Friday, June 29, 2018

Diet Time!

So I'm going on a diet in July. I've been mulling it over for awhile, it's actually on my long term list of things to get done this year. Not the official goals, but the running list of things to work on, like painting the living room (two years and counting since I picked the color), and getting Brent's Navy certificates framed nicely (at the framers right now but oh holy shit that was so much more expensive than I thought it would be). So anyway, it's on the list.

Dana's visit triggered me to follow through. I spent the weekend ingesting a lot fewer things than I normally would and it felt good. So looking at a need for July's monthly goal coming up and I thought, yep, time for a diet.

A social media diet.

Not a fast, I just can't wrap my head around that. I have too many people that I only keep up with through Facebook. But a diet. I won't be posting on Facebook directly for July. I say directly because my picture of the day will move to Instagram and I will cross post from there. Same with Selfie Saturday. And any blogs I write will hit my blog page. But the multiple status updates aren't going to happen. And I won't be spending time on Facebook reading other things as well. That's the hardest part for me. Like I said, I have friends who I only see on Facebook so letting that go for a month will be hard.

But I need to take a break and walk away from the daily onslaught of information. I need to process things in the world in my own space without the rush of information coming in at a fast and furious pace. But even there I am going to curtail my news intake for July as well. I'll still be pretty informed, I can't not be, that would make me REALLY crazy, but I am going to be under informed for me. One news story about an issue. No looking for other perspectives. Just when I hear it or read it the first time, then done.

I'm not actually sure how it's going to go, but I want to try it out. I spend a lot of my time online. Like the majority of my time. Even when I'm doing something else I'm checking news, or my friend's feeds, or posting pictures. It's a lot. And it's habit at this point. I will check my phone. Put my phone down. Then pick my phone up and check it again. Never really paying attention to the fact that I JUST checked it so nothing new could have possibly popped up.

I need to break away from it.

So a social media diet. No direct posting on Facebook. No mindless scrolling through the feed. No checking and double checking my Google Newsfeed. Instagram posts, but don't replace mindless Facebook with mindless Insta. Messenger so if you need to talk to me reach me there. Google Newsfeed once a day to keep up with the world without getting overwhelmed with the world.

I'm not sure how it's going to work but who knows, with all of the extra time maybe I'll get my living room painted...

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Be Better...

Yesterday morning I had to refrain from lecturing a large section of Facebook. The results for a primary in New York were in and the very progressive liberal beat the establishment Democrat. Which is great. That's what primaries are for. So districts can find the candidate that represents them best. This district felt that a young, super progressive, latina fit that bill much more than an older, moderate, white guy. Which I know, older white guys HATE when that is pointed out. But they do have a different perspective than not white, not older people do. I'm an older white woman, I get it and I'm not insulted, you should try it out as well...but anyway...

So that happened and that's great. But the reaction to it made me clench my jaw. The multiple posts about REAL Democrats winning. About how they are getting rid of the FAKE Democrats. STOP IT! Just fucking stop it right now. You don't get to decide who is a real and who is fake. You do get to say, I am a far left Democrat and don't vote for moderate Democrats when given the choice, but it is not the same. All you are going to do is make it impossible for ANY Democrat to win by further dividing a party that is already like herding cats to get anything done. You want a repeat of 2016? Because this is how we get a repeat of 2016.

Now, I get it, I am not exactly the right person to be worried about the future of a party that I've never belonged to, but as I am not even anywhere close to wanting the Republican agenda set in stone, I will vote with the Democrats and push the Democratic candidates. I don't feel like I have the luxury of a Republican vote right now. Not when we are looking at all three branches of government under one party.

Because yesterday should have shown you why infighting is not a good idea.

Trump got the stolen nomination and replaced Scalia with Gorsuch. That kept the Court pretty much the same. Maybe not quite as smart. As much as I hated Scalia's decisions he was awfully brilliant. Now Kennedy retires and though he has been more consistently conservative than not he did break ranks for equality cases. That's not going to happen now. The replacements all come from the hard Right list Trump was given while he campaigned as his "use this and conservatives will ignore EVERYTHING else and vote for you." He did, and they did. And here we are. And yes, this only shifts the court to even more right, it doesn't actually change the ideological makeup drastically, but it does change it enough. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 85 years old.

