A harrowing tale

I was on ravelry today (aka facebook for knitters/crocheters) and was reminded about something that I haven't thought about in a long time. Ghosts.

My parents used to own this restaurant...and it was haunted. It was 1997... I was going into the 8th grade, and I had to read The Diary of Anne Frank and Farewell to Manzanar for summer reading. I was reading Anne Frank upstairs in the musty apartments above the dining rooms, when I started smelling flowers. I thought my mother had bought a candle or something. Then a little while later, my mother and I are staining and schlacking the tables in one of the dining rooms. Tables we were working on were in the middle, all finished tables got moved to the wall. All of a sudden, the both of us are wiping cobwebs (or what felt like cobwebs) from our faces...except we're in the middle of the room.

It wasn't until later that week when a woman who said she used to work for the restaurant under the previous owner (who had abandoned the building in like 1978 and you could tell) stopped by and asked us, "Have you met the ghost yet?" She told us this story about when she used to close the restaurant, and one night her 3 yr old son was with her. He wasn't allowed to go up and down stairs, and he was upstairs in a playpen in the apartments (there were two full apartments upstairs. we used them for offices and storage). She went to go and get her son, except that he was standing right next to her. When she scolded him for coming downstairs alone he replied, "but I wasn't alone. The nice lady with the pretty blue dress held my hand all the way down."

Then we started to notice other strange things.

Like when my father was moving wood from one side of the building to another, and he was going through this one doorway between the two small dining rooms. The first time, there was a chair blocking his way. He put down the wood, moved the chair, and kept going. When he came by a second time... the same thing happened. And it happened a third time. The third time, he said outloud "I am picking up and moving the chair. If this chair is here when I come back... I am going to have a heart attack." It wasn't there the fourth time. And everyone else who was in the building that day was working on the bar... which was pretty separate from where my father was.

Another occasion... my dad was planning the menu with our head chef. At the time, they were the only people with keys. My dad had bought cookies from the grocery store across the street (you know, the ones from the bakery in the plain clear containers?) and there were a few left. Both my dad and the chef thought about taking the cookies home, but then decided to leave them for breakfast in the morning. My dad left last... and he showed up the next day first. The cookies were not in the dining room where they left them. They were in the kitchen on the counter... and the container was empty. And closed. And there were no crumbs anywhere, so it was impossible that it was an animal.

She also liked to play "hide the wine." We had different people dropping bottles of wine off for my parents to taste so that they'd put their wine on the menu. This particular day, we had few contractors but I think they were mostly outside. And my aunt had come to visit (she's a nun. It's not important to the story, but she is). My parents and my aunt were in the small dining room with the fireplace when my dad said "Oh...THERE it is!" and he picked up a glass of red wine from inside the fireplace. Apparently, hours earlier, one of the bottles was open and missing a glass of wine. My parents hadn't poured it... and neither had my aunt the nun. And the contractors were outside. And the glass of wine wasn't in the fireplace when my dad found the no longer full bottle on top of the mantle. The ghost apparently just loves cookies and red wine.

We did discover (or rather, my mom discovered) the ghosts name... Susanna Levan Kemp. Her father was the original owner of the restaurant 250+ years ago when it was the Levan Inn. Her husband inherited it, and it became the Kemp Hotel. Her story is actually published in one of those "Ghosts of Eastern Pennsylvania" books. I'm pretty sure it was volume 3, but I'm not 100% positive.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I have others, too, but this one is I think the best one. With the most incidents.

Funny how things change...

This weekend (and by weekend, I mean Monday.. but I was on vacation, so it was still my weekend) I got to reconnect with someone I've been friends with for over ten years (and when we figured that out... we simultaneously groaned OH MY GOD WE'RE SO OLD). She always moves far away. She went to undergrad in Florida... and grad school in D.C. where she's been living for the past few years, and while D.C. is much closer than Florida (to me anyway) we still don't see each other quite as often as we'd like.

