I See Dead People

When hubby and I bought our new home we got more than we had bargained for. You see apart from minor- that later turned into major renovations we also inherited a tenant that lurks around our property and enjoys playing tricks on us. Whether you believe it or not, we have a ghost! The late husband of the previous owner‘s spirit still roams around and whenever we criticize any of his former DIY projects that we now have to fix, or do anything he disapproves off he loses his temper with poltergeist like flare.
Our haunting started out like most do: We moved in! At first it started with small annoyances for which there could have been any number of scientific explanations. A light bulb exploding hardly would raise any suspicion of paranormal activity, but when it happens frequently and a pattern that has nothing to do with faulty electrical wiring emerges one starts to think twice. The same holds true for our elaborate alarms system that would go off at the most inconvenient times for no earthly reason and even after being inspected by a technician no fault with the system could be identified. And no, it’s not just electrical interference through which he likes making his presence known; he also has a sense of humor which I hardly find amusing. Our ghost likes hiding sunglasses, keys and mobile phones and he especially enjoys doing this when you are late for work. The punch line being that once you return home the item would be placed neatly back at the same spot where you were looking for it that morning.
Perhaps the strangest event was when friends of ours came over to visit with their kids. We had only been living here for two weeks and removed the majority of the knick knacks that were hidden and scattered around the garden, ranging from flower pots, broken water features and hideous molded sculptures. Our friend, her daughter and youngest son ventured into our back garden and all three saw the sculpture of a monkey - the same sculpture that we removed the week prior and were no longer there! After their visit the daughter told her mother that she didn’t like our house and the father concurred later telling us that he sensed a spirit in and around our home.
The previous owners popped by our house a week later to bring the last set of keys we were owed. Knowing that wife and daughter of our ghost were pretty open-minded I told them what was happening in the house. Not exactly knowing what reaction I was seeking I was flabbergasted by their response. They confirmed that the husband and father was still in the house and was sitting on our bed in our bedroom. After briefly hyperventilating thinking we have had sex on that bed where the ghost is sitting, I tried to composed myself and before I could prevent the words from spewing out of my mouth I said “Well then, Tell him to leave - God damn it!” They responded by saying he would leave when he was ready to go. Not at all the answer I was hoping for as I was secretly wishing they would leave him a spiritual forwarding address and accompanying taxi fare.
The old man’s favorite spot on the property was a workshop in which he used to build model trains. This spot I suspect was also his hiding place when he wanted peace and quiet and to get away from his wife and daughter. When we moved in his workshop seemed the perfect place for an outside entertainment area and it was promptly demolished and revamped to become a covered Moroccan Patio. We also noticed that this spot was the one place on the property our cats refused to go near. As work progressed trouble started, first there was a wasp infestation that took weeks to chase away, and then the one automated garage door refused to work and would open by itself whenever it felt like it. The final straw was this past weekend with our housewarming. We decided to have the party under the patio and everything was going well up until round about 11:30 pm – our ghost’s bedtime. He decided we partied enough and electricity to the patio area was cut off. Several trips to the main power board inside the house were pointless as the power kept tripping, so we finished off the party under moonlight with candles. The next morning, in denial about our haunting yet again, I tried to find the electrical problem, and again there was none and everything was working perfectly and was back to normal.
We live in a haunted house with an old man that does not like being criticized. I suspect he may also disapprove of our live style, friends, pets, taste in furniture and art. He died just over a year and a half ago and doesn’t seem like he wants to leave. Even though he is still here, it is strange but I am not scared. It’s kind of comforting knowing I am not alone on the property when no-one else is around. He may stay for as long as he wishes on condition that he doesn’t break anything else, accept the fact that the queers have moved in and due to the fact that he’s dead he forfeits any voting rights or opinions regarding future alteration to the property.

...Till next time....

Gay Ghost (pt 1)

Existential Crisis!

