Sleep Therapy

For the past few weeks, I've been a basket case of uptight craziness, rushing about, working on the edits for FREAK, juggling a thousand things at once.  I'd been invited to a big Halloween party on Saturday and I was ranting and raving to myself that I wished to GOD I'd never agreed to go.  I had to come up with a costume, get dressed up, waste time.  A pure, unadulterated bitchfest.  I'd gotten less than five hours of sleep a night since I'd begun all the rereading and analyzing all the editor's hard work as well as my own and last night, I finally crashed.  My head was pounding, my eyeballs had melted, my brain had fried.  So I did the only thing a semi-rational human being could do.

I went to sleep. 

Sometimes, that's the best thing for a case of the hyper-pissy.  Like a squalling toddler, I was griping and angry and my head hurt and I didn't want to do anything but keep going, going, going, get it done, get it done.  My body was exhausted, my mind was overwhelmed and I needed to slow down.  As my roomie, who is a yoga master, often says, ssslooowww dowwwnnnn.  When it comes to the insecure, that's a very tough thing for us to do because nothing we ever do is fast enough, good enough, clever enough or anything enough.  We can always do better.  What we don't look at is, we can also always do worse.  In our screwy brains, we're already doing the worst.  We're already inadequate.

I thought I was past that meanness to myself but insecurity loves to lurk, waiting for an opportunity to pounce.  Last night, I was a yarn ball and insecurity a grinning cat.  We took a tumble together and I unravelled a bit.  It was very early for me, around eleven at night, but I went to bed, curled up under the covers, snuggled my microfiber pillow and soon began to snore.  I was the toddler who runs around screaming and collapses in the middle of the floor.  All I was missing was the footsie pajamas.  So take a lesson from the not-so-wise and listen to your body.  If you're tired, ssslooooooww dowwwnnnn.  Take a nap.  Get some sleep therapy.  It's cheap, it's refreshing, and it's necessary.  Be kind and put yourself to bed. Hum a lullaby and take care of yourself.  You are your own child too, you know.  Don't push too hard.

Be well.

Love, R

facebook info!

Hello, All.  I now have a facebook page.  Since I'm a techno moron, one of the photos is upside down but at least the page exists now.  The website will be up soon too.  Check it out!

Facebook Address: Freak Rebecca ODonnell

Love, R

Magical Meetings

I met a wonderful couple today: an old lady and her very old mother.  We got to talking and the mother began to reminisce about her husband.  They'd been married fifty years when he died.  She is still grieving and it's been along time since he passed.  Every day, she'd bring him a glass of orange juice in the morning while he shaved.  He would reach over and kiss the hand holding the glass and say, "Good morning, my darling."  Every night, he would give her a cuddle and say, "Good night, my darling."  As he lay dying, she held his hand in their bed and coaxed, "My love, try and say it.  Say, "good night, my darling."  Her lip trembled as she told me this, then this beautiful smile broke through as she said, "He couldn't say it with words so he said it with his eyes."  She went on with a few more beautiful stories and all three of us were a bit teary by the end of it.  The daughter smiled in a bittersweet way.  "Yeah, Dad was a really nice guy.  A really nice guy."  "Make sure you're friends first," the old lady instructed me, wagging a finger to make her point.  "Friends first.  Then everything will be fine."

I love stories like that; magical meetings that reaffirm the fact that love does exist, true love does conquer all, and even if it's fleeting, it's still a pearl beyond price.  I don't feel envy or bitterness that I don't have such a relationship in my life right now.  Mostly I feel gratitude that I'm given proof, every once in a while, that such wonders really do exist.  In the cynical world we live in, so much shit is spinning in our heads every day; horrors on the news, financial disasters, relationship woes and physical ailments, that we lose sight of real magic.  There's Merlin sorcery in the heart of a flower, whimsical fairy dust in the silver bell laugh of a child, and spiritual warmth in the sight of two people in love.  I adore watching parents truly enjoying their kids, proof that that also exists.  When you're raised by slamhound maniacs without a clue as to decent behavior (because they've never experienced it either), it's hard to see joy in another without a bit of gall in the throat. But there, right before you, is one child you don't have to worry about.  One kid who's confident and happy.  I'm not talking about spoiled brats who get their way in all things.  I'm talking about children who are given proper boundaries and can flourish with such strong roots put down.  I know a marvelous old woman who was born wealthy, raised by loving parents, married an adoring man, is surrounded by protective and adoring children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  People bitch about her gentle kindness, sneering such opinions as, "Sure, if I was that rich and spoiled, I'd be nice and gentle too."  But don't knock that.  Can you imagine what it would be like to be free of strife, want and emotional starvation?  There would be no war and most likely no cruelty if everybody was raised that way.  She is a philanthropist and does a great deal of charity work because she was raised to appreciate everything that she has, all the benefits and advantages she was born with.  A garden of Eden, right here on Earth.  So I am grateful for such lovely visions and signs of the depth, strength and beauty of the human spirit.  Cruelty, I'm well acquainted with but kindness...that will always be magical, no matter what form it takes or where I find it. May you all have a little pixie dust sprinkled on your own lives, and may you also spread it around a bit yourselves.

