Happy Halloween ya'll

I was in the fourth grade, on the school bus, heading home. Birdie Hensley, a fellow classmate, was looking at a monster movie magazine in the seat beside me. I tried hard not to look. Sort of like driving past a horrible car crash. You know you don't want to see but you can't not look. I guess she noticed my reluctance and kept shoving the magazine toward me. She finally said "You're afraid to look!" Yes, she nailed the truth on the head but I said "I'm not afraid, I'm just not that interested in monsters." And so she set that monster magazine right in my lap. I sat petrified - as if the very paper this stuff was printed on was eating the flesh from my legs!

There was the wolf man who I always thought was a dumb idea for a horror figure. A guy changing into a wild dog...please. And same goes for vampires. A man changing into a bat? Vampires suck! Two colossal mistakes for monsters. I'm just not a fan of the changing forms concept for horror....which I guess is basically the whole premise behind horror. And, oh yeah, that creature from the black lagoon. He just looks like a guy in a rubber suit to me. Yet, all those guys gave me (4th grade Sarah) the creeps! But the creepiest one of all was the mummy. Something about that character, coming back from the dead and all. And me growing up in the south -confused about religion and knowing that coming back from the dead was, according to a lot of reliable adults that I knew, possible. Of course this was all before I understood the concept of spiritual versus physical death. The idea of walking mummies scared me!

So that afternoon after the fateful bus ride, I was walking back from feeding the pigs in the back holler. Suddenly I got that weird feeling one gets when they think someone is watching them. I kept looking over my shoulder, with flashbacks to that magazine in my lap, and walking a little faster. I was so sure that I had seen something. Was it a mummy? Wasn't there something white back there? Was that a sound? Like a moan? Was it a mummy moan?

I ran to the house as fast as I could. Mom was there and she could fend off any of those ugly creeps! I felt better just being around her.

Anyways, I lay in bed the other night thinking about that day. Why did those stupid books trigger such fear in me? My rational mind knew they were just actors in costumes but that irrational mind of mine forgot all that and ran with the fear.Why?

As I lay there in the dark thinking "why" something else occurred to me. The vampire could turn into a bat and fly to any known spot. And the werewolf could run as fast as a wolf, so he could get about pretty fast too. Yet the mummy would take a step and (long pause) take another step. Take a step (long pause) take another step. On and on. I could have walked quickly from the pig pen to the wood shed, sat down, knit an afghan for my grandmother, finished off my Christmas card list and then walked over the back porch to compose a 3 act opera. Mummy would just be getting over the rise of the hill. Mummies move slow. I guess it's the being dead a long time that slows 'em down. And in the movies, these guys are actually catching flesh and blood people. How slow does one healthy human being have to be to get caught by a mummy?

I lay in bed laughing about this! Then it occurred to me that maybe that mummy from my childhood is still after me. Maybe he has been walking that one step, (long pause) another step (long pause) for over 45 years and several states. Maybe as I am laying here in bed having a good laugh about dumb, slow mummies, he has made it all the way from North Carolina - because mummies never quit and he is right at my window right now. And for an instant, I could have sworn that I heard something..............

Hang Ten - again

Hello Blog Fans! Well here we are at the top of the stairway. For the longest time, I contemplated just how to get up high enough to finish off the ceilings at the top of the stairs. As fate would have it, when the need became necessary, a way to do it developed. Let me bring you up to date on the Nichol Street Experience (my art project for 2009), all the upstairs rooms are ready to paint. I will be doing a final check before the painting begins but right now, that part is ready. The entire stairwell will be ready to paint in two more working days. I framed in the back door and cleaned up the wall around the door. I learned that I am not good at installing panelling. This is OK news to me because I've got enough to do. I had planned to put panelling over the rough wall around the back door area but it just wasn't working. Trust me, when I get finished with the house I will do a before and after blog feature. Anyway, Barnaby has been coming by to help me with some of the work. One day he went to Taco Bell for lunch. When he returned and saw me up on the ladder in the stairwell he almost lost it! "Mom, what are you doing?" I explained that the ladder isn't going anywhere and that I just think of surfing videos. He says "They land in water."

There's a party going on round here...

