Category Archives: Dreams

Such Things I Do Just To Make Myself More Attractive to You

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How are you? Yeah? Mmm hmm. See how I am acting interested, but I am just waiting for the follow up story on your rash? No? I can’t help you. Go down the hall and make a sharp left.

Franny is learning about the Holocaust. She is reading a book about some little child who fled Germany, and on Thursday she is hearing a Holocaust survivor speak. She didn’t really get the whole thing, why people were running here and there. Over their oatmeal I told them about LAMPS MADE FROM HUMAN SKIN and sewing pregnant women shut and whatnot. We talked about tattoos and armbands.There’s your context.

“…then they all formed together to make one super-robot, and the Jews flew to the moon. And that’s why your sister has a hairy butt,” I finished.

“Hum,” Franny said. “Ugh.”

“So be nice to this lady on Thursday, because she has probably seen some crazy shit and if you are quiet she might tell you,” I said.

In other news, apparently Ruby and I are going to the school auction this year! She was supposed to go out of town, and she is my only date I will go with, but her plans changed, so voila. Now I can wear my ridiculous-assed silver zebra shoes I got when I was in Canadia last month. Things are a lot better than when I was still running it. Now I can just show up and eat. Ruby is a former chair and makes a good date. Snark powers activate! Shape of: Bree Van de Camp.

As an “interesting” side note, I can trace that 2008 auction post I linked as The Last Time I Was Sane in 2008. I think I was still faking it for a while, though. Can you see the cracks? Or just a sailboat? I am glad 2008 is over. You know something? I hardly remember it. 2008, I mean. I know some stuff happened because there are pictures. It’s a good thing I have a goddam diary. Do you have faith in me, since I have proven I can endure? I am on the QT and not making weeping vagina noises here.

Last night I dreamt that some bad dudes were out to get me and Strudel. They developed a plane that was completely agile and almost soundless. There was a demonstration in the town square, which was the town square from Back to the Future, complete with broken clock tower.

The plane was bobbing around and it destroyed a tree. This was the demo. I hid Strudel in a house nearby, and one of the guys found me and was like “BRING THE PLANE HERE.” Really, a plane? You are in front of me, could you not just kill me, like, manually?

All I could think in the dream was “This is why we cannot have nice things!”

I have a portrait of the Lusitania on my back and when I flex it CRASHES.

What Happens if You See Dangerous Living at Midnight

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Last night I dreamt that aliens were coming to destroy the Earth and people knew and figured out a way to protect about 3 square miles of it, which was like some kind of sanctuary. I got in and watched the rest of the Earth explode from some kind of omniscient viewpoint, which is of course a product of having seen too many movies on the same topic. I felt sad and panicky at first, but I knew that things would be okay, for me at least. “This would make a great movie,” I thought. Usually if I get lucid I wake up, but I think I was too tired.

I was on a raft heading towards the sanctuary and there was a flood of water from breaking dams or something. Then there were all these fucking tigers swimming towards me and attacking anything that moved, including me. My childhood bff was there and we were fighting them, and I could see us losing hit points.

There were also square pizzas, provided, no doubt, by Robot Dad. I cannot even go into that right now.

Conclusion: I need to get out more.

If You’re So Very Entertaining, Why Are You On Your Own Tonight?

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So. It is established that Seattle cannot really handle anything above or below 65F. Winter brings OMFGBBQpocalypse if there is a half-inch of snow on the ground, causing school to be slammed shut and workplaces and bridges to close. (It should be noted that when I was working for barely above minimum this fall and winter, those workplaces did NOT close, not once.)

A couple of days ago it was over 100. Most houses have no air conditioning, which, fine, I can hang. I can make cereal for dinner and cheese and cracker and be cross and drink Mexican beer for a couple of days during the wave.

What cannot handle the heat is my stuffs. My router melted! I called Qwest to tell them and ask them if they would disown me if I used a non-Ma Bell model and they tried to troubleshoot me.

Them: Have you tried plugging it into another phone jack?
Me: It is melted!
Them: Have you tried cycling your modem by unplugging it and…
Me: IT HAS WAVES IN IT FROM MELTING AND IS TOTALLY WARPED!
Them: Oh.

Also, I had one of my favorite things, a big chunk of cocoa butter type moisturizer from Lush in my shower and it melted right down the side. It was not even in the sun.

Looks like I am offline this weekend. I might even have to GO OUTSIDE, UGH. Last night I spent about an hour trying to make dialup work, but no dice. It was kind of soothing hear the modem try to dial in though. NOSTALGIA. When I first started blogging, I used to click “connect” and then wander off and grow a beard and stuff. I also used to write all my posts in Word and copypasta them into the blogwindow, hit send, and get out again as if it was some kind of blogograph service. I almost pooped myself the first time I typed a post directly into the window, OMG.

Franny is off to her dad’s for two weeks, and she is hella pissed. I figure it’s good for her to have some not getting her way in her life. I think of myself as an advocate for her, generally–someone who can help her navigate the seas of WTF. Sometimes I say “Verily that sucks darling” about her traumas and sometimes I give her the little pep talk. She gets frustrated with SeaFed because he comes from the Jolly-but-dismissive school.

