Fouad called me at work yesterday to ask me for the password to one of his 853 (rough estimate) email accounts.  First of all, buddy, we broke up 10 months ago and, while I had several passwords to several of your email accounts, I don’t remember them.  Plus I’m pretty sure that the one you were requesting the password for is the one secretive account that I was never allowed to read.  This is what happens when you keep (approximately) 853 email accounts, each with a different password.  I mean, duh.

 I think I’m like his mom in Prague.  I’m that person he contacts when he is needy and desperate and doesn’t have anyone else to turn to.  But, in part because I am <i>not</i> his mother, I feel less and less guilty about not helping him.

 A couple of months ago, he was trying to hit me up for several hundred dollars so that he could fly home to Algeria.  I felt bad that he couldn’t raise the funds to see his family but there was no way I was going to pay for it.  Somehow, though, he managed, and I will always wonder how.  But he flew home to Algeria in mid-October.  And then he proceeded to text me and do that call and hang up thing, from an Algerian phone number.  I did not call him back.

 On Saturday, he returned to Prague and asked me if he could stay with me for a week, but I turned him down, simply saying that my landlord was going to be visiting this week.

 Frankly, now that I know that he was fortunate enough to come up with the money for a plane ticket back to Algeria, I can stop worrying about him.  I guess I’ve been feeling a bit guilty and thinking that I still owed him something after we broke up in January, but he can take care of himself.

 My annoying friend Lenka might stop by tonight after work so that she can pick up her mail, which she is still getting at my apartment 10.5 months after she moved out.  Actually, she only contacts me now because of her stupid mail.  Caroline told me that I should take Lenka’s name off of my mailbox and that I should have done that months ago.  And Caroline is obviously right.  But we all know I’m a pushover, and so I haven’t.

 I think my subconscious has opted for the annoy-her-until-she-no-longer-wants-to-get-her-mail-at-your-apartment plan.  I’m totally cancelling on her tonight, in part because I think I’ll go grab a few drinks with my friend Leslie.  But also because I’m a bitch who is tired of being used as Lenka’s personal post office.

 I saw Amy and Emmy today for the last time in Prague.  If I ever see them again, it will happen stateside.  Amy was talking today about women dating/marrying men exactly like their fathers, and she asked if I had done this.  I’m not really sure, frankly.  I don’t think Leon and my dad were anything alike.  And certainly not Fouad.  Chris has an outgoing personality that might be similar to my dad’s but their beliefs, ideas, and views of the world are so completely different.

 Anyway, I was describing my dad to her as an extroverted, talkative person, and she stopped me to ask how my seemingly friendly, outgoing parents could have produced someone like me.  “You’re so quiet!” she said.

 It made me stop to wonder how she perceives me.  Our friendship was sort of built around my listening to her problems.  She had to go through that hellish pregnancy and birth; she had to go through one particularly hellish job here in Prague; she had the general hell of dealing with a foreign land and people who aren’t, by nature, very helpful or friendly; she had some arguments and issues with her husband.  And so I listened.

 Yes, it’s true, I am a quiet person.  But I was quiet out of the kind of respect that I think my parents taught me.  And that, I guess, is how my friendly, outgoing parents produced someone like me.

 I really hope my new sofa and armchairs are in my apartment when I get home, but 20 koruny says it ain’t so.

Had he not died on Christmas, my grandfather would have turned 73 today. I wonder if it’s a solemn day in Quincy.

I don’t hear a lot from home, really. Everyone is busy—my mom teaching summer school, my dad working a second job, and the pair of them raising my sister’s kids. Meanwhile my sister is, I think, completely caught up in a romance with an unemployed guy, which means that he has plenty of time for her. That’s how it works best, I think, until she has invested (and I mean that in the financial sense) so much in that person that she wants something back.

