IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

You know you’ve got something special when people say “This is real, this is real”. And you really know you’ve got something special when women and men are left crying.

Which is what happened at the concert the Carllile women gave Sunday night.

These are special people. And Sunday’s was a special event.

Virginia, Calli and Tammy Carllile

Virginia Carllile

Kathy Carllile

Tammy Carllile

Calli Carllile

The Carlliles with some special friends at show’s end, including Troy Beiser (of Telegram), Jill and Rhett McAllister (of Arlington Priest) and Heather Luttrell.

Tammy after the show and Virginia in the background. The Carllile women not only soulfully inspire tears, they are damn funny and fun and some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met.

The concert, sponsored by Todd Evans (to whom goes my never ending gratitude for making this happen), featured Michael Steele on bass, Gerry Hansen on drums, Mike Hines on guitar (all from Randall Bramblett’s band) and Martin (Marty) Kearns on keys. A live CD is forthcoming.

And to give you an idea of what will be on the live CD, here was the song list:

VIRGINIA….THE LOSER
CALLI……….LITTLE BY LITTLE
TAMMY……..SKYLARK
KATHY………MAYBE YOUR BABY
VIRGINIA…..I GUESS I WAS BORN THIS WAY
CALLI………GUILTY
KATHY………NEVER LOVED A MAN
TAMMY………I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF
VIRGINIA……MY BUDDY
CALLI……….BURN
TAMMY………I NEED YOU TONIGHT
KATHY………….HE’S NOT JUST ANOTHER MAN
VIRGINIA……I’M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY
CALLI………..GO DOWN EASY
KATHY……….I CAN SEE CLEARLY
TAMMY……….SUNRISE
VIRGINIA…….INDIAN BOY INDIAN GIRL
TAMMY……….TELL ME
CALLI (with everyone) …………HALLELUJAH

“Tell Me” is by Troy Beiser, who writes some of the more beautiful songs you could ever hear. “Tell me” isn’t up at Telegram’s Myspace page but “Jesus’ Son” is. Go listen. It’s another favorite of mine. I’ve heard the Telegram songs from the sessions at 800 East for a while now but hadn’t met Troy until last night (man, what a nice person). While introductions were made, and I thought, “What a nice person”, H.o.p. was hopping all around pretending to be a rabbit (too apropos).

Thanks from Marty goes to Nicolle Jerovitz and Greg Lee, Heaven Davis and Kevin Whitehurst, and Vic Stafford (who did a wonderful job engineering the recording).

When the concert was done and over with and the people had left, while the tables and chairs were being broken down, a couple of songs were recut. Heaven Davis, after helping put up chairs, with her husband Kevin (not only is she a great singer/performer, she’s always the first to pitch in a hand and do what needs doing without saying a word, as does Kevin, and I always think “I can’t believe these people”) settled down to listen and Kathy recounted the story of how Heaven got her singing again recently after some years of being out of the business (read more about Kathy at her Myspace page).
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Heaven Davis (you can’t see her) listening as Tammy recuts “Skylark”

And if this little blog on the concert seems very short and cut and dried, I really don’t know what to say but what I opened with, that you have something very special when people say “This is real, this is real” and both men and women are left in tears. These women don’t begin to have a humble clue of how special they are and how much they enrich the lives of those they touch both personally and musically. How one family can be gifted with as much talent, personality and love as they are, I don’t know.

I told H.o.p. beforehand that he was going to be witnessing something wonderful Sunday night, hoping to impress it in his brain so that a touch of its aura wouldn’t be lost to him amongst the memories of childhood. Afterwards, I took some of the simple star decorations and brought them home and draped them on the wall above his computer, much to his delight. It was partly for me, so the evening would linger longer, and also in the hope this would help keep the event in his mind for a while, so he’ll have a better chance of remembering. And brought home too some of the xeroxes of Virginia and Thumbs that were on the table at the entrance, to put up on our wall.

