Like everybody else, I’ve been watching the Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, which is excellent as long as you stop looking for very much actual Shirley Jackson in there. I may have to watch again, if only to see if they really managed to leave out the best quote:

Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The idea of a house being sentient but not sane seems the most terrifying thing ever, and in some primordial way I still use it at a measuring stick. There’s a house on my block now that I would classify as not sane, and yet it’s absolutely the one I would renovate if I had the cash. Go figure.

Anyway, it was good- go watch it. Once it’s over, Netflix will then suggest you watch another of their series, called Haunted, which sounds like a fantastic concept. The preview made it sound like one of those shows where people share their scary stories of supernatural encounters- but with a budget! Most of those shows are filler done on a shoestring, so this had real entertainment potential.

That genre is kind of my dirty little secret, I love them, even through my sniggers. But I can suspend disbelief and really enjoy them…up to a point.*

“Haunted” takes that point and just obliterates it. The first episode had some serious plot holes, but it was when the second one started I found myself talking back to the tv in the first 90 seconds.

They start with this:

Already a red flag- all of those other shows start with “the following is based on,” or some such disclaimer. No disclaimers here, so…wow! Should be interesting! Click to embiggen!

Okay, so far we’ve been told they lived in the middle of nowhere with a psychopath daddy, a deluded mother and a lot of dead people, which they were told never to talk to anyone about. In the cutscenes, the kids are little- maybe 7 or 8, so okay, I guess we can forgive them at this point?

But now we continue, fast forwarding a generation. The sisters are older, and they’ve escaped. Somehow, despite knowing what their father is, the older one decides that it for sure is an awesome idea for her son to hang out with her father, who naturally starts to groom the kid to follow in his footsteps. As you do. We see scenes of grandpa encouraging the kid to knife an animal carcass, stick your head into its guts, dance around a fire, worshiping the devil. As you do.

Then, apparently grandma’s over it- they are retirement age, for goodness sakes, and he just won’t let up- so she smothers grandpa.

DING DONG, the witch is dead! The wicked witch, the…wait…what?

So everybody’s cool with their mass murdering grandma, who moves in with her daughter, there are no inquiries into grandpa’s death, and despite that everybody’s older, no one attempts to deal with any of this? And you further think it’s an excellent idea to just move on in?

At this point, it’s impossible not to have noticed that none of these people acted as if they gave a single damn about any of these victims. No mention of cops sniffing around, what the victim’s families might be going through, but this is the real WTF moment, when he moves in and finds “hundreds” of grandpa’s trophies:

So what does he do? Does he call the cops? Nope, let’s destroy lots of evidence instead, and continue to play ostrich:

He gets a dumpster, gets rid of everything and hopes to settle in to his happy home. Surprise! It doesn’t go as planned, things get spooky, mysterious bloody handprints start showing up everywhere, and he’s sure “they” are coming for him.

Still lives there, of course! Never notified anybody! No cops have apparently ever come around this vortex of the the damned, asking about all these missing people!

And then, the punchline:

Really? Really? You came on an internationally broadcast show to talk about the potentially hundreds of people you yourself say your family killed, while not one of you showed sympathy for people losing their lives, but you’d like some sympathy for yourself because you might lose your job? Frankly, I’d be more concerned about your credibility, which has definitely flatlined.

So, in the end I only have two problems with this: the living and the dead. And the producers, actually, who probably get classified as zombies, since they’re clearly braindead if they thought viewers would actually believe this tripe, or be able to forge any connection to the self-serving yahoos telling the story.

Again, I love a scary tale. And I love history. Plus I lived in a house for years where at least 17 people died in the last 50 years. We had some seriously weird stuff happen, which may be why I’m curious about these shows.

To paraphrase my daughter, “Mom wants to believe in stuff, she just needs some proof first, and that’s not how belief works.” She’s got a point. And I’ll actively try to give you the benefit of the doubt… if you can explain why you think bad things are happening, and even better, offer some proof those things actually occurred, I’ll happily go along for the ride.

If you don’t treat me like an idiot, in other words.This show forgot that one caveat.

*One I particularly loved when it first came out was where this chick psychically felt out a house while her partner does research into its history. Supposedly they don’t talk to each other until it’s all over to compare notes, but after a couple of seasons, plain old dead people haunting places must’ve gotten dull, because suddenly it was interdimensional visitors, portals, and everything had to get ramped up more and more, at which point I was out.

In the beginning, there were some pretty atmospheric episodes, though. I have a doll/clown thing, so this one stays in my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8ejd3sXo0A

I did a thing.

