Well by the title you can guess that I have moved, taken the big jump over the pond and landed in Colorado. After an 8 year hiatus from living in the states I am back and ready *cough* for action. We arrived Tuesday after a really long day of sitting and drinking beer on the plane. We get to the passport control and we tell the guy that Dennis is immigrating and that we have all the forms. The nice, funny guy says “now why would you want to do that?”. Not wanting to tell him we came to steal other people’s jobs, I said it was a long story and that seemed to be enough for him. I also asked him if he could put Dennis down for a full body cavity search and to be gentle since it was his first time. That was $100 wasted, they didn’t even touch him. Just kidding, I wouldn’t spend $100 on that.

But they took Dennis away, with out the white jacket, and I went to the conveyor belt to await the 5 huge bags and dog.  Now this is the interesting part since I am wearing two wrist braces and my back is hurting from the plane, stupid fibromyalgia, and I have no idea when Dennis will be released. I take a quick look at the bag belt and see nothing of my stuff so I rush to the oversize luggage department and there is Murphy, waiting for me. He looks so sad in his kennel and I want to rip the door open and let him out. He sees me and starts whining cause he wants out. I load him on the little cart and start to head back to the luggage belt when I am stopped. This women comes over and explains that the dog must stay there because of airport policy. But she says she will stay with Murphy (she is in-love by this point) and so I leave. I manage to flag down a guy to help with the luggage and I collect my things and my dog and wait. Now the little room where Dennis is not being manhandled is all the way back near the passport control and I am at the other end of the huge room. Finally He arrives, we go through agriculture and get outside. Now Murphy is whining like no tomorrow and we want to get him out as soon as possible, but Murphy’s Law kicks in and ofcourse my dad has parked on the other side of the airport. So with the nice porter, our 5 huge bags, whining dog, unviolated husband and my dad, I walk to the other end of the airport and we get outside.

We rip open the door on the kennel and Murphy comes jumping out, tail wagging and nose sniffing. He rushes over to the nearest post and takes his first American piss. And man did he need it, he made the Mississippi look like a dry river bed. He was happy to get that out of his system. We loaded up the two cars we had (my mom had left hers there in the morning since she had to take the plane to a business meeting) and headed off. As we left the airport, we saw the sun set over the Rockies and I felt, this is it….. this is vacation!

Another day, another blog. Well today was my penultimate therapy session with Ken. Now you are probably wondering “therapy? what, is she some kind of nutter? does she sniff glue or hear voices?” Well, yes I am nuts, no I don’t sniff glue and you are just jealous cause the voices only talk to me. But in all reality I am in therapy to help me deal with the mental side of the fibromyalgia. I still haven’t learned my limitations, and for someone who used to be very active and at times very fiercely independent, limitations are very tough on me. And also, as said before, I’m a nutter.

But I decided, even if I am coming close to the end with Ken and Dennis was “working” from home today, I was not going to do anything different. My therapy days are the also the days I go into town for long periods of time and just relax outside the house. Now the thing is I HATE to shop. There are a few things that I do enjoy shopping for but clothes, in town, with crowds of people, is not one of them. But my normal ritual is to get there a few hours in advanced, I hate being late for things, and to just fart around. I first go to McDonald’s for a coke and sometimes for fries. I sit there, with my blank notebook or reading material, and contemplate what is happening in my life at that moment. Sometimes I get the urge to write or draw or just stare blankly at things and watch people go by. After a while I go shopping. I aimlessly walk from shop to shop to see if there is anything around that tickles my fancy. And believe me, my fancy doesn’t get tickled very often. Dennis likes to shop more than me. Then I head up to Ken’s office which is also in town. After a good 30-45 minutes of spilling my guts and crying I leave. Now I am never really in the mood to just head on home, and today was no exception. There is the Kermis in town. There are rides, games, candy and toys. Now that is my idea of therapy. I walked around and watched the kids play games and dare eachother to go on the rides that flipped you upside down. That particular ride reminded me of the time when I worked at Sony in Heerlen.

