Monday, July 16, 2007

mid-afternoon

The Most Awesome Dream - Mostly Unremembered

So, we tried to sleep with the little fosters again, and it’s a bit hit & miss with them.  Sometimes they’re perfect angels, who jump up on the cat tree next to my side of the bed, and instantly fall fast asleep.  And sometimes, that cat tree is like a catapult that launches them (and their nails) into my side or right next to my head, onto my pillow.  They really are sweet little guys (and still up for adoption!), but on the nights that they don’t manage to go to sleep well, neither do we.  We crane our necks up at the tree (it’s terrific for causing neck pain, if you’re looking for the antidote to a relaxed neck), wondering if they’ve decided to sleep yet...or if they’re planning an assault on us.  Last night/this morning, they seemed to settle down really nicely, but we stayed up reading for about five minutes too long, because they seemed to be injected with copious amounts of caffeine just as we wanted to go to sleep.  They were RACING up and down the cat tree, RACING across the room chasing each other...under the bed, sometimes over the bed (which means over our bodies usually), and they were just nuts.  Then, one would settle down, and we’d sigh with relief, knowing that the other would soon follow, like usual.  But no, one would settle down, and then the other would still be crazed, and that kind of “don’t let your foster parents sleep” crime desperately needs a partner.  Oh yeah, and then a couple of times they both settled down, and TJ who seems to be a bit hormonal with Bunny, would start biting her neck.  It’s hard to be nice and settled when a furry thing is standing over you and biting your neck.  I don’t blame her for that.  Eventually, Leigh-Ann gave up and took them downstairs to sleep in their cozy bathroom with Missy Mae.  Generally, they don’t mind and Carlo still has some occasional pooping on the floor problems (he gets horrible cramps that you can actually see rippling through his teeny little body), so it’s okay when they sleep down there.  But, we’d like to have them trained as nice kitties for someone else’s home, where they won’t feel really cozy in the bathroom.  Our bathroom downstairs is decked out for the cats - litterbox, two nice beds, food & water, and lots of toys, and Missy Mae as a babysitter.  Anyway, it took us a couple of hours to finally get settled to go to sleep, which I think leads to some strange dreams.

If I’d been able to remember my whole dream, it would’ve made a great book about time travel.  It had some incredible details about how I was actually doing the time travelling.  It also had the requisite amount of gore to be a sci-fi book.  I was on some sort of boat, with a bunch of people that I knew, and it was starting to sink (the water wasn’t deep, so that part wasn’t overly icky), and we were all wearing nametags.  I think that came from the pictures I saw the other day on the Huffington Post of the media mogul gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho, and all the rich & famous were wearing nametags.  It was cute.  Anyway, I told people on the boat that I had to go somewhere, and then I kind of disappeared off into the mist, and showed up again at an airport or a mall (I’m not sure which) with my brother and an ex-friend.  It kept happening over and over, I’d be talking to people and for some reason, I’d drift off into another time period in my dream life.  Most of the things that happened in the dream never happened in my real life.

I had another dream after that that I remember more clearly.  I woke up in between dreams and told Leigh-Ann about the first dream, so that’s probably why I remember them both.  The second one had me ditching some odd get together with distant relatives.  Instead of going where they were, I went to a mall, and in the mall there was an odd side entrance to a lesbian bar that I’d never been to.  What a surprise, since I haven’t been to a gay bar in close to twenty years, except for the time I went out with a male friend one night to a quiet bar in the Castro.  It didn’t really count, because we could’ve been anywhere.  We just went there to talk and hang out together.  Anyway, I took a peek inside the bar, but it didn’t seem at all interesting, even though it was packed full of people.  Instead, I went to this supposedly secret hidden restaurant around the back, where you had to wait in a long line...and show identification just to get food.  But the food was fabulous, and I was sad that I didn’t have it when I woke up.  It was Cajun food, and they had some sort of specialty that was like fried lobster strings.  I guess you could make it by dropping lobster meat into a deep fryer.  In real life, I’d prefer crab, but if someone’s just giving it to me, the lobster will do.  That’s all I can think about now, that appetizer that I don’t think even exists.  I did a little search and this is maybe the closest thing I can find, “Lazy Lobster Dinner -The meat from a 1 lb. lobster taken out of the shell, sauted in butter or batter-dipped and deep fried with our coleslaw and choice of potato.” Hey Kristine, could you go to BG’s Boat House restaurant in Portsmouth and tell me if this is any good?

