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Did you ever have a dream you were ashamed to talk about?
I’ve had some pretty wigged-out dreams in my day. Or rather, my night. I don’t often dream when I sleep during the day. Hey, science people–does dreamless sleep mean you’re sleeping deeply? I have a lot of deep-feeling sleep during the day. You know, when I sleep during the day. Not like I habitually sleep during the day, though I wouldn’t have a problem admitting it if I did–because sleeping isn’t shameful; it’s the dreams that weird other folks out.
My husband and I often share our dreams. Not in the aspirations sense–outside of taking our meals out, we don’t have that many common goals–but in the REM-sense. He’s shared some dreams with me that I kind of wish he hadn’t. I’ve also shared some dreams with him that I kind of wish I hadn’t. Like that dream I had shortly after we got married, where I dreamed that he was pimping me out to a mutual acquaintance of ours. To make matters worse, it was a mutual acquaintance that I really didn’t care for, but that’s actually beside the point. In the dream, the mutual acquaintance was all, “Dude, I really appreciate this,” and I was like, “Hey, I’m really not comfortable with this AT ALL,” and my husband was like, “What’s your problem?”
Anyway, I don’t know why I would have dreamed something like this…well, no, on second thought, I have an idea…but don’t worry, I won’t share it with you. Why not? Because my husband reads this blog, and if this experience of dream-sharing has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t share sensitive material with the husband. Because he’s spent the last eleven-plus years teasing me about having sex with this person that I wouldn’t have sex with if he were the last person on earth, that’s why!
Sex dreams don’t necessarily have sexual meaning, of course. At least that’s what I hope. I mean, how would it be if you had a dream that you were watching a TV show and the TV show was all about how Steve Sanders from 90210 had been reduced to making pornos? Wouldn’t that disturb you? It disturbs me. I mean, it would disturb me, if I were to have a dream like that, because no offense to Steve Sanders and his kinky-haired glory, but where the hell does that come from? I always thought that if I had a sex dream involving a 90210 character, Brenda would figure more prominently. I mean, not that I mean anything by that, but doesn’t it make sense?
Anyway. I had a dream once that I was married to Liam Neeson, but oddly, there was no sex in that dream. And by “oddly,” I think you know what I mean.
I’m just not saying.
Mister Bubby on Anatomy
.
Mister Bubby: Mama, what if Elvis and I peed so much that our crotches exploded?
Giraffemom: Hopefully your crotches would never explode.
MB: Well, they will when we die.
Uh oh.
Princess Zurg is banished from the computer until Tuesday
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Princess Zurg: Tuesday!
Sugar Daddy: You wouldn’t have any time for the computer tomorrow anyway, since you have piano lessons and you have to clean your room.
PZ: Oh. Okay.
Later…
PZ: Mom, if I can’t use the computer until Tuesday, what will I do tomorrow while I’m waiting for the bus?
Giraffemom: Well, how much time do you usually have on the computer before the bus gets here? Ten minutes?
PZ: Yeah, about ten minutes. But I don’t want to get bored.
GM: Trust me, PZ. We’ll find a way to get you through ten minutes.
PZ: Okay. But what will I do while I’m waiting for dinner to be ready?
GM: OH MY GOSH, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I DID WHEN I WAS GROWING UP AND THERE WERE NO COMPUTERS IN THE HOUSE???
PZ: Okay, okay, okay!
Something tells me that Tuesday is too soon.
Madhousewife had a dream
.
Mad: I dreamed that I went to Wally George’s birthday party.
SD: Who’s Wally George?
Mad: Which I do every year.
SD: You dream this every year?
Mad: No, I had a dream that I go to Wally George’s birthday party every year.
SD: I still don’t know who Wally George is.
Mad: He had a talk show on Channel 56 in Anaheim. He’s Rebecca DeMornay’s father. He’s probably dead by now, he’s so old. Anyway, he had this really cool party, and I went to it, like I do every year. Ed McMahon was there.
SD: Cool.
Mad: Ed McMahon goes every year, too. Wally George does a tribute to him, even though it’s his birthday. Ed McMahon gave a very nice speech. I think Joan Rivers showed up at some point.
SD: Well, that figures.
Mad: At first it was just a handful of us, but after a couple hours, all kinds of people came. Phil Collins was there.
SD: I see.
Mad: And Pat Morita.
SD: I think you might need help, Mad.
Mad: I might.
SD: Did he say, “Wax on, wax off”?
Mad: No. He was singing backup for Phil.
