I blame the booze
And messed up cosmic bowling. And a million people all driving towards the mall. And a long line at the liquor store. And that first, delicious, vodka martini with garlic stuffed olives (pretty good, not as over powering or breath killing as you might think). And the movie Elf. And the bottle of wine that I bought the other day. And the other bottle of wine that I bought today. And the sore muscles that prevented me from getting up and moving in a timely fashion. And the Wizard of Oz, with commercials, so that I could struggle to my feet and exercise my way to the kitchen for more drinks in between.
But not actually exercise. Or not eat. The moment I said I would just drink and not eat, all I could think about was food. So we ate pretty much all the leftovers in the house. And then some other stuff too. Sorry Mason, we ate the cheese sticks. I’ll buy more this week.
And then it was so late. I could stand and walk enough but I was not doing, like, a workout. And now it’s morning. For the record I slept like crap. And I had a headache all night long. And I was really thirsty. And I had strange, weird dreams about working in a hospital. A giant, multi-level, spread out hospital that doesn’t exist in real life. I had to put eye drops in a long list of patients scattered everywhere, and measure their pupil dilation. But I couldn’t find the rooms. And the patients were listed categorically by disorder and it seemed most were psychiatric. It took me 15 minutes just to get near the hospital rooms. There was a huge, 2 level, narrow, oddly stepped staircase I had to go down (and back up) and my kids were following me and I was wearing my school uniform. AND I was drinking in my dream too! IN the hospital. All the other nurses and doctors were too. I don’t know what that means but it’s probably not good. In the end I could only find one person on the list and he refused.
Thank god I woke up. I’m drinking coffee now without anything in it, although I bought something for that yesterday too. I’m going to wait until later. During football, to start drinking again. And I must try to exercise even though just trying to cough hurts at this point. That’s the problem with irregular exercise. Those muscles hate stretching out after you let them sit for awhile. Then they punish you big time by not letting you move faster than sitting and not lifting more than a fork or a glass. Thank goodness I can type, right Amanda??
I suppose I better get up now and do something. In celebration of school being over I got myself some fake nails. But I am not skilled on managing alot of personal hygiene things yet. Takes practice and some different moves. Like, for instance, it took me half an hour to put in my contact lenses. It’s stupid. I don’t know how the fancy girls do it 24/7. But in a week or so, I’ll have naturalized myself to the whole concept and I’ll be fine. I let my daughter get some too, but her’s are probably all broken and chipped by now. 2 days would be a record. She likes to tap them on everything and pull at them all the time. Anyway…my point was that it takes longer to do less.
And I have a crazy fish to deal with. My son’s Oscar has taken to swimming around the tank in circles. Not like around the outer edges, literally swimming in fast circles like he’s a dog chasing his tail. We can’t figure out what the problem is. One site said water issues, one says nutrition, one said maybe he broke the heater and he’s getting electrocuted continuously. Well, there’s another fish in the tank and he seems fine so I doubt it’s that, but we unplugged the heater anyway. Still spinning. He also likes to attack the surface and throw water out. He just did it again. The other things are not easily fixable so I say just move him out. I think he’s too large for where he’s at and needs to be moved to the big tank. There are a variety of fish in it already and one giant Oscar. He used to be really aggressive, but he seems to be tamer now. I think it might be ok. It’s a pity though, because Mason’s fish is nice and smooth with no scars or damage and he’s probably going to get beat up a little bit if we switch him.
Anyway, these are the problems of a Sunday morning stall. Type long enough and something else will come up to do other than exercise. Like your mom calling you and asking when you planned on coming over. Hi mom! Thanks! Did you read all this? It’s funny huh?? So, since I didn’t make it clear when I called her earlier, and she won’t drive her scroungy butt to me, I guess I better really go get dressed and haul it out there! See? No exercise! Yay fat me!
I am posting a picture of the big Oscar that Mason took as companion to this fine piece of writing, except that its at the top, so you’ve already seen it. And I still have lots of Christmas pics I took from around my house when I was goofing around with the camera. And hopefully, I’ll have really old pics to post from when my dad was alive later too. Pretty exciting stuff. You do want to see those, I promise. In the meantime though, here’s a picture of Mason’s crazy fish:
He’s not as clear as he could be, but you get the idea. He’s about 8 inches long and 5 inches top fin to bottom. In a 36 gallon bow tank and looking mean, but we’ll see.
