That Old Room

I've been asking my mom if I can get a new nightstand for a while now. There's nothing really wrong with the one I have, but it's decorated with cartoon pictures of ponies, and as much as I still love ponies, the pictures on the nightstand just seemed a little baby-ish for my room.

Mom told me we can't afford that kind of thing right now, but she thought about it and said that if I was careful and promised not to make too big of a mess, I could paint the one I had! She had a leftover can of paint from another project, so I could get a nightstand that was like new and basically free. We like free around here. ;)

I decided to paint my shelves while I was at it, too. I've been meaning to do it for a long time, but I didn't realize we had paint. I had to clean them off first. I piled everything into my old roll-top desk, and it made a huge mess. So much for Mom cleaning my bedroom for me while I was gone. :D

I decided to start with the shelves first, because I thought they'd be quicker to do that my nightstand. Mom helped me protect the wall with some tape first; as much as I'd love to paint my walls something better than boring gray, we live in an apartment right now and that isn't allowed.

Next, I started on the nightstand. I have to admit,I was a little sad to see the ponies disappearing under the paint, but I think it'll be worth it!

It took a lot of layers to cover up the ponies. It started to get really boring since I had to stop and wait for the layers to dry before I could paint some more.

Finally, everything had enough layers and was dry enough that I could finally start cleaning up my room again (yay me!). I peeled off all the protective tape, and started to put my books back on my shelf.

Once I was finished putting everything back, Mom surprised me with some new posters to hang up! She said that since we painted over all the ponies on my nightstand, I needed a new pony poster to make up for it. I think it's the best pony poster ever!! I hung it up over my 'new' nightstand.

 Here's the whole view of my room make-over. What do you guys think?

Home Again!

I don't know if I mentioned this, but a few weeks ago, I was invited to fly to Kentucky and stay with an online friend, Katia. Our parents talked it over, and it was all set!
I had a great time hanging out with Katia and her sisters, but I just got back into town this morning, and I'm pretty happy to see my own room (even if it IS haunted.).

First thing I noticed was something was different! My mom had taken the opportunity to give it a good clean without me getting in the way, and everything was a lot neater than it had been before. But the biggest difference was my bed! It's white now!

I really love how it looks. They painted it with a textured finish, and it's like coming home to a whole new room! Well, almost.
Mom also hung some new corkboards for me... She knew Katia and I had been taking a lot of pictures, and she thought I'd like a new place to display them. She was right!

I dropped my stuff and gave my bed a biiiiiig hug hello! I think it missed me, too. See one of the new corkboards above my head?

As much as I wanted to curl up and take a long nap, now that I was home I really missed Katia and her family, so there were a couple of things I needed to do first.

When I was at Katia's house, we loved to play with her collection of My Little Ponies, and before I left she gifted me with a couple of my own! I don't have any like these. I needed to find a great spot to display them, so I could remember the fun times we had.

Don't they look good with my Grand Champions?

Mom came in after that, and asked to see some of the pictures we took. I was so busy having fun that I kept forgetting to email her some, so she hadn't seen them before. I spread them all out on my desk... I needed to pick which ones to hang on my boards anyway.

She said it looked like we'd had a good time, and helped me hang them up, plus a photo I'd taken a few months ago with my friend, Ivy.

It's a little bittersweet to be home... I'm super excited to see my friends again, but I'm really going to miss Katia and her sisters. I hope we'll be able to keep in touch online and stuff!
But, now for that nap!!

Well, it's been a day and a half since I posted! I didn't mean to neglect this, but the last few weeks of school have been pretty rough for everyone.

To update on my ghostly situation, Bee and Mallory have helped me get rid of the poltergeist, and we all properly disposed of the ouija board. The exciting news is Maude is still here, though! Bee thinks the poltergeist used up all of the energy she had and she's gone now too, because she doesn't show up on any of Bee's ghost watching devices, but she isn't.
Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I can just barely see her watching me. I can see her smile and on really bad days, I can feel this nice, warm feeling enveloping me and comforting me, and I know it's her. It sounds so bizarre, and no one really believes me that she's here, but she's my family, and I know I don't have anything to fear from her.
All I've ever felt from her is love.

