Sunday Night Creep Show

Last night, my husband did me a favor and took the kids out to McDonald's for dinner. They have a Play Palace there where they can easily kill an hour or two. I stayed behind to "winterize" the closets. For me, winterizing means going through the entire inventory of the children's clothes, packing away spring/summer clothes in underbed storage boxes, and putting sweaters and warm clothes in their drawers instead. Basically, I'm getting the home ready for winter, and making it difficult for my son to dress himself in shorts and an Aloha Bob shirt when it's 40 degrees outside. I also use this chance to collect old, or too small clothing to donate to goodwill. We have a great service here provided by the Vietnam Vets group that actually picks up your used and unwanted items from your front porch. All you have to do is schedule a pickup and they come to your house and take it away. You don't even need to wake up early or be home for it, you can just leave it outside, and away it goes. And they don't just take away clothes, they take anything, even old toys, shoes, linens, and small items of furniture. This service is perfect for moms who have lots of kids and find it difficult to leave the home to run errands.

I had actually started this project last week, but it was taking some time because I could only devote a couple minutes each day out of our normal routine to work on it. Finally last night, I asked my husband to take the kids out so I could just finish the job in peace, especially when it came time to collecting old toys for goodwill. The kids kept taking all the toys out and remembering "oh, I like this, don't give this away." The husband left with the crew at around 8:30 pm and was going to be back by 10ish. For the first time in ages, I was all alone in the house!

I started the night by making myself dinner. I had Cup O' Noodles soup and a salad. Easy. It reminded me of college times when a cool meal was never easier than boiling some water and pouring it into sodium-laden ramen noodles in a styrofoam cup. Then I watched Desperate Housewives while I winterized the closets. When it was over, I channel surfed to find something else to watch (I'm not into that Brothers and Sisters show) and lo and behold where did my remote land me but VH1, where they had Hal Spark getting scared shitless in a haunted sanatorium! The show is called the Celebrity Paranormal Project, and it stars a group of five new B-list celebrities every week. It's very much like that show Fear they used to have on MTV a while ago starring random teenagers, but this time, with the addition of the famous celebrities, it's even better. It perfectly blends my love of the celeb life with my fascination with the paranormal, it's like watching E! and that show Most Haunted on the Travel Channel all at once.

photo VH1.

So the point is, five celebrities have to spend an entire night in a building deemed haunted. When I turned it on, Hal Sparks (of Talk Soup fame) was all alone on the fifth floor of the building and he suddenly sees a shadow of a little boy whizz by. And I saw it too! I've got DVR (it's kind of like Tivo) and I rewinded and replayed the clip in slow motion and damn, there was a little black shadow of a child! This wasn't magic, it was really there. Then later, Donna D'Errico, who had earlier said at base camp,"I'm not scared of the dark," is petrified and crying when a ghost of a doctor appears before here (it's captured on camera, it's really there in front of her!) and she is told she has to walk towards it to the stairs behind the ghost to get out of the building. She did, but cried the entire time. (I would too.)

By this time, I had lost all interest in winterizing the closets, I kept peeking at the doorway to make sure there was no ghost there and wishing my husband and kids would come home soon. Why did I have to watch a scary tv show when I was home all alone anyway? You'd think I would've changed the channel by now, but no, I'm a sucker for punishment, and I watched it through to the end. Hal Sparks got possessed by a spirit and drew pictures of a bloody hanging, Hal Sparks get pushed down the stairs by a ghost while a screaming Jenna Morasco is running for her life, Hal Sparks leads a seance to help the ghosts move to the next plane. It was clear by the end of the show, the ghosts had a thing for Hal Sparks, yet the one actor who wished he could get some ghost action on (and yet, not one ghost touched) was Gary Busey. Apparently, Gary has had three near-death experiences and thought if anyone was going to be able to communicate with the dead, it would be him, but no, the ghosts wanted Hal Sparks.

In all, the show is really great. I managed to survive it and am really looking forward to next weeks episode. Next week, a new cast of stars will spend a night in an abandoned haunted building that used to be an asylum for the criminally insane. The ghosts aren't just insane, they are criminally insane. One of the stars along for the spookfest is Tracey Bingham, I can't wait to watch her get scared. She was such a snob on Surreal Life.

By the time the show ended, the kids came back from McDonalds and were telling me about how much fun they had and how they got to eat ice cream sundaes. I was so happy to see them, I decided to save the rest of the winterizing for tomorrow. I obviously got seriously distracted by the creep show, but in hindsight, it was a good distraction. That's all I need sometimes, a little time to myself freaking myself out to remember what I value most in this world, my kids. I've been feeling really burned out lately, and was unwantedly taking it out on the kids by snapping at them for the littlest things. I've been feeling so guilty about it that I feel sometimes, that the only thing the kids are going to remember about me from this age is that mommy was tired and yelled all the time and was always doing laundry or dishes. I really do want to kick back and relax with the kids, I wish I could sit down and play with them, but there is just so much to do just to keep the house running. Honestly though, I think alot of the pressure is coming from me. I tend to put unnecessary demands on myself, and from time to time I need to remind myself to chill out and just calm down. The world won't end if the towels don't get washed today or if we order pizza for dinner two nights in a row. I guess, I just needed a rest for a couple of hours, and I needed to see that Spark that would turn me into "fun mom" again. I asked the husband if he could make the McDonald's thing a weekly occurrence, since it helped me recharge so much, to which he responded with a bewildred look and a "umm.....okay?" but I told him I was just kidding. Once a month will do just fine.