Today is the first day of Christmas in my world
UPDATE 12/17/09: I am finally done with this semester of school! And I am registered for January. Stress, money, stress, books, stress, start studying NOW for next semester(that’s basically what they told us today), stress…my point is that I obviously wrote this in the throes of desperation for panicked finals and four tests in a row. I am appalled at all my bad grammar and weird use of words (melee’ ?? WTF? I don’t even remember typing that word!) I never say it out loud! So strange. But I’m leaving it. For fun I thought you could read it and tell me how many errors I made! Best, most creative slap down gets a shout out and…I don’t know…something. Maybe a free vital sign check-up?!? It’s hard to give stuff away when I am here and you are wherever you are! Ok…go!
If you are like me, and I bet most of you are these days…you have divorced parents. And you have been traveling to various families for most of the holidays for most of your childhood. And then YOU got married, had kids, and got divorced, and now you have two, three, four, five….etc…MORE families to travel too during the holidays. And even if you managed to get out of a few visits in the melee’ these days, your kids haven’t. Their just starting the roller coaster of holiday family dinners and fun that defines our holiday memories and ideas. Personally, for me, my dream is to have enough money to leave Chicago the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and not come back until after New Years, to a country that doesn’t celebrate the holidays. Or at least one that has a beach and an ocean as its primary geological features. My last thoughts were the Maldive islands. Any and all are welcome to come with me. I’ll even pay. Tahiti is my second choice. Just imagine yourself in the South Pacific, water so clear you can see right to the bottom, warm breeze and temperate weather, and you are in your own bungalow high above the water, relaxing on the deck with a steaming cup of exotic coffee, planning a day that has nothing to do with snow or sweaters or candy or decorations or presents or giant dinners of ham and turkey and pie….and all your family is there with you, happy and getting along, tan and healthy and relaxed…it’s a lottery dream. Trust me, I know. So today starts Christmas with my dad’s side of the family. It’s fun, actually, but the dream remains….
Merry Christmas Everybody!
Severe Weather Wednesday
It’s all about tornado’s, fierce lightning strikes and those crackling, rumbling, low-in-the-throat, crashing, thunder rolls. And what’s worse is when the wind picks up out of nowhere, a leaf here and there, a branch on the roof, another branch…a limb…holy hell! And your BF’s friend is trying to do you a favor and fix your WW II, rooftop, chimney pipe that is crumbling to shit, but it’s pouring down rain and the clouds are moving fast across the sky looking like they are taking aim directly at the soaking wet guy kneeling on a high roof holding sheet metal pieces, a screwdriver and a drill. Not good. Pretty damn scary actually.
I appreciate the attempt, for real, but I can’t have him being killed in the effort. Rain is one thing, this was another.
And the day started out so…semi-sunny. Storms were predicted. I went to school. Got the final info before the real work begins. Have some assignments. Reading. The usual. I feel good though. It’s the same at school, semi-sunny then storms. (To definitely mix metaphors. See Zero Effect) Mind set is what they talked about today. (And by “they”, I mean all our teachers that we met today, the speeches, the handouts, and the rundown of the schedule and how the classes are actually coordinated. All the good stuff before you are bumping around in the halls looking lost and feeling like a failure. Graduation will never come.) “They” said, “Think of yourself as the nurse. In all future questions, studies, clinicals, tests…you will be referred to as the nurse. The program doesn’t ask what you will do in two years when you become a nurse, it asks what you will do right now as the nurse. That’s a tough mind game. But not as tough as this, also told in a story, (from my memory to the page):
“An evil wizard was always trying to get rid of the beloved prince. The wizard was always thinking of ways to outsmart the prince and show him for a fool to the rest of the kingdom. But the prince was smart and he knew the wizard was always tricking. One day the wizard had a plan that couldn’t fail. He would hold a bird in his hand and ask the prince if it was dead or alive. If the prince answered alive, the wizard would crush the bird to death and show the dead bird proving that the prince was wrong. And if the prince said dead, the wizard would let the bird fly away to prove his error. The plan could not fail. So the wizard, in front of all the kingdom, said, “Prince, is the bird in my hand dead or alive?” And the prince thought about it, knowing he was being tricked somehow, and answered the wizard finally, “It is what you make it.”