As for me, my writing career pretty much culminated Sunday night. I decided my singular honor in ever writing was taken care of with Virginia’s singing again “I’m so lonesome I could cry” at the concert. She had read my blog piece on Thumbs in which I’d spoken of how 18 years later I was still carrying the memory of her singing that at Thumbs’ wake. She said because of this she was performing it and this time she sang over a recording of Thumbs playing at the beginning, and then the band joined in. I had the unexpected privilege of Virginia dedicating the song to me on Sunday but what I felt was akin to a shadow instrument, as if in writing that small piece I was a shadow instrument still played by that performance so many years ago (which in some respects seems like just yesterday) the purpose of which was to facilitate others sharing, which they were able to do Sunday night, which brought tears to people’s eyes again, touching them deeply–and what does any artist want but that, for others to come into touch with something of themselves and a portion of their lives clarified. And some of us are honored just to point and say “there, go there to hear your heart beat” and know a few did. As I lay on the floor of the balcony with my camera, squeezed into a corner (taking bad pics), I stared down and was torn because the last thing I wanted to do was take photos of Virginia during the song as I didn’t want to be distanced by the camera, so when Virginia began I put the camera down. Then Virginia had no sooner started singing and my eyes unexpectedly began to tear (I don’t’ cry easy), and I thought of how I had no idea 19 years ago I would be listening to the Carlliles at this concert, hearing Virginia singing again, all of these marvelous women together, friends old and new applauding not only a marvelous musical heritage but an exceptional heritage of spirit as well. Eventually, I raised the camera and took a couple of pictures, thinking there are very few things for which you hope for so long which finally happen.

If you weren’t fortunate enough to be at the concert, click on the below to view full some of the materials that were at the entrance table. I’ve also put up a new photo gallery for Marty’s studio, Down in Deep, and archived more photos of the concert there:

My computer, which had a bad Windows install with which I’d been living for a while, finally went crash and I ended up without it a couple of times over the past several weeks. The thing is everything is on my computer. All the work I do is on my computer. Words. Art. Websites I do for others and volunteer and myself. Research. Everything is on the computer. All my records for H.o.p.’s homeschool (his computer has all his homeschool stuff on it). So when I’m without my computer I’m without everything. Being without everything, last week I began degreasing the kitchen. I wasn’t industrious enough to pull out the ladder and standing on a chair could only reach up to within 16 inches of the ceiling but I figured that was good enough. I degreased and degreased and degreased shelves and stuff on them and scrubbing and scrubbing I got a chip of something under my thumb and really bruised it badly so I couldn’t use my thumb for anything as it hurt too badly so that ended that elbow grease emphatic cleaning.

Then this week my computer went boom crash again. We had thought it was ok, had been through tests etc., and now here it was losing parts of Windows (same as it was last week) and refusing to reboot. Just gone. So away it went again for other people to look at it and this time I have been without it since Tuesday. It is a 4 month old computer. We replaced memory hoping that would help. Replaced hard drive. It is still not working right. I don’t know right now when I’m getting it back.

The first day without the computer I wandered around through all the rooms with a can of flat wall paint standing on chairs touching up this and that. I’ve the walls covered with H.o.p.’s drawings and took them down and peeled off tape and retouched around all that. (I later discovered that the off-white was not quite the shade on our walls, a barely barely only vaguely noticeable touch darker, but it was too late by then.) I looked up at the ceiling at a patch of the paper covering it that has been threatening to come down for months. I’m no carpenter or painter but in some ways our landlord isn’t much of one either (and Marty isn’t at all) and so I did what I always counted on in theater, which is trusting distance to turn make-believe into reality, and I pulled out the rickety ladder (it wobbles like 6 inches to either side as you climb) and decided my desk was better than that and covered it with towels and climbed on top of my desk and painted the ceiling over my desk (which needed it) and then just used plain old scotch tape to fix the cracked and falling paper. You can’t even see the scotch tape so I figured that worked quite nicely. Then I started in on H.o.p.’s room. I sorted all the toys, looking for itsy bitsy missing parts and putting them back together, which was quite some chore and took hours. You probably will wonder how it took hours but it did, looking for this part and that part in stacked bins and bins of toys and parts of toys. I forget what else I did except the usual with H.o.p.’s school work and I read to him almost all of a book of Shel Silverstein’s poems.

The second day I started rereading Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day”. I tackled H.o.p.’s closet (when he wasn’t looking) and tossed what I could, which I knew he would never notice. I looked for other stuff to toss. I decided I wasn’t through with sorting H.o.p.’s toys andI took out his bins of Megablocks castle blocks and Legos, which were all mixed together, and I sorted all those and, trust me, that took quite a while. I vaguely remember talking to the landlord about the bathroom again (during one of my trips to the bins with stuff for tossing) and I bleached the bathroom floor heavily to kill the mildew smell. I know I worked quite a bit in the front room that night doing something or other (taking down books and washing window sills) because the prostitutes have returned to our street, hooking outside our building, and I got to watch them walk up and down right outside the windows. They wear 5 inch cloppy heels and sound literally like horses going up and down the sidewalk. Again, I forget what else I did except H.o.p.’s schooling and I began reading to him Azimov’s “Chronology of the World” which he isn’t at all interested in but I decided to give it another shot.