I got a MySpace message from her boyfriend on Fathers’ Day saying that he planned to propose to her on that day. I haven’t heard anything from either of them since, so I don’t know if they are engaged or not. My money is on no, because I think her Facebook status would’ve been changed immediately. Thank God for social networking sites, or else I’d have no idea what was going on with them.

My parents aren’t so keen on this guy. They think he’s a weasel, but I’ve barely been around him and, as long as he’s polite to me, I don’t really care about anything else. And he is polite to me. And friendly.

But one of the reasons that they don’t like him is because he had my sister arrested on felony charges and she spent a night in jail last New Year’s. She broke a picture frame over his head in some domestic dispute, and he called the police. She was supposed to go to trial—an actual, honest-to-God jury trial—last spring but he dropped the charges.

He also brought up the proposal to my parents, and he whipped out a ring in front of them a month ago when my sister wasn’t around. It was after dinner and they were sitting on the sofa in the living room. My mom said that she was speechless, while my dad pretended to fall asleep so he didn’t have to react.

I am meeting my parents in Barcelona at the end of the month. The last time I saw them was in early August, so it will have been almost an entire year since I last saw them. It’s unbelievable how that happened.

We’re taking a Mediterranean cruise, and we’ll start in Barcelona, hit Malta, France, and a couple of cities in Italy. I’m stoked, but I bet that much travel at the hottest time of the year will be exhausting. But hopefully we won’t push ourselves too hard and have a lovely time. I can’t wait.

My grandfather's obituary has been posted on the funeral home's website. Seeing it in print makes it feel more real, like I didn't just dream it.

It's going to take a while for it to completely sink in, though.

The first words out of my mouth when my aunt told me: "Are you serious?"

She was taken aback. I'm sure that when she was imagining what she would say to me (if she even had time for this--it's quite self-centered of me to assume that in the first ninety minutes after her father died, she was consumed with thoughts of me), she didn't suppose that she'd have to convince me that it wasn't some kind of cruel Christmas prank.

Not that I needed convincing; I was just shocked.

In my defense, I didn't think he was going to die yet. I know I said in my last post that I "knew" he wouldn't live to see another Christmas, but that's not actually true. I can't tell you how many times I've been informed that various members of my family wouldn't live to see another birthday, holiday, or first day of spring. And I can't tell you how many times that information turned out to be incorrect.

This is no one's fault, of course. You might be tempted to blame the messengers--to say that they were continually crying wolf, but this isn't the case. There were times when things looked really fucking bleak, and so my parents, sister, or grandparents told me that things were really fucking bleak. Sometimes things got better, and sometimes they did not.

For my grandfather, they did not.

But the last message I sent to my mom on Skype before hearing the news was this: "Is grandpa still in the hospital?" As in, is he back at home? Has he gotten better? Is he recovering? I didn't even bother to ask if he was "ok," because, for me, of course he was ok. But was he the kind of "ok" that needed a bit more monitoring in the ICU or was he the kind of "ok" that got to carve the Christmas ham?

It's impossible for me to explain the goodness of my grandfather. The assumption now is that I will say kind things because he is dead, but this isn't the case. There is something impossibly glowing about my grandparents and my mom that goes far beyond the respect of a child for her caregivers. These three people are/were selfless, caring, hardworking people. They are perfect in my eyes, and they mean the world to me.

When other members of my family die, I will be sad and I will mourn them and probably say wonderful things about them, but it will not be the same. Even my father, whom I love dearly, doesn't quite have the sheen of my mother and her parents. And when they are all gone, I will not be the only one who feels it.

Late last week, the divorce became final. No, not my divorce, you vultures! My sister's.

Sara filed for divorce from her husband Jeremiah about a month ago when the news of his termination at work and his subsequent lie about it were the final straws on the back of a camel that was already supporting the weight of his alcohol problem and physical abuse of her while she was pregnant.

About a month ago, Jeremiah told my parents that there were going to be some layoffs at his place of employment. I don't know if this is true or if Jeremiah knew that he was about to be fired and was cunning enough to plant the seeds for a cover-up. Either way, he was fired and soon began telling everyone--including his wife--that he was laid off and was nothing but a victim in the tale of how he'd come to be unemployed.

