Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Trapped a fox

 

Of course it was a dream, though it's not that far outside of reality. I dreamed I trapped the fox that has been eating my guinea hens babies. In this case he was also killing cats and in general being a poop. He was making daytime appearances and even coming into the house. He had to go. 

I got out the trusty animal trap, which I have used to send many feral cats to an unknown, undesirable terminus at the animal shelter. I found this little fox to be quite personable, though, and decided to drive him down to the river to release him. 

A few strangers I encountered along the way all agreed it was a very considerate and humane thing to do. He entered the trap easily after first deciding that my car was a nice place to habitate. I gently herded him in, and he nipped at me playfully without really biting. He'd have made a good pet, were he not, you know, a killer. 

On the way to the river, I stopped off at the grocery store for god knows what. I was on some kind of disabled wheeled-device, similar to a skateboard. It was difficult to maneuver, and I wound up stuck in line. I wasn't buying anything, so I decided I needed find a more direct way out. 

I tried to go around the checker, but there was no room in those aisles for passersby, so I exited by a more direct route designated for shopping carts and such. I found the main obstruction to be a person who I knew from YC Honda, Glenna, the old parts manager.

"Thanks a lot, Glenna," I said, giving her the familiar shit-talking greeting. 

We made small talk, mostly related to the fact that we'd not seen each other in roughly 15 years or more. I had a fox to release, so I had to go. 

Meanwhile, down at the river, it was an uneventful release. I opened the cage, and he scurried away, never to be seen again. 

On my return trip, somehow I was driving a big yellow school bus. I had to follow another bus and was just getting the hang of turning the behemoth as we pulled away from the curb for the first time. One of those on-the-job training kinds of situations. I managed OK, though I had to stand up in order to reach all the controls.

I saw a cop scoping me out as we made our way through an intersection. I just knew he was gonna find something wrong with the way I was driving the bus, or perhaps just the fact that I was  driving it, but he let me through the intersection without incident. 

I don't remember much more than that. I had to wake up and turn off the big sprinkler so my automatic sprinklers would work. I made it with seconds to spare, then came into the house, had my morning piss and then sat down to document this dream. I guess I'll stay awake, though my eyes and body feel like sleeping some more. Perhaps just a short rest...

Monday, September 28, 2020

Who puts a crawlspace under a football field?

 

I dunno. I dreamed I was doing a little digging in my back field, which just happened to be a football field which was taking a hiatus. I was going to put in a kind of a fence/gate. It was illogically placed in the middle of the field and was going lengthwise, so it had no sensible purpose. 

I dug down deep enough that I hit a wooden floor. It was actually a polished walnut wood or something very coffin-like, which is what I would have thought it was, had I not somehow found an area where I could see under it. 

The entire field was raised up on pillars and supports like a house. There was this regulation football field sized yard, with sod and grass and dirt going down about two feet and then this empty space with all these supports, which was about a foot and a half off the regular ground. 


I puzzled and puzzled about this, but woke up with no answers.

Friday, September 25, 2020

He was a skater dude


 

Sk8ter Boi - Avril Lavigne

I dreamed I was in a beach town and had rediscovered the skateboard. It was just a cheesy banana board, but I could do some cool downhill stuff with it on the narrow trails that went through the iceplants on steep hillside. The line from the song, "He was a skater boy, I said see you later, boy" kept playing over and over in my head as I went zipping along. 

I was in the process of resurrecting a dead fad, getting some of my former third and fourth grade classmates interested, since I made it look so fun. One of the dads was also getting in on the action, although he seemed a bit hurt by my constant singing of the little ditty. He was still fresh off a divorce and for some reason that song cut him. 

Sorry, Daddy-O, it was stuck in my head. Now I gotta go find it and get it Roto-rooted  outta there.

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Light is on, Dreamed about Sharon


Here's what I know. So, yesterday when I was about to take a nap the LED came on. I felt like I was being told to get up and get active, but I didn't. I drifted to sleep watching some movie. I woke up and the light was back off, but it came back on later on in the evening. I went to sleep in the guest room again, since it is very dark in there and I tend to sleep better without the lights and electronics.