As most of you may already know, I have been working on fixing up a rental house in Anderson. About 3 weeks ago, I arrived to find tiny foot prints in the spackling dust all over the house. You cannot imagine the bolt of terror that went through me when I saw these little tracks. My imagination had a hideous, huge creature jumping on my head and ripping my eyes out! So I slowly made my way through the house looking behind every door and around every corner. I went down in the basement thinking about those horror movies where people are going into the basement and you're thinking "Don't go down in the basement!" I looked everywhere for an opening that a creature could come into the house. I spotted an open flue that emptied into the massive chimney. I figured the varmint must have come in that way. I stuffed a huge chunk of insulation into the opening! When I got back to the Lincoln building, I googled 'animal tracks' and came up with squirrel. Time went by and no more tracks....until Monday of this week. I arrived at Nichol to find squirrel tracks all through the dust like some kind of wild party had taken place. A trash bucket was turned over. Not only were there tracks on the floor, there were tracks on the step ladder, on the stair rail, tracks on the commode and tracks on the wall where a cord comes into the room from the satelite dish. I think the squirrel was pulling the cord for some reason. I decided to go back to the basement and check the flue opening. Before I went down the steps, I opened the back door to let more light into the stairwell. I heard a chattering outside the door. The squirrel was sitting in a tree making a noise that sounded a lot like laughter. The insulation was missing from the flue opening. Now the flue opening has a flue stopper in place and hopefully the crazy parties have stopped.

Hang Ten

As most of you know, I have been working on remodelling the house on Nichol Avenue since January of this year. I wanted to give you a little update on my progress. I think I have repaired all the walls that need repairing. I did the interior encasement framing on about 14 windows and now I am in the taping and spackling phase. The pictures I've included here are of the living room. .. "before" and "currently". The walls in here were covered with spackle that was put on in what I call cake icing style and topped with gold glitter. Maybe it was quite beautiful when it was first created but over time, dust had settled on the different surfaces. It was quite a mess. I knocked off all the edges and washed down the walls to create a somewhat smooth surface. I then spackled over all the walls to make a smoother finish yet.

Last week I was standing on a ladder, 3 feet off the floor, reaching to the top of the 9 foot walls to smooth spackle on the walls and dipple it into the ceiling. I had some music playing. It was a cd that my friend - Julie - gave me years ago after she and Jack and Phil and I had gone to Chicago to see Circe de Soliel (sp?). It was Varekai(sp?). As I was reaching and spackling, I thought of those performers on the stage in one particular skit. There were about a dozen performers up on a moving contraption and as they were moving and spinning, many of them would flip around and land on this shed type structure. They got to moving so fast and furious that it looked like some kind of human molecular structure in action. The whole thing was so amazing that as I watched, I felt like I was holding my breath so as not to in any way throw off their balance and momentum. And I think everyone else in the audience felt the same way because when the performance ended, we all exhaled in relief and jubilation that no one had gotten themselves killed! It was thrilling.

I bring that memory up because as I was standing there on the third rung of the ladder, my feet clutching the step and my left hand holding the wall as I smeared the spackle, I started thinking about courage. Where do the people who do the toughest things get the courage? I don't know if you would have to have the greatest faith or have to abandon faith altogether to flip from a moving structure to land on the shoulders of someone standing on an 8 foot high structure 10 feet away. I felt a little better standing on that rickety, old ladder after that.

Speaking of courage, check this out....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Pw7vKtqpo

Red Moon Rising

The moon rose red over the soybean field. It seemed to quiver in the blue of the night sky. I was sitting at my dining table witnessing this ancient happening. I grabbed my camera and went out by the mailbox to take a picture.... a red moon on the horizon. Later I went back to take a video of this scene as the clouds had started to do a peek a boo.
After downloading the videos to my computer, I thought that I might just delete the videos as it is hard to get a good movie of far away objects. Then I noticed the sounds in this video. And maybe I'm just weird but I love the sounds even if it is hard to make out the moon.



I was looking at the Prairie Home Companion website this week and came across a good piece of advice from Garrison Keillor. A young writer wrote in to him and asked "Do you have any advice for an aspiring young writer?"
Keillor wrote back ... " The first obligation of a young writer is to describe your parents, a major project. I also think you should start a novel right away. I put mine off for years, thinking I wasn't ready, but it's invaluable experience---- to set out to write a sustained work of prose fiction of a hundred-thousand words or so. The main character is you yourself, it's set in Bristol, and your parents are definitely in it. Your main character has to get in trouble and then get out. And maybe that's the problem here. You've been too good, too obliging, helpful, kind, considerate, thoughtful, generous, responsible, etc, etc. It's hard to be interesting writing about pure goodness. Find some vein of evil within yourself and work from that. You don't need to enact these things in real life, by the way. Unless, of course, you want to. The way to write a novel is to write a few hundred words a day, every day, no fail. So try it. Maybe it'll be a big failure, but big failures can build the foundation for great success."