The third day I finished rereading Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day”. My thumb was healed enough that I only sweated and shivered a little when using it so I did more drive-by painting. I pulled out the black gloss and painted the front part of a book case and the shelves that needed it and the top. Wandering by another book case I decided it could use some touching up, and another. Then I touched up a chair. Then I thought that my desk would look better black and I painted my desk, its body and drawers. I pulled out the leftover can of kitchen paint and I started on the wall behind where the garbage bin is. The plaster had been bubbling and peeling off. As my landlord isn’t much of a carpenter/painter, and though I’m not, and as the wall already looks like an archaeologist’s dig, I decided I might as well see to it myself and I scraped off plaster and more plaster and started repainting that wall. Then I repainted the wall next to the ktchen sink. Then I painted the wall again where I’d scraped the plaster. Then I thought I might as well paint the white cupboard drawers in the kitchen and pulled out the white gloss and painted those all around and while I had the white gloss out I remembered some white bookcase shelves that needed touching up and I pulled out some things on a couple of them and touched up several shelves. Then I painted again the kitchen walls I had been working on and put a layer of paint on the wall beside the oven, under the window. Then I touched up all the thresholds to rooms (they’re all painted black). Then I thought now I will do the antique semi-gloss around the baseboards and touch up all the doors but the little that was left in that can was dried up. Which left me in a chair staring up at the ceiling seeing another part of the paper that was cracking and starting to come down but it’s not over my desk and at least for the time being decided not to pull out the ladder and climb up and try to do something about that.

For some reason, looking around, I feel like I’ve not done much of anything. I don’t know why. It seems like I should feel like I’ve done something.

I’m posting this via H.o.p.’s computer. Which he has let me borrow for the moment.

I’ve not a clue what I’m going to do today.

Got my computer back and it is sitting in the back room because it’s pretty much nonfunctional right now and that’s how that stands. While H.o.p. sleepeth I blog from his pretty well dysfunctional computer which has a teeny tiny screen. It’s a dinosaur with zip memory and power (but it’s doing better than mine is right now, isn’t it) and so I can do nothing with it, besides which it is his computer. So you will not be seeing any time soon one of the pretty pics I took of the flamingos (zoo trip on Monday) which I’d worked with a bit. Which is just fine because Perez Hilton takes up the slack and is vastly more entertaining, I’ve decided.

In lieu of being able to treat you with pics of the hookers working outside the building (still have digital camera but no way to upload pics) I’ve been thinking it’s time for a co-blogger, someone with personality who doesn’t sit around painting baseboards. Not that I was actually thinking of posting pics of the hookers, because I have this odd idea that I would be invading their privacy and they would somehow find out about it and beat me up.

The transhookers we’ve always had around here but they kept to their corners pretty much looking out for the cars with out-of-county license plates. The new flock of hookers moved in from another neighborhood and are aggressive, chasing locals. As daylight dawns and the street scene switches to daylight women tromping up and down the street on the way to 9 to 5 jobs, even when they are in high stompy heels there is no echoing clop which you can hear from 100 paces, their step is nearly silent, so I’ve decided the hookers have somehow amped up the clop of their heels intentionally and it something like a mating call or business advertisement. The new upscale condos on the corner look like something out of Mary Poppinsville (and they smell nice too now that they’ve taken care of their sewer issues) and I would’ve thought their presence would cow the hookers but I’ve obviously not the heart and mind of a hooker because instead cozy Poppinsville seems to make for only a more opportunistic staging area. Except the hookers usually don’t walk that side of our narrow street. They keep to this side.

I was asked what H.o.p. thinks of the hookers. He is blithely unaware. They are a late late night breed, as are we, but he is still unaware as they aren’t noticeable unless you’re in the front side room at night, which we aren’t. And when he’s coming and going by vehicle it’s always earlier in the evening and only the transhookers are out then on their corners, and when we pass they always are in singles rather than pairs and quietly, taciturnly surveying, They are dressed to sell but have a way of blending into the street as well. A dual identity where they are both there but receding visually as you pass, looking almost insecure in comparison to the other hookers. At least during the early hours. The late night transhookers are flashier in presence but I rarely see them. And the late night hookers don’t seem to see me. The early evening transhookers do, when I pass, however fleeting a glance. They have been around a while, I recognize them, and there is something in the eyes as they briefly glance then look away and I’ve never been able to quite say what it is. Maybe it’s just the striving for ambiguity, walking the edge of blending in but not. I always feel like they are testing–have I accomplished it, do I blend in just the right way, does that woman see another woman who could simply be out for a walk to the store or does she see a transhooker, and even now that she’s seen me regularly out here on my corner and we recognize each other in passing, what identity does she see when she’s looking at me? At least that’s what I am made to think when we pass and they glance. But of course I don’t know what is actually on their minds.

