New Home

Hi, all. I have a little announcement for all of you, but first, I wanted to apologize for all the confusion over finding my blog this week. I was simply hiding from the lady who was harassing me, because I didn't need any of that. However, I am moving my blog. This lady kind of sealed the deal for me, but, to be fair, I was planning on doing it anyway, because I just plain out suck with the new Blogger dashboard. My OCD just isn't having any of it. So from now on in you can find me at Accidentally Unsouthern. I hope to see you all there!

It's That Time of the Year

Hey guys. Notice some changes around here? Sorry about that. There is a woman who is harassing me on here. She is upset about a former post I did where I stated that I found her instructions hard to follow for a tutorial. (In my defense, there was an entire thread on a message board asking for clarification on these instructions, and even when I asked her for clarification, I still had to find it elsewhere. I just simply didn't understand her instructions. That was a me problem. That's not me trying to be offensive, it's just the truth.) Instead of emailing me directly to please ask me to change that or take the post down, which I gladly would have done either, she decided to leave a nasty, uncalled for comment on my blog. I don't need that kind of childish drama, nor do I welcome it on my blog. So guys, if you have a problem with something I wrote, please email me and let me know. My intention is never to offend anyone. I realize that sometimes I say things bluntly and don't mean to be rude. So if I do offend you, email me and I will make sure it gets fixed, because if I've offended you, I haven't realized I've done it. If anything, I try NOT to offend anyone. There is no reason to call me classless and tell me I should be ashamed of myself because I said I couldn't understand your instructions. Let's all be friends here. I wish she would have emailed me and we could have worked it out, but unfortunately she did not choose to go that route or I would have ever so gladly worked with her. I have been considering changing my blog to another site anyway since I do not enjoy the new dashboard. Just a personal preference. I now am going to go ahead and do that, and will make sure to let you all know where I move to.

Creepy Kitty Strikes Again

On this blog I like to give lots of little quips and tips for making your life funnier. Are they always relevant or useful? Heck no. But if you've got some time to kill, I promise that you'll be left laughing. Today is going to be no exception. And since it's getting closer to Halloween, I thought I'd throw in some tips on how to nicely frighten someone. Yes, folks, it can be done. But first, I must set up this situation for you.

My mom is in real estate. One of the things she likes to do each time she acquires a property is make pamphlets for that property featuring pictures and important information. And by she likes to make pamphlets, I mean she wants me to make her pamphlets. If there is one thing that I utterly despite doing, it is these pamphlets. They're a time consuming pain in the butt. Plus, since I'm not her, I don't know the information about the house or what she wants me to put on the pamphlets, and she's often not around while I'm making them, which just causes a lot of debauchery and annoyance on my part.

Today, however, took my patience for these pamphlets to a new level. To begin with, the pictures had been taken off the camera and edited at my mom's office, but were never put onto a flash drive, so all of the pictures she wanted me to use were on the office computer. I'm at home. To offset this issue, I had to go into her MLS system and save every single one of the pictures off of her listing. That would have been the end of it, except that the MLS system puts these hideous white borders around all the pictures, so then I had to crop them out. I was over two hours in and all I had done was save and crop the pictures and open and begin to set up the template for the pamphlets. I won't get into details, but it just went downhill from there. Getting increasingly frustrated, I realized my urgent need for a laugh. A plot was born.

While I was going through the pictures on the camera and realizing they would do me no good since they weren't the edited versions, I found a picture of the homeowners' cat. Let me explain this one so it doesn't sound uber creepy. In this particular instance I had gone and taken the pictures at the homeowners' house along with my mom. It was more of one of those situations where we were on our way somewhere and she grabbed the camera on the way out the door and decided she wanted to stop. The homeowners' had a kitty that was sleeping in the middle of the bed while I was trying to take pictures. Being an animal person, I went over and started to talk to the kitty in all kinds of crazy baby talk that probably the cat didn't even understand. It eventually came over and hugged my hand...and then immediately took it back by trying to remove my hand from my body. It was a lovely kitty, really.

And that was the exact moment I realized that the kitty was just going to have to be in the pictures if I wanted to keep all limbs in tact, and then find a creative way to hide the kitty in the pictures. Therefore, I ended up with a picture of the kitty, a kitty that later tried to take my mom's hand off, so I didn't feel so singularly unloved.

The homeowner later told us that she had tried to take the kitty back to the where she had gotten it because it was so darn mean with her kids and such, but they wouldn't take it back without putting it down, so she kept it. That might have been important to know before we went in the room with the kitty. Either way, the kitty ended up being the talk of the day, and my mom said that she didn't enjoy how mean that kitty was whatsoever. The next time she turns her computer on she's going to wish she hadn't said that. Since I was annoyed with her pamphlets and had plenty of time to scheme, I figured the kitty was the perfect revenge since it also related to the house.

This is her usual desktop background. It's a picture of our beloved dog Leo, of whom she adores.

This is her new desktop background. Creepy Kitty is merely expressing its distaste for the way it was creatively left out of the pictures on the pamphlets.


I don't plan on telling her about the switch. Did I mention that she has a seventeen inch monitor?

You've Been Cat Dialed

So today I was in the grocery store shopping...while helping a demonologist with an exorcism by way of cell phone. How has your day been?

Yeah, guys, that happened. It's been an insane week. The demonologist that I regularly work with came to me for help with a case. Last night everything came to a head, and then unexpectedly had to be finished off today. While I was at the grocery store. Where people could hear me and I could get in their way. I just refused to let this stop me from grocery shopping. Luckily my demonologist and I both find it completely hilarious that stuff like this is just a mere mild inconvenience in our day. But I have to say, assisting with an exorcism from the grocery store was definitely a new one for me, and that was just part of my day.

Today, all of this happened and then some, but I can't remember the and then some part. That's probably a good thing.

- I cleaned out the refrigerator and cabinets and found stuff I didn't even know I had. Then I was disappointed because it had gone bad before I ate it. Following that, I began to think about all the new stuff I was going to buy at the grocery store that would disappoint me in the same way.

- I visited (Let's use the term "visited," otherwise I'll end up angry.) the office of which holds my paperwork for my insurance. I was supposed to get new papers to fill out for the end of this month, and to have my doctors fill out, but they never came. Turns out they moved my renewal period back a month. No one thought it necessary to tell me, nor would anyone call me back when I called them to ask about it, so I got to waste my gas and time to go deal with stupid. I live a highly glamorous life.

- I visited my mom at her new job and realized her co-worker is way too friendly. I didn't think that was possible, but she even terrified me.

- While shopping, I nicely told anyone who got in line behind me that I had a lot of coupons. I wasn't the crazy coupon lady, but I'd be awhile. The first guy thanked me and got out of line. The second lady lied to me and said that was okay and she had plenty of time. I was almost done checking out when she lost her cool and started swearing and bitching me out under her breathe and moved to another register. The check out lady and myself bust out laughing. Hey, I warned her. And I was out of the store before she even got checked out in her brand spanking new line.

- I learned that I can use my clicker to lock my car from the dining room. Now that I know that, I can be completely lazy and never have to walk the whole way out on the porch again.

- I gave my cat an entire dramatic monologue. It was as follows. I encourage you to read this as if you were an actress or actor in a comedy where you were encouraged to be overly dramatic for the pure purpose of ridiculousness.

"You once were but a small, beautiful kitty who had it all. The world was in your hands. You had everything you wanted. Your life was beautiful. You were a princess, what with your fancy meowing and your special canned food."

I now encourage you to read this as if you were Miley Cyrus on Hannah Montana and trying to make a point while angry.

"And then you had to go and not chew your food."

