After yesterday's tragedy of my sparkly Eiffel Tower notebook being stolen RIGHT OFF MY DESK,

(outline of the body)

I came to my pretty house

and did the things I normally do, such as feed the dogs, let the dogs out (who, who who), feed the cats, let the dogs back in, slop the hogs, note the writing in the spiderweb and then get the mail.

We should all totally read Charlotte's Web for our next book club. Why are all the best books ones I've already read?

Anyway, I went to the porch to get the mail, my pretty porch with all the pink and red flowers like I live in a fairy tale, and this was on my welcome mat.

Please note that I do not actually HAVE a welcome mat, as I really don't welcome anyone. I know I've said 200 times that my mother has people running in and out of her house all day, and if this happened to me on the regular I would kill myself. She grew up with a lot of people; I grew up with me, and two adults who came home for dinner then went off to do stuff like go to political meetings.

My mother was forever going off to political meetings, and it just dawned on me that that's what Frank Kennedy told Scarlett O'Hara he was doing when he was forming the Ku Klux Klan and got himself shot clean in the head. I dearly hope that's not what my mother was up to in the '70s. Do they even allow women in the KKK?

All of a sudden I don't like Ashley even more than I didn't already. That fuck ass was ALSO at a "political meeting." Gentlemanly Ashley. What a fuckstick. Melanie was dumb as a stump.

Oh my god anyway. So I find this weird can right outside my front door.

"But I fix thing good." Smiley face.

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? How effing creepy is this can and note? Nothing says "threat to your life" like a can of green beans.

"Could it be the stupid kids across the street?" asked Ned. Well, talk about indirect. If they hate us, why not just have a party at 4 a.m.–oh. They do.

I have no idea. It's eerie, is what it is. It's Freaky Friday. Is what it is. And people ask, "Whatever happened to Freaky Friday" and the answer is, no one has sent in a new weird story. I guess I could make one up, or alternatively get threatening cans of beans on my porch to really liven up this blog.

I'm off. To fix thing good. Smiley face.

Thanks for your how-to-fix-a-scratch tips yesterday. Who knew rubbing a walnut on it would work? Aw nuts.

June's blog. Come for the hilarity. Get disappointed.

Anyway, today is Friday, so I bring you a Freaky Friday from Faithful Reader MissPam, who tells us stories of her kid, Amy, that we all love. Here is her Freaky Friday story:

Miss June,

This is not big time freaky. Just a little freaky. Feel free to scorn it!

When we were stationed at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina we were especially close friends with our next door neighbors, the Lightfoots. We had moved in around the same time. We were in and out of each other's houses constantly. Between us, we had eight kids. All the kids without exception hated the Lightfoots' downstairs bathroom. They all called it the scary bathroom. They would either run upstairs or even next door to avoid using it and no one ever wanted to bathe in there. We never got a straight answer as to why it was scary. It just was. I personally thought it was because Amy hated flushing toilets and somehow had influenced the others. It was a loud flush. We had lived there almost two years when the bathtub clogged up in there. Judy scheduled maintenance to come and repair it. Afterward she came over and had to tell me a secret that we both swore never ever to tell the kids.

The tub was the type with the drain thingy being a metal disc with small holes and you closed the drainage with a knob up on the faucet. The plumber had to remove it with a screwdriver, and once he did, there was an obstruction right there at the metal plate. He had to pry it out. Judy brought it with her when she ran over to our house. It was a heavy black metal pentagram.

Some previous occupant had taken off the metal disc and wedged it into the drain! To what purpose I have no idea. But it freaked us out. I'd like to say the kids instantly started liking the bathroom. That didn't happen. Just afterward Judy and I took to avoiding the scary bathroom. And it was.

Side note. Amy is still afraid of the self-flushing toilets. She reports to me whenever she encounters one. "Mom, it was one of those scary toilets. I had to run!" Makes road trips enjoyable. We keep track.

MissPam

Boo!

Are you horrified? Do I do that every year? I think I do. The point is, it's St. Patrick's Day and we're all getting ready to cut turkey with our families and spin a dreidel. Speaking of which…

I guess Jewish kids were sick of getting the shaft, AGAIN, when it comes to their holidays, so they get Mensch on a Bench, now, to ensure they're good for Hanukkah or something. Poor Jewish kids. Seriously, I'd tell Marvin about my Christmases and Easters and he'd be all, we look for a cracker. That'd be it. Their whole holiday. Oooo, we found a cracker! Cellllllebrate good times, come on!