Saturday, October 21, 2006

evening

..And Don’t Call Me Shirley - Call Me Shirleen

Are you prepared to enter the crazy place I call a brain?  I’m going to try to transcribe in a linear manner, my wacky dreams from yesterday morning.  My guesses about the appearances of everyone and everything will be in italics.

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This dream started with me doing loans, but seemingly in the back of some expensive red sports car.  Oh geez, I just realized, it could be a red Ferrari.  (Tie Domi drives a red Ferrari) Anyway, in the back of the above-mentioned sports car, I was talking to a guy on the phone.  Apparently I’d applied for a job with him, but he was being a huge jerk and he said that he couldn’t do a home equity loan with the info that I gave him.  He acted like it was the most ridiculous request he’d ever heard. (Leigh-Ann has been talking to a couple of guys about working for them doing loans, and marketing them online.  A friend told me that she and her partner wanted a home equity line of credit to put another bathroom in their house.  Plus, there’s been lots of applying for jobs in our household this week) Appropos of nothing, I was in some really great looking mansion that looked like the house from “Rock Star”.  I specifically remember the floors being really nice and looking like the fancy laminate Saltillo tiles we want to replace our hideous linoleum in our kitchen and family room downstairs.  I have absolutely no idea what I was doing there, but apparently I was sharing the house with Barbra Streisand (she’s been in concert...and in the news for telling a heckler to “shut the fuck up”), who showed up at the house with like a dozen little dogs on leashes.  I’ve never particularly liked Barbra Streisand, and I doubt I’d like her in real life.  However, in my dream, she was super nice and I think we talked about dogs.

The next part of the dream is the part that went on the longest.  I don’t really think most of it needs explanation.  I dreamt that Leanne (the one without quotes; i.e., the real one) posted something mean about me on her blog.  I don’t remember what it was, but I remember thinking that it wasn’t fair.  So, I decided to go see her since she wouldn’t talk directly to me.  I don’t know what country we were in, but I do know that we’re 3000 miles or so apart, but perhaps I teleported, like Hiro on “Heroes”.  Anyway, I thought she was working at a bookstore, so I went to what vaguely resembled a mall to me.  I went up an escalator and there was a really large area at the top of the escalator with lots of people wandering around.  For some reason, there was a really cool (why it was cool, I have no idea) stamp machine against one wall.  I wish I’d looked at it, so I could’ve figured out what country I was in.  So, I look in what I think is a bookstore and see Leanne.  She seems to know who I am, even though we’ve never met.  I guess if I can teleport to the mall, she can recognize a stranger.  She doesn’t seem surprised to see me.  The place really is a bookstore, and she’s working there, but as I’ll find out later, she doesn’t work in a bookstore.  I’m not sure how that works.  She looks the same as she does in pictures, but her hair is, uh, puffy.  I’m not sure how to describe it, but maybe when you find out her name in the dream, you’ll understand.

Leanne tells me to come back to her office.  So, we go upstairs to her office, and it’s like what you see normally when you’re behind the scenes of a big department store.  When I was a teenager, I worked at both Robinson’s and The May Co., before they were Robinsons-May, and it looked exactly like the suite of offices either upstairs or behind customer service.  Anyway, we go to her office, and she has me sit down and wait.  There’s a plaque either on her door or on her desk, I don’t remember which, and it says her name is Shirleen (the last name is like Pagnoski or something, but I didn’t write it down, so that part’s lost to me), and that she’s the Executive VP & Travel Coordinator of Skin So Soft.  How those go together, I have no clue.  (my friend, Victor, just got a new job involving corporate travel - we used to work together at United Airlines, so that may play into it) For one, she was just downstairs in a bookstore, for another, Skin So Soft isn’t even a company, it’s a product made by Avon.  I think she’s finally going to talk to me, but then she invites people into her office for a group job interview.  There are four other people, I think.  I don’t even know what the job is, but I’m supposed to act like I’m interviewing too.  The four of them are sitting in front of her desk, and I’m to the side, on the same wall, but on the other side of the door from them.  (I did have a job interview of sorts on Monday & Tuesday, but it was on the phone, and the person I talked to was definitely not Shirleen) Uh, Shirleen is asking some average job interview questions of everyone, including me, which freaks me out a bit.  I hate job interviews under the best of circumstances, but this is too weird.  I don’t want whatever job it is and I don’t want to be in a room with her and four strangers.  The dream ends with Shirleen showing us a beer commercial with animated animals and cavemen, then asking us our opinion about the commercial.  I say, “Animated animals sell a lot of beer?” That’s when I woke up.  Not only do I not know what went on with “Shirleen” (I have never, in my life, seen that name before - what the hell does it mean?) in real life, it’s even frustrating in my dreams.  I can’t believe I figured out how to teleport for that.  If I’m asked about a commercial someday, I hope I can come up with something better than “Animated animals sell a lot of beer?” I’ve embarrassed myself in a dream.

