I was diagnosed with chronic asthma yesterday. Good timing, eh? What with the shifty global pandemic continuing to wreak havoc on the entire world, whether people want to believe it or not, it’s not an excellent time to have asthma. And, not only that, but I may be on my way to acute bronchitis once […]
Author: BrainWars
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Weakness, Witches and Signs of the Time
I’m not able to leave the house much because I have bad lungs. I am still in the revolution, as my friend refers to it, but I’m also living in a time of coronavirus like most other humans on earth and, since I’m more susceptible to the virus because of my bad lungs, I’m staying […]
The American Civil War Doesn’t Need a Sequel, Much Like the Matrix
āItās about you but itās not about youā is the way I can best sum up a response to some things other white people are saying about white privilege in the context of the current movement to acknowledge and address systemic racism. And, sure, police have been killed in the line of duty but black […]
Coping: a Frustrating Revolutionary Reality
Yesterday, my husband David received a NEGATIVE! result for the free coronavirus test we took last Friday. So that’s great. However, since we took our tests at the same time at the same place… it felt weird I did not receive my test result when he did. First my sense of humor and #1 coping […]
“Want a beer?” and Other Life-Saving Techniques
“Want a beer?” is what I’d hear if I walked into a Wisconsin friend’s house because it’s what is first said when terrible (and good) things are actively happening. I’m so demoralized and not surprised by all the news reports about American violence of late I’m going to talk about drinking alcohol. However, I’m not […]
The Edinburgh Fringe, Tourists, Darkness and My Disdain
I grew up in a somewhat tourist-y area. Baraboo, Wisconsin is naturally gorgeous and features a lake which was formed by glaciers. Itās named āDevilās Lakeā and thus throughout the surrounding area many of the roads and activities are titled āDevilās Thisā and āDevilās Thatā and, as a kid, I just thought it was all […]
Remembering Nice Interactions in Scottish Society After Poor Interactions in Wisconsin Society
Usually, if I’m feeling bright and cheery, I try to gather it all up to summon the nerve and will to go out and talk to people. I’m remembering this because I had some pretty upsetting interactions with humans recently as, due to a family emergency, I found myself in a small town in Wisconsin […]
“Is the American Health System That Bad?” Asked my Scottish/Not Scottish Friends. “Well, It Depends Who You Are.”
My husband David and I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland 2007-2010. Since his mom is 100% Scottish (though she resides in America but not in this photo because she came to visit us when we lived in Scotland), her family still lived there and we were therefore able to spend time with them. One time we […]
Same Rant, Now With Castle View
Rough day yesterday. 911. Emergency room. Parking lots. In any case, a reminder to not allow meaningless, small stuff to dominate time because our time is short. And this reminds me of feeling the same way in Scotland: tired. One day, while living in Edinburgh and feeling overwhelmed by deadlines and recent deaths and academia, […]
Thinking About Other Things Like the Scottish Ferris Wheel From Hell
We lived in Edinburgh, Scotland for three years as I was awarded three years of research funding by the University of Edinburgh. La-dee-dah, I hear you. For the record, Edinburgh is the most visually stunning city I’ve ever seen. When we first got off the double decker bus on South Bridge and looked around it […]
Tired (Wild Animals Screaming into an Invisible Mic)
I’ve been running in place for ten years. And I just realized it. In books, I sometimes see authors compare “a cake walk” to playing the old board game Candy Land. As in, both are smooth/easy/no problem. Well. Candy Land is in fact a brutal board game. Now that I think of it… cake walks […]
Wisconsin’s Need to Party
When I was younger, I felt pretty world-worn when I posted on Facebook: āLife usually does not follow our plans but we still need to keep making them. I guess. And then adapt or go grab a beer.ā But, by saying that, I either called it or typed in error. Because, here in Wisconsin, a […]
Back in Milwaukee, Paranormal Activity Outpaced by Criminal Activity
After a year in Pittsburgh, we moved back to Milwaukee and rented a pest/rodent-infested apartment in a kind-of-bad neighborhood which always has car alarms going off and which also comes with the creepiest daily interruption: The ice cream cart was novel when we first moved in and then it lost its charm. There is a […]
Moving Out and We Took the Haunted Mirror With Us (To Goodwill)
Right. So, we started to pack up to ship out. The haunted house had won. Well, it wasnāt as much the weird happenings as much as the whole thing about my mom living her last days and dying in our house. The latter factor was a big one as we didnāt want to continue to […]
The Final Straw!
It took a year but, when 2018 rolled around, my husband David and I were making final plans to put our house on the market. Too much had happened within its walls and we needed a change. And, one night in February, David went to bed early while I stayed up to watch the Winter […]
The Murmuring at 4:40 AM
After Momās death, we lived in the first house we owned for another year. And, after her death, the house got right back to its old haunted routine. In our final year, and when now looking back, only three incidents really stick out. The first of the three occurred only days after my mom’s funeral. […]
Angels in a Not Yet Broken Phone
Five and a half years after being placed on hospice, my mom died in June 2017 at the age of 64. I organized the funeral and then the funeral happened and then I returned to our house and my husband David went to work and our house was just empty and quiet and I couldnāt […]
The Beyond
On the first night we viewed and then signed the papers to buy our Madison house, it felt haunted. When I went upstairs to turn off the hallway light, I felt the air thicken and move around me in an unnatural way. Thrilled, I ran downstairs, delighted that we were going to buy a haunted […]
The Outsiders
Our house activity climaxed with my beloved momās fight to defy death in her final months battling frontotemporal degeneration (FTD). New things started to happen which didnāt seem particularly paranormal as they involved tangible, organic creatures who were simply behaving oddly. Specifically, the animals started to mobilize. By this point, we had lived in our […]
What the Others Saw
As time went on, more souls were to experience the unexplained, creepy and unusual happenings which took place in our Madison, Wisconsin house. But these experiences were secondary as these additional house visitors were there to assist me with the care of my rapidly declining, terminally-ill mom. Due to her lengthy battle with frontotemporal degeneration […]
Brain Wars!!! 