Deck Progress. No, seriously.

So you remember that time where we finished our living room project (mostly) and we (and I really mean "I") got all ambitious and was like, "Onto the deck project!" and Matt gave me the side eye like I had gone mad because it's just not in his nature to be all productive on home improvement projects?

Sure you do.

Well I will have you know that we actually have progress!

I think you can all remember what my back porch used to look like. Matt tried to get the concrete stairs out himself by trying to drag them out with his Jeep. This did not work and it only resulted in HUGE tire track holes in my yard and it moved the steps just enough for Jackson to fall through only every time he went outside. Matt told me he would have to rent a super duper jack hammer and that this was expensive (lie) and it would take him at least a whole day (lie) and it wasn't worth it.

Then I ended up working a ton of hours at work for two weeks and guess what? Matt rented that super duper jack hammer for only $50 because it only took him two hours to do.

 tee-fucking-dah.

And because I have this reasonable fear that if I didn't push him to keep going, our back steps would look like that for the entire summer or longer. So I put on my bitch panties and was making his life fairly miserable when he came into the house for anything other than water or bathroom breaks. And that resulted in this after day one: 

 Obviously, I was meant to be a project manager. 

It's kind of huge, right? So then, the next day it wasn't as nice out but it wasn't raining so outside he goes again. And he put the decking stuff on. And I had him put one of the railing sections on so you could see what that will look like:

SQUEAL. 

He has to cut the last piece of decking that goes against the door, buy some stair stringers so we can put the four foot wide step landing onto the sidewalk, and then lattice so animals don't live underneath it. And something about trim? We also have to get some deck wash (???) and power wash the deck and then DONE.

Oh, and get rid of the concrete because ew.

But the best part about this deck is that so far, we have only the $50 jack hammer rental into it. Matt knows a guy who knew a guy who had this deck and then his wife decided she didn't want this color, she wanted something totally different after only having it up for a month. So they took it all apart and gave it to us for free so long as we hauled it that day. DONE. The other bonus? We have enough to do a front porch too.

I know, I kind of peed a little there too. Totally acceptable.

What isn't funny is that while Matt was digging and getting the steps out he found a lot of empty liquor bottles. We've decided that either the person who built our house or the person who did major foundation repairs to our house was an alcoholic. Either way it's bad but it does explain quite a bit.

What else? Oh, Lillian is still here with her friends. Matt will not let me smudge the house because he's certain I will fuck it up after the cat raping incident he was involved in that very much did not work. Which he probably is right because I don't feel qualified to do this. But we've noticed that if you are watching TV on the couch at night, and you've got maybe one lamp on so it's kind of dark but not too dark, you see flashes of light in the cubby hole. It makes it really hard to focus on my Basketball Wives show if this is happening.

So yay.

I'm about to get all Blair Witch in this bitch.

So, if you are my friend in real life you have heard my stories about Lillian. I don't know Lillian personally, and I bet she was a nice and feisty woman in her day, but the bitch is creepy me out. And before I get into this, let me just be clear- I'm a fan of old people. I like them, they are all right in my book. I'm not even against dead people, I mean- we all die, I don't think death should be something that makes you not like a person. But Lillian is creeping me out and now I think she has some friends.

First off, who is Lillian? Lillian is this lady who owned my house a long time ago. For whatever reason (she either died or she went to a nursing home to die), she sold the house to some do-it-yourself Menards employee who absolutely should not be a home improvement store employee because based on his work here, he is incompetent and maybe mentally handicapped. Anyways. So, she sold the house and when we were at the house closing as we were buying it, we had two conversations with the guy:

1. The toilet apparently "fell through the ceiling" at some point, though he is pretty sure he had fixed it. I almost shit myself because A) I had eaten Taco Johns right before and I was five months pregnant and B) not only did we not know that before we just signed our lives away but we had a very thorough home inspection because of the obvious things we knew that were wrong with the house. (Update- it turned out he was wrong, he just never installed the toilet correctly, which is why it was uneven. Idiot.)

2. Oh yeah, the house is haunted.

Now, when we moved in we really didn't notice anything. Everything was FINE. Then we started putting the addition to the house on and things got weird. We'd hear someone walking around upstairs, we'd actually see her in the living room at the base of the stairs, we have seen her sitting in a chair (the chair was like a ghost too, not like she was on our chair) looking out the window in the living room, etc. We've see cupboard doors do weird things, you get a weird feeling in the house sometimes, all kinds of stuff. Now, as far as we know only Matt and I have experienced these things. It always flares up when we do any kind of work on the house, except when we did the cubby hole- but I think that's because we were restoring a part of the house to how it used to be.

When Olivia was two we moved her into her "big girl room" because I was pregnant with Jackson so we would need the smaller room for the nursery. It made sense because then I wouldn't have to rearrange furniture, etc. Well, the room Olivia went into was our old room which was previously the master bedroom. Also, Lillian's room. I would put her to bed and hear odd things on the monitor but really, thought nothing of it. Now, Olivia has always been scared of the dark and really a shitty sleeper since the day she was born so I just assumed it's an Olivia thing. I have a freak daughter and this is something that will be endearing to her future spouse someday. I remember her telling me once when she was two or three that the "old lady sings" to her or talks to her and that's why she doesn't sleep. Again, we had a plan for her to tell the old lady that it was her bedtime and she needs her beauty sleep. For awhile, this seemed to work.

Until tonight.

At bedtime, Olivia was kind of hysterical. She doesn't want her door shut, she wants her mini blinds open, the closet shut, a flashlight and a night light. Basically, it comes down to the fact she sees "big white blobs" and they are scary. So I ask her how big they are (thinking maybe it's a light shining from the street, a shadow, a reflection, something) and she says they are like people. She said yesterday she woke up and there were people in her room. So she's asking me if I lock the doors and could I hear if someone came in the house or not.

Not even kidding you, I'm fucking freaked out.

Never mind the fact that I am terrified of the dark (not so much when I'm sleeping, but I don't like walking around in the dark no matter where I am) myself. The last few nights I have been up later than usual reading books while Matt snores and after I'm done reading, I have to pee. So I get up and have to turn all the lights on as I go to the laundry room to pee, and on my way back? I run as fast as I can and jump into the bed. What makes the last week or two different is that on my way back to my room (which is not a long distance at all), the back of my neck goes cold and the hair on my body stands up. I am now terrified in my own house. But I think about it, I was in Chicago and walked around our room in the dark and I was fine. I've walked around my mom's house in the dark and I'm fine. But every time I am in my house alone, dark or not, I feel creeped out. Oh!!! And I should make mention my cats are even more dysfunctional than usual. Batman especially, he keeps slinking around the house and making weird noises. Stumpy is kind of lazy and extra stupid, but he hissed at absolutely nothing yesterday.

So.

What do I do? I need to tell Lillian it's time for her to go. And take her homeboys with her. Do I have any Ghost Buster readers? Do you have any suggestions for me??