Anyway, I am fully aware this blog is in need of a vastly more entertaining co-blogger, one with tantalizing plumage. But that sort of person will have a blog of their own, won’t they.

H.o.p. is now up and telling me my “favorite” show is on. He believes since I have sometimes enjoyed watching the PBS Antiques Road Show that it is my “favorite” show. Any show I have at one point seemed to enjoyed for a minute or two becomes my favorite show.

“Mom, that show that has the sculptures you like is on! I know it’s your favorite show! Mom, I just saw a rattle that has a human face a frog going up to the human face and a raven on the back. It’s really pretty.”

I walk in and note to him it’s a Tsimshian rattle.

“I know, it’s an Indian rattle! Come on and watch with me.”

So I will.

A bit of congratulations are in order, for sake of bolstering. Just managed to get up the rods in the kitchen for holding pots. Kind of. And yes I know for 9/10ths of the population this would be a piece of cake but somehow I manage to always be the odd person out.

First I was drilling into hard hard hard wood (this building is about circa 1910 and when something called for hard wood back then, it was hard wood). Used the drill bit then dug in with the screws. When red dust (not sawdust) started pouring out of the wall, the same red oxide of the dust that occasionally appears from a screw on an old pipe near the kitchen sink, I figured it was time to stop drilling. I guess maybe I hit a pipe. And I freaked. Because I’m not very bright about these things. But I’m assured that it’s all right by my husband (over the phone).

The reason I’m doing this duty is because we’ve had these rods for several weeks but Marty’s not put them up so I figured it was up to me. We have both about the same lame level of expertise in these matters so it’s not like I’m going to do an inferior job.

Next I was drilling into plaster that is hard as a damn rock. Even with the electric drill I was sweating it trying to get those screws in, and when I touched one of the screws I’d been working on, that had been considerable trouble, it was hot hot and burned my fingertips. But finally the rods are up. A problem is the hooks turn out not exactly to fit the pot handles. I guess I can pull out some pliers and stretch them out some.

My knuckles are bloodied. I don’t know how I managed that.

As a part of home education, I called in H.o.p. to take a look at what his mom was doing. Being as mechanically inclined as we are, his idea of building with his Erector set is to join the pieces with pipe cleaners and call the outcome a robot “Look what I built!” Anyway, he was not at all impressed but did involve himself enough to supply me with screws.

I installed the top rod too low because pots hanging from it drape over the bottom rod but I suppose that’s okay. I was installing ithe top rod under a shelf and give myself a little too much room for getting the drill in there. I keep looking at that top rod thinking, “I should have put it higher”, but it’s too late now. I’m not about to take out the rod, fill in those holes and start over again. I don’t think.

Believe now I’ll clean the pseudo fabric, styrafoam type upholstery on my desk chair. Or try to. We’ve got enough fabric and carpet cleaner, certainly something should work on it. Cleaning out the under-the-kitchen-sink cabinet I realized that either the numerous different brand bottles is evidence of our doing a lot of cleaning of carpet and fabric, or so little that we always forget we have a bottle of the stuff already. The latter is the case, of course.

Please, universe, if I can have my computer back I promise never again to neglect things like, well, I’m not including painting the floors on that list. But if I don’t get the damn computer back soon then I fear I will next be painting our bedroom floor and H.o.p.’s floor.

Well, it has come to this. I would be, finally, painting floors this afternoon, but I find I have no floor paint. The lid appeared to be solidly on but when I pryed it up the paint was a solid.

My hands are scratched, scraped and bruised. I’ve repaired my gourds that needed repair, gluing and drilling and sewing back together. I’ve repotted cactus. Yesterday, armed with a new ladder that doesn’t put my life in peril, I repainted the windows and doorways in the back room which is used mainly for storage. Those windows, I don’t believe, have been painted in 40 years at least. Scraping off the old paint would have meant removing the wood. So they, like everything else around here, have a decided stucco effect to them–though the windows in the other rooms of the apartment are in better shape. In the summer a tree attempts to grow through the floor back where is a pipe of some sort that is now capped off. And higher up on the wall nearby there is a pie plate looking (would be covering a hole) that I’ve only seen in kitchens, in other old places we’ve lived in, where there was once a ver old stove/oven. A coal appliance? So maybe very early on that portion of the apartment was the kitchen instead.. The landlord has always referred to it being an old sunroom, but its obvious the kitchen was never in the interior of the apartment and equally obvious where it is now was not built with kitchen use in mind.