But getting together with her really made me realize how much I missed her. It's also made me realize how much we've both changed. We used to have this routine in the summers. Go swimming in her pool, go to the mall, eat at Friendly's, go to VS and absolutely buy the 5 for $25 underwear, then go back into pool, turn on hot tub, watch silly movies. Yesterday, however, we went into the pool (and now I'm SO sunburnt), went to the mall... realized Friendly's no longer exists (the horror!), got ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery instead, went to VS... and hated everything in there, and then we parted ways. I had to get home to make dinner. It was so funny because we're still the same basic people, and our friendship still works, but we've definitely changed.

When we drove to the mall, we took the long way (to avoid tolls... I didn't have easy pass with me) and went by this road that we used to go on in high school. The road is supposedly haunted, and there's supposed to be this coven that does all kinds of weird stuff. Now... I studied Wicca for a while (found it fascinating) and I also read Tarot, and this "haunted road" was just a road. But that didn't mean that it didn't scare the bejesus out of me. And when we crossed over it... it just brought me right back to all of the stupid shit I did in high school. The one night we did go there... we did get run off of the road and someone followed us for about 2 miles until we turn onto a different road, hence the terrified part.

The whole day just had me really missing those friendships that I had in high school. Out of all of the people I was close to, I only talk to two people. The friend I hung out with, and my best friend that I've known since I was 6. That's it. All of these friendships that I thought I'd have forever... gone. And I know that I'm better off... all of the friendships I have now are really strong. They're the people I'd call if I needed to hide the body, you know? The other people would say they'd help me, but call the police so that when I went to pick my friend up, the cops would be waiting. But that still doesn't mean that I don't sometimes miss those people... and wish that they could have been better friends.

Also, unrelated, I've almost finished watching season 1 of True Blood... DAMN that show is good. And for my lunch today, I'm going to Borders and I'm going to buy the first book. I do love me some vampires. No vampire can come close in my book to Edward Cullen, but Sookie seems way more interesting than whiny Bella Swan. Maybe if Sookie and Edward got together...that would be awesome.

Why do I do these things to myself?

I love my family. I really do.

My cousin Patty is getting married in a few months (about 5? I think.) and she's having a baby in about 4 months. She was planning the wedding for about 8 months when she discovered surprise! She's having a little boy. Up until then, I was a bridesmaid. Then when she discovered the pregnancy, she was unsure what she wanted to do. The due date was before the month of the wedding, but she wasn't sure that we wanted to be pregnant, planning a wedding, and then taking care of an infant, and doing the wedding. So she decided to elope or have a very very small ceremony with just immediate family.

Then my aunt announced to everyone two weeks ago at our uncle's surprise 50th that PATTY'S HAVING A BIG WEDDING AND EVERYONE IS INVITED!!! So now I'm a bridesmaid again.

When Patricia was first looking at dresses, she kept looking at $200-$400 dresses for the bridesmaids. The ones with the BIG POOFY SKIRTS that perfectly matched the style of her wedding dress (love her... but ew). Don't get me wrong, they were really really gorgeous, but all of us, including her, in the exact same style dress? Nuh-uh.

Now her new thing is... just buy a black dress. I don't care what it looks like.. the idea kind of came from Breakfast at Tiffany's, so that style is preferred but not required. So now my aunt is sending me all of these sales on dresses (still above about $175, which is about $100 more than I'd like to spend at the moment. Still recovering from the 4 weddings I just attended).

So what do I decide to do? And tell my aunt I'm going to do? Make my own.

If she asks me to make all of them... I may cry.

The sleaziness of others never ceases to amaze me.

Recently, I uncovered this horrible scandal at my alma mater. This girl whom I went to school with, we'll call her Sleazy, was having an affair with a married professor. Now. This girl had graduated (by over a year) and supposedly this torrid affair was going on post-discussion of divorce on the professor's part. I had heard this story second hand (after Sleazy stormed out of the party we were at in a huff after crying in the bathroom for 20 minutes) from her friend... let's call her Liar. Liar (who is Sleazy's best friend) told me that Sleazy was dating.. um.. Robert.