This might have worked, except that he caused such a spectacle when he was fired--screaming and cursing at his bosses--that he gave his coworkers a reason to talk about it. One of his coworkers sent a text message to his girlfriend as the huge argument was taking place, and she received that message while she was at work...with my dad.

Quincy is a very small town.

A day or two later, Jeremiah and Sara showed up at my parents' house for dinner, and he told my dad that he had been laid off from his job. My dad didn't let on that he knew otherwise.

But after dinner, my mom told Sara privately what had happened and she was understandably hurt and angry.

I talked on the phone to Sara shortly after all of this happened, and she confessed that she wanted to get a divorce, but, "I look at mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, and they've been married for so long. I don't want to be the one who gets a divorce."

I told her that staying married for the sole sake of avoiding the stigma of a divorce was silly and that she shouldn't care what other people think of her. Besides, anyone who condemns her for divorcing the man who lied to her about something as important as his job and who beat her when she was pregnant has some serious issues of their own.

In other news, Leon is in Tennessee this week, visiting his family. He flew into Knoxville, which is halfway between his hometown of Johnson City and Nashville, where his mom has been receiving her cancer treatments. When I last talked to him, he didn't know if he'd be spending his time in Johnson City or Nashville, but he did know that his mom's cancer didn't go away when she was injected with her brother David's stem cells several months ago--a process that, as I understood it, had a 20% chance of curing her, a 20% chance of killing her, and a 60% chance of sending the cancer into remission. But none of these things happened, and she's set to undergo the entire process all over again.

I obviously hope that she beats it this time around and that she is well enough to attend her daughter Ruth's wedding in August. My prediction is that she will have to wear a surgical mask to the nuptials, just as she had to when we went wedding gown shopping for Ruth during the Thanksgiving holiday. Those chirpy David's Bridal employees had never seen anything like it.

This is getting a bit long, but I must mention that my Aunt Val was in the hospital recently, having lots of tests done. Last I heard, she didn't have the results back, but I'm confident that she's going to learn that she's suffering from the same degenerative liver and kidney diseases that my grandpa has. It's sort of like looking into the future and seeing what's going to happen to me if I don't take better care of my body.

As for my grandpa, he's showing the early signs of Alzheimer's in addition to his own liver and kidney problems.

And this is the news from the States. But Prague is great. Wish you were here!

I feel a bit like I did on that day when Lindsay sat me down and went sentence by sentence through an email apology that I had written to her, telling me that this apology was actually rude and disrespectful. That is, I feel misunderstood.

I was unfriended tonight by a Livejournal friend who told me that I am an ungrateful, spoiled child who is treating her parents poorly and hurting her husband.

First, in my White Teeth entry, I implied that I blamed my mom for the tetracycline staining on my teeth and that she had "scarred me for life." I actually thought that was funny. In fact, I nearly tagged the entry "amusing" because a good portion of it was sarcastic. Okay, so I guess it really wasn't funny, but I thought it was. I actually thought about writing that entry while walking through downtown Berkeley and I thought the line about a cosmetic dental procedure in an Eastern European nation was humorous. Yeah, maybe I have a terrible sense of humor but that's all it was.

Do you really think I called up my mom and said, "Bitch, you fucked up my teeth! How dare you try to heal yourself while I was still in your womb?!" Um, no. I just told her about it by saying, "You know how I have those little marks on my front two teeth? Well, those were caused by you taking antibiotics when you were pregnant with me," which led to her remark that, "oh, sure, it's always the mother's fault," which was another joke. She said that half laughing--she sure as hell didn't think I was accusing her of making me ugly. Yeah, I guess we don't tell a very good joke or I am lousy at translating it into text but that is all that was.

