Aunt Martha struggles to clean the garage, gets a Covid shot and starts taking her meds again

 

Once again, I wake up with just a scrap from last night's dreams lingering in my head. I'd been dreaming that I was living with Mom and Greg. I was in the garage and doing some cleaning while they were out. It was expected that I'd be done by the time they got back, but instead I had just begun. 

I was vacuuming and was very disappointed in the vacuum's underperformance as a vacuum. It had some kind of weird telescoping handle that I just couldn't get the hang of. I spend an inordinate amount of time vacuuming the same spot of carpet, trying to get the same small pieces of lint.

There were a couple of rolls of clear plastic packaging tape that fell on the floor while I was cleaning up. One of them unrolled clear across the garage floor, wasting nearly the whole roll. I was trying to tear off the spent portion, using the semi-sharp corner of a workbench. All I can say is, this tape was the most resilient alien technology I'd ever encountered. 

As I struggled to tear the tape, Greg walked in through the back entrance. He surveyed my half-completed job with the tape, and my poor floor cleaning job.

"Is Aunt Martha going to be done in here soon?" He queried me with not a small amount of disdain for my efforts.

---

That's about all I can recall. In other matters, I got the first of two shots in the arm of Moderna's Covid vaccination yesterday. Other than waking up with a sore arm, I don't feel any adverse reactions. 

I also started taking 10mg Elavil, per my psychiatrist's and my GI doc's recommendation. It's a smaller dose than the first time around, so perhaps I won't have the unwanted side effects that I got last time. 

I'm only making mention of this for my own future reference, not because I think it is entertaining reading, so you just shut up, you hear? You. Shut up.

Lummox

 

I was working, in some capacity, at a local coffee shop/night club venue. It had a very intimate feel, kind of like Jabberaw, the '90s indie venue, only smaller and with more private booths and nooks for conversation. Lance Mathyssen, aka Lummox, frequented the place and was known to play a song or two if asked.

My official job was, I dunno, sink decorator? I was responsible for making attractive little tableaux-type garnishes to give the bathroom sinks an artsy look. This somehow played into my other job as dog catcher, since the sinks were being decorated and camouflaged in order to trap stray dogs, which were the bane of the joint. They were always stealing food which was meant for the customers.

The sink traps were very ineffective, and my official title should have been something like "dog waiter" or "canine cater," since all I was doing was providing upscale dining for the mutts, with all my fancy sink decor.

Lance sat on one of the beanbag couches, drinking from a flask, in preparation for a number that he was going to perform. I sneaked over and opened a can of Foster's lager sitting on the floor next to him, which I had innocently mistaken for a can of Coke. 

"Really?" Lance chided. "A can of Foster's and a can of Coke look nothing alike."

"I'll just leave this right here," I said, sheepishly placing the motor oil quart sized can of beer down on the coffee table next to his flask.

I sat down with him for a while and watched as he smoked a joint. I contemplated asking for a hit but thought better of it after his reaction to the beer. I had my own emergency joint with me in a little glass jar in my pocket, which I always brought along "just in case." Considering that I'd be driving home, I decided to refrain.

I found myself in the kitchen with Karen Spencer. I don't know if we were on a date or something, but I was preparing a very nice sized rack of ribs for the two of us. Well, she did the cooking; all I was doing was carving up some slices. 

"Do you want me to trim the fat?" I asked her.

"Now, what do you think?" She looked at me quizzically, like I'd committed some faux pas of rib serving.

I didn't know what to think, so I proceeded cautiously, just trimming the really excessive pieces. 

I woke up soon thereafter, so I don't really know how Karen Spencer likes her ribs, and I never got to see Lance play his number. And no dogs were trapped, nor their bathroom dining sensibilities disturbed in any way, during the production of this dream. 

Thank you and good morning.

Tim and Chris at Target and my stolen delivery truck

 

I was in Santa Monica, semi-homeless and roaming about doing whatever it is we homeless do: scouting out places to camp out, scavenging for scraps of leftover things with which to build a shelter, and stealing vehicles, apparently.

I'd run into Chris Knoll and his son, Tim at a Target earlier in the day. Tim was a troubled teen in the dream. I'm not sure what he's like in real life, but in the dream he was the sullen, sulky type. Chris was having to rescue him from having one of his "episodes" in the Target.

I tried to help out, first thinking I'd talk to him, one former sullen, sulky teen to another. Quickly, it became apparent that I might have to belt him one, you know, a kind of "Snap out of it!" type of moment. He was doing this little fainting routine, where he'd go all limp and just lay about on the floor. 

Chris intervened and tried to talk to him, taking the approach I'd seen him employ many times in his dealings as a church counselor --  one of firm but reasoned intelligence. I could just tell that this was being wasted on the youth and that a belt in the mouth might have achieved better results. Kids just don't appreciate subtle logic.

Later on, I was downtown, walking the streets of Santa Monica. I saw a deer with a collar on it's neck, roaming about in traffic, looking scared. I thought this struck me as tragic, since it was obviously someone's pet and it wasn't going to survive long, what with the city buses and all. 

He kept darting in and out of the busy afternoon traffic and, just when I thought he was a goner, he'd pop up again somewhere else, sprinting for his life. Soon he was joined by a few more deer who were similarly fearful, and they formed a small herd. 

A group of police officers and bystanders rushed them and attempted to take them down, tackling the deer against the wall, in true LAPD fashion. It looked excessive to me, but really, those deer needed to be stopped. It was ineffective, however, and the deer soon popped up again elsewhere, having slipped through the mob's grasp.

About this time, I was looking around in the parking carport of a run-down apartment complex. Still  scrapping, as always. I found the remnants of a torn sleeping bag, which I inspected and deemed worthy to roll up and procure for myself. I encountered another homeless guy, a long haired, bearded fellow, larger than myself, who I thought might challenge me for the prize, but it never happened. 