I tried but was unable to remove the blinds in one of the windows and as I didn’t want to break them and thus have to purchase another set I simply painted around them. Slipshod, I know, but the windows being the condition they’re in, I don’t think it much matters. Seeing the landlord at one point, while painting, I pulled him in to look at something. He noticed I was painting and said if I wanted it I could have some work painting other apartments. I declined.

I’m not used to working with an honest-to-god ladder. And it is nice to have. I managed not to drip a single drop or smear the windowpanes with paint. Which was one of those little nothings that one counts as a sort of accomplishment. Then after several hours of painting, after taking a break to drink some water, when I went back in to finish the job, not being used to working with an honest-to-god ladder, I forgot that I had put the paint bucket on that portion of the ladder that is used for holding paint buckets, and I moved the ladder and next thing I knew there was paint all over me and pouring down the ladder to the floor. So much for that slim accomplishment.

Would make sense that what is our back storage room was once the kitchen. There are no picture mouldings at the ceiling and the door frames in there don’t have detail. Also the windows, though large, begin a good 4 inches higher than the others in the apartment and, as there are no ceiling mouldings, go all the way to the ceiling. Maybe what is now our kitchen, which I’ve always figured was once the back entrance storage area, was also once a pantry for the kitchen. As far as I can tell it has not ever had an ordinary door leading into the apartment. The door (no longer there, but a portion of its hardware remains) used to instead be either a swinging door or a folding door. Perhaps a swinging door.

Where the stove/oven originally was located, smoke from it wouldn’t have come pouring back into the apartment, as it now does.

H.o.p. comes up and asks me to read to him only the last sentence of what I’ve written.

“Perhaps a swinging door,” I say.

“Oh, that sounds mysterious,” he replies.

“Don’t even think about it,” said my son, about thirty minutes ago, as I, armed with paintbrush and paintcan, turned toward his bedroom.

He is tired of the touching up. Of mom painting doors and windows and advising him to be careful while he’s running about.

And it’s true that I have been going about touching up where I’ve touched up. Because it’s an old apartment and there’s always something else. And because H.o.p. is eight years old and, for instance, a couple of days after I’d painted my desk, I looked and saw fingerprints on the side of it.

“What happened here? I asked.

“Nothing,” H.o.p. said.

“Looks like fingers,” I said.

“I wanted to see if it was dry,” H.o.p. said.

I don’t know if I’m lucky or not that the landlord wasn’t around today. After realizing that the back room used to be the kitchen and that ventilation could be had through where the stove pipe (I guess) used to be, and seeing that there was a capped off water pipe (I believe), I went around measuring walls and decided with several more new, taller bookcases we could move the storage area into where the kitchen is now if I could convince the landlord to move the kitchen back to where it used to be. “What’s the big deal of moving an electric oven and the sink?” I thought, which is what the kitchen amounts to, and recollected he had once mentioned a previous tenant having a washer in the back room, perhaps where the capped off pipe is? So I occupied myself with that fantasy for several hours, reconsolidating things mentally and deciding that my old jewelry making supplies would fit in the bedroom if I got yet another bookshelf. Yes, I could make things possibly fit and have finally a workable kitchen with ventilation.

Then I heard that finally the computer has at last been diagnosed. Bad hard drive. Data is being imaged and I will probably (cross fingers) have the computer back tomorrow, which is good because some people have webwork that has to be done. Has got to be done. So I must have my computer and its programs and data.

H.o.p. will be glad when I get it back, as evidenced by the “Don’t even think about it!” Though his windowsill does need to be repainted. He sighed as I brushed up a few spots on the back of his door then I put up the paintbrush and went in and oiled the floor around his desk, then noticing that some nails were sticking out a bit from the kitchen threshold I fetched a hammer and pounded them back in.

Why doesn’t it feel like I have accomplished anything much the past ten days?

Now, if I moved the kitchen, then I would feel like I’d accomplished something. I’d be back there moving it tonight if I knew it could be done and how to do it.

Except I’m not sure we should move it. The storage area is nice to have and it would be effectively cut 2/3rds. But it would be nice to not have to move the dish drainer every time I need a work area.

“Don’t even think about it,” is probably what the landlord would say.

My plans had been to write about watching “Twister” with H.o.p. earlier tonight.

Insomnia without my computer programs and files isn’t a whole hell of a lot of fun. Usually, if I can’t sleep, I get up and work some then go back to bed. That not being an option the past ten days, I finally started cutting on the television and thus ended up watching, amongst other things, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “A Night at the Roxbury”.

Well, I only watched “A Night at the Roxbury” in part because it was so bad and boring that I fell asleep during it.

