I found a spider, but that didn't make me sad, I then lost track of her, and that is frustrating but I hope that she'll be somewhere I can find tomorrow.
No, what made me sad is I knew her mother (we called her Skarlett) and was excited to find her daughter (who is provisionally Bonnie) despite her being down by the mailbox in a lame spot. There was a big storm today (not as big as the one which actually killed her mom, but big enough to wreck her web) so I decided this would be a good opportunity to migrate her over to the porch and try to get her to set up in between the two columns where her mom was, but after safely getting her up out of the decorative grass around the mailbox and calmed down on my hand some, I lost track of her on a hand swap when she went down the outside towards my elbow.
When I tried to reorient and get her switched to the other hand she wasn't there, so I froze and checked my shirt, shoulders, pants, the ground by my feet, the sidewalk around me, my shoes to make sure I hadn't crushed her (did not, thankfully), and the general area around me.
Unfortunately it's after dark, and as an immature
Argiope Aurantia (or zig-zag orb weaver, black and yellow orb weaver, banana spider, etc, wonderful identification guide there btw) she's still mostly grey and white... like the pavement on the sidewalk/end of the driveway, so my only hope was for the flashlight to cast a shadow as she was walking, but no luck.
Hopefully that means she went straight for the grass and is now heading across the yard towards the little flower garden to set up, I'll track her down tomorrow I hope, but yeah... that's a weird problem to have, and a weird thing to be sad about I guess.
I got rather attached to Skarlett last summer
until I discovered her broken web and absence. She was a minor celebrity, we had people come back after stopping by the house because their little boys wanted pictures with the spider, which is damned cute, little boy on a footstool leaning over so she's in the frame with him. So I has an odd sad until I find Bonnie.