I spent so much of the last election cycle trying to get people who hated that woman to understand that they needed to hold their fucking noses and vote for her anyway that it would literally give me stress headaches. And yet they didn't. And wouldn't. And would tell me to stop bugging them about it. And now we have a court that is being set up to rule on gerrymandering, discrimination, religious preference, Roe v. Wade...and we lose. We being progressives. We lose. Each and every time.

Just this session the Court contradicted themselves in decision making process to give conservative wins. In the case of the bakery not serving gay people it was well the committee member made statements showing negative attitudes toward religion (saying that religion has been used to justify slavery and the holocaust, which it was by the way) so the whole decision is tainted. THEN saying that they had to disregard the things Trump said about the travel ban  (I, Donald J. Trump, am calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering this country, among a whole host of other things) and only focus on the ban itself. What? How is that okay? If they had done equal measurements and said that the bakery case was tainted AND the travel ban (the 3rd version or as Giuliani said on fucking air, the version of the Muslim ban that they could do that would pass the courts) was tainted I'm okay with the reasoning though disappointed in the bakery case. If they said that the ruling on the bakery case had to be taken without consideration of what the member of the committee said AND that the Travel ban had to be taken without consideration of what Trump said I'm disappointed the other way but still it's consistent. But this? This is bending the circumstances to find a ruling you want. And this is what we are in for.

Trump says he can pardon himself. You know who will get to decide that? The Supreme Court. You think you were mad when they gave Bush the election over Gore. Just wait.

Momentum going in to the midterm elections was with the Democrats. There was a taste for change. It generally happens that the American people shift the Houses to opposite of the party in the White House. With the gerrymandered districts and voter suppression that's more difficult for Democrats to start. And, let's face it here, Democrats have been AWFUL about showing up at the polls in non-presidential years which is how the gerrymandered districts and voter suppression laws have been able to be passed. But THIS time the momentum was there. Trump is as awful as we thought and there needs to be a check and so THIS time with some former Republicans actually disgusted by him as well we might have seen that blue wave. But...Republicans have always understood the power of  SCOTUS appointments and they vote for SCOTUS appointment control and right now they are getting as solid of a reminder as they can that they need to vote for SCOTUS appointments.

Democrats have never understood the power of the Court.

Republicans have always understood the power of the Court.

If you continue infighting over who is a REAL Democrat and refusing to vote when FAKE Democrats are on the ballot Republicans win. Every single time.

Be smarter. Be more strategic. Be better.

We are all depending on you.

Equality.
Reproductive Rights.
Health Care.
Immigration.
Religious Discrimination.
Voter Rights.

Whatever it takes for you to understand that this is important, focus on that one.

For fuck's sake, focus!



Friday, June 22, 2018

You Still Don't Get It...

Direct message this morning was a link to a story about the picture of the little girl crying next to her mother at the border and the attached story that they weren't separated after that shot.

"What do you think about this????"

My reply was, "I think that's great. The photographer didn't know what happened to them after they got on the van and I'm so glad they weren't separated."

Lots of dots... (the symbol Facebook gives you that someone is typing a reply) lots of waiting.

Lots more dots.

Then no dots.

More waiting.

Dots again.

"It was all a lie. You should be mad that they proved it because now you can't use her to make some sort of liberal point."

"What was a lie? There are over 2000 kids that were separated. That's not a lie. The fact that this little girl wasn't is a good thing. I'm glad. That's what I want. I want the 2000 reunited. I want her to stay with her mom. I want families to stay together."

"You just want to blame OUR president."

"I just want the families put back together. We can talk about the rest later."

"The media just wants to blame Trump...."

And off to the races with the whole Clinton started it routine.

How many times do I have to write it out? I don't care who you feel the need to blame as long as you get mad about what is happening. If it makes you feel better to put it on Clinton or Obama or Santa Claus I really don't care. What I care about is it stopping. Which it looks like it is, though I don't really trust that because there are still a lot of people who can't seem to care about it.

And I don't get that any more than they get me.

These are kids. It really shouldn't be a partisan thing that we aren't cruel to kids.