Tonight I woke up and unable to get back to sleep I lay there thinking about “Twister” (I don’t know why, I just did) and decided to pass a few minutes blogging on it on my own computer which is kind of back in my possession and kind of half not. At the moment most of it is missing (memory and files) but should be back to normal sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, I get up and come in and sit down in my chair and am thinking for a little while.

And I felt someone nudge the back of my chair.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep and get up then H.o.p. will wake up and he won’t say anything when he comes in, he will just brush the back of my chair and I’ll turn about and there he is and I’ll say he needs to get back to bed and he’ll say he needs a bedtime snack.

So I turn around but there’s no H.o.p. standing there. And the feel of the back of my chair having been nudged by someone was so strong that I couldn’t shrug it off, couldn’t shake it, became rather unsettled and finally had to get up and go over and cut on the lamp.

The floor hadn’t shook. Nothing like that. It had just been the back of my chair.

I may have been as susceptible to being unsettled because I’d already thought something odd enough earlier that I’d mentioned it to Marty.

When you cut off the kitchen florescent light, our electrical set-up here is such that you can hear it through H.o.p.’s speakers. For some reason you can’t hear it through my speakers, but you can through H.o.p.’s, a loud scratchy pop electrical noise. Has always been this way here. Whatever. Electrical quirk and we’ve got surge protection on his and whatever is going on electrically seems never to have hurt it.

But, earlier tonight, I’m walking into the bedroom to put something up and the moment I walk into the room there was the same scratchy pop electrical sound. And I couldn’t figure out what it came from. The television was off. The radio was off. Where did that sound come from? Impossible to figure it out and yet I heard it. But I’m one of those people around whom electrical appliances do seem to behave oddly so for me that happening falls in that category, not in the “odd” box, but in the “oh yeah that happens sometimes” box. I’d mentioned it to Marty to see if he knew what might have been the cause then not thought about it again afterwards.

There have been a few instances of things around here where I have wondered if I heard something, was at the point of deciding I’d not heard it, then H.o.p. will say, “Did you hear that?” At least twice we have been sitting in here and heard something loud, as if it was in the room, but never could figure out what the noise might have been. Each time I have thought, “Well, maybe I didn’t hear it after all,” and then H.o.p. will say, “What was that?”

H.o.p. has told me in the past that this place is haunted. I’ve always thought it was haunted in the way that an old apartment building is haunted by the sounds, say, of a dog playing with a ball on the wood floor in the apartment above. And there have been numerous instances where H.o.p. has said, “Ghosts!” and I’ve assured him, no, that instead that was a sound that came from upstairs because it was obviously a dog with its ball upstairs or someone walking or the radiant heater making noise. I’m a skeptic in general about hauntings and think usually there’s going to be some rational explanation.

Then about two months ago, Marty and I had opted to sleep in H.o.p.’s room because he’d fallen asleep in ours, and we both heard and saw his door shake like he was on the other side trying to open it and Marty opened the door for him. But there was no H.o.p. Marty went to check and H.o.p. was still sound asleep in our room. But we had both heard and seen ithe door shaken in the way it would be if someone was trying to open it. And it was bizarre enough that we got up and didn’t go back to bed for a couple of hours. We never could figure it out.

It wasn’t just the apartment building “settling”. There wasn’t an earthquake (and I’ve felt several small ones and it’s quite different). It really did seem someone was at the other side shaking the door a couple of times trying to open it.

When it happened it reminded me of a sound I’d heard not long after we moved in the building, maybe within the first month or two. It was late at night, I was unable to sleep and was at the computer. The light in the living room was off. And it sounded like a door or someone or something up there, I couldn’t figure out what. I wondered briefly if there was someone trying to get in the apartment. I got up and looked into the living room just to make sure H.o.p. wasn’t up. He wasn’t. I never did get to sleep that night. And in the morning when Marty got up, when he went up front he found, up where I’d heard the sound (which I’d not mentioned to him) a large puddle of water sitting there in the middle of the floor behind the sofa. We were never able to explain it either. The radiant ceiling heater for the living room is nearby and after three years (no other incidents) I’m still not absolutely sure it wasn’t the source, but Marty examined it at the time and insisted it wasn’t. I examined it too and could find nothing to indicate that the radiant heater was the source, and was convinced enough that it wasn’t that I even examined the front door, wondering if somehow water had entered through there? But there was no way possible for that to have happened.

Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the problem leak currently in our bathroom, which is next to the bathtub and does have to do with a pipe in there.

