The Creepy Window

Candice just reminded me of a horrible incident that took place when I was probably about seven or eight. We were in our bedroom, which faced the front of the house, getting ready to go on a weekend trip to Catalina Island with my dad. We had a dresser that was on the wall exactly opposite of the front windows. Now the windows were along the roof line of the house, and were triangular in shape, so at night when cars would park we were only able to see the glow of the break lights and never the car. That itself was scary to me because I had a very morbid imagination and always thought that it was blood stained flashlights. Yes, gross, I know. So this particular night Candice and I were burning incense in our room on the dresser that was on the wall opposite our windows. We were looking at ourselves in the mirror that hung over the dresser. It was fun to watch the pretty swirls of the burning sticks and being girls we giggled and we poked at the smoke and watched it wrap its way into the air higher and higher before disappearing. I'm not sure exactly what happened next, just that I looked at the corner window though the smoke filled mirror. Quickly I turned around and looked at the window, then back at the mirror, then back at the window. Finally a look of absolute horror must have come over my face because Candice suddenly because frightened. I know this because I could hear it in her voice as she asked me "WHATS WRONG?" I didn't even answer her. I bolted from that room so fast you would have thought that my pants were on fire.

I had seen a ghost in my window. It was a scary witch face looking in at me. Miraculously I was only about to see her creepy face though the smoke and the reflection of the mirror, she would disappear when I turned to look directly out the window. She was in fact doing this to taunt me.

As I ran hysterically down the hall to my mom, who I'm sure was just as freaked out by my screaming as I was by what I had seen, she was able to calm me just enough to get me to tell her what the matter was. Nana and Tom were in town from San Diego and so immediately Tom and Dana went outside to investigate. I was so scared that whoever this thing was would hurt my family but I let them go anyway because I needed some closure.

As it turns out, a pile of leaves had collected in our banana palm that happened to be right outside our corner window. When the light from a close by street lamp shown into our room the reflection backwards looked like a face. They shook the tree to get rid of the leaves and saved the night.

I've never let anyone burn incense in my presence since that night. The twirling smoke still makes the hair on my body stand up.

It's MY Party...

Remember that classic song that goes "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You would cry to if it happened to you."

Ahh.. me too! I remember it so well that sometimes I think I wrote it. I'm not sure of the year, but judging by how old Dana looks in this picture I'm guessing it was about 1991. That would mean that Candice was turning 12. Do you see those shiny new ROLLERBLADES on Dana's foot? Yes those are the ones that I'm writing about today.

It wasn't infact MY birthday party. No, it was my sisters. Her birthday is almost exactly 3 months after mine, so I had recently received my fill of gifts. But this particular afternoon as the family gathered round to watch her open up the latest trendy items, everything was was happy and wonderful. That is until she opened THEM. I promptly burst into tears announcing that I wanted them. Now thinking back I realize how completely ridiculous that was, I was only what, 7? But at the time it seemed as if my entired would just came crashing down because how dare my parents give HER rollerblades for HER birthday and not even consider me?

Luckily for me, I have the best sister in the whole world, and before she ever even tried them on for size she helped me lace up and held my hand while I tried my hardest to stay up right as she took me for a ride down the street and back. Now that's love!

Chow

That silly dog of mine, I could probably sit and reminisce about all the dumb things he did while he was our family pet. Like the time we let him in the house to play and he peed on the chair. Or the time my dad installed an electric fence around the garden and after touching it with his very wet nose and getting shocked, he decided to PEE on it. I mean honestly, who pees on an electric fence anyway?

The dumbest thing that Chow Chow ever did took place one afternoon when he escaped from the backyard. My dad of course jumped in the car to go looking for him. Well actually he drove an old U.S. Postal Jeep (pretty cool when we were kids!) I'm sure anyone with a mailbox knows that the Mail vehicles aren't exactly quiet. So off he goes up and down the nearby streets calling "chow...chooooooooooow" Finally he sees that huge lion of a dog trying to run for home. (I think in his mind he was convinced that if he could just make it home first, he would be able to play it off as if he hadn't ever left) And, I'm sure he sensed that he was in big T.rouble!

