Sometimes My Brain Is On Pause

Saturday I was lying on my couch waiting to die, waiting for the Velocirapture to swallow me whole. And watching a movie called The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni. I spent most of the movie trying to keep track of Nicolas Cage's hairpieces. He had more styles and colors than a 25 year fast-forwarded clip show of Oprah's hair.

There's a moment in the movie when Cage and Don Cheadle, who plays an angel, are in a car and Cage is confused about what's happening to him. Cheadle tells him he has to figure it out. Cage asks him why he just can't tell him what's going on but Cheadle persists. "Let it come to you. It will come to you."

This is how my life has run its course. The Answer always comes to me. It pops into my head and I instantly "Know" it's the right thing to do.

Sidebar: This offer not valid with boyfriends.

It happened in Paris, it happened in New York. Both times I was miserable but then I heard The Answer and off I went. But as unhappy as I've been living at my present address here in LA, I haven't heard The Answer. That calm inner voice of The Higher Self. The voice telling me what to do, where to go. It once told me the password of someone's email account. It often gives me the result of someone else's problem. I depend on it so much that it writes the majority of my punchlines. It's never been wrong.

Sidebar Again: This offer still not valid with boyfriends. I repeat this for my own benefit.

But lately I've been obsessing about The Answer. Where is it? WHERE IS IT? And then I take a breath or seven and remember that all the other times it came to me, I didn't expect it. It just showed up.

So I'm watching Don Cheadle, one of my top 5 favorite actors ever, tell Nic Cage that the answer WILL COME. It will come, he repeats. And as much as I've been fixated over this very issue, I knew it was a message I was meant to hear as messages appear in many forms. Movies, a chance encounter, a phone call. We've all read The Celestine Prophecy, correct?

Then my phone rang.

I looked at the caller ID.

Area code from St. Petersburg, Florida. The town my father died in. The caller hung up immediately, didn't leave a message. But they didn't need to.

I heard it loud and clear.

I spent Sunday with my sister. I told her the story and at the end of it she burst into tears. "That was Dad helping you out."

Yes, I know. So, thanks Dad.

READ MORE - Sometimes My Brain Is On Pause

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

When I was a kid I asked my parents over and over if there was any possibility that we could be Jewish. I have no idea why I asked them but I really wanted to be Jewish. And adopted. Surely these two cretins could not be my biological parents.

Religion was not a big deal in our house. Mom dragged me and Lindy to mass every Sunday where I sat and muttered under my breath how much I hated her church.

She wanted to become a nun when she was 17 and Dad was an alter boy at his church. Although in the above picture he looks like an alter man.

Religion didn't stick on any of us. I left home at 17 and that was the end of all church going activities in our family. Lindy got out of it 2 years earlier THANKS TO ME. Today we can't even sit in a church and listen without eye rolling each other. We wish people got married at bars. Or maybe a nice seafood restaurant down by the beach.

Dad always insisted that his side of the family was Scottish. No Jews.

Our Dad was a notorious pack rat. It took me 3 years to wade through his papers and possessions after he died. I removed this book from the apartment in Florida. It looked old so I figured I should take it. You know, so I could start my own hoarding traditions. The book is called Life of Washington by the Hon. J.T. Headley.

It was published in 1860, the year I was born. Inside is the name Walter Kummerer, neatly and artistically written in black ink. From something called an inkwell, for all you Justin Bieber fans.

After I found the book I asked my mother if she remembered the last name of my grandmother. She replied that it was Kauffman. I said I thought Dad's mom was Scottish but mom insisted on the name Kauffman.

So I went through our family tree and discovered that my great, great, great grandmother was named Kauffman. Her daughter married a Kummerer and their daughter married a Scot.

So my mom was right. Only she got the last name of my grandmother wrong. How did she know the great, great, great grandmother's name but not the immediate grandmother's name?

As everyone who reads me knows by now, I believe in reincarnation. I believe Mom remembered the name because she was part of that family in a former life. There is no other explanation. I'd say she had a great memory but she recently went to Greece and gave me the wrong departure date. And arrival back in Paris date. And then blamed it all on me.

When I was 5 years old I used to say that I wanted to go to California to see Cindy and Cincy. My parents always asked me who they were and I would always reply: Cindy and Cincy. Like my parents were the two dumbest people in the world.

While my Dad was alive I looked over our family tree one evening and discovered that a woman named Cinzie, real name Christina, had been in our family and died in the early 1900's. I clearly met her on the other side. Because who in the hell ever heard of someone named Cinzie?

I dedicate this Friday's Bite Me post to organized religion because I never knew I was part Jewish and I'm sure it's the Pope's fault.

