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Morning confessions, afternoon daydreams, and evening wind-downs. |
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This is dedicated to my daughter, Azalea Paige Kraynak. You're half the cause of some of these entries, but that's why I love you. There's rarely a day that you don't surprise me with the things you do and say. I've changed since the start of this, of course I think that's to be expected - I'm not an overworked pessimist anymore. I'm and adequately worked, for the most part happy idealist who holds the occasional cynical view of someone whose done seen some @$*#. That said, these are the new and improved ramblings of a guy who lives a life that I find to be occasionally comical. |
| Strange as it might sound, Wednesday marks the start of my weekend going from nightshift to dayshift. In that case, I had 1 beer in the fridge. Now I have none, I'm drinking it right now. Yes, at 8:00 in the morning, I'm drinking a beer, I worked all night in a steel mill, it takes something cold to get the heat of a steel mill out of you, seriously, you have no idea. 3000 degrees burning in your face for 8 hours tends to warm you up. At this point, with all the talk of alcohol I do, I'm guessing it probably seems like I'm in cups when I'm not at work. I'm not. I do however like the taste, strange as that may seem to some people, I appreciate the subtle bitterness of beer and the gentle burn of a good whiskey. It has the ability to remove this stupid and annoying draft coming from somewhere behind me. I've looked for the source of this draft for 2 years, can't find it. That's the problem with living in a house over 100 years old its drafty as hell and everything in it breaks, all the time. ALL THE TIME. I really mean that. It's like a weekly occurrence that something in this place needs some attention. This time, it's the bathroom. Whole remodel needs to be done at this point, which I'm going to welcome and curse at the same time. Anyone who's ever been around a husband in the middle of fixing something understands. (I apologize for the curse word here but there's no other way to say this) Losing your shit is just part of the process. Really, it is. House work, remodeling, and most especially working on the car or the truck. I tend to lose my temper, swear words fly like a gaggle of geese, and occasionally something might go sailing behind it. That's how I fix things. I lose my shit. They get fixed though. It's strange when I think about it, I'm for the most part a pretty even keeled individual. 12 years of traveling abroad for work really used up whatever stress I had in me, and I want to enjoy the time I've got in peace and blissful empty headedness. Still, something about fixing things really lights that spark and I'm reminded that I still have that signature redhead temper buried somewhere in there. Then I'm reminded that my youngest daughter is a redhead. Then I take a swig, knowing that in about another 12 or 13 years, I'm going have a far more pronounced temper living in the house with me, losing her shit. That alone deserves a drink, but during this rant I drank my fill, and now I have an empty can. Bummer. |
| It was kind of crappy end of the day at work today. For some perspective, I'm a steelworker in a unionized shop. We don't do any finished products, only melting and pouring. My department is the remelt department. For those that don't understand the process and to be quite honest, the impressive amount of engineering and science that goes into making a particular steel alloy, it's a lot more than simply melting raw product and pouring it into a mold. One 50,000 lbs. ingot likely had the efforts of nearly 50 or 60 people to make it happen. From the furnace operators, the ladle crew, the vessel operators, the bricklayers that line the ladles, furnace, and vessels, the finishing department, heat treat, then to us, the remelt department which is another team of 22 guys. We are the last stop before it goes to shipping. Almost all of our products get melted twice. This is to remove impurities in the alloys, after us they usually go off to a forge somewhere and get hammered or rolled into billets or plates. When I say hammer, that's not some guy with a blacksmith hammer and an anvil. These hammers are several thousand tons of force per impact but that is beside the point. The remelt department is pretty involved, its basically another melt shop inside the melt shop, but with a lot less guys. Granted, we don't need bricklayers or a ladle crew. But we need some ace welders, and solid crane operators. All of us fill all the roles in the department, some better than others but we all do our part - for the most part. All that said, when things go wrong, they're usually pretty catastrophic. That was today. 44,000Lbs of ingot got stuck in a crucible. Stuck as in, no. No matter what we do it's not coming out. Our usual crew leader was in the control room tonight which I'm usually the guy that takes charge of floor operations when he's upstairs. I'm not sure how that happened, but I guess it's just my ethic or the way I carry myself and retain information, but it seems like I'm always the problem solver on the floor and everyone else just kind of follows along. That's fine with me, I don't particularly want to be a leader, did that for 12 years, and I'm done doing that. But if you think I know enough about what we do and you wanna listen to me, be it on your head because as I've said before, I'm an oaf. I just look like I'm not an oaf. O.K. that tangent now out of my system, when an ingot gets stuck in a crucible, which is for some reason, a lot more common now than it used to be, there's a bit of a process that occurs to try to get it unstuck. All of it sucks - all of it. There's nothing easy or enjoyable about it. Usually, it involves trying