I had a dream with Sharon in it. First I was on a mission, to try to find her, I guess. I went from one location, a school or prep academy type of place, where everyone was mobilizing in a very military fashion. It could have been a drill, but it looked to be a situation, the kind they had been preparing for. Everyone was being herded out of their rooms and down some hallways towards an entrance which they were supposed to guard against--what? I fell in line, though I wasn't trained, and didn't know what I would be facing. 

It turned out to be aliens. They were shooting little frisbee like disks that had propellers in them. They were of a cheap plastic, but somehow everyone was deathly afraid of them, since if they hit you in the head they were liable to slice open your skull. That was how they got into your brain, and, you know, controlled you. Standard B movie stuff.

I was struck by one but not in the head, so I felt the cheapness of the plastic and decided it wasn't as scary as all that. But I also didn't want to stick around. 

I made my way to a hillbilly house on a hillside. It was constructed, or slapped together out of all kinds of reclaimed boards and pieces of old Victorian buildings. It looked like a beach mansion at a quick glance, but up close you could see that the boards holding it together were just lying all piled up together, being held up by good intentions and not much more. 

I went inside and found Sharon. She was in a state of disability that let her still walk around, though she was kind of pretending to be bedridden. I was putting my arms around her and kinda feeling up her butt, getting a little cozy, so to speak, when I noticed fresh butt paste on my fingers. Someone had been putting paste on her butt and it wasn't me. Now we had a problem. 

I asked her flat out, "Who has been putting this paste on your butt? And what else have you been doing with them?" I took an accusatory tone but didn't expect the answer that I got. 

"Yes, I've been sleeping with him, too. It's Dave." 

Dave was her ex-boyfriend, the guy who she left for me, or possibly the guy before the guy she left for me. But he was still in the picture when we first started dating in real life. In real life, she copped to having slept with him once during the very early stages of our dating, saying something like, "We weren't serious yet." She had told me this as a way to kind of come clean with me, while at the same time breaking up with me. 

I don't know why she told me this in the dream, but reaction was not what she expected.

"Oh, it's Dave. Well, that makes sense. He always had a thing for you. I'm not surprised. I can't hate him for that." And off I went to go and try to find Dave. 

I came to a room in this giant house and knocked on the door before gently nudging it open. Dave was right on the other side of the door, so when it opened he kind of fell into me. He was startled and started to struggle a little, but I held him fast. 

"It's ok, Dave. I'm not mad at you," I told him, "I understand. Maybe we can share her." 

He was even more startled by that but calmed down and seemed to accept it. 

I left him for the moment and went back to try to find Sharon. She was nowhere to be found and I wound getting lost inside the crazy hillbilly house, which was looking more and more like the Winchester mystery house. Stairways doubled back and left you where you started and doors led out onto dangerous precipices. 

I found myself on one such precipice and the door slammed behind me. I was stuck out on this ledge made of boards that were stacked end to end in a very precarious manner, like a house of cards. Sure enough, as I inched along the narrow ledge the boards began falling out from under me, making quite a racket. 

One hillbilly lady was alerted and saw me clinging to the wall, breathlessly looking down at the fall I was bound to make if one more of those boards gave way. She started shouting something at me, and then she realized the gravity of my situation and yelled for someone else to "send for Cletus." I think it was Cletus, but it could have been some other hick name. 

When she said that, I awoke at least enough to know that it was a dream and I was going to bail on the whole situation without needing to solve my ledge situation. I went back to sleep and dreamed more, but it didn't stick.

Monday, September 21, 2020

Being chased by the devil


That's about all I remember. I had a plethora of dreams last night, but I only remember the vaguest bits. I was being pursued by a rather small devil. He resembled Mike Cardenas, aka "Little Chocolate Teddy Bear." He was a personable devil and was mostly just pursuing me with conversation. I knew if I got too involved, I'd become hopelessly ensnared, so I was trying to avoid him at all costs. But everywhere I went, he kept popping up. More of a low-key psycho-thriller than all out horror. There was a bunch more to it, and several versions, but that was all I remember.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Hillary Clinton talks some shit and tries to get me fired again


I was working at, you guessed it, YC Honda again. I'd been away for a while but was taken back because of the sympathetic nature of the owners, Art and Joellen. My employment was tenuous and conditioned upon my getting along with everyone. No problem, right? It's not like I had to be good at working on cars or anything. 