Love, R

Halloween Fun IV

Piercing screams from upstairs notwithstanding, I was conscious only of a sickening sweet stench coming from whatever goo I was embedded in.

Peeling open my squeezed shut eyes, I shone the flashlight down at my feet, where a child's eyes glistened up at me.  I was standing in the cloth guts of a large, mutilated doll, its arms outstretched as if crying for help.

"Beck!  BECKY!  Are you all right?  Answer me!"

"I'm fine, Carol," I called, teeth clenched as I extricated myself from the rotten insides.

"What are you doing?  Come back.  Come back now, right now!"

"There's jars of tomatoes down here."

Free of the unfortunate doll, I shone the light around me.  I was in a dug out dirt cellar, where rows of canned tomatoes sat in the hollowed out walls.  I looked at the stairwell but decided I wasn't going back up that way.  Too dangerous.

A storm cellar door led to the outside.  The few steps leading up to it were sturdy.  I tested the door, found it open and climbed out, grinning.  Evil sense of humor in full swing, I can around to the porch steps and came silently back inside through the window.  Switching my flashlight off, I crept up behind the group of girls hovering over the cellar door.  They were all crying and screaming my name.  Trying not to laugh, I pulled air deep into my lungs and let out a roar.

They almost drove off without me.

That's an excerpt from FREAK which has hit the cutting room floor and found new life here on my blog.  I thought it would be a fun little Halloween story, very appropriate for this spooky season.  Now, it's back to the slag heaps.  The book is almost ready for print!  Hurrah!  Wish me and my sore eyeballs good luck with it all.  My editor is a genius and it's coming together beautifully.  I'm so excited.  I hope the book comforts and helps as many people as possible.  That's its purpose...so here I go again, back to the writing computer across the room.  Take care.

Love, R

Halloween Fun III

We had a story to tell at school the next day.  It was a month until Halloween, but the time passed quickly.  Four other girls agreed to go with us to the voodoo house for All Hallow's Eve.

Carol remembered the winding way, since I was born with no sense of direction.  We got to the house around eleven, two carloads of giggly girls squirmy with excitement.  It was a cloudy, windy night with no stars.  Armed with flashlights, we waded through the grass and climbed in the window.

A surprise greeted us.  Everything had been cleaned up.  The pentagrams were gone, the dolls were missing, the fireplace raked out.  The only thing left was the dripping couch in the stairwell."

"You guys," Debbie cried. "What a load of bullshit!  I was really scared."

"Well, I'm more scared now," Carol said. "Somebody's been here and cleaned it all up.  They must have known we were coming."

"Oh, Jesus. Let's get out of here."

"No way," I said. "Let's go down in the basement."

"Fuck you, O'Donnell," Tammy said. "I'm not going down there."

"Come on.  What are you, chicken?"

"Yes!"

I rolled my eyes and grinned, enjoying the whole macabre thing. "Come on, Carol.  We'll show 'em."

We got to the cellar door and shone our flashlights on the stairs leading down.  The blackness swallowed up the light.  Carol took a step back.  I looked at her questioningly and she shook her head, giggling.

"No way, Beck.  I can't go down there."

"I'll go, then."

Having just read Stephen King's Salem's Lot, I was mindful of broken steps, feeling my way with pokes of a cautious toe.  Debbie's "Let's get out of here" sounded like an echo behind me and I turned two thirds of the way down, just as the step gave way beneath me.  Crashing through three rotten planks, my feet landed in something awful and spongy, sinking to my ankles in some unknown, soaking slop.

Part IV tomorrow!