So pictures this, the dog starts running for home, but he's turned looking at my dad, thus not watching where he's going. Up ahead is a fairly busy street with only a two way stop. The stops signs just happened to be on the street they were on, not for the oncoming traffic. As he nears the intersection, my dad is starting to sweat bullets that he's going to be hit by a car and he'll have to explain to his young children why they no longer have a bear living in their backyard.

But instead of being hit by a car, the lucky driver with unlucky timing was hit by my dog. That's right, he ran smack dab right into the drivers door of a passing car. It knocked him back a few feet. My dad once again worried he'd be hurt. But Chow just got up, shook it off and ran home to lay on the front porch as if nothing had every happened. Tongue slobbering all over the place and all. Good boy Chow!

My dad, obviously not thinking, drove home, parked the car, got out and let the dog in. The victim...oh she watched the whole thing, drove up behind my dad and told him he'd be paying to have her door replaced.

Good boy Chow.

"I'm looking for my head"

This is a statement I made one afternoon as I shot up from a dead sleep.

We(My sister brother and myself) were visiting Nana and Tom in San Diego. Everyone was playing Lego's on the living room floor when I decided to take a nap on the couch. At some point I must have been having some sort of twisted dream because for no apparent reason I shot straight up and announced "I'm looking for my head," then promptly laid back down and went back to sleep.

Boo!

This one time when I was probably nine or so, I can remember I had to go to the bathroom really bad. As soon as I rounded the corner to enter the lavatory, I heard "BOO!" as my sister (who is five years older) jumped out from behind the door to scare me. Because there was a window directly in front of the toilet, I was too scared to use 'that' bathroom, and quickly turned around to use the one in my mom's bedroom. Now, my sister was still in the bathroom when I left it. I turned around, walked down the hall, made a left into my mom's room and "BOO!" My sister jumped out from behind her door to scare me once again. Thanks Candice, I guess I don't need to use the restroom after all.

*To this day I'm still trying to figure out how that was physically possible. Since she never passed me in the hall and the hall is the only way from the front bathroom to the back bedroom."

Santa. Real vs. Imaginary

When I was about five years old (maybe my dad can help me out with this one), my dad woke my brother and I very early on Christmas morning. He told us "Shh, listen, do you hear that?" "Santa's jingle bells! Santa is here, he's really here!!!" Was our reply.

...Now the house that we grew up in was a single level house with an apartment in the back. They were technically connected, but you had to go out the back door, through the yard and up a flight of stairs to actually get into the apartment. My grandma Frances lived there. (Yes I know, we couldn't be luckier little kids to have grandma so close) Anyway, this year we put our Christmas tree at Grandma's.

So back to my story. After we heard heard the bells and knew that Santa was on our property, and better yet in OUR house we hurried out the back door and up the stairs. We opened the front door and there HE was! Can you imagine the excitement? Santa in the flesh, in my house, holding a ...... PUPPY!!!!!

It's true, I got the cutest little chow chow puppy that I had ever seen. Naturally I named him chow chow. (I once named a cat kitty kitty too) One of these days I'm going to learn how to use my scanner and I'll post pictures of that adorable dog.

Recently we celebrated my son's 1st Christmas. And while we didn't put a single gift under the tree from Santa, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about the traditions that I want him to grow up with. I'm grateful that my parents played into the whole idea of make believe while I was little, because I think that having an imagination and believing in something that is good is a wonderful thing. Personally for me, actually 'seeing' Santa made him real to me, and so I no longer needed to believe. I was in my early teens before I finally decided that he was probably one of my dad's friends in a costume, and that was later confirmed by my cousin. But what makes him so real anyway? Is it the fact that when we wake up Christmas morning there are gifts under our tree that are "From: Santa:?" Is it the holiday spirit of giving that he represents? Or is it really just a child's ability to dream so vividly? I suppose it's different for every person.