I used to work for the customer services for their online store and in that office we were a quick 5 minute walk to town. When the Kermis was in town my colleague Juan and I would walk into town for our hour long break and ride that ride over and over again until we either ran out of money or until we were finished with our break. We would get there, pay our money and they would strap us in to the ride, on the uncomfortably hard seats with the even harder harness. You would get swung out 30 meters at a phenomenal pace and then up 30 meters above Heerlen. What an excellent view of Limburg I can tell you. Then, after reaching the top, you would be swung, backwards, towards the ground, jerking back and forth in our hard plastic seat and thrown forward again. This would continue, round and round, up and down, upside down, for a good few minutes and then it would stop. We would get up, a little worse for wear, and head over to the booth to by a ticket for another round. After about 45 minutes of this we would head on back to the office for another few hours of complaints and inquiries. That seem to just make the day so much better.

So now I am home, full of suiker spin and good thoughts, and just waiting for the sugar rush to hit me

Well I know, another blog in such a short time. Hell must have frozen over or something like that, but I shall not keep you in suspense any longer with a topic heading like this.

Tonight was my last horror marathon for us horror geeks in Belgium and the Netherlands. Every month, on a normally gorgeous Saturday, I make the short 30 minute drive to my friend’s house in Belgium. I park across the road infront of the football fields and cross the street to the little one story house where the Bielen family resides. I go inside and I am always greeted by a vibrant little blond in the kitchen (Mrs. Bielen), I then proceed and say helloto a kind faced gentleman (Mr. Bielen) and I go to my friend’s computer where I find him behind the computer burning another copy of a DVD he just down loaded off the internet (Davy). Now Davy is my best friend. He is funny, odd and down right sweet, and an even bigger horror fan then me. His bedroom and the guest room are filled with shelves, boxes and stacks of DVDs, a grand total running in the thousands. Davy is always smiling with his new find and always wanting to talk about it, or the next ambitious project he has in store for us at Hexagore, his little production “company”. Sometimes I am early and have beaten the others, and sometimes I am greeted by Bob (a.k.a Lizzy) who is feeding the fuel to Davy’s madness. Bob is also crazy. I have known these guys for a few years now, having met at my previous employment, they were in a different department but we managed to find each other, crazidar (kind of like gaydar but more accurate, you just have to look at us and you know we are crazy). This is the core of our group, the die hard freaks of sitting in a basement to watch blood and filth and the stuff nightmares are made of.

We have a few other nutters who join us from time to time, so we wait for the others to show. Then we proceed down the stairs underground to the comfy the couch, the chair and the beamer. We always have loads of energy drinks to keep the caffine flowing and the vibes going. Of course you know that crazy and caffine is an interesting combonation. And for Davy and Bob it is even worse. After watching one or two films Mrs Bielen calls us up for dinner. Now this woman can cook. She makes her own pizza that is to die for, a spaghetti sauce that would rival any Italian grandmother and even her own Mayonaisse. After stuffing our bellies full of good food and maybe a glass or two of wine to take the edge off those energy drinks, we go back down to the bowels of horror and stay until about 1:30 am. Then we get in our cars and go our merry little ways back home with visions of artistic kills fresh in our minds.

Tonight was no exception, well kind of. I walk into the house I know so well and was greeted again by Mrs Bielen. She gives me an enormous hug and says it is a shame this is my last marathon and the she will miss me. I try to put that out of my mind since I want to enjoy myself as always. I go a little further but Mr Bielen is away so I do not see him. I go to Davy’s computer room and there he is, downloading as usual. And Jan is there. Another one of the motley crew who was also a great victim in our fake grindhouse trailer we made for a competition. Bob was going to be late, and what is more, he would be bringing his new girlfriend. We started off with a nice Norwegian horror called Rovdyr, a nice survival hardcore gore with great FX. This is just an appetizer for things to come. After a plate of delicious spaghetti, Jan, Davy and I start talking and laughing and wondering when Bob would be there since it is really not like him to be late for a day of death and destruction.