If you seriously think that I yelled at my mom or tried to make her feel guilty about my teeth, then I would really like you to unfriend me because either your understanding of me is so off that there's really no point in you reading this anymore or we're just on two completely different planes and there's no sense in us trying to communicate with each other.

The other horrible thing is that I'm hurting my husband by going to Prague. This is more understandable, really, and I can't blame my Livejournal friend for thinking less of me for this. That's because I still haven't revealed all of the details of my trip to Prague. For starters, you really need to know that whole "bad news" story that I've been holding just out of your reach for the past several months. That may not improve your opinion of me but it will at least clear some things up.

The other thing that you might need to know about the trip to Prague is that Leon fully endorses it. And not in a "Oh, yes, dear, whatever will make you happy!" kind of way. The truth is that Leon is tired of trying to help me get better and he's not at all to blame for that. My problems are within me and have nothing to do with him. And because of this, he has requested that I go elsewhere to deal with my problems and to "fix" myself. He doesn't want to deal with it.

It's completely understandable to feel sorry for Leon in all of this, because he hasn't done anything wrong and certainly doesn't deserve to have a wife who is as fucked up as I am. But! He does not feel abandoned. He doesn't really want me here while I'm unhappy. I mean, you must admit, it'd be one hell of a downer to live with someone like me.

So let me make myself very clear: I do not think that there is anything wrong with Leon's approach to my problems. He has been there for me through some incredibly rough times over the past six years and been the best friend I could ever ask for. But the fact is that my problems are within me and he can't do anything about them. I have to deal with them myself, so he and I both think it would be good for me to be on my own for a while. Plus, dude needs a break from me and my crazy, I'm sure, and I'm all for giving him that.

And as for my teeth? My parents paid for my braces, the removal of four permanent teeth plus the removal of my four wisdom teeth (I'm quite toothless!) as well as 18+ years of checkups and cleanings. Mom and dad, thank you for my teeth!

...But that obviously isn't for my parents' benefit because they already know how much I love and appreciate them. I spoke to my mom today and walked her through the installation of Skype so that she and I can still talk as often as we always have (multiple times a week) while I am away. Sometimes I think about what it would feel like to lose them or how grateful I am for everything that they gave me, and it brings me to tears. And I have told them this, which made them cry (well, at least my mom) because we are one sappy family--one big, crazy, sappy family with terrible senses of humor.

My mom had known for weeks that I'd been considering going to Prague for an extended period of time, but I told her on Wednesday that the decision was final. I had purchased my ticket, informed my work, and made arrangements with Caroline.

I could tell that she wasn't entirely pleased with my decision, but she said that I have her support and her desire for my happiness. That's all I could reasonably ask for.

Thursday morning, she emailed me to say that she had shared the news with my dad. Actually, she had told him weeks ago that it might happen, but she obviously told him in a moment when he wasn't paying attention to her.

"Kate might move to Prague," she told him.

"Uh huh," he said, surely not looking at her but at the newspaper or the television.

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Uh huh."

And so the news on Wednesday evening did not have its proper introduction. Unprepared, he was confronted with news that his younger daughter was moving to Eastern Europe. Granted, his younger daughter is a 24-year-old adult but that doesn't mean he can't have an opinion on the matter. And he did.

The word that my mom used in her email was "livid."

To be honest, I have trouble picturing my dad as "livid." Hurt, upset, shocked, confused, incredulous? Sure. But not "livid."

On a whim, I called home last night and my dad answered the phone. He certainly didn't sound "livid." Of course, neither of us said anything of Prague, but he did at least make conversation. He wanted me to know that Leon's great aunt was a question on Jeopardy. He wanted to know if I had seen it or taped it and I told him that I hadn't. In less than three minutes, he handed the phone off to my mom.

The interaction wasn't much, but it showed me that he isn't really livid. He's just worried and perhaps expressed that as anger, but he can't really be angry with me. No, I know that I have his support and, like I said, that's really all I can ask for.

