Author Archives: iasshole

9-Feb Dream Ushtra Asana Toe

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Last night I dreamt what I think was based on this awesome talk on how terrifying and unexpected Facebook is. The parts about FB are interesting but kind of meh, because it’s become normal for many of us, and shapes the way a lot of what I think of as the generic open universe of the internet. I like the way the speaker kind of brings the audience back to the idea that FB is super weird, and still pretty new in a lot of ways. I am away from it now, but when I was on it, I found myself recognizing other sites biting FB’s steez and whatnot.

Anyway, I was on a business trip with my husband, who may or may not have been The Man in the Horn-Rimmed Glasses. We got off a plane and everyone who greeted him gave him all of his favorite things, despite not knowing him personally or having spoken with anyone who did. There were children ranging from about 7 to 14 who were doing dances around us and singing about him. That was how crap the economy was; it paid children to memorize and basically act as human cookies. It looked flawless, like they had been bred and raised for this moment. But their costumes were tattered at the edges from jumping through this routine so many times.

I kept thinking to myself, this is novel now, but I think what we’re heading for is never ever being surprised ever. Everything is pleasing and to our tastes, but nothing is surprising. I spend all day hammering and clicking and shaping until everything is exactly as I want it while I work and screw around. I actively work to push out unwanted experiences with things like adblocker.

ANYWAY, it was a dream and then I woke up and there was frost when I went out. I am paying so hard for my year of gravy right now. Also trying to get up the motivation to do some more revising on the gravy. I was happy to take a month off and recover from pneumonia and whatnot, but I have to get serious now that my energy’s back. I need to push back against the strong feeling I have of being done right now. Sometimes it’s hard to decide when something can just be personal and when it’s okay to push it out into the world. I will tell you I got to the end of the year and I thought, shit, I am the only one who really cares about this. How presumptuous to think it would have value to anyone else.

I got into dancer today and did not fall over. Man, am I creaky.

Sweat on Bamboo

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BOY HOWDY was Franny out of it last night when she came back from her dad’s. She was repeating herself and generally acting like she was completely on drugs. I was treated to stories of naps and confusion. I can only think she has whatever virus I had. I sent her to bed early and she is home reading today. It’s hard, though. I don’t want her to miss too much school, but she doesn’t have a fever.

In other nooooos, I am looking at placing a chicken order. I think instead of going to the feed store and rolling the dice on a straight run, I will order sexed birds, which will give me a 90% chance of girls.

I worked all weekend and all my clever is squeezed out of me, I think. I feel buried–behind on email, cleaning, life.

Dream 6 Feb Shave My Poodle

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Dreamt I was in charge of some big animal refuge but I forgot to feed the fish and they started committing suicide by jumping out. Then it turned into a people shelter and they were staying in the viewing rooms. I shaved a man who was undergoing cancer treatment. Then a bunch of the people and the cats put on a play.

Rating: Terrible, though Doug looked great post-shaving. F- would not dream again.

With Great Power Comes Great Squirtablility

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Taking one of my usual walks with my friend today, and I dreamt that I stood her up and got my pupils dilated instead, something I have never, ever done. I had this idea that I could walk around with dilated pupils, I guess, and that it would all work out just fine. I am confused and inconsiderate in my dreams sometimes.

This morning we hit the pranayama really hard and I felt pain in my lungs. What is this lung mutiny? It felt a lot like December and January when I had pneumonia. I put my hand on my chest, as if you can smoosh away lung pain, and the teacher came over and told me to Slow It Down, Farmer Brown. I told her that part of the reason I was back in yoga immersion now was to push out the last of the sickness. I feel like it has hung around like a slowly-dissipating cloud.

“Well, try nudging it away instead of kicking it out,” she said, after class.

“Okay,” I said. I like this.