Let me explain. Sophie kitty thinks she's a princess, so much so that she does not like hard cat food. She can eat it, her teeth are fine, she's lived on it for six years now, but she just doesn't particularly care for it. Since Sophie also happens to be the creepiest cat in the entire world and I am convinced she's plotting my murder, we decided to get her some canned food to make her happy. Things were going quite well, right up until the other night. When I went in the room to get her, I thought she had dumped her bowl. Then I realized what she had actually done was not chew any of her cat food and threw it up all over the entire room. Furniture had to be moved, sheets washed, the rug scrubber came out, and I pulled something in my back moving the bed just like any ninety year old would do. So needless to say, her days with canned food are over. All she had to do was chew her food. Now she's in there chewing hard food and giving me dirty looks. Look, Sophie, we all know your teeth and gums are fine, so don't even play it like that.

- I hand washed my bra in Woolite and was trying to spray some perfume on it so it could dry with the bra and make it smell yummy, since I hate the smell of Woolite. Someone, and we won't mention any names, but since I was the only one doing this you can guess who it was, didn't look to see what way the perfume bottle was pointing and sprayed herself in the nose. On the bright side, everything smells spectacular.

- I learned that I hate when you want one snack cake, but there's two in a package, so you have to pretend to be upset that you have to eat both just so you feel better about eating both.

I should have seen this ridiculousness coming. Last night I had that awkward moment where I was on the oval office and finished my book, and then wondered what I was supposed to read then. Hey, don't look at me like that. We all do it. If you say you don't read while on the potty, you are either lying or you are texting during your business.

But even with all of that craziness behind me, I do have some good news to report. I identified DJ VM$$. It's my cat Stitch. If he hadn't sat on my phone and managed to call my mom, I would have probably never known. Forget butt dialing. Mom, you've been cat dialed.

Also, tomorrow I'm hanging out with my mom and Aunt Bev. I better get some good stories from the blog or I think it's safe to say that we'll all be disappointed.

My Crafting Ensures I'm Forever Single

Because we know that my crafting brings no boys to the yard, I thought I would share with you my recent endeavors into ensuring that I was forever single. But first, let me tell you how this craft project came to be. One day I was sitting at home and minding my own business (I'd like to take a minute to point out that I always say I'm minding my own business, but it's usually not true. I'm usually minding my cat's business.) when I got an email from one of the craft sites I subscribe to. The email featured 31 fall wreaths to craft. As my mom and I got to talking, we realized we had no fall wreath. As I got to going through the email, I realized they didn't have any awesome fall wreaths either. An idea was born.

I had a wreath lying around and decided that I would make a much more awesome wreath all on my own, without their ideas. I also didn't have a lot of money to do it, so I went out bargain shopping at the Dollar Store and hoped an idea came to my mind. Before I went, I had gone through my crafting supplies and saw a few things for a Halloween wreath, so I thought I'd make one of them, too. The shopping trip was a success, and the following came from it.

First up, we have the fall wreath. For this wreath, I wanted something classy that was truly one of a kind, but had a bit of sparkle to it. I started out with a 9 inch wreath we already had, but normally only cost a few dollars, exactly like the one pictured below.

At the dollar store, I bought some beautiful ribbon and a string of glittered fall leaf garland. I already had some little pine cones that I had picked up for free out of boredom while waiting for my mom to get off the phone one day while we were at a butterfly release. My plan was to cover the wreath in the ribbon, but not overlap it. I would then take and fill in the spaces where the wreath stuck out with the leaves and place the pine cones over top.

Since the ribbon was the good kind with wire through the edges, it made it difficult to wrap the ribbon, as a whole, around the wreath to cover it. As a solution, I cut the ribbon into six five inch strips. I flipped the wreath upside down, put the middle of the ribbon around the part facing the table, and then put hot glue at one end of the ribbon and brought the other up to meet it. I also burned myself with the hot glue gun approximately 972 times because I had to push the ribbon against itself to make it stick, and the hot glue came through. I put each individual piece of ribbon up against each other in the center of the wreath, and left room at the bottom for the focal point.

I then cut a few of the leaves from the garland, which are sparkly, though it's hard to see, and positioned them over the gaps between the ribbon. I overlapped two leaves per gap, sometimes three if I was doing the overlapping on the outside of the wreath. To balance it all out and bring a bit of depth to the color, I took the baby pine cones and placed them over top of the leaves to get this effect.

At the bottom of the wreath, the part where I had not put any of the above things, I started on the focal point. This is a view from the inside out the wreath out.

And this is the head on view. What I did was take three big flowers from the Dollar Store and line them up side by side, cutting their stems to a half an inch and lathering them with hot glue to make sure they stayed, before sticking them into the wreath. To balance it out, I took some smaller flowers from the dollar store of a darker shade and lined the inside and the outside of the wreath just around the three flowers for balance. Because the flowers were from the Dollar Store, the centers of them were nothing to write home about, so I hot glued pine cones into the center to tie together the rest of the wreath.

This was the end product, and it only cost me a total of $4. Had I had to buy the wreath, it would have cost more like $7, but I still think that's a good price considering how much you would pay for an already finished, thousands-made wreath.

Up next was my Halloween wreath. I wanted this wreath to be a little more fun and not as busy. I bought the Dollar Store version of this wreath in a 9 inch, so it wasn't near as nice or as fancy, but that was okay, because it was just the base that I would be covering.

I spent around two hours hot gluing moss onto the wreath and burning my fingers. It wasn't as hard to do as one would think. The moss went right on. When I got the first layer done, I shook the wreath and pulled off the pieces that weren't glued on, and then repeated the process a second and third time. I love how it came out and it was totally worth it, though I do warn that this makes a heck of a mess. After doing that, I took one of the Halloween items I had found and glued it onto the left side of the wreath like so.

I then went to the right side and glued another little kitten I had lying around onto the wreath directly across from the Boo kitty above.



I also had a little witch's broom lying around, so I positioned it right in between where I knew my ribbon would fall, so when the ribbon fell, it looked like this.

One thing that was a must have with this wreath was a really awesome, slightly over-sized ribbon on the top. I got one at the Dollar Store that matched my kitties perfectly, and then tied it and hot glued it on. I wasn't happy with how the center knot looked, so I took a black button and hot glued it to the center of the ribbon, and then glued an orange one in the middle of it to give it flair.

To balance out the large ribbon, I bought a sign at the Dollar Store that went with the theme of the wreath and attached it to the back of the wreath and hung it from the wreath, having the ribbon just skim the top of it so that it all tied in together. The end result was as follows. This wreath also cost $4 for everything you see, aside from the kitties and the broom, but including the sign.

I wish these pictures made them look at cute as they are in real life. I look at the pictures and wonder if I enjoy how they came out, but when I actually look at the wreaths, I love them. I guess maybe it's one of those things where if you make it, you always see the flaws.

Caution: White, Sober Girl Walking

I know I've been promising you all part two of the plumbing story for exactly a month now, so I've decided to stop being lame and write it. But before I do, I have a few things I want to share with you all.

First, for those of you who were following the LMCP story, I have an update. LMCP has crossed over. I'm sure this isn't the end of the saga with her, as she left quite a legacy behind, but I had finally succumbed to the fact that she was with me for life. However, her person and herself really stepped up last week and dealt with what they needed to deal with. In doing that, they figured out how to let each other go, and it was a really beautiful thing. Before she left, I promised her that I would make sure to always keep an eye on her person. Normally, when my spirit girls are not helping someone, they stay with me. Now, when they don't have a greater purpose at the moment, they stay with her person and not only keep him safe, but keep his stuff from bothering anyone else. Although it's quiet around here because my one girl that is always with me is now taking care of him, I know it's for a bigger purpose. Everything that needed to be taken care of around him was, and everything she needed, she got closure on. Although taking care of her person is going to be a life long job and entails more than just having my girls keep an eye on him, I am much less stressed without her seventeen and pregnant self hanging around. A lot of things are changing and rearranging, but I think it's a good change.

