Comet Lulin!

We got to see Comet Lulin tonight. It was very dim but definitely observable with the naked eye. Mostly it was just a blur between Saturn and Regulus, but still very cool. I have never seen a comet before at all. And I am so proud of myself for finding it, because I have been to a dozen planetarium shows where they show you how to find all the stars and so forth, and I NEVER see anything once I get out on my own.

Ivan Carlos

Yesterday a baby died in Chicago. His name was Ivan Carlos and he was only 2 ½ months old. His tiny little life was lived out in a cramped filthy apartment with as many as 18 other people, many of them children. He lived surrounded by dirty clothes, rotting food, and cockroaches.

What must that baby’s life have been? Two and one-half months of filth, likely accompanied by hunger and neglect. Two and one-half months, frightened and alone, maybe hurt and abused. I used to know the kind of people who live crammed into dirty apartments. They are not the kind of people who make loving parents. They scream at hungry infants, rather than comfort or feed them. They sell their food stamps for drug money. They are the kind of people who don’t care about themselves, much less the creature they happened to conceive and by some accident deliver.

I wonder about the pro-life people, and whether they listen to the news. Don’t they hear things like this? How could anybody, anybody, in their right mind imagine that allowing that child to live for 10 weeks in a squalid hell is in some way a good thing? How can they think that forcing women who don’t want children to have children will have a good result? Forcing every woman who happens to get pregnant to bear out the pregnancy will only result in more horror stories like little Ivan Carlos.

Where are the pro-life people when things like this are happening? Once the unwanted babies are born, who takes care of them? If these people were really pro-life, why are they not working toward improving the quality of life for babies everywhere? Why don’t they see to it that the egg-donors of babies like Ivan Carlos have access to decent birth control? Why don’t they take adoption counseling into the inner city, where it can help babies like Ivan Carlos get a new start with loving families? Why oh why don’t they make any effort to help all the thousands of unwanted babies being born every day all over the world?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to help the unwanted babies already living in the world to improve their lot in life? Wouldn’t that be a greater good to the world, or a greater testament to the glory of God, if that’s how you roll? Why should they track down all those women who at least have the sense to know they are not ready for motherhood, and force them to shoulder a burden they don’t want? How on earth does that help anybody?

It sure does not help all the Ivan Carloses in the world.

May he find peace at last.

Proud of my Son

Today we went to homeschool group and then stopped at a forest preserve to take a short hike and visit the nature center. Kiddo wanted to make a craft, so the nature center people kindly told us to help ourselves to the supplies. We had noticed some taxidermied animals in the nature center, and Kiddo asked if they had been shot. I told him I didn't think so; the animals had likely been found dead from natural causes. But he was very adamant and concerned that nobody shoot animals in the forest preserve. So for his craft, he made a diamond-shaped sign with a picture of a gun with the red circle-slash over it, and the words NO SHOOTING written on. He got permission to tape it up in the window of the nature center.

As he was taping up his sign, he told the nature-center lady, "Nobody should shoot at the animals, because they are defenseless." He said it in such a cute, matter-of-fact way.

I love it that he cares so much for animals, and even bugs. This evening he made a temporary cage for a lady bug so that it would not fly up in the ceiling fan and get hurt. What a sweetheart. I have heard it said that the true character of a man shows in the way he treats animals. That says a lot for my son.

My little boy is not so little any more.

Kiddo turned 7 Saturday. We had a wonderful ice-skating party at the local rink, where he takes hockey lessons. All his cousins were there and his coach even dropped in for cake and gave him a hat with the ice-rink logo on it. A wonderful time was had by all.

My mom, in her sneaky way, told his cousins to ask him if he wanted to sleep over that night. Well, hey, it's his birthday, so why not? Only after they left did I realize, the next day was Easter, and I would not be there for the Easter baskets. I missed getting the Easter Bunny picture this year, through my own stupidity and the fact that someone broke my car window and it took it all week to get repaired. And now I missed seeing him get his Easter Bunny basket, too.

Ted reminded me that it's not that big a deal, after all, it's not Christmas. Of course he's right, but still . . . . Kiddo is growing up so fast. Who knows if next year he will even believe in the Easter Bunny? Or Santa Claus, for that matter. It's only a matter of time. I felt as if I had something stolen from me.

Of course, it's not just this one incident that has got me all bent out of shape. A year ago, I would have been fine with this arrangement, because I would have felt that there were plenty more Bunny-enriched Easter mornings left for future years. Kiddo has matured so much in the past year of so. He is much less a little boy, and much more a young man. He thinks differently now, and he questions everything, and it is only a matter of time until he works out that the world is not quite as magical as we have let him believe.

Only a matter of time.

Sometimes I feel like I have started this long, slow countdown clock, ticking away the moments until the magic ends. Only, I don't know where the stopping point is. Unlike a kitchen timer, which will tell you the exact number of minutes or even seconds until your casserole is done, this timer never reveals its end point. I only know that, every time I make it though a major event like Christmas or Easter or a Lost Tooth, and it seems like Santa or the Bunny or the Tooth Fairies have survived, I breathe a sigh of relief and figure I still have time until the next event. Whenever I field a question like, "How exactly do reindeer fly?" I notice that the clock is ticking, and am reminded that it will one day run out.

That's one more reason to home school. It helps me maximize the childhood time, this magic time.

PS: My friend Heather at My Supernatural Life has a little girl who shares a birthday with my boy. Heather wrote the most lovely post in honor of her daughter Riley turning 5. Be sure to check her out.

Jessica Junior

We got the box of new Jessicas the other day. Ted took one with him this morning, and then brought it home, telling Kiddo that the Mexican Restaurant had called and said they had found her.

