caerula's Diaryland Diary

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every breath you take ...

I've just not had the energy lately to deal with my life and write about it too. I suppose, though, that if I don't get back in the habit I'll stop altogether, and this wouldn't be a good time for that. So, here goes the story of the past week.

I left work early on Friday. I still felt miserable from the flu or whatever I had. I don't even remember what we did Friday afternoon & evening, if anything, at this point. Blue worked Friday night, his usual 11-7 shift. 7 am on Saturday, I woke up to the phone ringing. I didn't answer it, but stayed sort-of awake long enough to listen for the machine, thinking it might be Blue calling from work for some reason. There was no message, but 10 minutes later it rang again. This time I jumped up and answered it, figuring something must be wrong somewhere.

The person on the other end asked for Blue. I asked if I could take a message. He said something about if Blue was at work or if he would have left already. Then he said he was calling from the hotel -- he gave me a name, but sleepy as I was, it didn't really register with me -- and that he needed to get in touch with Blue regarding an "emergent situation" at work. He asked what time Blue usually got home, and said he would call back. I hung up and went back to bed. In my sleep-fogged brain, none of this had really registered, and I remember thinking that if there was some sort of emergency at the hotel, at least Blue was on his way home so it couldn't be too bad.

Not two minutes later, the phone rang again. Same guy, now asking if he could get in touch w/ Blue via his cell phone. Stupidly, I gave him the number. Then he goes on to explain to me all about how there's been this "situation" -- no details -- but he doesn't want me to worry and they'll be sending out an email to everyone involved later on, and he asks me all these questions about what Blue did at the hotel. I was very vague, as I was getting a little creeped out. I sort of cut him off and hung up, but not before he'd verified our address and email, which he actually had already.

Then I called Blue on his cell phone. He was just leaving the hotel and had no idea what I was talking about. He told me nothing had happened that night, but he'd go back in and check on it, and call me back. Almost as soon as I hung up with him, the phone rings again. It's the same guy. Now I know something really strange is going on, and I'm getting freaked out. He starts out by telling me he'd left Blue a message on his cell phone, and he just wanted to reassure me blah blah blah. I said something to the effect of,

"I don't know who you are or what's going on, but I've just spoken to my husband and there's no emergency, so what the hell is your deal?"

I know. Trying to explain or reason with someone like this is nuts. But it was 7 in the morning, I was sick with bronchitis and a sinus infection, hadn't slept well, and was by this time really freaked out. I had no control over what came out of my mouth.

He started in with, "just let me explain the situation." I hung up. It rang back immediately. I picked up and clicked off. It rang again. I picked up and didn't say anything.

"Are you going to hang up on me again, or are you going to let me explain to you?"

I hung up.

The phone rang again. This time it was Blue. He told me to call my dad and have him come over immediately. (Mom and Dad live 5 minutes away, while the hotel is a good half-hour's drive). He said he'd call back and explain after I'd talked to Dad. So I called -- Mom fortunately is an early riser -- and I told her we had some sort of situation, which I wasn't exactly clear on, but that I needed Dad to come over because we had some guy calling us who knew where we lived. So, she hung up to go wake Dad up and get him over. Blue called a few minutes later. He'd gotten a bizarre rambling message from this guy on his cell phone. Blue recognized the voice as someone who'd been a guest at the hotel for several days that week, and who had behaved very strangely. They finally refused to let him stay another night after one of the staff found he was distributing porno stuff out of his room.

Even aside from that, he'd been odd -- paid cash every night, kept having to go pick up money transfers, asking for different rooms -- they were just really uncomfortable with him. Blue said they'd finally got him out by telling him they were overbooked for the next night (which they weren't) and just couldn't accomodate him. Apparently the general manager had decreed he didn't want to deal with calling the police, he just wanted this guy out of the hotel.

