I’ve been too long gone from here, I know. It feels dusty and neglected in this virtual therapy box. I’ve just been a busy girl is all. You understand.

Here are some things:

1) I lied about my age the other day. It was the first time ever and there was no good reason. It certainly wasn’t vanity. An interminable tech-support call with a girl half a world away is no cause for vanity, I can assure you. First of all it’s on the phone. Secondly, it was a girl and I don’t play for that team. Thirdly, it’s half a world away so even if I did play for that team she would be a bit out of my comfort zone in terms of a long distance relationship. Then again, I’m pretty lazy so ten miles is sort of out of my comfort zone when it comes to long distance relationships. Nevermind India. I don’t care how good you are with computers.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t about that. She was just making small talk while looking up the solution to my problem and she says to me, “So, how old are you?” which is an odd question anyway. Who asks that for small talk? This girl, I guess. I faltered for half a second and then knocked four years off my age. Inexplicably. If she doubted it she never gave any indication. She just went right to the next question which was something about my work, I believe. I just wanted my computer to work! Not the Spanish Inquisition! The whole lying thing confuses me though. I still don’t know why I did it. Your guess, as they say, is as good as mine.

2) I can’t ever step on the back porch without hearing the neighbors talking or bickering or building seemingly never-ending additions. I guess even in the country you can’t get peace and quiet. Or maybe it’s because it’s the country. Sound travels better. That sounds good and scientific. We’ll go with that. All I know is that there’s a whole big old field horse pasture thingie (don’t I sound like I belong in the country?) separating our two houses and still it seems like those people are in our back yard.

This doesn’t always bother me because sometimes at night it’s a comfort when I’m standing out there looking at the sky to hear their familiar voices and noises. I’m afraid of the zombies who are only just biding their time before leaping the steps two at a time to consume my spicy, spicy brain. Oh, don’t act all surprised. They’re out there. Just watching. Watching and waiting. It’s at those times that I’m grateful for the disquietude of my neighbors.

Also, there’s this: there’s very few times I’ve gone on the deck out back and not seen deer. This is a nice touch when living in the country. Deer are pretty to look at and they rarely ever try to kill you or eat your brains. The only problem is that in the winter when it gets dark early they are hard to see but make a great deal of noise and so are easily mistaken for something that might try to kill you and eat your brains. This is problematic for me in that no matter how pretty they are when I can see them, when I can’t see them but can only hear them, they are pretty much useless and are, in fact, really a nuisance — and a pretty damn frightening one at that. When a couple deer come charging through your yard when you’re relaxing on your back porch in the thick, black of night it’s mighty hard to find comfort in the soft lull of your neighbors’ voices. At that point you’re pretty much convinced your brain is zombie chow and you might as well pray your death will be swift.

Those deer can be quiet. Which is worse. I’ve turned on my car before at night to find two of them right there, staring into my headlights. I thought, “Jesus, those are the biggest dogs I’ve ever seen.” But then I realized dogs don’t have antlers.

When they’re tearing around our yard like, well like zombies, it scares the bejeebus out of me.

3) This new, healthy fear of zombies is a direct result of it being October. October is, naturally, the month for gorging oneself on horror movies. Horror is my guilty little pleasure. I hate the genre! It disgusts me so much I can’t help but crave it to the point of distraction. Better I allow myself one month a year to get it out of my system. Better for us all, I can tell you that much right now. How convenient then that Halloween falls in October and, as such, the networks do me a solid by playing pretty much nonstop horror schlopp the whole month through. It’s gratifying in a horrible sort of way.

What’s weird about it though is this: I remember all these movies they’re showing being way scarier. Jacob & Kaleb are both old enough now to watch some of the horror movies I watched when I was their age. Or whenever. They’re interested in them now. Finally. So I’ve been telling them about some of them and I’m all like, “And then, this one part, and it was so scary and oh my god I just about had a heart attack and blah blah blah” and they’re suitably impressed and can’t wait to see it and I’m super excited because I remember being SO scared watching these movies when I was younger. So we sit down to watch it and these critical scenes come on and do I remember them? Oh, yes, I do. I get scared. My heart starts racing. I get that familiar feeling of dread and fear when the priest is about ready to meet his bloody end….and then….nothing. The boys are totally unimpressed. They look at me like I’m crazy. At one point in one movie I literally had to leave the room because I couldn’t handle what I knew was coming up. When I came back and asked if it was over they said, “Nothing happened.” I’m thinking maybe it hasn’t happened yet. But no. The scene I was referring to has come and gone. They just didn’t think it could possibly be the one I was referring to. It couldn’t possibly be significant enough to send me running out of the room.

I think you see. I think you know right where I’m going with this. Don’t make me say it. They’ve dashed all my hopes and dreams. Desensitized. All these craptacular horror movies these days. They’ve knocked the shit out of the good horror movies from the good old days. Yeah, I said it. GOOD OLD DAYS. What about it? Saw 4. WTF? We didn’t even need 1-3. In my day we had Amityville Horror, Salem’s Lot, The Exorcist and Carrie and we were damn glad of it.

4) Matt says I chew on sunflower seeds like a chipmunk and then laughs at me. I now can’t remember what chipmunks look like. He says it’s cute. Too late. I now have a complex and can’t eat sunflower seeds in front of him. He says he didn’t mean it like that. I now wonder what I look like eating other things in front of him. He says not to be daft. I now have the urge to go on a hunger strike or else eat in front of the mirror for the next three weeks just to get an idea of what “Eating Kim” looks like. He says I’m wonderful and one of the things that’s wonderful about me is that I don’t believe him when he says I’m wonderful. I now suspect he’s going to kill me and eat my brains. Or, possibly, wear my skin like a new leather coat.

I am so terribly afraid.