Namaste, Bitches

Stolen from a coupla people and posted once I figured out how to make an lj poll, lol.

[Poll #1235058]

I stuck my datura out on the porch in bigger pots - they've survived two days! This morning when I went out to water them, there was a dead cicada in one of the pots. According to the news, this year our cicada emergence is the largest expected since 2002. Apparently they're still quite the delicacy in many parts of the world, but... I don't think I could eat one, deep-fried or not. At least this year they were more timely than the last few years - I get anxious when the cycle is out of synch. It's been deliciously humid this past week - my skin is sighing in relief.

Our garage door is broken. Rob gets to spend all day w/his parents. Makes me relieved it's Monday & I can be here at work.

Well, in keeping with my journalistic standards - it's raining :D

Me, Rob & this house have had an ongoing war since we've moved in here. We don't like it & it doesn't like us. But in light of Rob's new quest for spirituality, and the possibility of me wanting to stick w/the County if I actually pass my background check, we're thinking of ways to try and reconcile our relationship with the house.

Everything is always based on so many ifs though.

If I do end up at the County for about a year, the m.i.l. might reconsider selling us this house, getting us out from under her thumb. Ownership leads to comfort and greater security. We would know we were staying and the house would know we were staying.

We haven't seen a scorpion for a year now. We quit spraying for the food bugs & we haven't had plants in the yard (other than weeds) for almost three years now.

So I'm thinking maybe it's time to start investing in a container garden. Even if it's just a lemon tree or two. I'd also like to do some things in the back yard, like Cretan-Minoan-style tilework or murals on the pure white walls. And a stone labyrinth on the ground. I can see stylized dolphins & octopi and turquoise blue waves back there quite easily. Any painting would have to be if we owned the place, but I could put a couple of outdoor braziers for when it's not too windy, or one of those earthenware chimneys. And a birdbath. And bird feeders. I don't care if all we get is pigeons & doves.

I also need to thoroughly top-to-bottom clean this place, which beginning Monday, means a room a day til it's done. Dusting, wiping off counters, pulling the fridge out from the wall, everything. I'd start tomorrow but I work. I should have started the week before last but I didn't have the whole County job thing looming over my head at that point.

And then I need to cleanse the house. Sage and salt water. Offerings to the lares and the household deities. I told Eleggua and Santa Muerte that if they got me through the County's door I would keep them in candy, candles, cigar and tequila for the rest of their lives. In retrospect, I should have said 'the rest of my life'. I am not on familiar enough terms with Santa Muerte to threaten her by saying, "If you don't get me this job with the County I will smash you on the garage floor and sweep you out into the gutter!" If I threaten Eleggua (which I have been known to do on occasion, and it makes Bob laugh - but Eleggua & Bob fuck with each other anyway) he just puffs up & says, "I'm made of concrete, I'd like to see you try!" If I could draw I could make a whole comic strip about the misadventures of Coyote Bob & Eleggua. Eleggua forgets, but I left his predecessor on the bank of a muddy canal in Metairie. (If a concrete head could flip someone off, I'd be so flipped off right now.)

We need to start doing more celebratory seasonal things again. I've neglected the holidays since I stopped being so Wiccan all those years ago, and Rob hasn't cared one way or the other, but there are things we can do to celebrate yearly changes without whipping out the athame.

We need to open the curtains more during the day when we're actually up. We need to play more music in this house - more background music, less background t.v. And we need a fountain or fish tank... something watery, while still being low maintenance.

But for now, I need to go to bed. While it's still raining.

Oh I hate this house,
And this house hates me,
We live together in
Perfect animosity...

We just had a very short black-out. First, my computer stopped responding - not weird considering that most peoples' myspace profiles are too graphics-heavy for my dial-up to handle. Then I heard a loud 'thump', accompanied by a low vibration, the lights went out and I sat here in the dark. Pitch black dark, really. I mean, a complete, total, 100% lack of any light natural or otherwise. The main disadvantage to being a night person is that all our windows block out light. All light. Another disadvantage to being a night person is that preparing for bed & sleeping when it's light outside has left me childlike in my fear of the dark. All the hairs stood up on my body & head and my bladder sort of jumped up into the empty space left when all my other internal organs leaped about two inches away from their proper spaces. In other words, the sudden unexpected removal of all electrical stimuli scared the living crap outta me. Then, just when I thought I was going to start bawling like a little baby, there was another loud 'thump' & the lights came back. Thank the Gods!

I still sat here, momentarily stunned. The house started making cracking noises as the air pressure changed in response to the a/c shutting off & then coming back on, which startled me. I finally got control over my legs enough to do a once-over & reset all the clocks to their corresponding time zones... I kept making kissy noises at Rob, but he didn't even roll over, leading me to believe that whoever cut out the lights may have already entered the house, silently killed Rob & left as I sat here trying to talk some sense into myself.

Ed is shedding & restless, so I at least have some companionship, but his hissing at things invisible or unknown to me makes me more nervous than I already am.

I hate this house - the noises, the atmosphere, the weird angles of its architecture. There is not enough Vesta powder or protection spells in the world to ever make me feel comfortable here. It's a creepy fucking house, and I know it's responding to my dislike towards it because it doesn't like me either. Neither I nor the house want to 'shake hands & make friends'. The house is winning, tho - all I can really do is refuse to clean it or maintain it - it's got the upper hand because it can make me feel very uncomfortable.

I have taken some positive steps - I have a doctor perfectly willing to let me have a lifetime prescription to Elavil, and I have stopped watching ghost movies. The Pazuzu episode after watching the last Exorcist movie was enough to convince me that I am too susceptible to suggestion, and I am not entirely convinced that Pazuzu has left our fireplace. Pazuzu doesn't sleep, He waits.

Here I digress for a moment: This new one coming out, 'Pulse'... not gonna happen in this house. Same went for that one about the water... Apparently, there's a 'Grudge 2' coming out - no way, no how. The remake of 'The Wicker Man' isn't exactly a ghost story, and when it hits the video store, I will probably watch it. The original one was interesting, and I've grown to appreciate it more since the time I first watched it. There's nothing quite like an old-fashioned human sacrifice...

Ahhh, for the first time in many months, Rob is at work & I am at home. Alone. All alone. Just me & the ghosts, & the feeling around me of a house seething with animosity towards me. It is nice, in a way, being by myself. "Give me my scallop shell of silence..." No hotel worries, no Rob worries. Just me & the unquiet atmosphere that this place is brimming over with. Sometimes I think about that cheesy '80's movie, the supposedly true-story "Entity"... I'm thinking about taking a bath, and it's so easy to drown someone by just grabbing them by their ankles & forcefully pulling them under... the water rushes into their nostrils & usually the shock of being grabbed makes them inhale, gasping inwards... Drowning used to seem a pleasant way to die but lately the pressure in my chest & lungs from the shoulder problems I've been having are making me rethink that whole idea.
But oh fucking well, I can seethe back. See if I clean you for awhile, motherfucker. Hah, take that, filthy dirty house!

I was kind of disappointed in the History Channel's 1st chapter of "Barbarians". I expected at least an unbiased account of the activities of the Vikings, (and I don't know enough about the Goths to know if they were portrayed fairly or not), but instead the History Channel made the Viking people out to be uncouth, dishonorable & greedy. In fact, they outright called them greedy. And sneaky, to boot. My Teutonic blood cries out for vengeance!