Sickos Inc.

I, like many people with unbridled internet access doing hard time 8 hours a day in a crappy cubicle, have been obsessed over the last few days with CNN's round-the-clock coverage of the 'House of Horrors' in Cleveland. For those of you too hoity-toity (or poor) to fritter away half the day reading sensationalized, shabbily-covered online news bytes, this is the grisly tale of three young women abducted over the course of several years from the same neighborhood, and kept captive for a decade in a house in the middle of a suburban subdivision.

It's almost too awful to even comprehend. Everything about this story smacks of an early Stephen King novel, but infused with the lurid cinematic terror of the 'Saw' movies.

Now, those of you who know me well, or even not so well (because I broadcast my innards all over the internet in several forums, it's not hard to get to know me) may remember that I am kinda obsessed with true crime.  OK, more than kinda; I spent over $100 this summer in Kindle fun-money purchasing serial killer books to inhale during my week at the beach and at one point got myself so freaked out reading about the 'Sex Slave Murders', I blacked out briefly in a chaise lounge and may have suffered a mixture of anxiety-attack/sunstroke, but I digress.

What's so appealing (which is really a poor choice of words, and for that I'm sorry...these women went through hell and I absolutely am amazed by their fortitude) about this story is that it happened in real LIFE. Middle class America, right under the noses of residents who, while thinking their neighbor's introverted behavior a bit off, never could have imagined that he had three grown women (and one of the women's eventual offspring) held captive in the house next door for years on end.

There is so much I want to know. Which is why I've been scouring the net looking for answers. Who the fuck was this man, for starters? How the hell does a person decide that it would be a cool thing to abduct another human being and contain her against her will for years and years? Then do it again and again? What kind of person can systematically violate another person then walk out the door and go pick up some Big Macs or hop over to a neighborhood barbeque?

It boggles the mind. And it's the kind of real-life horror story that keeps me up at night. Just another thing toss into the overflowing mental dumpster of fears that a mother has about what could happen to her child.

We first heard the story on the radio on the way to school the other morning. Being the pain in the ass that I am, I opted of course to seize the opportunity to go on one of my Stranger-Danger rants.

(Like a cheerleader): "What do you do if a man tries to get you to go in his car?"

(rote response): "I run away and come tell you!!"

"What if he has, say, a puppy? Or a broken leg? Or tells you he's lost and needs directions? And he looks like a totally normal guy, and he's really friendly and nice?" (Thanks, Ted Bundy biographies)

"I KNOW, mom...I don't go anywhere with strangers..." this reply is delivered with pursed lips, window-fog fingerpainting, and plentiful eye-rolling.

Maybe it's overkill. So what. I don't give a fuck. Lily is six months away from double digits. We live in a world where a 14 year old can be walking  home from junior high school, thinking about her recent first kiss and how the dumb violin her mom makes her play is too heavy and the case bangs against her legs when she has to carry it home, and then suddenly she is spending the remainder of her teenhood shackled to a radiator in some sick bastard's basement.

Life is precious. Keep your babies close. Even if they are annoyed by it. Some day they will thank you. That is all.

Oh, lord. I just looked at the date of my last post and gave myself a swift mental asskicking.
I need to write more. There's certainly no question about that. It just seems lately like the days swirl into great funneling tornadoes of have-tos and routines, and suddenly, after I've worked all day, taken care of the kid, attempted to create a somewhat nourishing meal that doesn't require much prep or oven usage (mac n cheese goes great with...bread! And frozen peas!), 'cleaned' up, and fed our thousands of cats, its 10 pm and I've barely even sat down or taken a moment to indulge in my 15 minutes of social networking iphone porn.

But I'm a try, y'all. Actually, I'm just saying this publicly for me. Because nobody really knows about this blog. BUT THEY WILL!!!

Maybe. Probably.

hope so.