After a few minutes of talking and laughing, Bob and his girlfriend Wendy show up. She is introduced around, put on display as if she was fresh meat, and  we were off to the basement again. Since Wendy was new and not exactly a HUGE fan of horror, we decided to ease the poor girl into it with Dance of the Dead. This was a mix of Army of Darkness, Shaun of the Dead and Prom Night. It was great. After she was initiated we proceeded to Midnight Meat Train. Now that was gore. Clive Barker really needs to see a therapist, but in secret I hope he doesn’t or his stuff might be too soft. And to round off this feast of blood we finished with The Strangers, unrated. This to me was good but not great. A lot of the stuff reminded me of the things they would do at the Robber’s Nest to scare us sans the killing, for obvious reasons.

As the night concluded and since Bob and Wendy had a long drive ahead (she being a little bit further away than us) they got ready to head out. We were standing outside in the cold fall Belgian air when it accurred to me, this really was my last marathon. As Davy and Bob continued being their strange selves, laughing and playing off each other’s wackiness, I started to feel the sadness that will be coming for the next two weeks. I looked around at the football fields, at the woods behind them, at the spot where we attached a fake blood filled condom to my stomach with a firecracker so we could test out a squib effect of being shot, and I thought to myself that we had a great time. And I know that it is never really over and I have the memories (which I will hold dear to me for the rest of my life), but I will miss it, naturally. Bob hugged me good night and left and Jan followed as I started crying in Davy’s arms.

Now, my friends have already threatened to visit me so that is not the problem. I know I will see them, I will talk to them and I know all will be well in the end. But it did hit me, this was my last marathon and the end of a chapter in all our lives. But I know this is not the final chapter…

ok, ok.. I know it’s been a while since my last confession but hear me out. Many things haven’t happened so there isn’t much to confess. Ok, so I turned 30, big deal, almost everyone will at some point. I still act like I’m 5 so nothing has changed. The immigration papers are all in order and mentioned in other blogs, so no news. The house is now clean, a miracle upon miracles . And now we get closer to the move and I’m scared, so that hasn’t changed either. Now don’t take the scared to be a bad thing.

Those who know me will know I LOVE horror and the feeling of fear doesn’t come easily to me anymore after many summers at Glendorn. I shall elaborate on that one. When I was a kid we would go to Bradford, PA to my family’s (whole mom’s side) camp like getaway. Well camp like makes it sound rustic and it is anything but. It is a large piece of land my great great grandfather bought for the family. A large house (the Big House, so original ) was built in the style of the great camps of the 1920s and 30s (well it WAS built in the great camps era). Later as the family grew cabins would pop up. But when my grandfather’s generation were young, they decided to build their own little fort. There was a clearing about 1/2 mile up into nowhere and they “borrowed” wood from the wood shed and wood-shop. The parents found out and decided to build a rustic cabin in place of the shanty town shack. It was then properly named “The Robber’s Nest”. This was truly rustic. It had water that came in from the stream outside (if you remembered to turn the knob in the ground that fed it to the cabin) I”m not sure but might have had an electric light at one point, and to finish it off, an outhouse for your needs in the nights .

For generations after, this was the place to test your courage, dispel fear and eat a crap load of candy that would send a normal person into diabetic shock. Since it is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded on one side by swamps and the other sides by woods, it is the perfect place to scare the ever-living piss out of kids. The house itself consists of a screened porch (with barbecue inside) that only has two doors going to the outside. Once you have walked through the door there is another door that leads into a dark, creepy, wooden house. The house had two rooms and not very big ones. The first one you walk in to has a fireplace and one window. Then there is a large opening to the other part of the shack. That has windows over looking the swamps, one on each wall. And wooden bunk beds and old army/navy cots hanging on the wall. Now I might change tenses through out this thing cause the Robber’s Nest from my past has had a face-lift.