Second, my cat now has a rapper name. It's VM Double Dollar, but is shortened to be ever so fashionable at VM$$. Let me explain. The other day I left my phone lying on the coffee table. I thought it was safe. When I came back to it, my red light was going off. I looked at my phone, and it was a text from my friend asking what VM$$ meant. I never texted her that, so I was confused, until I looked at the previous text. It was indeed from me and had indeed said VM$$. The only reasonable solution was that a cat stepped on my phone and sent that. The only reasonable explanation for a name that fly was that it was my cat's DJ name. The problem is, I don't know which cat did it.

With that said, I want you all to know that I wasn't initially going to tell part two of the crazy plumbing story. But I decided I'm going to go for it full force. My mom called a plumber the same night as we found there was water leaking into my vent, and he promised to send someone out the next day. My mom chose a plumber that her clients had used. In the business she's in, she sees all the bills for the work that is done for her clients. She knew his rates and knew he had done good work. She had told the plumber that it had been the reason she had chosen him. You can see this is going to go wrong somewhere, yeah? Long story short, the plumber decided to completely rip us off and charge us a much, much higher price than he charged her clients for labor. Our job was about a sixth of a job that theirs was, too.  He also charged us for times they weren't here, the plumbers' lunch hours, and two hours in travel time a day when they're only coming from twenty minutes away in bad traffic. This is now an ongoing dispute, but I digress.

Day one started off fine. I was up way earlier than I wanted to be with some strange guy in my house. Since I was the only one home, the day soon became like a Nancy Drew novel, only the mystery was where the leak was coming from. The first assumption was that it was coming from under the house. The poor plumber crawled his bad self under there, couldn't get the whole way back, but couldn't see anything either. That led to some hemming and hawing, and finally the realization that there was going to have to be some cutting into the walls. I'm not going to lie, Plumber 1 and myself had some awesome adventures and laughs while trying to find this leak. He was kind of awesome.

By the end of the day, we had found the problem, the plumber had fixed it, we had a hole in our wall and floor, our washer and dryer pulled out, but we were gleeful. And then we realized we had more leaks. This apparently was a two plumber job for the following day. That was gauranteed to be debauchery filled.

Day two got a little hinky. Plumber 1 came back with Plumber 3. I could call him Plumber 2, but that just seems unoriginal. I open the door to greet the strange men into my house earlier in the morning than I care to be up, when Plumber 3 says to me: "I swear I didn't pee my pants. My wife didn't put the lid on my coffee the whole way this morning." And then he walks away. He didn't even see hi. Immediately, I knew I was going to like Plumber 3 just fine.

Because the plumbers didn't want to tear up more floor, they decided to see if they could get far enough under our house to find the leak. This didn't seem feasible seeing as the leak couldn't be found from under there the day before, but Plumber 3 was feeling particularly bold and decided to try it. While standing outside of the entrance to the crawl space under our house and having Plumber 1 ask me a question, me answer it, and him yell the answer to plumber 3, I was stung by a bee. It wasn't even ten am. It was going to be one of those days. For the record, I've never been stung by a bee in my life, but it was good to know I wasn't allergic to them. Because we all know there's no better time to find out if you're allergic to bees or not than when you're alone with two strange men in your home.

They finally surmised they had no choice but to make another hole in the floor in another room. The problem was that it was a ninety something degree day, and the room they had to work in was land locked by other rooms. The tiny window it did have in the one open wall didn't open anymore. The way the room was facing, there was no way to get air into it. I was afraid they were going to die, but Plumber 3 assured me they would be okay with some fans. I still started coming up with stories to tell the police just in case, and realized the truth was really the only thing that wasn't going to make me sound suspicious.

I went into the living room and decided to send incredibly funny emails to everyone I knew, because I didn't know what else to do with myself. You know how it is, the second you start a project, they need your help, so there was no use in starting anything. If you don't start anything serious, they don't need your help. Guess which rule this day followed. If you guessed one, you would be wrong.

As I'm really into my emails, minding my own business and what not, the plumbers suddenly start making a loud noise. I wasn't too concerned about it, however, I happened to catch my cat out of the corner of my eye. Slowly, I looked up at her and immediately regretted it. Just a mere foot from me on the corner of the couch, my kitty was giving me a look as if the say, "make that noise stop or I will murder you in your sleep." I didn't even know she was there until that very second, but now that I was aware, I couldn't be unaware. I was practicing my ninja skills in my head and slowly moving over while giggling nervously, when the noise stopped and she left the couch arm. It was a close one.

At the end of the day, all I was right with the zoo again, we had water pressure we had never had, were wondering how long these pipes had been leaking, and bid the plumbers adieu. By this time my mom had come home to monitor the debauchery. We were just so wiped out from all that plumbing they did in the ninety degree weather that we ended up sitting on the couch for over an hour and a half just so we could see this.

Let me just ask you something. What is it about three minute interviews on television shows you don't like or watch that make you want to sit down an hour early just to make sure you catch it? We all do it, especially with those dang morning shows. And did you ever notice that if it's something educational, you find something else to do right up until the very last second it comes on, and then you plant your butt in front of the television, missing the first minute of the show and not caring? What is up with that? And why is it that once you've sat on the couch forever and a Christmas to watch some three minute segment that you suddenly think your day is shot and decide to sit and watch television for the rest of the day? And in doing that, you end up watching a bunch of things you don't actually want to watch just because you still swear the day has been wasted by your acedia. There needs to be therapy for this.

But two days of sitting around, writing awesome emails, and making friends with plumbers who say odd things, I learned two things that I'd like to pass on. 

At one point in the day, someone texted me and asked me how I was enjoying the plumber's crack. I texted them back and told that that though it seemed impossible, our plumbers didn't have crack. They tucked their shirts into their underwear. Not that I was looking, but when you have to move around them in your own house, your eyes see things you're not trying to focus on. So take that, plumbers. It IS possible to not have plumber's crack. I know this is shocking news, so take a minute, breathe, take your medications; there's no need to get worked up. You have to look like Napoleon Dynamite to do it, but it's so worth it.

Plumber 3 cracked what I thought was a joke at one point in the day, and then I realized that not only was it not a joke, he had a point. He said that back in the day it was his dream to own a plumbing company. He decided that when he did so, he was going to hire one really tall guy and one midget. The tall guy, obviously, could reach all the things the normal sized guys couldn't without ladders. As for the midget, he could finagle himself into every situation that regular sized men couldn't. He'd be like the super ninja of plumbing. Plumber 3 said that the tall guy was negotiable, but the midget wasn't. I mean no disrespect to midgets, but Plumber 3 totally had a point with that.

2 AM; Who Do You Love?

I wasn't going to post tonight, but I'm feeling all kinds of sentimental tonight. I'd like to think that it's the medication I was put on for the current catastrophe of a health problem I'm having, but it's probably just me. I prefer to be funny, good story telling Cass. Sometimes I'm life lesson Cass. But there's other times where I just need an outlet and feel like if I don't speak now, I might explode. I don't think anyone would glue me back together, so it's probably better if I stay in one piece.

Tonight I found myself in a situation that honestly frightened me more than the stories my spirits tell me of their deaths, spiders or birds ever could. If you know me, you'd know that the mere sight of a bird makes me scream and run like a little girl who was just offered candy from a stranger. It's completely ridiculous, but I digress. A very dear friend of mine was in need of help and was having an impossibly tough time, and I didn't know what to say to her to help her. I kept trying to say the right thing, and then wondered if I said the wrong thing, what would happen to her and how it would make her feel. And, for a brief moment, I saw myself seven years ago. It was a moment too long, and I became more afraid that nothing I said was going to help, only make things worse.

