Okay, it wasn’t really the nanny cam that failed.  I just haven’t heard any footsteps for a few days now.  I can’t get any writing done because I’m listening too hard to concentrate.  I will have to just trust the cam and try to relax into my (tense, terror-inducing, nail-biting) writing.

I did see The Hunk pick up a donut, suck in his small gut, and put it back.  Then he came back half an hour later and looked sadly at the donut again.  Ha!  He always claims he doesn’t have to watch what he eats, but now you and I know better.

In other news, I received a threat-filled letter from Bossy Sister, stating that since I’m no longer part of the family, I must “return” all family heirlooms to her immediately, or suffer the consequences.  I wrote back that actually SHE has been jettisoned (let her look that word up!) from the family and that Aunt Midge and I would be eagerly awaiting receipt of all heirlooms in her possession.  Again, I say HA!

My kitchen now has a new clock — one with a hidden camera inside!  I’ll catch the sonofabitch who’s been creeping around in my house.  Or prove that I’ve lost my mind.  Either way, you and I are the only ones who know.  I won’t tell The Hunk anything about it unless I get proof.

And if I keep hearing the footsteps but the tape shows no one in the kitchen, I’ll know that I’m hearing things, or hallucinating, or that my imagination is completely out of control and I can never allow myself to write anything scary again.

I swear that someone keeps walking around in my house!  From the basement I can hear the footsteps, but then when I get to the kitchen, no one is there.  Am I losing my mind?  I need proof.  I’m seriously going to get one of those hidden cameras and put it in the kitchen.  I just know the creaky footsteps are in the kitchen.  I don’t want to say anything to The Hunk unless I get proof.

Yesterday I took a nap in the basement, just a little break from writing.  I dreamed with perfect clarity that someone was walking around in my house.  I could hear the exact creak of the kitchen floor (which The Hunk is going to fix — two years ago!).  I could hear the sharp sound of women’s heels clacking on the wood floor.  She got closer and closer to the basement door.  In my dream I grabbed an axe (which we don’t really have) and prepared to meet her at the bottom of the stairs.

Then my son came home and woke me up, but the feeling of being invaded and attacked has stuck with me.

Last night I dreamed that someone offered me a cigarette, and I haven’t smoked in years, but I took it, feeling like I was sneaking it.  It felt glorious!  In the dream, I became totally relaxed and stopped worrying about Little Sister and my daughter and all the girls coming over here to see my son.

As I drive around town, I keep seeing cars just like Little Sister’s everywhere.  So she probably wasn’t really sitting in The Hunk’s parking lot at work.  Probably.

Today I went to The Hunk’s office to meet him for lunch, and I saw a car exactly like Little Sister’s car in the parking lot.  Someone was hunched down inside.

Could she really be sitting in his parking lot, watching for him?  Or was it just someone spending their lunch hour sleeping in their car?

It gets curiouser and curiouser.

Over the past few days, I’ve been recalling lots of suppressed memories spanning from childhood through this past Christmas.  Here are a few things I’ve remembered:

Dad once confided in me that he thought Little Sister should see a therapist.  He said she was paranoid and had a persecution complex.  I didn’t take it seriously at all.  LS??  No way.  He couldn’t tell anyone else in the family, because they would freak out on him, and when I disagreed, he just kept it to himself.

The Hunk used to get these anonymous calls from a woman who wanted to talk dirty to him.  He thought it was hilarious, and I was just pissed to have our dinner interrupted repeatedly.  The calls stopped around the same time LS moved in with her husband.

This past Christmas, there was an accident.  Everyone was fine, but if things had gone a little bit differently, I could have died.  LS was the cause of the accident.

–

So now am I the one with paranoia and a persecution complex, or did LS try to have phone sex with The Hunk during family dinnertime and later try to kill me???

How does one go about determining such a thing?

I had the worst, most vivid nightmare last night!  I was me, at my current age, but I was also a kid.  I was in bed and I was supposed to be asleep, but I wasn’t.

I knew that someone was breaking into the house, but if I screamed for my dad, the robber would kill my whole family.  If I pretended to be asleep, the robber would only take things but wouldn’t hurt anyone.

But I knew that I couldn’t pretend well enough to fool the robber.  I’d never be able to keep from peeking when he came into my room, and my nightlight would give me away.

All I could think of was that he was going to kill Little Sister and it would be All My Fault.

–

I had totally forgotten about this nightmare, but I used to have it all the time when I was a kid.  Well, for the couple of years when my parents were fighting all the time.  It was just as terrifying last night.

So, I’m  having a serious problem with Mother Dear, Bossy Sister, and Gossipy Sister.  I was kind of coming to terms with it, because if people treat you badly, maybe you don’t need them in your life.

But now the hate has spread to my Little Sister.  She sent me an email detailing everything I’ve ever done wrong.  Well, surely she missed a few things, but it was pretty comprehensive.  She says there is a pattern of me being selfish and unwilling to sacrifice for my family.  So the list of misdeeds is meant to demonstrate this pattern.

I think that’s TOTAL BULLSHIT.

Well, okay.  I DO tend to resist sacrificing for GS and BS, because I believe they take advantage of me ALL THE TIME.  For MY WHOLE LIFE.  So as an adult, I have occasionally tried to stop letting them do it.  I’m not very good at it, so I tend to just limit my involvement with them instead of trying to defend against them.

And I know that she’s mostly still upset about the big, wicked thing I did to her.  It was a looong time ago, but she’s never forgiven me for it.  But if I hadn’t done what I did, I could never forgive myself.