A fairly stupid thing.

An impulsive thing.

It goes without saying that this was an ill-considered thing.

While doing laundry.

A friend pointed out that it’s difficult for most people to accomplish this sort of mischief while doing laundry, but what can I say, y’all? I’m a multi-tasker. While the wash was agitating, I went around the corner to the Big Lots – to get a shower curtain, which I never did look at – and saw this…thing.

It was large.

Extremely ugly.

Also, exceedingly brown.

Just…the brownest brown.

Have I mentioned that I’m virulently anti-brown, as a rule?

Right on cue, up sidled an employee. “That’s something, isn’t it?” she asked, casually.

“That’s one way to put it,” I replied, dazzled by the drab.

“It’s on clearance. Returned. Too big for their space.”

“I can see how that’d be,” I commented absently, caught in its muddy vortex.

“Comfortable, though. Give it a try,” said the spider to the fly.

You know what comes next, which is this:

They gave me an extra 10% to take it NOW, and when I protested it wouldn’t fit in the car, they showed how it comes apart. Two kids shoehorned it in my car, where it took up every square inch. Getting it out of the car to the front hallway nearly killed me, and how it gets upstairs to the office/bedroom is something of a mystery at this point.

But ohmygod, is it the most comfortable thing I ever sat in. And half off! Plus 10%!

So where’s it going to live?

Well, that’s another issue entirely. About a year ago- more than that, come to think of it- my sister asked me, and I quote: “Are you a moron?” The answer, apparently being… kinda?

Here I have a large bedroom with a brand new king sized bed, waiting to be dealt with, and instead of dealing with it, I continue to sleep on the broken down, 14 year old memory foam (that had a 6 year warranty)little mattress in the small bedroom. The emotional reasons for this are somewhat complicated, but the practical ones are that it needs a LOT of work.

But I did do the offshoot room, the little office, and that was a big job, okay?

But to do the bedroom…carpets needed removal, then something to replace it, painting of walls and furniture, that horrible pitiful light needs replacing, on and on and on…and the scale is daunting.

I mean…look:

And yet, there’s now the world’s most comfortable, if supremely ugly, chair to consider, with no place for it to go…other than taking up the entire entryway. So my needle has gone from the “nothing” side to the buried-in-the-red “all” side, just like that. And that’s often how it happens. Last year I took several days off of work** and accomplished much in a short space of time, so I put in for 3 days off that, combined with the weekend gives me the better part of a week to deal with this.

And just to add a little spice to the mix- in case also working full time, plus dealing with the IRS and everything else at once isn’t enough…if I can get enough done before my days off in the first week of October, maybe we’ll actually go away for a night or two instead. I haven’t spent a single night out of the house in 2 1/2 years, so that’s a worthy goal.

All because of a big, ugly chair.

* As for the cover image, not 100% applicable. But where energy/motivation = glass contents, it sort of works. Also, one of my favorite Pratchett quotes, so like a cat that decides “if I fits, I sits…”

** It must be something about this time of year, because the day after I posted this, the “on this day” feature started popping up pics of exactly this time last year, and what I accomplished in those 3 days. It gives me hope for the 3 days I’ll be taking this year:

1st/2nd floor steps: carpets removed, sanded, painted, new hallway flooring:

Upstairs hallway: carpet removed, cleaned, new flooring:

Revolting but useful table: (1st pic in collage is *after* cleaning and sanding. Never did tile before in my life…

Several awful lights replaced (those butterflies…):

The new plan is that once a “weekend” (my days off being Thurs/ Friday) we will do A Thing. Get out of the house, do something fun, something different, no matter what. After a rocky start at the beginning of the summer we’ve finally begun exploring our “new” environs.

This week’s outing was to Storm King Mountain’s Art Center. I knew it was a huge sculpture garden (500+ acres huge), but not how very very abstract it is.

I have come across this problem before, where abstract art makes me feel rather… unsophisticated. This, for example, is called Iliad:

Why, yes, the fall of Troy is exactly what that brought to mind? hmmm…

But then there’s “Frog Legs”

Which, while visually interesting, left me tilting my head like a dog that doesn’t quite understand what you’re trying to tell it. One suspects the artist did this on purpose. I can never quite shake the feeling that we’re playing a surprise game of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” with this sort of thing.

The scope of the place is amazing, and if anything made the massive sculptures pale in comparison to their even more impressive surroundings, which is built in as a feature, not a bug. There are references to global warming, mother nature, and our impact on the earth everywhere- the curators definitely consider the grounds to be the largest canvas, cultivating wild grasses and flowers everywhere.