SD: Yeah, you definitely need help.
Mad: It made perfect sense at the time.
I tell you, I had an awesome dream.
Last night I dreamed that I was working for an apartment complex that doubled as a county registrar. It’s not worth explaining. Suffice it to say that I had a million tasks to complete, I could never remember what I was supposed to be doing from one moment to the next, I never had time to write anything down or prioritize or plan, I could never find anything I needed when I needed it, and people kept interrupting me to take care of their crap when I was seriously freaking in the middle of my own crap and could they not just let me be for five seconds? In other words, I dreamed THAT I NEVER WENT TO SLEEP AT ALL BUT JUST CONTINUED LIVING MY LIFE THE WAY I ALWAYS DO (EXCEPT THAT THE CRAP WAS FIGURATIVE).
Just kidding. Well, I really did have that dream, and I’m really tired as a result, but my real life isn’t as bad as that dream was. Except that I’ve been unable to take a nap this morning–and come to think of it, it is now afternoon, so never mind. I have to make lunch now. Have I ever mentioned that I hate making lunch?
Speaking of lunch, I took the kids to McDonald’s for lunch yesterday. I take them to McDonald’s every other Wednesday, when the housekeepers come. It stops them from wrecking the house before the housekeepers get there and from making mustard sandwiches on the kitchen floor while the housekeepers are trying to mop it. I take them to McDonald’s because McDonald’s has the nicest playground. At least in our neck of the woods it does. The Burger King playground is serviceable, but not ideal. The McDonald’s playground is ideal, and that is why I put up with the McDonald’s food.
I always get Happy Meals for the kids, but Elvis likes to have both chicken nuggets and hamburgers, so I get him a hamburger Happy Meal and then buy a McNuggets meal for myself and share the McNuggets with him. I’ve been doing that for several weeks now, and I’ve noticed that there just aren’t enough McNuggets in a McNuggets value meal to satisfy the both of us. So yesterday I was perusing the menu for some other, cheap item of food-like quality to compensate my hunger and hormone-aggravated depression, and I decided to get a cheeseburger from the dollar menu. Don’t judge me. This is my story.
So I noticed that a McDonald’s regular cheeseburger is 95 cents, but a double cheeseburger is $1. Does it trouble anyone else that the price differential between a cheeseburger and a double cheeseburger at McDonald’s is 5 cents? One could adopt a Super Size Me-like conspiracy theory and suppose that they are trying to manipulate people into buying double cheeseburgers for the express purpose of killing us faster. Or one could adopt a more plausible yet still paranoid conspiracy theory and suppose that they are just exploiting the calorie-conscious, bleeding them for every penny they can get. Has anyone ever noticed the price of a salad at McDonald’s? Heaven knows I haven’t. But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it costs twice what a Big Mac does. Of course, neither of these conspiracy theories is nearly as disturbing as the apparent fact that McDonald’s MAKES THEIR CHICKEN NUGGETS WITH CRACK COCAINE. Seriously, those things are magically delicious. They make me hate myself.
Last night I was out gallavanting at the Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe, and I came home to find my husband watching Thunderpants. My husband bought this DVD at the Blockbuster for $3 a couple weeks ago, and he’s been trying to talk me into watching it with him ever since. I have avoided doing so on principle because…I’m sorry, do I need to finish this sentence? And yet, love will make you do crazy things. So last night I was in the same room with him while he watched Thunderpants. A casual observer might say that I watched it with him, but that would be a person who doesn’t get nuance.
He originally said he bought it so he could send it to his brother as a joke, but now that he’s seen it, he thinks he needs to buy more copies so he can send it to multiple people for Christmas. This is kind of a step up from when he used to talk about sending family members poop in the mail, but on the other hand, he was not really serious about that.
Back to the Moonstruck, though, last night (before Thunderpants) I was at the church building waiting to speak to a stake presidency person, and I was looking for some lip balm in my coat pocket and discovered this smooshed-up truffle that I got from Moonstruck the week before because an employee was handing out free samples just as I was leaving and I didn’t have anywhere else to put it at the time and I figured I’d eat it when I got to the car, but I forgot, so there it was a week later, wrapped in a napkin in my coat pocket and smooshed. Yes, I did eat it, and I excuse not myself. IT WAS MOONSTRUCK. It was delicious. And not that unsavory and suspicious McNuggets-delicious, but wholesome and honestly-slash-legally delicious. I regret nothing.