Love, R

Halloween Fun II

Here's the second installment of cutting room floor fun.

There were mutilated baby dolls everywhere.  Eyes gouged out, then sewn into their bellies, arms ripped off, legs burnt, fingers melted, headed pierced with nails, a dead bird inside the abdomen of one; there were beheaded and mangled little Patty Playfuls all over the place.

A door in the kitchen led to a black hole of a cellar, but we didnt' go down there.

"Hey, Carol," I said. "Let's come back here for Halloween.  We'll go into the cellar then."

"You're nuts."

"Ain't going to find anything scarier than this place.  No way."

Carol grinned. "We can get a group together.  I'd be fine in a group."

"Yeah.  Like a Halloween party."

We found the door to the upstairs and had to climb over a soggy couch wedged in the stairwell.  Why it was so wet, I didn't want to know.  Somebody had rammed it down or up and gotten it stuck.

Thinking uncomfortably of my brother Frank as I clambered over the mess, I finally stood on the second floor and looked around.  There was nothing up there: no furniture, no devil stuff, nothing.

Carol and I went into one of the bedrooms and found the squares cut for the smoke holes.  We laid down on the floor and peered into the living room under us.

A sudden noise made us both jump out of our skin.  This was a scary and obviously dangerous place.  The last thing either of us wanted was some black magic cocksucker with a pet demon to appear.

We investigated the noise and found a terrified little starling flapping about the ceiling.  The bird was trapped in the back bedroom, crashing itself against the window.

"I'd be frantic too, little bird," I said as it circled the room. "Let's get you out of here."

We chased the bird for half an hour, hopping over the death holes in the floor, waving our blouses (which we'd removed) as nets.  Finally, we caught the exhausted starling and carefully stuffed it through a hole in the window.  It flew off like the hounds of hell were after it.

"No kidding," Carol said. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, "Make sure you never come near this fucking place again!"

Creeped out enough for one day, we made our way back downstairs, climbed out the side window, and drove home.

That's all for today.  Will write the next installment tomorrow.  We went back on Halloween night and it was...very memorable.

Love, R

Halloween Fun

My editor recommended that I post some of our cutting room floor excerpts from the manuscript on my blog.  I was digging through some of them and came across something that's perfect for Halloween.  So, here is a story from the manuscript FREAK which is not going to be in the finished book.  Very fun, and all true.  It took place when I was in high school with my best friend Carol.

Carol's parents had bought her a car.  We spent many a lazy afternoon driving around the back roads and dirt lanes between Briggsville and the neighboring towns.  Autumn approached, and endless rows of corn started to tassel in the fields.  That's when we found the voodoo house, as we liked to call it.

A favorite habit was to find old farmhouses and see if we could get inside and explore.  Unlike my brother Frank, who had turned me on to the idea, we didn't look for things to destroy.  Frank had burnt, demolished and torn apart innumerable abandoned houses in his quest for destruction.  Even today, decades later, he drives around, tool in the back seat, looking.  His favorite things were houses with crystal doorknobs, which exploded under one blow from a hammer, or furniture, which could be used as a battering ram to tear apart walls and knock down doors.  He and his hooligans once shoved an old grand piano straight through the wall and bay window of a beautiful, lonely old house. 

Carol and I spotted the voodoo house on top of a hill.  It had a dilapidated old barn with a caved-in roof behind it, but there was nothing of interest in there.  The dirt lane was overgrown with weeds and the grass was waist high.  Perfect.  We parked as close as we could get and climbed the rest of the way.

Rotten and sagging, the porch groaned under our careful weight.  I found a side window partially open and we wiggled inside.

Rosemary's Baby and Race with the Devil combined inside that freakish house.  Who knows what sad grannie and grandpa haunted that place, appalled by what had become of their once lovely home.  Carol and I wandered the first floor in superstitious silence, our hair standing on end.

Pentagrams were etched in black graphite on the walls and floors of every  room.  Occult magazines and Ouija boards lay in messy piles in the living room and several small, controlled fires had been lit on the floor, surrounded by a ring of stones.  Eight inch squares had been cut through the ceiling and upper floors directly above the burnt wood, apparently to allow the smoke to escape.  Demons and goat's head monsters, drawn on newsprint, were taped on the four walls of the living room, and decapitated birds lay burnt in the green fireplace.  Worst of all, though, were the baby dolls.

That's all for now.  Will write another installment tomorrow!

Love, R