I looked around some more in the apartment's stairwell and decided to vacate. The stairs were burned out, and an entire section was missing, leaving an impassible gap in the staircase. I wondered how the people living there managed to get to the upstairs apartments but soon judged the whole area as being too sketchy, even for the likes of homeless me.

I procured some transportation in the form of a tanker truck of some kind. It was suited for liquids, but I felt that the contents of the storage tank was likely sardines or cherry tomatoes. Earlier in the dream, I had been in a processing plant that had these items as the main product, leading me to this tenuous conclusion. 

The truck didn't handle very well. It was top heavy, and the weight would shift treacherously when making turns. I had to put my feet out on the pavement to stabilize it, or it would have capsized for sure. To make matters worse it had handlebars with brakes and a clutch, also a kickstand on the left side of the vehicle, which pretty much made it a motorcycle shaped like a 10-ton bobtail delivery truck. 

I drove it around for a bit and decided to circle back to the apartment building where I'd found the sleeping bag. I parked it in front of the building, employing the kickstand so it wouldn't tip over. I was afraid I might encounter the large, hairy fellow from earlier, but that never happened. 

Eventually, I woke up, somewhat agitated about my lack of success in achieving anything noteworthy in this disjointed dream.

Dumb text dingy

 

I had a whole dream that I was wrapping up with, but I got awakened by my phone's little text ding. Now, all I can recall of the dream is that I was getting a text from my friend Houa, aka CalvinRU. 

I was just about to respond back, "Hey, Calvin, what RU up to?" but was jarred awake instead.

My feet were up in the air in the dream, as I was sleeping like a bat for some reason.

Diane and Daniel Levy go on vacation, leaving me with a baby in a backpack

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, I thought to myself. 

I was in a hotel room with my friend Diane and Daniel Levy. He was in character as David, from Schitt's Creek. Diane was playing the part of, well, Diane--duh. We were all going to watch a movie on Diane's phone, which she'd positioned on the dresser so it would project up onto the ceiling. 

I had been entrusted with a backpack earlier in the dream, which I found contained an infant. He was a cute little bugger, all cocooned in there with just his tiny face sticking out, eyes still closed like a baby kitten. I was a bit worried that I might have inadvertently crushed him during the time when I was unaware of the backpack's contents.

True to my typical Charlie Brown dream protocols, Diane and Daniel left me in the hotel room and went off on a journey together. They were going to share a bed at some other hotel room and watch movies, leaving me with the baby. I was a bit jealous of the arrangement, wishing it could have been me and Diane and Daniel and the baby.

While I was moping in the hotel room, I got a call on the hotel's cordless phone. It was Diane. She was watching another movie with Daniel but wanted to give me the play by play. How nice, I thought. I was going to get a second-hand movie narration, while her and Daniel did the snuggling and popcorn part.

In the course of watching the movie, it began to dawn on Diane that she, Daniel and myself were being used as a part of some international cartel's smuggling operation. She said it was always the ones who were the least aware that made the best mules. To prove her case she reminded me of the time she was somehow paired with the unlikely partner Junior Vasquez, an oafish, bumbly mechanic I'd worked with at Honda. 

"He was meticulous with those nuts and bolts, as you know," she reminded me. 

It was true. Junior had always laid out the disassembled parts from his timing belt jobs with OCD ritual precision, making certain that they were arranged just so in his magnet tray. He took great pains to make sure that no one upset their perfect configuration. Diane pointed out that this quality, along with his otherwise generally low level of awareness, made him the ideal candidate for being an unwitting contraband smuggler.

Somehow, this all related to our time in the cult, where we were all similarly unaware of the goings on among the higher ups in the organization. Even then, Diane concluded, we'd been but pawns in an operation with some kind of international criminal ties. As long as we were all being put up in hotel rooms, watching movies and being entertained, it was assumed that we would just be grateful and not ask too many questions.

That's all for now. I awoke with a crick in my neck from sleeping on the couch again. One of the last thoughts in my dream was, "Crikey," which I uttered with Steve Irwin's aussie inflection.

Lost and found

I dreamed I was hanging around with a cute little tuxedo kitty. Maybe it was Olaf, the kitty from next door or perhaps Dummy, I don't know. It belonged to Janet Knoll, my friend's Chris's wife from the cult days. 

Kitty and I were riding around on an airplane wing as the plane taxied about on the runway. It was eventually going to take off, I suppose, and we didn't really have any good plans for how we were going to hang on at that point. We were just enjoying the moment.

I spied some little marijuana seedlings growing out of a crevice in the wing. I just had to snap a picture of them to show my friend Gene Scott, a fellow weed aficionado. I had a camera in one hand and was trying to hold onto the cat with the other. That was when things got tragic.

I knew if I let go of the cat for a second that he'd be wandering around on the wing and I'd have a devil of a time getting him back, but I made the choice to let go just long enough to take the picture. Sure enough, before I even got the shot, the kitty was out of my reach and wandering off close to the nose of the plane. 

I watched in horror as he just walked over the edge and fell off the plane and out of sight, presumably under the landing gear. The plane continued on its trip with me on the wing the whole time, somehow staying affixed despite being aloft.

When we got back to the airport it was nighttime. I had been crying for the entire time, and I still was broken up as I had to deliver the news to Janet about the kitty. 

She was upstairs in a rickety old building with a dangerously decrepit staircase that I had to circumvent by climbing around on some similarly loose and decaying boards on the side of the building. 

Somehow I managed to make it into the upstairs room and I proceeded to inform Janet about the cat. She seemed to be less broken up than I was about it, but it certainly wasn't the most ingratiating news I could have brought her. I'd lost her cat, who was presumed dead.

