I am quietly obsessed with Unknown Mortal Orchestra, a band I have recently discovered. I enjoy all their music but my favorites are Hunnybee and Everyone Acts Crazy Now Days.

I write “quietly” because I am exploring music on my headphones while putting CC down for a nap. It’s really great toe tapping music. I feel like I need a disco ball and swivel office chair when listening to this band.

Twirl twirl twirl.

Swivel swivel swivel.

Twirl, swivel, twirl twirl.

Speaking of putting Cecilia down for a nap, lately I just fall right to sleep after story time. My whole “pretending” to go to sleep so she’ll settle down is backfiring on me in a big way. So in an attempt to stay awake during yesterday’s siesta, I caught myself thinking about…if you thought to yourself, ” I bet she was thinking about the horror film The Exorcist”…you would be correct.

I used to be enamored with the horror film genre.

For the longest time, The Exorcist was my all time favorite movie. Of course there was The Shining, Poltergeist, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and whatever else used to keep me and my girlfriends up and scared out of our gourds all weekend long. I don’t know how we managed to survive. We could probably send a thank you card to Pizza Hut and Mountain Dew for starters.

But honestly, I cannot count the number of times I have seen the classic of all classics and suffice it to say, every time that little girls head turns the whole way around and I hear the crunching and breaking of bones in the background, every hair on my being stands straight up.

It never disappoints.

Yes there were more for sure but The Exorcist, for me, was the one that launched my fondness for an honest to goodness guttural scream and consequently the standard for all horror films I would ever be exposed to.

And then I had children. Not chicken as my computer spellcheck wants me to write… although I probably had a lot of chicken during those times as well.

When I became pregnant, my psyche went through a strange transformation of invincibility to fragility all at once.

I no longer wanted to know or be associated with anything unsavory. I didn’t want to think about death in any of its forms including vindictive justice, which made it very difficult to watch anything from Martin Scorsese, whom I enjoyed immensely.

Through the years I have reconciled with my psyche on certain forms of “death in cinema” and ever so slowly, have begun my journey back to the dark side. And luckily for me I have come to my senses about Martin Scorsese.

But to this day, I absolutely cannot watch the new horror films. They have morphed into something darker, more sinister and worse… kind of real.

With that being said, I take you back to yesterday afternoon, when it was time for Cecilia’s nap.

First, allow me to set the scene for you. Right from the moment we awoke at the wee hours of the morn, the sky had banded all of its clouds together to block the sun from coming through. It just looked as if we were in for something more than a couple of little rain drops.

And holy wha…it was the storm of all storms complete with thunder, lightening, and random power outages.

As I stated before, Sometimes when I put CC down for a nap, I end up falling asleep right beside her. Her rhythmic heavy breathing, pummeling my neck with that warm strawberry breath. Watching her little hand with those jagged dirty fingernails rising and falling on her tummy. Both of these little CC nuances doing everything in their power to lull me into taking an afternoon nap right along side her. Like I don’t have dinner to prep, laundry to start, a bathroom to clean, dust buffaloes to sweep up, Kindergarten, 3rd, and 6th grade lessons to prep for AND implement, calls to make/return, appointments to schedule, tons of stuff to put away…the list goes on.

Sometimes when I don’t want to sleep, I mindlessly search social media. I have been an infrequent voyeur lately and therefore quite happy. Until yesterday, when I needed to stay awake. So Instagram it was.

I was just browsing, trying to pass the time. My finger must have hovered over a button because all of a sudden my camera was on and getting ready to record “my first IG story” whatever that is.

Before I could blink, an older version of me, with forehead wrinkles, sourpuss facial expression, dark circles surrounding my eyes was staring back at me. Scared out of my mind, I scrambled to press what ever button would get that old woman’s scary face off my phone screen.

Mission Accomplished.

Phew, what a relief! Holy cow…what was that?

But wait, that old lady staring back at me was…me. No way! It was straight out of an 80’s horror movie. And trust me, I’ve seen them all. Thus my plummet into the downward spiral began:

And just so you know, I would not under any circumstances post a horrific picture of myself on social media. Nor would I “print” out a horrific picture of myself and frame it for our entryway…or put it in our children’s baby books. In other words, I won’t post the horrific images here either. But since this post is about CC and myself, I will post pictures of us enjoying one another on Busha and Grandpa’s swing a month ago.

Trying to rationalize with myself I thought “No…I don’t look like that without makeup on…right?” So I did what any sane human being would do in that moment and turned on the camera again.

“WOW. How long have those forehead wrinkles been that prominent?” I said to myself.

“Angie Beth, you shouldn’t squint like that, you’ll get wrinkles” my older and wiser sister used to say to me all the time when I was a spring chicken refusing to wear my glasses. Glasses got in the way of the carefree image I was trying to put out there. Clearly. Ugh, She was right though.

“Holy Crevace…those lines run deep…and, are my pores always that big? Is my nose swollen… or are my eyes swollen? Are my eyes AND nose swollen?

I think my phone camera is jacked up. Plus the lighting in this room is wonky.

Ugh, should I start doing Botox? Will botox get rid of that extra fold of skin above my eye lid? Have my eyes always been this different from one another? There definitely NOT the same.

I look like an alien.

Oh my… holy wha… SERIOUSLY are my pores really that BIG? Is this phone on “magnify mode”?