Oh, the joy! I wish we had videotaped it. First he cradled her in his hands, and said, "Jessica???" as if he really couldn't believe it. Then his whole face lit up as he clutched her to his chest. He danced around the house with her. He made up little songs for her. He was unbelievably ecstatic. He held her in his hands while we were reading, and of course he took her (and her dog) off to bed with him.

The new Jessica is cleaner and a brighter green than the last one, which he attributes alternately to someone at the restaurant cleaning her up, and her having a good bath at her home on the Forbidden Planet (like in the movie.) The new one also has a few beans in the stuffing, which he says are there because she ate them at the Mexican restaurant.

Thank God for the resilience of young imaginations!

A day in the life

Here is a bunch of unrelated news:
Ted has been having secret meetings with the children's librarian. She thinks her daughter has a duplicate Jessica at home. If all else fails, she will help us order a sack of 50 of them from the wholesaler.

Kiddo is dealing with the loss very quietly. When it became apparent that we were not going to find her, Ted had the presence of mind to say, "Wow. She must have found a space ship and flew away." And I picked up on it right away, saying, "Yeah, but I wish she could have said goodbye first." Kiddo cried a little bit for her, but he comforts himself by imagining her fabulous life on the Forbidden Planet. I suggested he get re-acquainted with some of his other furry "friends," so now he has half a dozen other stuffed critters he is dragging all around the house. We have talked a little about grief and loss, but nothing too heavy duty. I hope to God we can find a new Jessica soon.

Kiddo had his first hockey lesson at the local ice arena. No more saturday trips to Orland Park! Yea! The new coach is very nice and suggested we put kiddo in the Saturday morning class, so he can have more one-on-one instruction.

My brother-whatever Steve called today to tell me my mom had called HIM to say she was having some kind of fluid-retention issue in her leg, and had been to the doctor. I called her to ask what was happening and why she had called Steve but not me, and she refused to answer. She is still pissed at me for something from last November of December. I don't know specifically why she has her knickers in a twist, but that was about the time I started laying down boundaries.

Kiddo wants to spend Saturday night at her house. He is ASKING to go. That just happens to be my birthday. Ted and I will discuss it later.

We have been discussing what we want to do about managing Kiddo's relationship with my mom. This is so hard because it is impossible for me to be objective where she is concerned. Ted's big issue was with the bathing and her puerile interest in seeing Kiddo in the buff. I think we have that under control. Mom really does not like that I have forbidden her to bathe my son, but I think she also understands that if she wants to see him, she will have to play by my rules.

My huge issue with my mom is that I don't want my kid to come home with his self esteem torn to shreds, with no greater sense of himself than as an object for other people to use. But I had an epiphany the other day--MY kid won't ever feel like that, because I am raising him. Every single day, I treat my child like the loved and adored kid he is--and I also make the effort to discipline him, to teach him right from wrong, to correct him when he messes up, and so forth. A few hours with a slightly batty old lady isn't going to change that. Not ever.

Many of my friends have told me that he should spend absolutely no time alone with her, but for some reason that just does not ring true with me. (Those same friends also tell me to trust my gut, which I am). The thing is, Kiddo is very open and honest. I have talked to him a few times about the odd ways his grandmother acts and why she sometimes says the things she does. He seems comfortable with "That's just Grandma." I think he gets, as far as he is able, that Grandma and I have very different opinions. I have taught him that he should respect other people's right to have their own opinion, without actually accepting that opinion himself.

I think I'll go ponder that while I drift off to sleep.

Ta-da! The cake!

Goodbye, Jessica

We really did it this time. Kiddo took Jessica into a Mexican Restaurant, and when it was time to go, she was gone. It was a fast-food kind of place, where you order you food at the counter and then take a tray to your table. We searched everywhere, even pulling out the trash cans and poking around. We left a sketch of her and my phone number with the staff, but I don't have much hope. It's a sad night here in central Illinois.

How could we let this happen?

Faith and the Bible (and laziness and Bible-thumping)

I grew up Catholic and went to a Catholic school for the first eight years. I can't say I learned much about religion, God, or prayer, even though those things were forced on me every day. The only part of religious instruction I found interesting was the Lives of the Saints, because I liked learning about how other people lived.

In the Lives of the Saints, at least in the versions I have read over the years, equal emphasis is placed of the prayer and spiritual lives of the Saints, and on their public lives of good works. In fact, it is often easer to place more emphasis on their works, simply because the lists can be so long. My family's patron saint, for example, St. Brigid, is known for founding a huge double monastery (male and female dormitories) in Kildare, Ireland; for her kindness to the sick and poor, and for influencing many of the missionaries who spread out over Europe during the dark ages. Few details are known about her prayer life or her spirituality.

I only learned a few Bible verses in school, and Bible reading was not encouraged. IN eight years of Catholic school the only things I took away were this:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'

"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.' (Matthew 25 34-40)

And this:

"The most important [Commandment]," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Matthew 22:37-39)

Call me crazy, but these two verses, which made the most impact on my religious life, sound to me like a call to action. We are meant to do something. I myself am not a shining paragon of virtuous action, but I do what I can. Most of the time. I don't do stuff because I want something in return, and I don't do it because I am trying to work my way into heaven. I do it because, as near as I can tell, it's the right thing to do.

I have always been perplexed by people who claim you don't have to actually do anything in order to be a good Christian. I think everybody knows a few hypocrites like this. They have convinced themselves that all they have to do is proclaim to themselves and whomever will listen that they believe in Jesus--usually in the loudest, corniest, or most obnoxious way possible--and then all their sins will be forgiven and, without further effort or exertion on their part, they will be taken bodily up to Heaven at the time of the Rapture (the end of the world). People like this creep me out for a number of reasons, but mostly because I find this view to be a poor excuse for laziness and hatefulness and a perversion of what is really a very simple faith.