A day or two later, I was still heartbroken about the kitty, and I was still hanging around on airplane wings, though I hadn't gone for any rides lately. 

Just then the cat showed up, waltzing along the wing like nothing had happened. We were tearfully reunited with hugs and kisses and snuggles. I vowed to never let that happen again, though the cat was probably thinking otherwise. He'd most likely just been wandering around doing cat stuff and saw no cause for all this concern.

Living with Mom and Greg, a financial consultant I am not

I was awakened by a telemarketer but was able to re-establish my dream connection, since I was very tired still and had more dream juice left in the glass.

I was living with my mom and Greg in some version of a condo setting, similar to Santa Monica but different. The dynamic was much the same, though, alas. I was the underachieving, sloppy teenager with no goals, just skating by, and they were the ever-hopeful, prodding parentals, providing me with food, shelter and opportunities, which I took for granted or disdained altogether.

I was in their bedroom listening to rap music, some Notorious B.I.G., and in general making myself as odious as a teenager might. I was supposed to be taking out the trash but neglected the chore until it was trash day. I wound up crashing the trashbin, spilling the contents, as I wheeled it out to the street at full speed.

Another opportunity/responsibility I had was a job with Greg's firm. I was to be a liaison to a client whose finances they were managing. She only had one stock, and I was to write up a one page proposal about how to best proceed with handling her investment and present it to her, one on one, at a meeting. It sounded so easy, only a caveman could blow it, but that's what I proceeded to do. 

First off, I completely forgot about the paper until the day of the meeting. And I'd neglected to even research her stock, as well. My last minute scramble for information only produced the vaguest awareness of what her company was all about. Something about bugs. It had a ladybug tattoo for a logo.

Completing my perfect picture of ineptitude, I was unkempt, unshaven and generally looked like a bum. For the meeting, I'd grabbed one of Greg's old '70s suits, a three piece off-white number, from his closet in an attempt to look business hipster chic. I thought I was pulling it off, with my mop of tossed brown hair and John Lennon beard, but Greg felt otherwise. He insisted that I at least shower and began yelling at me as he read my poorly researched paper. 

"I can't have you meeting with clients dressed that way," he said disapprovingly. "And this is a less than adequate proposal for our client. I don't think you are capable of handling this client at all."

I was still thinking I could pull it off, just a quick shower and a re-write of the proposal, but Greg was already pulling the plug. I was off the account. My mom chimed in weakly to my defense, but his mind was made up. He would handle it himself.

"Well, why was I put in charge, then?" I countered. "Who puts a teenager in charge of someone's financial affairs, anyway?" 

I'm still not clear about that, but my guess, now that I'm awake, would be that I was being given a small amount of responsibility with the firm in order to prove my worth. Well, surprise surprise, I fucked that one up again, didn't I?

Charnia, My Own Personal Butterfly Effect, and I Can't Get a Ride to Funkytown (Text editor walking notes)

CHARNIA

Noun; a fictional place which is a mash-up of Charn and Narnia where the elements of birth and renewal are intertwined with those death and decay. I guess we could just call it Earth, since such a duality actually exists here.

 

 TREE STORY

 

A pine cone was sitting in the middle of the path that I walk in the wilderness area. I kicked it out of the way, and it rolled down a hill.

“Maybe you’ll have better luck growing into a tree down there at the bottom of that ravine,“ I said listlessly, to no one in particular.

My own personal butterfly effect. I kick a pine cone and 100 years later a 100 foot tall pine tree has grown up in that spot. It has enjoyed a long, mostly drama free life, as far as trees go.

But fate, nature and random luck have conspired to abruptly bring about this tree’s demise. One day it is struck by lightning.

Although dead from the core, the tree remains standing for some time. A wildfire sweeps through the area scorching the trunk, weakening it further.

Termites have gone to work on the roots and several seasons of wet and windy weather have caused the tree to lean in the direction of the road from which the original pine cone was kicked.

It is 100 years later, I and I have passed on years ago. I’ve been reincarnated, and my new character is an adolescent male. He lives in the same area and enjoys riding his quad along the same path.

It’s a bright sunny day, although it has rained recently. The boy is zipping along in a carefree fashion, enjoying the wind his hair. He passes the spot where the pine tree has lived and died, leaving only its towering skeleton leaning perilously over the path.

The tree falls on him and kills him. The end.

 

 FUNKYTOWN 

“Won't you to take me to Funkytown?” I shout these words at a cow.

“And you, and you and you," I continue giving the stern '70s disco injunction to everything at which I can point my finger, like Oprah giving away Pontiacs. Or like a baby that giggles and says, “Dat!” to everyone and everything. Like Nina Simone, singing to the birds, the sun and the breeze, I cast my net as wide as the earth:

“Gnarled dead oak stump, take me to Funkytown! Acorn growing from a pile of manure, take me to Funkytown! Poison oak vine growing surreptitiously alongside a tree, won't you take me to Funkytown?”

Alas, nature is not getting through to me these days. I’ve been epiphany-free these days, and I’m not liking it much. I would like to stock up on epiphanies like I do my groceries.

I talked to my psychiatrist about this anhedonia, this complete lack of enthusiasm for life that I have been experiencing for a number of years. I really just wanted him to sign me up for some Prozac, or some other happy pill. Instead, he offers me more nutritional guidelines to further fine-tune my Paleo diet. FACK!

I feel like a 10-year-old begging his parents for a Coke. Instead, they offer him some seaweed-infused electrolytes, sugar-free, of course.

And if Lesa ever asks me why I’m mad at her, this is what I’m going to tell her:

“I really wanted you to take me to Funkytown, and you didn’t do it.”

 

Uncle Steve and a trip in the log jammer ride around Paradise

We were talking about my mom and the kids. That's about all I got for now. I'll fill in the details after my google call with them. Maybe more will come back then.

