Who ya gonna call?

I know, I know…it’s been well over a year since I wrote anything publicly on WordPress. A metric ass-ton of things & upheavals have happened in my life, outside of this current BS of a pandemic. Actually, I do believe NONE of the upheavals have anything remotely to do with any respiratory illness. I don’t want the wordy-word police to come at me & I’d like to keep my opinions of this nonsense to myself & a handful of in-person friends, so we’ll leave it at that, shall we?

So anyone close to me knows that since 1984, I am a HUGE Ghostbusters fan. Huge. Like Ultra Huge. In 4th grade, at recess, we used to go out & take over the basketball court & play Ghostbusters. I ALWAYS played Dr. Peter Venkman & was ALWAYS getting slimed. I know Susan was a part of this recreation of the movie, I believe Amy, & maybe Robin. But definitely Susan. I haven’t seen her since 1994, Amy I just saw as we drove past where she lives now on the way home from seeing Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Robin, I know my mother spoke to her recently. All childhood pals from kindergarten until shortly after graduating high school in 1993. Anywho…

I have had a profound love for Bill Murray since the late 70s/early 80s, seeing him on SNL. I have just loved that guy. Maybe I didn’t know everything he did back then on TV & in movies, but a kinship was formed. We have similar names. He was funny & weird & people say that of me. Sometimes. When chronic illness from my rare health challenges does not turn me into a she-hulk-bitch. As a side note, for the most part…most of those false diagnoses I was given from 2000/2001, are pretty much gone. Just working on C-PTSD from trauma & gaslighting from a majority of people that were or still are in my life presently. Why am I stating this?

My current “regular” therapist & I were discussing how freaking excited I have been since we saw the first trailer last year at the drive-in before Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure 3. Even as I type this on a notepad, I am getting tingles. It just had that good-ol’ Ghostbusters’ vibe…then the green wispy air shooting up from the mining rig…the piano keys…then…Paul Rudd…lol. I also have loved Paul Rudd since I first remember seeing him, which was on Friends. He played Mike, Phoebe’s boyfriend, aka Mr. Crap Bag. If you remember that episode where Phoebe changed her name to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock. Still not sure why she didn’t go with Regina Phalange….anywho…

Seeing that one of my superpowers deals with high observation & sucking everything in all at once in a millisecond, I had summed up that trailer immediately. (Thanks messed up Autonomic Nervous System & hyper-vigilance!) I knew the little girl was the new Spangler. Oh…to collect mold, spores, & fungus in an actual little laboratory…lol. I have been psyched up since last summer. November 11th was marked on all the calendars. I told my husband that if he had to work that weekend, I would go in there myself with my proton pack & zap them all, lol. Then just recently…they bumped it a week. I cried. I actually cried. I felt like I’d never get to see this movie because they’d keep bumping it. Annnnd….he had to work ALL weekend, due to Thanksgiving coming up & getting the products out in time where he works. I. Was. Devastated.

Ok, so…we just do not like dinner with my parents. We still don’t understand how they have survived thus far. It’s a constant passive-aggressive show-down. Seeing that this year, my birthday is on Thanksgiving, and my parents ruined our plans to go away camping; as they are going away that weekend for work up north with the train company they work for, we decided to try to find an open theater. Well, last weekend at the one drive-in Christmas Movie show (Scrooged!!!!), they kept saying, “one more weekend.” We found out why. More huge Ghostbusters fans in our age bracket. They announced that this past weekend & Thanksgiving weekend will be the last of the season for those brave souls in their cars in 30-40 degree weather. All because of Ghostbusters: Afterlife. So seeing that Simon’s birthday is 2 days after mine, we will be donning our Ghostbusters gear one more time & taking him to see the movie.

This will be round 2 for me & my husband. We found a theater about 40 miles away, which we will now go to when we want to see a movie over the winter. It was pretty awesome, outside of the no touchy-feely ordering on the phone nonsense & the coffee taunting us, but the debacle of whether they could serve it or not. It was a 10:55 AM showing. Coffee was not allowed to be served, but alcohol was. I was ready to cry because (1: over-excitement. 2: migraine for the past 2 days. 3: THIS IS BULLSHIT that I am speaking to the manager, then shift manager – HUMANS & yet, I had to order on my damn phone?) So they felt bad & made us coffee, and wouldn’t you know it? They’ve had problems with app ordering for a while so that when my husband tried to pay for his pretzel bites, it kicked his payment back. Not to mention, 2 days prior, it did that 3 times with tickets & he ended up calling the day before & got refunded before we saw the movie for 4 out of the 6 seats charged to his card. The shift manager took pics of my phone since he said that his management (corporate) doesn’t believe there is anything wrong with the app. This poor guy must be so frustrated with everything. He was so kind that he actually gave us a free cup of coffee each. Maybe it was my watery eyes, maybe it was the fact that I looked like I was ready to go bust some ghosts, maybe he just was sick of the app being a jerk & was a really, really nice guy. Who knows.