No, this puddle happened within a foot from the front door. Just happened. Nothing else was wet. No trail of wet. Nothing. No splashes or drops. Just a puddle of water. But since the radiant heater is nearby I’m still placing my bet on it probably having been the source, as it is the only reasonable explanation. And though it has never happened since and though there was no sign of the water having come from the heater and though Marty insists it had not come from the heater.

This is a very quiet building. No sheet rock. All good hard plaster. You can sometimes hear the upstairs neighbors walking around but the sound is pretty muted. You don’t hear doors opening and closing upstairs. You can hear doors opening and closing sometimes from out in the hall and the sounds are obvious and distinguishable.

Anyway, H.o.p. has been telling me that the apartment is haunted but I’ve always passed it off as the kind of imaginings you have as a child where there are monsters in the closet or under your bed. He doesn’t like to sleep in his room, and it’s only been in the past couple of months that he’s told me, a couple of times, because, “It’s haunted” and I’ve always thought it was because he was hearing apartment noises. He hasn’t insisted on it. He’s just mentioned it a few times in the same tone of voice he’d use for telling me he wanted some water. If he sees an ant around here then he yells, “Mom, I saw an ant!” (see an ant here and usually it’s followed by a swarm coming in through the back door so there’s reason for alarm) but there’s been no yelling about ghosts. Still, we don’t make him sleep in his room–right now he now normally beds on one of the living room futons and sometimes in our room with us or we’ll sleep in the living room. It’s all pretty flexible since it’s all futons around here. But occasionally I will try to get him accustomed to his room and will again suggest he try sleeping there and go in and lie down with him until he goes to sleep. I did the same a couple of nights ago. Got him settled and cut off the light and lay down with him. He said, “I don’t like this room, it’s haunted.” I said what made him think that and he pointed around and said, “Ghosts,” then said, “Eyes.” When he’s brought up the idea of seeing ghosts before, I’ve explained to him that sometimes we see things that aren’t there, especially in the dark. I assumed this time he was talking about his stuffed animals on his bookcase and I said no those are just your stuffed toy animal friends. We lay there a minute and then I realized he was quietly crying and that he really was afraid. I’d had no idea–couldn’t tell by the sound of his voice. So I got his stuffed toy dragon that he sleeps with and played with it like a puppet and had the dragon tell him all about his stuffed animal friends, reminding him how much fun he has with them and how much he loves them and they love him, talking about every single one of them and the good times they’ve had together. He started smiling and fell asleep and the next morning when he got up he proudly said he had not been afraid at all after his dragon had talked him to sleep.

Well, that took care of that, I’d thought and felt rather pleased with things that the dragon did the trick and that his fears abated.

And here I am, a couple of nights later, freaked out and cutting on the lamp because I felt something bump my chair.

It’s not like I was sitting here thinking about ghosts or all this. No, instead I had been sitting here thinking about “Twister” and how I would have hated it if watching it by myself and would have cut it off, but watching it with an excited and enthralled eight-year-old made for an enjoyable evening.

Do I “feel” the place is haunted? No. I do feel H.o.p.’s got those eight-year-old fears of closet monsters going on that many kids have. We’ve talked a lot about that. I’ve not just brushed them off. But now that I think about it, the few things we’ve been unable to explain, I wonder how I can continue justifying telling H.o.p., “No, it’s nothing.” Because there have been a few things that we simply can’t explain.

Godzilla visited the neighborhood today. We made a movie of it but I can’t post it as I realized today I don’t have sound on my computer. It says no audio device is in evidence.

Godzilla terrorized H.o.p. He went screaming, entertaining rush hour traffic two feet away.

Someone painted their window bright neon yellow. I have no idea why except perhaps to easily identify where they live for pizza delivery. It is very neon from the street.

One of our windows was being painted today by George. (He knocked on the door early in the AM to inform me he would be briefly taking down the burglar bars to paint that window and asked me not to shoot him.) H.o.p. got a big sheet of paper and wrote a joke on it in big letters and held it up to the window hoping to make George laugh. “Why did the donut baker quit? She was fed up with the hole business.”

Here is the cactus that shot up an inch overnight this week (nearly an inch and a half of growth on some of them now) and sent up 7 new baby cactuses at the same time. Can someone help me ID these things? Marty got them for me several months ago and kept no ID and I don’t know anything about cactus.

H.o.p. wanted me to post a pic of flowers he got for me last Sunday that are still beautifully enhancing the apartment. He told me where to place them too. He wanted flowers that would be very Spring (he said) so chose red and white.

That black metal futon frame was given us by a friend about seven years ago who was moving to California and dumping most of his stuff. He worked for Marilyn Manson and I have nothing to say about it except that he eventually quit.

