Haunted Blog Hop, Part I

Last year, my friend Gina invited me to join her for a haunted blog hop. It was so cool. None of us knew what we were to write until we got the piece before us. It's was a very cool event! This year, I didn't hesitate one moment to join in again. And, I'm starting! snuggle in, dim the lights and enjoy!

Ruby limped. The fact that both of her halluxes were half the size of her second toes was to blame for this awkward movement. It was also the reason she never took off her socks in gym class. Her feet stank. They truly did, but she couldn't bear to have her classmates laugh at her deformity when they didn't even talk to her under normal circumstances.

On any given day, she was content being the limping girl that no one talked to. It wasn't that she was happy with having so few friends, it was that she would rather be ignored than teased and mocked. So, it was with great concern as well as excitement that she accepted Eli's offer of a clandestine meeting on Saturday night. She stared incredulously at his beautiful penmanship on the parchment paper, which had been carefully folded and handed to her as she left school for walk home on Friday afternoon.

Eli was the smartest boy in their class. She was certain that he'd be named most likely to succeed, and he was quite possibly the most handsome boy in Douglas County. And now, he had asked her to meet him at the County-Line creek. In the back of her mind, she knew that this could easily be a set-up. But, her heart, the one that had never held a love for another, told her that this may be her one and only chance to have a boy ask her out.

She didn't tell her mama where she was going. She was certain that her mama would never approve of her meeting a boy after dark by herself. And since her papa had left and never returned several years before, mama rarely let her out of the house except to go to school. And she only let her go to school because Pastor Timothy encouraged her to let Ruby get as much schooling as possible.

Ruby waited until mama was asleep on the couch in the parlor and was snoring loud enough for Ruby to hear in her room before she tiptoed down the stair, painstakingly skipping the third from the bottom step. It always squeaked. She held tight to the rail but found herself falling to the floor when her left food wouldn't cooperate. She pulled off the finial from the bottom of the rail. Mama snored on, and Ruby blessed the fact that mama often sampled a little Vanilla Elixir before going to sleep.

It was mama's sound slumber that allowed Ruby to leave the house and walk as quick as her deformed feet would let her travel to her meeting with Eli.

To be continued tomorrow with Gina...

I See Where I Rate

For the most part, the government shut down didn't have a direct impact on me and my family except to cause extreme anxiety in my already-anxious child about how the government shut down would directly effect her and her alone. I have close friends whose families wondered where their grocery money for the week (or two or three) would come from; I knew people who weren't being paid because they are employees of the Federal government; and every single person I knew had an opinion, one way or another, about what the real issue was and who was at fault.

As for me, I didn't fully understand it. I listened to the commentary, I read every last shared post on Facebook (and then did some major blocking of ignorance), but I all I really got from it was that our politicians' behavior could be best summarized with two words: Big Babies.

Good news--they came to an agreement before we defaulted (whatever that means) and the government shut down was ended, which really didn't mean too much to me and my family because, as I said before, we weren't directly impacted. Life was still going on as usual. I blogged a little. We did our #ThankfulThursday. We went to school. We came home. We went to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

On Thursday morning, we woke up, got dressed in our costumes and drove to Tulsa to film my segment for Great Day Green Country. Brian and I were dressed as a Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes winner and spokesman. Daughter 1 was dressed as Napoleon Dynamite--Sahweet! And Daughter 2, after a lot of last minute scrambling, was dressed as one of the Duck Dynasty Guys.

We did a segment wherein I discussed how we do our own Halloween costumes and how I try to not spend exorbitant amounts of money on something that we'll only wear for four hours at best and how 90% of our costume can be used in some other capacity and about how I crowd source for the hard to find items--like a Napoleon wig.

The interviewer, KC Lupp, who is always so kind and seems genuinely interested during our segments, asked my family how they felt about my blog and my oversharing, and they all responded that they were the first editors, nothing gets posted without their approval and then we cleared.

All during my interview, I felt my phone in my back pocket vibrating like an adult toy with new batteries. Brian and The Daughters went back to the lobby--they didn't need much changing. I headed back to the changing room and then joined them in the lobby where I checked my phone.