If you want to say that it's been happening just like this for years then okay, you say that. Though I would ask you why you aren't furious with Fox News and the rest of conservative media? A friend of mine who rarely posts anything political, he's a preacher and it's not good for him to alienate his flock, made the point that if it had been happening and the mainstream media was ignoring it then Hannity and O'Reilly and Limbaugh should have been talking about it. They should have been at the border with cameras and recorders and blasting it every night until it stopped. Because taking kids from their parents is wrong. And it's wrong no matter who is in office.

So if it was happening at the rate of 2000 in a month under Obama I have two questions for you, first off, where are they? That's a lot of kids, where did they go? And secondly, where was the outrage from conservative media? If they knew and they kept quiet they are despicable. If they knew that 2000 kids a month were being taken from their parents and they chose to focus on tan suits and latte salutes and Michelle wearing shorts on Air Force One and yes, even on 4 dead in Benghazi over 2000 kids a month, they really fucked up.

And I can tell you if they had been talking about? Showing it? Recording it? I would have been saying it needs to stop. I don't care who is in office. I really don't. The same way I posted articles about kids in Afghanistan loving cloudy days because that meant the drones weren't flying, the same way I said that dropping bombs on wedding parties was a funny way to gain peace, I don't care who is in office, it doesn't change my mind on the kids.

And the fact that you think I would be mad that a little girl got to stay with her mother means you really don't get it at all.

And that's the real shame.

I already know people care about the politics more than the facts (literally saw someone yesterday delete a fact list because they didn't "feel" it was what they believed). Facts aren't going to carry the day. But I really hope we get to a point where compassion can.

When you care about the politics more than the children then we are lost. Really and truly lost.

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Follow Up...

So the blog I posted a few days ago about cleaning people out of your life that needed to go? I followed that up with a Facebook post also talking about it. Then yesterday I ended up cleaning someone else out for falling into that gap. The we don't agree, but it's more than a disagreement, it's a fundamental difference.

He was arguing a point with me that we disagreed on and that's fine. Then he sent me a PM about how liberals can't seem to understand laws and consequences. And as they say, that was that.

So now the tally is at three so far in the past few days that have been cleared away. I would guess there will be others. I'm trying to feel badly about this, but I just can't find it.

We have gotten extremely tribal. Limiting my friends to people that agree with me on most things will only make that worse for me. However...keeping people around who make me disgusted with their world view won't actually help either. It just reinforces the tribalism. If you post a lie about Planned Parenthood instead of just saying you don't believe in abortion that's a problem. If you argue that liberals are stupid or lawless instead of just saying you have a more conservative viewpoint, that's a problem.

We have to figure out how to talk to each other again. But I will not abide by rudeness in the pursuit of that. If you can't make your point without name calling, no matter how passionately you feel, you need to go sit on the time out step. If you can't voice your opinion without adding a lie to try to bolster your point you really don't have a point at all. We don't have to agree. We never have to agree. But I'm neither stupid nor spineless so don't act like I am.

I would like to see the middle come together. I still think there are more of us than there are of them. I would like to reach compromises with people where we might have issues that we will never agree upon but we focus on the points we can agree on and work towards those. I would like to see more discussion and less hectoring. But I will not put up with the other in search of what I want anymore.

I'm done.

I'm tired of fighting.

I'm tired of having to take a deep breath before I check my notifications.

I'm tired of reading the same cut and paste talking points instead of original thought.

We need to figure out how to talk to each other again. I'll be here ready for the conversation.


Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Time May Change Me...

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things. 1 Corinthians 13:11

(not one Corinthians but first, for any Trumpians out there)

I've been thinking about growing up lately. Not actually doing it, heaven forfend, but the parts that have happened without my permission.

As I talked about earlier I've been sorting and cleaning the house trying to keep my head busy during the hard stretch of June (we are in the hardest of the hard stretches, RIP King George). But part of the sorting and cleaning has been happening on Facebook as well. And it's much more complicated there.

My friend list is actually fairly small, as you would expect for an introvert. It's a little bigger than it would have been due to an online game I played years ago. I made friends with people in that game and I kept the friends even when I stopped playing the game. And then there are old friends that got added as we found each other again.

