I’ve lived in three haunted houses over the years. The first was by far the most frightening, while the ghosts in the other two houses were more benign.

The first house was rented for us by my boyfriend at the time, without me having seen it. The minute we pulled up to the gate of this five acre place with a really cute rock house, I had the creeps. How often do you pull up to five wooded acres and not hear a sound. Not one single bird. In the two or three months I lived there I never saw a bird, a rabbit, a squirrel. Five acres full of trees and underbrush and NOT ONE LIVING ANIMAL. If that wasn’t bad enough – at the time I had a number of pets; guinea pigs, lizards, cats and dogs. During the time I lived there from the first day the guinea pigs all stopped eating and all eventually died. The lizards did the same. The cats refused to enter the house at all, except for my personal familiar, Spaz – who would only go inside when I was home and then was more or less physically attached to me at all times. Two of my cats died from unknown causes. Another ran away rather than stay there. My boyfriend had a dog and probably twenty aquariums with fish. After I left him AND the creep house the dog first developed horrible sores all around her neck, became emaciated, and eventually died. The heat failed one day and all of his fish aquariums FROZE and all the fish died. There was a never ending ominous, threatening feeling about the place. It was so creepy that I simply told the story about it to a witch friend of mine and she shuddered and looked around and told me to stop speaking of it, because it was following me and coming when called. Yeah, it was that creepy. I still don’t like to talk about it.

The later house was one I shared with my husband. We had only lived there a few days when I saw someone out of the corner of my eye in the house – actually, I saw them in the mirror. But when I turned around, there was no one there. Hubby and I both had this sort of experience in that house. I am perpetually putting things down and losing them – most notably my keys. One day I had just a crazy idea and said out loud “Ghost, please help me find my keys” – and then heard them. You know, that key chain rattling sound – and was able to find them. This happened more than once. All was well until we started packing to move out. The ghost was obviously not very happy about us leaving and took to throwing things around and knocking them over when we were out of the room.

The last haunted house we lived in was sort of a mixed bag. I attribute this to the ghost being a fairly angry ghost, but because we always treated him with the utmost respect and compassion he couldn’t really be angry AT US. I felt him around now and then, but the most he ever really did was scare the cats. I don’t know if he just didn’t like cats or thought it was funny but now and then all of our cats would come tearing out of a room or resting place like all the furies of hell were after them and then be scared and unsettled for hours. Although our ghost was not doing anything scary, we eventually left after some other odd things happened, including finding out that the vacant area behind us had been a slave cematery, and before that possibly an native american burial ground. An elderly woman had been murdered in the area, and the killer had buried her in that area, sure that if she were ever found she would be thought to be one of the earlier burials. Later the killer was caught and confessed – and the next thing you know we have policemen and dogs all over the place looking for her body. Not one of my better days!

So – how ’bout you? Lived in any haunted houses?

WB

Well, the whole transition to disability and dialysis has not gone quite as smoothly as we hoped.  Ain’t that always the way?  Looks like I’m gonna have to go get a J-O-B (Just Over Broke) for a while until our lovely government system can be persuaded to realize that “cannot do his job” = “disabled” for the hubby.  Apparently, it is not so all fired automatic as the kidney Doctor seems to believe it is.  Welcome to the real world, Doc, where our government hopes they can delay things long enough that you DIE or at least end up HOMELESS so they never have to pay you shit of what you paid in.  What a system – gotta love it.

It’s pretty plain what is going on when the fact is you have to wait until age 72 to get “full retirement benefits” – and the average life expectancy in the United States is (wait for it…) 72.

Just give us your money all your working life and we’ll keep it.  Um, for you, yeah, for you.

Snort.

WB

Heart shaped rose bouquet coloring page

So – as I guess you all know now – I draw coloring pages, or rather line art to color for one of my other websites, Color-Your-Own.com .  Today I finally knuckle down (or under) and draw some designs meant for Valentine’s Day.  Personally, I think Valentine’s Day is a bunch of bullshit – but there are a lot of people who totally buy into it and they want and need line art and coloring pages, so who am I to deny them their fun?