End of chat.

READ MORE - It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

Does Anyone Have The Exact Date Of The Apocalypse?

Today I heard a huge Bang. Boom? It was incredibly loud. I was lying down watching TV and jumped straight out of my bed. I assumed it was an earthquake. Or the shuttle reentry. I went online, asked Twitter if they heard it, checked all the news stations. No earthquake, no shuttle reentry. No Nothing.

For the rest of the afternoon I thought it might be one of my usual visitations. My Neighbor and I had discussed odd things happening around our building lately. One guy had a visit from what he called a Harpie Ghost. My Neighbor said that 2 days ago he knew there was a presence hovering around his bed. After I reminded him of all the crazy stuff that goes on over here, he decided to research the noise I, and apparently no one else in my building, heard.

My Neighbor forwarded me this email he got from one of the experts who monitor these things. Whatever these *things* are.

"At about 16:20-16:30 MDT a large seismographic reading hit almost every station in the world. I called the USGS Alaska Science Center in Anchorage and spoke to one of the scientists. He wasn't aware of the event and I had to send him the actual seismograph website. He wasn't sure what in the world is going on and sent it to his superiors for further analysis."

I wish it had just been one of my ghosts. Them I understand.

READ MORE - Does Anyone Have The Exact Date Of The Apocalypse?

Ghosts Over Suzy

Longtime readers of this blog know I have ghosts around me. My Dad was the first person I ever told that I believed in reincarnation and he told me he did also.

What I now recognize as my first visitation happened in New York City in the 1980's. My Russian grandfather was in critical condition and lay dying in a Paris hospital. One day I was leaving my bedroom and when I rounded the corner, I heard a crash. I turned around and saw that a picture of him had fallen over. His picture was next to a clock and I noticed the time. My mother called the next day to tell me he had died. At exactly the time the picture had fallen over. I knew he had come to say goodbye.

Below is a picture of me and a friend taken in my apartment. I appear to be strangling her with IHaveNoIdeaWhat. I'm also holding a dish towel. I am clearly not normal.

Sidebar: I'm wearing my fabulous snakeskin Guess jeans that I still need to lose 4 pounds before I can get into them again. When I find the person who invented food I will KILL THEM DEAD.

The white spots in the photo are only on me, not my friend. On the entire roll of film this was the only picture affected.

So many of these things happen to me that I wrote a book called His Dead Wife. It has no ending.

I've chronicled in this blog how both my stereo and bedroom TV often turn themselves on and off. Usually in the middle of the night, forcing me to get up and retrieve a very large manly man hammer out of my tool box. GHOSTS HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR.

I think I've talked about some of the things that happened in Florida, both before and after my Dad died. It's all in the book but I can't remember what's exactly in this blog.

I may also have mentioned that when I was 4 years old I had an imaginary friend with a very unusual name. A name so odd that my parents asked me constantly who the hell was I talking about? As an adult I found our family tree and discovered the name had belonged to a female relative, now deceased. I knew her from the other side. Of that I'm very sure. And I've never heard the name again.

These are just the stories I can sum up in a sentence or two. Most of them are way more intricate and way, way more creepy. Over the last 20 years, besides my grandfather, I've had visitations from my Dad, my dog, one of my stepmothers and of course, His Dead Wife. And others. I'm sure there have been others.

I'm used to it. And I'm not the only one.

I now know that major electronic activity around me precedes certain events in my life that I can't mention here on my blog. Maybe one day I can, when it all ends, if it ever ends.

I wish I could talk about it. It's exhausting keeping it to myself but others are involved so...

READ MORE - Ghosts Over Suzy

Where Did All The Bloggers Go?

Once I was babysitting my sister's first dog. He had horrible skin allergies and scratched himself constantly. After hours and hours of this, I gave him a Benadryl. Then he went crazy and turned in circles for more hours and hours and I ended up having to walk him at 2:30 a.m. because I thought he just had to go outside. I found out the next day that there is doggie Benadryl and I shouldn't have given him human Benadryl. From that moment on, we called him "Mommy Tried To Kill Me."

Well Twitter Is Trying To Kill Me.

There was an expression in newsgroups, Lurk before you leap. You read what everyone is saying until you figure out all the players, inside jokes and sock puppets. THEN YOU POST. Twitter does have the option but only after you've started following people. Or they've started following you. And how will they start following you if you don't post anything? I'll say it for you, "Why does she sit around and think of this shit all day?"