MMmm. Nope. 

My initial impression was that we were on kind of floating tour of Paradise, going down the main streets in a log ride.

"Have you noticed your mom spends a crazy amount of money on _____ (something grandkid related)," he asked me.

I concurred. In real life, I'd imagine it might be Harry Potter themed Legos, but I'm not sure that's what it was in the dream.

And that's about it. Weak, I know. Why can't I have cool surfing dreams, like my friend J?

Smogs and a motel business

I wish I had more to give you, but I'll try to fill in the details as they come back to me.

I was working as a smog tech with Manny Salazar, doing mobile smogs. Someone from a school district called in, needing a difficult smog done on one of their fleet vehicles, a school bus, possibly.

"Man, they're going to love you," Manny said in his typical sarcastic tone.

He handed me my portable device, with which I was to perform the smog and sent me off on foot to the elementary school. Presumably, the vehicle was going to fail and that was the reason for his snide remark. I was going to be the bearer of bad news and would probably be blamed for it.

I trudged up a long hill carrying my equipment and got as far as the end of our parking lot, but that's about it for the smog business. I woke up to pee and the channel changed.

Next, I was sitting at a lunch table in the meeting room of a small motel chain. My in-laws were there, and we were about to have a meeting regarding some investors in the business.

The parts of myself and and my in-laws were being played by some of the cast of Schitt's Creek. Bob was Johnny Rose and Hannelore was Moira. I, sadly, was Roland. I had the flannel shirt, scruffy beard and obnoxious manners, along with a complete lack of understanding of what was going on. 

"Now, we're going to meet with one of our proxies today, so I need everyone on their best behavior," Johnny-Bob intoned with Eugene Levy's perfect parental delivery. "Oh, look, I see her now. She'll be wanting to discuss some financial matters with us."

"You mean, she'll be wanting to squeeze us for some money, dontcha?" I retorted. "That's all proxies are, just sponges waiting to sop up the profits every chance they get, am I right?"

"No, that's not right. Again, you fail to understand their role. They are investors. We need them. They give us money. We need to show them that we are doing what they want with it," Johnny chided.

The lady, a rich looking middle aged high-society type, came in and sat down next to me, and we began discussing the peril that she believed we were in regarding our investments. She had a list of grievances.

"There is a lot of construction going on on the Skyway. And that's affecting the blacks, mainly. So, there's that. And there are protests going on in Yuba City. Have you seen them? It's awful." She went on about things which might affect our motel business and, more importantly, her money.

She had brought her own lunch and was picking at it with a fork. It was a sourdough sandwich in a silver chalice, which she placed between her and myself. It was making me hungry. All I'd brought was my water bottle.

"Well, there's always been construction on the Skyway," I said defensively. "That has been going on forever. Well, at least since the fire. So that's no reason to worry about your money." 

She absentmindedly grabbed my water bottle and took a drink. I don't know if it was a gesture of humility, you know, drinking from the same vessel as a "commoner," or what, but it kinda pissed me off. I let it slide, though, since John Bob Daddy-o was so adamant that we keep her feeling comfy and cozy.

That's about the last of it. I know there's a story in there, but I don't think it has legs. Or if it does, it has used them to vacate the building.

Urban Development Woes

I dreamed my neighborhood had been rezoned or something and gotten an influx of new residents. The first thing to go was my sense of privacy and security. People were cutting across my property to get to the local burrito joint and using it as a shortcut to get home from school. 

First an old lady, who I let slide, but then a couple of surly, entitled kids, one of whom looked like Wilmer Valderrama, came through, uninvited. Laughing and joking, they traipsed across my land from end to end, disrespecting fences and gates. I decided enough was enough and spoke to them harshly. 

"This is private property," I grumpily told them. "You can't just come walking through here. And that goes for grandma, too." I made a mental commitment to get some No Trespassing signs at the local hardware store.

Vivianne was living next door. From my chair outside, I could see her when she arrived home from school. Every day she'd show up at the same time, the bus dropping her off right in front of my house. I'd watch her go from the street and up through her property, where she'd disappear into her trailer. Trying to be neighborly, I would make it a point to catch her and wave her over to say hi.

I decided to check out the cozy little burrito joint that had sprung up a couple of blocks away and was causing so much foot traffic in the neighborhood. It had a very personal feel to it, as the chef would let you watch as he made his creation for you. 

He was kind of a guru at inventing gourmet, off-menu masterpieces just for you, using your order as a kind of jumping off point. He seemed to have an almost psychic ability to tailor the dish to your exact wants and needs as a human being.

I stood in line for a while as I pondered what type of specialty food I would get. I kept coming up blank, so I ordered a super burrito. I was disappointed with myself for my lack of creativity in ordering, but the chef went to work making me a plate that showed off his amazing culinary and divinatory skills. 

His work was almost like a magic show. I watched as he created a some innovations such as almond stuffed avocados for appetizers. He'd slice a bunch of avocados in half and, using some slight of hand, he'd turn the avocado seed into a handful of almonds, which he would then crush into powder by banging his fist on the table. He'd then crumble the powder into the half shell of the avocado and roll it up into a little ball that looked like a perfectly round little avocado.

He performed this trick and then popped the product into his mouth, just to show me how delicious they were. I couldn't wait to sample the stuff myself. 

Neither, apparently, could one of his other customers. One of his Mexican friends was behind the counter with him and started snorting up some crushed almonds and walnuts right off of the silver serving tray. I mean, literally, he put his face down on the platter and closed off one nostril with his finger and vacuumed the stuff up with his other nostril. 

I was getting antsy, but the chef didn't disappoint. He warned me as he handed me my order, but I still wasn't prepared for the actual weight of the meal. It was probably a good ten pounds of food that he somehow managed to cram on to the sagging Dixie plate. I nodded approvingly as I took the food. I had to draw it close to my chest because it threatened to throw off my whole center of gravity.

