wondering just how much the act of sucking a spider’s house into a vacuum cleaner would sully my karmic future.

Fortunately, my husband arrived home at that very moment. He’s not currently taking part in a Karma Project. He’s a card-carrying member of We Kill Bugs Because We Feel Like It club. I said, “Look at this! Come here and look at this!”

“Eww, what IS that?” he asked.

“It’s spider poop, and it’s coming from that web up there!” I said in my best, “I am a helpless damsel in distress” voice.

He straightened himself up, puffed out his chest, and said, “I’ll take care if it for you. Don’t you worry.”

I watched as he sucked every strand of web along with all of the spider’s recent kills into the vacuum cleaner. I felt bad that, in doing this favor for me, he would eventually be punished, perhaps, by waking in the middle of the night to find that spiders had woven a web over his entire body, but I was happy that the spider would no longer be pooping on my picture.

Then I stepped in something wet.

I looked down.

It was dog barf.

Estimated Good Karma Points: 1 (not killing a fly) + 1 (opening a door for a mom carrying a baby) + 1 (smiling at a stranger) + 1 (complimenting someone who really deserved it) + 1 (answering an annoying email with dignity and grace) + 1 (stopping myself from talking about someone behind her back)= 6

Estimated Bad Karma Points: 1 (removing spider house) + 1 (yelling at my dog for barking) + 1 (lying to my daughter) + 1 (not stopping myself from talking about someone behind her back) = 4

Happiness score: 8 (But the weather has been fantastic)

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