I was working doing something when I heard that a customer had brought a car back and that I was "the last person that worked on it." No mind that I'd been gone for years, it was still a "comeback." 

I went over to look at the car. The customer had the hood open and was attempting to work on this piece of shit 1980-something white Prelude right there in the service drive.

I was relieved when I saw it. No way were they gonna blame me for the condition of this hunk of crap. I asked what it had been brought in for previously and what it was currently doing or not doing. It wouldn't start. And it had previously been brought in for a brake job or some such unrelated repair. I was in the clear. Now my only job was to condemn this bucket, and I could be on my way. 

 "Well, first off, it has a carburetor..." I began my speech, "No one works on those at all anymore. New ones are over $900, if they were even available, which they aren't. So...next!" That was easy. 

"And another thing. It is a 1985. Bad year. Make sure you don't ever buy a 1985. They notoriously suck. If you do buy another one, buy it so you will have parts to fix this one."  I was full of good advice. 

Next, as I was wandering around, I overheard someone say that Hillary, who was the boss's daughter in this dream, had been opposed to them hiring me back. I was livid upon hearing this and began to search around for other people who might be able to support me, or else confirm what might be a widespread opinion, that I didn't belong there. I found someone else, Johnny Castillo, who tended to agree that I was washed up. 

I thought about it, and it was true. I had let my smog license lapse. If I was going to work there, I needed to get it reinstated before they found out. Perhaps I could still do that.  I mulled it over and decided that I had let it lapse intentionally, that it was a decision I made in order to not wind up working in the automotive field again. And yet there I was. 

And here I am having yet another stupid dream about Hillary, who stole my lunch, by the way, at my stupid old job that I never want to go back to again except as a customer to get my oil changed and maybe some free shit done to my car on the sly.

Monday, September 7, 2020

Laura Prepon, weed aficionado


I love a dream that includes both Laura Prepon and large amounts of weed. This one had it all. Except the sex. It just wasn't that kind of dream. 

So, I was living at this beach type house with a bunch of other guys. I think Grampa Buckwitz was the actual owner, because he was there digging up my weed plants, as scraggly and unrecognizable as they were and replanting them in the back yard. 

He was more open minded than the real life grandpa who called the cops on me for some seedlings after snooping around in my room and finding them growing in a fishbowl in the window. That's a story for another time. But this Gramps was kind enough to relocate them to a more discreet location. 

Laura Prepon, who was magnetically attracted to weed, found out about my plants and started talking to me about the project. I told her that I had grown many years worth of weed and if she ever needed a "weed guy" that I'd be honored to comp her as much as she needed. 

She seemed to immediately take to this idea and we began looking for my stash, which was hidden in the walls and ceiling panels of the old house. Or so I thought. 

The first location came up with empty. Someone had been cleaning things out. That was ok. There were other stashes. This one would have been older and more than likely deteriorated. We're talking ten years worth of stashed weed harvests. 

So, I told her to shut the door while I looked for the ceiling stash. I had to climb precariously on the bed, but I managed to pull down a full trash can with quarter pound baggies, full of carefully manicured buds. They looked like little round brussel sprouts. 

Yes! This impressed her. I mused at how much they might be worth and she immediately whips out a calculator and starts counting baggies. I told her we could sort through all that later. I just wanted to get some of it in her little hands for the time being. 

I lamented that as much weed as I possessed, it pained me because I really couldn't smoke it like I did when I was younger. I hoped she'd enjoy it and our new "relationship." I was going to be her mac daddy of weed. Such a proud moment.

And in the real world, I have some 14 foot Durban Poison to contend with. I don't know Laura Prepon and I have no idea what I'm gonna do when they all ripen and I have to process them. I got swamped last year with all the picking and such. Ho hum. I really don't like weed all that much and I don't have enough friends that do to give it away to. Maybe I'll look for some homeless person and make their millennium.

Sunday, September 6, 2020

I attend a funeral IRL and more bitching about "The G-Word."

 

I'm getting bored with this G-word journal. I went to a funeral yesterday. Houa invited me to the funeral of his aunt whom he barely knew. It was a pretty big affair, I'd say 50 or so people in attendance. She had no children, but the extended family was still large. 