Lately she is having nightmares that I am dying and that she goes to an orphanage because her dad doesn’t want her. She has been worried about this lately because she knows she will be whisked away from our house and P. and Strudel if I died. I am the bridge.

I put on my gypsy lady rings and played Dream Interpreter.

I told her it’s normal to dream about losing the people we care about most. I told her about a dream I had about her where I lost her and panicked. Also I told her that last time her stepmom spawned she felt all left out and I wondered if her brain is worried about the new baby.

“See how it’s better to expose these things to light,” I said.

“What does that mean?” she said.

“Does it seem less scary now that we’ve talked about it?”

“Yes,” she said.

I have changes afoot–what else is new? I will fill you in in a few days. I am so feeling the Smiths today. HOBO LIKES SONGS ABOUT BEING BURIED ALIVE. Here’s to a new chapter.

Theory: Too Much Guacamole

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How can it be that I laid in bed for two hours? I am indolent, under a spell. I am in one of those special moods, some kind of melancholy brought on by a dream that you can’t shake. It’s usually gone by dinner, though, right? Talking to people, having meals, seeing ordinary things that lock into our perception of what the world really is. You have no thought that your dog is going to turn into your favorite kind of waffle, whereas you would be entirely, deliciously accepting of that is it happened in a dream. You would take a bite of your dog’s waffle-divoted rump and ask for more.

I have always had that feeling, fairly or not, melodramatically or not, that I’ve been on the outside. I think this is true of everyone to a certain extent. But maybe especially true when you experience that family reshuffle, which makes you feel like you’re the extra one there, unwanted, but tolerated. It is also true when you experience the geographic reshuffle and are surrounded by strange accents and food and a social structure that has been in place since preschool that you don’t even have an inkling of. You stay in one place for a while, get grounded, become a known element, your moves, voice, reactions are predictable, and then you experience the worst reshuffle of all: the internal one. Your brain cracks open and turns on you. You are gay, gay, gay, and almost worse than that in this place, godless. You think maybe those people who told you there was something wrong with you were right, because here it is come to pass. You get stuck and smeared on the factory sorting bar because you cannot find a boy to cling through to pass through with on your way to the next zone on the factory floor, the church group.

So I have dreams where I find myself in rooms full of people who are nothing like me, or out of my past, or completely hostile to me, or all of those things. I think this is mundane and normal; an anxiety dream. I don’t know the house but the room is full of people posed, in the kitchen, leaning against the bookshelves, perched on the sofa arms, waiting for and dreading my arrival. Franny’s grandmother has died and they have all gathered in her absence.

The Italians who taught me to shout, impassioned, to fling my arms, to slap one hand on the table for emphasis and then listen in the silence as the crystal in the cabinet tinkles, to tip chairs. There they were, sitting quietly, calmly, not yet needing to mobilize their force against an enemy. They chatter politely and comfortably with a group of people from my future: Franny’s family.

They are mixed in with the Italians, blonde and lithe, looking like they just stepped off of a sailboat or are well-rested from a vacation. They are like giraffes, like cranes, mixed in with the Italians who are leaden and doughy, and loud even while speaking in their hushed reverent tones. The stage whisper was probably invented by Italians.

They turn as I enter, the older members welcoming and willing to absolve me of our past, unwilling to hold onto petty grudges. The younger members of either party glower at me, glance towards me and their eyes dart away. I am unwelcome here. I don’t really belong anywhere.

I confront them, I speak to both of them as a group, as if they both are completely familiar with my histories with each of them, separated by ten years or so. I am scared but I can’t hover in this house on the fringes.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and then I realize that there is strength behind my words and my voice. “I didn’t take anything from you.” I turned to the Italians. “I didn’t burn the house down and I was never going to.” Being turned on, being falsely accused of that intention stung like it was new. I turned to the WASPs. “I could have taken half the house, but I did not. Franny is still here. You still have her.”

The scene broke like it was a stage direction then: mill about and murmur. I was still not welcome, but I had said what was on my mind. I gave up and made to leave and my grandmother pushed something into my hands, a jar half filled with her sauce. The other older side of the family said something nice and thanked me for coming. I walked off up the street alone.

The Late Shift

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Last night was restless. I heard Strudel shouting from the other room. I had that feeling like it was two-ish, because I was deeply groggy like I had been asleep for a while, and yet had not slept enough. She was shouting about a crazy man and sounded wide awake, so I popped in on her.

“There was a crazy man! And I want my mom and dad!” Strudel shouted, bug-eyed and sitting upright stiffly.

“Where was a crazy man?” I said.

“He was in your room, on one of your books,” she said.

I tried to think of which book was giving her the wigs. The cover of one of my magazines? Bill Buford’s vaguely Hitchcockian silhouette? A comic book?

“Pictures aren’t real, honey,” I said.

“I want to see my daddy.”

“Okay.”

“Tell him to go in here,” she said, as if I was a little stupid.

“Daddy’s asleep.”