Sometimes that leads to complications. I would end up with someone on my list that I just don't agree with fundamentally. I'm not talking about a political point that is different than mine, but a fundamental difference with them. I have friends who I will never see eye to eye with about politics. Ones who when they post a link to an article or a meme I know I will roll my eyes and scroll on by. And I also know full well they do the same for my stuff. We disagree about our politics. But we don't fundamentally disagree about something major. For instance, for a stretch I ended up with someone on my list that is a self avowed neo Nazi. Now I had no idea when we became friends that he was, and the first time he said something about being one I wrote it off to hyperbole. My conservative friends over here like to exaggerate that they get called a Nazi no matter what they do. But no, he wasn't kidding. So yeah, fundamental disagreement. This is not a political thing, though obviously our politics did not align, this was a fundamental disagreement about life. Off he went.

The complications come in when you discount that fundamental disagreement for "reasons." I had one the other day that a mutual friend contacted me to see how Brent and I handle it. This was someone who obviously felt strongly in a direction we did not, and who was, let's be blunt, posting really racist shit and couching it in layers of but I'm not a racist because... I had hidden him ages ago. Deep. Like I never saw anything he posts but the original friendship was decades old so unfriending him was not easy. It felt wrong. Another mutual friend of all of ours had done it, sent a very mature note explaining why, and then did it. I'm not that mature. I just hid posts and forgot about him, mostly. Until I was explaining all of this and could hear the justifications in my own reasons. I would NEVER put up with that shit from someone new. I would tell them something along the lines of "Don't want people to call you racist, stop doing racist shit!" and move along. So I unfriended and moved along. Because, to me, when mutual friends see me on that friend list it feels like I am condoning his shit. Like people would see my name there and think, she's SUPER liberal and is friends with him, he must be okay. Probably too high of an opinion of myself, but it is there.

And with this particular person it was also a case of looking back to our childhood years and seeing that he hadn't changed. He was always like that. We just all thought he was kidding. Because we were all being awful to each other in different ways. Teenagers like to push the boundary. At least when we were teens, and within our group. We looked for the soft spots and poked them. Does this hurt? How about now? Still? But, I thought, we were kidding. A little mean, but funny. And then we all grew up and realized how shitty that is and how you can be kind to your friends just as easily as you can tease them. Well, most of us grew up and realized that. Don't get me wrong, I still tease my friends, but I really try to stay on the ornery side of the line, not the I will destroy you side.

And for me there was another piece of looking back that wasn't easy to deal with. I've talked before about growing up and the labels we all deal with, well my best friend was always the pretty one and I was the smart one. People tagged us that way and it stuck. She wasn't dumb though, and I wasn't ugly. But that was the inference in the labeling. But he was the first one to say, "You are prettier than she is." Wow...that was mind blowing. Someone thought I was the pretty one? Looking back it's easy to see that of course I was the pretty one to him. I am white and she is black. It made me feel retroactively shitty about myself. Being vain was bad enough, being vain over a racist thinking white is prettier than black? I needed a Silkwood shower. So part of my attachment to him and our years of friendship and all that was in that package was part of that. I really didn't like it. I can't change it, and honestly I can't really feel badly about it because I didn't know, I hadn't realized, I was still a child. But I can and did change the current status. I'm sure he still has really good points, his family loves him, I just have a fundamental difference with him that is insurmountable.

And that's where I am standing right now. There is a lot of talk about our personal bubbles and how if we only interact with people that think like we do we will never be exposed to other ideas. And I do believe that, to a point. But I also believe that if you reach a point where you look at the relationship and you have no other points of contact but disagreements, that's not helpful either. If every time you get a notice that they've commented you have to take a deep breath before you read it, you aren't learning from each other. If you know that if you met them on the street you wouldn't spend a moment with them because you are fundamentally different then don't keep them around. Clean it off. Don't act like a child. You aren't.

So yeah, I grew up. Not willingly, and you all know not even close to completely, but it's still a good thing. Get rid of the things and people that do not suit you anymore. Don't justify keeping the baggage. Goodwill, and good riddance are your friends.

Now if you'll excuse me I have someone else that needs cleared off my list and few more things to sort out of my house.

(Oh and the Bible verse? Don't get excited or worried, the good thing about being agnostic is a good quote is a good quote no matter the source material.)








Monday, June 11, 2018

Check Up...

I was listening to the Id10t podcast this morning and was struck by something the guest said. Chris Hardwick was interviewing Howie Mandel, who suffers from OCD and has been public about it since being outed on a Howard Stern radio broadcast. He thought at that moment his career was over. There was such a stigma still around mental illness that he thought, no one is going to hire me, no one is going to watch me, this is it, it's all over. Instead what happened was a huge group of people started contacting him and letting him know they suffered from the same disease. That it was so nice to hear someone famous say that they had it (even if he had no idea he was being broadcast live at the time). Basically how nice it was not to be alone.