You were preempted!
The president is speaking!
You aren't on! The president is!
Why aren't they showing you?
When will you be on?
What are you doing? Send. Send. Did it send? What are you doing? I don't think this phone is working. (My own momma just learned to text.)

So ... we stayed around to film my next segment ... but I'm not telling you when it will air in case the President reads my blog has plans to wipe me from the air completely. (So there! I will not go down easily, President Obama!)

In the meantime, though, we ran into a few of our Wednesday night friends:

So ... what was my takeaway from Thursday?

1. Apparently The President outranks a mom blogger from Oklahoma--who knew?

2. Modern Family photo opps always make things better.

3. Our costumes look really, really great on and off the air.

Maybe Spooky or Maybe Not

"Momma," Daughter 1 asked, "Have you ever played with a Ouija board?"

Hmm ... good question, "I think I did."

"You think you did?" she fired back.

"Wait," I said, "Maybe I didn't."

She just stared at me as I reached back into the deep and forgotten areas of my memory and tried to remember if I ever did.

I grew up in the day when Ouija boards were found right next to the Monopoly and Battleship games in closets all over America. It wasn't considered, by mainstream America, to be an evil device or portal to the dead. It was, as the box clearly states, for entertainment purposes only.

source

"You know," I said, "I can't remember if I played with one or not."

She nodded her head, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

But that wasn't it. I wanted to tell her, but I really couldn't remember. It seems like there was this one time when I was out visiting a friend who lived west of town. Her parents were working one Saturday, and we were stuck at home with a whole night of HBO. We talked about playing the Ouija board but argued about whether we would contact the ghost of Elvis or the ghost of John Lennon and decided instead to watch the movie Airplane!.

"I want to tell you," I shot back, "just let me think for a minute."

I vaguely remembered staying with a friend one Friday night and sneaking into her parents' bedroom after they were asleep. My friend just knew that they had a Ouija board in their closet. They did not have a Ouija board in their closet. We didn't find the Quija board; instead, we found some other items in their closet that were for entertainment purposes only. We opted to quickly retreat back to her bedroom and ponder exactly how and for what kind of entertainment those other items were used.

"Really, Momma, it's alright. I've kinda lost interest anyway."

"No ... now, give me a second to think ... "

Had I ever played with a Oujia board? Had I played with it, had a bad experience and blocked it? Had I played with it, had a bad experience and been robbed of my memory as a payment for other-worldly services? Surely if I had ever played with it, I would have remembered it, right?

"I don't think I ever played with it," I finally said definitively.

"Fine. Whatever," Daughter 1 sighed.

"Why do you ask?" I implored. "Do you have questions about spirits or something like that?" I was ready for a deep spiritual conversation with my first born.

"Nah," she said, "I'll probably never play with it. Even if you weren't too cheap to buy it, you'd obviously never remember to get it anyway."

She's probably right.

Fine Print Disclaimer: I do believe that Ouija boards are for entertainment only. Please don't write me hate mail or comments about how I will probably be going to hell because I may or may not have played with a Ouija board when I was younger. First off, I believe that hell is here on earth--don't believe me? Ask any child who is living in Syria or has gone to bed hungry every night for the past few days or weeks or even months. Secondly, if I do end up going to hell, it won't be because of a board game. It will be because I lied in this blog post. We didn't watch Airplane!, we then watched Porky's. And then Fast Times At Ridgemont High. It was because of those two movies that I figured out exactly what those items were in my friend's parents' closet.

A scary story

The following is an actual transcript (not actual, but pretty dang close) of Daughter 2 retelling me her favorite scary story.

Once upon a time, there was a princess who was babysitting for some kids that she locked in their room so they could go to sleep. Hold on, did I say princess? 'Cause she wasn't a princess. She was just a babysitter. I don't want to say a babysitter, though because it reminds me of Macy, a real babysitter, and I don't want anything bad to happen to Macy. You want me to start over? 'Cause I will.