I moved into my first apartment back when I was in college. It was the summer after my sophomore year, and a really good friend of mine and I decided we'd had enough of the dorms and found an apartment together near campus for the following year. It was the first apartment for both of us, and I will admit I felt quite grown-up, signing a lease and paying rent and all. (I was all of 19 at the time.) We'd looked at several apartments, but with our budgetary constraints, most of the nice ones were well out of our reach. We settled on a two bedroom, one bath on the outskirts of what was considered the "University" neighborhood - more grad students than undergrads were found living that far away. The neighborhood was, how shall I put it? Bohemian. Artsy. Sketchy. The building was right off a street that was known for its shops, bars and theaters - all of the decidedly alternative variety. In short, had my parents driven up from Jersey to check out our proposed abode before we signed the lease, I don't think I would've signed the lease. I probably would've found myself living in a dorm for another year.
That's not to say that the apartment was a total dive, mind you. At least, I've seen worse. It was on the second floor of a three story building - an actual apartment building, not a converted house, as so many of the student rentals were in that town. The apartment's best feature was its HUGE living room with large windows and an interesting (albeit dingy with age) black-and-white tiled floor. We envisioned turning the apartment into a 20s Art Deco style showplace, though that didn't get any farther than buying some black and white sheets with which to cover the hideous couches and black and white plates and mugs for the kitchen.
Annnnnyhow, it was not a bad place, despite the .........colorful neighborhood, and we happily moved in and went about our lives. Thanks to Google Maps and my ridiculously good longterm memory, I can show you a picture of the building:
Now, this was an older building (as evidenced by the picture above). Having grown up in a very old farmhouse (as in: 1740s vintage), I was used to the quirks an old building can have. You know, the occasional creak or squeak or dripping faucet... None of that sort of thing fazed me in the least. After a few years of living with roommates, I was used to those sorts of quirks, as well - a light left on here, a door left ajar there, things taken out and not put back exactly where they had been before. No big whoop. So, a few weeks into the semester, my roommate and I attended a party at a home occupied by a bunch of grad students (friends of her boyfriend's) that was in the same neighborhood. In the course of chatting with some of these people, it came up that we lived just up the road. Someone asked us where, specifically, and when we told him, he said to us "Oh, the haunted building on the corner?"
Haunted building? Did he just say haunted building?
Yep, that's what he said. We tried to inquire further, but the noise level and his alcohol level made getting solid details mostly impossible. He and the group of people we were standing with all nodded vigorously in agreement that our building was most definitely said to be haunted, that much was clear. My roommate went off in search of her boyfriend at that point, and it wasn't until later when he was walking us home that I realized how upset she was over the news. I shrugged it off for the most part, chalking it up to a local urban legend at best.
Except all of a sudden, those creaks and squeaks and things that went bump in the night seemed a bit more.....ominous. The faucet that would start running in the bathroom or kitchen sinks wasn't as easily dismissed as "Oh, she must've left the water running." Ditto for the lights that we could've sworn we turned off at night before retiring to our respective bedrooms and then find on the next day. Neither of us were prone to sleepwalking, much less sleep-dishwashing or sleep-toothbrushing, so finding the tap running or a light on in the morning began becoming more and more disconcerting.
Then, it happened. I was home at the apartment alone one evening, my roommate having gone over to her boyfriend's place for dinner. Around 10pm, she called me to say that she was staying over there, so I could put the chain on the door, which I went and did as soon as I got off the phone. I decided to go to bed shortly thereafter, checking the lock and chain on the door, making sure all lights and taps and everything were off, and closing my bedroom door behind me.
Now, I am a sound sleeper. One might say I sleep like the dead, even. But that night, something woke me up around 3 am. I sat up in bed, trying to figure out what it had been. (Our upstairs neighbors favored loud, heavy metal music and seemed to have footwear solely composed of cement blocks.) As I came fully awake, I realized I could hear noise coming from the living room. I got up, turned on my bedroom light, opened the door and found the stereo was on. The stereo that I had not been listening to before going to bed - I'd had the TV on - was on and set to the radio (I'd been listening to a cassette earlier in the day, so the knob had not been set to "tuner" when I'd shut it off hours before.)