I’m seriously tired. And my back hurts. It’s time for a poll:
So last night, after a long day of closet-cleaning and then reading lengthy online discussions about the passage of Prop 8 in California, I went to bed and had this dream:
My husband and I were in a hospital waiting room, waiting to see a new doctor–not a totally weird thing to dream about, since we’re enrolling in a new insurance plan and we’ve been talking about which doctors will be in-network or not–and at one point a doctor walks into the waiting room and announces to the desk staff that he’s all done seeing patients for the day because he’s off to get married. Not only is he getting married, but he’s getting married at the hospital. Well, fortunately he’s not our doctor, so he leaves to get married somewhere in the hospital and we keep waiting to be called in for our appointment. Meanwhile, two more couples show up and announce that they are also getting married in the hospital. I think this hospital must have a heckuva chapel for all these people to want to get married there, but whatever.
The first wedding apparently goes as planned, but the other two couples run into obstacle after obstacle, and they start to get very irritated. One of the men starts complaining loudly to the nurse behind the desk–who has nothing to do with any of the wedding stuff and doesn’t know what to tell the guy, except to stop bothering her–but he just keeps going on and on about how he’s been coming to this hospital for years, and you’d think they’d show a little more gratitude, a little more courtesy, as he’s been waiting for all this time. At one point the guy is so agitated that I go over to him and see if there’s something I can do to help–which is totally unlike me in real life, and in dream-life, once I offer I realize how ridiculous it is because I know even less about hospital weddings than the nurse does. Anyway, the guy doesn’t want my help and tells me, “Don’t you dare look down on me because I’m short!” (He was very short.) So I give up and go back to waiting for my doctor, whoever he/she is.
Well, eventually the short man’s wedding goes through, and at this point one of the nursing staff announces to all of us in the waiting room that the third wedding is about to start, in case we’re interested, and naturally a whole lot of us are, so we go in to watch it. It turns out that it’s a lesbian couple getting married, which shocks me just because I could have sworn earlier that the one was definitely a man–a big, burly man who is now dressed in the most exquisite gown (very elegant, not at all gaudy) and is apparently actually a woman, getting married to this other woman (who is dressed in a modest skirt-and-sweater combo). Anyway, after they are pronounced wife and wife, everyone claps for the happy couple, and then the burly lesbian starts talking about how years ago she fell in love with a black man and they wanted to get married, but it was against the law in their state at that time. She gets very emotional talking about how much it hurt not being able to marry the person she loved, and how even to this day it hurts and in a way she still loves him, and she just breaks down crying. Suddenly the smaller, sweatered lesbian bursts out, “But Dad, I thought you WANTED this!” The maid of honor tries to calm her down, but Sweatergirl just says, “Oh, shut up, Mom!” and storms out of the room. “Now you’ve done it!” Mom snaps to faux-lesbian Dad guy and she walks out, too, while Dad is still blubbering on about his true love.
I turn to the people next to me and say, “Isn’t this the most bizarre thing you have ever witnessed in your life?” but at that point everyone is just shaking their heads and leaving because they can’t believe what a mockery these people have made of the marriage sacrament, and in a hospital, too. And that’s all I remember, lucky for the rest of you.
Sorry, there’s no point to this at all except that I had to tell someone.
As for what I ate last night before retiring, it’s none of your business and totally irrelevant, so don’t even go there.
A couple nights ago I had a dream that I was watching Brokeback Mountain. I’ve never actually seen Brokeback Mountain, so my subconscious had to make it up as it went along. I have to tell you, when it comes to the art of filmmaking, my subconscious is an uneven talent. I understand that the real Brokeback Mountain had some scenes that made some viewers uncomfortable. I wouldn’t know anything about that. The most memorable scene in the version I saw had the two cowboys drinking beer and making Jiffy Pop popcorn. I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about that either.
Except that I do, because I just made some Jiffy Pop popcorn last Friday. It was because we were out of microwave popcorn, and we just happened to have this Jiffy Pop that Elvis had gotten as a present from his teachers at school. So I made the Jiffy Pop. It was okay. Microwave popcorn would have been better.
When I was a kid, they didn’t have microwave popcorn. Well, I’m assuming that there was no microwave popcorn because most people I knew didn’t own microwaves. And I remember what a big deal it was when my mother finally got an air-popper. That was amazing. We would totally gather around and watch the popcorn popping because that’s what you do when a technological marvel is occurring. Anyway, before the air popper my mother would make popcorn on the stove. Not Jiffy Pop, though, because that was too expensive. No, she’d just make it in a pot. We wouldn’t gather around and watch because, you know, there wasn’t really anything to see.