to knock it out with sledgehammers, to be honest I'm not even sure why we do this because I've never seen it work. The next step is to put it back into the cooling vessel and wait it out. Sometimes that works, didn't today so hey we're on to step 3. Try to use Bertha. Bertha is the name we've given our largest fork lift. Its a monstrous fork lift that can lift 80,000 Lbs. Seriously at least for me, that's a gargantuan fork lift. This thing can lift more than our biggest crane in the entire melt shop. The best part about this thing is its a pain in the butt to get it started, its worse to keep it running, and I'm one of 2 people on my crew that is certified to operate it. The other guy of course, was in the control room so yep, I'm the lucky driver today. Of course, no it didnt get the ingot out, but that's because it never made it to the ingot. Nope, got stuck on the railroad tracks in the ice pit in the parking lot. Yeah, great way to end the day. Took 2 of us, in 2 seperate front end bucket loaders to pull it out. That was probably an OSHA approved method, they wouldn't have had any problems with that I'm guessing, but that was still preferrable than CSX or whichever train company comes through slamming into our biggest fork lift, and probably derailing a few million dollars worth of locomotive, while also shutting down the main avenue into town. Ok, so that rant aside, I'm home now, sipping away my woes with a glass of my own homemade whiskey, and oddly enough, the only thing I can think of is my trips to Australia when I traveled for work. The one thing that is sticking in my mind is they have some of the best chocolate milk I've ever drank, seriously it's astonishing how much better it is than here in the USA. Then I realize that same country with that same great chocolate milk has this completely outlandish and just morally wrong lime flavored milk... yeah, limes. Like the green, not as good tasting cousin of the lemon. Limes. In milk. Who in the hell? And why in the hell? Of all the things I could ever think to flavor milk with, limes wouldn't ever make it to the list. Not if that was my only option... just no. You sicko Australians... why? WHY LIMES? And there you have it, this was an exceptionally long winded rant today but boy I feel better now. You all have a good Monday, at the very least have as good a Monday as mine was. Cheers. |
| I haven't updated in a few days, and for that I apologize. Writing this current novel has taken a good portion of my free time so blogging as much as I enjoy it, is a secondary endeavor. I haven't made a lot of progress in word count—well I have, but much of that tends to get thinned and moved around. I tend to get deeply philosophical when I write. I know most folks really don't enjoy the droning on and on of the inward reflections of a character, myself included but for some reason, that is often how my muse manifests itself. That said, there's nothing wrong with philosophical moments in a story. I do work them in, and sometimes pull them out, there to add a bit of reflective spice to character development that ought be driven by narrative. So, that constant droning muse winds up being a different sort of muse that I might use actions to arrive at those reflective conclusions I started with in the first place. All that said, progress on the story has been a bit of an uphill battle, one that has been well fought and enjoyable. The character is developing almost on its own, writing himself in ways I hadn't first anticipated but working well into the original narrative. I've been spending inordinate amounts of time during my other routines, thinking of ways I might develop these continuously evolving paths of the character development. The problem with that is I'm kind of an oaf. Ponderous and clumsy in absolutely no short supply. I do stupid things when people aren't looking, and sometimes when they are, which to my great expense tend to be somewhat embarrassing. I had resolved to surprise my wife over the couple days I had off, with making her an eggs benedict breakfast. It's one of her and I's favorite breakfasts, but its tedious and kind of a pain to get right, but when you do, by God is that a rewarding way to start the day! There's an old saying though: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. There's a lot of different ways I can explore this old proverb, from the metaphorical to the practical, but I'm going to look at it for what it is. Don't put all your damn eggs into one basket. Simple. I did, then I dropped it. None of this is a metaphor. I literally dropped the egg basket on the kitchen floor. I've got 5 hens, that give us usually 3 eggs a day. Over the course of a week, that's a lot of eggs. I have a little carrier for them when I go out to get them, which I then bring inside and do whatever. Well, thinking of all these neat ways to work on the story I've been so enthralled with, I dropped all the damn eggs I put into the damn basket. That was a mess to which I can't describe brought about a wave of the most unheard-of spewing of obscenities the likes of which would have impressed even Ralphie's dad from "A Christmas Story." I spoke in tongues. Seriously I think I invented words. I used 2 whole rolls of paper towels to clean up that mess, and I think there's probably still some shells laying around somewhere that I might have missed. I might add, we didn't have eggs benedict that morning. We had oatmeal. I still continuously think about this damn story and how to word certain bits, and still stupid things happen because I'm so engaged in my own thoughts. But please people, for the love of God, DON'T. EVER. PUT. ALL. YOUR. EGGS. IN. ONE. BASKET. J. M. Kraynak    The current cause of all my calamity:
Stop on by and let me know what you think. |