I'd missed whatever ceremony or service they had, but made it to the burial. This was a very unceremonious burial. The family all watched as the cemetery workers lowered the casket into the plot and covered it with dirt and sod. It took about an hour, during which time people stood around talking and taking photos of one another. 

I sensed that most people were not in a state of grief of mourning, but it was just a nice social occasion to wear black. My friend wore a blue shirt and stood out somewhat because of it. We talked about life and death, but that was nothing new. We routinely discuss those things, so it wasn't a lively conversation. Mostly, we just stood and stared as the workers sweated away in the 100 degree heat. 

I'd gotten a plate of free food upon arrival, which I stashed in my car, where it sat un-refrigerated for several hours. Afterward I went home and later ate the Hmong leftovers with a glass of wine. I was expecting to get sick from eating food that was left out, but I microwaved it for, like, 10 minutes. All's well that ends well. 

I missed my Saturday ritual or music, coffee and cannabis but I felt it was more important to go and support my friend. I can always do my simple routine and since it's Sunday, and Labor Day weekend at that, I think I will indulge today. 

Why do I feel so ho-hum about everything? Got a case of the blahs, I guess. I'm taking 5mg lithium oratate and 2000mg magnesium glycinate as a last ditch effort to alleviate my depression. It seems to be doing something, but the emotions that I do feel are mostly irritation and anger. So here's my bloody list then.

1. I'm not dead (yet).

2. My pain is less. I've been tracking it over the last couple of weeks and it is pretty much down to a 2 or 3 and most of the time it isn't the primary or even secondary thought on my mind. A whole new world of bitching has opened up to me, now that I'm not preoccupied with the pain in my gut.

3. I got away with eating the Hmong food of questionable freshness. It was wrapped well and I did refrigerate it eventually before nuking it for 10 minutes or so on high. Oh, and it was tasty, too, though I did have to add some spices. Tapatio, black pepper and turmeric. 

That's about it for now. I don't even know why I'm bothering to write all this down. It is tedious. There are no epiphonous insights, vivid or even adequate descriptions of events or emotions. There is just this flat-sounding narrator's voice going on which makes me tired just to listen to. Maybe I'm just feeling disconnected from everything and that also includes my own inner self. Like I'm not emotionally involved in my own life.

4. Oh, and I beat Katie at Words with Friends. I call her "the witch" because she self-describes that way, but mainly because she seemed to have some mojo which prevented me from beating her and we played, like, 46 times or so. She said it was because she was sick, but I'm taking the victory regardless. Just because Muhammad Ali is having an off day, so what. Whether he is having a good day or an off day, you have still beaten Muhammad Ali, so give yourself credit for crying out loud.


Saturday, September 5, 2020

Sharon and the neighbor guy


I dreamed of Sharon again. Classic Sharon, not well, but still mobile and up to her old tricks. A neighbor guy had a crush on her. It was a black guy who she was surprised but not too upset to find  was leaving her notes. 

I was a bit jealous, but more was I amazed at her getting up and walking for a spell. She kept needing help and I'd come find her as she went about finding the notes this guy had left for her. I was reading one of the notes with her and I didn't seem too upset, like I might have been in real life. It was just an interesting phenomenon, like her being able to walk. 

There were some other sketchy blokes about, and I kept having to pretend we didn't live where we lived, so they wouldn't try to case us or the place. The guys were speaking "noir," or that old-timey wiseguy talk which denotes a lower class of thug. I was onto their tricks, see, so's I didn't fall for 'em. But I didn't like the way the neighborhood was shapin' up with them in it. 

I had to lock a garden gate with a giant safety pin and was having a time of it. I banged my front tooth real good on the safety pin as I was trying to affix it to an impossibly high position on the gate, to mimic a lock when viewed from the outside. From the inside it was an obvious pin job, but whoever did it before me had made it appear pretty secure from the outside. I settled for a less secure job, which didn't hide the fact that it was a safety pin at all. 

I began singing a song called "Why Don't We" as the dream faded out. I just woke up because I had to pee. Now to go back to sleep. I love Sharon dreams, no matter how messed up they are. She was walking and that pleased me immensely.