LS went on a few dates with The Hunk, 18 years ago.  He was too old for her.  He was too cocky for her.  He was too macho for her.  He was too working-class for her.  We hit it off the first time we met.  THEY weren’t serious, but SHE was serious. He and I failed to take her seriousness seriously.

One thing led to another, we fell in love, I got pregnant, and we got married.  And she had to watch all of it (and be a bridesmaid!).  And for 18 years, according to her email, she has watched me live the life that should have been hers!  What about her husband???  What about her kids???  What?What?What?

Her husband is perfect for her: intellectual, slender, neat, well-mannered, well-spoken, and well-read.  They have a beautiful old house in a great neighborhood, and three really smart, great kids.  She’s a teacher and is really good at it.

Yet she says that I stole her life, and really she should be married to The Hunk, living in our bungalow, with our two kids (who she says I neglect — NEGLECT!) and that she should be the writer of the family!  As if she’s ever written anything outside of school!  As if a family can only have ONE of ANYTHING! And after 18 years, to still be dwelling on some guy she dated briefly strikes me as a little bit TOTALLY CRAZY OBSESSIVE!  Right?

So, she’s done with me.  She has had it.

This is a loss that really, really hurts.  We’ve worked so hard to be friends, and we’d nursed our fragile relationship back to what I thought was a fairly healthy one.

I’ve heard so many stories of familial estrangements — hell, our backyard neighbor is estranged from her ex-husband, and he doesn’t even contact his daughter!  But I never really understood how it could happen.  Don’t you HAVE to keep seeing your family, even if you don’t like them?  Isn’t that a Natural Law or something?  You’re tied together forever, and if the Mormons are correct, you’ll be together for ETERNITY.

It is going to be mighty frosty in ETERNITY with no one speaking to me except Aunt Midge, Dad, and my brother.

So, the weird neighbor lady came by again today, totally interrupting my flow.  Yes, I hate it when pretentious jerks talk about “flow” but it was true.  I was writing like crazy, totally in the zone.

Ding, dong!  Ding, dong!  Ding, dong! Knock knock knock knock.  Ding, dong!

Ding, dong!

I finally gave in, trudged upstairs, filled with hatred caused by both writing from the perspective of a hate-filled murderer AND from being interrupted while writing really well.  Well, it was a true Ding Dong at the door!

Man, where did this sheepish little thing get the balls to ring my bell so many times?  I was impressed by her persistence, so I gave her a chance to talk this time.  Turns out she wants to be friends and brought over some kind of homemade bread.  I gave her a cup of coffee (assured her it was decaf, but it wasn’t!) and she let loose like she’d been in solitary confinement.

Mousy hates hates hates that bitch who slapped my son.  I just let her go on and on, and she had lots to say about how that lady has bossed her around since childhood, and Mousy has always hated her, and she’s glad that bitch twisted her ankle and is laid up (apparently she’s not expected to be out and about for weeks!)  And how fucked up the bitch’s son is — you can tell that from across the street!  He has always been an anti-social little weirdo.

Mousy finally left, after making up excuses to use the bathroom, and take her dishes into the kitchen, and pretend to get lost and look in the TV room.  I’m half-certain that bitch sent her over, and I honestly searched everywhere she went after she left, looking for bugging devices!  I wonder if the bitch planned for her to talk shit on her to gain my trust!

That crazy bitch makes me paranoid.  Plus I’m spending way too much time reading about, thinking about, learning about home invasion for my novel.  I’m keeping all the doors locked all the time now.  I’m also going to make sure all the blinds on the front of the house are closed.  Mousy let slip something about that crazy bitch having binoculars.  I wouldn’t put it past her.

I’m totally writing her into my novel, as a seemingly well-meaning, mousy little frump who brings over poisoned or drug-laced treats and then does something to the home owner, who is too polite to send her away or refuse to try the food.

What is up with people wanting my attention today? My Bad Sisters have been calling, emailing, and even texting (which I try to avoid at all costs). Apparently Aunt Midge is pretty upset.  Mom is pissed at Bad Sisters for starting trouble, and Bad Sisters insist that the only way things will settle down is if I call up Aunt Midge and apologize for being ungrateful.

I used to always want everyone to get along, and I have taken the blame for so many things. Even when we were kids, my older sisters were always tricking me into taking the fall for them. Today I explained that I’m not doing it anymore, and their horror can only be described as EXTREME. Right now, I don’t really give a shit if I ever see any of them again, and they could hear it in my voice.  Now who will they fuck with and use as their scapegoat???

I just talked to Aunt Midge yesterday and told her that I really appreciated the sheets. (I do appreciate the thought, even though she is an enormous, frustrating pain in my ass.) I was very adult and very calm, gently insisting that I had no idea what she was talking about — ME angry? At HER??  So now she knows that someone in the family made shit up, but she doesn’t know which one did it. She can’t remember who actually called her.

So Midge and I are just fine. Mom and Bad Sisters can take care of themselves. Hopefully I won’t have to talk to any of those women for at least a month.

In other news, a neighbor lady stopped by today and kept trying to get inside my house. It was the weirdest thing! I almost had to push her to get her to leave. She’s never acted so strangely before, but she was very persistent. I’ve been making sure the doors are locked ever since she left.

Then there are my son’s girlfriends. Who knows what they’re up to — always coming over and trying to get into his room, whether he’s home or not. It is not easy to have a handsome teenage son (not that it was easy raising his sister, but now she’s the college’s problem) (Just kidding) (mostly). I’m considering putting bars on his bedroom windows to keep the girls out.