I read an email recently about a child who went to the mall to ask Santa to visit his sister in the hospital who was dying of a terminal disease. It was her dying wish. This ordinary man, dressed up in character decided that this little girl was worth it, and so off he went to see her. While he was there he granted her a Christmas wish by blessing her that she would recover and told her that he would see her next year. The next year while handing out candy canes and smiling for the camera time after time, a little girl came to sit on his lap. It was the little girl who was supposed to die the year before. She believed in him so much, and he believed in God so much that together their faith healed her. I'm pretty sure this is one of those made up stories to make people like me sob my eyes out, but the warmth the story brings is so uplifting.

I just hope that one day I'll be able to instill that sense of excitement into my son that my parents instilled into us when we were small. I hope that he will BELIEVE just as I did.

What's in a Nickname

Recently I've been thinking a lot about nicknames. My family has come up with some pretty creative names in the past. For example, my nickname as a child was Cinny (pronounced sin-e). I actually came to be known as this because as a little girl I was very tan. We spent a lot of time at the beach and I have the right skin tone to become very dark. My family began calling me Cinnamon stick. That was eventually shortened to just Cinnamon. My older brother Billy is only 20 months older than me, and so because he was young himself, he couldn't quite pronounce Cinnamon. It came out Cinny. My family thought it was cute and from then on that was what I was called. No one every called me Alexandra until I was probably in the 4th or 5th grade. Even know my family still calls me Cinny and I'm still charmed by it.

My younger brother Dana. Now that is a boy of a million names. When he was real little we called him Mista. Then Little Guy. In fact one year for Halloween he dressed up as a little man with a mustache and all, because then he'd fit his 'little guy' name. About the time he learned to walk he was called Angel Boy. His dad later had a store named after that nickname. By the age of three he graduated to Tres. At Four he was called Four. At five, Cinco. In all honesty I can't remember all the names he's had. Maybe my family can remember more and they'll help me out and I can come back and edit this posting.

But the nickname that really got this stirring was one I gave to my Nana's husband, Tom. Because our grandpa who we call Pa Bill is still alive, we never called Tom Grandpa, we always just called him Tom. One day while visiting them we were playing Lego's and goofing off and I started calling him Grapey Grandpa Tom. This was hands down the funniest thing I had ever heard in my life. If was even funnier than I came up with it. Tom wasn't amused. I can remember over the course of several months, maybe even a year, every time I saw him I'd call him Grapey Grandpa Tom. He'd always very kindly and patiently remind me that he didn't like that name. I think that made it more appealing to me.

When I was about 8ish, give or take a year or two, Nana and Tom were up in Orange County visiting us from their home in La Jolla. They were staying at a hotel in Laguna Beach. One night they took us all swimming, and a ring that my mom had given me fell off my finger into the deep end of the pool. This ring was very very dear to me because it looked like a cat wrapped around my finger. It reminded me of a cat that we had that had been killed by a coyote. Anyway, my ring was now in the deep end of the pool and I was too afraid to swim down to get it. Nana and Tom weren't swimming that night. They were just enjoying watching their grand-babies play. When Tom realized that I really was too afraid to get the ring myself and that my siblings thought it was funny to torture me by not helping me, he offered to get it for me. Under one condition. That's right.... I had to promise, cross my heart and hope to die, that I would NEVER call him Grapey Grandpa Tom EVER again! Deal! I needed that ring. After all it was a special gift from my mom. After a pinkie swear in he dove and when he returned to the surface of the water he had my ring in hand. Before he handed it over, he made me promise once again.

So there you have it. The beginning and the end of that nickname.

I first remembered this story about two weeks ago. It was of course one of my random thoughts that I had while sitting on the couch with my husband. I started laughing out loud, he asked what, to which I eagerly relayed the story to him. It was so funny reliving that memory that I immediately went to send an email to Nana and Tom to tell them all about this treasured memory that had just been recovered. I wasn't sure if Tom would remember. After all it's been about 15 years, and are silly little things like that really ever important to anyone else beside the person that they are happening too? The email I received back moved me to tears. Tom had remembered that. And he was so moved that I remembered that he cried.