Even though Twitter still has 23 million members, here are a couple of tips I've picked up from the half million people who left Twitter so far this year:

1. Do not follow people who post the same link over and over. UNFOLLOW

2. If someone's profile says they love a certain NFL team, do not assume they will talk about anything else. UNFOLLOW

3. Do not follow people who only post recipe links. UNFOLLOW

4. Do not follow people who post only words like awwwww or geeeeeeze. UNFOLLOW

5. #Hashtaggers. No one cares what you start. UNFOLLOW

6. People who post the same #hashtags over and over and OVER. STOP. UNFOLLOW

7. Do not follow people who post ENJOY. UNFUCKINGFOLLOW QUICKLY.

I haven't had a cold in 20 years and suddenly I'm on Twitter and I've got a cold. Before you think this isn't possible, Dooce also got a cold and she didn't mention where she got it. The defense rests.

It took me 3 years to start bitching about blogging. But it's taken me only a few weeks to start bitching about Twitter. This does not augur well.

And in other unrelated news, the stereo did the same thing again. I got up at 5:30 a.m. to turn off the air conditioning. When I got up 3 hours later, the stereo was on. Does my air conditioner have arms?

End of chat.

READ MORE - Where Did All The Bloggers Go?

The Ghosts Are Back

The bizarre and the unusual will happen to me two times. When the TV in the bedroom first turned itself on in the middle of the night, I freaked out. By the time it happened again I just turned over and went back to sleep. I started calling these events The Twos.

These strange occurrences happened for many years but I never told anyone. Who would believe me? Even when I ran them privately through my head they sounded insane. I didn't feel crazy but I didn't know what crazy felt like. Maybe I was losing it.

One day at a party I struck up a conversation with a guy and I asked him what was going on in his life and he replied, "The Twos." He hesitantly started to explain it to me and when he was done I said, "You're not the only one; it happens to me too." He looked relieved.

Last week I got the pictures of me and my dog Kiko, sent by Paul, the photographer who had tested with me back in NY. Less than a week later I got the video from Mack that I linked on Friday, and there was my dog again.

After Kiko died and I moved to L.A. a year later, he started walking on my bed. I would feel his little paws stepping over me and pacing back and forth. The first time it happened I was so incredulous I lay in bed and felt the paws go over my body and around the bed. At first I was afraid to acknowledge it but I finally sat up and ran my hands over the bed. No dog. It happened on and off for years. Once I had to go to an emergency room in Santa Monica and they checked me in overnight. As I lay there trying to go to sleep, the little paws started walking all over me again. The paws were always little. I knew it was him. I sat up and felt the covers. Still no dog.

I was in therapy then and shared these stories with my shrink, who didn't seem surprised. I asked her why not and she calmly replied, "Similar things have happened to me." Then Kiko stopped walking on the bed and I've never felt him since. There have been nights when I've missed those paws. Like a lot of things in life, you only miss it when it's gone.

So when Kiko recently appeared twice in one week, once by video and once in a picture, I immediately thought it was a coincidence, although there's no such thing. I didn't realize it was a precursor.

Friday night I had the air-conditioning on because Los Angeles cannot decide what weather to wear to the prom. At 5:30 a.m. I was lying in bed, stuck to the sheets like tongue on metal, and knew I had to turn off the a.c. I got up, walked to the living room and turned it off. I went back to bed.

The next morning I noticed the stereo was on. My stereo has a flap that pops up and then turns a rainbow of colors. If you read this blog, you know this has already happened twice before.

I sat at my desk staring at the stereo opposite me and knew someone had turned it on and it wasn't me. It hadn't been on at 5:30 when I got up to turn the air conditioner off.

I looked for the stereo remote. I kept it in a basket, on a shelf a foot down from the computer. I took the basket out and fished around for it. There was nothing heavy sitting on it. So I pressed power and the stereo didn't turn off. I put it level with the stereo and pushed power again and it didn't turn off. I have a Chinese screen about 8 inches taller than my desk sitting directly in front of me so I had to pick up the remote, lift it over my head, angle it down and then push power.

The stereo went off. And then immediately turned itself back on. I turned it off again and this time it stayed off. There was no way I had done all that without remembering it.

I'm not sure why these things follow me around and have for so many years, going on 20 now. I am open to them but I have no ability to interpret their meanings. So when they happen, and you can click on the label below this post to read about the other experiences, I know I have visitors.

I just don't know what they want.

End of chat.

READ MORE - The Ghosts Are Back

It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

This has not been a good year for living. You can't even get a decent Death Pool going because A. you have too many options and B. they're already dead.

The first song I sang publicly, at age 14, was If I Had a Hammer by Peter, Paul & Mary. I used 3 of my closest friends, (Kathy, Robin and Whozzits) and they sang while I sat in the audience and heckled them with a roll of toilet paper. I'm amazed I didn't get early enrollment into a PhD program at M.I.T.