People like to quote bits of scripture, taken out of context, to justify the most atrocious things. If you take any bit of text out of context, you can make it mean almost anything. Here is a good example, that lots of people like to use:

So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief;^{[or little faith, or lack of faith]} for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.(Matthew 17: 20)

So people say, "I have faith. My faith is much bigger than a mustard seed, really. It's so big that I can't even contain it. I have to tell it to everyone I meet. I believe in Jesus Christ as my own personal savior. I need do nothing else. " All too often, this line of reasoning runs on like this: "My only Christian duty is to now try to force everyone else around to this same way of thinking!" which sometimes leads to "Jesus wants me to force everyone else to believe in him and his way of thinking, and I will be richly rewarded with the spoils of my crusades!" Which sometimes leads to TV evangelism, and sometimes leads to wars.

People of this ilk are overlooking a few things. In the first place, Jesus preached and lived a life of love, kindness, and forgiveness. He taught; he did not force. Furthermore, an entire Chapter of Matthew (Matthew 6) is devoted to the idea that people should pray and do good works in secret; indeed, those who blow their own horns about their own righteousness have already gotten enough fun out of being seen and heard. They will get nothing else from God.

And the most important part of all:

A mustard seed is a living thing. If you have faith like a mustard seed, that is a living faith. It may seem small from the outside. (In fact, many modern translations of the Bible focus on the size, putting in Jesus' mouth the words "If you had faith only as big as a mustard seed. . . ." which seems to me like a self-serving bend of the truth.) But the thing to remember is, it grows. It makes a mustard plant which in turn makes more seeds. A living faith, like a child (another often mis-used quotation (Matthew 19:14)) will grow and change and eventually go out into the world and do things.

People who have faith like a mustard seed, get it. They get that a living faith means acting as Jesus did when he was among the living. They get that we are called to help each other. To be good to each other. To tolerate each other. To act with love.

People who have mustard-seed faith, even a tiny little bit of it, get it. They get that believers are called to do more than just believe. A person who truly believes in Jesus and the Bible, understands that believers are compelled to do good works, because the Bible tells them so.

But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? (James 2:20)

Cooking up some Christmas Cheer

There was a big huge ice storm this morning, so we couldn't go to church. The 4-H Christmas party also got canceled, so I had a whole long day which did not involve running around. What a treat. What did I do with my whole long day? Why, I baked, of course!

I do a big formal Christmas Eve dinner for Ted's family every year. I have to start early because it is a lot of work, and I hate trying to do it all in the last few days before Christmas. So today I leaped on the opportunity to get ahead. I made:

Cookie dough for 5 dozen cookies (to be rolled out and baked tomorrow)
Home-made applesauce from 3 lbs of apples (Made slightly more than a quart)
Butternut Squash bread from Holly's recipe
Pumpkin Butter
Honey-Wheat bread.

Then I made Spaghetti Squash and Tofu for dinner.

My Holiday menu will also include:

Maple-brined turkey (This is Ted's thing. I try not to look)
Cranberry sauce made from real cranberries (Already made and in the freezer)
Pumpkin bread (Already made and in the freezer)
Marbled mashed potatoes (White and sweet potatoes prepared separately and swirled together)
Some kind of vegetables
Apple cider and peppermint sticks for the kids
Wine and coffee for the grownups.

Coffee and cookies and the chocolates my kid had to sell for 4-H for dessert.

Am I missing anything?

Snow Day

So, I blew off out homeschool group today, even though we have are supposed to turn in our orders for the fund raiser, and even though it is Scholastic Book Order Day, because it snowed today.

It wasn't a big snow, only a few inches. The plows were going all night, and by morning all they had to do was scrape the new slush off the roads. But when we woke up this morning, the whole yard and the field behind us and everything we could see was covered with a blanket of fresh white snow. It was beautiful. Kiddo wanted to run outside in his jammies and play in it. As it is, he went out in a rugby shirt and his cub scout uniform pants, and snow boots with no socks, before I noticed he was gone.

I bundled up more carefully, but went out and joined him. We played Frisbee in the snow. Had a snowball fight. Loaded his sled with snow only to move it across the yard and dump it again. I also put up some Christmas decorations, brought the lawn chairs in to the garage, filled the bird feeders, and stacked bricks around the base of the chimney. (The previous owners finished the outside of the chimney with particle board and plaster, and of course it has not held up to the winters. The bricks are not a complete solution, but they are better than a gaping hole at the base of the chimney.) I decorated my front porch for Christmas and put away all the autumn things. I never thought I would have a house with a front porch, and I never ever thought I would be able to decorate it seasonally. But it looks lovely out there.

A Novermber (Not) to Remember

I am quite proud of myself because this month I knocked myself out and paid $2000 worth of one-time only and unexpected bills that HAD to be paid this month or else. Can I also say I am exhausted! The last bills are due today and I am about to go out and make the calls to get them taken care of. HOORAY! I feel so much better today, in spite of the fact I have been going on 4 or 5 hours of sleep all week.

And, I never thought I'd say this:

I am soooo sick of coffee!

Sometimes life imitates the Simpsons.

In between a somewhat disappointing trip to the children's museum (am I the only one who notices the stuff is falling apart?) and running to 4-H (Where I will now be volunteering as a leader of my son's Cloverbud group), I made a quick supper and sat down to watch the Simpsons with Kiddo and Super Ted.