“Please carry me, because I’m afraid of that crazy man.” Strudel held out her arms to me and I picked her up. She buried her face in my neck.

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Man, Fuck The Permit, I Know Where Ima Park Tonight

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1. I was pushing eggshells into the maw of the sink when I remembered: I had the most horrifying dream about my teeth last night. I was wandering around one of those doctor’s office complexes that are like rambling warrens.

Why do they do that? Why do they want patients to feel lost and overwhelmed? Is it sneaky psychological intimidation or dissatisfied architects who wish they were designing museums instead of medical-dental? Do doctors think they are giant bunnies?

ANYWAY. For some reason I stuck whitening strips on my teeth while I wandered around looking for my babydaddy, who was there somewhere in a room. Then a timer dinged and it was time to take the strips off. I pulled and pulled, but they were a little stuck.

My teeth started crumbling apart like some kind of fragile candy. It felt like the butt end of candy canes when you suck them down to slivers and they just snap off. I started spitting teeth out into my hand to see if any could be salvaged. There was a whole one with a root, but mostly they were brown and crumbling.

I looked into a mirror at my brown crackly nubs. “Have I always been this ugly?” I wondered to myself. I kept licking them, worried I was going to cut my tongue. I pushed a door open and walked outside and the light was blue, like the light is in the spring sometimes.

My ex drove by in his boat of a car. “Have you seen Franny?” I clapped my hand over my mouth, closed my fingers over my tooth fragments with my other hand, and shook my head. He chit-chatted with me for a few more minutes and then drove on.

Then, of course, I started to worry about where Franny was. I dropped my teeth and said, “Oh, well, I will deal with this later.” I began looking for her and I woke up.

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In Which I Dream About Dinosaur Boy-Parts

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Before I start, let me remind you that I hardly EVER bore you with my dreams, unless they are exceptionally disgusting. See: the Marilyn Manson nacho-chip-butt incident.

That said, WOMG, I had the worst dream last night. I dreamt that my companion and I were renting the cutest little house in the most idyllic neighborhood and I was upstairs in the bedroom…with my ex-husband Seattle Federline! And he was about to (sorry if this is getting too scientific here) “bust out his junk.” SCREEM!

And I looked at it, and it looked exactly like some fake boy parts that we saw at the Pacific Science Center on Monday, when we were desperately trying to beat back cabin fever brought on by an extremely rainy xmas break. While Franny blissfully operated the robotic dinosaur off to one side, there in front of us was a giant model of a four-legged dinosaur.

“Look,” said my companion, “it’s a boy.” I looked, and sure enough, the dinosaur in question had a wrinkled, browny-green penis thingie in the undercarriage area. Do they know what dinosaur junk looked like? Or are they just basing it on iguanas? Hopefully my rabid archeologist readership will be able to enlighten us.

ANYWAY, lo, the penis thingie reappeared last night on SeaFed. He just started moving towards me, and I have that feeling you get in dreams where something like this has to happen and you can’t stop it, and it doesn’t matter at all what your feelings are in real life. I felt resigned, like, “Oh, well, this is happening now.”

Then, thank you Giant Head of Vin Diesel, my companion and a mutual friend came home in my dream and I had to shove SeaFed out the window, with all of his clothes, a la Desperate Housewives. I thought I was in the clear, but he came back for his car key, which was in the bedroom. (The car was a nicer late model car, rather than that pimptrocious Cadillac he drives now. In my dreams I either edit things to be much, much better, or much, much WORSE.)

So I was hella busted, and confronted by both my companion, and our friend who decided to scold me. Then, hooray, I woke up.

I’m going to Freudianly diagnose myself and say that I am no longer capable of seeing SeaFed as a sexual person, so I replaced his dick with a plaster dinosaur thingie. And since the panic I felt about getting caught was the only genuine emotion I had, I would like to assert that my only concern would be intentionally jeopardizing my relationship with my companion. Because I have had some really sexually inappropriate dreams (cue “Vicar in a Tutu” here) and have been okay with them.

In conclusion, damn you, subconscious!

In Other News

Then I woke up and I had an email from SeaFed about putting Franny in kindergarten next year, so my dream turned out to be a slight premonition. I am bummed about this, because she’s going to be six next fall, and if she were going on at her school she’d be the equivalent of a first-grader. She is doing early reading and will definitely be reading at the first grade level by this summer. She has been in the her school primary class for three years now (as is normal), so I think it’s time for her to move on. I hope the public schools here feel the same way. I will see what his reply is.

Et Tu, Jude Law?

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I had a dream that I was in a cafe, looking at the menu, waiting, waiting, when suddenly I realized that I was waiting for my good friend, Jude Law. I am meeting Jude Law, I thought. I wonder how he’s been? I didn’t have to wonder long, because soon he slid into the booth next to me, on my side.

“How’s things, SJ?” he said, in his creamy Jude Law voice. This man is flirting with me, I thought. I am not into this.

I have had enough of the scrawny rake type to last me a lifetime. Rakes are okay, but not scrawny ones. As far as I’m concerned, Jude Law needs to eat more warm pork.

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