I think my mother must have made popcorn every day and we’d all eat it while she watched The Doctors and Days of Our Lives. I was never that into The Doctors, but Days of Our Lives had a really interesting storyline at that time, what with the Salem Strangler killing people and Jessica having that split personality (nun by day, shameless hussy by night), and then it turns out her boyfriend is the strangler and Sister Marie is her mom? Holy crap, that was exciting. I guess you had to be there. Anyway, Another World came on after that, but usually by then the popcorn was gone. My father didn’t like my mother to watch soap operas. He thought they were a waste of time. My mother would watch them anyway, but it was a secret, so we had to keep it on the downlow, as it were.
There were never any gay cowboys on Days of Our Lives when I was watching it. Things might be different now, just like the popcorn is different. I would never watch soap operas with my children. And yet that is one of my fond memories of childhood.
I had another dream that I went to high school with Johnny Depp. I had known Johnny Depp since the fourth grade. We didn’t talk much, so we weren’t close, but in my dream we were in high school together, and one day during math class he tried to kill me. I never understood why, but I got asked to tell the story over and over, and that’s when people started noticing some inconsistencies in the narrative. It turned out that I’d just read Winona Ryder’s memoir of the event, because it had actually happened to her, not me. Then it turned out that she made the whole thing up, and I felt pretty ripped off. Kind of like Oprah, I imagine.
I didn’t go to high school with Johnny Depp, of course. Johnny Depp and I aren’t even the same age. I think 21 Jump Street may have been on when I was in high school. Probably some episode of 21 Jump Street had some high school students trying to kill each other and lying about it, but I don’t remember much specific about 21 Jump Street, except when Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise would go undercover as delinquent brothers. I’m not sure why that made such a strong impression on me, unless I really dug the way Johnny Depp looked in a do-rag. Really don’t know the answer there.
I think I know where this dream came from, though. I’ve been eating Frosted Mini-Wheats this week, and on the back of the cereal box there’s this movie offer, and one of the movies you can get is Lucas–you know, that movie Corey Haim made before he got old and desperate? Winona Ryder was in that movie, too. She was very young. Johnny Depp was not in that movie. But Johnny Depp dated Winona Ryder, as you know. That’s how he got his “Wino Forever” tattoo. There were no tattoos in my dream, though. Just attempted murder and literary fraud. It was more exciting than the gay cowboys eating Jiffy Pop, though.
There was something wrong with that Jiffy Pop.
It’s Valentine’s Day, and I should have written something about love. Instead I wrote about dreams of love and love gone wrong. Also the popcorn going wrong. I love popcorn, and I love this blog. And I love you guys. (Nothing funny, just being festive. Grow up, for Pete’s sake.)
I had some weird dreams last night, but they were so real. Like I dreamed that I was posting on Xanga and my headline was “George W. Bush Drowns Orphan’s Puppy: President Says Dog “Had It Coming.” I think I then proceeded to write a very sarcastic political blog that was probably pure genius, since I was asleep and all, but it’s gone now. Your loss, kiddos.
In other news, my son’s new shampoo smells like insecticide. Specifically, it smells like that old Raid Country Scent, which was supposed to smell like lilac and lavender or something, but actually just smelled like extra-disgusting Raid. Why would they put that scent in a shampoo? Now I keep getting these subliminal messages that my son’s hair is toxic. I can’t trust my nose anymore. It’s tragic.
We finished the second season of Veronica Mars, and now I’m in Veronica Mars withdrawal. Sugar Daddy was helping some friends move last night, so after the kids went to bed, I put on Season One while I folded laundry. That show is freaking awesome. SD came home and watched it with me, and we still had a hard time turning it off, even though we already knew what was going to happen next. It’s freaking awesome, all right, but I can’t swear that it’s that freaking awesome. We may just be that freaking pathetic.
While my father was here, he helped me clean my house. He did the lion’s share of cleaning Princess Zurg’s room, for which he probably deserves a medal. It took him all day. (By contrast, I cleaned my own room in forty-five minutes, and the boys’ room in about two hours.) He threw away a lot of crap. Contrary to what he believed would be the case, PZ was asking about some of said crap not twenty-four hours later. But she hasn’t asked about it in the last 36 hours, so we may be home free. I mention the cleaning only because it’s really hot today and I’m glad I did all that hard work earlier in the week because now I’m lazy.