Which is what all of us want right? That feeling of belonging? To know that we are not the only ones who feel a certain way, or think a certain thing, or are hindered by wonky brain chemistry. But that wasn't the part that struck me. It's what else he said, about mental health in general.

We don't check for problems.

 (paraphrasing)
Most of us go to the dentist twice a year for cleanings and exams. Most of the time the result is, everything looks good and we go on our way. But we check for problems. We don't do that with mental health. Nobody just gets a mental health check to make sure everything is fine.

That just struck me as amazing. Because it's so true.

I get blood work done every couple of years to make sure my blood sugar and cholesterol are okay. I get my blood pressure taken every single time I go to the doctor. But aside from the past year when they added the "How do you feel and how much are you drinking" questions to the intake exam nobody checks on my mental health. Not really. There is no test that is run to see how I am really doing. No detailed questionnaire that might reveal issues. Nothing.

And yet, we blame mental health for everything.

There were two high profile suicides last week and a report from the CDC about the increase in suicide over the past 20 years or so. Every single time there is a mass shooting in the US we blame mental health. But we don't bother to check up on our own, or anyone else. If depression means that you kill yourself, if another imbalance means that you decide to kill others, isn't that worth a yearly check up more than a cavity in a tooth?

Now, I can tell you that people would fight it. It's the fight I get from my gun lovers when they want to talk mental health instead of abundance of guns as an issue. When I say, "Okay, fine, then are you willing to have a complete mental health work up before you are allowed to buy guns or ammo?" and of course they aren't. Invasion of privacy! Stigma! Bias! But still we blame mental health for the problem.

Depression lies. I've talked about it before. The Bloggess and Wil Wheaton both write about depression in ways I never could, but in ways that show what it's like to live with it and battle it. Medication helps some, and makes it worse in others. It's a real tricky thing trying to balance brain chemistry. And sometimes it doesn't work and people die from depression. Yet we don't add it to the list of things we get checked out annually.

It just struck me as a shocking thing.



Friday, June 8, 2018

Sort it Out...

When I pick Brent up from work we talk about what we did with our days. His work stuff, my house stuff. This past week it's all been sorting and cleaning from me. I've been getting rid of extra things and I have a plan to tackle the whole house by mid-June.

He listened on Wednesday to my plan to get rid of some things that are tucked away not really in the way of anything in a space that we don't really need, "Hunh, normally I know what triggers the crazy. This time I'm not sure."

"It's June."

"Ah."

See, one of my crazy things is tossing out our things. My family back home tends to lean toward the hoarder side. When I was growing up one of my responsibilities was cleaning the house. It made me crazy that I couldn't keep it clean for more than a few minutes. The sheer amount of STUFF that had to be moved to dust or vacuum, the piles of things I would send to respective bedrooms that would migrate right back out the to common areas, it made me nuts. But growing up poor I really do love the fact that I can have things now. Books and pretty things that do nothing but look pretty, coloring books, magnets, just stuff. So "my crazy" is that I don't like stuff to be around but I still like stuff to have.

So it's a weird balancing act.

I reach a point where I look around the house and see too much clutter and I get rid of a lot of stuff. Then I regret that I got rid of a lot of stuff because it was something I was sentimentally attached to, or something that I might not use often but when I needed it, it was the only thing that would work. The normal trigger is trip home. Being in my mother's house with the abundance of stuff makes me itchy. I know from experience it's not clean enough. There is no way to dust around that many knick knacks. Plus a few dogs and cats to add hair to every surface? And living in a desert? It's dusty and furry and it makes me go home, deep clean and toss my own stuff. Which I then regret because I no longer have my stuff.

Over the years I've come up with a stop gap. I sort and "toss" but instead of driving right over to the thrift shop to donate it sits in the garage on a shelf for a few months. If I don't go pull it back then it can go away. But I have pulled back enough stuff now to know it's a good system. And I try really hard not to worry about things that are tucked away. And to get Brent to understand the oddness in my hatred of clutter and yet still having piles of things I'm working on. I know it's crazy, but it's my crazy and he's used to it now. I have other good points that keep all of my crazy things in the he deals with it column.