She is an amazing girl who deserves a beautiful life, yet no one's ever told her that. No one's ever treated her like it was okay to be who she was. I remembered the times that I sat in my room and wondered if I'd ever have a chance to fly, and I looked at where I am now and still found no answers for her. Luckily, she is an incredible girl who is smart and funny and found a solution for herself. And I told her I'd always be here for her, but that I would probably never know the right thing to say, and we talked about some things. And it brought up a lot of stuff.

I grew up enchanted with everything, especially shiny things and love. But my environment shattered my enchantment of love before I was five, although it never ruined the fascination of shiny things for me. I'm twenty five and should still never drive in Vegas, but that's beyond the point. I want to have a perfectly imperfect love story with someone. I want to savor the times when things suck and you're confused, but still know you're with the right person. I've never had the stability to say that anyone would stick around. And, as much as I hate to admit it, my spirits don't help. Most of them are young girls whose lives were taken far too soon, and I know how easily that could have been me. To hear their stories, it scares me away from relationships and becoming close to anyone even more, seeing how easily a life can change; how quickly. I've watched as a relationship changed in front of my own eyes because of someone trying to do the right thing, and having someone else lie to them and have it almost end in their death. Then they drowned themselves in alcohol, and I never got the person I loved back. So shit happens, and sometimes it's no one's fault.

But I'm not good with the unknown, and I've never trusted myself so much either with knowing how to handle keeping someone or something for myself. My first reaction is always flight. And then I realized that for a girl who is afraid to trust herself, I'm in a pretty unusual situation. I help spirits on a regular basis, and they come to me for help because they trust me. They see something in me, and there's a reason each medium gets a specific spirit. I've always helped and I've always sat passively and wondered why they trusted me so much and why I could dedicate my life to them, but never be able to have any kind of life for myself. And now I know that I've been blaming them when it's never been their fault.

Sometimes life isn't about you, though. And maybe sometimes you're not meant to have what you want. And sometimes what you want and what you need aren't the same things. There's always going to be someone that knows what you need, though. In my line of work, I get it all too often, but I believe the same goes for anyone in any situation. There's always someone on the outside looking in. And maybe that person is right. If you push them away to protect yourself, you'll never know. You can say you can control your life all you want, and you can put up every wall in the world, but then you forget to give yourself a chance. Maybe that someone who knows what you don't is just trying to give you that chance to fly.

A Very Greta Picture

Hi! Greta Hayley here!  I'm posting for mommy because she has a sick! I don't have a whole lot to say, so I just thought I'd share my picture with you.

You Will Be Remembered

Today would have been my grandma's 84th birthday had Scleroderma not taken her. For those of you who don't know me well, you don't know that my grandparents had an extremely large hand in raising me. My mom was a single mom going to school full time to try and make a better life for us, so most of those first outings and first times after the age of two or three were with my grandparents. Cancer took my grandfather eleven years ago, though sometimes it seems like just yesterday.

My grandma was a strong woman. She wasn't ready to pass when she did, but Scleroderma ruined her heart, destroying the right side completely.  Her body just couldn't hold up any longer, though her mind was strong. She passed suddenly in the winter of 2009. Though we knew her time was coming, we had gotten a call one morning that they had found her in her apartment still breathing, but she was gone before she reached the hospital. 

She was more than a grandma to me. She was a confidante, a best friend, and a lot of times she played the roll of mom. Not a day goes by that I still don't think of her and miss her. Last year I wasn't strong enough to post a tribute to her, and this year I'm crying the whole way through it, but I want her to know that she will be remembered.

 

 This week has been particularly hard, not just because of what today signified, but because our beloved kitty Lila also passed on Tuesday. We had, had her so long that we couldn't even remember when we got her. She was an older kitty, but also in good health, until one day she wasn't, and the next, it seemed, she was gone. Pets are truly part of the family and it's been hard getting through this week without her little meows and leg hugs around every corner.

   I know I owe some of you comments on your blogs, and I thank you all for the comments on mine. I promise I am getting there. Please bear with me until a few wounds start to heal. I'm going through some other things involving my gift and in general am having a trying time this week.

Emails From Aunt Bev

Last night, Aunt Bev and I were having a conversation via email. At some point, she casually dropped a line saying that the computer insinuated that she was stupid. One thing led to another, and I got these words back from her.


WTF!!!!!!! Smart Ass Computer!!!!!  Settle down, Bev and go to bed. I won't be able the sleep now I'm so furious.

That's right, inanimate objects really can make you that angry. We now have proof.

Shut Up, Self!

I know I owe you all part two of the plumbing story, but let me just fill you in on the last week of my life. Or, as I like to call it, proof that I need to shut my mouth.

As you all know, I'm a psychic medium. If you don't know that, you're probably new here, and in that case, HI! Welcome. Look around, stay awhile, do a little dance, whatever. This little glitch in my hardware makes my life hectic as it is. Usually I shush up about it in person so that I don't end up running myself in ragged circles trying to help everyone and their mother, brother and sister. I get enough emails about this sort of thing and have enough lined up as it is that I don't need more things. With this in mind, I was clearly wearing my dunce cap last week.

The week started out with my friend having a case involving an ancient Indian creature bothering her sibling who was living on what was once land where Indians were massacred. It skipped right into the same friend having issues of the not so holy kind in her own home. So I had that to deal with going into the week anyway, and that just happened and was no one's fault. The rest was all my fault, so I should have quit the week with the paranormal while I was ahead. It was only Monday. We knew I was going to fall behind somehow.

I was doing good all day Tuesday and was still ahead, then Wednesday rolled around. I had to go to a dinner with the awesome Aunt Bev, so we decided while we were down that way that we were going to stop in the Historical Society and do some research on her parents' house, which has had all sorts of issues ever since Aunt Bev can remember. This was going lovely until the lady who worked there told me about a lady who had come in a day prior to research a property for paranormal reasons and how strange she thought that was that two people came in for that reason two days in a row. Then I realized it was my friend who had come in and that was all my fault, too.

When I feel like something is my fault, even if it's something odd, I start ranting. This is when someone needs to get a piece of tape like they do in those NoH8 photos and tape over my mouth. One way or another we got to talking about an old town here, the one where they had the really awesome reenactments of court cases from the late 1700s. One thing led to another and I ended up telling the lady from the Historical Society that I had felt someone watching over the one house there, someone with a hat, to which she laughed and said that was so funny because the former caretaker had died in the last few years and another medium had told them he was watching over the place. She turned me around and showed me a picture of him. He was wearing a hat. He always wore it.

This should be the part where everyone goes, "Oh, neat. Oh, nice." Don't do that, though, because the next thing I knew I was telling the lady that I can see the old town how it used to be in the 1700s with my psychic site, she was gleefully telling me that they had been trying to reconstruct the town to how it used to be but knew no one who could help them do it, and I was writing my name and number down on a piece of paper. The lady who is in charge of the town is calling me when she gets home from vacation at the end of the week. And I was assured that if I do a good job that they could use me for a lot of things. I'm going to just hold my applause.

If that didn't give me enough to do outside of my hours upon hours of emails and consultations with the paranormal a week, my mouth continued to make things worse for me. Friday, we decided to visit an old castle about a half an hour from here. I went prepared for spirits, because the original structure that still existed within the larger structure was built in the 1700s. Before that, there was a war waged on that land. As it turned out, that building wasn't my problem whatsoever.

