TICK...TICK...TICK...GOES THE PSYCHIC

 

I watched a TV show last night where a group of women who were longtime friends were arguing about going to see a psychic. Half of the women thought it would be good fun, while the other half didn’t want any part of it because they were certain psychics channeled some kind of voodoo power.

The show made me think of the times I’ve had psychic readings, mainly out of curiosity. The first was at Old Orchard Beach, back when I was about 20. The woman, a Madame Somebody, told me I would marry a fair-haired man named Robert who lived out of state.

My mouth fell open. At the time, I was dating a fair-haired man named Robert who was from the Boston area. When I later told him what the psychic had said, he laughed, probably because he thought I’d made up the whole thing just so I could bring up the topic of marriage.

As it turned out, I married a dark-haired guy named Joe, from my own city.

Then, back in 1999, I saw an advertisement on TV for a psychic hotline where people could get “authentic” psychic readings. And as an introductory offer, the first two minutes of the phone call would be free. Once again, curiosity got the better of me, so I dialed the 1-900 number.

“Welcome,” a female voice answered. “I’m Vicki, psychic number 714.  How can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m interested in the free psychic reading you advertised on TV,” I said.

“Fine,” she said. “Your first two minutes are free, then every minute thereafter will be $3.99, which will appear on your telephone bill.  Now tell me something about yourself – your hobbies, your interests.”

I was tempted to say, “If you’re really psychic, you already should know what my hobbies and interests are,” but I didn’t want to waste a single second of my two free minutes.  I quickly told her I enjoyed photography and writing.

Vicki said, “That’s good. Now, let me concentrate on my vision for you…”

She then went silent, as if waiting for my aura to come through the telephone line.  Actually, she was just killing time, but I was too clueless to realize it at that point.  Finally, she said, “You have to drink wine and take long walks in the woods.”

I wanted to tell her that if I drank wine, I wouldn’t be able to stand up, never mind take a walk anywhere, but I simply asked, “Why?”

“The walks will help stimulate your thought processes so you can write a great novel,” she explained. “And the wine…well, it’s not actually the wine you need, it’s something in it.  Let me concentrate on what it is.”

I checked my watch.  One minute and 20 seconds already had slipped by.

“It’s the berries!”  Vicki exclaimed. “You need the berries!”

“Why? Do you foresee constipation in my future?”

She laughed. “No.  Berries will make you clairvoyant.”

That was a new one to me.  I’d eaten bushels of berries (mainly inside blueberry muffins) in my life, and as far as I could tell, I didn’t have a clairvoyant bone in my body. 

“Do me a favor and close your eyes,” Vicki instructed.  Fool that I was, I obeyed, not realizing it was her “psychic” way of preventing me from looking at my watch.

“Now take a deep breath and picture yourself in the finest hotel in Jamaica,” she said. “You’re eating strawberries dipped in chocolate, there’s a warm breeze blowing through your window, champagne is chilling in a bucket on the table…”

My eyes flew open. “What on earth does any of this have to do with predicting my future?” I interrupted.

Vicki sighed impatiently. “I’m trying to put you in touch with your senses so you can write a great novel!  You must learn to touch, see, smell and hear everything as if you are doing so for the first time.  It’s obvious you haven’t yet suffered enough to write a bestseller.  Your ocean is too smooth.  Your waves have no foam – they’re not crashing against your shore.”

I was beginning to think Vicki was the one who’d been drinking the wine.

Before she continued to “metaphor” me to death or make me seasick, I decided to cut to the chase. “Just tell me, will I or won’t I ever write a bestseller?”

“Yes,” she answered, without hesitation. “You’ll write a thriller, and it will be published in the year 2004.”

“2004?” I repeated. “Heck, I could be dead by then!”

“No,” she said seriously. “You won’t be.”

I happened to glance at my watch and was shocked to see that nearly 20 minutes had passed.  Just as Vicki was about to deliver another piece of her infinite wisdom (probably about eating pineapples while lying in a hammock in Hawaii) I abruptly hung up.  The realization that I’d been hoodwinked into staying on the line 18 minutes longer than I’d intended (to the tune of nearly $72) made me think of the famous old saying, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

Well, 2004 has long come and gone, and although I’ve written several books, the closest I’ve come to having a bestseller is a fair-to-good seller.