I'm gonna lock you up in a tower til you learn to let your hair down far enough to climb outside

This time it was innocent. I SWEAR. I was simply cleaning out the kid's schoolbag and out tumbled two carefully folded papers. Curious things to find in the hobo-like knapsack of a girl who can't manage to turn her homework in without food stains and wrinkles.

Yet I know these papers. Lined – wide-rule. Each filled with the pencil-thick penmanship of someone nervous and pressing down too hard. Folded once, twice, maybe six times total so as to slip inconspicuously into the front pocket of a backpack. Notes from a boy.

A FIFTH grade boy, no less. A boy who, when I pick my daughter up at aftercare every day calls me "Ms. Lily's Mom", and who standing up is taller than I am. Taller than I am! And this boy has told my daughter in hurried scribbles that he wants to marry her and has bought her a Christmas ring. And that he wants to give her $20. For some reason.

At the moment I am somewhere stuck between mouth-curling horror and hysterical laughter. In this note, filled with promises to 'perteckt' my daughter and sing her a song he wrote himself, this boy tells her that he always stares at her because she is 'hot'.

I am not ready to have a daughter who is hot.

So I of course took well-lit photos of the evidence and texted it to all of my friends and family in the hopes of getting some perspective. Some reason. Anything. Help me understand how a little girl who needs to sleep with two kitchen lights and a closet light on, who bites her toenails and loves to be tickled, who each night tucks her American Girl doll into a crib lined with kitchen towels, can be hot.
She isn't fucking hot. It's blasphemy.

Help me, blogosphere. gulp...help

How to Ensure that Your Child Will Never Talk to You About Anything, Ever, Part I

Well, we've finally gotten there. Earlier than expected, I have to say. But we've reached the point where my little daughter, the more beautiful, weirder, slightly more mercurial version of me but with a much better butt, has begun to separate herself from me.

It's been happening in little ways. She doesn't need me to do her hair in the morning. She spends more time with headphones on. But still, it's the beginning of something more.

This should make me happy. This should be the shit. Because ever since that gorgeous little monkey ambled out of my body nine years ago, some part of her, I think, has always kind of been trying to figure out a way to get back in.

That is to say, we're close. Partly it's because I wore her in a backpack well beyond the point when her legs were perfectly formed and in good working order. And breast fed her considerably longer than 'Make other moms at the park uncomfortable' age. Probably it's also because her dad and I split when she was three and we starred in the Mommy-Lily show for years and years (sometimes a lighthearted sitcom, like "Friends";  sometimes more frightening,  like "American Horror Story" or "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo". )

Regardless of the reasons, Lily and I are a unit. And I love it. But she's zooming toward the newly identified demographic of 'Tween' (Thanks, Mary Kate and Ashley) faster than you can say "Justice gift card".  She thinks Santa is bullshit. She wants to text people. She thinks Ke$ha is pretty. I'm not ready.

Which explains, I guess, why I do really dumb things. Like a couple weeks ago, I happened upon a journal. And I did the unthinkable.

Yup. I read it. Disgusted, aren't you? I know. It goes against every touchy-feely, crunchy-hippie-mom attachment parenting instinct I have. And yet. And yet. There it was.

It's okay, I told myself. You're only peeking in to make sure everything's going okay with her. Just getting a birds eye view of her life. Find out, perhaps, a teensy bit more than the usual 'Uh huh's and 'Fine's I get in the ride home from school lately.

Well, part of me wishes I hadn't. A really REALLY big part of me wishes that. But another part of me, the bitchy, worry-prone, See-I-Told-You-So part, felt totally, disappointingly justified. Because as I read the most recent entry, besides having to squelch the urge to break out a red pen and correct her totally shitty spelling, my knees started buckling and my whole midsection felt like it turned to liquid heat. I nearly burst into tears as I read the words (edited, of course):

DEAR DIARY, I AM SO EXCITED BECAUSE THE BOY I HAVE A CRUSH ON FINALLY ASKED ME TO BE HIS GIRLFRIEND!!!!