| It's a short one, but needs to be said. Our 1 year old daughter had a pretty bad case of constipation a couple days ago. She's been remarkably fussy because of it but has since started settling down. Then I realized leaving work this morning, the morning message from my wife was about poop. I was updated on her poop. Its unfathomable when you have a baby, how much conversation revolves around poop. Color, consistency, smell. It becomes a topic as common as the weather. Almost all subject matter in one form or another circles back to baby poop. I wonder if the baby even knows how much of the conversation is about something so stupid. We could talk about almost anything. Work, weather, politics, food, but no. It just doesn't offer the same mental stimulation as poop does. It's almost cave-man when you think about it. But we find humor in it, sadness, whatever elicits whatever emotion the baby might have felt at that time. Something so simple yet so complex. I really need something else to talk about. |
| Today is the 2nd day of my 2 days off before I switch to the graveyard shift for a week. My preconditioning to the night shift schedule usually involves me staying up til about 7 or 8 in the morning, but sometimes, whiskey or just plain old tired get ahold of me and I don't make it. I made it to about 4:30 yesterday. In my eyes, that's close enough for me. I woke up at about 12:30 today and went about those routines I'd mentioned earlier. That said, it was about 1:30 or so that I got to sit down and say to myself 'let's write.' With laptop on lap, and fingers eagerly perched atop the home row, I stared at a white, blank screen. Nothing. Not one thing. Granted the story I'm working on has been kind of an uphill battle, but the idea is there, the plot is there, and the ending is there. But in this instance, the words just weren't. I couldn't place it. Most times I write, it's for a flash fiction or some contest, with a clearly defined prompt and guidelines that I am obliged to follow. Give me 3 words I need to use, and I'll give you 297 more words to put around them. a shoutout to "Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  by Arakun the twisted raccoon  Which I'll say, if you haven't entered it before, give it a try, it's harder than you think to pull off a story in 300 words.This story I'm working on however, isn't for a contest, or a prompt. It's just me, an idea, the occasional sip of alcohol or coffee, and my ability to put the idea to paper. If this were a NaNoWriMo sprint, I'd be smashing out a couple thousand words a day. They'd be haphazard and chock full of grammatical fallacy, but they'd be there. I don't know what to call this, the lack of a metaphorical fire under the @$$, or what, but it just wasn't there. It's not block - the idea is still there and flowing - branching and evolving with other sub-plots and struggles in my head without any problems. Each time, invoking a new drive to research the subject matter further, dive into the unknowns and untapped creativity of this mind of mine, and yet I'm stared at with a blank white screen. A whole day wasted. Well, kind of. I came up with great dialogues (at least in my mind.) and those aforementioned sub-plots, but the loquacious rambling of the story getting drafted just didn't happen. There are times when I'd be bitter at myself for this, but I have taken a very long time off the habit of daily writing. It's possible that I'm just expecting too much from myself too soon, and I told myself as much. Then I sat down after making supper. One word drooled out, then another. Then a whole sentence. A few minutes in, I had a couple paragraphs. Then I sat back, read what I had wrote, and thought to myself: 'where'd that come from?' It wasn't how I intended that particular chapter to go, but then maybe that's what the problem was. I had kind of a linear direction for this story, stifling it's and the protagonist's ability to write themselves. I don't know if anyone else writes like this, but I've never sat down with the exact outline of a story and followed it to the letter. Sometimes the story just needs to do its own thing. It's a dangerous idea, I know, and can take you down a rabbit hole with no real ending and no real segway back to the original plot line. Still, it's kind of how I've always done things. I don't know, maybe I'm completely wrong in doing it the way I do. I was always told in literature class the methods of story development, and none of those lessons ever said, just sit down and start throwing words out there. What do you think? You're all far better writers than me, what's your take on it? |
| Well, I call it a morning ritual, it's more of a 'when I wake up' ritual. I work swing shift so I'm not always waking up in the morning, but the routine is always the same. Wake up, brush my teeth, make some coffee, put my lunch together, and then take care of the animals. I raise chickens and rabbits in our little corner of Pennsylvania. If you have ever considered doing it, do it! I mean it, it's a very enjoyable hobby. I don't know why I find it so pleasant, but I really like the sounds of chickens clucking. The eggs are an added bonus considering how absurdly expensive they are nowadays. We have 5 hens so we get about 2 to 3 eggs a day. My wife, kids, and I aren't daily consumers of eggs so that's more than enough to get us by. But I need to complain a minute about these eggs and well I guess the chickens. This isn't my first small flock of chickens. We started with Black Australorps and Production Reds. We had 6 of them then. Bruce, Kyle, Steve, Kevin, Kenny, and Craig. Yes, they had boy names. Those birds had the decency to use nesting boxes to lay eggs which is awfully nice considering I didn't have to pretend every morning was easter. This new batch of birds are a good bit dumber and so have dumber names: Breakfast, 2nd Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Supper (an ode