I'm Gonna Keep On Creepin' On

One of my favourite things to do is to try to scare myself and others. I have a hard time scaring myself though, even with all of the creepy things online to look up. I once watched Silent Hill and IT in the dark, by myself, and then went to bed with no lights.

Hello, kiddies!

I believe my fascination with the creepy began as a very small child. Tales from the Crypt ran from 1989 to 1996 and for several of those years I was enamored with the Crypt Keeper, whom I dubbed, "My Funny Man."

Not exactly the best bed time stories, but I don't ever remember being scared by it. The only time I ever remember being truly scared by a movie or show was after I saw Candyman.

In 1993, when I was five, Candyman came out on VHS. After seeing it, I got scared in the middle of the night and ran to my dad. In a decidedly insensitive move, he held me up in front of a mirror and said, "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman!"
I screamed bloody murder. (I'm freaking out just writing this.)

While I'm sure he was just trying to show me that nothing would happen, it terrified me and to this day I still haven't been able to watch the movie again. I like being creeped out, paranoid, and scared, though. I'm not sure why, but I'm sure there's some deep psychological reason that I couldn't give a crap about.

In the 4th grade, my classmates were starting to read the Goosebumps books, but I was already cutting my teeth on R.L. Stine's Fear Street series. It didn't take long before I was reading Stephen King and Robin Cook. I remember my 5th grade teacher being horrified when I presented a book report on Pet Semetary.

Most recently I've delved deeper into the scary and the supernatural. The show Supernatural helped remind me how much I love being unnerved. I started watching more scary/creepy movies and ended up joining a livejournal community called ontdcreepy where I have wasted many hours trying to scare myself.

(Image credits:Vivo (Ben) via: BoredPanda)

One of my favourite things to do is look through photos of abandoned buildings. Photos from Chernobyl are especially haunting.

This is a photo of the Pripyat Funfair. It was to be opened on May 1st, 1986, but was left unused after Reactor Four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a catastrophic power increase on April 26th.

This April 26th will be the 25th anniversary of the disaster, and the town of Pripyat, Ukraine, is still abandoned. The radiation levels are slowly returning to normal, and the Ukraine is getting ready to allow tourists in to view the abandoned city.

Viewing Pripyat and seeing the devastation is something this creepy would love to do.

The Hillbillies Come Out in the Afternoon

Needing a fun day, my friend Tara and I drove about an hour away to visit the Weiderkehr Winery for tasting and to eat at their 'authentic' Swiss/German restaurant.

Except her GPS tried to get us killed.

One of the many dead vineyards.

After inputing the address into the GPS, we set off on the road. After reaching Altus, we followed the GPS's directions to get to the winery. We missed the original turn off, so it recalculated and told us to head up a bit and there would be another entrance.

We ended up turning onto a dirt road. Being a popular Arkansas tourist destination, I was a little bemused at the fact it was up a dirt road.

We passed miles of dead vineyards and finally ended up in the middle of a feild somewhere in front of a locked gate. 

Somebody doesn't want anyone to know
where we are.

We turned around and headed back. And when we turned around, I noticed a mangled street sign lying in the brush.

Cue Dueling Banjos.

Confused, since the street sign said the correct road, we decided to head back slowly down the dirt road and back to the first turn off the GPS directed us to.

That was also a dirt road. We kept following the navigation of this little machine and ended up on top of a mountain, miles away from a real road or people we knew probably wouldn't kill us or go all Deliverance on us.

Dishwasher? Dryer? Oven used to cook people?

Along the road, we found several things, including a dishwasher and a pull out couch . At a cross roads, there were also two very large dirt mounds, covered in brush and grass.

Hey, this pull out couch just
needs a little Fabreeze and it'll
be just fine!

We finally ended up at the only house in the area and had to turn around in their yard as the road was too narrow to do so. It really freaked us out too because we just knew these people were going to run out and attack us and feed us to their goats, pigs, and chickens.

Finally we made it out and back on the highway, where we went the other direction and stopped at a very populated tourist shop and asked for directions to the winery. After an hour of creepy backwoods driving, we finally made it and enjoyed tasting the wine.

Super creepy statue at the winery

Oh, mother.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my mother is a smart person, but like any of us, she makes some pretty dumb mistakes.

Last night at dinner, she mentioned she was tired and how inconvenient that was for her to be at that moment since we had quite a bit more decorating to do.
I started telling her about 5-Hour Energy Shots and how I know many people who swear by them. After saying the name a few times during my sales pitch, she pipes up with, "How long do they last?"

I know, Patrick Stewart. I know.