I was pulling my hair back this morning with barrettes so it would not hang in my eyes and I have discovered I can still make victory rolls in the front, which are slightly hilarious with my hair spiked up in the back. I am party in the front, business in the back. The cats were trying to get in to both of the doors in my bathroom like they were marauding Morlocks and I was just a wee Eloi, nibbling on cliff berries and trying to get my hair did. Well, F that N.

My eyes fell on the squirt bottle that I give myself a quick mist with on mornings I am in a hurry but still don’t want to look like Yahoo Serious. I set phasers to “stun” and whooshed open one of the bathroom doors where tiny felines were scrabbling under it like their lives depended on it.

SQUIRT SQUIRT SQUIRT SQUIRT!

I whooshed the second door and repeated the process.

Oh! SHOCK! Panic! Betrayal! AUGH! Cat and kittens scattered, their clever plan for annoying the Friskies out of me SMASHED. As I left the house they were still lick, lick, licking off all the offensive water. Since that was entirely too much fun, the squirt bottle now resides on my desk.

I Can’t Life My Arms Four Hours Sleep Waaat

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Up betimeish, but not as betimesly as yesterday when I went to 6 a.m. “death march” yoga (as it is being referred to by a certain wag). HOLY HOPPIN TACOS am I out of shape. It’s like I did nothing by cook, slurp gravy, and write all year. My muscles between my ribs are sore.

SECONDLY, Veronica Bock, Orpington extraordinaire, is growing her pink comb back now that the days are longer. She looked slightly startled this morning with her red-rimmed eyes and now this pink comb. I have no hope that she will start laying again, though.

Today I was forced out for lunch, but did not feel like going to a place with, you know, tables and humans and stuff, so I went to Jack-in-the-Box. The drive thru chick looked like her drive thru place was probably the MAC counter. She had swoopy cat’s eye makeup and some serious highlights going on. I was amazed. She gave me some tips.

“It’s time for you to make a Youtube video,” I said.

“Nooo,” she said. “This is so easy, though. It only takes five minutes!”

“For you, maybe.”

“Here, take this ranch, have you ever had ranch on your curly fries?”

“No,” I said.

“You are going to fall in love with it,” she said.

I got extra fries! Proper.

28-Jan Dream Sea Kittens and Open Ceiling

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Kittens! I got six kittens! I also had a bunch of goldfish. What to do? Put them in the same tank, of course. I was sprinkling cat kibble onto the water and the kitties were swimming and nipping at it. At one point I forgot what I was doing and took a goldfish out to pet and it died. Because kittens can live in aquarium with fish, but the fish cannot come out. Yeah.

Dreamt I was laying in bed and I heard gulls. The ceiling was open like a bad overlay special effect from the 80s. And then the gulls came! I covered my head to avoid the crap storm.

A brief interlude where I was having sex and it was fun, and then the perspective turned and I was my partner. AUGH, do my thighs really look like that? Yoga on Monday, thank god.

Hooray for Tetanus Shots!

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I learned something at PetCo yesterday. They have found a way to monetize tail shapes in Siamese Fighting Fish. Once they were $6 a bucket, take your pick of color or shape. Now there is a code for fin shape! And some of them are $28! If the choice is between $28 for something that will live for 3 weeks, and like, the equivalent in hot dogs, then I am going for hot dogs.

I like to turn off my alarm and listen to the girls gossip about me. Strudel hears more than her sister because she does not leave on weekends.

“Mom’s planting KIWIS!” she whisper-shouted over the clank of their breakfast plates. That child does not have a quiet bone in her body.

“Really,” said Franny, who is used to her sister getting things hilariously and disastrously wrong. “Real kiwis? Like these?” she asked, no doubt pointing to the ones they were chowing down on now.

“Yes real kiwis, they are vines. And Mom’s talking about moving the hot tub, but it’s too heavy.”

There is a horrible, wretched, decaying hot tub in the corner of the yard. I am certain it’s a mosquito vector in the summer and is an ugly blue tarp-covered mass year round. I called a local junk hauling service just to see and they quoted me $400. It’s steep to consider as a renter. The back up plan is to move it to an unused part of the yard where it will be shaded and not fill with water. I am also hoping to cover it with something else.