to lord of the rings). These ladies have nice, literally brand-new nesting boxes. Where do they lay their eggs? On my table saw of course. Perfect place to lay an egg. But we can't forget behind a stack of summer tires for my car, or on top of a compost pile. The morning routine used to be, go out, change water, feed, get the eggs in one spot. Now its, go out, change water, feed, find the first egg, go from there. Used to take maybe 10 minutes, now it takes a half hour. I literally went 2 weeks thinking they just weren't laying because it was so cold out. That's when I found the spot behind the tires. There were a dozen and a half eggs in there, all cracked because they had frozen - it's pretty cold here right now. I wasn't mad or anything but I was a little perplexed. I tossed them all into the compost pile (eggs make for great compost,) so of course the chickens saw that as the new spot to lay an egg. Why not? I can say, at least the compost pile is a few degrees warmer so they won't freeze there. Now anyone that has had chickens might say: try putting ceramic eggs in their nesting boxes. I have tried that. They're dumb but somehow, they know. They kind of just roll them around with their feet. Another might say: Put one of their eggs in the nesting boxes. Tried that, didn't work. Someone might say: Move the nesting boxes somewhere else, yeah I tried that. Trust me, I've tried it. I've tried all of it, at this point i kind of just look at as like F%#k it, lets just have a scavenger hunt every day. |
| Today ends another week in my department at work, at least on my shift. Next week we go to the graveyard shift, but for the next two days, I can relax, enjoy a beer or whiskey or both, and maybe put pen to paper at some point. Before I do all that, I need to get something off my chest here. I'm not the guy that stresses about things at work, especially when I'm not there, but by God do I work on a crew full of those guys. I'm the 2nd oldest on my crew, granted I'm not old - only 39, but the others are a good bit younger than me and the other fella. That said, you couldn't tell. Stress beats you up. I don't share the opinions of some of the guys I work with about our company, but if you ask them, this place has beaten them into the dirt. That's the killer there. I try to say there's way more important things to worry about than how good your weld looks. You welders out there, I know I just triggered you - believe me, we don't weld for beauty contests in my department, and I've seen some damn fine looking welds fail, and absolute ugly beads hold like a champ. With that out there, the youngest guy on my crew is 21. I swear in another year this man is going to have gray hair, if he has any left. This kid is a straight worry stone like I've never seen; welds, electrical cords, cranes, fork-lifts, paperwork... this kid just stresses about all of it. On top of it all, he's a single guy who desperately wants to not be single. I'm rooting for him. Really, he needs it. Two days ago, he called off after a lot of urging from me and the other older fella on the crew, to meet a girl from his days in weld school. It took us an entire shift to convince him that he's got nothing to worry about here at work, and to go enjoy his self. Today he apologized to me like I was mad at him. Buddy, I'm not mad at you. Gotta enjoy life a little bit. 21 years old is way too young to be worrying all the time. He's a happy-ish guy, but by God I want to see that potential really get tapped when he gets himself a lady friend. It sounds cave-man I know, but you'd have to meet him. I can attest that a good partner really can bring a lot of harmony to your life even if it was nothing but stress before. That's what my awesome wife did for me. I was that kid once when I traveled for a living. If i'd have stayed with that company, I'd have given myself maybe 20 years and stress would have killed me. She brought me back down to earth. Really, she did, I don't even know if she realizes it. I'd love to see the same happen to this guy. It bugs me seeing someone put on a happy face when they're not happy. It's a tough-guy thing to do, and in our line of work, that's just kind of the prescribed method, but why be happy-ish when you can actually be happy? |
| Let me start this by saying, I've been gone a while - a long while. I haven't written in this blog in something like 8 years or so. A lot has changed since then. This blog was originally called 'Ramblings of an Overworked Pessimist,' yeah i'm not that guy anymore. I mean, I guess I'm still a bit of a pessimist kind of but not nearly the diva that I was. Work had a lot to do with that. Let me just say for anyone whose ever wondered about traveling the world, do it - if you can afford it that is. It ain't cheap. Nothing gives you perspective like seeing a different country with a different culture. Granted - I didn't do this for leisure, work told me to go so I went. After 11 years of living out of a suitcase, I don't want to look back nor do I want to really leave my little corner of the Appalachian Mountains. With that said, I'm not in that line of work anymore. I don't miss it, and I don't like wasting thoughts on it, and here I am talking about it like an idiot. I get to go home every night now. The home dynamic has changed of course. 