So, after laughing for the rest of the meal, I had her stop and get one at a gas station before we headed back to do some more decorating. She bought one of the extra strength ones and instead of throwing it back like an actual shot, the moron took three goes to get it down. Each facial expression of disgust was exponentially greater than the last.  It was hilarious.

After about twenty minutes, she started to get hyper. She was walking like one of those weird speed walkers and talking a mile a minute. She got silly, too. Things that weren't funny became hysterical to her. Mom was acting like I do when I'm on a manic wave; it was nuts! I don't know how many times I saw her walk in a circle or whip her head back and forth looking at two different things.

I can't wait until she buys another one. Has anyone got a camcorder I can borrow?

Thanks, Mom

So 23 years ago today, my mom was pushing a fur covered blob of fat out of her banjingo. While I was the smallest of her three, pound wise, I was a bunch of little rolls of fat and I was covered in hair. From my eyebrows up, and all the way down the back of my neck.




Mom says she used to rub my forehead, trying to get the extra hair to fall off. They actually nicknamed me 'Werebear' because I growled.

I don't know how long my mom was in labor, but I've heard that I was the easiest one, mostly because I was primarily blubber. My brothers were both around 10lbs and I was only 8.

I hear people complain about how hard their 6lb birth was and can only admire mom. What's even more amazing is that she smoked through all three pregnancies; I can't even imagine how much we would have weighed if she hadn't!

So thanks, mom. I love you.

The Plates are Too Loud

I have migraines. They're pretty frequent; I usually have two or three a month. Since I lost my insurance, I haven't been to see a neurologist, but I've been doing alright and managing them with dark rooms, soft piano music, cold wet washcloths, and crying in my bed.

Tuesday I was babysitting for my good friend Tara. I looked outside and when I looked away from the bright sunny day, my right eye refused to focus and I lost peripheral vision in it. The best way to describe it is when you get your picture taken and the camera flash blinds you for a few moments, except this didn't go away for hours.

After a few minutes I found myself sufficiently freaked out. I did a little research and asked a group of people online about it and they urged me to get to the ER because partial blindness in one eye with lots of squiggles and blurry things is a symptom of retinal detachment. So, after getting worried, I called Tara to see if someone could come get her daughter. She hurried home and drove me up to St. Edwards, and being a super awesome friend, she stuck around for about two hours waiting with me until my parents got there. Another hour or so and a migraine flare up later, I finally got into a room.

They checked my eye, took some blood, made me pee in a cup (which they didn't even test!) and then sent me down for a head CT. A few episodes of Law and Order, and then a few of Enterprise after my mom went to get food, and a nurse came in and gave me a nice morphine shot in the butt. After my mom got back, they also gave me a nice soothing Ativan.

All that worrying and waiting and making my friend leave work, and it was just a new and exciting symptom of migraines. I'd never had an aura before my migraines, but they're pretty common with other people.

The morphine and ativan put me to sleep pretty quick after I got home, and when I woke up and looked at the clock, I got annoyed because it was only an hour later than when I went to sleep. And then I looked at the day, and realized I'd slept for about 25 hours.

The doc gave me a prescription for hydrocodone and when my head started hurting again, I look one. It didn't do anything so, I took two at the next appointed time since the bottle said 1 to 2 pills.

I'm still hurting some, but everything is real shiny and distracting. I keep looking at things and forgetting to look away. I got a plate out of the cabinet to make something to eat and I freaked out because the plate was being loud.

Now, I've never been high or drunk before. I'm a pretty straight-laced kind of person. I drink and get tipsy, but I've never been drunk, partially because of my extremely high tolerance. But I've never taken any sort of drugs before and this is pretty much the strangest thing I've ever felt. Letters look weird.

My teeth feel funny. And I really like dogs because when you spill sour cream on the floor because you can't tell where the counter is, they'll lick it up for you, because the ground is really far down there and it's scary. I've never been more grateful for spellcheck in my life.

I am very amused at this post right now but I think I won't be later.

Cat ladies can also love dogs

Ask anyone and they'll tell you I'm a cat lady. They fit perfectly with my personality and they're low maintenance. I've never really liked dogs; they're fun to play with, but I never connected with any of the ones my family had.

About three years ago, my parents adopted a dog from a local shelter to take with them when they went out to remote locations for work. They took her out into the shelter yard to get a feel for her and the first thing she did was proudly drop a deuce before taking off. Moments later, she returned with a stick to be thrown. It earned her the name Twiggy.