I made a baby wrap sling for myself–or rather, for my baby, who appreciates it almost as much as I do. By “make,” of course, I mean I bought a five yards of fabric on clearance and cut it down the middle lengthwise so it wouldn’t be too wide, and I learned how to wrap it around the baby and myself so that it now qualifies as a baby wrap. No homemaking skills required. It works very nicely. When the baby was born, I bought a pouch-style sling, which has served me very well, but I like the baby wrap better for prolonged periods of baby-wearing. I wanted something she could move her legs in, since it seemed counter-intuitive to take a baby to physical therapy one day and then trap her legs in a sling the next. (Not that I ever kept her in there very long, but still, it seemed odd.)
Anyway, we look tres crunchy while walking to the mailbox now. I totally recommend slings for baby-wearing. Unless you’re a dude. If you’re a dude who wants to wear a baby, I’d stick with the Baby Bjorn or whatever the kids are riding in these days, because you will look like less of a sissy. No offense to you sling-wearing dad-dudes–I’m sure you’re incredibly virile, and it’s just our society that’s messed up. Anyway, for those of you who are interested in making your own baby sling but not interested in sewing (or serging, which is what you really need to do), buy five-and-a-half yards of knit fabric (with a teensy bit of stretch, but not too much–no spandex, for example), the kind that curls at the ends when cut. Then watch these videos to learn how to wrap up your baby. The learning curve is not as steep as I was led to believe. I mean, if I can do it…you know the rest.
It’s so hot in this house that I’m tempted to drive everyone down to the Target just for the air conditioning.
Last night I dreamed (dreamt?) that I had the baby, and it was a boy. This is the second time I've dreamt (dreamed?) the baby was a boy. I don't think it means anything, except maybe that I'm having a boy. Anyway, I had the baby and brought him home, and my whole family was there–I mean, the family I had growing up. Interestingly enough, none of my other children was there, and Sugar Daddy was nowhere to be seen for much of the dream. Anyway (again), my family kept trying to feed the baby spaghetti. This is a newborn, a few days old, and they're trying to feed him spaghetti. I said, "You know, I really only have to feed him breastmilk for the first 4-6 months. He doesn't need any spaghetti." And my mother (who was alive in this dream) said, "Oh, I know you did that with the other three, but this one really seems hungry for something else." And I said, "Maybe it's because you haven't let me nurse him more than twice since I've come home. You keep whisking him away for spaghetti." And my sister said–as she was spooning pasta with tomato sauce into my newborn's mouth–"Oh, Mad, stop freaking out. It's just spaghetti."
What was freaking me out was that I knew my baby should not be eating spaghetti, but for some reason I couldn't just say, "Hey! I'm the mother here! Stop feeding my baby spaghetti, you freaks!" (And why are you all in my house? Where are my other kids? Why aren't you still dead, Mom?) It was really disturbing. Then I finally found SD, who was reading on the couch, and I said, "SD, have we picked out a name for this baby yet?" And he said, "Uhh…no," and went back to reading. And I continued to worry about the spaghetti and the fact that the baby hadn't breastfed in several hours.
I told SD about this dream this morning, and he said he had a dream that the Harriet Miers nomination was withdrawn. He always has to have better dreams than me.
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I'm registering for the hospital, and I'm looking through all the brochures and papers they give you, and there's a newspaper birth announcement form that I find a little over the top. It asks for the parents' names and the baby's name, date of birth, blah blah, you know, the normal stuff, but additionally it asks for the time of birth, the weight, the length, the siblings' names, the grandparents' names, the great-grandparents' names–and I'm thinking, "Who the freak cares about all this?" I mean, I care, but does the greater
Portland area care? How can they possibly have room to print all of this information?
I used to be responsible for the birth announcements when I worked at the newspaper, and it was a tedious job, but the thing that bothered me the most was when parents would ask me to notify them when the announcement was going to run–which I was willing to do, when I had the time–but when I called them, as soon as I identified myself, they assumed I was trying to sell them the paper, and they'd hang up on me. Needless to say, I did not call them back, and they did not know when their birth announcement ran. The happiest day of my life was when one mother called to ask about her announcement and I got to say, "Yes, that ran about three weeks ago. I tried to call you to let you know, but you hung up on me." Sorry.