Anyway, today is Arbor Day and because it is, I'm giving you a good Freaky Friday, sent by Faithful Reader Jennifer. Ready?

OOOOOOOOOooooWEEEEEoooooooo…..

I'm running late of course again today, and really Nedding takes up a lot of my time. It's my new hobby. It's not a bad hobby as those things go, but I feel like knitting would not distract me till after 8:00 in the morning.

At any rate, here it is Friday and I remembered to bring you a Freaky Friday story, because I am organized within an inch of my life. It's brought to you by Pamela Soul Sister, who has read and commented here for 73 years.

Before I delve into her story, lemme put all these pictures up that I keep meaning to show you and never do. They are all very congruous and organized. Because organized within an inch of my life.

Ned in Peg's yard the day she gave us pizza. Ned went to NC State. Ned is a trifle obsessed with NC State things, like sports things, and boy, me too.

My work husband, Ryan, went to a lunch-and-learn at work, and ate the box lunch provided. Someone didn't show up for the lunch-and-learn, so here is Ryan having second lunch, inexplicably at my desk. I would like to tell you I did not eat all those chocolate-covered almonds but that would be a lie.

Another rare and unusual Eds with Blu sighting.

I feel like maybe I didn't get big enough dog beds for my poor curs. Look at Edsel, falling off his. Will rectify.

TinaDoris gave me housewarming Pop Tarts.

Ned at the hamburger place, where a kid acted the fool the entire time. He was like, 8, or maybe 15, or maybe not, but he was too old to be acting the fool. His stupid dad let him run in and out the door, and finally the stupid kid hit his face on the window and SCREAMED so much that the whole place fell silent. No one felt sorry for that bratty kid.

Okay, good. Desktop is clear. Onto Pamela Soul Sister, so to speak. PSS, you will notice Ned is right on top of you. We're having the same morning!

PSS's FREAKY FRIDAY STORY

My first grownup apartment was a converted warehouse in downtown Brooklyn, NYC. Soon after moving in, my roommate and I would both hear all kinds of strange, un-attributable sounds at all hours of the day and night. Also, things would fall when no one was near. We were told that someone had died on the premises when it was a candy factory. So, we just assumed it was the spirit of that poor soul.

We tried to cleanse our space with sage and Florida water and such, but nothing worked. We frequented a Yoruba candle shop in the neighborhood and decided to call in some professionals. Two little old brown ladies dressed in white, Santeria priestesses, showed up…with sage and Florida water (um…we tried that)!. But they also brought with them The Gift. They told us that it was not the soul who died there that was with us, but several of my guardian angels. The most animated of the bunch was a Native American ancestor (they could tell he was Native American by his garb), who made it his mission to look after me. They said he was harmless, but just liked to make his presence known. They told me to talk to him and tell him that I appreciated his presence, but that he should quiet down and stop scaring us. 

I did as they instructed. It worked. The shenanigans stopped cold. 

Before they departed, they told me, "Oh, by the way…you have The Gift, too.  You can do what we do. You just need to develop your psychic muscle." Or some such words. 

A year or so later, I got a reading from a very renowned intuitive and he confirmed everything those ladies told me.

I've been using my powers for good ever since. Just kidding. I am purposefully not tapped in to that part of me…yet. OOOWEEOOO!

-Pamela Soul Sister-

I keep forgetting to tell you something cool. You know my coworker, who when I talk about her on this blog I call Fleeta, and I came up with that name using the random name generator? And we were all, Fleeta. Pfft. Yeah, there's a name. Remember that?

Fleeta.

Well, recently our pal Fleet (that's her casual, we-know-her-so-well nickname) went back home for a visit, and she asked some of the older relatives to tell her stories about the family, stories from way back, so she'd know her history.

Turns out? Her great grandmother? Fleeta. HER GREAT-GRANDMOTHER'S NAME WAS FLEETA!

How weird is that? Out of all the names the random name generator came up with. And who ever even HEARD of that name, ever?

So that's today's first Freaky Friday story, and here's a bonus story, from an actual reader, who wanted me to give her a cool name, so I will call her Phleeta.