8 years ago, I had a fiance and 2 kids. Well that didn't work out, she's now an ex-fiance. While traveling in Australia, fate decided to gift me an encounter with a beauty that is either blind to my strange ugliness, or oblivious to my eccentricities or both. One thing led to another and so-on and so forth, that beauty is now my wife. I still think she's a psycho for marrying me though. A few years passed, now we're parents - me again, her for a first time. It's weird being the one who knows what they're doing this time. I'm loath to admit it, but I sucked at babies the first and second times. So here we are in the present. We've got a baby that wants to walk but can't, so she gets mad that her balance sucks. She crawls at warp speed and has the courtesy to close the baby gate behind her which is kind of odd in 2 senses: the first being that I could have sworn I closed it, and second - it's just weird that she turns around and purposefully closes the baby gate. It's like that guy who always pushes his chair in even though he's going to sit back down in it in a minute or two. Those nuances just kind of strike me in a way that make me laugh. I legit have a daughter whose favorite hot dog topping is sour cream - SOUR CREAM. I'm not an expert but that's got to be on like an 'Am I a Serial Killer' checklist. It's funny, but it's just weird. I've got another that eats almost nothing but likes watching food getting prepared. Her diet consists of chicken nuggets and boiled eggs, but she likes watching my wife and I make something we know damn well she's not going to eat like she's studying to be a michelin chef. Now with all this in mind, they're all girls. All 3 of them. I live in a mire of "Frozen" and "Animal Crossing" theme songs, and the occasional minefield of Legos. Mixed in with all that, I'm a working class guy with a working class vocabulary that married someone who speaks metric and eats veggiemite. If you haven't tried it, don't. It's disgusting. Seriously I don't know how Australians can eat it with a straight face. It's like if salt was condensed into a black paste and then dropped outside on the ground and put into a jar. I was told once that I was eating it wrong. Yeah, like it was my fault that it tasted like crap. I was told that you have to put butter and jam on it. So the logic in the end is: Take something that tastes like pureed anchovies turned into a pudding, and cover with stuff that actually tastes good. No. That's just a lot of extra steps. This viewpoint annoys my wife, and really she's a saint for putting up with me and my idiocy, but seriously Australia, what the hell were you thinking with Veggiemite? |
| In the beginning, I was given a very vivid imagination. I mean that in a sort of light-hearted, personal jab at myself kind of way, but it is true. I was gifted with an imagination where I can picture worlds, and peoples, and creatures that don't really exist. I see it a lot in my daughter, who continues to discuss with me, her continuing saga of the shoe eating monster. (I swear this is absolutely true) I'm a bit hazy on the details of this heinous tormentor, but I know he lives at Grammy's and he ate her shoes. He's not a nice monster, he's scary, and he doesn't like purple. This is what I've gathered so far... You know, whilst reading this you might think that this is the adorable imagination of a near 3 year old. Well in all honesty it does sound that way, but truly, I'm hazy on the details because she's legitimately afraid to talk about the shoe eating monster. He's apparently quite scary indeed. Now of course, my kid is afraid of all things a 3 year old girl would in fact be afraid of... the shop-vac I have in the basement is a fine example, or my air compressor, or my router, or any of the other tools in my make-shift woodshop. But this is a different kind of fear from what I can see. It's the result of some terrible image that she just can't shake. (at least that's what I hope) And in all honesty, I've really pushed hard to not expose her to my horror movie collection, which is small, but still very much horrific. I try not to expose her to graphic content of any kind, whether it be strong language of a TV Show or Movie, or just something that a 3 year old simply should have no interest... unfortunately she does enjoy sitting with me and watching snips of "The Newsroom." Well anyway, I've rambled about the shoe eating monster, which to be honest, isn't even my original point I wanted to make, or even close to it. Well, I suppose it is in its own right, but anyway. Like my daughter, a monster haunted me for many years in my youth. I can still picture him in the back of my mind, and this figment of my imagination was the reason I was terrified of going into the basement alone for many years. This monster, of course was the result of my imagination, but it was triggered by a not so nice event that happened. I was five years old, and fishing with my dad and his cousin, R.J. We were walking the old railroad track on the shores of the Beaver River, just north of Pittsburgh, PA. It was mid-spring, but it was a cold spring that year, and a lot of the pooled water was still frozen in some places, and the last remnants of snow still lingered in patches in the woods. Anyway, it was cold that day. I don't really remember the walk too well, but I do remember we didn't go fishing that day, because we came across something that would end the trip quite early. We found a man. He'd been floating in the water, face-down, and he was on the shore of the river, half-frozen and bloated. I'll never forget what he looked like, and I can tell you with utter sincerity that I can't even describe it to you for fear of invoking total disgust. It was something a child of five shouldn't see, but unfortunately, I did. For years, I thought that man was following me around wherever I went, and I hated being alone. I don't really know what finally shook that fear, but eventually it ended... to an extent. Honestly, I still don't particularly enjoy being alone, but as such, it happens. Throughout my life, I've experienced a good deal of really cool, and often totally amazing things. I consider myself lucky to have been born to be honest. However, some of these things, I simply cannot explain with any discernible and credible scientific solution. An example of such things... I was 19 at the time, and I just recently moved out of my dad's