This was the episode where Marge and Homer go on a tour of wine country, and Marge starts drinking as much as Homer. In the course of it, Homer does something Really awful to Marge. He sits in the local bar where the bartender, Moe, asks him some variation of "Why the long face?" This is what happens next:

Moe: You can tell me. I've heard everything.

Homer whispers in Moe's ear.

Moe: That's awful! That's the most horrible thing I ever heard! You . . . why, you deserve to drink watered-down beer out of a chipped mug, while sitting on a stool with a big sharp nail sticking straight up!

Moe now smacks Homer's mug on the edge of the bar--chipping the entire rim-- then pours a cup of water into Homer's half-finished beer. He relocates Homer one stool over onto a stool with a big pointy nail sticking out of it.

Homer: Can I have some peanuts?

Moe: OK, but I get to poke you with this sharp stick (which he produces from under the bar).

Moe resumes the classic position of a bartender, leaning with one elbow on the bar, bar rag in hand, all the while poking away at Homer with his stick.

Moe: (poke, poke, poke) So, did ya see the game last night? (Poke, poke)

Now, that was possibly the funniest thing I have EVER seen on the Simpsons. Everybody I told that to at work last night (Yes, I went after 4-H) thought it was mildly amusing, except the bartender, who laughed so hard she almost wet herself!

See, you have to realize that the the part of this conversation in dark blue is the part that is really happening, and the part in lavender is what is going on inside the bartender's head. We who work in bars totally GET IT and love it. I have, many times, had to listen to a conversation where they guy is telling me how he beat up his kids, cheated on his wife, extorted his company's money, and stole food from starving orphans, while I smile and nod and say, Wow! what an interesting life you've had. Let's go have that dance now.

Now on to work. There were few customers and many dancers, which means, once you land a seat next to a potential customer, you stay there. To get up prematurely means you risk losing your only chance for a sale in the immediate future, and furthermore you will wind up staring at the fish tank or the silent TV, with no one to talk to. So I sat with one cheap idiot who had tipped me a dollar for a 5-minute massage ( I gave it back to him), a mooncalf who was about to go on house arrest for the second time, and this third knucklehead who started talking about how he had shot his dog.

THe whole story is, the guy had been divorced and was by his own admission sleeping with any slut that would have him. The dog had a habit of waking up the women in the middle of the night and scaring them away. Well, the dog took a liking to this one woman, and allowed the woman to stay in the house. Eventually this knucklehead married the (slut) woman, on the dog's recommendation. Eventually the (slut) woman reverted to the behavior that got her in the guy's bed in the first place, and started sleeping with the guy's boss. So this asshole shoots the dog.

I feel ya, Moe.

Haunted Strip Clubs

Houses are not the only places that can be haunted. When you think of a what a strip club can be like--all the emotions people express there, frustrated sexuality, unrequited love, happiness, lies, anger, and sometimes even violence that go on there—It would surprise me to mind out that a majority of then were not haunted.

I have worked in 3 small regular strip clubs over the years (as opposed to bars where dancers are just part of the entertainment). Everu single one of them seems to have had a ghost. One was haunted by the ghost of the man who used to own the building. I never saw this ghost, just heard about him form the other girls. He was apparently harmless. The back-stage part of the strip club had once been a large house, and the public front part had been added on later. The former owner is said to have come down the stairs and sat in one of the dressing room chairs. According the girls who did see him, he didn’t seem creepy or weird, just lonely. The girls seemed to think he was really just hanging out for company. They would talk to him. I can vouch for the dressing room being icy cold a lot of the time, but I actually just thought the owner was too cheap to pay for the heat.

Another club I worked in had some raised separate booths on the side of the room opposite the stage. If you were up on the stage, you cold see into these booths. Frequently, I would see people sitting in those spots, and of course I would look over and smile at them. When I looked again, they were gone!

This is my best haunted club story:

The first actual strip club I worked in was this skanky little dump in Indana. The manager and the DJ were both young guys, who were also friends, and who apparently got their ideas of how to run a strip club from watching movies like “Stiptease.” One day the manager and the DJ came in with a box of clothes they said they had gotten hot somewhere and sold them to us. They claimed the things were new, but I and another girl noticed that when we took the things off, they looked like they had been worn more than a few times.

At about the same time, I started thinking I saw somebody by the door coming in, then I would look again to see if it was a staff member or a new customer, and there would be nobody there. Strangely, there always seemed to be an orange cast to the imaginary person, as if they were standing under a neon light. We had no such orange neon lights in the club. I saw this same thing once in the hallway by the VIP rooms.

Another girl had a bizarre experience while entertaining a customer in the VIP section. That club has small curtained booths for a VIP area. They only ever allowed one dancer and one customer to a booth, and there wasn’t room for more than that anyway. This dancer was sitting on the customer’s lap, facing away from him, and for some reason turned her head to the side. She saw ANOTHER GIRL'S FACE just inches from her own! By the time she recovered from the shock, the other girl disappeared.

A couple of weeks later, a girl came back to the club who had been off work for a while having a baby. She saw my gown that I had bought from the manager, and said "Oh my god, where did you get this?" When I told her, she told me that it was a gown the house mom had custom made for her, and that after she had gotten tired of it, she gave it to a new girl named Autumn. Autumn eventually became engaged to and moved in with the DJ. Shortly afterward, she was killed in a car accident on her way home from work!

Strangely, the only ones of us who saw anything unusual were those of us who had unknowingly bought Autumn’s used outfits from the DJ! Neither one of us knew her.