Maybe it’s time to drink some wine and go take a long walk in the woods.

 

 

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I HAVE "SNOW ON THE ROOF" PHOBIA

Every winter I develop a phobia about the snow piling up on my roof and possibly causing damage to my house. This year, with good reason, my phobia has been worse than ever.

I’ve been checking the exterior of my house at least three times a day, searching for bulges, cracks or anything else that looks suspicious. The same with the inside of the house. I thought I saw a crack in a corner of the bathroom ceiling the other night and was ready to pack my bags and leave.  But the crack turned out to be just a cobweb.

And the slightest noise makes me jump. On TV, they said houses make normal sounds in the winter as temperatures fluctuate. These sounds can include creaking, popping or banging. Unfortunately, those also happen to be the sounds a roof makes just before it turns a house into a pancake.

Although I have so much snow on my roof, I worry about low-flying aircraft hitting it, I’m relieved there’s not even one icicle. That’s a huge change from the last house where I lived.

That house had a metal roof, which was supposed to cause the snow to slide right off, so there would be less risk of winter damage. Granted, most of the snow did slide, but only to the edges of the roof, where it remained, piling up and freezing until it formed ice chunks so thick, I half expected to see the hull of the Titanic sticking out of them.

As a result, my husband and I became afraid to leave the house. Visions of one of those big ice chunks sliding off and landing on our heads caused us to dash in and out of the house in record speed. And we made a conscious effort never to slam a door.

We weren’t the only ones who were afraid we’d end up with flattened heads. Whenever I tried to let the dogs out into the yard, they’d take one look up at the huge overhang of ice and dash back into the house. They developed kidneys of steel.  I ended up having to do everything short of dressing up like a steak to coax them outside. 

Then when the temperature finally rose into the 40s and the ice began to melt, huge pieces of it began falling off the roof and crashing to the ground or landing on the porch with such force, they sounded like explosions.  More than once, the house shook from the impact.  Some of the kitchen-cabinet doors even popped open.

And as the temperatures continued to climb, the sound of crashing ice became more frequent. I began to feel as if I were trying to sleep in the middle of the percussion section of an orchestra.

One particularly loud ice crash occurred one day while my dogs were out in the yard. When I opened the door to call them inside, they were nowhere around. Panicking, I ran into the living room.

“I think that last crash scared the dogs so much, they jumped the fence!” I shouted at my husband, who was watching TV. “We have to go look for them!  They could be halfway to Canada by now!”

He just calmly sat there, not leaping to his feet as I’d anticipated he would.

“Somehow, I can’t picture our dogs leaping over a 5-foot fence,” he said. “I mean, they weigh over 100 pounds each and one of them has bad knees. I’m sure they have to be out in the yard somewhere.”

“Fine!” I huffed. “I’ll go check!”

I threw on my jacket and headed outside, running – not because I was in a hurry, but because I wanted to dodge any falling ice.

I called the dogs, but there was no sign of them. And it wasn’t difficult to check the yard when all of the bushes, shrubs and trees had no leaves on them to conceal anything.

Just as I was about to give up and take a drive around the neighborhood to expand my search, another ice chunk fell, this time landing on the small back porch. Two dogs suddenly came bolting out from underneath the steps and ran to hide behind me.

My current roof, which is shingled, is quiet because nothing slides off it. And for that, I’m grateful. But that also means everything just sits there, piling higher with each storm, which concerns me.

I found a roof rake in the garage a couple weeks ago and had just about talked myself into trying it…when I saw a report on the news about a man who’d been raking his roof when a ton of snow suddenly slid off and crashed down on top of him, burying everything but one of his feet. He’d had to remain that way for a couple hours, until his wife finally came home and found him.

That did it. I shoved the rake right back where I found it.

So I guess the snow on my roof is going to remain right where it is – probably, judging by the height of it, until June.

Maybe it will help keep the house cool in hot weather.

 

 

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