I chose not to think about how and why it was on and instead rushed across the room and shut it off, then ran back into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me, and got back in bed. Eventually, I fell asleep again. When I next woke up, it was a little after 7 in the morning. I got up, opened my door and............. the radio was on again. On and turned to a station that played jazz way down at the other end of the dial, far from any of the rock stations my roommate and I preferred. Also, the chairs that had been pushed in under the dining room table against the opposite wall were pulled out, away from the table, and set together a few feet into the living room, facing the windows. As though someone had wanted to sit and admire the view while listening to some jazz.
In the light of day, I didn't feel nearly as freaked out, so I bravely marched across the room, switched the radio back to our preferred station and then shut it off and moved the chairs back to where they belonged. I checked once again - all the windows were shut and locked (and besides, we were on a second floor apartment with no fire escapes or other easy means of reaching them), and the door was locked with the chain still on. At first I was convinced my roommate had come home, somehow gotten in to the apartment despite the chain and had been messing with me. This wasn't at all her style, but still. Just to be on the safe side, I called her up over at her boyfriend's apartment. Nope, she hadn't been home - in fact, I woke them up by calling. I explained to her what I'd discovered overnight and that morning, thoroughly freaking her out in the process. She never spent another night in our apartment the rest of the lease without her boyfriend sleeping over, and more nights than not she wound up spending at his place or going home to her parents' house, as they lived nearby. I, on the other hand, continued to live in the apartment with whatever (whomever?) else had been there before our lease. I'd even occasionally chastise them aloud for leaving a light on or the tap running, since the utility bills were only being split two ways. Other than trying to avoid the laundry facilities in the basement unless it was daylight (the basement was spooky in and of itself, haunted or otherwise), I had no major issues with our building's other tenants, human or ......? Throughout the remainder of the lease, lights would be turned on - usually in the bathroom or kitchen, and taps would be turned on in the sinks and occasionally the tub. Every now and again, a drawer or cabinet in the kitchen would be open. Things didn't always turn up where we thought we'd left them. A few times, small things went missing - loose change, pens, that sort of thing.
Did we have ghosts sharing the apartment with us? I couldn't say for sure. I will say that whatever dwelled there (beyond the death metal Neanderthals upstairs) was fairly benign. Nothing malicious or harmful ever transpired in the apartment, beyond the slightly higher utility bills. I never did find out the story behind the building's supposed haunting. I'm still curious, though... So, what about you? Do you believe in ghosts and hauntings? Have you ever shared a home with a poltergeist? Can you come up with a more rational explanation for the goings-on in our apartment that year?
And on that note, Happy Halloween to you and yours from me and mine! I'll leave you with our jack o'lantern for this year, carved by Hubby and Kiddo (I do NOT do pumpkin guts) earlier this afternoon:
Have you seen my shizzle anywhere? Because I've lost it. Now, I thought I had lost it yesterday, after being forced into playing Let's Kick Up Some Major Drama For No Reason Other Than I Feel Like It with a member of my family that ended with me hanging up the phone on the Drama-Producer (though not until I said, as calmly as I could, "I am getting very upset and cannot talk to you any more right now. Goodbye.") and said family member is now Shunning Me With a Stony Silence, by all accounts and appearances. Yee-ha. Yep, thought that was where I waved goodbye to my shizzle as it packed up its belongings in a little red bandanna, tied it to the end of a stick and went whistling off up the road out of our subdivision for Parts Unknown.