The next two dreams are short.  In the first one, it started with me entering a strange house.  It was like going up a plank.  When I got into the house, there were a few people milling about.  One of them was Geena Davis.  Why?  No idea.  There was also a smarmy car salesman who was mad about being stuck in the house because he had cars to sell or something.  The guy was a guy from my mortgage agent class, but that guy doesn’t sell cars...and I liked him.  He wasn’t smarmy at all, he was nice.  Then, they told us that we had to campaign for a Republican.  A Republican who had pointed at some guy on a cruise and said, “He’s gay!”.  Heh, Republicans are getting such bad publicity, they’re doing stupid things in my dreams too.  Anyway, there’s no way I wanted to do that.  I decided to stick with Geena, as I figured she’d know what to do.  That’s how the dream ended.  I have no idea what it meant, except that our mortgage agent instructor told us that she’d been cast in a reality show.  Because of her contract, she couldn’t tell us which show.  One of the few personal things we knew about her was that she loves to travel, so maybe us thinking that she wouldn’t be on Big Brother is why something like Big Brother was in my dream.  I don’t even watch the show.

The third dream was just about feeding foster kittens.  We had so many kittens and they were so many ages that I couldn’t remember who got bottles and who got solid food.  They were all over the place, inside and outside, and in trees.  That’s all there was to that dream.  But, we do have foster kittens, but there are only three of them.  They’re not outside, ever.  Perhaps it was just one of those “everything is out of control” dreams.  It’s been a crazy week, so that makes sense.

Friday, October 20, 2006

early evening

Omigawd, I So Need Sleep

We’ve been going to bed at approximately 4am every day this week.  Lots of stuff has gotten done, but I just feel terrible.  My whole body hurts and I’m having the weirdest dreams that seem to be a mashup of my life, current events, fears, wishful thinking (I was living in a house that looked like the Rock Star mansion, yo), with a special guest starring appearance by Geena Davis.  Why, I say?  Why Geena?  She hasn’t even been in the news lately.  I get the Barbra Streisand appearance, but she’s been in concert.  I’ll write up the dreams tomorrow.  I woke up to write one down, it was so lengthy and strange.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

late evening

The Blur Of The Last Two Months

I feel like I lost two months of my life.  Well, after I lost almost a year of my life to back pain, doctor visits, surgery, and recovery from surgery.  The last two months I’ve either been sick (first with a sinus infection that would not die, then with a cold) or in school.  Even though I learned a lot in school and I’m kind of excited to start doing loans (but terrified at the same time - you’ll send people to me, right?), I feel like so much has gone on and I’ve gotten a little lost.  Then again, if I look back over the last two months, a lot really has happened - some stuff that I can discuss publicly and some stuff that I can’t.  Weird stuff.  Annoying stuff.  Baffling stuff.  Plus, there was that weird dream last night about Sharon Stone shoplifting.  Why on earth am I dreaming about Sharon Stone?  And why is she shoplifting in that dream?

Hey, you know what’s been good lately?  Television.  Veronica Mars is back.  It’s so good.  Are you watching it?  You should be.  Although, why does Mac look different this season?  She looks...odd.  Also, Gilmore Girls is back.  The blessed breakup of Luke and Lorelai.  They made a terrible couple.  The new show this season that you should be watching - Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  It’s awesome.  The writing is great, the acting is fabulous, and I’ve missed Matthew Perry.