But there was no trip home to trigger it this year.

Just June.

June is a hard month for me. Or at least the first half. I've talked before about how much it shocks me that losing my dad affected me so much. I left home at 18 and I was incredibly independent before that, partly because that's who I am and partly because my parents really didn't want to be parenting by the time I came around. I am much younger than my siblings and I was unplanned. In fact not only unplanned but planned against. Condoms don't always work, kids, this is your lesson. Anyway...my mother tells a story about being in the hospital with me right after I was born and telling me that they had already rearranged their lives for kids and they weren't doing it again. I would be setting my schedule to theirs. And so I was on three meals a day and sleeping through the night very early. My mother has a very strong will.

But that sort of set up how I was raised. They took a much less active role in my upbringing. My oldest brother talks about how it was like we had different parents. And it's pretty true, we did. The ones that raised him were reeling from the loss of their first baby Marsha at birth, and the loss of another baby Marcia after John was born, and then the loss of our brother Mark when he was only 6 or 7, and having John, Jeff and Susan still to take care of when they probably wanted to just stop and grieve. By the time I was born they thought they were out of the baby business and were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. John was 14 and in high school, Susan (the youngest) was 7 and in school full time as well. They were on the downslope.

In some ways it worked out fine. I became a pretty good problem solver and I am not one to need anyone's approval for what I am doing. In other ways it was disastrous, the stretch where my sister was having her issues which became my issues and I didn't feel like I had anyone to turn to, to protect me. It all leaves marks.

But all of it together made me an independent child who left home at 18 and lived a pretty separate life. So I was surprised when Dad died how hard it hit me. I hadn't been a Daddy's girl. I wasn't tied to my family back in New Mexico for my daily existence. But just having him there. Knowing he was around if I needed him. Knowing he was there for my mother, who needed him to balance herself out. Well it hit me hard. And continues to hit me hard at times.

Like June.

June is a hard month. At least until after Father's Day passes and I can get out of the bog of memories of the phone call and the trip home and the funeral. And each year it's hard in a different way. And each year it's a surprise that it's still hard. Like really, it's been 8 years, I should be able to mark it as a date and not dwell. But dwell I do. I get very introspective. Even for me. And I'm a navel gazer from way back. I get very emotional and moody and withdrawn. Things affect me that wouldn't normally. But I'm aware of it, so I deal with it.

This year the way I chose to deal with it was by focusing on the house. Getting things cleared out that needed cleared. Cleaning things that needed cleaned. It was a good plan except that it isn't really working. It's a manic task and I'm not manic in June. At least in the first half. But I'm still plugging away at it. It's enough to keep me busy. Which is what my dad would want. He was a busy guy. So I will keep busy too.

And that's really what June brings. A time to reconnect with the man that raised me. The quiet man. The dedicated man. The family man. The good man. And to clear out the clutter of the stuff that doesn't matter. June is hard. But it's also good.

Remember those that you've lost.
Honor them in your own way.
Live your crazy everyday.


Friday, June 1, 2018

Contract Work...

Lori stood on the back porch with the surveyor.  Her dream yard stretched out in front of them. Rolling hill of grass leading to a tree line that sloped down to a creek. She swore to her husband she had dreamed about it all her life before seeing it in person. Not dreamed of something like it, but of this exact yard. This exact space. They had gotten the house and the land for a great price. It was destiny. Her dream.

Now verging on nightmare.

"Yes, you are right, there is a problem."

"Shit, sorry, excuse my language." Lori said.

"Nah, that's probably about the right reaction. It's not the worst I've heard, and to be frank with you it's probably not the worst you are going to say."

"So it's bad?"

The surveyor nodded, "Yeah it's bad. You've got a definite structural weakness. You can see the bowing. It's pretty thin. You could have a breach at any point I would say."

"So can I do something to shore it up? Some plants maybe?"

"Rosemary or mint might help, but then you've got a different problem. Unless you plant mint in a container it tends to spread like crazy. And if you are pulling up the mint and hit a weak spot? The whole thing could go. And what if you get an infestation of bugs? What you really don't want is another mass die off in the area."

"Well I could just make sure I treated for bugs religiously."

"And what happens to the bugs you are treating?"