This yard has a lot of just generic junk in it, which makes me CRAZY. When the girls go out to play they will find random things, like flattened, popped beach balls or a tattered gardening glove. I have done several sweeps to get rid of the detritus that’s around, but things keep getting literally unearthed, like all the empty shampoo bottles that you get with home hair color kits we found in the side yard. Why do you hoard those? And why do you then put them into the side yard?? The chickens have done a lot to scratch up odd bits of plastic and trash. At first I assumed it was years of messy renters, but we find things with the owner’s children’s name on them, like old membership cards.

There used to be a wood stove hooked up in the basement, long gone now, but the stack of firewood and broken wood from random construction projects and cabinets is still out there. There was another pile of trash near one of the sheds, and a recycling bin full of mixed horror that I will deal with when the weather gets nice.

I’ve lived in poor places, in the North and the South. I like things like wabi sabi and found art and whirligigs and bottle trees, but this trash has got to go. I’m going to Freecycle the now-useless firewood, and I’ll have to see what I can do about the rest. I’ll take some pictures next month so you can see it in all its glory.

You Are Sleeping You Do Not Want To Believe

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Did SeaFed call my sister on Friday as he said he would? No, he did not. There’s been absolute radio silence on this matter from all parties. I hate silence.

He did text me to ask if he could pick Franny up on Thursday, since Friday is a holiday. “Fine, and my sister is waiting for your call btw,” I said. “Ok thanks!” was the reply. In the world of SeaFed, that is the fuck you of “I do what I wont my damn self.” This can mean that he was agreeing with me on the phone when I called him to communicate my distress about my mother’s further slide, and then blew it off and will disregard me, since, as always, I am, you know, me, or he’s sticking his head in the sand about it and maybe will stop returning her calls? I don’t care about her hurt feelings.

I am sad to say he has zero coping skills for actually facing problems. People in his extended family used to disappear for a while during divorces or stints in rehab and then reappear thinner, with a haunted look or a new spouse. When I would get upset about things, or made a decision that would reflect poorly on him in “public”, or tried to create boundaries for people in my life who were not good for me, it was always my problem, I was the one who was the troublemaker and needed to sit down and be quiet. NO! I WON’T! I spent many years being quiet and doing as I was told instead of what was best for me, and boy has that fucking ship sailed.

It sailed as soon as I had children. “Hey, you can’t treat my child like this,” and a little voice in the back of my head, growing louder all the time, kept saying, “And you should not be treated like this either.” Say, that’s true, annoying dawning realization. It’s sad that we are willing to take nothing for ourselves sometimes.

I am over that realization, though. The only remaining struggle is balance. I still err on the side of being unnecessarily loyal and agonize over ending situations and relationships that are making me miserable. Sometimes I go the other way and feel like the top of my head is going to pop off over something related to the girls, until a few minutes later, when I realize that not everything needs to be a federal case.

But I am thinking about it. Ignoring this situation with my mother, or asking her opinion about how under control she thinks her drinking and behavior is would be fruitless, which was SeaFed’s plan, to talk to her. Addicts lie. I don’t care about her feelings being hurt like he does. I think he knows talking to my sister, who he has a cordial, if not close, relationship with may force him into action, because then the “crazy” would not just be coming from me.

I also need a new doctor for the girls. We got stood up for Strudel’s TB test results. That’s right, stood up. It was not a miscommunication. The doctor apologized for it last week. Then she almost ran me down at Greenlake this morning (probably unrelated). About two months ago she told me to bring Strudel back for shots in December, and when we came, the nurse looked at her chart, told us it was too soon and sent us away again. I’m done!

I’ve got a pot roast in my fake Le Crueset and that is my happy thought for today. Well, I’ve got more than one. But today, goddam diary, I feel like fruitlessly shaking my pathetic fist at the universe.