With the town in disrepair, we struggled to find a place to eat there, and when we get hungry, you better get us to somewhere with food before you start looking tasty and we attempt to steal your lunch. It's a Mom, Aunt Bev and myself ism. We like food. There were rows and rows of buildings; a whole town's worth, but all were vacant and empty. Following signs and a tip, we drove a little ways outside of town to a super amazing old mansion that had a restaurant inside. I fell in love with the town, or lack there of, instantly, and was sucked into this house. It was so warm and friendly, and although it was clear spirits were there, it was a gathering place in life, as it was in death. There was nothing vicious, just a warm feeling that made me want to live in that house. I was sucked in.

While we were waiting for our food, the woman serving us let us wander around the entire house, which was to become a bed and breakfast, since we were the only ones there. This just enchanted me more. When we were done with the meal, she took us downstairs to show us the basement that used to be a pool, but was now turned into a tavern. I had kept my mouth shut about the spirits until one walked right past me. I got in a silent argument with my mouth in a sad and sorry attempt to get it shut, but it didn't work very well, and before I knew it I was asking the server if there had been any paranormal experiences in the house. Her exact words were, "Funny you should ask that..."

Also before I knew it, we had identified the man I saw by her showing me a picture and me saying, "Yes, that's him," and she was taking my name and number because the owners would love to talk to me about this. We were getting ready to leave when the owners just magically popped up, and just like that an hour and a half went by. In that hour and a half I learned that real alligators were kept in the basement, the woman whose husband built the house and had passed really hated one of their patrons, and the man who built the house and had passed really hated the whiskey they served since in life he made whiskey, but it was no longer available for sale. I also bored my mom and Aunt Bev and made the one owner miss an appointment. He was awfully cheery about missing that appointment though.

I'm going back this coming Monday to go through the house and tell them everything I am feeling and help them make the house a place where the spirits still want to be. They're awesome and understand that this isn't their house, they are just taking care of it. They welcome the spirits, as long as they're nice, and that house is filled with nothing but nice. They just want to make the spirits proud of what they're doing there, and since they're having weddings there, the original owner's wife couldn't be happier. I'm actually super excited about doing this, and I hope that the owners will let me come back from time to time. I loved them, I loved the house, and this is what I love to do. And hey, they even offered me free food. I don't charge for my services, but I will ALWAYS take free food.

I didn't even make it one more day before I opened my huge mouth again. Surprising, I know. On Saturday we were having a yard sale. Now, for those of you who don't know this about me, I'm convinced that yard sales spawned around the same time that Lucifer fell from Heaven. I just don't like them. So as the day is reining down on us and we have been sitting there for what felt like eight weeks, but was really more like five hours, we started to wonder if we were going to sell anything else or have to drag it back home. Just then, a woman in a red truck became our savior, and made me open my big mouth again.

Turns out, this lady was from a missing children's foundation in the local area, but they work nation wide. They were looking for any items we didn't want that they could sell to help fund the organization. I gave them everything I had left. In my line of work, I see a lot of kids go off the grid because the police run out of leads or their hands are tied, and this is where this organization picks up. This is something close to my heart, especially with my spirits that come through on a regular basis. A lot of them are lost souls because their bodies have never been found, and I have no idea how to approach the police about these girls without looking uber fishy. Being as people think I'm about seventeen anyway, fishy was not what I needed.

So, and I say it again, before I knew it I was telling this poor woman about my gift and dishing out my name and phone number. I was also telling her all about this one young girl that went missing locally of whose family I've been wanting to contact but didn't know how, and asked her if they could work on getting me in touch with the family or if they would help me follow up what I knew about the case. Ever since this girl went missing, I've wanted to bring her home so badly, no matter what capacity that may be in. I'm still waiting for a response.

The guy who runs the organization might think I'm nuts, but I hope he doesn't, because the lady all kinds of loved me. She assured me he would be in contact with me, and I hope is. I know I can be of help here, and I take responsibility for anything that happens on information I give, good or bad. I'm willing to be as hands on as I need to be with this. If he does decide to work with me, I have a feeling I'm going to be insanely busy like no one's business, and I hate dealing with families, because I never want to see anyone hurt. I can't imagine the kind of toll this will take emotionally, but if we can bring some kids home, that's all that matters. Sometimes they don't come home in the way that you want them to, but at least the families will never have to wonder any longer where their child is, and that's always been something I've wanted to be able to achieve with my gift. This could also open a lot of doors for me to get some credentials and be able to go to the police about some of my spirits without them thinking I'm all fishy and such. I help the dead, and if this can open up a door for a better way for me to do that, that's all that's important.

Let's pair this with the fact that I have LMCP and her person to tend to on a nearly constant basis. That situation is so messed up. I have a feeling sleep is going to turn into a luxury, and I'll never have to leave my couch except for a few times here and there and still end up entirely busy. Too bad this job doesn't pay, but I'd never, ever charge someone for something that came to me for free. So wish me luck, you guys, and pray that I keep my mouth shut more often...or something.

Guest Blogger: Please Welcome Zoe!

Tonight I am going to do something totally different with the blog and present to you a very special guest blogger. You all may know Zoe from the comment section of this blog, as well as me linking you all back to her blog before. Not only is Zoe an avid reader and commenter of this blog, but she is also a fantastically wonderful person, good friend, and spectacular writer. You should all follow her blog and follow her on Twitter so that you can say you knew her before she was famous, because this girl is going to be HUGE. Not that I'm trying to tell you what to do...

A few days ago, Zoe and I were having a lovely conversation in which I confused her a bunch of times. I'm sorry, Zoe. Somehow in that conversation, I ended up reading a piece from her blog, and asking her if it would be alright if she would be a guest blogger and share that post on my blog as well. Luckily, she graciously agreed.

There are so many amazing things about this amazingly talented girl, and this piece shows every bit of who she is and what she stands for. If you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything, and she's not the kind of girl who is about to go down without a fight. Plus, she loves Taylor Swift, so where can you go wrong? She brings awareness to something that has been in the media lately, but passed off by many: Cyberbullying. So, please, everyone give a huge round of applause for Zoe and remember to check out her blog and twitter.

I read some pretty disheartening and quite honestly horrific attitudes regarding cyberbullying today. Someone said that cyberbullying is a load of crap because you can always turn off the computer and go elsewhere. I am gathering, from what I hear and read, that this is the opinion of a few people. Yet those people I can tell have never experienced the horrors of being bullied online. Yes, you can ignore it. It takes a great skill to be able to move on and laugh off people harassing you, but once you get a hold of it, it's easy to master. But you cannot always pretend it does not exist. The opinion I read clearly lacks a huge misconception; what if the cyberbullying follows you to school? Then, are you capable of ignoring the comments, turning off your computer and going to hang out with friends like everything is okay? You can't. If those people are joining in the harassment and it continues off the computer you can't just smash down the lid or turn the off button on the monitor and ignore it. It eats you up inside. The longer it continues, the more the comments and the name calling persists, the more you come to believe it. How do you think babies learn? They see the repetition of adults speaking to them, encouraging them, and they adapt and believe and repeat themselves. It is exactly the same when it comes to bullying. The victims learn that the things they are labelled as are true. They come to believe everything the bullies say about them. When so many people constantly throw names and belittle them without relenting, they have nothing else to do but to consider that perhaps, if so many people are saying it, then it must be true.