So we get to our Dream Lounger seats (the first seats we picked out of the 3 orders). There were 8 other people in with us. One problem with my chronic health challenges now is since the Orthostatic Intolerance does not seem to be affected in the least bit by the (3) 0.1mg Fludrocortisone I’ve been on for maybe 8 months now is that it makes me have to pee constantly sometimes. Usually inopportune moments. Since blood pressure is dictated by the kidney hormone, renin, it, therefore, affects the bladder. That is the short & fairly uninvolved story. So I peed when we got to the theater. Right before the previews started. Then…about an hour in. So I missed a bit. I ran to that bathroom down the long hallway. Of course, as always, I came out from the second theater door to the Men’s bathroom right across the hallway. And contemplated how quick I could pee a gallon, lol. Thanks so much, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome/Disease for affecting everything since everything has collagen in it. OMG…the peeing episodes. As I learned in Veterinary Nursing school, the human bladder can hold about as much as a can of soda – 12 ounces. (My Anatomy & Physiology professor was always drinking Coke, so she used this as a reference.) I can tell you – & no one can figure out how this can happen, but sometimes, I have had to make emergency pee stops alongside the roads. I have almost overflowed 24-ounce disposable coffee cups we now stash in the vehicles for this purpose. My husband has said, “I greatly underestimated her bladder capacity.” to the cardiologist & PA/PCP. I’ve always had issues, but it just seems like it is getting worse in the past few years. We (me & my new medical team) have discussed what all those crazy prescriptions I was on for the misdiagnoses had covered up & disguised as something else from roughly 2000-2019. I know I still haven’t really posted too much about my new, & I feel, proper diagnoses of a collagen disorder with mutations in my one collagen gene, maybe someday I’ll tell that dramatic turn of events. Maybe it’s just ectoplasm in my body. I don’t know.

So all I can say is that this nerd-grrl was so emotional going in. Judging on a scale of Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia/Star Wars “Episodes 8 & 9,” pretty much the same. Balling my eyes out & tried not to be a distraction or hyperventilate from trying to keep it in, since I had a migraine already. I don’t think this will happen since Richard Donner just passed away recently, but if there ever is an adult Goonies revisit movie, phew! Look out!

So my recommendations for anyone who has an emotional investment in the Ghostbusters 1 & 2 movies are to take tissues. Good tissues. Not the crappy cheap-o ones you use like a box a year. I refused to watch the 4th Trailer last week when it was released because Ghostbustersnews.com had said spoilers. I watched that & some interviews between Friday night & yesterday. It wasn’t anything I didn’t know already from the first 3 trailers & some other updates. It wasn’t anything I didn’t already figure out from the first trailer & just being totally absorbed & kinda being able to just let go of my health issues & the world BS & stressors elsewhere. It felt good to be excited about something. As of yesterday, Saturday, November 20th, 2021, it would appear that the movie broke the box office, lol. I am so happy for this movie to get here & now be part of the loop in my brain that never stops. Yes, there are Easter Eggs, which I saw the fancy professional movie reviewers complained about. I also saw that the huge nerd fans, like us, were just thrilled about them. Yes, most of the original 1984 cast does make an appearance. Sadly, Rick Moranis did not return. I felt that McKenna Grace as Phoebe kicked major ass. Not only is the character a science nerd, but she is a loner. Trying to make her way in a brand new environment – in so many ways. I just felt the whole cast fit together perfectly. I couldn’t have been more ecstatic that my husband suggested going to an early show on November 19th. I felt terrible that he barely had any sleep, but I think he was just as excited to see it. Maybe he just liked seeing me be excited about something & nerd-out, I don’t know.

All I know is that when Tim at the drive-in announced they’d be staying open not one, but two more weekends to show Ghostbusters, my eyes started welling up & I really felt the need to get out & run around the drive-in parking lot screaming, lol. I really thought we wouldn’t get to see it on the big screen, the way it was looking on Fandango last week for theaters showing it past Thanksgiving & our schedules. Sadly, all normal movie theaters in our county are extinct. The local drama association used to show older family movies monthly during the warmer months. But that was it. We used to have 3 theaters in the 3 malls in this county. The most northern mall was torn down the other year & is now warehouses. The one in the town I grew up in is just weird now & that theater was the first to go back in the 1990s, I think. The middle one, along the main route through our county…that is where my parents took me to see Ghostbusters in 1984. If the seats are still in there behind the walled-off section, I could probably take you to the seats where we were sitting. That was the first time I remember my parents getting popcorn. And they allowed me, 9-year-old me, to hold the small bag. I sat between them, right side of the theater, 1st 3 seats in, about 1/3 of the way back from the screen. I was so excited. And then we went into the basement of the NYC Library with the symmetrical book stacking & the floating librarian. And then…popcorn everywhere. Sadly, I can’t recall that we ever got popcorn at the movies again. I lost my popcorn privileges just as fast as I got them.

To be able to feel that child-like wonder again was freaking amazing. To be able to let go & just give in & watch the movie was amazing. I know there are a few things that have bothered some other Ghostbusters nerds. And those things, as an adult, did cross my mind. For like a millisecond. But for some unknown reason, I could actually allow my loopy brain to stop thinking. Even though I was still thinking & trying to figure things out as we journeyed with Phoebe & the others to fight the good fight.

Thanks for reading. Take care. Be as well as possible. And until next time…