My friends are having their own problems, and it's nice to be able to come home and not have to worry about being scared anymore.
Avalanche's dad is being a real jerk, and no one is real sure what is going to happen there. See, he was supposed to finish up with his dig and come back to the States to be with Avalanche and her mom, who has her hands full with Avalanche's grandfather, but that didn't happen.
They made some kind of massive discovery at the dig site and he decided to stay, even though Avalanche and her mom begged him to come home. I guess I get that it would be exciting to see your hard work pay off, but it also seems really selfish. Avalanche told me that he wouldn't even consider coming back for a few weeks so they could discuss things and work everything out, and her mom is talking about getting a lawyer for a divorce. Avalanche isn't the same person these days. She's so broken, it's almost too painful to be around her, even though I know she needs me more than ever anymore.
It seems like she's losing her grandfather and her dad at the same time.

I'm so glad school is finally out for the summer! I'll have more time to hang with Avalanche, and maybe we can try and communicate with Maude.

The Gathering

Sorry it's been so long since I updated everyone! My science class is a bear, and I'm having trouble doing fun things like blogging. It's taking all of my energy to deal with the thing in my room and not failing.

I finally convinced my mom to let Avalanche come over, and Bee and her older sister, Mallory, showed up a few minutes later.
The thing had been sort of quiet lately, but it'd never met Mallory and took the opportunity to introduce itself by throwing a heavy snowglobe at her head.
"Hi, I'm Bee, and this is my sister Mallory," Bee introduced herself to Avalanche. "We did a lot of ghost hunting with our dad, and Mallory is really good at it. I brought her along to see what she thought."
"Awesome!" I said. Honestly, though, I was so tired from not being able to sleep, I didn't really care if she'd brought in a Klingon. I sat down on the floor to get out of their way as Mallory opened the backpack she had brought and pulled out a couple of things that looked like a camera, a tape recorder, and a couple of odd looking machines. She selected one, turned it on and started waving it around in the air.

Avalanche flopped down beside me in a huff. "If I'd known you already had professionals on the job, I wouldn't have bothered to show up," she said irritably.
"Maybe if you'd known what you were doing to begin with, Edie wouldn't need us!" Mallory snapped at her. She adjusted a dial on her machine and continued to wave it around.

Avalanche jumped up and started to say something, but I reached up and yanked on the pocket of her jeans and pulled her back down. "Aves, just let it go... I need this thing out of here, and you weren't allowed over. Bee was all I had. We're still best friends, nothing has changed."
Avalanche stared at the floor and picked at the carpet. She mumbled something about everything changing, and she looked miserable. I started to ask her what was wrong, since it seemed like more than just my new friends, but Mallory distracted me.

"It's not a ghost," she announced confidently, switching off her machine. "There's a ghost here, too, but the thing that's throwing stuff isn't one. It's a poltergeist."

A Potential Solution?

Remember in my last post I was all worried about whether I should tell Bee about my problem or not? I shouldn't have worried, it sort of worked itself out.

So this morning while Bee and I were outside taking Rocket and Argos for their morning walk, Bee's mom called my mom and asked her if Bee could stay with us while she took Bee's sister, Mallory, to the dentist. Since Bee and I have been getting along so well, and Bee doesn't seem to have Avalanche's crazy problem, Mom agreed instantly.

Bee stopped to drop Argos off at their apartment and grab a few things from her room,and then she was walking into our living room. I still can't get used to having a friend that lives so close to me! We had a few awkward moments in the living room... I wasn't sure what to do about my bedroom, but my mom said "Edie, why don't you show Bee your room?" and I had to take her in there. I was hoping she wouldn't notice anything, but she had barely crossed into it from the hall way when the shadowy thing threw a shoe at her head and launched two books across the room in front of her. I had no idea what to say; I couldn't breathe for a whole minute. I was sure I'd just lost a friend.

Her mouth dropped open in shock, and she shook her head.I expected her to run for the door and never come back, but all she said was "Whoa, Edie! Did you know you've got some bad stuff in here?" She started to walk around the room, staring at the ceiling.
"My... my friend Avalanche talked me into playing with a Ouija board last week," I said shakily. "I think she let in two ghosts. I don't mind the one, she appears to be an ancestor of mine, but the other, well... It throws stuff."
Bee quickly dodged another shoe and a snow globe. "I can tell," she said wryly.

She pulled a cellphone out of her pocket and started using it to take photos of my room. She showed me one of them, and I was shocked to see a dark shadow in the ceiling in every one of them, even though I couldn't see anything there myself.

