palace of winds

Though my friends all know me as slightly obsessive-compulsive (I like to think it’s at the ‘charming quirk’ level; it’s certainly not at the ‘raw bleeding hands of repeated feverish washing’ level or anything like that; I’m just anal), I have my staple issues and don’t often get stuck on thoughts that aren’t those.

The past few weeks, however, things keep cropping up that have been haunting me. Images I can’t shake from my head. Not compulsions or anything, so I guess that whole first paragraph? Just disregard that. I just can’t stop thinking about these things, and shivering a little every time I do.

First, the box elder bugs are out. They’ve been out for a few weeks now. I’ve been very brave about them, though; I am happy to report there have been no histrionics in the driveway, and I have managed to get inside the house unaided every afternoon. I will admit that some afternoons I approach the front door and shudder and hurriedly key in the garage code so I can go in that way instead, if I deem that they are either a) too close to the knob, or b) in danger of sneaking in the house while I’ve got the door open. There are about a thousand lady bugs too, and while I hate lady bugs in the house or near the front door, I have yet to have a nightmare about them.

Box elder bugs, on the other hand, had a starring role in one of the few recurring nightmares I had as a child. I feel like I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m too lazy to go back and check. I will compromise by sufficing with the short version, which is: I used to have repeated nightmares about box elder bugs, probably caused by the falls they blanketed our door and the side of our house and the electric stump thing out in the yard so thickly they were all red.

Second, a few weeks ago I was looking for crochet patterns for my Halloween costume (party’s tonight, woo!), and I found Sylphide’s site. I am going to give you the link, with the warning that the picture that will greet you upon the site loading has been haunting me for weeks now. Maybe I am overreacting, but I can’t shake it. It makes me slightly queasy. It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me want to cry, a little.

It’s a little like a train wreck, the pull it all has. It’s all about a girl who wears corsets. If you have a tape measure handy, consider making a circle the size of her waist measurements; it added a new level of horror for me, to see it so visually.

Third, I caught an article about a woman’s suicide being mistaken for a Halloween stunt. Though it is on Yahoo news, which is notoriously unreliable. It led me, however, to Snopes, which was a mistake.

A big mistake.

I now cannot stop thinking about:

Accidental hangings resulting from Halloween stunts.

The two men who lost their arms in a tug-of-war contest. No joke. I made the bad, bad mistake of looking at the picture. I knew I shouldn’t and I did anyway, and now it’s slowly ascending toward Emmett Till level in my head. (In ninth grade we were learning about Jim Crow laws and that whole time period, and saw a video that talked about Emmett Till. He was a teenager who was beaten and killed and then dumped in a river by a bunch of white men, and famously had an open-casket funeral so everyone could see what had been done to him. Nine years later I can still picture his face clear as anything.) Well…come to think of it, no, it will not reach Emmett Till level. Thank. God.

A man vacationing in Yellowstone is burned to death attempting to rescue a dog from a hot spring. It’s the stupid detailed description on this one. The exact account of what he said, how he went in, how he came back out. The…things afterwards. I’m weirdly and unexpectedly pissed as hell at this guy for being so stupid and then having to spend a day dying, knowing just how unutterably idiotically infuriatingly stupid he had been. And I’m pissed at the other guy for letting his dog loose. He’s dead and I just want to slap him.

And wow. Looking at the clock, Jocey was supposed to be here an hour and a half ago. I’m off to call her and harrass her a bit.

I hope everyone is having a lovely Halloween weekend.

(Oh! And if you, like me, are trying to stay away from candy, you could try this snack I had last night. Though it’s not particularly candy-like, it is sweet and delicious and very satisfying. You need only slice an apple quite thin (into thick chips, essentially), place the slices on a sprayed baking sheet, and sprinkle with a little cinnamon and splenda (or other sugar substitute, or sugar if you like). Bake in a preheated 325F oven for 30-45 minutes. I would highly recommend watching it closely in those last minutes. I burnt part of mine and sorely wish I hadn’t, because it came out tasting lovely.

Another delicious fall treat is mock banana foster. Put a little fat free cool whip (I used 2T) in a dish and stick it in the freezer for 5 minutes. Slice a banana and sprinkle with cinnamon. Heat a bit of caramel topping (I used 1T) in the microwave. Put the chilled cool whip on the banana and drizzle with caramel. Mmm.)