The (haunted) house where I used to live

The first house I shared with my husband was full of spirits. That house was also newly built, but it had been built under contract for somebody who had reneged on the deal at the last minute. That house was built on land that was once a farm. The original farm house was next door to ours, and it had even more problems. The house behind that one and the house next door to ours on the other side all seemed to be affected. In the 8 years my husband lived in that house, those 4 houses saw 3 divorces, the demise of one good friendship between 3 room mates, the financial ruin of one couple, actual psychological illness, spouse abuse, and dozens of knock-down, drag-out fights that frequently spilled out into the yards.

The five years I lived there were the most difficult of my life.

Though I had stayed with Ted on weekends before I was pregnant, I had never noticed anything weird or unusual. I would attribute that to the constant activity—(Besides Ted and me, there was also Ted’s roommate, the roommate’s 12 year old son, all their rowdy friends, and several cats) and my continual state of drunkenness, hung-over-ness, and/or post-coital bliss. Hell, I was lucky if I noticed whether my shoes were on the right feet. When I got preggers, though, we kicked the roommate and her entourage out and started fixing up the house That was the year natural gas prices were so outrageous, so we stayed in my condo and only went down to the house to work on cleaning and decorating it. That was when I began to notice things.

The house was a split-level ranch, with a short stairway in the living room that lead up to a hallway that was open on the living room side. Frequently, when I came around the corner from the kitchen or the bathroom, I would see someone standing there. It was a man, rather short, in a tan jacket and pants, and a wide-brimmed hat. He usually stood with his hand on the newel post, looking down into the living room. He would always fade away as soon as I saw him.

One time, when it was bitter cold, Ted and I went into the house to do a few things. We had to turn up the furnace while we worked (we usually left it set at 50) and left it on when we went for supper. We had planned to do more when we came back, but for some reason we stayed out several hours and decided not to do any more in the house. When we went back to turn down the thermostat, we found it had already been turned down.

When we brought the cats down to live in the house, they went crazy. One stayed under the couch for days and growled. The other ran right to the top of the stares, where the figure of the man always stood, and started to cry. (Not really crying—it’s this desperate-sounding noise she makes when she wants something and we don’t know what it is.) We put the litter box in the basement bathroom, and the older cat would sit on the steps and cry many times when she didn’t want to go down to the litter box. She would stare down the stairs with her ears pointed forward as if she could see something, and meow like somebody was killing her.

When we brought he baby home, things got worse instead of better. When I sat up nights with the baby, I could hear another baby crying. Having worked in an emergency room, I know a baby’s fever cry. Sometimes it was that, and sometimes uncontrollable bawling. I heard cats meowing. Kiddo’s electronic music toys would begin to play spontaneously. Musical instruments, like bells and tambourines, would play. Things got moved to improbably places. Things disappeared all together—especially shoes. Over the years, I threw out several single shoes and slippers, after despairing of ever finding the mates. I sort of expected to find all that stuff when we moved, but no luck.

The sprits got bolder. One time I came home and opened the front door, the find the tan-suited man standing in my living room. As the door swung open, he stared at me in surprise for a moment before fading away.

I began seeing a female form, too. She had a long pink dress. One time, I had taken Kiddo out for a walk in his stroller, and he had fallen asleep there. I simply wheeled the stroller inside and parked it in the kitchen, letting kiddo sleep. I got busy doing some dishes. When I turned away form the sink to check on Kiddo, the woman was bending over him in the stroller. It wasn’t a threatening gesture, just an interested one; the way people usually look at babies in strollers. As I opened my mouth to speak, she disappeared.

As kiddo got old enough to stand and walk, he developed the charming habit of lifting his arms and smiling at whomever he wanted to pick him up. Sometimes he would turn to what seemed to us an empty space, make faces that showed obvious pleasure and recognition, and then lift his arms to be held. He would also babble and wave to people we could not see.

Ted had his experiences, too. He likes to soak in the bath tub with a good book. Frequently while he was doing this, the bathroom door would open and shut, as if someone had passed through. A couple times, the bathroom door flew open forcefully and banged against the wall. Sometimes it didn’t open, but there was still a banging sound, as if somebody were knocking desperately to get in. When in the basement, he could hear footsteps in the empty house above.

The creepiest thing that ever happened to me there was once, while I was standing in the hall, a huge black shape flew from the bedroom at the front of the house, straight down the hall, and out the bathroom window at the back of the house. It was not a bird or a bat—this thing was huge. It was probably about as big as a person, but it seemed shapeless. It passed just inches from me in the narrow hallway and blocked out the light from the bathroom window before it made its escape. Although it was a hot summer day, I felt cold.

The oddest thing was the way the house or its spirits seemed to affect our relationship. Although our relationship was rocky in those days, we would be fine as long as we were outside the house. As soon as we came home, a fight would start. I’m not joking—sometimes as soon as we were in the door, Ted would say something, and I would take it the wrong way, and off we’d go! They really seemed to thrive on this—the worse the argument, the more activity we’d see for the next few days. Strangely, sex seemed to have a similar effect on them. Many women state in a figurative way that they herd bells and music after hot sex—we really did!

The activity seemed to calm somewhat as Kiddo grew older, but I still hated being in the house. I never felt comfortable there, and I never felt like I was alone. And we still tended to fight whenever we were together in the house.

Thank God Cook County raised their property taxes; because that was the only way I could convince Ted to move. Our new house, a restored school, is super quiet. In almost a year and a half, there has been not one single incident. The nights here are peaceful and quiet. When I sit up at night to read or work, I can relax, instead of always listening for unexplained noises and watching for God-knows-what.

The (haunted) house where I grew up

Ok, Halloween is coming, so let’s talk haunted houses. Not the kind somebody sets up in an old barn or whatever, but real houses people live in that have ghosts.

