Haunted house

I don't think there has ever been a moment where I was totally at ease in my Oma's house. In the 21+ years she has lived here I have been terrified for almost all of them. Besides the traditional creepy crawlies: tarantulas, giant caterpillars, piles of inch worms and mice, her home boasts a series of ghosts that make you feel like you are being watched 24/7. When they moved here in the early 90's, the home was trashed by the previous builder/owner. Apparently during one of her all night mountain-side glitter cocaine orgies a young party-goer fell asleep in the garage and later perished inside a vehicle (my young self would assume this was because he fell asleep in the garage in the summer time and died of heat stroke). Another theory is that the home itself was built upon a mass grave site of later (not latter) Utah settlers who died tragically fighting a mass of already settled Mormons. The other ghosts that inhabit this place belong to my deceased relatives, they are all over the place here and (in my thinking ((that is something Oma ALWAYS says and it drives me crazy)) )live quite comfortably in this very suitable already haunted house.

First, there is my great aunt Pearl. She knew me as a baby and I feel that I remember her but I know I was much to young to really know her as a person. I have many of her quilts (regretfully) held in my storage unit in a chest that belonged to My Uncle Bill (he's further down in this story). Aunt Pearl had a lot of costume jewelry which Oma keeps in my grandfathers office. I don't necessarily feel she is "around" in the traditional sense but her stuff is definitely everywhere. I wear some of her old pieces but trust me, if you open a box practically anywhere in this house you will find an earring or some other shiny bauble just aching to be tried on. Like I said, she isn't wandering around the place...just leaving her calling card.
When I was about seven my family moved here. We lived in the basement which cannot even be called a basement because it is extremely finished and has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room, wet bar and dining room. If I remember correctly, we had lived here about a year when Omi came to visit. Omi is my Oma's mother; she had severe Alzheimer's and dementia. Picture it: a frail, stooped, old, senile German woman who smells like mothballs and fixodent. Maybe this is the reason why I do what I do? I don't know, anyway, Omi was a real character. She only spoke her native tongue to my sister and I. She called us Rosie and swore we were her daughter-in-law. I had many instances of walking in on her doing something that seven year olds do not understand as being mentally unsound. She would comb her hair with a serrated knife, she would hoard food under her mattress in the upstairs guestroom to the point of mice infestations, she was slightly terrified of my younger brother, and she once full frontal flashed my unsuspecting father while he was on the computer. I live in the basement once again and yes, I do sometimes feel I can hear her meandering around me, mumbling in German. Her husband, my Opi, is in cremains in a jar in Oma's bedside table.
My Uncle Bill is (was) my Oma's eldest child. He died of heart failure from(what I imagine was) a wild night of lonely drug abuse. Oma had a local artist paint a very large portrait of him with his dog Rooster and that portrait hangs in her living room and watches me eat breakfast almost every morning in the solarium. When I was younger I imagined him alive and what he would be like. I struggled with so many of the same things he struggled with and I feel like I came out of it so easy, I never really felt addicted to those things. Was that My Uncle Bill? I don't know...but I like to pretend it was. Oma used to have his ashes in an urn on her mantle but has since purchased a plot in Kansas where My Uncle Bill is on one side and my Papa is on the other side and guess where Oma will be? Yup, in the middle.
Which brings me to my Papa. If anyone has a right to haunt the shit out of this house it would be him. Papa is (was) Oma's husband, my grandfather. The things I remember about my grandfather: He was usually working in his office, he only EVER ate oatmeal for breakfast, he would sneeze so loud it would scare you to death I swear, he loved hiking and skiing and I am glad I got to do both with him. The only place he still hangs out in is his office. If you think I am crazy, come over and stand in the office and then you tell me he isn't there...you won't be able to.
Oma has pictures of my cousin everywhere too. He took his life at an absurdly young age and no one will ever be able to convince her that there wasn't something that she could have done. Those cousins keep a deeper distance from us, they always have. So now she eulogizes him the only way she knows how' by hanging pictures of him and donating money in his name to charities he himself would never have given a thought to. 
I really do walk around this house expecting to see someone. Every doorway, hallway, or out of the corner of your eye glance. There are animal ghosts too. Shiloh, Rooster and Frankie are all cremated and buried in the mountainside. They have a beautiful lambs-ear plant growing on top of them. Shiloh was my first family pet and Rooster and Frankie belonged to My Uncle Bill. I have Carly downstairs with me; I have looked across my half dark room to see the coppery glint of her name plate perfectly shining in some stray beam from the closet light.









I just read this and I sound like a total lunatic. But seriously, this house is hell of creepy! 

I could just die

This is straight from the vault. unedited too!