I have always loved roses, all shapes, sizes, colors but especially the ones that smell really good.  But for whatever reason, I’ve never really drawn many flowers of any kind – roses included.  Looking for some different ideas for Valentine’s Day coloring pages, I ran onto a couple of different heart shaped bouquets made of roses.  I thought that was a cool idea, so I set out to draw one.

This means I drew something like twenty individual roses.  The more of them I drew, the more of them I looked deep into, the more I outlined those delicate folds and intricate mazes of petals – the more they started looking like pussy.  Pussy as in vagina – those curled lips, that mysterious little dip holding the clit in it’s center, that sweetly unfolding hole drooling a little cream…  If you have spent any substantial amount of time face down in pussy (and I have) the association is inevitable.  I wonder if that is why roses became the symbol of passionate love?  A man once told me my pussy was like a beautiful flower and I laughed.  Maybe I owe him an apology?

WB

But my main reason for being here and abusing everyone today is that I finally got my shit together and got the store up so you can now purchase and download the coloring books in PDF form that contain all the coloring pages I’ve drawn for Color-Your-Own.com. I think digital coloring books like this are cool because they can live on your computer – you can print them once, print them a million times, print all the pages, print just the page you want to color that day, print your favorite page as many times as you want – it’s the ultimate in having what you want in a coloring book. To me anyway.

So go check out the store. I’ve got it for free for a week, then I have to decide if it is worth paying the monthly fee.

And yeah, I’ll plug my little article on Valentine’s Day for the frugal (not to say CHEAP) couple – who have been together for a while and are pretty comfortable. Bleh. LOL

CYA

WB

Enjoy the slide show of Danse Macabre images:

I talk a bit more about my fascination with the Danse Macabre on this lens – look towards the bottom.

Come on over and give me a listen on Blip.fm – you’ll find me as “Webitchtress”. I’m really having a blast with my own music station – LOL. If you’re there, blip me and let me know so I can dig on your music.

WB

First there was the idiot event. Sunday night, January 10th, the Internet suddenly just went off. Since I had just paid for it on the 21st of December, we thought maybe there was some sort of problem at the service. Finally on Wednesday we were able to find out they had cut us off for non-payment. Back in December when I paid – four days early – the entire balance – the idiot on the phone swore there were no past due bills or fees or anything and in fact was quite freaked out that I was paying a few days early rather than leaving it until Christmas Eve (when it was due). January 10th someone suddenly discovered we had a past due pro-rated partial balance from…AUGUST 2009. So they shut us off. Since we’re on a budget here – and I thought the bill was paid in full – we had to wait until payday on Friday to turn the Internet back on.

I am really getting sick of idiots who through their incompetency fuck up my life.

I know I told a lot of people that some major changes were coming in my life and then left it hanging. I really didn’t want to go into it if it wasn’t necessary. You see, on Monday January 11 we went to the hubby’s Nephrologist (kidney Dr.) to get her final word on something. The word is yes – hubby is going to have to start dialysis. This means a flurry of Dr.’s appointments in the next few months. Then he will go on full disability and be going to Las Cruces (about 100 miles) 3 times a week for dialysis. In case you didn’t know, he has had kidney disease since he was a child – this was not a big shock except in that he really doesn’t seem to be SICK, just tired a lot.

In a way, we are rather looking forward to it. He will be home all the time, and have an income we can depend on – no fear of lay-offs, getting sick, being fired, etc. We plan to start traveling again as the Dr’s assure us that won’t be a problem. Hubby is a great cook and is looking forward to getting to cook for us every day. He has been interested in photography for a few years – he takes many of the gorgeous photos you see in this blog – and will be able to finally take some courses and spend more time on that hobby. After all, he will be spending less time in dialysis than he spends now working for some soul sucking jerks who don’t appreciate him at all.

So yes – it’s going to mean some changes, but I think they will be mostly for the good.

Unfortunately, the latter part of the week was spent caring for a severely ill dog. In the end there was nothing more we could do and he was clearly suffering, so on Sunday we put him out of his misery. We all miss Klyde and it will be a while before we are really okay around here again.