I have had lots and lots of experiences, from the tine I was a little kid. My Mom’s house is full of spirits, although she refuses to believe it. My Mom and Dad had that house built form scratch, so all the spirits there are somehow related to my family.

My brother died in 1967 at the age of 18. I was born in 1969. The house was full of his presence. I had an area in the basement where I worked on my model horses, which had also been his area for working on civil war soldiers and stuff. He was always flickering the lights and messing with the stereo and banging the pipes when I was down there. At first it scared me, but I began to get used to it. I would talk to him sometimes, and that seemed to calm the noise and lights and so on.

My Dad died when I was 13, after a lengthy illness. The last few months before he died, I could hear someone pacing the hallway between the bedrooms. The pacing would stop when my Dad would get up for any reason, and then resume when he went back to bed. I used to lie awake nights and listen to it. I became convinced that that was my brother, waiting for my Dad to come join him. I may have been right, because after my Dad passed, I never heard that sound in the hallway again.

My anniversary . . . . more mushy stuff.

I had to work Friday, unfortunately. Suck. I dropped Kiddo off at Mom's house, and she took us out to lunch to celebrate the anniversary of "the day we all married together," in Kiddo's words. (Remember, he was 19 months old when we got married.) Then I got my nails done, and had to fight traffic, all of which made me terribly late. To make matters worse, the police had set up a roadblock just half a block north from the bar. Roadblocks are so not good for business!

Well, that was a waste of time. On an impulse, I kept my work dress on under my jeans and sweater when I left. I walked up the street, around the roadblock, and to the discount liquor store, where I spent a quarter of my meager earnings om wine. Then I grabbed a baked potato at Wendy's and raced home. Including the stop at Wendy's, I made it in one hour and 29 minutes, which is a land speed record coming out of Stone Park on Friday night.

When I hit the driveway, I saw that the house was mostly dark, with only a light in the bedroom window. Well, shit. I bet he fell asleep. That would be understandable, really, since Ted gets up at 3 am to get ready for work. But even if his intentions are good, once he nods off, he's never quite the same. Even after he wakes up, he is in this weird disoriented state. So, I resigned myself to a little computer time and looking forward to the morning, when we would both be rested and refreshed.

I grabbed my wine and carried it into the house. The night light in the hall lit up the usual assortment of shoes, backpacks, and hats . . . and a trail of rose petals leading up the stairs. Hmmmm . . . . I dropped off my wine in the wine cooler ( I always wanted to be the kind of person who would have a wine cooler, and I don't mean a fruity little drink in a bottle!) and went to investigate. I followed the trail of petals up the stairs, through the playroom, over several wooden train tracks, past my pole in the exercise room, and into the bedroom. There I found the bedroom cleaned, candles burning, and rose petals strewn over and around the bed. In the middle of the bed were a dozen red roses. My dressing table chair had become a makeshift stand for a bottle of blackberry merlot and two bottles of champagne chilling on ice. In the sitting area, Ted was waiting for me, grinning, surrounded by rose petals and pink-wrapped chocolate pieces that he had scattered over the table also placed in dainty dessert glasses. He stood when I came in and took me in his arms. . . . .

The first thing that happened tome in the morning was that someone dropped a lovely decadent piece of dark chocolate in my mouth.

Along about noon we had to emerge form the bedroom, if only to raid the wine cooler. I made brunch--fried-egg sandwiches on home-made whole grain bread, with sauteed candy onions and green peppers from the garden, sliced garden tomatoes, smoked cheese, soy sausage, mustard and mayo. We washed 'em down with more wine (hey, it's not like we do this every week!) while we watched Showgirls, which Ted had brought home for me the week before. The picture of the girl with the pole on the front of it had caught his eye, and this was a particularly lovely gift set which included the DVD, shot glasses (I collect shot glasses) party games, etc.

Oh, my gawd! what a horrible movie. I had heard it was bad, but I wanted to see it for the dancing and the costumes. It didn't have enough of either, in my opinion. The main character was just . . . . awful. Completely despicable. After the first few minutes, Ted kept wishing more and more horrible fates on her--"I hope she gets hit by that truck!" he would say. "I hope she falls off the stage and breaks her neck!" "I hope Jason gets her!" The movie's only saving grace was, not only was the plot simple enough to follow even when intoxicated, but the more we drank, the more fun we had ripping on it! Hence the shot glasses included in the package.

Only, the more we drank, the more we had to take breaks to go to the bathroom, and the more my attention span wandered and then I'd come in the office and fuck with the Internet, so that the movie, which was too long to begin with, stretched out and devoured our whole day. I had had it in the back of my head to do something outdoors, since it was so nice out. Oh well. We drank some coffee and watched the sunset form our back porch, then got cleaned up and went out for dinner.

Dinner was a big flop. Ted had wanted to go to a Chinese buffet, and he had one in mind that we had never tried before. Won't be trying it again, either. The food was greasy and bland. As a vegetarian, I had a real problem because crab meat was hidden in everything. It wasn't enough crab meat to actually make anything taste like crab, because I took a few bites before I realized something was not quite right. Apparently the only reason they put it there was pure perversity. Oh, well. Live 'n' learn, right?

Last stop of the night was Carlo's in Cedar Lake for karaoke fun. I love it when we go out singing. I have had voice lessons, but I used to be too shy to ever sing in front of other people. Back in the days when we were just buddies, Ted convinced me to do the female part in Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Singing is easy after you've had a few beers. Anyway, karaoke had been a huge part of our dating life and life as a couple. It is one of the things we most enjoy doing together. So, a bucket o' beers at Carlo's, and we had our entertainment for the rest of the night.