Leaving the restaurant, I dropped the plate on the floor as I tried to navigate the crowd. I picked it back up, only slightly worse for wear and tear. It seems he'd put enough food on the plate to account for spillages, since he didn't provide a bag or even a tinfoil cover. 

I made my way home, going through an alley which reminded me of Chico's avenues. I noted some well-groomed weed plants that could have actually passed for ornamental trees, growing in a small orchard-like grove in a cute little backyard. I wondered how they'd fare this school year, with all the kids using this route as a shortcut home from school. 

I also noted a market that was definitely a Chico fixture along my route. This confirmed my geo-locational intuition that I was somehow in a mashup of Chico and Loma Rica. Loma Chico. Chico Rica. I wasn't sure I was liking the merger.

By the time I got home, I barely had any food left on my plate, which was now folded in half like a taco. I was ravenously hungry, so it was a good thing I'd ordered a "super" rather than just a regular burrito. He'd also thrown in a six or possibly eight-pack of an unknown canned beverage that I was curious to sample. 

Alas, I woke up at this point, and now I'm craving burritos. But at least I'm not too worried about having to put up No Trespassing signs. The pandemic and my locked gate are working just fine at preventing unwanted human incursions. 

The angry men's clothing store in my basement and a collapsible horse

I was in a men's clothing store that had a decidedly rough and tumble western feel to it. The kind of place with black metal cutouts of cowboys in silhouette and signs that say "In God we trust, all others pay cash." 

The target customers were the over-50 blue-collar worker set. Those who made their living doing trades like outdoor electrical or diesel repair. Soured by their work ethic, they had permanent frowns and a decidedly unfriendly disposition to anyone who didn't share in the suffering of some kind of difficult profession.

The shirts and pants were all folded and stacked in unfinished wooden cubicle shelving that ran along all the walls, floor to ceiling. There was a big wooden workbench style table for folding clothes which took up substantial real estate in the middle of the room.

As I looked for some pants for myself, I overheard the comments of one of these upset at the world types. He'd sized me up and found me clearly lacking the qualifications to shop at this establishment.

"Oh, Christ. They're letting anybody in here," he growled. 

I knew I had as much right as anybody to be there, but I felt the sting of his remark, so I gave him a wide berth, despite the crowded table situation. 

Without actually changing locations, the place somehow turned out to be my own home. I was standing at the folding table with another, slightly less grumpy customer. We were talking about something or other and trying on western attire. He tried on a duster, and I told him that it suited him. 

"Just like the trenchcoat mafia," I joked. "Now don't go shooting up the place with your sawed off."

He flung open the coat and pretended to pull two long barreled pistols out in a Yosemite Sam rootin' tootin' fashion. 

Next, I noticed a horse approaching from behind the store. My view was from an angle through a gap in a set of  boards that afforded me the only look at the oncoming rider. I told the man at the table that he had best be keeping an eye out for things like this.

"If you ever see something like this, you need to say something right away," I told him, chiding him for his lack of vigilance.

The horse got closer and closer, finally arriving with a crash, as his rider hadn't given him the "whoa" command in time, or at all. I could see the horse's muzzle pressed up against the window pane, an almost embarrassed horse grin on his lips.

I went around to the door to see who the rider was. It was a female cowhand, wearing a duster and an Aussie hat. She had already dismounted, and she and the horse stood at the top of the cement enclosed staircase outside the back door. It was one of those subterranean sideways stairwells, the kind you see in New York basement apartments. 

The horse wasn't going to use the stairway, however. It jumped directly from the street to the bottom of the stairs, ignoring the whole walkway idea and chipping one of his hoofs in the process. The direct approach. Well, that was one way to do it, I thought.

Then the horse did one of those camel-like parking jobs, where he collapsed himself down to the height of a small dog, folding his legs backward and forward, in some creepy tarantula fashion. The animal seemed to want me to mount him, and I wondered about the intentions of the person who'd sent me this trained emissary. 

I petted him and told him he was a good boy but refrained from getting on. You never know where a horse like that is going to take you. 

Just one lousy nail

I can't remember much from my dreams these last few days and it is starting to really bug me. 

I have been spending an inordinate amount of time editing this blog, adding pictures and paragraph breaks, enlarging the font, etc. I'm trying to make it more visually appealing than that walls of text that I originally squirted out when I wrote this junk. 

Not that I need to have it more readable, when no one is really reading it. But since it's my only mental activity, I guess I feel obligated to try to crank out something that at least looks like a product. 

I can start now. See this here new paragraph? It was planned.

Well, not really all the way thought out. See how I just abandoned it? All forlorn looking, up there it sits, like a widow without any porridge. Like my stupid dream last night, it had one thought, one idea and then poof--nada.

 

I dreamed I had a roofing contractor out re-shingling my house. I watched him using a nail gun as he put on the last of the roof caps. He looked to be satisfied with his work, but I was a little nervous about the quality of the nails he was using. 

"What about that one?" I asked, pointing out a protruding nail that was bent almost into a hook shape. 

"Oh, we're coming back tomorrow," he said. 

Why he wouldn't just fix it right then and there kinda irked me. It was just one nail. 

It looked almost intentional, like a signature of sorts. Some guys will do that. Leave one stone out of a wall, or one post out of a fence, as a kind of personal "fuck you" to their client. It is like a code to other contractors, saying, "This guy is a dupe" or "Kilroy was here." I let him know that I wasn't gonna let it slide.

"Ok, fine," I said and followed him out to the truck as he and his crew packed up for the day. 

I kept thinking about the leak that could be generated by this one stupid nail. All sorts of scenarios played out in my head involving the replacement of vast amounts of drywall and repainting, etc. all because of this one nail. 