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SD and I have tentatively decided on a boy's name, so I was feeling okay about having a boy, but the dorkus had to tell his mother what the name was, and she said she hates it. Well, I don't really care if she hates it, but I care that she feels obligated to tell us she hates it. I suppose it doesn't matter because everyone in his family feels obligated to tell us they hate the baby's name, even after the baby's been born, the birth certificate's filled out, we've blessed him in church, and he's about to start kindergarten. On my side of the family, they have the decency to talk about it behind my back. Except for my step-mother, who doesn't really talk about it so much to our faces, but when she comes to visit the baby, she'll talk to the baby and let him know that our parenting leaves much to be desired, and she's very sorry he has such an awful name.
In all honesty, I'm not in love with the name we've picked for this one, so I don't need this further discouragement. I can just hope my dreams about the baby being a boy are as accurate as the dreams I had about Elvis being a girl.
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I also have a form here to outline my birth plan. It's pretty open-ended. I'm not too picky about my birthing experience. I mean, beyond the basics, I don't have any special requests, like live studio audiences or relaxing music (pfft!) or scented candles. When I was getting near my due date with Elvis, my midwife asked how involved SD wanted to be with the delivery, and I said, "Well…he definitely wants to be there." And she said, "How does he feel about stuff like cutting the cord, helping bring the baby out, etc.?"
"Oh, he'd probably think that was cool."
"And how do you feel about that?" she asked earnestly.
Confused, I just shook my head and said, "What do I care?"
I don't think the midwife was prepared for that response because she just about peed her pants laughing.
I'm really tired of being pregnant.
So I spent most of the last 36 hours battling what might have been food poisoning, an overachieving 24-hour stomach flu, or simply the dietary justice meted out to those who consume Double Fudge Brownie ice cream and Cheetos before they go to bed. Whatever it was, I can tell you that churning stomach + hyperactive fetus = bad.
Add to the mix three children who don’t understand the meaning of “Mommy is sick and you’re all heartless ******** for screaming at her when she doesn’t get your juice/band-aid/Star Wars Cheerio cereal (excuse me, puking) as fast as you think she ought to” and I think the solution is something with mathematical symbols I’m incapable of reproducing here. To his credit, however, once Elvis saw me fully reclined and sobbing on the La-Z-Boy in the living room, he immediately went into Florence Nightingale mode. First he got me a blanket. Then he brought me some water (which I didn’t want, but he insisted). Then he brought me a stuffed giraffe and, for some reason, his toy light saber. Then he brought me some reading material. Then he played me some music. Then he started climbing on me and throwing things at me. Well, it was nice while it lasted.
I feel better today, which is good because Sugar Daddy left for
Arizona again this morning, and will be gone for the rest of the week. I had some really effed-up dreams last night, though, including one in which I went to the free clinic in the wee hours of the morning, and, as long as I was in the neighborhood, decided to go shopping at the (apparently) 24-Hour Jennifer Lopez Natural Foods Store. I don’t know why I would dream about such a thing because I’m sure I only spend about 0% of my average day thinking about Jennifer Lopez, but there it is. Anyway, while I was there I picked up some multi-grain bread flour and J. Lo’s special Protein Powder, which turned out to be dehydrated bananas, but it was pretty tasty nonetheless. Well, that comes later. While I was still at the store, pondering the nutritional wisdom of Jennifer Lopez, I realized that it was 6:10 a.m. and SD’s plane was supposed to leave at 6:40, and I’d just left him at home with all the kids and unless he’d found a sitter at 5 in the morning, there was no way he was going to make it.
Long story short, I suddenly had a cell phone and managed to work everything out so that SD could get to
Arizona, at great inconvenience to everyone but myself. Needless to say, I felt terribly guilty and knew that I would never live this one down. I can’t tell you how many times I then dreamed that I woke up wondering if this had actually happened, and if it had, where were my powdered bananas? A rough night, to be sure.
But now I’m awake, J. Lo’s powdered protein bananas a thing of the past, alone with my children and a mostly-functioning digestive system. Tonight is my last tap class of the term, and possibly my last tap class until after the baby is born. I’m already having balance issues, and add to that the fact that tap dancing tends to result in a full uterus bouncing up and down on one’s bladder, and I just don’t think I’m going to make the Third Trimester Tipsy Tappers Team this season. No worries, though. Assuming the actual birth doesn’t kill me, I can start again in January.
Speaking of the actual birth, I also dreamed last night that I had the baby, and it was, of course, a boy. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what I named him, and I’m really ticked off–especially since I still can’t shake the taste of those stupid bananas. My subconscious has no sense of priorities.