Oh my god I love myself.

_________________________________________________________________________

This doesn't seem like much of a story compared to some others you've had but here goes.

About forty years ago we were living in a new house in a new subdivision in Knoxville, Tennessee. There were a lot of creaking noises at night; we were told by the builder that new houses did that as they settled. One dark night I found myself suddenly wide awake andI felt someone was in the room. I sat up and I saw a small figure in a white gown at the foot of the bed. I couldn't see the face clearly but the white gown shown in the darkness. I thought it was my six year old daughter and I whispered her name, twice.  Then I remembered, she doesn't have a white nightgown anymore. The figure slowly dissolved and I lay there with my heart pounding. I knew there had been something there.

I didn't tell anyone what I had seen. I didn't want to frighten my small children and I didn't think anyone else would believe me.

Seven years later we're living in a different house, different city.My now 13 year old daughter heard me telling this story to a neighbor and her mouth fell open. She said that in that same house she had been lying awake late one night (child was a night owl and always had trouble sleeping) and she saw a man and a woman in a red dress dancing down the hall. She said, "I thought it was you and Dad at first but then……I realized it wasn't. I never told anyone because I didn't think anyone would believe me."

She's now 46 and she still swears this is true.  I have no explanation of why there would be ghosts in a new house. The subdivision was on the site of an old farm but that's all I know. We moved a year later
and I've always regretted not contacting the new owners to see if they ever saw anything.  My daughter and I still talk about it occasionally and it haunts (ha!) us to this day.

Hauntingly,
Phleeta, but give me a cool name if you use this

I have gotten a few Freaky Friday submissions since Peter's chilling tale. Here's one from Jeanne.

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My mother used to tell a story about me: When I about four, I found my mother weeping and asked her why. She told me it was my late grandmother’s birthday and that she missed her mother. I left the room and came back about ten minutes later holding my hand in the air. When my mother asked what I was doing, I said that I had brought my grandmother to visit. I don’t remember having my hand in the air— I do remember walking from my mother’s bedroom to mine, and stopping in the doorway because even though the room was empty, I felt like there was someone there. And then I remember being picked up.

Twenty years later, I was at a friend’s house and told her the story. She asked if I’d ever had that sensation again, as if there was someone in what seemed to be an empty room. When I said that I occasionally had that feeling, she asked if I’d felt it in her house. Without thinking, I pointed to the next room and said, “Well, there’s something by the dining room window.”

The next day she told her neighbor what I’d said and the neighbor got a weird look on her face. She told my friend that the previous occupant of the house had been a sickly old man who sat for hours looking out that window every day for the last ten years of his life.

_________________________________________________________________________

OooooWEEEEEOoooooo! Jeanne freaks me out.

I leave you now with something I found while I was (WAIT FOR IT!) (WAAAAAAIT!) packing. When my mother turned 60, she asked Marvin to write a song for her. So he did. You'll never guess what my mom's name is after you hear it.

Download 1 Audio Track

I hope you can click on it and play. Kills me. Marvin was funny. Okay, I'm out. Have a fine weekend and please give me words of cheer because all I will be doing is schlepping and cleaning, cleaning and schlepping.

XO, Pam

It's time for another installment of our weird Friday stories. This person just identifies herself (I THINK this was a girl. She emailed me in scented font) as a longtime lurker. She wants me to make up a name for her, so Ima call her Yardena Almog.

(Come out and delurk today, if you have always lurked. Just say, Hey, June. Love your ass.)

Okay, here it is.

I was driving home one night and at a stop sign I was randomly reminded of a childhood friend who died in a gang-related accident when I was 14… sad, sad. Anyway, I hadn't thought of him in over 20 years! But, for whatever reason, at this stop light, I suddenly thought of him and his death and how he was my first crush and one of the best people I had ever met in my short life. I wondered about his family and wondered what he'd be like today if he were still alive. I recalled fun memories of school, the neighborhood pool, and general neighborhood shenanigans. The rest of the drive was a walk down memory lane. I was sad and nostalgic.