People like the ones I encountered are entitled to their own opinions. But the only thought that went through my mind was how little they know of the truth. They can say "grow the fuck up and move on" all they like, but that is never the solution, and I can tell they have never been through the experience themselves. How could they say things like that if they had? They cannot understand the feeling of being completely and utterly alone, of feeling like you are the only person in the world going through this kind of pain. They cannot understand how so much builds up and cyberbullying is just the tip of the iceberg. I can't look at my old tumblr account because of how much hate I am getting on there, and that severely hurt me. Those grey faces didn't know who I was, and they had no courage to come out and say it to my face. The vicious comments left by others to put me down reaffirmed my thoughts that I was not an important person. You cannot tell people to grow up and move on unless you have been involved in the attacks. Unless you have experienced the heartbreak over feeling that everyone is against you, that people who do not know you hate you without any justification for it. Calling someone ridiculous for killing themselves over vicious bullying online is completely out of order. I know how it is to feel utterly alone. I know what it feels like to be scared to talk to anybody. I know what it feels like when everyone turns on you, both online and offline.

Another comment I read said that turning off the computer, deleting the messages, ignoring the website all together, these were all solutions that were “not that fucking difficult”. I felt sick when I read that. Did they understand what exactly goes through the victims mind at that point? Did they not realise that as soon as one person has seen the message, there is every possibility that the message would have been print-screened, sent across to everyone in messages berating their chosen victim? If someone else posts a comment about them, and that person is considerably more ‘popular’ than the victim, who do you think people are going to believe? The victim has no chance to properly defend themselves in these situations. And people telling them to “grow up” and “move the fuck on”, that’s almost as bad as what the bullies are doing. The victim doesn’t want to hear anything that seems remotely harsh. They want to be comforted. They want to be reassured. They need their friends to stick by them. When all your friends turn on you, it can get so much worse.

A lot of these comments seemed to centre on the ABC movie, “Cyberbully”. Many labelled it as a copy of “Odd Girl Out”, but “Cyberbully” actually modernized and brought the issue to the forefront of people’s minds, focusing strongly on the bullying that occurs on the internet, and particularly social networking sites. In fact, a large quantity of the people bashing this movie shared the opinion that bullying online is not an issue because nobody forces people to endure the internet; they can turn it off. They can delete things and report them, and it’s online so it’s not real—they can ignore it. Allow me to direct you to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Megan_Meier. Megan Meier was bullied online, mostly through MySpace. Not long after setting up her account, she received a message from ‘Josh’, though the actual perpetrator was her former friend’s mother, Lori Drew. Several people, mostly Lori, contributed to running the account. They would gain her trust and get information about her, personal information, to use against her because Megan had allegedly spread rumours about Lori’s daughter. Then the messages changed from being kind, to being insulting and cruel. ‘Josh’ told Megan she was not a nice person, and he didn’t want to be friends with her anymore. Several people posted bullitens about Megan saying that the world would be a better place without her. Later messages were sent through AIM, and Megan was found twenty minutes after, having hung herself. Now. Would you call that bullying ridiculous? Could you so easily say that she was stupid, and should have deleted the comments and not let it bother her? The bullying spread to the outside world. It did not just stay online. People in her school and the town began to turn on her. Imagine, just put yourself in her shoes, in the shoes of people everywhere around the world who experience this kind of bullying. It’s never easy to deal with and nobody deserves it. I am thouroughly sickened by people who have the attitude that bullying online doesn’t have a basis in ‘real life’. Comments like that stay with you for a long time. When people who you thought were your friends turn on you, you feel like you are the only person in the world going through this. You have no one to turn to.

I honestly think people need to reconsider the effects of online bullying. People who make comments like that will never understand unless it has happened to them or someone close to them. But it happens. The internet is the world of this generation; kids spend hours online. It’s like a whole other world to them. So yes, words hurt, regardless of how they are said or where they are said. If someone starts spreading ugly rumours about you and they do not even know who you are, you are going to be offended. When people gang up on you just because the ‘queen bee’ decided you were her next target. I want to direct you to this book: http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Girl-Out-Culture-Aggression/dp/0156027348. Rachel Simmons’ book does not focus on cyberbullying, but it helps to understand why girls in particular bully one another. As she says, “There is a hidden culture of girls’ aggression in which bullying is epidemic, distinctive, and destructive. It is not marked by the direct physical and verbal behaviour that is primarily the province of boys. Our culture refuses girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into non-physical, indirect, and covert forms. Girls use backbiting, exclusion, rumours, name-calling, and manipulation to inflict psychological pain on targeted victims. Unlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack within tightly knit networks of friends, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the victims.” By no means was she, and by no means am I, saying that all girls do this. They don’t. But the evidence that it happens in undeniable. That book helped me to understand why girls bullied me, to an extent. I understood why girls bully one another, and I learned how to get over it. With my recent experience being bullied through the site Tumblr, I was fortunate enough to know how to deal with it. I may have left the account and made a new one, but I did not let it affect me emotionally offline. I was comforted by the knowledge that they did not know who I was, that they were too frightened to come off anon and say these things to my face. I had been through enough years being bullied that I could ignore it and pretend as if it didn’t really bother me. I may have shed a tear or two at their expense, but that was it.

Many people are not as fortunate. Your closest friend may be being bullied and you could have no idea. I’m not saying you should act like a spy. I’m saying that those people who make these claims that cyberbullying is ridiculous should approach the subject with a more open-mind, and a gentler attitude. You may go through your whole life without being bullied; it is entirely possible. But look at what it does to people. Just because you break down and cry over comments online does not make you emotionally unstable. You will never be prepared for it. You will never expect it. You do not think that it can happen to you, and you can say “shut the fuck up and move on” all you like, but when it does happen to you, a part of you will understand what goes through the minds of other people and maybe, just maybe, you will regret the things you said. Once more, I am not saying it will happen to you. I am saying that sometimes you have to go through something to understand it. Cyberbullying is one of those things that is so easy to ignore because it has a very simple solution. In reality, it is never simple. Words hurt.

Perhaps cyberbullying doesn’t feel real to some people because it is not physical. It’s not direct bullying in the flesh, therefore it is easy to ignore and pass judgements. But cyberbullying is an issue people need to take more seriously. Know that your words hurt people online. If you say something cruel, start spreading rumours, and more people surround the victim, they are going to be hurt. They are going to feel excluded, alone, depressed, maybe even suicidal. If they feel too ashamed to tell their parents, their mind is going to come up with a thousand scenarios to make everything disappear. In Megan’s case, this was suicide. In the case of many others, their escape was suicide, through bullying online.

If this is happening to you, I implore you to speak up. Tell someone. Anyone. There is even a website, CyberMentors, completely free to register and highly confidential. There are helplines who never mind listening to you. There are groups you can go to. If you are too frightened to tell your parents, write something down on paper. Leave it on your teacher’s desk. Give it to someone, an adult, who you find it easy to talk to. Rachel Simmons’ website gives you the opportunity to email her. You can contact me, if you want to. I don’t mind. I will listen, and I will try my best to help. 
http://mymindgoesfast.blogspot.com/ On my profile you can find my email. Nobody should be without help for this. What you are going through, if at all, is wrong. It hurts and it is very, very real. There are many other people who will gladly be there to listen. Just be brave, brave enough to click that send or request button. Brave enough to write that letter and leave it with someone you know can help. And as for everyone who thinks this is not an issue, I have this to say: please, open up your minds a little. Take a good look at what really happens online. Understand how these words hurt people. Acknowledge that turning off the computer is not always the best solution. Try to put yourself in a position similar to theirs. It’s not something that can easily be ignored.

A Full On Rainstorm

First off, I just want to thank everyone for sticking things out with me while I neglected my blog like it was a really horrible two cent whore. I also want to thank you all for putting up with me saying things like "two cent whore" and still coming back to me read my blog. Seriously, you all are either the most wonderful people in the world, or just a tad crazy. I hope it's a mix of both.