and into my first apartment which was a duplex. My friend and former drummer visited one day to talk music and X-box, and I recall telling him, "Jeff, I'm gonna tell you right now, I think this place is haunted and it lives in my kitchen closet." An odd conversation starter, but I meant every word. I noted that my closet was unnaturally cold one day in the summer... so cold in fact, that I questioned why I bought a refrigerator. After making this profound discovery, I moved a chair into that closet, and a lamp, and that is where I did all my reading in the summer. (I tell you... that apartment was so horribly hot in the summer, I don't think Amityville horror could have kept me out of that closet to escape the heat) I was pretty up front and deliberate when I said it. I wasn't afraid or anything like that. Whatever was happening in there didn't really bother me to be honest, but it was happening daily. I considered it, either like a pet that I couldn't see, or like a homeowner who was kind enough to let me be a guest. Either way, it was a harmless haunting that made noises from time to time, and occasionally made its presence known quite loud and clear. Often times, I could hear it strolling through the apartment one footstep after the other. Other times, it would smack my television when the picture was screwing up (that was quite often.) Overall, if it was real or not, it wasn't harmful to my way of life in any way so I just accepted it. Well, my friend was quite skeptical. But, my haunting friend was an honorable one, and was quick in revealing itself to him. We were in my living room. I had a beaded curtain (I know...) that separated it from the bedroom, and I swear to you it split right down the center, and opened just like someone would do when they walked through it. It had never done that before, and never did it again, but he wasn't skeptical after that, and even asked me how I could live there, and I told him, it just didn't bother me. If it wanted me out, it would have let me know. It never did. Nobody ever talks about those hauntings that aren't malevolent, but well... I just wanted to point out that if it was real (from what I saw I think it was) it meant no harm to anyone. My landlord told me that that place used to be his mother's house. She had a heart attack in the afternoon while vacuuming, and died in that house. I assumed it was her, but honestly, perhaps I'm just crazy in my own way... I don't know. It's impossible to find reason and explanation to the unexplainable and I don't know why I'm trying right now, but at any rate, that's one of the more extraordinary experiences I've had. If you follow any of my writings, either my novels or short stories, you may note I have an attachment to the supernatural and unexplained. It's a favored genre of mine, and I try to write in the styles reminiscent of Poe and Lovecraft whom I consider to be masters of the art of supernatural and occult. At any rate, lately, I find myself getting so into a particular creation that I wonder if I don't begin to fabricate it into existence. I of course don't mean this in the literal sense but more of a sensory sort of thing. I'm sure you've experienced something similar before. Have you ever watched a scary movie, and were then afraid of the dark for the next three hours? It puts your senses and emotions on edge long after the ending credits have rolled. Writing and reading can do the same thing I think. I've been put on edge so many times in the past from a well written scene by Lovecraft, that I've jumped at the signature creaks and cracks of my old house more times than I can count. Recently however, I've taken a break from reading and writing and began to work on improving the house again. I finished installing hardwood floors in my dining room and office, and have added a lovely half-partition between the living room and dining room. The point however is, I've not put my senses on edge in quite some time. But lately, I've been having those weird sensory things happening to me that I just need to talk about. A couple months ago, on the fly, a story popped into my head, and I wrote it down. I titled it "Shadow People." The goal was to invoke a sense of fear in the tiniest but most apparent degrees. I don't know if it worked, but I hope it did. But those little pin-pricks and "Someone's watching me" sort of feelings have been troubling me for several weeks. We've had this house for 2 years now, and though I experienced it only one other time, shortly after we bought the house, I'm getting it now, so horribly powerful that I'm starting to think I could turn this into the next Paranormal Activity movie. My fiancé is skeptical as all hell, and rightly-so, she's simply never around when this stuff happens. The other day, I was at my laptop, likely watching a youtube video of a favorite wood-worker of mine, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye, in the archway between my living room and foyer. You can do google searches and come up with "Shadow People," but I tell you, this wasn't a shadow at all... This was a seriously, a person. A child, if I were to judge it by height. But I swear, I've never been more jump scared in my entire life. It seriously took my breath from me, and stopped my heart for a second. Later that night, I heard an odd sound, like a tree branch landing on the porch roof and sliding off, which is what I made of it, but I felt something right after that and it got me out of bed. When I went to go downstairs for a drink, I saw it again, right in the same spot I'd seen it before. It hasn't happened since, but hey, it's pretty damn cool if I can experience two hauntings in my lifetime! If this is real, which to be honest, I don't believe in "Scientific" equipment and paranormal investigation, at least not the ones on television, then by god I'm either the luckiest