Later, I was in the house and had some people over. Javier Martinez is the only name that comes to mind, but I think he was part of the roofing crew and not this next little bit. 

The Who had been over to the house and had left an important paper artifact in my closet. Yes, the '70s rock band with Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend. That Who. 

It was a six foot tall pad of paper that hung on a metal frame, like a giant tombstone shaped gong. The paper was super-thin, and it kept getting folded and crinkly, so I attempted to cut the whole thing in half, making it into two manageable four foot items. Yes, I'm aware that the math doesn't add up.

It was just this conundrum that kept my mind going around in circles as I tried to restore the item to its original size. What business did I have messing with this artifact, anyway? Now it would be less valuable, that's for sure. Oh, well. The roof leak that I was surely going to have due to that one nail was gonna ruin the delicate paper anyway. 

I woke up frustrated that I didn't dream a better dream or, at the very least, remember more of the meaningless tripe that I did dream. Now I'm compensating for it by making extra, undeserved paragraph breaks and sweating out the future visuals for this stupid post. It seems I have nothing much to say, but I'm ever so concerned about how I will sound saying it. 

Bug Bites and Bicycle Thieves

Between the two, I don't know which is more despicable. A bug is just doing his natural born function, one cannot really fault him. Or at worst it is a case of mistaken identity. With bicycle thieves, well, it is a case for Encyclopedia Brown. 

I don't remember much, just the facts, ma'am. I was in Harold's backyard, admiring some of the cement work and taking note of a few insects that were roaming around doing insect things. I saw one that looked suspiciously like the biting little bastard who I suspected of chomping on my eyelid, giving me that nasty chalazione last October. 

Yeah, I never forget a biter. It was a little creepy guy with an armadillo-like exoskeleton and at least 6 legs. The closest I could find was a mealy bug, when I googled it last year. Anyway, I was noticing he had some in his backyard and was mentioning the fact just as one chomped down on my arm, confirming that it was, indeed, one the very same species. Not much came of it, and I proceeded to the next scene.

I was riding my bicycle around in Durham, or somewhere very Durham-like. It had that flat, farm-based feel to it and, although it was Chico-adjacent, it was stuck in some timeless era of old gas pumps and rustic implements of husbandry. I was riding along, just taking in the scenery. It was a nice spring day, you know, lots of green grass being grazed, birds and butterflies flitting about and all that. 

I stopped to help unload a giant dump trailer that had an enormous bag of feed in its bed. The bag was probably 40 feet long and took up the entire bed. All that was left were a few crumbles of some senior horse pellets, the nice smelling molassesy kind, in the bottom of the torn open bag. I thought I'd do the farmers a favor and fold up the giant bag for them. 

Well, as all good deeds, this was not without consequence. While I was distracted folding the bag, a family of bicycle thieves surreptitiously stole my alien green Specialized Stumpjumper. I should have known better than to take my eyes, much less my keister, off it for a minute. 

The temptation must have been too much for these hoodlums, because they lifted it with me standing right there. The father rode off on it, with me cursing and chasing him down the road in hot pursuit. I saw him ride into a building that was a part of the Chico State campus where a photography class was being taught. 

I inquired around and found out that the bike thief dad was a student there. Great. It should be pretty easy to track him down. He'd have to ditch the bike and certainly wouldn't be able to be caught riding it, now that I was onto him. 

"Why do people do things like that?" I asked Triple Four, my old CB neighbor. "They steal things that they won't be able to use unless they go somewhere like Mexico or Oregon." 

I really couldn't get inside the mind of a thief and wasn't aware of the lucrative resale opportunities available for stolen bicycles. I just assumed it was like the automotive world where VIN numbers made identification and retrieval of stolen vehicles a breeze. 

Uh, yeah, because that happens. Cars are always reunited with their owners after a brief joyride, right? I couldn't imagine the bike being stripped, sanded and rebranded. Not my lovely bike. 

Between the bug bites and the thievery, I was mad enough to not want to stay asleep any longer. I mean, I could wake up and have either happen to me quite easily, why dream about it?

My diet

I'm going to the GI doc today, so I'm going to print out my diet for him so he can evaluate it and give me some feedback. My abdominal issues have come back to some degree, though they aren't as debilitating as they were throughout 2020. I figured I may as well post the stuff here, that way I'll have a handy-dandy place to find them in case my computer crashes, and I forget what all I'm currently eating. So, here's the menu:

Breakfast 9am to 10am (or later)

 

Stirfry containing the following:

 

¼ floret broccoli

¼ to ½ onion

¼  sweet potato or yam (or substitute 1 cup garbanzo beans)

½ to 1 cup chopped cabbage

4-5 baby carrots

1 or 2 mushrooms

1/3 to ½ bell pepper

2 eggs sunny side up

¼ avocado

1 radish

2 kale leaves

1 handful of cilantro

2-3 cloves garlic

1 tsp L-glutamine

1 tsp olive oil (for cooking)

Pinches and dashes of the following spices: curry, cumin, clove, fennel, paprika, black pepper, turmeric and Tapatio hot sauce

 

 

Snack 1:30pm to 2:30pm

 

½ banana

1 celery stalk

15 or 20 black grapes (substitute ½ granny smith apple and ¼ cup dried cranberries)

4-5 baby carrots

½ cup of lightly toasted mixed nuts (almonds, pumpkin seeds, chopped walnuts)

 

 

Dinner 6:30pm

 

Salad containing the following:

Med bowl of mixed baby greens (substitute baby spinach)

½ cucumber

¼ avocado

1 radish

2-3 cloves garlic

¼ cup shredded purple cabbage

4-5 baby carrots

¼ sweet potato or yam (substitute 1 cup garbanzo beans)

1 cup lean turkey breast

1 tsp L-glutamine

1 tbs olive oil (as dressing)

 

 

Late night snack 10:30pm

 

1 cup chamomile tea

1 tsp honey

1 cup corn bread muffin (from scratch)

Snakes under the house and smooches by the sink

Details are going to be difficult to extract, I fear, but there are two distinct images I have to report. One was a situation that was going on under my house. I hate these kinds of dreams because they are sometimes all too literal. 

