Trembling

As a child, I remember hearing stories of my grandmother's late night visits with ghosts. One such story takes place while she and my grandfather were living on a farmhouse in rural Wisconsin (or was it Minnesota?). I don't know why they lived on a farmhouse when neither of them farmed, but I'm not writing the story – I'm only repeating it.
My grandfather worked for the power company and would be called away many a winter night due to weather induced power outages, leaving my grandmother home alone. She would go to sleep at night and in the morning, she would go downstairs to the kitchen only to find all the cupboards and drawers wide open and all the coffee cups, saucers, silverware, etc. strewn all over the room.
As the story goes, my grandmother would spend all day cleaning up after her otherworldly friends, flop into bed exhausted, only to wake up and do it all over again.
Now, I don't know why my grandfather never came home to help her clean and I don't know why it took all day (it's not like the dishes were dirtied), but in my family you learn at an early age not to question the details.
When I saw the movie “The Sixth Sense”, I really had a mini freak out when the little boy's mom entered her kitchen to find it in complete disarray! It made me a believer after all the years of silently questioning the holes in the story! I was frightened and pleased.
Coming home after the earthquake last Tuesday night was very much the same. The artwork on the walls was hanging lopsided, framed photos had fallen off the bookshelves, lamps tipped over. It was like a pack of drunken Wisconsin ghosts had hosted a party at my house! If ghosts wore clothing, I would have expected to see a bra hanging from the ceiling fan. (I think only the old school ghosts wear clothes and their underwear is completely different.)
So, while I was at work assessing a situation utterly foreign to me, and while three little dogs (I'm assuming) watched in sheer amazement, apparently there was an earth-shaking supernatural shindig going on at my house!
And that's my story.

Fly Girls!

The first of my two flights today was harrowing. And by harrowing, I mean unpleasant. And really, by unpleasant, I mean typical. Since the noxious gas I smelled was seeping seemingly from my upright and locked tray table, I stopped blaming my husband and began blaming the delicate flower seated in front of me.
And, believe it or not, one of the 8 peanuts they gave me really was rotten (so I gave it to my husband without even wondering why he's the first to be blamed for any and all disgusting fumes).
But other than that, the flight was essentially adequate, I suppose.
The two sky waitresses were amazingly friendly, albeit ridiculous caricatures of actual women. One was a buxom, Southern Belle, with hips as wide as the horizon that hypnotically shifted down the aisle, gently tapping each seat as she passed. Her skin was tanned to leathery perfection with moles strategically placed to draw the eye up, up, up to her bleach blonde, stacked hairdo. Her eyes twinkled a bit under their neon blue lids ….
… perhaps she was simply tickled to be distributing faulty snack food.
Her sister was as skinny as a stick with the palest of pale skin tones. The kind of skin that just barely hides one's spider veins from public view. Her hair was spiked all the way to 1984 and dog dick red. Too much? Okay, let's just say her hair was obscenely red in bizarre contrast to her bluish white skin. She didn't twinkle as much as the first one, but she was nice.
The second flight was just average for me. I got in trouble for using my laptop.