7/29/2002 01:23:09 PM|||Amy|||We took William to a Rangers baseball game on Friday. He threw up in the car on the way there. Michelle (who was in the back seat with him) seemed to be okay, but William told me yesterday that he thought she had been hit by some of the matter. I must go see her today, and make sure that I didn't make a huge gaff. John actually said yesterday that perhaps another reason why we might want to exit Texas is the sun. We both think that William is too sensitive to it to do well in this climate.

Moving to another state is a lot like divorce. It seems like a good idea, until you really take the time to consider the reality.

Little Miss Lauren spent Friday evening with her Uncle Scotty, and by all reports had a really good time exploring his apartment. I love Scott's apartment (when it's free of clutter). He has incredibly comfortable furniture, and some actual taste. He didn't inherit by default all the old crappy furniture that John and I received. He, instead, chose the nicer pieces which fit very well, and then bought the rest. The ceilings are very high, but have fans installed - so it is a super comfortable place to be. Plus, he's got loads of plants and a decent kitchen.

I'm thinking of taking a vacation Labor day week in order to make my apartment as comfortable. I want to get it cleaned up and decorated. A few plants would do a world of good. We've lived there for more than 2 years for fuck's sake, and it still looks like we've just moved in.

I also believe that our apartment is haunted - to the point that whatever may be there isn't terribly friendly. I'd be fine with the idea if our ghost were nice and comforting, but instead it seems to be (as John puts it ) fucking with us. Right after Lauren was born, I tried to explain to my mother and sister that I didn't want to go back to the apartment with Lauren because of the alleged ghost. They both had this look in their eyes which said, "she's post-partum. humor her." Both William and Lauren (William did this more than Lauren has) in their infancy would seem to stare at something for long periods of time at my parent's house. Sometimes they would smile, even laugh. The direction of their gaze was usually a doorway or towards some point in the middle distance of no substance or reason for amusement. Later on, William looked at a picture of my grandfather and knew who he was, and he called him by a name that we never used - but which was a valid name and one that my grandfather seemed to prefer. It may be that someone had told William and he remembered, but at the time no one could remember having done that. If there are any ghosts at my parent's, then I think they're looking after us (or maybe just at us) and not trying to mess with us. The apartment is different.

Friday night, after we staggered in the door and Lauren and I had gone to bed, my eyes were mostly closed when I saw this very frightening and ugly creature crouching over me with it's arms extended in a Bela Lugosi style loom. I opened my eyes with a start, but of course nothing was there. Afterwards, I thought perhaps my impression of this vision was that the creature only seemed demon-like because of the pose. If I could re-create the image in my head, I suspect it would have been more child-like. I think I even thought for a very small fraction of a split second that the creature was William and I had imagined the loom and the ugliness (for William is beautiful and not at all threatening.) Now, I am wondering that if indeed I did see something on the cusp of sleep as I was (which renders the whole thing very doubtful), if it was perhaps the image of maybe an 8 or 9 year old child leaning over me and Lauren, arms extended (or looming with the intent to frighten.) Because the idea of a ghost which is fucking with us is more frightening than the bored ghost of a small child. I frequently see things out of the corner of my eye, but never enough to form a solid impression. Things are lost which shouldn't be and when they are found, they are in unexpected places. Lauren seems to be unphased, but William is different. William once told John there was a ghost in his room which told him things about himself or his life. Then, William refused to talk about it again (he was three at the time) - once, though, he did say the ghost had melted (he was really into Wizard of Oz then.) When we knew Lauren was going to be a girl, I started to discuss girl names with William. He wanted to name her Sara, Boo Boo or something else which I can't remember but I have this written down somewhere. Every other name I would suggest, he would reject and say Lauren's name should be Sara. After she was born, he would (and sometimes still does) say things about his baby sister, Sara, and ask when am I going to bring her home from the hospital - in the vein of, "Mommy have another baby and name her Sara this time for Christ's sake." My paranoia and fascination with the unknown has led me to wonder if the ghost had a hand in William's insistence on the name, Sara. I told my mother and Lisa this story while I was in the post-partum stage and said that I was worried the ghost would be angry with us for not choosing Sara as her name... hence the aforementioned look.

Another story related to all of this, is that while I worked at Nortel one of the sales reps I would talk to was once a police detective in the area. She told me about this guy who had moved into my complex when he took a job at one of the big Telecom companies. He was from out-of-state and his wife and kids were waiting for him to buy a house before they moved out here. Well, this guy had a few very freaky predilections for sexual deviance and was found hanging in his apartment, fully made up and wearing feminine underwear. He had accidentally strangled himself during an auto-erotic asphyxiation adventure. They found undeveloped film of his realtor tied in bondage on a boat and some other things which did not bode well for this guy's (or his realtor's) reputation. The rep couldn't remember which apartment it was (just that it was a 2 bedroom like ours) or where it was except that she remembers having to climb some stairs (we're definitely a day at the gym away from the ground floor). The thing is though that I think that this ghost of ours (if there really is a ghost) is not that guy.

When I was pregnant, I hated being in the apartment with only William. During that time, John was spending a lot of time (and money) to fuel his binge into alcoholism (and the accompaning nervous breakdown) and was rarely home. So, William and I would go to my parent's and wait for John to finish doing whatever it was he was doing. At that time I almost felt like the ghost was on my side because it was John's things that would go missing and either never turn up or turn up in strange places. But now, after the little event of last Friday night, I wonder if the ghost isn't a little angry with me (perhaps over the name thing.) Still, I didn't feel threatend, just a little weirded out.

Here's what it comes down to: I realize all of this sounds insane and I definitely don't know if one can have a rational belief in anything supernatural. I think that the X-Files explores this paradox very well through Mulder and Scully as the character embodiments of the science and faith conflict. It seems to me that if one can accept the existence of God, then ghosts wouldn't be much of a stretch.|||79555655|||