Lori sighed, "Right. They die. No massive die offs. So what do you suggest?"

The surveyor let out a long sigh then tapped her front teeth with her pen. "Hmm, well, you've got a thin spot for sure, you are close to a breach from the way it's bulging, how quickly can you move?"

Lori laughed a little then realized that the surveyor wasn't joking. "Move? Seriously? It can't be fixed?"

"I can put you in touch with a few experts but here is the problem as I see it. You're dealing with at least three issues and they are conflicting issues. You've got two that are in direct conflict with each other, so you fix one and the other one gets worse. And then you've got the underlying issue that started the whole thing, as far as I can tell, and that one is in conflict with the other two so you try and fix the other two and you are possibly making the first one worse."

"As far as you can tell? Do you mean there could be even more damage than the three issues you can see?"

"Well there is more damage than the three main issues. Right now things are kind of pooling in the area. You are drawing in things that on their own wouldn't be an issue, but because they've all joined..."

"Fuck."

The surveyor nodded, "Yep."

Lori could feel a headache coming on. "So three main issues, plus added damage because of the pooling effect, a bulge, and a weak spot?"

"Technically the bulge is from the weak spot. So I'd count that as one thing. You shore up the weak spot and the bulge doesn't matter anymore. A thick bulge is just a bump, not a problem. It's the thinness that you are concerned with. That breaks and you've got more issues."

"Do I? I mean, is that guaranteed? Could the flood just spread and clear out?"

The surveyor looked at her like she was nuts. And maybe she was, but really what was the damage from a breach? Could it be nothing to worry about?

"Ma'am, I understand you really want this to not be a problem, but you've got at least a thousand ghosts pressed up against that barrier waiting to come out. And they aren't happy ones. You've got a Civil War battle still being waged on top of a Native American massacre. Nobody in there is happy. Nobody is going to be Casper. You're looking at a Class Two invasion."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. So what would you suggest if it were just one thing?"

"Well, you only get thin spots like that when there has been a mass die off. A natural disaster, or a war, or a mass murder. You've got at least two. There might have been a natural disaster that started it that I can't see. The Native American massacre happened to claim the land." The surveyor flipped through her clipboard notes, "There aren't many records of it, but there was a tribe here and then there were settlers. So you fill in the blanks and understand what happened. If that had been it we might be able to find some descendants of the settlers to apologize and some descendants of the tribe to show they survived. That can sometimes bring peace to those still wanting to attend to business on this side. But it's more complicated when you are dealing with tribes. For instance, there often aren't descendants to find. Entire tribes were wiped out. And if you find them and they aren't doing as well as the descendants of the settlers? Well..."

"Okay, we'll come back to that. What about the Civil War battle? Maybe if we clear them out that would relieve the pressure while we figure out what to do about the other?" Lori was thinking that her husband was part Kickapoo so maybe he could appeal to them as at least a Native American owned the land again, maybe. Of course, that would only work if they hadn't had conflict with the Kickapoo, she was going to have to try and figure out who was on this land a few hundred years ago.

"Battle deaths are complicated. Each side is in conflict with the other." she gestured toward the yard, "They don't even know who won. So you bring in descendants and you might get some that are still angry about the outcome. Right? Now you've got one half that is fine and one half that is not. And you might even end up with a fight on your lawn between the descendants. We're still fighting this war, after all, we just fight it with words and flags now."

Lori closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "So you suggest moving? Doesn't that just shift the problem to the next owners? And don't I have to disclose that in the sale anyway?"

"Supernatural phenomena? No. You don't have to disclose that. Most people don't believe in it, so it's not a category. Just price it under market value and get out."

Lori smirked. "At least now I know why it was so cheap."

The surveyor nodded. "Next time call us when you get the home inspection done. You don't have to say why we are inspecting, but it's always a good idea. For now, stay out of that area of the yard. Salt your thresholds, plan your move." She held out a card to Lori.

"Thanks."

The surveyor walked back to her car after telling Lori to move one last time. Move from her dream location. How in the world was she supposed to just let it all go? Lori stared out at her dream yard and watched as a squirrel ran across the grass carrying an acorn for his stash. She loved her yard and her house. She was still smiling when the hawk crashed through the trees and snatched the squirrel from the ground. As the hawk screamed, the squirrel died and the breach opened...