Nope. Turns out I still had some last shards of shizzle left. And I've lost them today. It seems that the simple and easy transition we were going to have for Kiddo's services in her new school? Not going to be that simple and easy. Also, the evaluation the school psychologist was supposed to do at her old school sometime between January and June? The one that she just never quite got around to doing? (Kiddo's triennial review, for those of you In The Know about the world of Special Ed.) The one that I specifically made a point of asking the head of SpEd in our new district about whether I needed to push to have done and she told me no, it wouldn't be necessary? Well, it might be necessary after all. The entire "classification, qualification and determination of services" wheel, it might need reinventing. I'd had such faith and confidence in what I'd initially been told, way back in mid-May when we were only 2 days into living at our new house and I'd started making phone calls to the Big Cheeses here in the new school district. Silly, misplaced optimism. Now, it seems that we are facing a a whole new set of hurdles, albeit it lovely, freshly painted ones as befitting our posh, new district.
So, there you have it. Shizzle fully lost with no GPS system able to track it. And, in my current shizzle-lost state, I also still have the fun of Will Kiddo Need Eye Surgery? and its partner Will the Insurance Company Pay for Vision Therapy in Lieu of Surgery? to tango with. It takes two to tango, and that is two plus one, so I don't know how that will work. I mean, I've never been Ginger Rogers... Maybe I can convince them to do a line dance instead. I'm a Chicken Dancing ace, and also quite good at the Macarena, and Kiddo's now taught me the Tooty Ta, as she has learned in summer camp........
....and some late-breaking news from Hubby. This just in: as his current company was bought out a few months ago, he has just learned that our health insurance will be transitioning from what we have now to the new company's insurance carrier instead. We'll learn the pertinent deets in September and coverage would switch (if it has to) come January. So, all the fighting with the insurance company over coverage of potential vision therapy? Could be moot. Could be a wheel that will need reinventing and a tango that will need to be redanced after the first of the year.
So, I've lost it. Freaking out. Freaking out and PMSing and I can't take one, tiny, little additional thing. No thank you.
I think I'll move to Australia. Or just bury myself at the bottom of a jumbo bag of Cheez Doodles, with a pint of Ben and Jerry's in the other hand.
Le sigh.
/whinging, ranting, raving, yelling, screaming, crying
Liza Minelli, Lance Bass, Carol Burnett, Naomi Watts, Heidi Klum, Mylene Farmer. You might be asking, what the heck do those folks have in common? (You might also be asking "and who the hey is Mylene Farmer?" Fair question, I had no idea myself! She is a French singer of some note, according to Wikipedia.) Anyhow, what Liza, Lance, Carol, Naomi, Heidi and Mylene all have in common is..... they're supposedly my celebrity matches, at least in terms of facial resemblance.
You see, my bloggy buddy Debbie over at Suburb Sanity put a post up this morning about her celebrity matches. In it, she bemoans the fact that several of her matches are of the male gender. I instantly knew I could make her feel better by going to the site she'd used and finding my own celebrity matches. I zipped over to the site, uploaded my most recent avatar photo and voila, here's what it said:
Naomi Watts! Woo! She's actually about a zillion times hotter than I am since I'm not even pretty and all, but I'll take King Kong's #1 Babe for sure! But then, look who is next: Thomas Klestil. (Who??) Yep, I supposedly bear a strong resemblance to a dead, Austrian diplomat. Huh. Well, at least he was President... Now, results that are sure to make Debbie feel better show that Tommy Boy isn't the only man I resemble. Nope, you'll note that I also resemble James Spader (and in his puffier, older Boston Legal stage, not his feathery, hot preppiness Pretty in Pink stage), as well as Josh Groban and Leonardo DiCaprio.
I then tried another photo. (Okay, I tried a few more photos.) I used a slightly different angle from my avatar photo shoot and this is what came up:
Ah, Mme. Farmer bumps Naomi Watts out of the top spot this time. She is my only female repeating face, too (Puffy-n-Wrinkly James Spader and Howie Dorough - wasn't he a Backstreet Boy? - also repeat). Hmmm. Number two? Der Bingle. Hee! Hey - he dueted with David Bowie (on an admittedly godawful Christmas song) so that's like some pictorial six degrees of separation then, right? And Andie McDowell snogged Hugh Grant several times on film, so that's decent in the pictorial/filmy 6 degrees way...