Now. Anyone who went to school with me would IMMEDIATELY think of this professor... whom many of my classmates believe walks on water. So, needless to say, this came as a HUGE SHOCK. At least to me. So my one friend emailed a friend of hers who now teaches at the school basically saying WHAT THE HELL IS SLEAZY THINKING? WHAT IS GOING ON THERE? And this friend replied, "Oh no, dear... Sleazy broke up MY marriage. She didn't sleep with Robert. She slept with MY HUSBAND (now ex husband) Justin Robert. Much more is still going on... more to come later."

HOLY ASS. This teacher is a lovely lovely wonderful woman who was a student of this school who teaches there now. She met her (ex)husband while at school, and he's quite a bit older than her. Sleazy is at least ten years younger than this wonderful wonderful lovely lovely woman.

I'm just utterly amazed. I'm amazed that this wonderful person is now having her marriage broken up by a complete floozy like Sleazy and I'm also amazed that her friend Liar went through such lengths to purposely make me think something completely different. It's not like people refer to this woman's husband by his middle name. We all call him by his first name! Or by his initials. And when Liar told me about the affair, she said "Robert and his wife are getting a divorce... and he's been dating Sleazy." I KNOW HIS EFFING WIFE. I know his effing wife better than I know him. So she was clearly steering me in the wrong direction. The more I think about it... the more I wish that I had known what was going on so that I could have tripped Sleazy on her way storming out of the party... or punched her in the face... or SOMETHING. I feel like I should be doing SOMETHING for this wonderful person who is having her life ripped apart by someone as heartless and callous as Sleazy.

See... THIS is how rumors get started.

Finally getting a little help...

Gene doesn't cook. At all. If I let him cook his own food, he'd live on Wendy's and toast (and I know this.. because before I moved in, he did). And he even screws up toast. It isn't toast. It's slightly warmed bread. If there's anything golden on the toast at all, he thinks it's burnt.

Lately, however, Gene has discovered a new toy... the Crock Pot. The one that we've had for almost 3 years that we've never used ever. Until last week when Gene decided that he was going to make ribs for dinner. They were actually pretty good. We didn't eat until almost 8:00 because Gene didn't put the meat in until 2, but whatevs. He actually made dinner.

So now, this is his new thing... the crock pot. He tries to find new and interesting things to make in the crock pot, and he wants me to find all these recipes so that he can assemble them. And so long as it's just brown meat, put sauce in crock pot, put meat in crock pot, turn crock pot on... he's fine. But what we're having tonight (pork chops in crock pot) I needed to do some things first... like cook bacon, cook pork in bacon, and make broth. That is too complicated for the Gene. The Gene needs something much, much simpler. So I was up super late making the dinner that Gene is supposed to make today.

Wednesday we're going to do a beef stew. I'm very excited. I guess I should be excited that Gene really is trying to help me (finally) at home... but I know that the one time things don't taste awesome, that's going to be the end of Gene cooking. I just know it. I was really praying that the ribs were going to be fantastic... because if they weren't then he was going to be very upset.


I also got an award from moonjavasmuse!



"The HonestScrap award comes with a caveat or two. Firstly, you have to tell your readers ten things about you they may not know, but that are true. Secondly, you have to tag 10 people with the award."

So here are my ten things:

1. My favorite vegetable in the universe is asparagus. I think it's delicious.
2. I have very little tolerance for wine... two glasses knocks me on my ass... but I can drink vodka all night long and be fine.
3. I harbor a secret passion for tween tv. Namely 90210. And One Tree Hill, but I probably won't watch it without Lucas or Peyton.
4. I would leave Gene in a heartbeat if Greg Dobbs asked me to.
Or John Barrowman.
5. I have a really big problem starting projects... and starting projects... and starting projects... before I finish one.
6. We bought a new entertainment center a few months ago. It's sitting in my garage, unstained and not put together. I've been blaming rain... but that can only go so far.
7. I hate my kitchen. It's the ugliest room in my house and I want to rip it apart.
8. I crush on cartoon and comic characters. Like Gambit from the X-Men. And Trent from Daria (la la la la la).
9. If I could live anywhere in the world... I'd move to Olde City in Philadelphia. It's really beautiful there.
10. I have a hard time making friends sometimes. Because I'm shy. Even though I'm a big ol' loudmouth who has no problem telling people what she thinks... when it comes to new people, I'm terrified.