Now, allow me to take you back three weeks to this post. If you all will reminisce with me, you will remember that this post was just a lead in to the week that was endured between that Friday and the following one. I really meant to make the post following that one about the insane week I had, but then the things mentioned in the post directly previous to this took place, and I lost my shiz, my sanity, and my ability to even consider caring about putting the craziness into a blog. Luckily, I did regal my story of craziness to a friend of mine and saved the transcript. Therefore, you all will be reliving the insanity in technicolor along with me.

But before I even get into that debauchery, I want to say a few words about the last post. A lot of you ask me why I post my experiences such as that, and others aren't happy that I do, feeling as if I'm going to stir up more paranormal activity by doing so. I am careful about what I post, change names, and do not give specific details linking back to that person or spirit as to make sure that I do NOT stir up any more activity with my posts or give anything supernatural more power. I also don't post a lot of details for the same reason. I would never post something that is going to exacerbate activity for myself or anyone else involved in the case, if there do happen to be more people other than myself involved.

As for why I do it, one of the most common inquiries I get are from people who either have some sort of sensitivity, always knew, and are trying to figure out their experiences, or just people who have had a few isolated experiences, sometimes even just one, and are left feeling as if they need to take the first train to Crazy Town. I have had a lot of bizarre, yet finite experiences. I've questioned my own sanity. At the end of the day, though, the experiences are what they are. I post my experiences so that other people can know that this stuff DOES happen in the spirit world and that they are NOT crazy. Recently, a good friend of mine came to me with a situation very similar on the emotional side, plus similar in the experiences they were having, to the one I posted about last night. We talked things through, and that person is dealing with it as best as they can. I hope that I have helped that person in knowing that the experiences they're having are common, and I am here for them to talk things out and sound crazy to, because they're not crazy.

There's a lot of things that people like myself don't want to talk about it, and unfortunately one of those things is the truth. It's the pure facts of what really happens when you were born with this gift, and the things that make them sound crazy that they want to leave out, because they still want to obtain some sense of normality in their daily lives. I gave up on that a long time ago, so I'm not afraid to put it out there. As I said before, I am careful about what I put on here, but being a psychic medium, I know what to say and not to say to keep from stirring up energy or making things worse. But at the end of the day, this is still my sacred place. It started out as a little place that only I wrote to and no one read, and turned into a place to share thoughts with friends. Ultimately, I will post what I decide is appropriate for said blog, but I would also never give away personal details or anyone's information. I even change names to keep people anonymous, and that's AFTER I ask that person if I can write about them. I will continue to be open and honest with you guys, but make sure that there's some things that I may post for nothing by my own want, and appreciate when you read them and comment anyway. I love all of you.

Lastly, and before I lose you all to a nap, I also realized that in my own emotions and jumble that made up the last blog, a lot of people missed the point of it. I admit that was my fault. I can be a corny little creature when I start angry typing. The point of the last blog was not so much to tell you about what was going on in my life, but more to give you a glimpse into a situation of an innocent person who is deeply troubled by things that are not their fault. I never feel much for the living who revolve around my spirits, but this person seems to be the only exception. This is someone who really could use any extra prayers you may have lying around, and that was the message I was trying to get across. I'm sorry that it did not come out that way, but if you have a few extra prayers, please pray for this person. He will never know you're doing it, but he could really use a few extra prayers right about now. 

With that little P.S.A. out of the way, I feel I can now bring you guys into a whole new world of insanity. And by insanity, I mean the week that occurred post the post I linked you all back to earlier in this blog. Confused yet? Just wait. And because of all this insanity, this is post one of two. That's right, it's going to take yet another post after this one to tell you about all the insanity that occurred during one simple week. This post is just going to deal with one singular day.

The week started out well enough. I had an appointment, and since no one really particularly likes appointments of any kind where they're shelling out money, naturally, this was the day when wonky rocketed its way straight into my little world and planted itself here with plans and tricks up its sleeve. The morning started out well enough. I got up, got ready, just made it out the door, hit every green light there and made it there before anyone else. Don't cheer yet. From there I went to Target, used some coupons, then went to Wal-Mart and finished my grocery shopping also with coupons, sliding into home base before 11:30 in the morning. It was going to be my lucky day. Go ahead, laugh. We all know all good lies start out disguised as lucky days.

I happily brought all of my groceries to the house and started putting them away, most likely be-bopping to some Taylor Swift song I was singing aloud. As I stopped to take a humungous breath for my big finish, I noticed our water heater making a strange sound. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a bit suspicious about this, especially considering that our hot water heater had appeared to die two days prior, leaving us the only people who were glad for the ninety degree weather when we had to get a freezing cold shower. With all the squeaking and gurgling our water heater was emitting, I was afraid it was turning into some zombie that was going to eat me while I slept. Luckily, it wasn't nighttime anytime soon, but unluckily, I was the only one home and unfamiliar with whom the water heater version of Ghost Busters was. So naturally, I texted my mom.

Also naturally, my mom was befuddled. Afraid that if I tried to mess with it, it was going to end me and my remains would never be found, I decided it's better just to let the angry water heater go until a professional can look at it. And by a professional, I mean my mom. This was a spiffy plan, except that while I was on the phone with her, I was washing out some dog bowls and accidentally, out of habit, turned on the hot water, even though I knew we didn't have any. I happened to catch this mistake right away when the water burned my hand. Oh, you find it odd too that we've spent two days with absolutely no hot water and suddenly our water heater begins to morph into a zombie and our hot water is back without not one person touching the water heater? I can't imagine why.

Since I didn't know what in the heck was going on and didn't want to argue with the hot water heater that was now giving me hot water, nor become a casualty of it since it wasn't too far fetched to think it was a zombie, I decided to move on with my day. I had enough paranormal emails to keep an OCD person busy for the next month, so I decided I would start digging myself out of the hole they had put me in when they all arrived in my inbox and spazzed it out. You think this would be simple, but no. This, too, is a story within a story.

Much like the water heater had an existing problem, it was the same with the internet. The previous day, I had a few issues with my internet. I was able to stay on for about an hour before it would crash out on me and I had to reset everything to get it going again. Eventually, I gave up trying to be on it for the day, but then got on later that night with not a problem. I thought whatever was going on was just a glitch and had corrected itself, but that's not my life. The same thing started happening all over again, only I wasn't even getting an hour of the internet this time before it crashed. Then, finally, it just wouldn't come back up at all no matter what I did. I was internetless in Pennsylvania, and it didn't feel so good.

Left with no other options other than the understandable suicide to save myself from what I inevitably had to do in order to get my internet back, I chose to be strong and call Verizon. This is usually a debacle in which I get someone who I can't understand and tells me their name is Suzy, when their name is really Oshimisa Hosomo. Look, I like Oshimisa, I really do, but I just can't understand Oshimisa, which is always problematic when trying to fix things over the phone. I would have gotten into an online chat, but you can see how that would have gone with no internet.

I went in expecting the worst and ended up getting schooled. Apparently angels work at Verizon and I just happened to come across one that day. Very patiently, this angel of a man listened to me when I told him how I had reset everything, realized he didn't have to take me through all those steps again, avoided it, and went right into testing the line and found that the jack was bad. He skipped all the unnecessary, just do it to amuse me crap, and cut straight to the chase. I took the modem into another room and to another jack and I was back in business. Then, when that was done, I slyly asked him if my neighbors hacking into my internet could have anything to do with the way my internet was being reset, to which he told me yes and proceeded to fix my internet so that it ran on a password that, once saved, was changed to algorithms. Since it's impossible to hack and algorithms, the neighbors would no longer be able to hack any of my passwords and slide their way into my net. I nearly jumped through the phone and proposed to this man before hanging up with him. You would think it was my lucky day again, but no.