I dreamed that I had some holes in my yard that indicated that there was some kind of network of wildlife running under my house. They were rather large and it was clear that they would have to be investigated, as they were interfering with some underground plumbing. 

This much has the potential for being true. I did have a pipe burst under my house in 2014 (fact), and I do have many holes in my front and back yard which cause rainwater to accumulate under the house in the winter months, due to improper drainage (also fact). The holes in the dream were a little larger, man sized, actually. 

I had a guy come out to look into them and he suggested crawling all through the network to find the lair of whatever might be creating them. 

Ugh! No, thanks, I thought. But the guy was insistent, so under, around, down and through he went. The guy was an actor from a TV show called Snowfall, who played the main character, an '80s crack cocaine kingpin named Franklin Saint. 

He found some defective pipes and electrical conduit, which he hauled out to show me. But while he was under there, which seemed to take forever, I began to fear that he was dead, having been buried under collapsed earth. 

When he emerged, he suggested that I utilize this pre-existing network to start a snake farm. Again, no thanks! I was glad enough that he had survived and a bit perturbed that I'd be having to replace all the pipes that he'd unearthed.

Next, I was in the kitchen in my house here in Loma Rica. I had a girlfriend, who I'd like to think of as Sharon, but honestly, I can't say for sure that it was her. She was standing by the sink and asking me some kind of question for which I had no good answer. 

I moved in and gave her the smooch of a lifetime, cradling her head and bending her back like the sailor that iconic photograph of V-J Day. It was breathtaking, and she swooned appropriately, making me very happy. 

I don't have any idea what her question was, but it was clear that I had given her a satisfactory answer. I forgot all about the snake farm idea and the underground lair beneath my house, so I guess it was the best possible ending the dream could have had.

In defense of the biblical patriarchy, guns and marijuana

 

No, it's not a manifesto, just the mnenomic device I use to remember key dream aspects before they evaporate completely upon awakening. 

This dream included a scene or two where I was clearly enjoying brandishing and dry firing this handgun I had found in the sand. It was a bit crusty and in need of a good cleaning and oiling, but it was still effective at getting people's attention when I would whip it out and point it at them. I found it to be a great teaching aid, since it kept people on point. Anyway, I had found it, and no one could talk me out of keeping it. 

Next, I was in a rec room or cafeteria style dining room that a long row of folding tables. I'd wandered in there because it was near a closet where someone had hidden a boom box. I believe it was Michael Cardenas, aka Carnitas aka "Little Chocolate Bunny Rabbit," an ex co-worker from YC Honda. He was busy packaging up some marijuana, and I went into the room to do some processing of my own. 

There was this cop running around trying to find the boom box, since it was prohibited on the premises. As soon as the cop got into the room, down went the volume and under some newspapers went the weed. 

"I think I'll just hang out here," I said lazily. "It's so nice and quiet." I was practically taunting the officer with my Bugs Bunny style repartee. 

The cop looked around for a bit, but unable to find either the boom box or the weed, he vacated, and out came the weed again. I kept dropping large chunks on the floor and scooping them up and re-evaluating them, keeping some and discarding others. I asked Carnitas if I could check out his stash to see how mine measured up. He gladly complied and opened up a small suitcase to show me his product.

Next, I was in another room in the building, this one equipped with an oversized bed. I was sitting on the bed and talking to a new convert. Oh, I forgot to mention, this building was all part of a compound used by a cult that I happened to be in, similar to the Remnant, I suppose. 

The topic of the conversation was the biblical role of women in an egalitarian society. I was trying to reconcile the clearly patriarchal view of the Bible, with the more enlightened present day view of gender equality. I tried to make examples of how family members are all equal, say when getting to vote for what kind of pizza to have for dinner, but how that kind of thing had to be tempered by a parent's role in assuring that no ridiculous toppings like bubble gum or all pepperoni were ordered. 

The argument seemed reasonable to me at the time, and the convert wasn't too concerned about it anyway. I got up to make the bed and was folding the sheets when it became time for me to wake up.

Blender sushi and wasps in my hotel room

I don't remember much. I'm rehabbing my way back to sleeping in the little bedroom. All I can recall is that Sharon was a little pissed at me for using the blender to make some raw fish concoction. I don't think I was de-boning the fish properly before putting them in and pressing the mix button. 

Later on I was in some cheap hotel hallway in Tahoe. The rooms were all being cleaned, so I was waiting around in the hallway. I really wanted to get in a room, so I offered to do a little cleaning if it would expedite things. They offered me a room that had a bit of a bug infestation going on. No, problem, I thought. I could handle a little bug killing on my own. I couldn't find a can of bug spray, so I grabbed a vacuum and started vacuuming flies off the wall. 

That's when I noticed a large piece of what appeared to be clay artwork adorning the wall by the entrance. It was a giant wasp nest, which I had disturbed while trying to vacuum the flies. The door to the room was closed, and I would have to run past the nest, in any case. The wasps were just about to launch their angry retaliation, when I gratefully awoke.

Radishes, babies and overweight geisha girls

 

Sorry, there doesn't seem to be much recollection these days. I've been too lazy to go to bed at night, so I am sleeping on the couch again. I don't seem to have as concrete story lines when I sleep downstairs. 

I was in a front yard somewhere, and there was a girl who had just moved in across the street. My current roommate, another female of unknown identity, wasn't thrilled. Whenever the new neighbor popped up on the street, my roommate would sigh in disgust and leave. I began to see why when the neighbor left a car seat baby carrier, fashioned out of a shopping cart, in our driveway. 