person alive, or quite frankly, the unluckiest person alive. Lately, I've had terrible feelings when I go into the basement, which is where my woodshop is for the time being. Of course, this could simply be because it's a dark, dreary basement which compliments a house that was built in 1906. There are many people who've had these feelings, and they can't explain them. I try to find any sort of discernable evidence that would suggest that it's simply a psychological anomaly that is in pattern with the things around me. This is in fact a very old house, in a very old town. Every old house has its nuances, creaky floorboards, sticky doors, and all in all, eerily constructed rooms. This basement is a glorified hole. It has walls and a floor, but that's about it. I think the ghosts from "A Christmas Carol" would be afraid of this basement. To be honest, you'd be crazy to go down there with a candle for fear of igniting the myriad of cobwebs which in itself is quite eerie. There's also a boiler down there, and if you've ever had boiler heat, you know that it too has a lot of signature noises. Ticks, and taps are pretty commonplace with boiler heat, as such, it does nothing to lighten the mood of the basement. This could in fact be the cause of my ominous feelings, but it doesn't seem that way. I don't really want to get going on the attic, but I just have to say, I can't spend more than a few minutes up there. Seriously, its the scariest place on earth in my opinion. You'd have to come here to truly understand it. It's not your typical attic. It looks as though the previous owners wanted to finish it, but they either didn't have the means, or simply lost the desire to. As such, it makes for a very quirky place in the house, and it seriously makes my skin crawl when I go up there. I have the desire to turn it into our master retreat somewhere down the line, but first I have to conquer the fear of being up there... yeah... sad for a man of thirty years, but I've never met someone who wasn't afraid of something. I honestly don't even know why, other than the thought that I might either have a haunted house again, or I'm just bonkers. I don't hear whispers or anything... thank god for that, if that were the case, I wouldn't hesitate to go see a psychiatrist :P. But I'm starting to wonder if that old monster of mine has come back for his last laugh. I wonder if we can ever really shake our childhood fears, and I wonder if I just let my imagination run unchecked for too long. I can say that when I'm alone in utter quiet, which is often as a woodworker and DIYer, my imagination takes me to all sorts of different places. Maybe I should rein it in a bit, I don't really know. But again I have to say... if I get to experience two haunted houses in a lifetime... by god that is just a statistical awesomeness that I can't even begin to fathom. At any rate, there was a sound just a few minutes ago that triggered my ramblings that damn near made my spirit jump out of my body. Never in my life have I ever truly experienced "Total Silence." Seriously, I haven't. When there's no other sounds around me, I always have a feint ringing in my ears. I've had it ever since I can remember... As such I've never said, "It's too quiet." Anyway, that's all I was hearing at the time I was reading my daily dose of political rhetoric (no offense) when I seriously heard fingernails rake down my living room wall. FINGERNAILS! I swear to god its the only thing that sounds like the sound I heard. They weren't that forceful nails on a chalkboard raking sound, but more like someone lightly touching their nails to the wall and sliding them down. It was light-hearted in tone, but plenty loud enough for me to say to myself "What the hell was that?" I immediately settled on one of my two idiot cats, but unfortunately, one is currently on my lap as he has been for the past hour and a half, and the other is lazily folded over a throw pillow on the couch. Which begs me to ask the question a second time... What the hell was that? And that in itself begs me to ask you... how many times have you asked yourself, "What the hell was that?" Or told yourself, "I could have sworn I just saw something over there." Or anything along those lines. I don't really mean the things you may see or hear right when you're on the cusp of falling asleep, because to be honest, during that time, I see and hear things that I can't even begin to attempt to imagine when I'm wide awake. I'm talking about those moments when you're just sitting there, and you get those perceptive glimpses that raise your hairs or give you that tingle in your nose. And if anything else, I'm asking you, if someone were telling this to you face to face, would you think they were nuts? If you've met me, you may think I'm a little eccentric. (Just recently we had a peer review at work, which was face to face with whomever we felt like reviewing, and two of my co-workers and brothers-in-arms, said to me, "My first impression of you was you were a wise-ass and crazy." They luckily toned it in a manner that would suggest it was a term of endearment, but perhaps I am a lunatic... A wise ass... well, yeah I am. At any rate, have a lovely evening folks... hope the things that go bump in the night wherever you're from, bump a little lighter tonight. ![[Link To User kiyasama] was kind enough to make this for me, for my 2015 NaNovel. Looks great!](https://www.writing.com/main/images/action/display/ver/1447106625/item_id/2064915.jpg "Ascendancy: The Book of Heylel (Sig) [#2064915]
[Link To User kiyasama] was kind enough to make this for me, for my 2015 NaNovel. Looks great!") |
