Spooky Stuff

Dearest Rachel –

Yes, I know Halloween was over three weeks ago, but the days continue to get shorter, and the nights continue to get longer – and there are still spooky things that come out of the woodwork as time goes by.

I woke up this morning with an idea in my head to write you about (based on my current situation, as well as memories of last year at this time, so it wasn’t that hard to put together), and promptly sent it off without a second thought. It wasn’t until I actually got up and out of bed, and sat in front of my computer to do my morning reading that it struck me – this is the twenty-third of the month. It’s been ten months to the day since the accident, and I didn’t notice it right off the bat.

I was wondering how long it would take before I would stop noticing the months as they went by. Guess I have my answer. It’s almost scary how soon it was that I forgot; not even a year.

Or maybe not. I mean, as soon as I saw what day it was, here I am reminding you about reminding myself. So it may well be a very long time that I read Proverbs 23 and not think about it being an anniversary of ‘that day.’ To be sure, the wisdom of that chapter doesn’t really much apply to the events of that day, or how I should deal with them – apart from the last section, which seems to recommend against drowning whatever sorrows I might have, as that will just make things that much worse.

I follow a handful of our favorite YouTubers on Twitter these days. One of them, Rebecca Parham (Let Me Explain Studios) is somehow determined to present herself as the quintessential perky goth girl. So just the other day, she polled her followers:

As you can tell, I joined the majority on this, but with a caveat, about which I replied to her:

Because – and you might remember this from her Draw My Life episode we watched so long ago – she lost her father some seven years ago. And while it might be presumptuous to say so, I dare say we understand each other a little bit for having this level of loss in common. I’m pretty sure that if she had him around – or I you – we wouldn’t even bother to charge rent.

That being said, I don’t know how things would work out if the ghosts and landlords were swapped. What would she say about a ghost fangirling it up while she’s trying to work?

Today’s third story comes from the fact that I simply cannot abide those little red dots in the corner of my apps. If there’s a phone message, an email, a new video that’s come up and I’m being notified, I have to go to the app and clear that red notification dot. The dating app is particularly aggravating in that respect, because I find myself going through every part of the app in order to try and clear it, and it doesn’t always work to clear the dot, for whatever reason. But I still go there, and try to respond to those who address me, or sift through the candidates the app offers me more or less every evening, in order to try to get that little red dot to go away.

Last night, I responded to a smile I received from a girl I will refer to as… Ruby, because it’s what she called herself.

Now, I would expect you to chide me for putting this up here with her own name and face – and ordinarily, I’d agree with you about it – but hear me out. As we were chatting within the app, there’s a little icon with the main information atop the chat box (presumably so you can keep track of who you’re talking to and all that – don’t want to be addressing one girl by another’s name or something stupid like that, after all), and I noticed something… off… about it.

Yeah, the location changed. That’s not a good sign. It even did it again later on.

But, be that as it may, we exchanged email addresses, and in the morning, I opened my email to find this wall of text:

I don’t know about you, honey, but I look at this, and I find myself reacting like Doctor Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap, no?

Most likely, I’m dealing with yet another catfish who’s trying way too hard (that’s my guess, especially seeing as to the fact that she had deleted her profile from the app by this morning – which is why I’ve no compelling reason not to put up excerpts from it), or if she’s real, she’s desperate to sell herself to someone. Either way, this is spooky stuff, and I’ve got no time to deal with this right now. Even the entertainment value is a bit low, what with the holidays and travel coming up.

But I still can’t bring myself to drop her flat. Let’s just see where this goes for a day or two, and if she winds up haunting my cabin, there are always subjects I can bring up to scare her off.

Maybe I can even squeeze some rent out of her.

Take care, honey. Talk to you later.