I directed, performed and produced this sketch and wish I had a copy of it so I could humiliate myself on my own blog. I picked that song because Mary Travers and I had the same hairdo. I think Frank Sinatra picked his songs the same way.

I had another incident with some of the haunted machinery in my home.

I sleep with a sound machine. I always have it on White Noise but if I have trouble sleeping I switch it to Ocean Pounding the Surf and then switch back to White Noise once I'm nearly asleep.

I got up early because the McPoundersons were upstairs dropping their baby on the floor and then I went back to bed a few hours later. I put on White Noise and turned over. All of a sudden White Noise stopped and there was silence for about 3 seconds and it jumped to Ocean Pounding the Surf, which is two buttons away. As per usual, THIS HAD NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. Thank God it happened in the morning because the things that happen at night scare the crap out of me.

It has now been proven that men lie 6 times a day to a woman's 3 times. They did tests to confirm this. Either that or they eavesdropped on all my past relationships.

End of chat.

READ MORE - It's Everybody Can Bite Me Friday!

His Dead Wife Loved TV's

UPDATE: ALL THE STORIES IN MY NOVEL ARE TRUE.

Less than a year before my Dad died, I was seeing a great guy. His wife had died and because we were friends for about 10 years, the inevitable happened. We kept it a secret for his sake because even though she'd been sick for a long time, his wife had only recently died and he was so sad and miserable that I didn't want to hurt him further by not doing as he asked.

Having sex with a person you've been friends with is very strange when you've only known them with their clothes on. What if we got naked, had sex and it was all a big mistake and we both knew it and now we had to go back to a fully clothed relationship? How was that ever going to work? You could never even glance below their waist for the rest of your life, even if their legs were on fire.

With alcohol, that's how it's done.

How do female movie stars agree to nudity in front of an entire crew? I wonder if that’s why male actors rarely do. You'd think men would, since every body part is multiplied by the multiplex, not to mention the camera puts on fifteen pounds. Everywhere.

The first time I went to his house I was overwhelmed. Did he look around and still see his wife? Were there pictures on the wall or clothes in the closet that belonged to her? Could I move something without him saying, “Please don’t touch that.” I walked around like a tourist. Oohing and aahing and feeling like an interloper in Ozzie and Harriet’s house. Only Harriet was dead and I was the whore of Babylon.

Afterwards, I was in the kitchen rinsing dishes while he dried. The TV in the dining room was on a sports channel and he was watching out of the corner of his eye and talking to me at the same time. All of a sudden the TV shut down, went dark. He walked over to it, picked up the remote, clicked to another channel and it went on. Then another channel and it went on. But when he clicked back to the sports channel it was still blank. He fingered the remote and and then locked eyes with me.

“I know who this is.”
“Who?”
"It's obviously my wife."

I knew it too but if I said something, would he think I was crazy? He believed it, surely I could too? He was convinced it was her because he watched sports all the time and what better way to get his attention? And it had never happened before she died.

I was at my house one night, sitting on a chair watching a rental movie. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. I kept wondering if our relationship would go anywhere. I was, after all, a rebound and I was terrified he'd figure that out and move on. And as I watched the movie, the VCR stopped playing and the noise of a television show blared through. The VCR then turned itself off. And I knew at that moment that there was someone else present. Pushing STOP and then pushing OFF were two different movements and I was nowhere near the remote or the TV. I’d had the VCR for seven years and it had never done that. And of course it never did it again.

Was his wife visiting me? Checking out my place, noticing if I was neat or messy? Looking at my shoes? I knew some spirits moved objects around, even threw things. Did they steal overpriced shoes still collecting interest on my Amex card?

A few days later, back at his house, we were upstairs in the master bedroom, standing in front of a large cabinet that housed a television. We were hugging and swaying and looking into each other’s eyes. We had a chemistry I'd never had before and will probably never have again. We could not keep our hands off each other.

Suddenly the television started to inch forward. Inch by calculated inch. It was on one of those wooden platforms that glide in and out. We stopped swaying and watched as the TV became fully extended on the platform and then stopped right in front of us. He pushed it back into the hutch and didn't say a word.

One night I was ironing his suit jacket and he was in the bathroom shaving. I had the TV on and when he came out of the bathroom he switched the channel to a ballgame. He did that all the time. I could have any station on and be seriously into it and he would just walk over and turn it back to his channel, or pick up the remote and switch it. It never bothered me because when he was near me, everything else drained from my agenda. I was more than just in love. I'd never felt that way about any man before. I was in serious trouble and I knew it. So we watched the ball game for a while and then he went back into the bathroom to dry his hair.