Since we've had her, Twiggy has become more than just a family pet. She's my little sister, my mom's baby. Twiggy pouts and sulks when she doesn't get her way or is in trouble. When someone sneezes, she hides. When she's scared, she lays on the floor next to dad's side of the bed. Mom even made her a Facebook page (that mom uses for Farmville).

Ron and I can both leave the house with no issues, but if mom and dad leave and she doesn't get to go along, she lays on the couch, head on the armrest closest to the door waiting. And if they don't bring her a treat, she pouts some more.

A mutt, probably with some terrier in her, Twiggy is one of the smartest dogs I've ever seen. She fetches, dances, waves, shakes, high-fives, sits, lays, and speaks. She shreds rope toys until the living room is covered with string. Twiggy also talks; she knows to make a certain sound when we ask if she wants it (a treat), when we tell her to say 'mama', and when she wants to go out.

Last Sunday night she went outside to play in the yard and a few moments after she went out, Ron came tearing out of his bedroom and threw the front door open. We thought she'd been shot. She ran in screaming in that terrifying way dogs do and dad and Ron took off outside to try and figure out what might have happened.

She was hurt, but she walked around alright and we got her to lay down for a while. In the morning she was still bleeding some, so mom, dad, and Ron braved the snow to take her to the vet. Twiggy has three wounds, the culprit likely a buck, and one of the horns went all the way through and out her skin. Luckily only skin (and her pride) was hurt, and the antler missed anything vital.

A week of pain meds, antibiotic wound cleaning, and lots of treats, Twiggy's doing a lot better. She's still healing, but the wounds are smaller and she's back to her old self. She still isn't allowed to go out on her own, but she has gone for a few rides in the car. In another week or so, my little canine sister will be just fine and back to chasing deer again. Because there's one more thing about her: she is stubborn as hell, and until she catches one of them things, she isn't going to stop.

Revenge is like a good scotch: twelve years old and shared.

My younger brother, everyone, is an idiot to say the least. He gets hurt a lot which means I get to laugh. So begins my recounting.

I belive I was ten or eleven when this story takes place, making my brother Ronnie around 8. The house we lived in had about three acres, and the people who lived there before us kept chickens. There was a large chicken house on one side of the property and instead of two posts, they had just used the two near by trees to wrap chicken wire around.

When we moved in, we took the wire down, but part of it had actually grown into the tree, so it was left there.

Ronnie, being an outdoorsy kid, spent hours outside roaming the property and the old chicken coop building was a sort of clubhouse. He also had an affinity for trees. Most of the trees were too tall to climb properly, with the sturdy branches being out of reach.

The chicken wire on the trees, however, gave him enough to grasp tightly so he could climb up. When he got to the top of the wire though, he was unable to climb any higher.

The easiest way down a tree, everyone knows, is to sort of slide down. He forgot about the wire. Sticking out at just the right angle and length, wire tore through his jeans, his underwear, and one of his testiculars.

He ran screaming into the house, holding his wee little boy. Now, my dad has always been there to take us to the hospital when we get hurt, always the one to make sure we were okay. He took one look at my brother's torn scrote and left dust down the road.

My mom had to take him screaming to the hospital and gramma met her there, which ended up being a good decision. It took my gramma on one arm, mom on another, and an orderly laying across Ronnie's legs so the doctor could stitch his sack.

If you'll remember, I stated Ronnie was around eight years old at the time. He was bouncing a 250+ lbs orderly like he was a drunk blonde girl on the back of a mechanical horse.

Finally, the doctor managed to sew it shut, and when they were leaving, mom saw the doctor sitting in the hall, head in his hands, shaking his head and looking close to throwing up. And when Ronnie ripped the stitch later, the doctor refused to redo it and just threw a butterfly bandage on the burst ball.

The moral of the story is not to climb trees with wires and not to piss off your sister who has a blog.

I'm a pack of Camel Crush. Everyone wants me.

It really is amazing how people seem to forget that an actual human being is the one ringing up their various and sundry goods at stores. Once a person steps behind the register, I guess we become robots, there only to serve.

For the record, the answer to the question "How are you today?" is not "Marlboro lights." And I don't know if wolves raised you or something, but I'm pretty sure most people were taught to respond when someone says hello.

What makes this terrible is that a lot of the people ignoring cashiers were once in the retail business themselves and have felt just how soul crushing it is being constantly ignored by your fellow-man.

Enthusiasm or a huge grin isn't necessary; chances are I feel like shit too. I'm at work, it's par for the course. But your life isn't so bad that you can't at least say 'hey' to your poor cashier. And for the love of humanity, if she says she can't take your check, don't throw your cigarettes at her.

I'm asking for a stun gun for my birthday.