Now the tradition was, when it was your turn to go stay at the Robber’s Nest you got to go to the huge well stocked kitchen pantry in the Big House and take what ever you wanted. That usually meant M&M’s in the 1 pound bags, chips with dip, coke, marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers for smores, and anything else you could possible want to satisfy the sweet tooth. You would then pack a little bag of stuff, your old sleeping bag, pillow and flashlights. You would be taken up in the old barn truck and dropped off before dinner. When I was little we would have a feast up there. Dan, the director of the children’s activities, would cook steak on the grill in the screen porch, you would have these wonderful soft white rolls and the best was Dan’s Robber’s Nest potatoes. Now if you want to know what heaven is, this is it… mashed potatoes with cheddar cheese, spring onion, bacon bits and a little sour-cream in it. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it. And after the feast the other kids would go back to their cabins and you would be left alone with your age group and a counselor. There was a fire-pit outside and we would build a campfire and sit around telling ghost stories, daring the other to do something stupid, and share our innermost girly thoughts.

Then the fun would start when it would get dark. Ever since we could walk we are told stories about the Swamp Lady that lived in the swamps there, there was a Pipe Monster that lived in one of the pipes that was buried under one of the dirt roads and if you walked over his pipe you had to make a funny face or he would come and get you. There was an albino escaped lunatic that haunted the woods and also bears. The last one actually being the true one . So we would get nice and revved up for the evening’s activities. After dark the kids would come up and try their best to scare us. There were twigs snapping, strange sounds or sometimes they would come out saying there was something wrong. It was never scary but bless them for trying. Then it would be quiet for a little longer. We would get out the old Ouija board and go in the house if it was too cold. That was the queue for the teenagers to come up. They would do more of the same with the breaking of branches, the scary noises and since we would be in the Nest at the time, they would bang windows and the walls. Sometimes they would run in, torn and dirty clothes saying something was out trying to get them. They would come up with these elaborate stories and since we were a little hyped up on sugar and little sleep deprived from getting to stay up past our bedtime, the horror would slowly sink in. They would continue this until they were either satisfied with the result or got bored and they would leave after helping themselves to the candy. We would be ready for sleeping by then. We would do another round with the Ouija and then get in the sleeping bags on the wooden bunk beds in the very small room that smelled all musty and was dark with no electricity. But that was not the end of it.

Did I fail to mention that the parents always love to go in for the scare? A lot of times they would wait until we were really tired. Then they would slowly go around the Nest and start to bang on it. There would be screaming coming from outside from one of our parents. There would be animal noises. I remember one year they did a scare with the swamp lady theme. This was one of the best I think. They had a regulator tank for scuba diving (we would scuba in the lake or pool) and someone dressed as the swamp lady, complete with the yucky stuff off the swamp surface. The have the regulator in the water and you could hear the bubbles sounding. They did something with lights a little over the swamp. There was screaming and one of the parents ran inside saying the Swamp Lady was going to get us and we had to leave. There was only one door that went in to the screen porch but most of the time we were paralysed or talked out of that option saying we can’t. Then there would be banging on the walls. One time the window broke by accident and that made us jump. It was awesome. I think the worse/best scare was when I was really little. I think it maybe my first time in the Robber’s Nest. My initiation, as it were.

As we were drifting off there was a parent or two that ran in. They said there was a mad man on the loose and he had a chainsaw. We needed to get out as soon as possible. But one of the counselors was dressed up in a Jason mask and clothes to match and we could see the eerie white glow of the mask in the trees. We could hear the crunching of the leaves and twigs breaking under his foot. Our counselors were holding us as tight as possible. They were not used to this so they were scared LOL. We could hear other things in the woods but not sure what it was. They gathered us into the screen porch since some of the Robber’s Nest is on stilts with a wooden floor and the screen porch had a concrete one. We heard a chainsaw in the woods and a parent scream. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. We were trying to figure out which parent it was that screamed. Then the chainsaw sound died and the white mask was out again. You could see it just faintly. Then it was gone. By now most of the cousins are crying. You’d think that would stop the parents from continuing wouldn’t you? But no, it is fuel for the fire. Suddenly we heard footsteps on the roof right above us. Counselors telling us to keep our head down as we could hear the chainsaw start again. I think that was the best time I had. No wonder I love horror huh?

Well at the end the parents would come out and say they were okay and kiss us good night and we would go to sleep at about 2am. This sparked my love of nightmares and horror. Ever since then I was hooked, a fear junkie. So now when you hear it scares me a little, you will understand the small things that make me tick