Now that I was off my phone, it was time to move and set up my wireless internet in the other room that was with a working jack. It didn't matter what room the modem and wireless airport were in, because we'd be running off the wireless. Easy peasy. Except, as it so turned out, my mom's computer was so old that it was without wireless internet capabilities. Previously, it had been hooked straight into the modem, because I had been too lazy to set it up for wireless. It didn't matter, though, because my mom has a desktop of which sat directly next to the modem, so it wasn't really an issue, nor did she have a need for wireless internet. But now she did and didn't have it. We were going to have to buy a wireless internet card and pray that I could figure out how to install it, or somehow find a way to move her computer, along with a metal desk that weighed more than I actually think we would be capable of moving, into a room where she didn't want to be.

I completely panicked, wracking my brain to come up with some solution to this. After about an hour, I realized I was just dumb, so dumb, in fact, that I needed Antoine Dodson to come sing to me about it. He never did show up. What showed up in his place was my brain. My mom worked for Verizon for seventeen years. She knew how to change a jack, therefore, she could simply change the one that was bad out and I could set everything up just the same as it was. I felt extremely stupid over this and decided that I should probably never be allowed in public alone, though people always seemed to think it is alright if I were. Silly people.

Since things seemed to be looking up and back on track, I got back online to continue answering the emails I had started out answering before this entire debacle took place. This was all well and good until my email wouldn't send anything. Nothing. Nada. My internet worked, but my email was PMSing. Over two hours went into trying to figure out what was going on, only to find out that Verizon-Yahoo changed some policy about their porting through Mac mail and I had to reset all the ports in order to get my email to send. Clearly it was too hard for them to send out an email outlining this because they probably have secret cameras set up in their customers' homes and just laugh when this stuff happens to people. Bastards.

After this was all sorted out, I figured that the day really couldn't get more crazy and that I had earned a bathroom break. This was clearly a lie, because as soon as I went back in my bathroom, I heard the sound of water running. No, I wasn't me going to the bathroom. Don't be funny. I have no idea what made me do this, but I lifted up the vent in my bathroom only to find it filled with water. This led me on the epic quest to find what other vents were filled with water. Turns out it was only the one in my bathroom and the one in my mom's, however, the curious whooshing sound seemed to be coming from the laundry area in our kitchen and right next to the water heater.

Let's just stop and take inventory of this situation for a second. First we had no hot water for two days. Now we have hot water suddenly, but our water heater has presumably turned into a zombie and there is the sound of water pouring out of somewhere, and it's obviously going in our vents. Obviously it was time to call in a plumber, which we did, but since it was already almost five, there was no way someone could get there immediately. And you would think this was the worst of the problems this insane day could throw at us, yeah? Wrong again!

As we're minding our own business and I'm sweeping the floor, the vacuum suddenly just stops running. I go over to the outlet thinking that the plug just pulled out, but then I realize the air conditioner is out, too. As I begin checking out the outlets like a detective, I realize that our main outlet that holds all the important things in the living room, such as our television and satellite box, was also not working. Our porch light was also out. I tried everything to figure this out, including messing with the electrical box, but since I'm so obviously not an electrician, I was not so surprisingly stumped by this.

Flabbergasted and defeated, we came to the conclusion that since the one outlet had been acting a little confused the day before, that it probably just went bad, and since the other outlets were on the same connection as it, it probably knocked them out, too. And then I went into my mom's room and her fan wasn't working suddenly. And, you guessed it, this is when I realized that the outlets in her room, as well as my closet light were not working. The living room, where the first offending outlet started all the problems, and my mom's bedroom were on two different sides of the house. At one last ditch attempt at confusion, my mom decided to play with the electrical box. Everything turned back on. I guess it just hated me.

So that was my day. And keep in mind that this all happened within twelve hours. And if that wasn't good enough for you, we still had the pending issue of the plumbing to deal with. Just wait until you all hear this story. The crazy week from the dark depths of the trickster of the universe was only partially over.

I Will Drag You There. Do You Hear Me?

Hi all. As some of you may or may not know, I am having a spirit problem of epic proportions over here, which has halted my regularly scheduled updates. Because of one spirit, I am now minus my gift, or my super powers, as I prefer to call them for laughs, my spirit girls, and mostly all of my sanity. You know what I do have, though? I have every medical issue that said spirit's living person is having.

I know what you're all saying over there. But Cassie, don't you have medical problems? Yes, I do, but this crap isn't mine. How do I know that? A: Never had these symptoms before, and I think I'm over getting new stuff at this point. And B: I just do. Don't argue with your friendly neighborhood psychic. It will get you kicked. I'm sorry, did I say friendly? I meant polite and kind and appropriate at all times. Yep, everyone laughs when I say that. I'm so offended. Lying isn't funny.

In this person's defense, he's gone to the doctor. I'm pretty sure my absent spirit girls pushed him there, but he went. His meds worked for two days. For two glorious days, I wasn't coughing, spitting up tiny particles of blood, having respiratory problems and having chest pains that rivaled an elephant parking itself on me. It was kind of amazing, and then BAM! And he's all, complain, complain, complain all over Twitter about his medical issues, but did he go back to the doctor? No, he went out of town. Jerk. And yes, I totally follow my spirits' people on Twitter if I feel it's necessary and have to get a message to them. Gotta love how easy the internet makes stalking. It does, however, make it easier for me to find my spirits' person. Not that I'm stalking them, but I digress.

So as I'm sitting here tonight for the second late night in a row, coughing like a maniac with no sore throat, and totally unable to breathe like a normal person and all that jazz, I finally broke. Desperate to flip out at someone, I decided to be intelligent about this for once, knowing that I'm not really shy and am totally capable of doing this. I turned to my beloved and rad friend, Cephelia Jackson (I will never tell if this is her real name or not. Secret keeping is the only super power I have left.), to remind me that what I was totally prepared to do was not sane. She's like my little sanity keeper. It's worse than being a zoo keeper, and she doesn't get paid enough. See: She doesn't get paid at all. It's probably not legal.

I politely told Cephelia Jackon my issue after about an hour of complaining, and asked her to remind me that it is not sane to write this person a direct message on Twitter and lose my shiz on them, because seriously, I can have medical problems all on my own. I even went as far as to type my short, albeit, to the point letter to her. I think so you can really get a grasp on how much this sucks right now, it's mandatory to share this letter with you. It's pretty epic, if I do say so myself. Which I do, so I'm probably the only one that thinks this.

"Hi, You don't know me, and I don't really care. If you do not go to the doctor, I will come there, drag you there, and then sit in the exam room while you change into those snazzy gowns with no backs and watch. I will grab you by your ear and I will drag you. If I have to beat you over the head with something and drag you there, that can be arranged too. Trust me, I'd be doing us both a favor. Because if you are okay with feeling like this, you are a dumb ass, but that's fine. However, a one hundred and twenty pound girl's body can not take the same shiz as a two hundred and twenty five pound man's body. How do I know all of this from clear across the country and without being a stalker? Because I have LMCP (His spirit.), and bitches ain't dumb after they die. So really, don't make me come over there. It's two women, one dead and one alive, against one man, and that will never, ever end well for you."

Okay, so in retrospect, that was a terrible, terrible letter. And in reality, I would never, ever send something like that to someone, but I think it's fair that I'm super annoyed that he won't go back to the doctor. It's because he knows something is really wrong and is afraid, and I get that, but obviously this is a man who needs friends who care about him, because he doesn't have anyone who really gives two flying farts about if he's well or not. I will be fine and this will be gone in another hour for me. It will come back later, but it usually doesn't last more than an hour or two. He's dealing with this pretty concretely. So guys, although I normally don't ask for this, can you all pray for this poor kid? Seriously. I don't think he needs any more issues than he already has, and right now I just feel really bad for him. Maybe if we all send good vibes his way he'll, you know, go to the doctor.