January 25, 2004                                                   

I could wait forever. I could wait and wait and wait. I wouldn’t mind. Its being alone. Not having anyhim to talk to. I know what I want. I know who I am today and who I’ll be tomorrow. It’s the days after that. The times in between. The people I want to know and the children I want to have. The husband I believe  in so much.  I see beautiful happy people everywhere. Glancing at each other, caressing the  waist, arms wrapped up tight, kissing with such conviction. Love is what I had once. I had someone to hold me tight at night, to whisper how beautiful and sexy I am while I was seconds away from ecstasy. I have felt the niceness of having someone to go on dates with, to watch late night television and scary movies with, to get high and stare at each other all night with. Someone to play drinking games and midnight top down rides with. Reading magazines and  playing jokes and being silly. Someone to claim as my own piece of breathing walking talking heart. An extension of myself. He let me feel that hot sting of a hand when I wouldn’t let things go his way. The beating of my heart when he hit himself over and over to prove that he loved me and he would beat himself to a pulp if it meant showing me he didn’t mean to hurt me. I remember when my heart broke and was repaired in the same night. I remember the look on his face when he saw me standing there. Waiting all sexy like. People talking to me, asking who I was waiting for. Saying when he came up to me how lucky he was to have a sexy girl like me waste my time. And him. He just. This is the end of this paragraph. When I can write one that isn’t lame and does make sense, I will come back and write one.

Part two

Now that I realize I am forever cursed with a “condition”, I have come to the conclusion that I should stay away from relationships and romantic encounters and  focus on the more important things.  Becoming a bona-fide spinster takes hard work and I need to bulk up for the forthcoming shit storm of my life. Being lonely is a process. It slowly wraps around  you and before one knows it, yr lonely. I remember a time when  I was so sure of my future…trailer park…babies…drugs…a “husband”.

“significant” other. What do they signify?

Qualities of the man of my “dreams”

1.       Tall\

2.       Limber

3.       Dark haired

4.       Excellent taste in music and art

5.       Sensitive, but not too sensitive

6.       Fabulous sexual chemistry

7.       Ambition and education

8.       Strange hobbies and/or  interests

9.       Very strong family values in a non religious way

10.    (left blank because one never knows)

Derek told me the first (before the last) time that we spoke, that we cared for each other because the sex was always great. Never boring, never stale, never bad. We loved each other. We yearned, we stalked, we lusted, we obsessed. But he also said that  we shouldn’t be together. I think that is the first remotely intelligent and selfless thing he has ever said to me. He said it because he has someone to hold his dick at night while he sleeps and dreams of the day when he will have a big free house and he’s sitting on a big free mountain of pot, and he is fucking in a big bed with a woman who freely lets him fuck her in the ass. I swallow my pride.

I try to stumble away , clutching the ripped and sewn and stapled pieces of my manifest of what a “man” is.

Goddamit if I don’t think about him every seconed of the day. He has once again left me… I AM 14 AGAIN!!!!! I am 14 with a heart as big as an apple and feelings so hurt…well, it hurts. I know that our paths will cross again. I just know. I trust with all my might that I will see him again. See that face…droopy a little…round tip nose…grey-blue-slate eyes. Long body and lean muscle. Skin that smells of soap and cigarettes and  sometimes even beer. “whatever differences our lives had been, we together make limb.” blonde hair that is so fine that even when tugged lightly during a romp in bed, he would cry out like a lamb looking for its mother. He has big hands and long fingers, dry from masturbation and  various work around the house. When he was on top of me and having an orgasm…his face would seem to melt. His eyes would lower and roll and his mouth would draw together and you could see his tongue a little and I remembered that I would never forget that ridiculous face. That  face that looked irritated but stern when  he made me a mix tape and sleater kinney started to play and he said “shhhhh!!! This is sleater kinney.” that face that electrified me like a lightning bolt straight through adolescence clear into adulthood.  I have said this so many times. I have thought this thought and contemplated every possible product of such.  “what I would give, to know what he was doing right now, at this exact moment.” he isn’t fair and life isn’t fair and I deserve to be deserving of someones love and affection and devotion and and and and…….someones everything. I suppose I will be pining artistically for the rest of this lifetime. I have no doubt. This operation was doomed from the beginning. Abort mission.

Don't think twice, it's alright

I am excited and anxious to say I am in the beginning stages of Phase 4. What is Phase 4 you ask? Dear reader, let me educate you. Every broken relationship you will have (or had) carries with it secret embedded lists that you may or may not know about. These lists commonly begin with "1. Don't call him." The hardest part of breaking up is indeed the "walking away" phase. I like to visualize my Phases as this:

Phases not Phasers

Phase 1) Break up with bad boyfriend.

Phase 2) Make a life altering decision to move across the United States.

Phase 3) Find your dream job in your calling and background.

Phase 4) Buy a home all by yourself.

Phase 5) Meet a companion that is all you have ever hoped for.

This may seem silly but you know that crazy ol Walt Disney said "If you can dream it, you can do it." It's true, it's on motivational posters allover the internet.

The first four phases are really the most important...the last one is thrown in there for good measure. I have never been a "dater." I am not good at it and I probably never will be. My relationships tend to blossom from happen-stance and who-knows-what. I figured that five phases is better than four; although I could just skip to Phase 5 1/2) Have a baby.