I first sang, "The Search is Over", from Survivor. I adore that song because, not only was it released about the time I met Ted (maybe a couple of years before, I'm not quite sure) but, when I sing it to him, it is absolutely the story of our relationship.

SURVIVOR lyrics

Ted sang Chicago's "Make Me Smile" and Seger's "You'll Accompany Me." Together we did "Sgt. Petter's Lonely Hears Club Band/With a Little Help From My Friends," and "Getting Better All the Time," both of which we perfected as duets 20 years ago or more, singing with a cassette tape in a boom box in Ted's 1966 Mustang convertible.

The DJ packed up his stuff at 1 am, but we were still singing when we left the bar.

The evil bastards at Ted's work scheduled him to work (yet another) Sunday, so that was then end of our fun. Oh well. I still have the roses.

My 5th Wedding anniversary

Here we are 5 years ago yesterday. Wow! Hard to believe that's us!

BTW, I still have the dress, I can still wear the dress, I do still wear the dress, and 2 years ago, I had the dress taken in!

Getting Better All the Time

BEATLES, THE lyrics

Today is my 5th wedding anniversary. Amazing. A-fucking-mazing.


That we made it this far is really tenement to Ted's amazing strength and patience. Or maybe pig-headed-ness and not knowing when to quit. Whatever, I am profoundly grateful.

We tried to have our wedding before Kiddo was born, but it was too much of a rush. I was also taking some classes (I was pre-med at the time) and working full time. The extra strain of planning a wedding was just too much, and so we gave it up.

The combination of unresolved grief and raging pregnancy hormones, combined with uncertainty in my relationship with Ted and my general emotional baggage, made me a horrible person. There is no other way to say that. I was selfish, emotional, whiny, bitchy, childish, and hateful. I blamed Ted for everything--how miserable I felt physically and emotionally, how I couldn't go on with school, somehow I even managed to blame him for Rick's death. Everything was all his fault.

That Ted didn't leave me during my pregnancy or the year or so after Kiddo was born, is testimony to his patience and steadfastness. He forgave me time and again, until I knew he would never leave me. For some reason, he even still wanted to marry me.

But sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees, and besides sticking around, Ted did little else to hold up his end of the relationship. He was as childish and spoiled as I was, and still wanted to live like a bachelor, in spite of the fact that he had a baby-momma and a child at home. For reasons of his own, Ted replayed some of the worst from my childhood--he objectified me, ignored me, didn't know how to cope with my emotional storms, and escaped into work or hobbies. For the longest time, it seemed like his only interest in me was "What can you do for me? In what way are you of any use? How does whatever happens to you affect me?" (Re-reading this, I recall that Ted's mom passed away when our son was about 6 weeks old. So only now, 6 1/2 years later, have I pulled my head out of my ass enough to see that Ted was grieving. How insensitive have I been? )

Each of us was desperate to get our needs met, and unable to ask like civilized people. We were both so miserable.

For those first few years, I conducted myself like a spoiled child, resorting to tantrums to try and get the attention I needed. I blew things completely out of proportion, for example throwing a screaming and bawling fit because Ted had spilled coffee on my clean floor. Ted would withdraw, or worse, resort to hurling hurtful insults that always seemed to get right to the heart of me. This escalated for a few rounds, until I would resort to hitting to make him stop. Then he would yell some more, and withdraw again.

The last time I hit Ted, I also broke his finger when he tried to restrain me. I turned around and saw Kiddo had seen the whole thing. That was one of many ah-ha moments that brought things around for us.


We've had a lot of those moments in the last 5 years.

Fortunately, we are both stubborn loners. Neither of us was willing to admit failure, and we both knew we had no one else. We were committed to creating a stable, two-parent home for kiddo, even though we disagreed violently about what that meant. So, somehow, we knew we had to hang on to each other. We didn't know how, or even where to start. Several months of marriage counseling didn't seem to have any effect until months after we had given up on it. Now bits and pieces of it still come back to us from time to time.

Love, apparently, can conquer all. Neither of us believed it at the time, but here we are. With the momentum of a speeding glacier, we have changed.

Ted believes the pivotal moment was when we moved out of our old house. To say that the old place had a bad vibe, is like saying The Amityville Horror was a somewhat creepy movie. We both firmly believe the place was haunted. It is an undisputed fact that in the 10 years Ted lived there, in that house and the 3 lots touching it, there were 3 divorces, a ruined friendship between 3 roommates, 2 couples who regularly had knock-down, drag-out fights, and 2 cases of near financial ruin--that we know of. And I can certainly say that moving out to the quiet, low stress, low traffic country has made both of us happier. So yeah, maybe there is something to that.

I like to give us more credit, though. I think, mostly, we simply grew the f* up. I think we both struggled for a long time and finally something gave, and we pulled ourselves together. Ted claims I somehow taught him how to think, which means to question logically the assumptions he grew up with. This means he thinks things through logically and with empathy, rather than just being contrary for the hell of it. He is breaking his bad habit of saying hateful things in arguments. He is more willing to work with me as a team and to accept my leadership when appropriate. He shows he loves me in ways I understand, instead of expecting me to intuitively know it.

For me, trust is the essential issue. Back in high school, Ted was really the only person I trusted. I felt he was the only one who understood me. Through the years, through our separation and all the changes in our lives, I stopped trusting even him. I tested Ted to inhuman limits. He forgave the unforgivable in me, time and again. He sometimes screamed and yelled and threated to leave me, but he never did. After a while, I became able to ask him to promise he's never leave. He had to say the actual words to me, many times over, promising he's always be there for me. And gradually, I started to believe him. I stopped trying so hard to make him go away. Sometimes when I am feeling bad about myself, I will still push him a little bit, but it's not exactly the same. Now I push because I really want him to say, "I love you. Let's make things better."--but I don't always know that is what I need, or I don't know how to ask.