| In the beginning, someone made me turn 30. And what a turn it was. In the months leading up to my recent birthday, I came down with a really odd sickness. It wasn't like one of those colds you get, that sort of build up. This thing hit me like a truck while I was traveling in Texas. I became so unbelievably ill, I had to pull over and make someone else drive. Well, tonight, I got it again. Out of the blue, BAM YOU'RE SICK, CONGRATULATIONS! This will be my third time getting sick this year. I don't understand it. I've gone years and years without catching anything and all of a sudden it seems I'm the catcher's mitt. It kind of sucks. At any rate, I'm huddled in a heating blanket right now, sipping some bergamot tea, and sniffling as I type this. It's not my most flattering writing style, but I just can't not write. As many of you celebrated Thanksgiving this Thursday, we did as well. Since we celebrate with her family and mine, this holiday kind of stretches itself over two days. Well, today we celebrated with mine. My family isn't your average family. We aren't all that particularly close with one another, but we don't dislike anyone. We just don't communicate as much as other families do, or I should say, I don't communicate as much as I should. That is likely the case. I'm just not a phone person, at all. I don't like texting, and I don't like phone-calls because they aren't personal enough for me. I prefer letters and face-to-face chats with someone. Letters are a little archaic, so we can scratch that from the list, but at any rate, I prefer our correspondence to be in person. That said, unfortunately, I just learned of a few mini-battles occurring in the family. When I arrived at my aunt's house, I noticed there weren't that many cars there. I recognized my sister's car, and my aunt and her husband's car, but that was it. When I came in, it seemed awfully quiet, so I went upstairs a bit perplexed as to where everyone was. Well, it turns out my dad refused to come because he's mad at my grandfather for whatever reason... I honestly don't get involved in stuff like that, but they don't have one of those picturesque father - son relationships and never have to be honest. I don't know the cause of this, but my dad can be kind of a glass is half empty type of guy. Honestly, there isn't a lot of sunny days in his world - very gloom and doom if you know what I mean. He's been like that for as long as I can remember, though he does associate with everyone, he doesn't particularly enjoy it. He does however, brighten up when he sees my kid, but unfortunately he didn't get to see her today. It was a little disappointing, but hey, I won't let it bring down the holiday mood so I don't press the issue. My first cousin also wasn't there. I say first cousin because that is what he is, but growing up, we were pretty much like brothers. We were raised in the same house, we were interested in the same things, and later on, we even worked together at 3 different companies. We're close, let me put it that way. Since I've moved up into the mountains we've grown a bit a part, but that's life I guess. He's like me, he'd rather not be bothered with "Hello" text messages and things like that, so the only chance I get to talk to him is on the holidays. That is the real downside to traveling for a living. It's very difficult to make any kind of plans, as I never know when I need to fly to San Jose or Riyadh, or Reykjavik or anywhere else in the world. It can be a little exhausting, but it's a great job and I'm very lucky to have moved up so fast in this company as I have. 5 years ago I was making $10.00 an hour when they hired me. I now make a little over triple that amount, and to be honest, I couldn't be happier. Money of course isn't everything, but it bought our house, and it keeps my kid's belly full, and if there were no other reasons, that would be enough for me. That said, you can imagine my disappointment when I heard that two of my closest relatives weren't coming. I asked why my cousin wasn't and my grandmother said, "He's a vegetarian now, and doesn't really want to be around meat." Ok... Hey, I've known him since I was 3 years old, and it sounds like something he would say. He's always had those odd phases like me, where I might draw for months, then switch to music, then switch to writing, then to something else. I cycle through all of my hobbies, but I always return to them. Jimmy is a bit different. He kind of has an interest in something for a while, and then just abandons it. I tell you, I've never seen such a great amateur boxer, but he threw that away many years ago. I think he could have made a great career with it, had he continued fighting, but I'm not going to judge him. He's older than me, so whatever he did, I respected. I always looked up to him that way. He taught me guitar, he taught me a lot about work ethics, he taught me some cool astrology things... he taught me all kinds of things that I otherwise would not have known how to do. Well, his strange, vegetarian self didn't show up, and all I wanted to do was share a few new writings with him. Oh well I suppose. I'll tell you something though. We aren't too close, but we know how to celebrate. It's not fun and games, but its a very nice family gathering, with good food, and good conversation. I have to say, we're terrible at dinner etiquette. We talk politics, we talk religion, we talk everything you're not supposed to talk about and then some, but we make it a family thing the whole time. We may get into debates over things, but in the end we're always happy enough to respect a stalemate. So despite our strange dysfunction, we make it work, and I guess that's good enough for me. So, on this Black Friday, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and I hope you didn't trample anyone in the stores. I return now to my tea, and my heat blanket, wishing I didn't despise Theraflu. |
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Thanks! Life is good, frustrating, but funny. I try to find humor in my day to day world and I'm glad you enjoyed it.