Friday, September 4, 2020

Not as pissed off today, don't know why


Not as many things "got to me" today as yesterday. A lot of the same factors are still in play, so I might attribute it to myself gaining some sort of immunity or resistance to the stressors. For instance, the quad still wouldn't start. A quick attempt and an "Ah, fuck it" and I was back on my way. 

I don't feel particularly joyful, but more like a person determined not to get run over by a bus. So, do I want to list three things today? Not particularly. The G-word is still a trigger for me. Fuck that damned word. 

So, can I acknowledge that not everything sucked ass today? Sure. I had a nice talk with my life coach, Katie. More like a friend who listens and really tries to come up with creative solutions. I do feel a bit pampered having someone listen to me bitch that actually seems intent on solving my problems, or helping me to solve them. 

Unlike the customer service team at LG, for example. I get lots of promises, but my television still sits on the bed awaiting a repair technician after 2 months. I'm not going to stress over that at the moment. I got that all out on the phone this morning... and yesterday morning. 

I am currently Facebook pouting. This is where I still look at Facebook, but refuse to like anything. I mainly want to keep up with my peeps, but I don't feel like interacting. I am still too bitchy. And I'm really still miffed with the whole Lesa thing. So, there's that. 

I have a semi-busy schedule for a guy who accomplishes so little. Food shopping tomorrow for a dairy free <fuck> low FODMAP paleo diet. How fuckin' boring can you get? Look it up sometime. It's a cave man diet. And there's nothing fun about it. Just hunting and gathering, no deliciousness or treats of any kind. Unless you can gather them from the bakery section. No, probably not. 

I'm sorta done with my need for low carb, but it's all about avoiding certain food types and it just so happens that most comfort foods are on the avoid list. Ah, fuck it. Move on. 

Cello, schmello. I've been playing with the bow and it sounds like a sick moose or a donkey in heat. Just terrible. But that's exactly how it's supposed to sound at this stage. Can't be avoided, says my teacher. Ok, then I'm doing great. Right on track. I just have to watch my back for horny jackasses.

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Text editor ruminations on the subject of sadness


When I think about people, really think about them, I feel nothing but sadness. I try to think about things that they might like, what might be meaningful to them. A favorite meal, perhaps. Favorite shirt. An activity of which they might say, “That’s my thing.“ I picture them with their earnest little faces, thinking their earnest little thoughts, “Mmm, McDonald’s.” Or “my favorite TV show is coming on tonight.” What makes me sad about this?

Why do I perpetually come back to this theme? I don’t know. You give me a person, I’ll give you a reason why I can feel sorry for them. I just have to have a few minutes with them to find out what makes them tick, check all of their likes, their quirks, their pet peeves, the things that make them smile, everything -- then I’ll wrap it up with a blue ribbon and tell you why it is the saddest thing on earth. I said

 <text editor redaction> 

Bitch. Interestingly enough I said

<unintelligible> 

But you’ll never know.

Back to being a toxic waste dump



Maybe I'll come up with three things to be <fucking> grateful for by the end of the day. Maybe not. I'm not in so much physical pain right now, so what's my problem? My x-rays came back clean. No masses or abnormalities. Nothing. When I'm in pain, it's real to me, but apparently not traceable to any real cause. 

Right now it is my mental status that I'm allowing to cause me suffering. It starts with a teeny tiny little thought, like, "I'm alone and I'm never going to enjoy the company of other humans, women, in particular or ones that might be attracted to me specifically." 

Take L---, for example. I gave up in February, when it became apparent that she was never going to make any plans with me or follow through with them. I felt strung along, because she was saying all this stuff indicating that we might have some future together. 

But all the flirting she was doing with me was also being carried on with D----, and he actually gets to see her on occasion. He has her phone number and can call her. Or get invited to sleepovers, etc. 

I should have known better than to get involved after she informed me that she still had, and does to this day, a boyfriend of 17 years that she will never break up with. I get it. Stuck in a routine. 

Anyway, I allowed myself to get attached back in Oct/Nov of last year, but it was eating me up that I was being played with and not ever going to be fulfilled. So, I got all dick-y with her and stopped communicating for a while. 

