I'll Be Doggone

Last night I had a dream that my mother lost the dog, and I just got so angry that I started yelling at her. It was weird, apropos of nothing, and I figured just a symptom of my loneliness -- I really do wish I had a dog.

Tonight mom calls and tells me that last night, while she took the dogs out, Zoe suddenly disappeared. She couldn't find her, the dog wasn't responding to being called (which is not a surprise). So eventually my mom went to bed. A train passed by sometime during the night and honked its horn, which is very rare, and my mom became convinced that Zoe had been struck by the train. So, after a sleepless night, my mom climbed the embankment to see if Zoe was actually up there, but instead she only saw six deer grazing in the forest.

At the same time, my father drove around the neighborhood, calling for the dog. No luck there, either.

When they came home, they found her at the back door, waiting to be let in.


I couldn't bring myself to get mad or lecture my mother; she just sounded so exhausted.

Bloody Steve

I had a dream I was eating blueberries last night. The more mundane my dreams get, the weirder they seem to me.

Today is my first day working at the Atlee branch of our library system; the previous tenant of the chair my butt is occupying retired, effective yesterday -- Hi, Susie! But in order to cover all the main libraries with sufficient hours on the reference desk until New Guy© starts on the desk, I was shuffled out of my office in Mechanicsville, and sent here. It's only 5 or 6 miles further for me: the commute is longer, and less direct, but not as bad as it could be. It also means that I will not be expected to travel from branch to branch the way I have been these past few months. I have spent most of my time on the desk in Mechanicsville, of course, but I have also logged time at Atlee and Ashland. That last one is the biggest pain: it's a heck of a drive, and unlike at the other two libraries, reference questions, even of the human library catalog, "Do you have this book?"-sort, are terribly infrequent. It's a nice library, and the area is attractive, everyone is really nice to me, and I actually enjoy the fact that the railroad passes right in front of it. But I would not want to work there full time.

I finished Christopher Moore's The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove yesterday, and am currently trying to decide what I would like to read next. Another Christopher Moore book? Should I revisit Vonnegut for the first time since high school? Should I follow up 1984 by reading Brave New World? The tenth novel I've read in a little over two months, I think: I discovered the key to my reading is to actually make time to read. That may sound self-evident, but it sort of wasn't for me. So instead of blaming my faulty brain chemistry on the fact I don't read, it was just that I wasn't reading. I never claimed to be particularly bright.

You may have noticed I'm trying to take time to write on my blog more frequently, too. I realize that the audience is minimal, but my brain has been feeling ossified and uncreative lately, and I think that the blog helps to get me thinking about things, and organizing my thoughts better. I also think that anything that gets me writing is, in a way, a good thing, barring terrorists pointing a gun at my parents' dog and demanding I blog.

Zoe says: "DON'T LET THE TERRORISTS WIN!!"

I started this monster as a way to entertain myself, so I guess nothing is lost if I keep on in that tradition.

And, to entertain you fine folks this Saturday afternoon, Flight of the Conchords:

Punctured

I had a dream about Jamie last night. I don't remember much about the dream: I know we were in a cafeteria in Livonia Mall, that I had apologized to him, and I know that at the point I woke up I was hugging him and crying, but in the dream I didn't remember he was dead. In fact, for several minutes after waking, I didn't remember that; only when I was wondering why I hadn't spoken to him for so long. And then I knew why I was crying in the dream.

In slightly less depressing news, I went out to my car last night and discovered that I had a flat tire. Now, I haven't said anything, but I have a new Honda Civic. Atomic blue -- it's very nice. And when I say new, I mean new: it doesn't even have that patina of filth in the cupholders, or mysterious dog hair that seems to grow on the seats, of all my cars. I have only made two payments on it -- and yet it had a flat. This is the story of my life.

Seriously, I have a long history with punctured tires, and those are only the ones I have blogged about -- after a certain point, I sort of felt that they were becoming regular enough to quit mentioning, because seriously, who wants a bunch of blog posting about flat tires? (Not me, I hear you, my single reader, cry! Well too bad!) If I blogged about every flat tire, we could start a drinking game. Not only that, but three months before I got my new car, I had to take in my old car for a flat tire, and in addition to the tire that was definitively flat, they also found nails or screws in two of my other tires.

What is up with this flipping city?? Do they pave their roads in nails and screws? Because, honestly? It's kind of a pain in the ass. I thought I was through with this when I left the Detroit Metro Area, where they have potholes so large that they have been known to swallow cars whole, and which thus beat your rims to hell and back. They even have a contest for potholes -- it's crazy.

WTF?

Why the hell am I having dreams with the cast from Dawson's Creek? How dated is my subconscious?

Dreaming Is Free

I had a dream the other night that I was recruiting elementary school students into the Army to fight in Iraq. I was in the parking lot behind the A&P, near where I grew up, and I was giving these 8 year olds these big plastic notebooks with big, bright buttons on them: they had to input their information into these toy-like things in order to be recruited. Then I corralled these kids into a helicopter which flew them off to Iraq. Who knew that my sub-conscious was such a wily satirist?

The next night I had a dream that I was at a carnival on some Pacific island. A woman -- actually, Mo Gaffney, whom I recognize mostly from her work on "Absolutely Fabulous" -- was doing tarot readings on a bed. I was trying to get my tarot read, but somebody cut in front of me, and was yelling at Mo. Eventually the yeller took off, and Mo said, "Let me see what card most accurately represents you." She drew a card, looked at it, and showed it to me. It depicted a nondescript man with a mountain in the background, with the text just saying, "TRANSLATOR".

I also had a dream that my dead grandparents came back from the dead to join me at Christmas. But for me, that's not a particularly uncommon theme.