Last week the bulk of my week were spent getting quotes for several projects hubby and I still have to complete around our house. Phase II of our renovations is about to start and I am looking forward to it with as much enthusiasm of a prostitute about to catch crabs for the 40th time. Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to the end result but having gone through this less than four months ago, the fights with contractors and the mess they make while working are still very fresh and somewhat raw in my memory. As the quotes started rolling in I was shocked not only at the prices but the fact that the warranties and guarantees on services and products reminded me that I am getting old(er). On the precipice of a full blown existential crisis about ageing, I had to make myself stop and ask, is growing older such a dreadful thing?
Presently I am slightly sensitive about the “ageing” thing. You see on Thursday I will be celebrating surviving another trip around the sun. Yes, it’s my birthday and I shall be celebrating my 31st birthday for the 3rd consecutive year. Normally I don’t dread my birthday as I quite enjoy the attention, the gifts, the phone calls and the potential fire hazard of the ever increasing number of candles on my birthday cake. But this year it seems there are constant reminders that I am hurdling towards the wrong side of thirty. In just a few more years I shall be sliding down the slippery slope to 40. Soon I’ll be 40 and middle aged!
Not being an advocate for self-torture, I horribly disappointed myself the last few days as I was doing exactly that. To the great annoyance of my husband, every time we received a quote or made a new purchase I obsessively checked the warranties and guarantees. Then compulsively made my calculations to determine when a certain product would need to be replaced and then, to both our horrors, calculated our estimated ages at that time. “These lamps have a 3 year warranty so I will be 36 and you 37 when they start giving problems. The light bulbs have a 8 year guarantee so they’ll keep until I am 41, the sails have a 15 year non-fade guarantee so that brings us to 48 and 49 respectively when they’d need replacing”. With each agonising calculation the inevitability of father time’s persistent pursuit of pilfering my “youth” became more terrifying.
Before reaching a full blown existential crisis about my mortality, the cruelty of nature and the toll gravity is taking and still will take on my body; I forced myself to take a mental “time out” and stopped my silly pre-mental-breakdown. “So what? I am getting older, so is everybody else! What am I so damn afraid off?” After some self-resentment and allot sulking for being bitchy with myself, I realized I am not afraid of growing old, after all I will be doing so with my husband and we will be gay, grey and crumpled together. So why then am I so emotional about this birthday?
Celebrating my birthday reminds me of all the wonderful years I have had on this lovely planet earth and the many more I hope to still have. I am reminded of all the good times and also those bad times some of which I often rather would want to forget. Sadly, the last few years my birthday also reminded me of all the marvellous people I had in my life and later lost. You see, for many years on my birthday the first phone call I would receive was from my grandmother. This would always happen just before six o’clock in the morning while I would still be fast asleep. I use to find this irritating, but now that it no longer happens I miss it. The second phone call would follow shortly after my granny’s wake-up call and it would be from my mother – her voice now too has faded with so many others and this birthday reminds me of all of them and how exceptional they were and how precious life truly is.
Every couple of years I experience a nostalgic spell brought forth by some minor incident causing me to wonder down a labyrinth of remarkable memories, most of which I will cherish for life. This year the pending and lasting renovation that we have done and are yet to do evoked a sense of fleetingness. We are making permanent and positive changes to our home that will outlast both of us. In the coming years and birthdays I shall see the plants and trees in my garden grow and flourish while watching our home evolve as we mature. More voices will be silenced with whom I would have loved to share more special moments. Old phone calls on my birthday will be replaced with new ones and I will treasure each and every one of them. Old memories will be amassed with new ones, as time and life goes on.
Thursday is my birthday and I will be turning 33. This will be a very special birthday as I have so much to celebrate and be grateful for. In the last few years I have learned many important and also some very entertaining lessons. The most important one being that life is something very complicated, very special, very unpredictable and constantly evolving. We are only here for a brief period of time and we should revel every moment, seek out every joy, love every person and never take it or ourselves too seriously. In a few years I will be forty and middle aged, and that is ok! So here’s to celebrating another successful round-trip around the sun with all I hold dear and for many more journeys to come and loads of more stories to share!

Till next time.