We have new foster kittens.  We’re not sure how old they are, but they’re already at the cute stage where they’re running and jumping and playing.  They’re our third set of foster kittens, and our third set of themed names.  The first kittens were hockey-themed, the second set were Buffy-themed, and these guys are mortgage class themed.  We have Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and TJ.  TJ was our instructor, and she was pretty cool, so we felt she deserved a kitten named after her.  The kitten happens to be a boy, but I don’t think TJ would mind.  By the way, is anyone looking to adopt some kittens?  They’ll be ready for homes in a couple of weeks.  They’re super cute and fun and playful.  C’mon, you know you want some.  They’re like potato chips, you can’t just stop at one.  Take all three.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

late morning

Time Change?  What Time Change?

I think this is the first time I was ever taken by surprise by the time change.  Too weird.  We were watching the Leafs game last night (and I still love them, despite the abysmal blowout) and one of the announcers mentioned something about the time change.  Leigh-Ann and I looked at each other, “Really?  Is it this weekend?” We still weren’t sure until we woke up this morning to our omniscient computer clocks, which changed for us.  Since we had so much extra time this morning, we decided to go out for a special once every couple of years treat - breakfast at McDonald’s.  Plus, since Starbucks is in the same parking lot, we of course had to go there too.  I have never seen our Starbucks so crowded (our usual time there is 4p-7p), with people just lounging around and HUGE lines in the drive-thru.  Also, as I looked around, I realized our neighborhood is so damned white.  Well, at least the Starbucks crowd is.  It was amazing the difference between the Starbucks and McDonald’s crowds, even though they’re in the same shopping plaza.  The parking lot at Starbucks was full of fancy cars - a Dodge Viper, a BMW SUV, etc.  The McDonald’s parking lot, compact cars and old trucks.  It’s strange to see class differences just a few hundred yards apart.

A Cricket & Flippy health update - Cricket is doing fine.  I guess it really was arthritis, because with a week of Rimadyl and some good weather, she’s fine.  I’m still having trouble wanting chocolate.  Yesterday, I attempted a chocolate Payday, but alas, didn’t like it.  It’s not the Payday’s fault, I just wasn’t that into it.  The steroids are freaky.  The pain is a lot better, but yesterday I started having really bad bladder problems again, which extended into today.  Leigh-Ann suggested that maybe the steroids were decreasing the inflammation so that my symptoms were going backwards.  Everything started with back pain, then moved to my bladder and then my leg.  Perhaps we’re going in reverse.  Hopefully, all of the symptoms will disappear completely soon.  Still, I’m expecting surgery anyway.  I’m thinking that early December is probably a good time.  We’ll go to the Liz Phair concert in November, have Thanksgiving and then have surgery, which will give me time to heal before the family get-together for Hanukkahmas.  Our grocery stores deliver, so we’ll be okay living as hermits for a couple of weeks.  Plus, if we really need anything, our nextdoor neighbor is always helpful.

I think the meds are giving me weird dreams too.  Last night, I had a dream that Tie Domi’s son came over to my house and wanted my new hockey skates.  That’s weird enough, but he looked like Sidney Crosby and was Sidney Crosby’s age.  Also, I don’t have any hockey skates.  I’ve never had any hockey skates.  I’ll admit, the skates were pretty spiffy looking, so I can’t blame him for wanting them.  I also had a dream that Tie had a healthcare blog.  Yeah, as if he has the time or interest for that.  Oh yeah, and part of my dream had to do with some hockey jersey I had hanging in the cabana near our pool.  Clearly, I dream big.  Our pool doesn’t have a cabana, and any jerseys I have are in our closet.  This one was apparently very very special.  If only I could remember why it was special.  I can’t wait for tonight’s dreams.  I’m assuming that the Tie associated dreams came from watching the Leafs last night.  Today, I’ve been watching football.  Maybe LaDainian Tomlinson’s son (if he has one...although, it’s my dream, why would it matter?) will want my non-existent football cleats.  Hey, if someone wanted my expensive baseball glove that’s in the closet, at least we’d have something based on reality, but noooo, people want what I don’t even have.