New stuff I’ve learned Department
There is no difference between queen-size pantyhose and size B pantyhose. It’s all a big conspiracy, girls. They’re laughing at us. If you have not yet joined the great pantyhose rebellion, now is the time. (Nice, ’cause it’s summer.)
Stuff I don’t freaking care about Department
PBS losing its government funding. Probably because I’m one of the few people in
America who doesn’t even claim to watch PBS. Not that I’ve never watched anything on PBS that I’ve enjoyed. Over the course of my lifetime I have seen several good things on public television. Which is why I, along with lots of other upper-middle class people with too much disposable income, would be happy to join the Carnegie Foundation and General Motors in writing generous checks to support quality programming on PBS, should I ever start to miss it. (I might conceivably get the hankering for one of those cheesy British sitcoms the networks haven’t bothered to rip off yet–ever see the one about the nurse who lives with a guy who’s really a superhero from another planet? Funny, funny stuff.) Sesame Street is a nice show, but if
can’t support itself by now, it can only be because someone at the Childrens Television Workshop merchandising department has a serious drug problem. But just say for a moment that there is an embezzling drug addict somewhere in the organization, and
goes off the air tomorrow. Will the world come to an end? No, really. I’m being perfectly serious. If your kid never gets to watch
–if your television exploded tomorrow, in fact–he or she would be okay. He or she will probably even learn to read and live independently one day. This may come as a surprise to some people, but television has not always existed. The human race functioned and thrived for centuries without it, actually. No joke. Look it up.
And before you chalk this up to more random rantings from an anti-NPR right-wing nutjob, you should know that I’ve always been against government funding of the arts. Even in my big-government-lovin’, Utne Reader-subscribin’ youth, I thought government funding of the arts was total BS. How were we ever going to have universal health care when we were wasting all this money on the damn arts? (Not that the NEA budget would come close to covering the costs of universal health care, but it was the principle of the thing. Yes, even then I had principles.) Nothing annoys me more than hearing these millionaires in the entertainment industry complain about how the government needs to support the arts more. I have an idea, Mr. Forty Million Dollars Per Movie–how about you take some of your undertaxed income you don’t know what to do with and support some arts? Sell one of your six vacation homes and buy some violins for inner-city children. Bathe in tap water for a week so the rest of us can watch Lawrence Welk on Saturday night. Funding the arts is easy when you don’t try to argue with a Republican-controlled Congress.
What’s the matter with me? Department
The other night I had the most bizarre dream starring Brad Pitt. Yeah, don’t get too excited, it wasn’t that kind of dream. (I’ve never actually gotten what the Big Deal was about Brad Pitt, though I must say, I’ve been fonder of him since I realized how much he reminds me of a young Robert Redford. Not that I have a big thing about Robert Redford, but now my feelings about him and Brad Pitt are about equal.) So I had this dream that I was watching a movie starring Brad Pitt, and it was supposed to be Fight Club, which I’ve never seen, but Brad Pitt was playing this guy with this huge, I mean enormous, goiter-like thing sticking out of his stomach. It was the size of a small planet, but it did not affect his love life one iota, because he was engaged to this girl who had fallen in love with him in spite of his deformity, but he was secretly planning to have the goiter-thing surgically removed so as to surprise her on their wedding day. Okay, so I’m watching this movie and I keep thinking, “When does he start fighting people? After his surgery?” But then I woke up. I told Sugar Daddy about the dream, and he said it sounded like a pretty good movie to him. Actually, it was quite engaging, but I have no idea how it ends, so I don’t think I’ll be pitching the script to
Paramount anytime soon.
That’s all.
Sometimes there's nothing like a good light saber fight. Mister Bubby got a purple light saber from Santa last month, to go with his green one, so now he has both of his favorite colors, and he needs someone to fight with. That's me! Woo-hoo! I'm good, too. A little too good, maybe. Of course I let him win. Usually. But the Star Wars fantasy has evolved over the last few weeks to incorporate his new The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe fantasy. Now we have to use shields with our light sabers. Those would be my pot lids. And he's decided we should no longer fight each other because we're both good guys. So now we have to fight together against the bad guys–which would be, of course, the White Witch of Narnia and all her ghouls and hags and MB's favorite villain, the wolf Maugrim, Captain of the Secret Police. Since we don't have anyone else to be the bad guys, really, we usually end up fighting inanimate objects. Which isn't as fun, I must say. But at least his values aren't messed up.
He informed me a few minutes ago that his favorite animal is a sheep. I don't get it. I just hope it isn't symbolic.