I was thinking about the tragic way he died and I wondered if, now with the internet and the "information age," I could find something online about his death and the incidents surrounding it — I never did get a full story of what exactly happened. I started to get excited that I could read more about it. So, as soon as I got home, I Googled him and looked for old newspaper articles that would give details. I was disappointment to see that the only thing on the internet about him was the information about where he was buried; it gave the plot number and his headstone information, etc. Nothing about the incident surrounding his death. I was bummed.

But then I looked more closely at the dates listed for his life and realized that I was suddenly thinking about him, Googling him and reading about him on his birthday! It was sooo freaky to realize that I thought about him on his birthday! I really did feel like he reached out to me from "the great beyond." For what reason, I have no idea, but I felt really good about remembering him and honoring his memory on his birthday.

Anyway, now that it's written down, it doesn't seem so dramatic, but it was really weird to experience it. Happy Freaky Friday, Yardena Almog.

This week we hear from Amy in MD.

I've lived in several haunted houses. The house I lived in growing up had a child ghost. You could never hear it when many people were in the house, but if you were alone in the house and stood in my bedroom, you could hear the sound of a ball bouncing on the front steps. I had this verified by another friend who happened to be in there when we were all elsewhere and asked me why it sounded like somebody was bouncing a ball when there was nobody out there. I found that house incredibly creepy in other ways and hated to be alone there, but most of it was probably my overactive imagination.

The house I rented prior to buying my current house had a long history. Originally a tobacco barn, it was renovated so that the farmer's daughters could live there. It had served as the office for the town newspaper, as a post office, and as a jail. I couldn't keep lights off there. Every day when I came home from work one or more lights would have been turned on.

My current house has had the most active hauntings. It was built in 1871, so lots of time for ghosts to accrue. I've seen several scary apparitions. The first was the worst. I jolted awake, screaming, terrified for no obvious reason. I couldn't remember dreaming. I opened my eyes and there was something between me and the ceiling. Just a dark…something. In the darkened room I should have been able to see the ceiling easily in the light from the street lamp.I was shaking so hard to that it took me a while to turn on the light, but when I did there was nothing. I did the sage blessing thing and blessed the heck out of that bedroom, and never saw anything in it again. But I didn't do the rest of the house.  

A while later I moved into the guest room so I could paint my bedroom, and had a couple of scary events there. I woke up because someone was wiggling my toe, the way my parents used to do to wake me up if they were standing at the foot of the bed. Nobody was there, of course. I sleepily mumbled "Stop it" and went back to sleep. Why that didn't terrify me more than a visual ghost, I have no idea. The next night, I woke up to find a man (dressed like he was in a barbershop quartet) leaning over me. He was standing through the bed — the mattress cut him off at mid-thigh. He was pretty memorable, with his old fashioned mustache and striped shirt. After that I slept with the light on until I moved back into my own room. If there were ghosts in the room I didn't want to know.

The child living across the street whose bedroom window faces mine asked why my light was on all night, and I made the mistake of telling her.  After that I noticed she started sleeping with her light on, too.  Oops.

Most of the activity in my house has happened when I've been doing construction.  It's like the house wakes up a little bit.  After a few months everything settles back down again.  We haven't had any ghostly visitations in years now and I'm pretty happy about that.

It's Friday, so it's time for another of your freakazoid stories. And, yes, I too love me for saying, "freakazoid." While we're at it, let me tell you that there's no parking, baby. No parking on the dance floor.

Anyway. Before I turn you over to this week's story, let me tell you about the deep and abiding love my dogs have for me. Which by the way is impressively deep. And abiding.

I went home for lunch on Thursday, as I am wont to do because I live close to work and that is a luxury I am still not over, having lived in LA for so long. So, there I was, eating my Weight Watchers-approved lunch of air and plain water, and I decided to turn on the TV. If I'm home at 1:00 I can watch Sex and the City, for a change, because I don't know every episode within the first 10 seconds of watching one or anything.

But I was home at noon, so instead I flipped around, not literally, and found Marley & Me.

I don't know if you recall when I saw it in the theater, but it was not sophisticated. I was still married to Marvin, and the mob. My mother and stepfather had come for Christmas. While they were visiting, I'd requested we see Marley & Me, since my mother has dogs and so do I and so on. But they wanted to see Milk, the movie where Sean Penn is a gay guy.