Do I know anyone who throws Botox parties? But then what if I have an allergic reaction? That would be my luck.”

Whatever happened to “growing old gracefully”…there’s nothing “graceful” about those crevices deep DEEP lines.

I typed in the word “graceful” in my search engine and followed with “antonym”… here are some of the adjectives I can choose to replace “graceful” with…

“Growing old Rigidly

Growing old inflexibly

Growing old bunglingly

Growing old stiffly

…ooh here’s one “Maladroit”

Growing old maladroitly

or damn…

Growing old “gracelessly”.

Awe…That one hurt.

Gracelessly.

“I can’t afford Botox. Abby is a growing machine…she needs food, clothes, shoes, possibly braces.

We are re-doing a house… “Oh hey, Greg, when I go to Home Depot to purchase the circular table saw, would you mind if I stopped by my dermatologists office and had him apply some botox…it’s only a BAZILLION dollars a vile…I don’t know how many I’ll need…20 viles, maybe 40…no it only lasts for a couple of months…”

With my heart racing, I gently rolled out of Cecilia’s bed and quietly sprinted to the bathroom tripping over every sharp tiny animal LEGO piece laying on the ground just so I could examine my granny face in the mirror.

With my palms sweating, I stood approximately 1 and a quarter-inch from the mirror poking, prodding, and pulling my skin taught in places where gravity had taken over.

“This is by far the scariest, most alarming moment I have had since the first time I watched “No Country for Old Men” back in…well, it’s been a while. When did this happen? I’m only 41. Aren’t the forties supposed to be the new thirties? Thirties are the new twenties and fifties the new forties?”

I had to self talk…I remembered the first time I saw The Exorcist, the subliminal messaging in that movie always fascinated me…the feeling in my stomach due to my little old brain working over time trying to decipher the images and their meanings. Yesterday, I was experiencing some of my own personal subliminal messaging:

 All of the sudden, I was transported to this older 1970’s decor living room. And there stood this 60-year-old woman. She had short dark black hair teased to perfection, in sort of a Jackie O style, dark tan skin, and this is the truly strange part, bright pink lipstick bleeding not-so-subtly outside her lip line.

She was wearing a house coat lined with gold snaps, over a bold red sequenced shift dress and a pair of open toed house shoes that showed her crinkly old bright red nail polished toenails that were turned aggressively towards her more innocent smaller, helpless toes.

I imagined the ring leader toe…the big one…but you probably guessed that one…would aggressively accost all the other toes if they stepped out of line and viciously scratch them until they bled.

So scary right?

My subliminal messages show her holding a sifter with a giant ice-cube and a quarter of the glass filled with gold liquid, which sloshed everywhere when she walked.

In this subliminal message, she begins to lead me to a bathroom. We walk down into a sunken living room, she misses a step and stumbles backward catching herself on her heels and used my shoulder to steady herself.

As she steadied herself, the gold liquid from her sifter sloshed onto this ugly striped shirt I hated wearing as a child.

Back to the present: I looked at myself in the mirror again to make sure I am still my curly frizzy haired self…when the same subliminal image continually presenting itself in boomerang mode:

She keeps laughing, with her lipstick bleeding outside her lip line and each time she laughs lipstick appears on her tooth…and then she repeats the trip and steady movement as she shows me to the bathroom…and then my striped shirt appears and…BOOMERANG…the scene repeats itself again

And again

and

Again.

“Are these scenes playing out in my mind because I am actually morphing into this lady?” I quietly looked down at my feet to see if Bunyan’s had appeared overnight. Nope. Still my long skinny skellator toes.

And I don’t own a house coat or a bathrobe if there’s a difference. So I’m all good there. Nor do I own a red sequence dress. But as I think about it, I did wear a red sequins dress to prom my sophomore year…hmm.

As thunder rattled the window panes of our current 1940’s bathroom, I leaned my face close to the sink and splashed cold water on my eyes…silently willing them to go back to normal.

Luckily it was around this time I decided I was putting WAY too much stock into this one isolated incident.

Problem solved.

And poof…my version of “the exorcist” and the obviously alcoholic Jacki O person, along with my ugly striped T-shirt disappeared….

As I straightened up, dried my eyes, and blinked several times at myself in our warped ‘Made In Taiwan’ mirror, I had one last image of the lady:

She was standing outside in her driveway that was actually alongside a pretty steep cliff sloshing her gold liquid all around as she waved goodbye to me. And with her lipstick teeth yelled something unintelligible, laughed, winked flirtatiously and turned for a, I’m not making this up, swan dive off the cliff behind her.

What? What does that mean? This whole sequence is so messed up.

For a split second I considered rushing to and looking over the edge. But then, would this damn story ever end?

What is the point of this whole saga you ask? I’ll be asking myself that same question for weeks to come.

All I know is that I feel rattled inside. Like I’ve just experienced something awful. Maybe I should just resign myself to taking the short afternoon naps with Cecilia. Or I could just listen to and purchase music. But last month, my iTunes bill was a little ridiculous.

I will be searching for the meaning to all of these horrific images for weeks to come. But in the interim, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Bat Dad it is!!

I have reconciled that my deep DEEP forehead crevices lines are due to the fact I had horrible sleep last night and I’m most likely dehydrated. It was a scary moment though.