Whensday

I cracked up when I first saw this picture, and posted it on FaceBook.  It brings up a very special family memory for me.  The story behind the giggle is kind of cute though but first I wanted to give some background.

I don’t do horror very well.  As a little kid, my sister would terrorize me by making me watch Dark Shadows, after which I could be found cowering under the bed.

As a teen, I came of age in the Halloween, and Friday the 13th era, which became popular date films.  I almost walked out of The Boogeyman but my date convinced me not to.  I remember perhaps 1 scene from each of those, the rest of the time spent hiding behind my hands.  I would have walked out on My Bloody Valentine but was a guest at someone else’s home and didn’t want to look childish.  So you can see, horror and I never mixed well. 

And then, then I married a horror writer.  Proof that the Lord does indeed have an interesting sense of humor! 

To his credit, the only horror movie Darc ever really strongly encouraged me to watch was The Exorcist.  We caught the 30th anniversary release.  Afterward, I could only wonder what all the fuss was about.

Eventually I realized that what I really loathe is what I’ve come to call “gorror,” that cross between horror and outright, gratuitous gore.  I hate the gory stuff, the bloody, slashing, stabbing, gooey, icky, red yuck.  But suspense I can handle okay.

So when the MiniNess was about 4, Darc picked up a copy of Alien, one of his all time favorite horror movies, and wanted to watch it during family movie time.  I was a bit dubious.  The kids were kind of little for that, I thought.  But we put it in figuring we could stop it if they seemed like they were getting scared.  During the first “facehugger” scene, the scene where the creature leaps onto John Hurt’s face and attaches itself, which startled me since it was the first time I’d ever seen it myself, I heard the little gasps come out of the kids.  Oh here we go! I thought, they’re going to freak out and have nightmares and I shouldn’t have let them see this and …

“Can we watch it again, Daddy?  Can you back up so we can see it again?  That was so cool!”

This is my 4 year old?  My sweet, precious, baby girl?  She wants to see it again?!

“That’s my girl!” exclaimed the proud daddy. 

She couldn’t handle the sight of the vacuum at the time, that sent her screaming to her bed to hide under the covers, but the facehugger in Alien was definitely not a problem.

Yep, that’s not thunder you hear, those are heavenly guffaws. 

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Nessie, etc.

No, this isn’t a post about me.  I am Ness, not Nessie.  Nessie lives in the Loch over in Scotland.  See, Darc and I watched this show tonight – Wednesday nights seem to be turning into weird TV night – it was some show about “monsters” and was all about Nessie.  They had sonar guys and all kinds of scientist types trying to find evidence of Nessie’s existence. 

I have never believed in Bigfoot, Yeti, El Chupracabra, and whatever else ends up being the we-know-it’s-out-there-but just-haven’t-found-it monster de jour.  But Nessie has always been special to me for some reason.  Not that I believe she’s real, I just think it’s the most interesting. 

Then we watched something about UFO’s.  I don’t believe in those either.  For the record, I don’t believe that some extra-terrestrial life form is visiting earth.  I do think there are things we haven’t figured out yet, and things we don’t understand, I just don’t believe those things come from other planets. 

And of course, we watched the Ghost Hunters and the Scariest Places shows.  They crack me up, really.  You can see the people on these shows getting themselves all worked up into a froth, scaring the crap out of themselves before they even set foot in the “scary place.”  No, I don’t believe in ghosts either.  Serial killers are infinitely more scary than ghosts, hands down.  There’s a lot more evidence for them, too.

I often think that as a society, we’d get a lot more done if we concentrated on understanding and fixing what we can see, instead of worrying about things we’ll never be able to prove one way or another.  I’m just sayin’. 

 

This, that, and the other thing

So my son was hovering over my shoulder the other night while I was browsing some blogs, when I happened by Dwight’s page.  My son noticed the picture Dwight had up, and asked me why there was a picture of a giant eagle holding a golden coin.  I was trying to explain to him that it was a picture of some bad guys, and that the big “coin” was actually their symbol.  He asked me what happened to them, and I told him that we’d gone to war with them and beat them, and that it was an old picture.  “It was taken even before I was born,” I explained.  My son, ever so sensitive, exclaimed, “Holy thingin’ crow, that’s OLD!” 

Thanks Baby.  Me and my bud Methusaleh will be over here watching our teeth fall out.  

Then, the next morning, my husband and I were talking about the discovery of the H.M.S. Ontario, a British warship from the American Revolutionary War, discovered in the waters of Lake Ontario recently.  I watched the video of it on FoxNews.com, and was telling my husband how they found the ship intact.  “How was it intact?  If it went down in a storm, how did it remain intact?  Intact ships don’t sink,” he said.  “I don’t know, I wasn’t there,” I smarted back.  “Heck, you probably were, you’re so old,” he commented.  Oh, that man does like to tease!  He’s gotten smarter, he makes his wise cracks from across the room now where I can’t smack him, but see what I have to live with?  Yes, he writes me beautiful poems for my birthday, but he’s big on using me as the whetstone for his wit.  Sigh.  And this was after I got him the grill for Father’s Day, and the re-play of how he became a father in the first place. 

So I’m going to set up the grill.  That’s my job.  I’m the family “put-togetherer.”  Anything in our house that has the motto, “Some assembly required,” gets assembled by me.  I like to lay out all the little pieces into separate piles, make sure I have all the parts, read all the instructions through first, go step-by-step.  Then, voilá!  A grill!  The steaks turned out nice.    Oh, that reminds me … Guys, just so you know – Real. Men. Eat. Beef.  Don’t do that vegetarian thing just to please your wife or girlfriend, seriously.  If you do, then they’ll know you’re PW’d, and no woman can respect or admire a man who’s PW’d.

We did something special for the kids this weekend – we took them to Rainforest Cafe.  My son absolutely adored it and we got to sit next to an aquarium.  My daughter, on the other hand, had different feelings.  Maybe 3 minutes after we were seated, the “thunderstorm” effect kicked in, with the thunder sounds over the speakers, the lights flashing like lightning, the water spraying along the outside edges to simulate the rain falling.  She freaked.  The fish no longer interested her, she wasn’t hungry anymore, didn’t want her pop (that’s how you know it’s bad), she was scared.  I picked her up and held her for a few minutes, told her it was just a pretend storm, that we were inside and it was all just pretend like a movie.  She calmed down a little and I sat her back down in her seat and she put her head on the table.  We thought she was maybe hiding her face or something but that child passed out cold!  This is the same little girl I haven’t been able to get down for a nap in months!  The same one who keeps me up regularly until 2, 3, 4 in the morning!  She passed out cold in the middle of the day, in the middle of a really cool new place, in the middle of a loud, albeit fake, thunderstorm!  I just couldn’t believe it.  She missed it all, and seeing how expensive it is, she won’t be able to go to college now since we spent that fund on lunch.  If only she’d have stayed awake, she could have the memories to sustain her during her post high school life.  She didn’t even wake up when the balloon guy came around! 

Darc and I stayed up really late last night working on some edits for one of his short stories.  It was going really well, and we cracked open the wine and had fun taking turns reading the story out loud, like a play.  We had a great time!  And I think it’s beginning to dawn on him that he really is a good writer.   

And how was your weekend?