When we did get the Internet back on I made the wonderous and happy discovery that my Squidoo payment this month was about twice as large as my Google Adsense income! I admit it – I mostly spent it on some fun things for myself. I bought tokens at SandboxFarm and paid my friend Robert Sloan for a fantastic bit of art he created for me last month. When it arrives I’ll try and get a good photo or scan and I’ll tell you all about it then – but suffice to say, it’s really special and I love it already.

Speaking of Robert, we were chatting the other night and he has agreed to create a number of dinosaur coloring pages for Color-Your-Own.com. I am really excited because I draw really LAME dinosaurs and Robert draws GREAT dinosaurs. This will be the first time I have ever asked or even allowed another artist to contribute at Color-Your-Own.com so that’s a bit of a milestone. I’ll be paying him for the art and I’m sure it’s going to be a really good thing for both of us.

And speaking of Color-Your-Own.com, the coloring books are done. They’ve actually been done for a week but…yeah, anyway, AHEM – all that awaits now is for me to find a workable payment system that will let me sell them for a price I think makes sense and in a way that (I hope) you will be able to pay and download them instantly. I’ll look into that some more tonight.

Doing research today for Valentines Day coloring pages, I ran onto an interesting bit of Victorian trivia that I posted at Foovay’s Floozies.

About the last thing I accomplished last week online before we got cut off was a Squidoo lens on Finding Free Articles on the Internet. Yes, someone stole an article from me and was rude about it and I obsessed over it for a couple days and then wrote a nice, long article on how to correctly find and use free articles on the Internet, and further more, how to make money doing it. I hope someone benefits from my ten years of experience in learning to do just that. I also happened to notice at the time that one of my old domains is up for sale again and I still have the whole old website that used to be there on my hard drive! Sooner or later, much of the old “empire” is liable to return. Hopefully on a more profitable basis.

And while you may have missed me just a little bit – and yes, I missed my Internet friends, too – I did enjoy being home to enjoy the mule deer who came to visit during deer season. They seem to have figured out we are suckers here and no one is going to hurt them. And here is one of hubby’s photos now!

Do you suppose goths dress all in black because we are in mourning for the way the world used to be?

What a thought. Because, you know, we USED to be punks – and punks dressed in all sorts of outrageous outfits which included bright colors.

The more I think about this, the deeper it gets.

I was even more excited, however, to see that they are making John Carter, Warlord of Mars into a movie. I am a serious Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, and although he is best known for Tarzan – my personal favorite of his series was John Carter of Mars. I am also a huge Pixar fan, and it does seem just too perfect as the medium for four armed ten foot tall Martians to be brought to life.

Go forth and enjoy!

Oh, the game! It’s Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhurst from Big Fish Games. We picked it up at a Walmart so you probably could, too. Since it is “return” to Ravenhurst, I bet there is a Ravenhurst floating around, too. I’m going to look on eBay. Obviously, no affilliation – just a game we really enjoyed that I thought my goth friends might get a big kick out of, too.

It was a well spent ten bucks in my opinion – and delightfully gothic and scary and Victorian. Great graphics. You run about this old Victorian mansion looking for clues to solve the puzzle. Hubby did the running around and remembering where stuff was and I did the puzzle solving bits.

Hope all of you have a great New Year – 2010 is going to be so much better than the years preceeding it for me and mine so you better get in gear and have a good one, too! Now I’m gonna go eat my Black-eyed peas.

BlessedB

WB

Pauley Perette

There’s this and that and the other I want to share but today I finally got my shit together in one basket and made my long anticipated Squidoo lens, Abby’s music on NCIS. I found a vid of Pauley performing Fear, a vid of her old band Lo-Ball, and lots of fun fan vids. You can buy the NCIS Soundtrack CDs or even download just the one song, Fear. So please, go check it out and give it some love, rating, etc.

My little thang for Music Monday on Twitter. Of course, I also have some new music I want to check out – stay tuned…

WB