Meanwhile, she still maintained that she was sincere and blah, blah, blah. Wants to be friends. Etc. So, I decided, "Why not? I just won't let myself get hooked into that feeling of jealousy or, for lack of a better phrase, "giving a shit." 

So she and I still exchange banter which is more cutesy than anything. There are no promises and not a lot of private messaging. I see her posts with D---- <hurl> and I respond to her responses on my posts with warm replies. But aside from the minor irritation of seeing that I'm only one in a bunch of people she flirts with, I don't feel anything. 

I'm mad at myself for even getting mildly irritated. Why, if I can't feel the joyous emotions of being alive, can't I turn off the remnants of human emotions, like irritation or frustration? 

My life is so goddamn boring, I go from sleeping, to eating to napping and scheming on my bedtime while barely moving off this chair. Chair to couch. Couch to kitchen. Outside for garden and the mail and back to eating an sleeping. 

I don't go for my walks these days (except yesterday) because the smoke has been intolerable. It was breezy enough yesterday for a short walk, but today is hazy again. 

There should be plenty of things implied in this that went ok or should be on the <fucking> G-list. Want to hear them? Fine:


1 I'm not in as much pain today.

2 My parents added me to their cell plan. I never use my cell phone for calls and so this will save me from having to pay $100 a year to keep a phone active for emergency use.

3 My house hasn't burned down with me and my cats and all my stuff in it. Lots of fires in California right now. So far, I have missed them. Or they have missed me. Fire season is a long way from being over, but I'm ok for now.


Mikey and the Motor Mounts

 

No, it's not a new band. 

I dreamed I was working at a car wash, but it was more of an outdoor auto repair shop. There were parking spaces that doubled as repair bays with lifts. The lifts were in short supply and were owned or claimed by the many mechanics that worked there. I was temporarily without a space to work, but I had a car that I was up-selling some motor mounts on. 

I approached Mike Cardenas, aka the Chocolate Bunny Rabbit, who was doing a brisk business in his own stall. I asked if I could use his stall for my motor mount job. 

Unheard of. Out of the question. It would certainly tie up the stall longer than would be tolerable. 

He would take the job off my hands, ie. do it for me, but not let me use his bay to do it myself. He offered to give me the time, so that I would get paid, just so long as he did the work. 

Sounded like a good deal to me. He was unselfish like that. And the job would take him a fraction of the time it would take me, so no biggie.

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

Uhh, again with the 3 things?


I'll try. Lesse. 

1. There was this time when I went to use the hose and I got sick of seeing the puddle of water leaking out of a pinhole leak, so I cut the hose and repaired it with the same fittings that I'd already used on the hose a few inches down the line. Uh, that went ok. 

The next hose repair didn't. I cut off the end of a hose that was leaking and didn't have an extra end, so I wound up robbing one off of another hose which I recently used a new fitting on. So, I swapped one bad hose for another, but I don't need an end on this one right away. I can buy a new fitting and then all will be well in hoseland.

 

2. I was eating breakfast and I really wanted to call the lab that mistakenly billed me for $377. I got the bill on Saturday when I went down to look for my supplements that I'd ordered. Instead of my happy Amazon order, I got this bill. 

I had no choice but to wait until Monday. I wanted to bitch about it to someone, but figured my friends didn't need to hear about it, so I had to compartmentalize it and back burner it for when the billing department opened up on Monday. 

That was today. I called in the middle of my breakfast. I couldn't wait. 

I didn't want to stress, so I really tried to unwind myself so that I wouldn't come off as a abhorrent asshole. That has its place, but I reserve it for later on in the process, when negotiations break down. Everyone was pleasant enough, and they sounded like they recognized that the fault lay somewhere in their department. 

They promised to get back to me when it was straightened out. In the meantime, I will give it no thought. I've got time.

 

3. I don't know what it is, but if I'm dying, it's really not the worst thing in the world. I can still get up and walk around. Most things still function. I can interact with people in a normal way, and so far I haven't done anything unforgivably awful. At least not lately. 

So, I have a semi-ok feeling about remaining in this world a little longer, but am also ok with the whole schmumpy mess just ending. I guess this is about the least grateful gratitude log you're gonna find, and I'm ok with that too.