I have had to learn trust in other things, too. I have always had a difficult time trusting anybody with any kind of personal (emotional) information. My instinct has always been, don't tell people anything they can come back at you with later. Never give anybody a weapon to use against you. This made an impossible situation in our marriage because there was no way Ted could avoid hurting me if he didn't know what was going on with me. But I could not tell him for fear he would use the information to hurt me.

About a year ago, I felt or herd a stirring from the un-integrated core personality, the original child who was so damaged. It was in the middle of an argument with Ted. Like so many of our arguments, it started because he had unknowingly stepped on one of my many emotional land mines. In the aftermath of resulting explosion, Ted asked me in exasperation, "How am I supposed to know what hurts you? You won't tell me!" I realized in that moment that he was right. I opened my mouth to speak, then clamped it shut again. A voice inside me screamed, "NO! NO! DON'T TELL! DON'T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY!" And I whispered, " I can't tell you. It's against the rules."

Lately I have had to tell. The pain of constantly getting my feelings trampled on by a good, well-meaning, man who was stumbling in the dark, got the better of me. I saw that the things I had done and the secrets I had kept to protect myself were now more cumbersome than helpful, and that they hurt Ted and Kiddo because I can't be a wife and mother to them when I am wallowing in my emotional pig pen full of shit. I decided that, if I wanted Ted to love, honor, and cherish me for myself, then he had to see my "self" as it really was. I used to accuse him of loving not me, Erin, but one of the alter personalities who had been his buddy in high school. But what I was doing, holding up an idealized, sanitized Erin, put me in essentially the same position. (Like The Wizard of Oz: Pay no mind to the woman behind the curtain!) And look, I can't do that for the rest of my life.

Now it's all out there. Or at least, all of it that I remember and understand. Ted now sees who he has in front of him. He sees the holes in me, and the places where I didn't grow properly, and the scars that are still so full of filth and shit that they will probably never heal right. And it's OK. He still wants me. Amazingly, he understands me. He gave me a beautiful gift the other day--he was angry at my mother for the things she did to me. Nobody has ever been angry on my behalf before.

Five years ago today, we stood in our back yard in front of our guests and promised to love, honor, and cherish each other. That has always been my fairy tale ending--to be loved, honored, and cherished. Like so many people, I looked to my marriage to make up for what I never got in childhood. Ted is a white knight guy--he really does want to save me and give me what I need. We balance each other that way--I so need to be rescued, and Ted needs someone to save.

Most psychologists would say this is not a perfect marriage. I know it's not. But it's honest, and for us that is a big step. It's strong and well-tested. It nurtures both of us and gives us both space and reason to grow. And it gets better all the time.

Getting Better All the Time

BEATLES, THE lyrics

Things happened fast again after Rick died. I should mention that, about the time my fiance Rick got sick, my best friend from high school tracked me down. Ted was the only really good thing about high school. We worked at Wendy's together and he sat behind me in one class. After school we were always together. After school he helped me with my paper route, and then we went to work or went out to see my horse or just went for a drive. Ted had a 1966 Mustang Convertible. We always took a "boom box" and plenty of cassette tapes with us--especially the Beatles and Led Zepplin. It was 1986. We had so much fun together.

Ted was also the only stable thing in my life at the time. After horrible fights with my mother or various boyfriends, Ted was the only person who could calm me. I would occasionally call him, crying, and beg him to talk me down. Nobody else could.

Ted stood up in my wedding to my first husband. We remained friends until I went into the Army, and then lost touch. When Ted finally called me, he had gotten married and was now about to get divorced. I had gotten engaged, and my fiance was dying of cancer. Our lives were falling apart, and we leaned on each other.

Ted's divorce became final in July 1999. Rick passed on August 19, 1999. Ted shares my interests in food, alcohol, music, and sex, so we spent the next 11 months dealing with our respective losses. We worked out a terrific formula: work hard, play hard. This involved as much over time as we could each arrange, up to 60 hour weeks, and weekends spent in restaurants, in a karaoke bar, and in bed.

The drunken weekends were fun while they lasted, and they gave me enough of a break from my crushing grief to go out and last another week. On the surface tings were looking better. Ted and I were rarely apart. Truth be known, I hated being separated from him like a shipwreck victim would hate being separated from a life raft. One drunken night he revealed he had been ring shopping and put down a deposit on an emerald for me. We dropped hints that there might be a wedding in the future.

On New Years Eve 1999/2000, we toasted the end of troubles and the beginning of a new life together.

But my grief was still catching up with me. I was still afraid to sleep. Many times, while I was sleeping I would forget that Rick was gone, and when I woke up, I would remember again with shock and surprise. On mornings when I woke up alone, I was still disappointed and disgusted to open my eyes and find I was still breathing. I wanted to be free of the pain. I worked in an Emergency room at the time, and knew some lethal combinations of over-the-counter drugs. As the summer progressed, I started passing the depressing "last time" anniversaries. Third week in June--the last time we had gone on vacation together. July fourth--last picnic at my Mom's. July 11- the day he went into the hospital for the last time. And so on. I began daydreaming about an elaborate suicide gesture: I would put on the wedding gown I had bought, take a lethal combination of drugs, wash it down with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and lie down on his grave to die.

Fortunately I didn't get too far with this line of thinking. Three hundred and thirty-three days after I lost my fiance, I missed my period and found I had gained Ted's baby. July 17, 2000 marked the beginning of the rest of our lives.