So, somehow, this guy gets Blue's full name, and from there our home phone, address, my name, and our email address. Either he got into the hotel's personnel files somehow, or watched Blue leave work and got his license plate number. Or some other freaky, stalker-like activity. Blue tells me he's going to be at the hotel for a while as they're calling the GM to see if they can call the police, and that he thinks Stalker Guy is probably harmless, but that Dad should stay until Blue gets home just in case, and I shouldn't answer the phone any more.

So Dad comes over and I tell him the story. By this time, the phone has rung several more times. Stalker Guy left one long, bizarre, rambling message about how he sent us an email that would explain everything and that he's sorry I "had to find out this way" -- find out what, I have no clue -- and after that I take our phone off the hook and turn my cell phone on. Needless to say, I am completely freaked out of my mind. YMB woke up when Dad got there, and we're trying to make believe that everything is fine because I don't want to scare him. We finally tell him that we'd gotten a couple of prank phone calls, that someone was trying to scare us but that Blue had gone to the police so we didn't have any reason to be scared.

Blue ended up having to go to the county sheriff -- the city police told him since we weren't in the city, and we didn't know where Stalker Guy was calling from, that it was the sheriff's responsibility. The sheriff's office told Blue we could get the calls traced, but that the guy hadn't actually said anything threatening and so there wasn't much they could do. I'm sure they had far worse things to deal with, but I was still a bit put out by this.

Blue finally made it home around noonish. YMB went out in the afternoon to see Disney on Ice with his aunt, the youngest Dementor daughter and the only family member who seems pleasant and nearly normal. This was good, since it got him out of the house for most of the day. Blue had been up something like 20 hours at this point, so I reassured him that I'd be fine if he took a nap. He went to sleep, and I wandered about ineffectually wringing my hands for a while, before I decided that was stupid and went and finished Phelps's long-overdue birthday/housewarming present, and did a lot of work on Dad's quilt. It was a bizarre, bizarre day, all in all. We had no more phone calls after the last message on the machine, although there was an email message from an AOL address headed "All the details" and consisting of a forwarded message about a memorial service for someone who'd died in the WTC, along with a huge long list of charities. This, of course, shed absolutely no light on anything.

Blue had to work again that night. The hotel GM offered to let us stay at the hotel that night, but as we had Sophie to think about, we stayed at my parents instead. I certainly wasn't going to stay in the house with just an 8-year-old, two cats, and a non-discriminatory Australian Shepherd for company.

Since then, we've had no further attempts at contact from Mr. Stalker at home, although he did have flowers sent to Blue at work to "apologize." Blue left these for his GM, who has been not-terribly-forthcoming about what he's doing about the whole thing. The police won't do anything else unless Stalker Guy does something threatening, and although we discussed having our phone number changed, we haven't had any more phone calls, and it would be a huge pain in the ass to get done.

So apparently things are back to normal, except now I jump almost every time the phone rings. And I'm finding it very hard to sleep when Blue's at work. Fortuately, he only had two more overnights this week, and next week he's on days through Wednesday and off the rest of the week. And we'll be out of town Friday-Sunday, so maybe by the time we get back I'll feel marginally safe again.

Still. Freaky.

So, what else? I went to the doctor Monday morning, who diagnosed the bronchitis and sinus infection extravaganza, and gave me orders to take a few days off and get some rest. GrandmaBoss was not thrilled about this, as she's back to panic mode now that we're full tilt on the second phase of the project, but oh well. I stayed home for three days. I slept most of Monday -- woke up at 3 in the afternoon feeling incredibly disoriented. Our new furniture was delivered Tuesday, except for the chair which was damaged in transit, and will be coming next week, and it's all quite lovely. The sofa is very comfy. So we arranged furniture and organized Tuesday night, I stitched and worked on Dad's quilt and read, a little bit, and slept some more, and got more rest than I have in weeks, I think. I feel much better today, not nearly as exhausted as I have been and really almost normal. And next week's a three-day week, and Friday we're going up to Toronto for the weekend, for a pifflefest and to take YMB to "Lion King."

So, life is good again. Maybe.

12:39 p.m. - 2001-11-15

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