Now that my computer is back and getting put back in order, H.o.p. is throwing at me lots of drawings he wants me to scan and post for him. I’ve my work cut out for me tonight.

It was one of those dyslexic days where I was trying to make an online purchase and it kept saying the credit card number was wrong. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure it out for like 15 minutes. Then I realized I had typed in 6’s as 9’s.

The first installment of “Boo”, a comic by H.o.p., hand drawn, partly hand-inked, scanned and finished in Photoshop. Click on image to enlarge.

Click on image for larger view. Not much larger. But larger.

There are a lot of things I do like about this building. I like character. I like it that the building isn’t modern sterile. I like our blue doors.

The building has decades’ worth of no longer used enhancements that aren’t worth the moment’s thought I give them. Like the hook in the corner of the hall. Why? What was it used for?

The landing in the first pic is a perfect place for a Grateful Dead poster. I don’t even listen to the Grateful Dead, but I recongize this fact, which is so apparent it’s a wonder this truth hasn’t been fulfilled. (If I step out in the hall day after tomorrow and see a Grateful Dead poster up there I’ll be totally freaked.)

I promised myself I wouldn’t write text that wouldn’t fit in the picture page. I failed that promise.

Correction: I discovered later that the landlord had nothing to do with the trophies. They were placed there by a neighbor as, I guess, a sort of altar.

The lot behind the hospital, between the hospital and Poppinsville, got quite a facelift with the finishing of Poppinsville. Loading docks are back there. The lot was kind of scruffy and its fence was chain link. About the time Poppinsville went seriously on the market, a nice little security station appeared behind the hospital and a fence identical to the black iron used in Poppinsville took the place of the chain link. I’m betting that Poppinsville paid for it, wanting a more seemly view for prospective purchasers.

Our street was also repaved when Poppinsville began the high gear shift into prepping for selling. I’ve wondered if somehow Poppinsville was behind that as well.

Took this photo at the zoo a couple of weeks ago before the computer went down. Click on it for the larger version. Love the bird 4th from the left. I don’t know what was up, don’t know that much about flamingos, but every few minutes they would all suddenly start doing flamingo squawks and stretch their necks long and rigid.

The Great Horrned Bill had nothing much to do with me that day. He and his mate had mice they were eating. My mother-in-law was with us that day and had difficulty with the birds eating mice and wandered off saying she couldn’t watch. With one exception, the female of every couple which approached (while I was there) expressed astonishment and loud ughness at the Horned Bills eating mice, and the dead (white) rat sitting in front of them, and walked off saying that they couldn’t watch, that it was horrible. The Horned Bills had no idea their dietary requirements were making them enemies.

For some reason it is usually (note, usually) the male of the human species that reads the displayed material on the exhibit, and the female either expresses approval or disgust at what they’re observing. The males tend not to offer opinions on the exhibits in terms of like or dislike. They say, “What is this?” and then answer for everyone concerned, reading highlights of the literature aloud and then may offer some guesses on behaviors in an authoritative tone. Except if it is a mother and child and no male adult around, then sometimes the woman will read for the child the displayed literature.

Hearing over and over, “That’s disgusting,” I had wondered how many of these individuals were thinking about what they were seeing, and what they were saying, and how many were simply spouting out a rather Pavlovian response. Something they’ve heard numerous times–though could be maybe even one time–and when it comes their turn the brain keys similar prior scene in the memory bank of another female’s “Oh gross” (an aunt, a mother, a childhood friend, the television) and out it pops, oh gross, and off they walk.

Difficult to imagine anyone rejecting a bird because it eats meat.

I doubt these individuals were vegetarians.

I imagine some of these same individuals think hawks and eagles are beautiful and noble birds. Then the brain sputters, goes gack and shuts down when seeing said bird with a meal in its talons. No attempt is probably made to resolve the conflict. “Fine bird. Noble bird. Eew, noble bird is a predator on the food chain, like me! Can’t deal. Foul bird. Still noble as long as I don’t think about what it actually is.” In the mind’s photo album labeled, “Noble Birds” they retire the temporarily highlighted image of the dining noble bird to the trash and, walking on, replace with the preferred majestic bird soaring.

Several times it almost popped out of my mouth, “What did you eat for dinner last night?” but each time decided, no, forget it, some things are just too obvious to remark upon.

Actually, what I wanted to say was, “How wearily predictable can you be. Engage your brain, will you?”

Just so you could see how appalling was the spectacle, I took a pic.

I’m sure I’ve probably said, “Oh, yuck” as well, some other day. Maybe. At least I can imagine myself walking up, say, to see one of the reptiles eating a rat, and out of my mouth popping, “Oh, yuck”.

People are funny that way.