My Spidery Surprise...

I am in Georgia, in the nice big, but sparsely furnished, house of my oldest son. He had knee surgery last week and has been pretty much homebound for several months because of a knee injury.  I tell that story on my Flicker site...
He was lonely and fighting depression.  Thankfully he is a computer genius and can work from home for his job. But he really has no family or friends here and it has been extra tough when all you can manage is Doctor appointments and scattered-only-when-absolutely-necessary visits to the grocery store.  He bought all he could off Amazon.com... I started praying that God would give him surprises... little things to brighten his day... I don't think he received too many if any, until I flew in and that did brighten him with a familiar face and someone to talk to and get groceries etc...
But I am a social person, and while i often say the wrong thing at the wrong time and get bent out of shape about things and wish i was so much more like my Mom....
I began feeling really stuck.. and the first few days i really fought some self pity.  So I began to be thankful for the little things and began praying to see His little surprises every day... I have to admit that i do miss them. But there have been a few that are really really special and one of them is the little spider...
I started an email to my bff and this is part of it:
  I miss my Daisy dog... she has taken up with Susanna now... but i miss her sooooo much... did i tell you i may be here 2 months?  it will get better when Josh can ride in the car for a few hours and we can get to Charlotte area  to be with family and friends... or short excursions into the Blue Ridge Mountains... I fight self pity... when i talk to you or anyone else, i try to not be negative, because things aren't bad here... Josh has a lovely house and thankfully he bought expensive living room furniture which is attractive and comfy... (lazboy recliner couches-  he gets the chair!)... but i escape into peoples blogs, or photography advice and some facebook.  but not the same as getting out.. yesterday i met a spider face to face... I was out on Josh's sunporch -- trying to figure a clothesline and decided the light was sooo nice i should try a picture or two, so i put out his card table and my handblown clear glass genie bottle i bought here  and discovered a speck on the lip of the bottle.... thought it might be a crumb or something... but it was a wee tiny spider... so i got my macro lens and started taking pictures of the spider... but this spider was not like the dang elusive birds around here.. This spider turned around and stared my lens right in the EYE!!   It did this several times.. until it jumped at me and i got creeped out... LOL

This last is to put it into perspective.. that is a regular card table... I have been to 2 thrift stores and bought this handblown "genie" bottle for a prop... 

My VERY First Fix IT Friday! (even tho it is Fix It Friday #89)

The first thing I did was to crop it as I wanted to see more of him and less of the rest.  Then I ran some random actions,  decided i didn't like those results very much and decided to run just an Eye enhancer and skin softener, both by CoffeeShop Blog.  Then I used the "sky" texture by Pixel Lounge at soft light..  I then duplicated the background shot and did a linear burn.  (I played around until I liked the effect).  Next I dupicated the texture and again used soft light.  'Duplicated the background again I think i blended it at multiply and then toned it down to 50 percent. I did save the unflattened file, but when I saved the flattened one, instead of "save as" i just hit save and it wrote the finished over it... live and learn...
Here is the finished product: