Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine was definitely action-packed. I was a dead bride, complete with scary makeup, a handmaid black veil (thanks Caitlin), and bouquet of weeds. Sam was Driver, and yes, he sewed that scorpion on the back of his jacket all by himself. I would like to remind you all to vote on your two favorite stories/photos. Links to all of the stories are in the post below. At the moment we have a three-way tie, which simply will not do.

It's time to vote!!!

Today is the the day. This is your chance to participate in the democratic process and vote for the winners of This Contest is Haunted 2011.

I've thought a lot about this, and since we have three photo entries and many more stories, I would like you to vote for your two favorites, regardless of category. In case you are undecided, you may find all of the entries here, here, here, and here.

Please vote in the comments, or if you would prefer to be anonymous you can email me at rachel.wri@gmail.com. I will tally up the results on Monday.

Go!

This Contest is Haunted IV

Wow. Here are the final two entries for the finest creative horror-fest I have ever been witness to. I had no idea my friends were more talented than the writers of Child's Play (I saw it for the first time the other night. It was actually pretty stupid), but you are. You really, really are.

8) The Origins of Elias

I first met Elias when I looking at a house in Mississippi as a potential roommate.  Al and Elias were sitting on the couch on the front porch when I pulled up on my bike.  We began dancing that dance of getting to know each other, except I’m pretty sure they were just making sure I wasn’t too straight-laced for the house.  The most interesting part of our exchange was when I reciprocated in asking where they were from.  Al, a pleasantly round and jolly sort, replied he was from Arizona.  Elias, being the weasel-y looking odd sort, replied he was the result of a bad night for two drunk badgers who had eaten rancid tacos.

Despite this first encounter I moved in, and quickly learned that Al, and especially Elias, were fans of whiskey.  And wine.  And chain smoking on the front porch ad infinitum.  Al worked at a factory in Swan Island, and although he commuted by bike, one day he was able to come back with an industrial sized spool of rope.  Elias, being the questionable character he was, decided to work on his knot tying.  The apex of his efforts coincided with one night I had people round for dinner.  We were eating our communal flan dessert when he entered the room with a series of nooses tied onto a length of rope.  He proposed an experiment, which was not received well by the group. 

But I digress.  This is meant to be a scary story.  In case the idea that your Craigslist-found roommate wanted to hang you and your friends (and for how long had he been planning this?) wasn’t terrifying enough.  In which case I will flesh out the mysterious origins of Elias.  Or how the night of his conception begat the man who interrupted my dinner party with a suggestion for a group hanging. 

It had indeed been a very bad night for those two badgers.  Normally without second thought for would-be predators, these two brazenly drank agave fermented in the bowels of New Mexican hell to hallucinating excess.  They feasted on their spicy spoilt trash tacos until their stomachs were distended and grotesque.  Belching and emitting the most foul of odors they caroused wantonly throughout the forests.  Until, that is, they were accosted by it. 

It was a stringy haired whore; whose body was covered in pulsating herpes blisters that popped in such rapid succession it was like young innocents blithely stomping packing material.  Its thin lips barely concealed teeth blackened by tooth decay it had developed while still in its mother’s syphilis infected womb.  It was bent over, afflicted not only with bread back, but severe spinal disintegration.  Surely this sorry collection of diseased cells with a pulse was on the verge of imminent death.  It was.  However, that biological impulse to procreate gave this monster one last ounce of strength, when, having encountered the badgers, it overtook them and had its way.  I mean, its way. Nasty nasty sex acts that that I will not pass on.  Think R. Kelly multiplied infinitely.  The badgers did not survive.

However, due to the incredible amount of biological activity that resulted from the combination of tequila from hell, trash tacos, herpes and tooth decay, a fetus developed.  Not more than 2 days later, when it had taken its last breath and evacuated its bowels for the last time, Elias emerged.  Mostly formed and ready to crawl his way to 4187 North Albina.  Ready to scare us, scare us all to hell.

9) The Godforsaken

Denver’s annual zombie crawl is upon us once again. Last year was my first encounter with this disturbing phenomenon, having just moved to the city from Wyoming a few weeks before All Hallows’ Eve. I’ve since discovered that the living dead are drawn toward urban areas as there are just far greater opportunities for feasting on human flesh than out in the sticks. I had never before encountered so many fucking zombies in my entire life.

Sure, you have your enterprising ones disguised as traveling salesmen or delivery drivers come to the ranch every so often, but being loners, these specimens are easily dealt with, relatively. You can spot them by their jaunty walk, and occasionally then have scars of gaping wounds, but they usually know enough to cover those up. Three guns are necessary. At least a twelve-gauge rifle, the biggest shotgun you can get your hands on, and a pistol with a decent kick. An initial shotgun blast to the midsection slows them down as they approach—don’t wait to see what they’re selling, to be sure, they’re peddling your goddamn demise—after the first shot, they’ll be dazed but don’t think you’re done. As they’re staggering and screaming all fucked up like—faking pain is a tactic they employ—you have to run up, getting as close as possible, and sink the rifle shot into the cranium. The pistol is for back up at close range only. And you better hope to Christ you don’t have to use it. Once they’ve stopped moving, you have about twenty minutes to sever the legs and arms, and what’s left of the head. If you wait too long, they will reanimate on your ass. This is the worst part because the smell is horrendous, and contrary to popular lore, those limbs do not easily separate from the body. Each part must then be buried at least 7 feet below ground and not within a fifty-yard radius of any of the other parts, neither from that particular zombie, nor from any others you’ve previously buried. Each spot must be clearly marked.

I was shitting dynamite when I discovered Denver’s substantial zombie population and the lack of adequate land to dispose the fuckers in. And on top of that, realizing that amazingly, I’m one of the only people in the city who knows how to properly kill and dispose of a zombie, I damn near called it quits and moved back home. But I stayed, if only for lack of money.

A year has passed, and tonight those godforsaken bastards will erupt from the ground like a gonorrheic discharge upon the streets of Denver, and they won’t leave until they’ve had their fill of human flesh. Knowing I can’t possibly eliminate the entire zombie population from Denver has been disheartening as all hell. I’m just one fucking guy after all. But that’s not stopping me from doing my damndest for the protection of the human race. A zombie infestation can get out of control faster than a Wyoming cop’ll have their hand up your ass under the pretense of a narcotics crackdown. For shit’s sake, I’m not going to let that happen.

Dressed in full camouflage, I carry a golf bag with my guns, a hacksaw, some beef jerky for fuel, and a water canteen, to the alley next to Dos Locos, a major stop-off on the zombies’ annual prowl. I hide behind a dumpster roughly twenty-five feet back from the street. A Dia de los Muertos celebration is in full swing. The playful mariachi music falls on my ears in stark contrast to the unsavory task at hand.

My plan is to pick a large male out of a pack as they pass by the entrance to the alley on their way to devour their unsuspecting victims. I’m hoping the first kill will be sufficient to scare many of the zombies back to their graves, because I just don’t have the man power or the space to sever and place more than one or two of them. If this fails, the vile, rapacious fucks will surely tear me limb from limb.

The first batch to pass is no good. Mostly females and skinny ones at that. Hard to shoot and won’t spook any of the others. Just’ll piss them off. I wait for another twenty minutes or so with no good shots. I get hungry and break into the beef jerky. Just as I’m taking a swig off my canteen the perfect specimen appears. Tall and wide, surrounded by a group of about ten other zombies and a few people dressed up for the Day of the Dead fiesta who don’t know any better. Luckily the idiot humans are on the periphery of the bunch. I drop my canteen and grab the rifle; the shotgun would probably hit the humans at this range. I aim and fire. The big sonofabitch goes down. No stagger at all. Everyone else is screaming and running away like I planned. The big one is on its back writhing. I reload and run up, center the barrel’s end near the temple. The mariachi band has stopped. The whole fucking restaurant is deserted save for two guys peaking around the corner of the building watching me. I fire again to end it. The decayed brains splatter my hands and face. The two guys look scared. One of them turns and vomits. I wipe my face with my sleeve and yell to them that everything is OK. It’s dead, I say, and the others have fled back to their graves. We are safe for another year! They run. It’s an understandable reaction from someone who’s never seen a zombie killing. I figure they’ll be fine, and set to work quickly sawing the limbs off. In the approaching distance, sirens blare, and I know everything is going to be alright.

Round III of This Contest is Haunted

Three contestants for the photo portion:

5)

6)

7)

Round II of This Contest is Haunted

 3) The Long March to the Bathroom (A True Story)

When I was around 9 years old, my newly formed family (mother, new step-father and step-brothers) moved about 20 minutes outside of Corvallis, OR into a wonderfully large multi-level home that was on a few acres.  Now coming from a town, I was not immediately ready for the shock of not having your neighbors right outside your bedroom window or the absolute silence and darkness that came at night.  Dealing with the dark and silence at night was easy living with my new brothers in the adjacent rooms, that all change within about 7 months of living there.  My mother and step-father were getting a divorce and we would be getting the massive house to ourselves.

As soon as my step-brothers and father moved out of the house, it took on a whole other vibe.  It became terrifyingly empty with all these crazy shadows cast by the moonlight coming in from the long row of windows that seemed to be present in each and every room of the house.  The very worst part of the house now seemed to be the separation of the family living spaces from where my room was, what used to be a blessing for three young boys was now a gauntlet of terror each night I had to make my way to the bathroom.

This long march came to a terrifying head one clear evening in October with a bright moon.  I needed to use the bathroom as any boy who is scared of leaving the safety of his warm blankets for the cold hard truth of not wetting the bed.  I made my way out of my room and down the hallway trying not to look out the window in case some monstrous beast was just outside waiting to catch a glimpse of me and snatch me right away.  I lost this battle of wills and peered out into the late night.  Our backyard was an acre long grass field populated with a few garden beds and a sprinkling of small trees lining the property.  At the very end of our property line was a tall stand of trees at the peak of the hill illuminated from behind by the moonlight.  At first I could not believe what I was seeing standing in between two of the trees at the very top of the hill and thought my mind was just playing tricks on me.  That was when it moved.  This humanoid looking thing was walking the ridge of the hill and must have been at least 9 feet tall when compared to the trees.  It lumbered along stopping occasionally and just stand still.  I was rooted to the spot in absolute terror and couldn't even let out a peep.  I had been terrified of something like this ever since I had seen an episode of Unsolved Mysteries covering sasquatch (aka bigfoot) and now years later I was seeing one in my own yard.  To this day I swear it stopped and looked down the hill directly at me and its eyes flashed red for a brief second, then lumbered over the hill out of sight.

If I thought I was terrified before of the walk to the bathroom, I can't start to explain the horror that walk was for the rest of the six months we lived there.  Anytime I needed to go to the bathroom at night I would jam my pillow on the side of my head that the windows faced and walk as quickly as my legs would carry me all the while picturing a huge bigfoot right outside of the window waiting for me to take a peek.



4) THE HAUNTED HOUSE (or, DEUCE NUMM-BERTEW GETS HIS FIRST PUBE)

Not so very long ago and not so far away, an unsuspecting new family moved into the spooky, decrepit fixer-upper on the corner of Bones Blvd. and Skeleton Street. The old-fashioned piss-yellow Victorian was obviously haunted yet inexplicably appealing to the merry-go-round of buyers who, like clockwork, moved in and then out, always screaming and frazzled when they turned over the keys back into the hands of Dolores Doodie, the neighborhood real estate agent.  Year after year, Dolores would do a little Annette Bening-in-“American Beauty” routine in the newly cleaned, empty house, giving herself a pep talk along the lines of “I will sell this house today!” despite the moaning and groaning soundtrack continuously provided by the floorboards and walls of the home. And year after year, an attractive new family would swoop the place up, high on the dreamy hopes of fixing the place up and reviving its full potential as a neighborhood cornerstone.

SPOOKY MUSIC

 And so, not so very long ago and not so far away, the Numm-Bertew clan pulled into the driveway of the old haunted house on the corner of Bones & Skeleton, their blood-red Previa minivan sparkling in the moonlight (they had driven all day from their former hometown and arrived at their new home only once the sun had long set). 

SPOOKY MUSIC

The family battled cobwebs and the lack of a porch light before reaching the front door, toward which little brother Deuce was extending his open hand when the thing clicked, croaked, and screeched open without any damn body turning the knob. Deuce’s two older sisters gasped in terror at the haunted house cliché, clinging to each other for protection in an inexplicably sexy way, with both sisters’ visibly pert nipples standing at serious attention in matching tight tank tops as the moonlight cast down upon nothing else but their boobs. Little Deuce paid no heed to his super sexpot teen sisters, of course, owing to his lack of pubes and the fact that, until kids get pubes, haunted houses are still cooler than boobs.

As usual, mom and dad were suddenly nowhere to be seen. Deuce Numm-Bertew and his wet hot American teen twin sisters were technically orphans, you see, but the ghosts of their dearly departed parents were so concerned for preserving the virginal purity of their should-be porn star daughters that they manifest themselves physically in a blood-red Previa whenever the twins were about to lose it to a football team and whisked them away, along with little Deuce, to a whole new hometown and a whole new life. 

Just then, a BLACK CAT/JOLT OF SPOOKY MUSIC jumped down from nowhere and scared the shit out of the twins, literally. Deuce rolled his eyes, mumbled “typical” under his breath, and pushed the front door all the way open, revealing a dark gaping expanse into which he bravely stepped.  Faced with the classic dilemma of whether to remain on the scary front porch where you and your hot twin just sharted in unison or follow your little bro into an even scarier haunted house, the girls opted to chillax with their poop on the porch and pray for a football team to come along and deflower them in the moonlight.

Inside, Deuce groped pathetically in the cobwebby darkness with the hope of finding a light switch. Little fool was too young to know what everybody does by the time they get pubes: that haunted houses don’t have light switches, and that the place is only illuminated when the demonic powers that be are damn good and ready to light a bitch up. Just then, JOLT OF SPOOKY MUSIC/LET THERE BE LIGHT!!! All at once, the haunted house was ablaze with jack-o-lanterns, hundreds of carved pumpkins lit from within by candlelight, each and every last one of them bearing a strained, constipated expression that was neither sinister nor intimidating yet also not sad or even ironically dopey. 

JOLT UPON JOLT OF SPOOKY MUSIC as the house itself begins to shake, quake, even, with the bizarrely straining pumpkin faces becoming even more bizarrely strained with every passing moment. Little Deuce wasn’t scared, though, because having spent all eight of his living years with twin teen hottie sisters with severe sharting anxiety, Little Deuce recognized the nature of these expressions almost immediately.

Without hesitating, Deuce became a man: he grabbed an axe from the nearest place where axes are kept and ran for the nearest mainline pipe. With one fell swoop, as the house was groaning and moaning and heaving and hoeing all around him, hundreds, no, thousands, of groaning, moaning, heaving and hoeing jack-o-lantern faces aglow with the look that only backlogged feces can be blamed for, Little Deuce slammed the axe into the sewer pipe as hard as he could, freeing his new home of her lifelong suffering with one valiant gesture, the act that made Little Deuce just plain Deuce.

And so at that very moment, when the most infamous haunted house on Bones/Skeleton burst from within to flood the entire neighborhood with decades worth of pent up poop and pee, Deuce got his very first pube, becoming a man. As for the house, well, it was no longer haunted at all, freed of the ghosts of feces past and allowed to breathe and be free at long last. With the first rain came a little less poop on the streets, then the second rain and so on, and by the time several years worth of torrentially rainy winters had passed, the formerly haunted house (and the three or so square miles immediately surrounding it) looked good as new.

And so Deuce Numm-Bertew lived happily ever after, with lots of pubes and a poopy twins fetish as his main companions, plus the annual Christmas card he sent to the realtor Dolores Doodie, thanking her for another year in the house she sold his ghost parents.
ORCHESTRAL CLIMAX!!!

THE END

Round I of This Contest is Haunted

Okay, here are a couple entries for the scary story category. We'll be voting for our favorite at the end of the week. Enjoy!

1) Untitled

Donna always knew there was something strange about their family dog. Her daughter had picked her out from the pound, and despite the puppies that were eager for her attention she went straight for the old mangy black and gray mutt with yellow eyes. Unlike the other dogs that were yelping through the cages this one sat in the back of its kennel alone, somber and disinterested, that was until her daughter walked by.  His eyes followed the little girl, apparently unaware of any other presence in the world.  Donna wasn’t surprised that her daughter had picked him, she was always a little different, and they seemed a perfect pair.   

The dog, Vince, followed her everywhere. He was her shadow, would respond to any order she gave, and would never make a sound. When others would approach, he would look forward with chilly yellow eyes, and bristled hair, causing them to take an unconscious step backwards. Meanwhile, Sarah would grin with a smile that suggested something between comfort and pleasure.

 It was early spring, and Donna had finally gotten an evening off and coordinated a new sitter to come over so she and her husband could enjoy a night on the town. At 8:00pm the doorbell rang, and a peroxide blonde woman in her early 20’s stood on the stoop shaking off her umbrella. Donna gave instructions to the woman, and told her they would be back by 11:00pm at the latest, then walked her into the living room to introduce her to Sarah. Sarah and the dog barely acknowledged the young woman when she came in, and continued watching an animated show about birds.

As soon as Sarah’s parents were gone the woman grabbed her cell phone, and started texting away.  Then she grabbed the remote and switched the channel over to watch reruns of the Jersey Shore. Sarah was not thrilled. She glared at the woman, and ordered, “Change it back”.  The babysitter ignored the 5 year old and kept watching. Sarah tried to grab the remote and the babysitter, startled pushed Sarah away, asking if she wanted “time-out”. Having fallen on to the ground as she was pushed, Sarah cuddled closer to Vince, and began talking ever so quietly to him about the mean girl.

When Donna and her husband returned home, the lights were off and Sarah was in bed with Vince sleeping by her feet and the babysitter nowhere to be seen. Slightly concerned, Donna woke Sarah to ask where the sitter was. Sarah simply said that the baby sitter’s boyfriend came over, they watched a terrible show about “Snookie”, played hide and seek, and now the babysitter was gone. Donna was rightfully appalled and tried to remember to erase that contact, thinking the woman obviously didn’t even deserve to be paid for the evening.

Summer was just starting to show up, and Donna found herself in the back yard hauling dirt, and preparing to plant her tulips. After digging for a few minutes Donna noticed a patch of yellow about 6 inches down. Confused she kept digging, not quite understanding what she saw. Waves of nausea washed over her. Her desire to run was overruled by the shock of recognition. She looked almost the same as that day she’d come over to watch her daughter, only instead of pink gloss and a smile, there was torn flesh where her bottom lip used to be, and a massive bite across her neck, which had ripped out her trachea, and left her spine visible.

The scream of terror she had finally been holding back spilled out, and rang through the neighborhood. Donna turned around to run and call the police, only to find her daughter and her dog, staring at her with yellow eyes peacefully sitting on the porch.

Sarah smiled at her mother, and said, “Vince, mommy wants to play hide and seek with the babysitter.”

 2)  A Scary Halloween Story.....a True One.

When the kids were all small I worked at K-Mart as an overnight stocker.  I would come when everyone left for the night.  They would lock me in, then in the morning when the store reopened I went home.  The only other person in the store when I was- was a guy who ran the floor buffer once every couple weeks.  Can't remember his name but lets call him Larry.  Also, back then K-Mart stores all had little snack bar/grills in the back of the store.  My sister was a cook in this snack bar.  All this being said, let's continue the story.........

One night as I arrived for work I walked back to the snack bar to talk to my sister. Let me add that you had to walk past aisles 1 through 12, then past the health and beauty aids dept before you got to the snack bar.)  She was all flustered and told me the story of what had happened that afternoon.  She had served lunch to a couple of women there and while they were eating, one of the women started to cough and choke. The other woman was alarmed and trying to help her but she couldn't stop choking.  So the woman was trying to help her friend out of the store and outside to see if she could catch her breath.....but right at the end of aisle 9 the lady collapsed.  She was spewing blood violently out of her mouth and convulsing.  She died right there at the end of aisle 9 of an aneurism.  As I walked toward the locker room to put away my purse I looked around at the end of aisle 9 and although maintenance had cleaned up after all this there were little blood spatters on the floor, on the baseboards around the checkout, and most horrible of all, there was a big display of Fiddle Faddle on that end cap (shop talk for the shelves at the end of an aisle) and there were spatters of blood all over them.  My first job that night was to remove those boxes and discard them.

 The next time I came in, I tried to avoid that area as much as possible. Someone had filled the end cap with those gallon sized jars of Vlassic pickles.  That evening when I was stocking I heard a loud crash.  I went to the front of the store to find that at the end of aisle 9---- three jars of pickles had broken on the floor. I cleaned them up but the hair on the back of my neck was standing up and I was scared shitless!!!  Later that evening I had just finished putting up a whole aisle of plastic ware...baskets and trash cans and stuff, and was all the way back to the storage room when CRASH!!!!!!!  I went over there and everything I had put on the shelves was in the floor.  I said fuck it and left it there on the floor.  I was terrified.   The next morning, when I told the manager and a couple clerks they laughed and told me I just had the heebie jeebies.

 The next time I worked, Larry was there to do floors.  He usually went and got a lawn chair and watched TV in electronics till about two hours before the store opened and then  would hurry and finish buffing the floors. Well this night I was feeling not as scared because I knew he was there at the end of Aisle 7 watching Sanford and Son and nothing would happen.  Wrong.  About a couple hours into the shift he came and found me in the back of the store and his face was white as a sheet.  He told me to come up to aisle 8 (that's where all the typewriters and adding machines were.)  Anyway, there was this electric typewriter just click click clacking all by itself.  Scared me shitless.  I told him to unplug it!!!!!!!!!!!  He hit the power switch that was hooked to the whole section of typewriters and it stopped clicking.  He kind of chuckled nervously and I went on back to work.  About an hour later I heard him scream and call my name like a little girl.  I ran up there and it was typing again--by itself---with no power source.

Larry never cleaned the floor that night, he stayed in the warehouse with me.  And he never came back to work again. 

Weekend!

I'm headed out to a magical adventure at Pacific City, stomping grounds of my youth and site of many an hour whiled on the beach with Corona and rolled-up jeans. There's a big dune. I will be running down it. Have a great weekend!

Real Life Conversation 1

I'm in a wedding in a few weeks and I'm on the groom's side. I'm not wearing a bridesmaid dress, nor am I getting my hair and makeup done with the other bridesmaids, so I'm a little bit worried about looking mannish and dowdy, or possibly confusing older people who think I'm on the boys' side because I actually have a penis or am hoping to have a penis in the future (I picture them explaining it to each other in hushed voices while they pass kleenex around, You know, like Chaz  Bono on Dancing with the Stars).

In an attempt to circumvent this awkwardness, I asked my friend Darci, who is an esthetician, if she would be willing to do my makeup on the day of the wedding. She was glad to, which was exciting, and last night we were talking about what I could do. We also discussed my hair. I have a lot of it and I am not much of a hair stylist so we were talking about a few different options.

Me: I was thinking I need to wear it up. Something with braids maybe?

Darci: I can do braids! I braided John-Robert's hair.

Me: Yeah, I saw the picture.You braided his hair in cornrows.

Darci: But actually, it would probably take five or six hours. I'm not sure I would have time.

Just imagine it.

Kyle and Emily, I'm going to have cornrows at your wedding. There may or may not be beads at the end.

Get Ready

I purchased the prizes for This Contest is Haunted yesterday. One for best photo and one for best story. I want it to be a surprise but I also can't wait to tell everyone because it's awesome.

I'll give you a hint: 90s. 1996 to be exact.


Send me submissions by Monday!

The Joys of a Signifcant Other, Chapter 2

Adjusting to real life. This is a huge step, right? Real life vs. romantic comedies/literature/my brain after absorbing all that stuff. My ideas about being in a relationship have changed a lot. I mean, back when I didn't have a boyfriend, I totally had a boyfriend. A future boyfriend.

He was, of course, not real, but he was always nice, was an artist or a writer (but not a flaky, stupid, self-centered one) and we would do super romantic things like watch the sunset, eat dinners cooked by him, have brilliant conversation always, and we would live in Paris, and then travel around the world in a sailboat, and live sustainably off the land in the woods somewhere and somehow it wouldn't be boring, etc. etc.

Future boyfriend was obviously not real nor attainable. Probably not even biologically possible. So you know, when you embark on a relationship you have to give up on your ideals based around Future Boyfriend. You also can't make ultimatums because they never work (except for maybe the one where you leave your partner if he hits you. That's a good ultimatum).

I once believed that I would never live with my significant other before marriage because living alone is awesome and then after marriage, you get the new joy of moving in. I don't know. I knew a couple that did that and they were happy, so I took it as my own. And all of the sudden we were talking about moving in together and I was into it. Weird. But when I started talking to my friends about moving in with the boyfriend, they told me, "You will clean. All the time. You will be the cleaner. That's just how it is." And so I freaked out and bought Sam a toilet brush. That's not true. I actually asked him if I could buy him a toilet brush and he said no. Fortunately my panic was unfounded, he cleans all the time.

I also recall a time when I tried really hard to look nice. You know, so Sam would continue to be attracted to me. I made effort to look nice when we hung out. I really did.  It's not like I wore makeup to bed or anything, but you can't look like slob, right? Over. Sam actually bought me an enormous pair of heather gray sweatpants and I wear them all the time and they have an awkward grease spot on the crotch where I probably dropped a piece of pepperoni pizza or something. And the sweatpants probably aren't a good thing, but I don't think throwing them away will change the fact that Sam has seen me in these sweatpants.