Mama and me

I was laying in bed this morning, recovering from a nightmare. I dreamed that I was in my house and I heard a noise over by the front door. I went to the door to investigate and a strange woman was standing there by the coat rack. Immediately, I told her that she would have to go. "You have to go!" I kept yelling. Though Phil said it came out more like "Aaaugh, aaaugh, aaaugh" real loud. Anyway, I woke up and had a horrible headache. I've been waking with a lot of headaches lately. It is allergy season so I am not surprised. This will keep happening until the end of September. One morning this week, I actually pondered the question - Could a skull actually split open like a watermelon in the garden? It really felt like my head was getting ready to do that.

So back to this morning - I woke up with a headache and didn't want to move, didn't want to see any form of light, didn't want to hear any loud sounds, didn't want to smell any strong scents. I just wanted to move through this world in slow quiet motion. Phil made some coffee and I closed my eyes and ventured into the kitchen to pour a cup for myself. Immediately, I noticed that it looked like coffee soup....dark and thick.... and I almost started something. I even asked him if he ever measures the coffee. He said no at which point I just gave him a dirty look. So I decided to just pour a cup and get back to my dark, cold bedroom, get back in bed and get over this headache.

I set the coffee cup on the table beside my bed and got under the covers. I was laying there, covers up to my chin, cold, darkness all around me and the smell of that thick coffee started calling to me. I took a sip. It was bitter. Yuck. I set the cup down and pulled the covers close. I lay there for about 5 minutes. Then I took another sip of coffee. I gathered the covers close again and lay back on my pillows. This is the point where an insight came to me.... I want to be kooky and quirky! I almost laughed but it hurt too much. Me, kooky and quirky. Yet somehow the idea interested me. I'll have to think it over and report back.

As you may have noticed, I have two pictures on this post. The one on the right is me - in pink.

My little sister took this picture or maybe I did. And this picture of me really resonates with me. You know how we all have that little voice in our heads that steer us through life? ( Ok, if I am the only one having this experience, please let me know - I may need help). Anyway, there is an inner voice that tells us what we need to know. I think this picture is that inner voice. She is the one who, when I was a young child and I heard the dogs scratching flees on the porch outside and thought it was someone knocking on the door, she told me "It's just the dogs scratching flees". And when the house would settle in the dark night, making cracks or pops and I thought it was someone creeping through the house, the inner voice would say "That's just the house settling." That good old inner voice has clued me in to a lot of stuff along the way. Once, after I was grown and times were really stressful. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown because I looked in the mirror and 'thought' my skull was swollen up like some kind of Martian being. My inner voice said "Girl, you need to get some rest". And as I went to climb into bed and felt like I wouldn't be able to sleep, that inner voice said "Sit down right here in the floor and give all your worries, stresses and deepest woe to God." And I did just that. I followed just what my inner voice told me. I told God that I couldn't make anyone outside of myself do anything that they didn't want to do. I told God that I had solutions to a lot of people's problems but they weren't interested. I cannot solve any of this. I told God that I have 4 children that do need my help and to help them I will need to sleep and cheer up. So I am putting all this 'stuff' into God's hands to hold. And that night I slept like a baby. I slept for almost 12 hours and when I woke up, Phil left for an appointment and it was just me and my 4 darling children at the house. I left the television off as Wall Street was having a meltdown and the news media were in a feeding frenzy. I just listened to my children go about the business of being kids. At one point I turned on the radio for some music and came across a station where they were speaking in tongues and my inner voice said "Turn that off." I turned it off and just listened to my world. So this picture of me reminds me of who I am at the core. I wanted to balance this picture next to another picture of me in work clothes and tell you about the kind hearted me who would do almost anything to help a friend but I will have to do that later due to technical difficulties. Instead I have a picture of my mother. She and I are roughly about the same age in these two pictures. She was a kind hearted person who would do almost anything to help her family or her friends. Mama loved to shop. She didn't have a lot of money so that made it a bit difficult. I love this picture of her. She was shopping. She went by one of her favorite stores and the clerk was showing her this instamatic camera. He took her picture (this picture) with that camera and she bought it. I love this picture! And it has a million cracks in it. I took a picture of the picture since one of my sisters owns the original. I thought I might photoshop it since time has cracked the film. Now I look at it as if it were a stained glass window, picturing a holy, sacred image....Mama mother or Sarah.

geezer in the geyser

My sister Grace and I were leaving the Andrews Geyser in Old Fort, NC. last week when we saw this guy climb into the geyser and get soaked. It happened right after Grace's granddaughter Cadence's birthday party.