Scarlet Letters

Or, why I have three more gray hairs and another few hours chopped off my life. You're gonna see the end of this one coming. As the work day wound to a close, Jim texted me that The Amazing Claire was off work today. Since she is his carpool ride, he needed the car to get home at 2 a.m. This meant a side trip to the university on my way home, so Jim would take his dinner break and ride home with me, drop me off and take the car back to the university. I texted the Spawn and told him I'd be picking him up at Founders Hall tonight instead of the Vadalabene Center where I usually retrieve him. Uh, last night. Because by the time you read this it'll be tomorrow. Post-dated blogs play merry havoc on the old verb tenses. Spawn replied that he had a ride home, so not to worry about him. I said that was fine, but try not to be out too late. I retrieved Jim, who was bearing two leftover pizzas to throw at Spawn because we can never have too much food to throw at the Spawn an...

Our house is more than a century old, and sometimes that shows in weird little design quirks. And I'm not talking about the ghost. Sure, we have electricity, central heat and air (pretty much - holy Hera it's been cold). But most of that stuff was added on much later, and not always in the most logical fashion. For example: There are no overhead lights in the foyer or living room. There's a switch in the foyer, but it turns on the porch light. There is no switch in the living room at all; we use a floor lamp in the corner behind Jim's chair to light the living room. That means when you enter the house after dark, you stand a good chance of walking through darkness for a minute. See, in a normal house you walk in to a foyer, you hit the light switch, the foyer light comes on, and you can proceed from there. In our house, you walk in and fall into a black hole. There's not much in the way of streetlights on our block - which makes me much happier than living und...

Living in a haunted house means there's never a dull moment. Okay, in all seriousness, we don't really believe Isabel is real. Mostly. Probably. We know there was a woman named Isabel who lived in this house and was murdered here by her husband in 1911. Isabel suffered domestic violence of the physical and emotional varieties, and had made a friend of an independently wealthy, single woman who encouraged her to leave her husband, unlike the other oh-so-helpful ladies of the era who simply believed taking a smack to the face was part of a wife's duty. As often happens even today, a woman trying to leave an abuser is most in danger on the day she leaves. He killed her, confessed, tried an insanity plea and it didn't work even back then. He was sentenced to 45 years, but his sentence was commuted after fewer than 10 years. He remarried and lived happily ever after. No wonder she's pissed. It was neat for two horror writers to move into a potentially haunted hou...

Why is it that the massive disasters strike just when it's most inconvenient? And is there any way I can blame Isabel the Ghost for this? Look, we don't have huge amounts of money. We manage to keep our heads above water by dogpaddling really really fast. We put a bit of our paychecks aside each week into two funds: one for Christmas, and one for "vacation." Now, "vacation" is a malleable concept. This year, "vacation" meant the Fourth of July in Memphis, which allowed Boy to see his father and allowed us to pick up Stepson for his summer visit. That put two teenage boys in the house (milk count: nine gallons in six days) and the costs of two outings: a day at the St. Louis Science Center for Jim to do the male bonding thing over the robots exhibit - pout, I had to work - and our annual sojourn to Six Flags. This is why we are both sunburned within an inch of our lives. It was a crazy, loud, fun week, and that our savings were pretty well dep...

Last night, Boy and I were watching TV in the living room when we heard a thunderous crash on the other side of the house. Jim was at work, so he could not be responsible. Boy's eyes widened, and as I stood up to investigate, he said, "No, wait, take the baseball bat." Um, did anyone know where the baseball bat is? No? So I investigated anyway. Boy's room was... well, it wasn't any more catastrophic than the last time I dared to look. If anyone knows how to get a teenage boy to clean his room, do let me know. Our room was substantially un-disastered, the bathroom was in its usual mild disarray.... Then I opened the closet. The closet grid system had partially collapsed, dumping all my stuff and half my clothes on the floor. (Jim's side was totally fine. Naturally. Isabel likes  him.)  Later investigation showed that a small fishhook-shaped connector had snapped. Jim found a reasonable replacement at Home Depot, and conducted the repairs thi...