Roseanne Barr And Jackie Beat Make Up Diva

Suburbia, Porn & Bubble Wrap

The last few days were spent in a semi-controlled chaos decorated with boxes, bubble wrap and unfamiliar keys. We finally managed to move into our new house and are now officially Stepford Fags living in suburbia. Even though the whole move was planned weeks in advance and all arrangements and preparations was in place, life has taught me one important lesson – no matter how well prepared you are, there will always be something that goes wrong!
Having 3 neurotic cats, that are highly strung and do not take well to change, the move would be traumatic for them. Knowing this I paid a visit to our veterinarian to get some magic potion that would ease the transition for our 3 furry bundles of joy. I received 3 syringes containing bright yellow fluid and was promised this would calm them down and put them in a deep sleep that would last roughly 8 hours. The morning of the move hubby and I woke up at 6am in order to dispense the medication. Anyone that has ever given medication to a cat will tell you it’s a skill! We decided to separate the 3 and we would work as a team, one tightly holding a cat while the other would open the cat’s mouth and squirt in the medication. Sounds simple enough but it wasn’t, 20 minutes and many scratches later all 3 were “medicated”.
As our cats’ medicine started to kick in and they were stumbling around in a drunken haze, we prepared the house for the movers. Naturally we picked a moving company with the gayest name we could find – Gigi! Expecting them to only arrive at 8am we thought we had plenty of time to prepare, but they were early and annoyingly efficient! We left the packing of the bedroom for last, as we didn’t want to upset the cats prematurely. When the movers arrived they worked at such a fast pace that we ended up frantically dumping everything that was left in the bedroom into the remaining boxes. At this point it also became clear that the cats’ dosages weren’t strong enough as they were not sleeping. The smallest one (the Diva!) was not going to have any of this and violently refused her cooperation to the great disinterest of the other 2 who were both very chilled out only voicing their confusion and discontent every so often with an off pitched and slurred meow and a one eyed glazed stare.
Two and a half hours later and the move were completed. We were surrounded with boxes that needed unpacking, a mammoth task especially if you aren’t sure where to put everything. The better part of the day was spent opening boxes, cleaning, moving around furniture and trying to calm down 3 critters that were sobering up and not happy. Allot of sweat and a few silent breakdowns later our first evening arrived at which time we decided to take a break and just take it all in. Tired as hell we both fell onto our couches wanting to unwind in front of the television at which point we learned our satellite dish was not working. Too tired to care we had a nice bottle of wine next to the pool and went to sleep in our curtainless bedroom with our hung over cats.
Early the next morning we were awoken by the sounds of suburbia preparing for its day and birds welcoming the early morning sun. After a brief breakfast we continued slaving away. More boxes, more bubble wrap! I phoned a repair company to fix our satellite dish and they arrived a few hours later. I was informed that something on the dish was fried. While they were busy with their little gadgets, hubby and I tackled the remaining boxes. On completion of the repairs the technician and his assistant called me and started to demonstrate where all the different channels were saved and where to find all our additional entertainment systems on our television. However, when he came to the DVD player I discovered, to my horror, we had forgotten a DVD in there. A Porn DVD was now being broadcasted on our 21 inch screen to an audience of very shocked and embarrassed people. The technician quickly changed channels, mumbled something and exited the lounge where I was left blushing with his assistant who by now had taken a few steps away from me. After the technician had composed himself he returned gave me my invoice, I paid him and pretended like nothing happened. However, I am sure all his friends and colleagues have been told this story by now.
Over the weekend most of our unpacking was done. Holes were drilled, picture frames and art went onto the walls and the house started to feel like home. Our cats slowly acclimatized to their new surroundings and grudges about being drugged and uprooted soon became a distant memory as they settled into their new routine. I am still struggling to figure out which key unlocks what door and going to bed at night now takes 10 minutes longer as we have thousands of doors to lock. Much still needs to be done, and renovations will continue for some time to come, but like a friend told me “Once you buy a house the work never ends”. For now we will tackle one renovation job at a time, put allot of love into each project and slowly watch our new home bloom. I am sure there will be many more frustrations, embarrasments and tantrums but all will be worth it at the end!

Till next time.