The day was gorgeous, and I’m glad we went, even if it left me feeling a little provincial with more of an appreciation for the nature than the art.

I genuinely loved several things at Storm King, although possibly not in the way the artist intended- my fav was a bronze fountain that I dubbed “Even Cthulhu gets thirsty:”

It’s a little hard to see, but it’s melty bronze in different shapes and watching the water come down in constantly changing patterns was mesmerizing. A fountain is on next year’s garden to-do list, so we may have to try some form of recreation here.

Also very relaxing was the kinetic sculpture “Sea Change,” which we watched for a long time:

George Cutts speaks about his sculpture Sea Change at Storm King from Storm King Art Center on Vimeo.

After spending hours listening to people wax rhapsodic at the Art Center (well, not so much ‘people’ as the tram’s guided tour), for dinner we ended up down the road apiece in Fort Montgomery, just outside of West Point.

It was a down n’ dirty place, same owner for over 25 years, same ancient clattery cash register that I desperately wish I’d thought to take a picture of (“It’s a genuine National! You usedta couldn’t get parts for it, but now they’re collectable, so it’s all on eBay,” the barmaid of 30 years said with amazement). Cash only, and it being a non-weekend night the only food on offer was Sysco’s finest, but fried up hot and brought out quick.

And it was the first and only time my Jack and Coke was proffered with a bendy straw:

And served with a flag paper placemat, because West Point, duh.

All in all, I’m a big fan of big contrasts, so it was a great day.

So. In some ways, things improve. In others there remains an impenetrable dark cloud that follows me around. I remain anxious, uptight and waiting for the chickens to come home to roost…and last week some of them did, in the form of a certified letter from the IRS.

This is not a surprise- how could it be? I’ve known that one day they’d cast their eye my way, and further that it’s my own fault for letting things get the way they are now. My only explanation (not excuse) is that hubby’s stroke left him unable to explain the various complicated financial dealings that have gone on, and I panicked and made like an ostrich, knowing, absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt, that a day of reckoning would come.

And here it was. And it very nearly made me vomit on my shoes. But it was Saturday- my work week’s Monday, and I was on the way out the door. Sunday, I figured (but didn’t verify) I couldn’t call a government office anyway. By Monday I’d decided that setting aside Thursday- my next day off – would make more sense, rather than stressing myself out and then having to go work all night upset.

Except, that doesn’t really compute, because I was already jacked up to 11. Constantly nauseous, unable to focus, my performance at work was terrible. And the deadline growing closer by the day. Coming home from work Wednesday night, I wondered if I’d be able to get even a little sleep. Kept trying to tell myself that this was a good thing- the only way out is through, etc etc.

And then a little bit of nudge from the universe, in the form of NPR’s On Point which was rebroadcasting an episode on “Inspiration Through Procrastination.” Here, I met Andrew Santella, author of “Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, From Leonardo and Darwin to You And Me,” which I will now have to buy, and Tim Urban, blogger and hugely popular Ted Talk giver:

I liked Tim, but Andrew’s more scholarly explanations hit home for me, including when he discussed perfectionism and procrastination’s linkage…maybe not so much in reference to the current IRS crises, but why I haven’t written, or created, or… anything much. Because I’m afraid that, given my current responsibilities and distractions, they won’t be any good. So I do nothing of consequence but feel miserable instead of relaxed.

Kind of like Tim’s Dark Playground, “It’s where leisure activities happen when leisure activities aren’t supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn’t actually fun, because it’s completely unearned, and the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred, all those “good” procrastinator feelings.”

But, but but! I’m tired, I’ve been being a caretaker, and dealing with the house, and at work until 2am, but but but. But those 2 hours a night you spend just screwing off on your phone…that wouldn’t have been better spent just knocking some thoughts together? Or, hey, how about gathering those tax documents?

And then, because the universe really does have an amazing sense of humor, when the show was over and I flipped the channel, the opening notes of this were just starting off, and I laughed so hard I cried. And that was before I saw this cheezy video:

It broke through in some way, and I’m sure that having a solid deadline in front of me helped. But the next day I called and had an hour long conversation and mia culpa with the IRS. I have a plan. And I will have a lot of debt, but the not knowing is worse than that.

I have a few other really big things to deal with- but now there’s some momentum, and hey- I threw this together in 20 minutes and I’m just going with it. For once I’m not going to overthink it (too many multimedia links, prob), I’m going to work on just DOING.

To that end, and for once in my life, I’m just going to hit Publish and walk away, this time with reasonable expectations to be back in fewer than 4 months.