“This adventure, and it is an adventure, you are about to embark on, is only what you make it. You hold in your hand the power to make it anything you want. To give and take what you will from the next few years. How much effort or how little effort you devote to this goal. It’s all up to you. No one can force you to participate or not. You will have in your hands the power to care and to comfort, and the power to heal the sick. But you will also have the power to make someone even sicker and to possibly even kill them if you are not very careful. Is it scary? It should be. But it is worth all the sweat, every drop of blood, and every shed tear”
So they say.
Truly.
I may not have it written word for word, but that was the basic story and summary. The woman who spoke it is very powerful, but quiet to listen to. She is very calming, while at the same time, managing to scare the poop out of you. But I feel that it’s all true. Why would they lie? It’s hard. But the reward is great. That’s what they say. That’s all and that should be enough. Everything else after is extra. I believe it. I worried about the whole life/death, mistake/error, kill the patient thing, and the teacher said that we should be worried. We should always be a tiny bit wary and prepared for what could happen, because anything can happen at any moment and at any place. Now isn’t that comforting? Luckily, amazingly, and more miraculously, it’s a wonder things don’t go bad more often than they do. It’s a fine line.
But I think that is enough for tonight. It’s late, and my kids have their first day of school, and I need to get up to be with them. My daughter is fine. Same school, same friends, same schedule. She’s the top class now! But my son is in Jr. High. New school, the bus (again), new classes, new schedules, new teachers, new students. Small fish in the big pond!
So, the weather is calm right now, the storm has passed for the next few hours. They say the morning might be rough, but then smooth sailing through all next week. Is this a weather report or a damn soul-searching, reflection-on-a-life-yet-lived, or what? I need to lighten it up with some kind of image. This is just the thing to restore your faith in my (ill-advised representation) sense of humor and shallow/callous self.
When we went to the zoo, so many days ago, (more pictures, I swear.) we got a few pictures of the lions. The animals were really animated that day. Like, ALL of them. It was weird. I have video of the apes and they were acting crazy. (You Tube soon, I swear.) Usually they just lay around looking like they all want to commit suicide, but for some reason, everyone was jacked up and pacing or jumping or chasing or playing…whatever the various species to do to get us humans close enough to attack. And the lion was working it! He was walking back and forth in front of this “viewing” window. Right against the glass. Stopping, looking, staring (evilly and maliciously) most likely devising some way to get from where he was to where we were. Well, not us, exactly. We were waa-aayyy in the back, trying to figure out what the lion was up to. The lady lion was trying to get a ball out of the water. But the man lion had something cooking. You could just tell. Stevie would barely let me take the pictures I took because she was sure that the lion was about to chuck it all, go for broke and try to bust out of that glass and kill us all.
At any rate, when you think about it like that, these pictures are kind of funny. The people are so colorfully dressed and so interested and amazed by the lion being so close, that I have no doubt, any one of them would say they were completely surprised and shocked that the nice little kitty would try to hurt them, even while he was chewing on one of their legs or ripping out their intestines. But you judge for yourself.
Curious animal/performer/vegetarian, aka, Alex from Madagascar OR bored/angry/ bloodthirsty, carnivorous lion, hell-bent for destruction?
Look into his eyes and then decide.
Oh!! Isn't he cute?!?!
All I see is: lunch, lunch and more lunch!
Won't all those colorful clothes, torn to shreds, covered in blood and scattered all over the ground, add that extra oomph! to the news story later when they pan the scene 50 times for our sick sense of viewing enjoyment??
Snack time! You know that lion is NOT posing for a picture. He's thinking, "I could get a head AND an arm."
The picture BELOW ↓, was taken after he walked away from the window to go take the ball away from the lady lion, in between canvassing for people. She would get it out of the water and he would roll it back in. But not that last time. He finally quit that bitch and took the ball and rolled it right off the rock wall, into the protective moat that separates the people from the lions. Then he went and laid on a rock. Playtime was over. That’s when I took my picture.
Dumb-ass, crazy humans. I'll kill them all as soon as I get big enough.
Feel better? Me too!!
Sweet dreams! Goodnight! Don’t let the man-eating lion bite!
Blatant second attempt at generating more traffic tonight. Trying to get Super 3000! And a disturbing dream I had days ago…
Read This. My first shameless self-promotion post.
I’ve made it so easy! Time is ticking. I’m feeling a little sickling…Really. I don’t know what it was, or is, but I feel kind of yucky all of the sudden.
Anderson Cooper, on Regis & Kelly today (he filled in) said that no one wants to hear other people’s dreams. Ever. Even close friends and family, he said, “It’s like, no, no, don’t tell me…ugh…too late…bored.”