"Hello, what's this?" I said as I took the bait. 

It was a Trojan horse. The next thing you know, I was stuck with another baby, making goo-goo noises and the like to pacify it, while the lady was showing me her laptop. It had a strange sort of receptacle for pouring coffee into, so that one could drink it from a tube while working on the computer. 

Sounded legit, I thought, as I poured some coffee into the small opening on the side. I found it to be too small and too close to the keyboard to be of much use. Coffee would inevitably get into the electronics and short stuff out. I held it over the sink and tried to rinse it off, which only made things worse as far as keeping the device dry. Meanwhile, the baby was still needing to be extricated from the metal cage of its shopping cart car seat.

Another neighbor, who lived a good half a mile away, also needed something from me, though I don't know what it was. I think that he just wanted me to see his giant computer display, which was basically a sheet of rice paper hanging from ceiling to floor. He had an interactive display with some album cover art with a picture of an obese geisha girl tiled across the screen. 

I started making notes on the original album cover and the changes appeared in real time on the giant display. Every time I made a change, the neighbor guy would undo the change and then run to the bathroom, which was oddly located a half a mile away near my house. 

I kept thinking, "Well, this arrangement sucks." But people in dreams have the oddest routines, and you can't ever do anything about them. So we stuck to this annoying editing business for a while, and then I woke up. Oh, and radishes were a part of the album art that I kept trying to work in, but Mr. Distant Bathroom guy kept editing them back out. 

I really gotta start back sleeping in the bed again. And maybe lay off of the pot. Oh, and this is the exact picture I dreamed of. Ok, so she's not really obese and not a Geisha girl per se. But I swear it was this exact image, no lie.

Farmers get shafted

That's just the frame. I lost the picture, so I don't know what the dream was really about. I was a farmer, I know that. I was holding a burlap bag that was supposed to contain crops for sale. It never seemed to have much in it, though, and so I surmised that farming just wasn't all that lucrative. A lot of shiestiness in the marketplace was what I imagined. But that's all there was to the dream, really, just me holding a bag and bitching.

The clunker you know

I dreamed I bought a used car from a stranger that wound up being a car that a co-worker had sold not that long ago. It was a 94 BMW coupe that had belonged to Jamison, aka Beavis, from YC Honda parts dept. Buying a used car is reason enough to be anxious and stressed, but when it is a clunker you know, it is the worst. I spent the whole dream asking Jamison about various problems with the car, and I never developed that sense of bonding that one has with their vehicle. 

I couldn't shake the feeling that I had bought somebody's sloppy thirds, and that I was inheriting a boatload of troubles that had been painted over, patched together or otherwise hidden from view. Every little noise or quirk and I was running to ask Jamison, "Hey, did it used to do this when you owned it?" I supposed that it was nice to have someone who was very familiar with the service history of the vehicle that I could ask about these things, but it was disconcerting to know that I had bought something that he'd deemed unfit continue to own. 

Upkeep on a Beamer is expensive even if it only needs oil changes, but since it had 351k on the odometer, somehow just skating by with the basics seemed less and less likely. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, certain that I'd be stuck with some outrageous repair costs. 

The'e ebe d-uh, that's all folks.

World's biggest mooch gets the evil eye from Sharon

 

My dream character, played by me, was the world's biggest mooch, or so it appeared to Sharon. I was making myself at home at Bob and Hannelore's place and helping myself to their food on the regular. Sharon gave me the stinkeye when she found me eating the last of the Fruity Crunch cereal, which was her favorite. 

I tried to make myself seem useful by holding a baby, and was somewhat successful in that I managed to quiet it from crying. This earned me partial credit for being more than a sponge of a houseguest. I also attempted to set the table, running into the age old dilemma of which forks to place on the outside, where to put the knives, etc. 

Outside the house was a regulation sized football field, upon which I attempted to unfurl a football field sized flag all by myself. It wasn't too difficult, since the flag was made of a very sheer and lightweight material and had been pre-folded to make the setup a breeze. 

Between holding babies, setting up the dinner table and unfurling giant flags, I still wasn't making much headway with Sharon, but at least we began talking. She went from mad with steam coming out of the ears to just having a civil conversation with me with less strain and tension, but we were a long way from lovey-dovey.  

Interpretation? Well, she used to like me better when I wasn't a lazy sack of shit, but was actively engaged in accomplishing something. I'm currently living the mooch life on disability, doing the minimum basic activities of human existence and not even making the effort to impress anyone by unfurling a flag or having the compassion to comfort a crying baby. 

I could blame circumstances, I guess, but, even in the dream, I found little dumb things to do to make myself useful. And don't eat the last of the Fruity Crunch. That's just odious.

Woodstock talent show

I was all set to be either the hero or the fool at the talent show. It was down to the last two participants, me and another guitar player. We were onstage getting warmed up, doing sound checks and practicing our solos in front of a growing crowd. 

It looked to be as big as Woodstock, or perhaps some big jazz festival, with a giant scaffolding for lights and speakers that loomed over the crowd. To add to the excitement, the artists were to play their bits from high up in a crow's nest atop these monoliths.

I did some climbing and stopped at a pretty high place and began some of my runs, teasing out a little of the improvisations that I'd be working into my act. Some recognizable notes of The Star Spangled Banner crept in, as well as some minor keyed scales. If I could pull it off, it would be epic. But my competition was pretty polished too, so it was going to be no walk in the park. 

I know there was a lot more preceding this dream, but I blame the phone company for not screening my calls. More telemarketers interrupted my dreams of glory with their robotic scams before I could pack the dreams up into my travel bag, making the recall scant at best. Thanks a lot, AT&T.