Here's the next one I tried - my avatar picture from earlier this summer:
Heidi Klum? Va va va voom! Now I'm pictorially six degrees from Tim Gunn, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia? Fierce! (Though again, Heidi = Major Hottie, Heather = Not So Much.) I do have several quibbles with this one, though, and not just because some of them are guys (again!). For example, my forehead is nowhere nearly as large or prominent as Christina Ricci's and while my mustache is becoming more visible as I'm aging, I don't think I'm up to Goran Visnjic (another hottie) levels of stubble. Furthermore, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm just about the whitest chick that ever was, so Martin Lawrence? Really? Not even in my darkest of tans, people.
I did another shot from earlier this summer, where I had my contacts in instead of my specs:
That's Heather with a Z people! I will confess to wearing about as much eye make-up as Liza back in the 80s, but not any time in the last decade or two. Look who else is in this one - a bunch of folks I don't recognize and can't be bothered to google, Matthew McConaughey (all right, all right, all right - another hottie I could never compete with) and some indie darlings like Leelee Sobieski (don't really see that, but okay) and Parker Posey, who always cracks me up in the various Christopher Guest films.
Speaking of the 80s, I had reminisced to Debbie about how as a 17 year old, I was twice mistaken for Bette Midler. Both times in NYC, one of them while taking a public bus. At the time, I was a wee bit "Whaaa?" not only because of the age difference between us, but because I sincerely doubt that the Divine Miss M would ride a NYC public bus. Come on, now! So, I uploaded a photo of me at 17 to see whether Bette would appear....
Lance Bass? Not even close. Oy. Oh, and hey there, Forest Whitaker, didja know we're alike? You know, you being African American, male, and a multi-talented Oscar winner and me being Caucasian, female and a multitasking stay at home mom....... Yep, we're practically twins! And look who else came up for Younger, 80s Jersey Girl Me - Anne Frank. ?!?!? Chuck Norris. ?!?!? Again, is my mustache really that noticeable? I mean, I didn't have any 'stache at all back in the 80s.... But there's Emmy Rossum, who is quite pretty, and Clara Bow too, so I was apparently a bit of an It Girl in my teenage years. Too bad nobody told me back then.
All right, time for the last picture. I was curious to see if this site would see the obvious resemblance my hair-growing-out self bears to a certain comic book movie character and/or famous, dead German composer.
Nope, no Wolverine or Beethoven. Carol Burnett - she's cool, I'll take it. Sean Lennon - again with the flipping facial hair? I'm running to the store for some Jolene Creme Bleach stat! Steven Soderbergh doesn't even HAVE hair, how the hey could my ginormous hair make me a match for him?!? (But, you know, he's worked with George Clooney several times so I'll let it slide.)
Anyhow, this is how I unproductively spent a good chunk of my morning. Overall, I bear the strongest resemblance to Liza, according to this site at least. I'm mightily resisting the temptation to load Hubby and Kiddo's faces into the site now, as well as all my other family and friends... Debbie, I hope this makes you feel better and helps you avoid the Botox, 'kay?
Someone stole my Obama/Biden yard sign. Took it right off the metal frame. It was the only yard sign of any political affiliation in our entire neighborhood, so I don't know if someone objected to my politics specifically, or just to the political signage in general. Either way, I was ticked. (I also checked with the county Democratic Committee and found out they still have a supply, so I can get a replacement if I can find the time to drive downtown and get another one.)
I stormed up here to my computer and was all ready to fire off a soapboxy rant about the stealing of my sign when I saw this post over on my dear friend Coco's blog. Now that I've read this definite food for thought, I'm not nearly so fired up to complain about my sign being stolen anymore. Warning, the post is NOT easy to read.
So, yeah, all in all, I guess I'm just glad I live somewhere where I have the option of putting a sign supporting my candidates of choice in my yard, or on my car, or on my blog...