Kelly disagreed. Some dreams can be interesting, she said.
Well pick a side, because here is one of mine.
I had it 3 or 4 nights ago, but I can’t forget it. It basically starts….fuzzy stuff…and I’m in a garage. At a party. There is a lot of drinking going on. Not by me, but by these three tall guys standing by the open garage door. When suddenly, one of the drinking guys somehow manages to trip the switch that makes the garage door start to close. But he doesn’t move out of the way. He just stands under it watching it come down on top of him. We, on the inside are yelling for him to move, but he’s not. It finally closes right on top of him, and it’s really wide, with some kind of hollow spot, because he’s kind of inside the door itself. But now he’s on the outside so I can’t see him. After a minute, the door raises and there he is, laying on the ground with a huge gash, shaped like a big teardrop on the side of his head near his eye. I rush over to him to help, and one of his friends is pulling it open and closing it with his fingers, saying, “Look at this, look at this!” I said, “Stop doing that!” And I kneel over him, trying to keep him still and he grips my back really tight like he’s trying to hug me, and his eyes are droopy and fading out. I say, “Don’t worry, the paramedics are coming. They’ll get you out of here. Don’t worry.” But he just keeps gripping me, quietly fading out. Then the ambulance arrives and the paramedic says to me, “Man, I love it when you med students are first on the scene, you always clean up everything so nice.” I just glanced over a little and mumbled as they pulled him away from me. They got him in the ambulance and started to drive when I suddenly realized what the paramedic said to me. I turned toward the ambulance and said out loud, “There was no blood! He was drinking and there was no blood.” As if this was very significant. But they were gone and I woke up.
Those words have been going through my head for the last three or four days now. He was drinking and there was no blood. It feels like it means something, but I can’t make the connection.
It’s been a long time since I had a dream that stayed with me this long and so clearly. It’s weird. But does it mean anything? I don’t know.
So what’s the consensus? Dream Talk: good or bad? Any ideas? He was drinking. And there was NO blood.
Find the New York Coffee Cup. The Thomas Crown Affair
Well aren’t we all lucky today?? Haven’t found a penny on the street in weeks, but I’m just finding those NY Coffee Cups!
And finding them in movies I’ve never even seen!
And then, finding the clips from those movies on You Tube!
And, strangely enough, The Thomas Crown Affair has Denis Leary in it, who I just had a dream about the other night! Seriously.
It was Friday night into Saturday. I won’t bore you with all the details but it was dream, dream, dream… and… kissing Denis Leary! I don’t remember what the rest of the dream had in it, but in the end it was me kissing Denis Leary. And he was kissing me back!
Anyway, here’s the clip from the movie. I just happened to catch this exact part while it was on cable the other day. There’s no sound for whatever reason, but the cup makes it appearance at the 1:30 mark. It may be in more parts of the movie, but I won’t know until Netflix sends it on over for me to see full length. Until then…Enjoy!
And in a related video…here is Denis Leary doing some comedy about…Coffee! Didn’t know this was out there either. It’s kind of old and it’s WAY full of SWEAR WORDS. Curse words, obscenities, whatever…NOT FOR THE KIDDIES! Otherwise…
Poetry For People / My Stuff
I have a diary!
In fact, I have several. As I was going through my drawers, (still cleaning out–getting those pictures organized), I found all these notebooks that I had been writing in. Actually, one, looks like an official diary. It has a rich, brown, leather cover with a strap and snap button on top, with thick, vanilla, lined paper inside. It’s nice and I don’t remember getting it, but my daughter wants to have it badly.
At any rate, I must have used it for something because there were some things written, and one thing that I thought was pretty good.
So here it is, posted just as I wrosted (That was a deliberate misspell) No title, as usual:
—————————————————————————————————————————–
And now I must go to bed
and dream of wild men.
And in the morning I am going to
put curls in my hair.
I didn’t know how the story ended.
Middle of the bed
Middle of the balcony
In a huge apartment
On the floor;
I will bet that you can’t remember
even half of it.
If you would dance with me
If you would lay with me
There was rain and we had rain
There was a jungle that you ran through
You were always chasing me
in the dark.
I could never get away.
Day Quote
You must always have great, secret, big, fat hopes for yourself in love and life. The bigger, the better.
—Gloria Vanderbilt
just shy of pretty 