And you know there are the moments when things aren't perfect (often because I get really mean when I'm hungry and other things usually related to me) and we are not skipping around and laughing and holding hands, but that is also sadly, part of having a relationship. It's still something I'm coming to terms with.

Oh. Another lie I told myself is that we would never work out at the gym together. Because those couples are gross. But it has happened. We have done circuit training in the gym in the morning and the worst part? It was fun. And we are gross.

I'm sorry. This must be hard to hear. But there's nothing better than the real-life confessions of a person in a real-life relationship with a real-life person to curb idealism.

Wait, so you're not going to be wearing a dress?

Kyle and Emily did their engagement photos with Kyle Carnes Photography this weekend and they are totally awesome. I mean, look at that photo. This shoot was special to me for several reasons. One, I'm in Kyle and Emily's wedding. Obviously, they aren't sticklers on gender roles and rigid tradition because I am a groomslady. Two, I was an initial supporter of their idea to have a 50s style gender role reversal photo shoot, threw out some ideas in the brainstorming session, and was very much looking forward to seeing the end result. Three, I was there for the conversation between Kyle and Kyle, during which, the proverbial lightbulb went off and Kyle C realized he wasn't going to have to shoot Kyle Arthur in a dress and make it look like a Norman Rockwell painting. Apparently there has been some links missing in the communication. Lastly, the shoot took place at our house. I'm pretty proud of the home that Sam and I have put together. I think it's very homey and well-decorated (obviously completely objective) and it gives me a lot of joy to see it in the background of these photos. Go to Kyle's blog to check out the rest.

New Favorite Style Blog

Remember when I discussed the merits of the Urban Weeds style blog? Well, after I did, Caitlin made a comment that the subjects were always so generic and made it look like all Portlanders wear skinny jeans, tall boots, and have children. Caitlin's assessment was true. And we don't all wear skinny jeans, tall boots, and have children. So after that, I really couldn't enjoy the blog. I would notice a new post, click to find a lovely black and white portrait and then scroll down to be completely and utterly deflated by some boring leggings/dress/boots/ peacoat combo. But I still look at it because it's fun to see people in Portland and also because I'm a little bit of an internet martyr (Seriously. There's this one blog I read only because I think the person is really annoying. Why?).

However, there is relief from the khaki-clad, squeaky clean of Urban Weeds. I have found a new go-to style blog: Portland's Pretty. Marissa is funny, doesn't take herself too seriously, and finds a wide variety of looks that she sees fit to print.

Here are some recent shots from her blog:

The Last Sasquatch Vol. 4

From top:

girls

rachael and kali dancing in the pit

alexis

sunset

More Inspiration

Don't forget, the deadline for This Contest is Haunted is coming up soon. Send your entries to rachel.wri@gmail.com. At this point, I only have a couple entries which means automatic prizes for you creative and daring souls. If you need extra inspiration I highly recommend the Milburn's Haunted Manor. Featuring a haunted house, haunted forest, and a haunted pitch-black maze, a completely horrific evening is guaranteed. You will cling to your friends, you will shriek, and you will spend your downtime doing that high-pitched, awkward giggling that happens when you've just had the shit scared out of you. Good times.

Lucky

I've been reading the posts on We are the 99 Percent and thinking about how lucky my friends and family are.

The Last Sasquatch Vol. 3

 From top:

Kali's space, Kyle's hiking boots

Stage and sky

Pod in contemplation

Rachael found a dread

I KNEW it!

Remember my prediction that American Apparel would attempt to bring back the thin cotton turtleneck? I wanted it to be a joke, I truly did, but I flipped open a Mercury yesterday and found a three-part ad featuring the thin cotton turtleneck. Shocking. 

An unfortunate item that I wore for the number of years that I was not dressing myself, the thin cotton turtleneck is one of those things that adorned moms and children alike in the 90s. Sometimes it had patterns (my mom had one covered in tiny Mickey Mouses) but usually it was plain, solid, and most definitely neck warming. They are somehow unflattering, something about that tube of fabric extending up your torso right to your chin and the awkwardly tight sleeves. The only thing worse is the mock turtleneck or collarless shirts for men. And of course, you can now get them in any number of different finishes and colors from American Apparel. Jeez. They've brought us bodysuits, guacho pants, and turtlenecks, who knows what sort of horror is left. 

Predictions? I'm afraid to make anymore, because they'll probably come true.