Frightful Insights

When NECC was held in New Orleans in 2004, I made the reservation to stay at this hotel that was rumored to have a ghost. I made that reservation on purpose, because I thought it would be cool to see a ghost. It was the first year I was suppose to be going to NECC by myself and my boss quickly changed my room reservation. Her reason for changing it - it was connected to Bourbon Street and there was no way she was letting a single female of her employ stay there by herself. Luckily she hired Cheryl T. and I didn't go to NECC by myself.

And luckily, she changed the room because I don't think I could have slept in a haunted hotel.

Now if you read my old blog you'll remember the story of a Friday in October of 2006 in the Pan Handle of FL where I started out in Destin, I freaked out on the road due to an overactive imagination, ended up making the wrong turn when rerouted for an accident, and ended up staying the night in the round Holiday Inn in Tallahassee, FL. I freaked out even more there because I had been reading a Nora Roberts book about vampires and well, I was too scared to even go to the drink machine to get a bottle of water!

Tonight I'm in Bartow at a fairly new (2 years old) Holiday Inn. I just closed the curtains and freaked myself out because all I could see was pitch black.

So I'm back on the computer. I thought about trying once more to write a book. I think I've started about 100, but this time it would just be for my son. See, he was just diagnosed as ADHD (which we knew and he was actually diagnosed before), OCD and/or high anxiety. There's also a chance he could be functioning autistic and something else - was it PDD or PPD or something like that. As dad says, he's the alphabet kid. Anyway, we're going to start treatments for the high anxiety, which will help us figure out if he's really OCD or just high anxiety or both. It'll also help us figure out some coping strategies. I'm just not sure if he'll start Thursday or in the fall.

So in the meantime, I'm thinking about writing a book for him. I have my Image Blender ready - a great tool to create images and create digital stories with. Trying to decide if I should make the boy a shark, since Joey is fascinated with sharks. Fascinated is actually too weak of a word to describe his passion for Great Whites. I've drawn a few silly things, and if the story turns out okay, I'll probably let my brother Kelly redraw everything to be more professional. But it's kind of calming to draw the ocean.

I just can't bring myself to draw the shark because even though I'm no where near the ocean, I'm already freaked out by the darkness I just saw outside my window - and I'm not usually afraid of the dark. Which brought me back to that trip from Destin, FL where I got lost on that one windy road that bordered the ocean and the deserted vacation homes and all I kept thinking was a shark was going to jump out of the water and get me if the trees pushed me any further off the road. (It was really dark, the trees were blowing hard in the wind, and my imagination was in overdrive times 100 and I think I had actually been forced to watch Sharkboy and Lavagirl before that trip too.)

So now I'm stuck. And scared. Time to find a comedy on tv.