"Fortunately, I think we can get rid of it, but we need your friend, and some sage, I think. Edie, you have to try to stop being so scared of it. I know it's hard, but it feeds off of energy like that," Bee said. She seemed really confident; more so than Avalanche had ever been.

I nodded and took a deep breath. I told her all about Maude, and how we thought maybe the thing was feeding off of her energy, too.
"Do you think we can get rid of the negative thing, but keep Maude around?" I asked. "I'd really like to talk to her about her life and stuff."
Bee shrugged. "Maybe, but I think the most important thing is to focus on this negative thing. It has to go, and anyway, we have no way of knowing if Maude will ever regain enough energy to come back as fully bodied as she did that first night, or even if she will remember her life."

I nodded. "Ok," I said. "I'll see if I can convince my mom to let Avalanche come over soon so we can take care of this."

To the Park with Bee!

I don't have a whole lot to report on the whole ghostly encounters thing tonight. Mostly because I convinced my mom to let me stay over with Bernadette last night and I had some time away from it all. It's the first good nights sleep I've gotten in a couple of days, and I feel a lot better now. I guess the thing in my bedroom likes my room, not me.

I like hanging out with Bernadette and her mom, and I found out a little more about them.
It turns out, Bernadette likes to go by Bee, and she and her mom and her older sister moved here from Oklahoma City because her parents just got a divorce and her mom thought they needed a fresh start in a new town. Bee's dad left them and doesn't really have much to do with them anymore. Bee told me that it happened really suddenly and she's having a hard time dealing with it all. She says her dad took her dog, Howard, with him, and she's been really missing having Howard around, too. I can totally understand, I would be devastated if something happened to Rocket.
Bee told me her mom had offered to take her to an animal shelter to see if she could find a new friend, but she was afraid it would seem like she was trying to replace Howard. I told her that she couldn't replace Howard and she never had to stop loving him, but there were probably lots of dogs that could use some extra loving, too.

She liked it when I put it like that. She said she hadn't thought of it that way.
So, we told her mom that she'd decided to give a new friend a try, and we went to the animal shelter. Her mom liked the puppies, but Bee was drawn to an older dog named Argos. He was big, shaggy, and calm, and Bee said he was the exact opposite of Howard, who was little and hyper, and she really liked that about this dog. Bee spent about an hour with him at the shelter to make sure he was the one, and in the end Argos came home with us!

Late that afternoon, we took him to the park for some bonding time and photos.

He was really good at coming to his name when Bee called him!



This is Bee and Argos posing for the camera!

We found a ball and played fetch for a long time. Bee flopped down in the grass, and Argos came and snuggled her, and laid down in her lap. It was adorable!



Then, we took a pic together. I'm so glad to have met such a cool new friend, and I think she had a really great day. She's already totally attached to Argos, and we're all glad we went to the shelter today.

I wonder if I should tell her about Maude and my problem? Her family doesn't seem like they're into the paranormal, so they probably wouldn't be much help, but you never know. I just don't want to burden my new friend with anything else; she's already dealing with so much.
On the other hand, maybe it would help distract her?

Out of Trouble... Sort of.

I finally got my laptop back! I was in trouble for about a week, and Mom is still pretty angry with me.
So far, I haven't really 'seen' Maude again. I know she is there, and sometimes I catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, but she hasn't come back as solid as she was the first night Avalanche and I saw her, and she hasn't been able to talk to me.

The other thing is something else. I've caught glimpses of him too (I don't know what it is, but calling it 'him' makes it seem a little less scary, although not much); but he's always dark shadows though. There hasn't been anything major happen since the first night, but lots of little things keep happening to make me jump, like things moving around or my alarm going off at random times during the night, even though it isn't supposed to. I haven't been able to sleep at all, and I'm always tired. It's also almost always freezing in my room now.
Maude seems like she's getting weaker, and this other thing is getting stronger. Since she was so strong to begin with, I sometimes wonder if he isn't feeding off of her strength and making her go away. I hope she doesn't go away completely, forever.

Mom still won't believe me about the ghosts, not even when I told her about Avalanche's Ouija board. I just got into even more trouble for messing around with one.
She also says Avalanche isn't allowed over any more... I don't know what to do! Avalanche is the only one who can help me, I'm really scared of the one ghost, but I don't want to get into any more trouble by sneaking her over.