"We can go to the refrigerator and see milk for free," I tried, but everyone had to be all thinky and liberal and enjoy the shit out of a gay guy being killed. Afterward, we all listened to NPR and drove hybrids and gave peace a chance.

As soon as my mother and stepfather were gone, I said to Marvin, "Let's go see Marley & Me." But Marvin was teaching then, and he was sick every five minutes with some new thing a germy child had given him, and he very dramatically splayed on the couch and droned on about his sickyness. So I went without his punk ass. I shoulda just called Ned.

Do you ever do that? Do you ever think about times before you knew someone you love currently, and think about how you were once at that restaurant six seconds from their house, or that you know for sure you were at the same event once? Or do you ever think about a time you felt blue, and if you'd only just known your person back then, you coulda called him or her and things woulda been better?

Well, I do. But I'm a freak. Azoid.

The point is, I went to the movies, and it was still Christmastime, so the theater was packed with families seeing films, and there I was, completely alone, and I recall my hair was particularly dreadful that day, as I did not know the Curly Girl Method yet, so hello frizzazoid.

I hate to break it to you, but eventually in that movie, the dog dies. Okay? He dies. And other people in the theater were sniffing politely, getting out tissues as unobtrusively as possible. And I

"BUHHHHHHH! BOOOOOOO HOOHOOHOOHOOOOOO. AAAAAHHHHHHH HUH HUH {sniff!}."

Dudes. I was crying so loudly, and so ludicrously, that people turned to look at me. When the lights went up, I got my sobby fright wig self the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

And do you think my second viewing of that movie yesterday was any better? As soon as Marley started slowing down, I got teary. Then when he got sick, I started crying. By the time that dog actually expired, I was crying so hard I thought I might barf.

The whole time this was happening, Tallulah remained in bed, where she was having her afternoon nap, as opposed to her morning nap and the one she likes to take after sunset, just before bed. I was crying so hard that Edsel didn't even understand I was calling him. He'd been sunning himself on the deck.

"Edddddddd{hic!} Edshuhuhuhuhul! Come here, Edsss-sobbb!" Eventually, he caught on, and came trotting in. He finally remembers that he learned how to open the screen door. He'd taught himself to do it, taught Tallulah how to do it, then completely forgot he knew, and for about a year would just stand underbitedly at the door after Talu had opened it with her snout.

Anyway, he trotted in, took one look at my contorted face and trotted right back out again.

edz luff to stay and chat, but he gots…theeng to do. sy co mom.

I mean, isn't the POINT of a dog that he's THERE for you when you're crying hysterically over an Owen Wilson movie? Why else do you tolerate the dirt, the barking, the eating of cat poop, and the fur fur fur all over the place? Isn't that their ONE redeeming quality?

yuu rayse good poynt, mom. lu theenk it….it…..zzzzzzzzz.

Yeah.

Okay anyway, on to Freaky Friday, written this week by my pal Sleeping Beauty. If you have a strange story, email it to me at byebyepie.typepad.com.

FREEEEEEEEEKY FRIDAY STORY by Sleeping Beauty

About 10 years ago I was on a shoot for a National Geographic documentary about transsexual fish (don't ask). We were filming a little fishy colony off of Catalina Island with some scientists. You may remember Catalina Island as the place where Natalie Wood bit it, and you may also know that there are sharks in the deep waters surrounding it.

I was the only member of the film crew and scientists who didn't know how to SCUBA dive, so while everyone was SCUBA-ing down below our dive boat with the transsexual fishies, I was snorkeling around the boat by myself.

The water was a beautiful light blue milky color reflecting sunshine, and tall stands of flowing kelp were all over the place. I'm paddling around enjoying the water when suddenly I get a bizarre and indescribable feeling that I need to get out of there right away. No reason—I didn't see anything menacing or unusual; just the sun shining through the blue water and the kelp fronds here and there. But something told me to paddle back to the boat NOW. So I did, and I scrambled out of the water and into the boat as fast as I could. I never saw anything, and my colleagues soon resurfaced.

Next day we got a report there had been a great white shark attack in exactly the area where we were working, maybe a half hour after we were there. I also learned that sharks cannot only receive electrical signals alerting them to other animals' presence—they can send them too. I'm fairly certain that indescribable feeling I got was an electrical pulse sent from a great white shark, probably just feet away from me in that milky blue water off Catalina Island.