Ellen Degeneres - Here & Now

Madness, Paint & Chandeliers

It is official, the purchase of our new home have been finalized. After literally months of searching we finally found our perfect little retreat nestled away in a beautifully treed and quiet neighborhood. The house or rather, as the real estate agent described it, “The Villa” initially had some not so pleasing elements that we decided should go as I just can’t live with pink walls, 1970’s porno ceiling beams and chandeliers straight from Dracula’s dungeon. This was just some of the cosmetic changes we had envisaged. However, after the old lady cleared out all the stuff she had accumulated during her 74 years on this planet, the canvas changed horrifically and I was left asking: What have we let ourselves in for?

For some bizarre reason I decided to be a Good Samaritan last week and help the old lady move out of our newly purchased home. You see she’s old and only had her daughter to help her with the mammoth task of clearing out the house that ended up filling 2 truckloads to the rim with over 400 boxes and furniture that could fill a museum. Luckily, the movers were efficient and my role was only a supervisory one but it took 9 hours that I will never get back. Once only the skeleton remained it was time for her to say farewell. We had to arm the alarm and leave. Sounds simple, but it wasn’t. We had to go through the motion 4 times, as we only had 60 seconds to get out. The 1st attempt we made it to the lounge where she broke down in tears, with the alarm screaming I consoled her, disarmed the alarm and tried again. The 2nd attempt we made to the kitchen, the 3rd attempt we almost cleared the pool area. Only on the 4th attempt did we succeed. After just over 20 years living in that house she had a deep emotional investment in every brick, stone and plant which made parting with 2 decade’s worth of memories understandably difficult and for this I did had empathy for her.
The next day hubby and I went to inspect our new property. It’s amazing how furniture can disguise ugly flaws. With the home now bare and the naked truth revealed, hubby and I were standing in the lounge trying not to hyperventilate and with the pink room spinning the realization sank in – the house is going to need a lot of work and it wasn’t going be cheap! I didn’t know whether to cry or throw up, I think I did a little of both. After the initial shock wore off we devised a plan of action. We needed to paint and get new light fixtures. Pink would be replaced with a tranquil and pale grayish blue and the beams from hell would be painted white, hopefully this would make them less obtrusive to my now very frail psyche. The same day we interviewed a contractor to do the painting. He smelled of alcohol and had a very smooth mouth but the selling point was he was cheap and thorough when he’s sober. So he was hired.
Early the following morning I received a call from my father-in-law saying that we were going shopping for paint and equipment. Arriving at the DIY store, hubby gave me the code for the paint we decided on over the phone. We searched every paint sample in the whole store but could not find a match. Later, after a short fight over the phone, I realized I wrote down the wrong code and the paint was found. Father-in-law was extremely patient and helpful and the fact that I was highly strung and behaving like hot-wired bitch did not faze him. All the equipment and paint was selected and hubby and I went back later that afternoon to purchase everything. By this time we already had about 3 miniature fall outs over stupid things.
The contractors started painting and as the pink started disappearing and the ugly beams became camouflaged the house was slowly transforming into something livable. Shopping for light fixtures was next on the list. We decided on brushed steel as the theme. Going from shop to shop and short momentarily fits of madness and some bickering we thought we would end up living with candles – we could not find anything we both liked. Had we been on a reality show the ratings would have shot through the roof as some of our public squabbles, insisting staff brings us step ladders in order to measure things and two blond gay guys inspecting lights as if it was the most important historical artifact in the history of mankind must have been hilarious. Eventually, to the great relief of many shop assistants I am sure, we came to a compromise on 6 out of the 7 items, not bad considering both hubby and I are stubborn and customers from hell.
With our bank balances taking strain and our bank manager happily rubbing his little greedy hands together while smiling we are not even close to what we want to have done. Being quite responsible, I do realize that only truly rich people can do a full renovation of a property all at once. For us normal folk we have to settle with doing what you can when you can afford it. Our big move is scheduled for next week, which is a whole other nightmare as no moving company has provided us with a quote yet and the clock is ticking! Worst case scenario – we will have to do it ourselves. Oh the horror of carrying heavy appliances down a flight of stairs… From my experience thus far I have reached an epiphany regarding relationships and real estate: A couple that can renovate together and still stay together in all probability will remain together forever.

Till next time.

Lady Gaga - Bad Romance