I took the internet's advice and gave my parents the bad news before Christmas. Actually, it wasn't a rational decision to let them cope before I arrived; I had become anxious to the point where I could no longer function as a normal human being. I felt that if I didn't tell them, I was going to explode from the pressure of holding in such a massive amount of hot air. (That's one of those metaphors that you should just read and not try to dissect.)

The Monday before Christmas, I called my mom and gaged her mood for a few minutes until I finally broke out this clever, diplomatic phrase: "What's the worst thing I could possibly tell you?"

Brilliant, Kate. Way to make Mt. Everest out of the Appalachians.

She responded, "That you're not coming home for Christmas."

"Really?" I said and tried to decide if her shortsightedness was a good thing.

After this, she reconsidered and began listing terrible things, some of which included: losing my job, quitting my job, getting a divorce, and having a terminal illness. "Well, which is it?" she asked.

I didn't answer. Somehow she decided that I had lost my job and began probing the whys and hows. But this wasn't it, and so I kept quiet, which did nothing to calm her nerves as she now considered that her youngest child might be homeless or dying.

When Leon began listening in some minutes later, she sounded angry and nearly hysterical. He calmed her down and told her that everything was fine, really. He told me, "Don't make her guess."

And I told her. And I cried and cried and cried, the most satisfying, freeing tears of my life. She told me that she was shocked but that she loves me and wants me to be happy. The following day, I had an email from her that was filled with wonderful, encouraging words and lots of smiley faces.

Unfortunately, my dad overheard the conversation and he wasn't as easygoing as my mom. He was somewhere between devastated and angry. And, although he treated me normally while I was home for Christmas, he left for work the day of my flight out of Quincy without saying goodbye (we drove by his work on the way to the airport and made him hug me anyway). He was very rude and condescending to me on the phone last night, as well, but that may not have had anything to do with me.

Still, I'd say they're both taking it well, in their own special ways.

My dad sent me the following email just now:

I went on google yesterday and did a search for Ilasco. I went into a Hannibal Public Library site and the picture on the home page was very intriguing to me. If you get a chance, check it out. And tell me who the man is in the front row, third from the right. The photo was taken in 1920.
DAD

The photo that he's referring to is this:



The man who is third from the right is my great grandfather, Charles Rache. And this photo would've been taken less than ten years after he immigrated from Hungary. It's quite a find, as I don't think I've seen any photos of my grandfather at this age, maybe one.

But, of course, my email to my dad was this:

Why are you using Google?

Dear Kate,

Federal express pulled up in front of the house at 10am today and I signed for a box. I opened it and thank you so much for the IPOD. You made me cry!!! I wish that you had not been so extravagent, but it is such a pleasant surprise. THANK YOU, Muchas gracias!!!!!

I have not installed anything yet, but I hope to soon.

One question, If I put a song on it and want to remove it, can that be done?

LOVE you very much,

DAD

My dad is getting an iPod Nano for Father's Day, and in true Kate fashion, it's going to arrive late. I am annoyed with myself for this and for not getting an especially good deal. And for having to pay for it with a personal check, which sounds fishy, even to me.

But he wants an iPod. I'm not sure how much he'll use it, but he thinks they're the bee's knees. Let's hope he can figure out how to get music on it (and that I didn't just get scammed).

FYI: When going to this, it's best to plan ahead for this. Because the traffic will be horrible. And you will be rerouted away from your destination if you decide to drive through the Financial District. Also, deciding to drive through Chinatown on the night of the Chinese New Year Parade? Another bad idea. I'm just sayin'.

Leon and I gave ourselves an hour and a half to drive from Berkeley into San Francisco and to pick up our tickets for Beach Blanket Babylon, which were a Christmas gift from my parents. Let me repeat: 90 minutes. To drive approximately 14 miles.

Granted, driving into San Francisco at any time other than 3 am on weekdays can easily take an obscene amount of time. But Leon and I were through the toll plaza and over the Bay Bridge in about an hour, and we thought we were home free. Then we tried to cross Market street.