I changed the channel back to whatever I was watching and continued to iron. After a few minutes I heard the blow dryer stop. He came out of the bathroom and walked over to a chair and picked up the remote. He switched the TV back to his game. He looked over at me and I smiled at him. He smiled back.

Suddenly the TV went dark. Stopped. He tapped on the remote and looked over at me.

“Seems this keeps happening to us," he said, laughing a little.
“Looks that way.”
“You know who this is too, don't you?” he asked.

I couldn't breathe but I nodded yes.

“I don’t think it’s good; not a good thing at all.”

But I knew it was. If it hadn’t been, she would have thrown the TV at our heads. I was suddenly glad I hadn’t told him about the VCR turning itself off in my place. I knew she was trying to get our attention, or tell us something, but what? And how could I tell the love of my life that it was a good thing? How could his darling wife being dead ever be good in any lifetime and on any planet?

And especially with me saying it?


This entire week's posts are excerpts from my novel on reincarnation, His Dead Wife. It has been truncated and some of the names have been omitted for this online version.

READ MORE - His Dead Wife Loved TV's

His Dead Wife Shows Up For Dinner

This is my favorite picture of my Dad and his 4th wife.

When she died my sister and I flew to Florida that night to be with him. My sister flew in from L.A., I flew in from Flin Flon, Saskatchewan, Canada. I can hear Canadians laughing from here. I WAS ON THE ROAD IN FLIN FLON, population 6, not counting the comedians.

The next morning I was sitting on a couch trying to wake up before I went to make coffee. I didn’t especially like Dad’s last wife but I really missed her in that moment, mainly because she always made the coffee.

I got up and went into the kitchen and noticed that a little placard was missing from the entrance wall of the kitchen. The little plaque above it was still there and I wondered if Dad had removed the other one to keep by his bed. I made the coffee and didn’t think another thing about it until a few hours later, when Dad and I decided to go to the post office. As we walked down the long corridor that led to our front door, we passed the kitchen and I noticed the missing plaque was back.

“Did you put the plaque back?”
“What plaque?” I stopped and turned back towards the kitchen. I motioned for him to follow me.
“This bottom plaque here, did you put it back?” I asked, pointing to the piece of wood.
“Put it back from where?” my father asked. I explained to him that I had been in the kitchen earlier and noticed it was missing. Standing with my father gazing at the itinerant plaque, we said nothing. Which if you know me, is unusual. My Dad? Could have passed for a statue at any point in his life.

Something was happening, as it often did around me and the dead. All I knew was that the placard was missing and now it was back. I just didn’t know why.

That night at the Yacht Club the remaining family and friends sat at a round table and put an empty place for the dearly departed. I find it creepy when people do that but so many people do it that maybe I’m the creepy one.

I had already been through the drama with Dad in the foyer of our apartment, so when we got to the Yacht Club, I repeated the story to the others. Family remained quiet. Friends, not so much.

One of Dad’s friends, Gracie, was an Electronic Voice Phenomenon tech who recorded the voices of the dead for a living. She and I exchanged looks. Suddenly my stepbrother turned to his youngest daughter and told her to stop rocking his chair. “Dad, I’m not even touching your chair,” she answered.

“Well someone is rocking my chair,” he insisted. Again Gracie and I exchanged a look.
“Hey, stop rocking my chair,” my father suddenly said to me.
“Dad, I’m not touching your chair, look.” My father looked down at the seat of my chair, which was a good seven inches away from his. “Dad, it’s your wife. Your DEAD wife, she’s saying hello.”

The chairs stopped rocking. Gracie and I rolled our eyes at each other as if to say, "Humans. Why don't they get it?"

After dinner Dad and I walked across the street to our condo. He looked so old at that moment, all eighty-six of his years engraved on every ridge of his face. His sadness scared me.

“Really, you weren’t rocking my chair?”
“No, Dad. Your wife never believed in reincarnation or the soul and I used to tell her she was wrong, that one day she would see.”
“Yeah, she really didn’t believe, did she?” he said with a small smile.
“Remember how I told her once, years ago, that when she died she would see that I was right and to send us a sign?” Dad mulled that over for a moment, his eyes suddenly filling with the memory as he stopped walking and turned to look at me.
“You told her to send us a sign when she made it to the other side!”
“That’s right.”
“You think it was her rocking the chairs?” he asked.
“Yes Dad, it was her, that was the sign; there’s something on the other side.”

Dad looked happy in that instant, knowing she had come to him. I never saw him that happy again.

When dead people come back to you, it's never bad, it's always good.

Dad died two years later and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

READ MORE - His Dead Wife Shows Up For Dinner