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Today is one of those days when I forgot to eat breakfast. It always surprises me when I forget to eat. Forget to feed the kids, sure, but forget to feed me? What's going on? I was too busy picking up the kitchen. Which is filthy, but now it's a tidy filthy. I also took an inventory of my coupons. No, not a mental inventory. I actually wrote it all down. I'm having one of my manic organizational episodes. It's really not healthy. I can think of little else besides putting things in boxes and sticking color-coded labels on them. And lists. I must make lists. If I had a working printer, I would really be going overboard right now. The kids would never get lunch. Not that they've all had breakfast. Whatever. Is it noon yet?
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Yesterday Sugar Daddy and I went to another "team meeting" at Princess Zurg's school. The thing I really hate about these meetings is that we always spend 30-45 minutes describing PZ's issues and wondering aloud, "Oh, what is to be done?" and describing the issues some more, hoping that if we talk about them enough, eventually we will come up with a strategy by accident. Part of the problem–and I'm talking about the meeting problem, not the PZ problem–is that we're all a bunch of women reluctant to say what we're really thinking. I use "we" in the sense of "they," of course, because SD is not a woman, and after nearly eight years of being married to SD, I've developed even more of that cut-to-the-chase plain-talking men are supposed to be so famous for than he has.
Still, I am female, so unlike SD I understand more of what's going on while nothing is actually being said. Yesterday I knew that at least two of the ladies there wanted to talk about placement–putting PZ in a different classroom, different school, Some Place Not Here–but none would come out and say it. The autism specialist wanted to say we were all full of crap and going about things all wrong, but she wouldn't say it. Wouldn't say much of anything, really, which is how I could be so sure of what she was thinking.
Everyone was obviously frustrated, but no one would say what she meant. Saying what you mean is not rewarded in these meetings. People will think you've taken offense, which they'll find offensive. Say what you mean or what you think someone else means, and everyone will immediately back off, rewind, erase what they said before, and you're back at square one. Which is detailing the inventory of your child's deficiencies. Ad nauseum. No one means for this to be a vent-about-Princess-Zurg session, but that's what it is because everyone's too afraid of saying what's really on her mind.
Even SD is afraid because he knows he's not at the Big Satan, where everyone says what he means no matter how offensive it is because if they don't, the company will probably lose money, and no one wants that. But education isn't a money-making enterprise. It's only a child's well-being at stake.
There was one moment of candor in the meeting. PZ's teacher, God bless her, said that in thirty years of teaching and working with special needs children, including her own children, PZ was the most challenging, and she considered our current course of action to be wasting precious time. Before I could get my verbal agreement completely out of my mouth, let alone jump up and kiss her for being so honest, two or three of the other ladies rushed to mitigate that harsh-sounding comment, and we got off track entirely. Again.I could use a good light saber fight now.
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I'm dreaming again, which means I'm stressed out. The other night I dreamt that I was picking up a prescription for an antibiotic which looked suspiciously like a bottle of Spray-n-Wash and suddenly realized that PZ's bus was going to arrive home any minute. I started looking for my car and couldn't find it. I realized I didn't have my car. How I got there without my car, I didn't know. I started wandering around aimlessly. I went to the library, tried to use their pay phone to call home because I remembered my mother was there. In my dream she was still alive, so that wasn't so creepy. I didn't have any change, or I couldn't get through, or something. I hoped she remembered about PZ coming home on the bus. I went outside. My father picked me up in the Dodge
Vista he owned twenty years ago. My sons were in the car, I think, along with one or two of my siblings, who were the age they were when we had the car, not the age they are now. I thought, oh, good, this must have been how I got here, and now I'm going home. My dad drove and drove, and I finally said, "Dad, where are you going?" He said, "Oh, I don't know, I'm just driving." Then I remembered I left my Spray-n-Wash prescription at the library by the phone, so we went back. I wanted to stay and pick up a copy of Lolita because I'd been meaning to read it, but my dad had the car running, so I didn't. Then I really hoped my mother would remember about meeting PZ's bus because it was much too late. Then I woke up and my father owned a
Toyota Prius and my mother was dead again. Okay, maybe it didn't hit me all at once, but I had returned to reality. And last night I dreamt about eating bad Mexican food. When I dream about eating something, it's always a bad experience, and it stays with me long after I wake up. In college I dreamt I overdosed on peanut butter, and I couldn't eat the stuff for months. Fortunately there's no good Mexican food in
Portland anyway.
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