From a distance, I could see all of these cult-like figures dressed in red ponchos and asked Leon what they were. It became clear when we actually got to Market and saw floats. "Look, honey! It's a Valentine's Day parade," I said. "How cute." The words haunt me.

We were able to cross Market on Front Street because it was evidently the one intersection designated for people to drive through the parade route. But then we turned on Pine and it was a complete standstill. At one point, we were actually sitting in an intersection for at least three light changes. Just not moving. (And yes, it was ass-y of us to pull into the intersection when it was obvious that we weren't going to get through, but we hadn't been moving at all because traffic going straight had been doing that same ass-y thing for light after light.)

At one point, I called my dad, because I am a baby. I was somewhat angry at my parents for getting us February 11th tickets because, duh! How could they not know about this Valentine's Day parade (I did realize until much later when we saw fireworks and people lined up in a dragon that it was actually not a Valentine's Day parade)?

So I tried to explain the situation to my dad. His reaction? "You should have been at the show thirty minutes ago." Because my parents are old people who actually prepare for a parade, a snowstorm, and road construction whenever they go somewhere. This past Christmas, they left for the airport before Leon and I had even gotten on our first flight.

Needless to say, he wasn't much help. And my totally ungrateful complaint of HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY MAKE IT TO THE SHOW WHEN THERE IS A PARADE (disguised as me asking them to somehow navigate us around the parade route--yeah, I know, I'm dumb) was mostly lost on him.

In the end, we got to the show. About 15 minutes late, which is a sizeable chunk of a show that barely has a running time of 90 minutes. On the plus side, the ushers sat us in the producer's seats, which were awesome reserved seats in the front. So we had a great view of all that Big Hat Goodness that was Beach Blanket Babylon.

But the next time we try to make an event in San Francisco? We should just leave the day before. My folks would be proud and maybe we could even catch the damn parade.

We received the disk with our professional wedding pictures today! Here are a couple of random ones, just in case I don't get around to writing up every detail of the ceremony and reception.







You can't see my face in this one because of the angle, so it may not be a great picture, but I absolutely adore my dad's expression. See how he's taking my hand? We held hands instead of linking arms the rest of the way down the aisle. He said later that he was too emotional and that I had to support him.

We don't have our professional pictures yet--I expect them in the next week. In the meantime, I am posting highlights from our friends' pictures.


The bride and the maid of honor: me and my sister Sara.

( I'm finally being nice enough to use a cut. )

My mom told me that my dad has been in a funk--sleeping all day and moping around. I know it's because he's bored on his summer vacation and needs something to entertain him.

So I asked Leon to call him and now they're just chatting away. My fiance is so cute.

What are you getting your dad for Father's Day? I need some ideas--hopefully something that'll match the Mother's Day Pajama Gram in awesomeness, so hit me.

I tried to broaden my parents' horizons Sunday night and introduced them to Tibetan cuisine. This was a big, stupid mistake.

My mom was fine with it, of course. She is incredibly easy to please and she ordered a dish with beef and noodles that was not unlike Chinese lo mein. She was happy.

My dad pouted for a bit and finally decided to order momas (dumplings) with mushrooms and cream cheese. After snubbing the traditional bread, he received his dish of momas, cut one up, and took a bite.

"They're cold!" he said. And there was a passing around of the momas and an insistence to him that they really were supposed to be cold. He ate the lettuce on his plate and then declared himself full.

Leon and I paid the bill, because we felt so guilty. My dad continued to pout after we left and wouldn't stop for a burger or slice of pizza. I knew he had to be hungry, and I felt bad for upsetting him so much with ethnic food.

I just wanted him to be happy.

So, I coaxed him toward the Gelateria on Shattuck, but the curious ice cream was not appetizing to him.