And I always feel like I seem to tag the same 10 people... so I give this award to whomever wishes to have it! Just let me know if I gave it to you so that I can read your 10 things :)

Hilarious Bet

Generally, I don't care much about celebrity shenanigans, but this is funny. Peter Facinelli has this bet with his friend Rob DeFranco that he can't get 500,000 followers on twitter. If Peter gets 500,000 viewers, his friend Rob has to dress in a bikini while singing "Single Ladies" by Beyonce and holding a sign that says "Twitter me" on Hollywood Blvd. If Rob wins (Peter doesn't get 500,000 viewers) then he gets the back of Peter's chair from the set of Twilight with his name on it. In the grand scheme of things, Peter makes out all right either way... but Rob is a Twi-hater. Peter would much rather his chair go to a Twi-fan. And he is going to pick one of the 500,000 followers who will get the back of his chair.

For those who don't know who Peter Facinelli is... he plays Carlisle in the Twilight series, he's married to Jennie Garth, and he also played the jerk jock who dumped Jennifer Love Hewitt in Can't Hardly Wait. And I think he's on that new Nurse Jackie show on ShowTime.

Peter is going to tape his friend doing his performance on Hollywood Blvd... since hardly any of his followers will be living in the LA area. Needless to say, I think it's hilarious, and I clearly want Peter Facinelli to win. Despite his creepy bleached hair as Carlisle. And I linked Peter's name at the top to his twitter account which is (and this one's tough) peterfacinelli. He's also asking (in addition to following him) that you add #peterfacinelli to any tweets so that he gets added to the trending topics. At the moment he is just shy of 200,000 viewers... and he needs 500,000 by June 19th, so not much time. But considering he only had 75,000 a few days ago... this is a huge spike. I think he can do it. He just needs help.

And if you're on twitter... I'm at adleisia.

ETA: Peter just posted this youtube video describing the bet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBtq6nY9Twk

Tova's Totally Awkward Tuesdays

Tova Darling always does this great thing every Tuesday called Totally Awkward Tuesdays, and I always think it's a lot of fun. I've posted a few... but there's one awkward story (and this one is pretty darn embarrassing) that I had blocked from memory until I read Tova's today. So, following in your middle school awkwardness, here is mine.

My friends and I used to use code words for the boys we had crushes on. That way we could write "I heart potato" or whatever instead of the boys name... and no one but our friends would be the wiser. So I had this HUGE crush on this boy Andy (looking back now... ew.) and my friends and I decided that his nickname would be "carrots." I also managed to get ahold of these sticker labels with Looney Toons characters on them... and I always used the Bugs Bunny ones because they had carrots on them. And I wrote "I heart Carrots" all over my pencil case. Not my books though.. Catholic school didn't tolerate writing on covered text books. That's a no-no.

Now, this was when I was in the 7th grade... and we shared homerooms with the 8th graders. There was one kid in my homeroom (and I've honestly completely forgotten his name) who was a complete jerkface. He would torture anyone who walked past him. And he saw my pencil case... and grabbed it... and then started harassing me about the "I heart Carrots" written all over the place.

And this was how the rumor started when I was in GRADE SCHOOL about how I would, um, pleasure myself with vegetables. Carrots were my favorite... but you know, bananas and cucumbers would work too. This went right with the rumor that I was a lesbian. That one was started by my friends because I wouldn't smoke at the age of 12, but that's a completely different story that is not so awkward, just mean. So yeah. I think eventually people just forgot about it... it followed me to 8th grade, but by the time I got to high school the rumor had pretty much disappeared. I was too shy to stand up for myself, unfortunately, and would rather have had this awful rumor than have this boy know that I liked him. We didn't exactly run in the same circles.