We ventured on toward the Cold Stone Creamery, where the cheesecake ice cream with berries and graham crackers was an instant hit. He was cheered up and somehow found his way into McDonald's on our walk home--imagine that.

Still, he was grumpy for most of the trip after that. I don't think it was the Tibetan food but simply the unfamiliar situation wearing thin. It was fun at first to see his daughter and future son-in-law, who he hadn't seen in three months. But then he missed his television, his computer, his sleep.

My mom said that next time she wouldn't bring him. Then we'll be able to feast on Ghanaian dishes without him turning his nose up.

"He's just an old redneck," my mom said. I hadn't really thought of him that way; he's more cultured than most people from our hometown. But he's getting so set in his ways that it may just be best to leave him in a recliner in front of the TV while the rest of us go see the world.

My sister had a baby on Saturday, around 1:40 pm CST. He's 19 inches long and weighs 7 lbs, 9 oz. His name is Harrison Christian Schmidt.

I called my dad on his cell phone around 1:30 CST and he gave me the play by play of the last few minutes. Then I could hear a baby crying and apparently everyone else was crying too.

Harrison is just 15 months younger than Matteson, my sister's daughter. It will be busy in Illinois; I'll post pictures from home.

My dad emailed me to ask what our flight number is (I don't know, Dad; it's the Delta flight from Cleveland that gets in around midnight) and casually mentioned that he's now on Christmas break. I'm sure he wasn't at all trying to make me feel jealous.

Fortunately, it is Friday, and Leon and I will celebrate the end of his first semester of grad school this weekend. Then it's just three more days, and I get a week and a half off from work. I'm so excited that I want to leap out of my chair and dance, dance, dance! through the office. The Christmas spirit must've clubbed me on the head this morning.

My dad recently admitted that he can feel presences in my family's house. Supposedly, when he's in the basement, he feels like someone is watching him or that he could turn around at any moment and someone would be there.

I'll admit that I've felt this way before, but this feeling isn't limited to my experiences in my house. Occasionally, I've imagined that someone's eyes are on me, but I usually dismiss this as mild paranoia or my tendency toward being overly self-conscious. I try not to consider ghosts as an option.

But I can't say that I don't believe in ghosts. I'm not a spiritual person, and I don't believe in an afterlife. Yet, if I were to say, "I don't believe in ghosts," I'd look around me as if awaiting some spirit to come and prove me wrong. I'm in this strange limbo between belief and disbelief.

Of course, I don't want to believe that our house is haunted. Unfortunately, it is over a hundred years old and near a cemetery, if that means anything at all.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with my mom, and she said this: "You know those presences that your dad feels in the house? Well, he saw them."

"What?"

"He saw them. It was a woman and her daughter and they were looking into our bedroom and smiling."

Well, that's lovely.

When we were in my hometown last weekend, Leon and I quizzed my dad about his odd discovery. My dad explained that he woke up in the middle of the night recently, and he saw these two smiling figures standing by the door.

I wondered, "How could you tell that they were smiling? You wouldn't have had your glasses on, and you're blind as a bat."

"I could just tell."

"Was it kind of surreal," asked Leon, "like, was it dream-like?"

"Yes," my dad agreed. And Leon and I exchanged looks. We think that he must have been dreaming.

All the same, I'm scared as hell to be alone or in the dark in my house. To think that I'm being watched by something that I can't see--but certainly don't want to see--is incredibly creepy. Fortunately, I'm hardly ever home. The next time that I'll be there is Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I don't foresee myself ever sleeping peacefully in my house again.

All right, folks. You were helpful about my Nelly question, so I have something else that's a little tougher. My dad had to take a Spanish education exam in order to teach in a different state and there was a question on there that stumped him. He posed it to me, since I've taken many many years of Spanish, and I couldn't answer it. Maybe one of you can.

The question had a picture of a person holding their left elbow with their right hand. Their left arm was bent upwards so that their hand was level with their face. And the hand was curved with the fingers bent. The question: What does this gesture mean?