Gracie's Trailer

I dreamed I was back at Lake Isabella with Gracie. I was my current age, not a child, though. I was hungry, so I rooted about in her fridge to scrounge myself up a meal. 

I found some bacon in a plastic bag in the freezer, so I tossed it on the griddle, along with some eggs and pancakes that I was making. I was eating and cooking at the same time, as well as making quite a mess of things on the stove.

Gracie came in and sat down on the sofa. She looked tired, so I offered to make her breakfast.

"Do we have any potatoes?" she asked.

I looked around and found a five pound bag of them in a cabinet above the stove. I tried reaching up to get one out, but couldn't quite get to the top of the bag, even on my tippy-toes. I got the step stool out, and still I found myself hanging precariously from some substandard shelving as I tried to wrangle just one lousy potato out of the bag.

I don't know how that part of the dream wound up. The next thing I knew, I was outside looking at some trench work that someone had left in an unfinished state. I made a mental not of it, along with the poorly constructed shelving in the kitchen, as things which I would try to rectify on my next visit up there.

Bill wasn't in the dream. He was working in Burbank at the time, but was due to come up in a week or so. I promised Gracie that I'd come back and get all the repairs squared away before he got there. I woke up soon thereafter, the repairs still just a thoughtful promise.

---  

I had my second Covid shot the other day and wound up with a 102.4 fever for most of the day yesterday. I ate very little and slept most of the day. Finally, about 3 pm I took some Tylenol and after another 3 hour nap I began to feel normal again. 

Roommate issues, and I play wingman

 

I had some sort of roommate thing going on where I'd fallen under the condemnation of the group I'd been living with. I can't remember what it was, but it was something like leaving too many beer bottles laying around or not respecting the common areas. I had to redeem myself, so I picked on my roommates one at a time to try to win them over.

One of my roommates was a younger fellow named Reice. In real life, I'd known this guy in junior high. His dad was a sound engineer and had developed one of the first stereophonic microphones. We used to write songs together and record them by singing into the oddly shaped dual microphones, which utilized a Styrofoam mannequin head to achieve a natural stereo effect.  

In my dream, Reice needed a little help to get back on the horse with regard to his game with the ladies. Apparently, he'd had a few failed attempts to start conversations, and he was now gun shy and "failing to engage." I decided he needed a wing man, so I followed him around the grocery store attempting to talk him up to a group of young females.

"You have to admit," I said fearlessly and without the slightest sense of social correctness, "that my man here is a catch." I pulled his baseball cap off and showed them his Beatlesque haircut.

"You're right," the leader of the girl gang agreed. "He'll do nicely." And with that, she snatched him up into their group as they walked around the store. 

They were picking up party supplies for a big she-bang that they were throwing later that night. Not wanting to miss out, and still having several other roommates that I needed to rectify things with, I pushed my luck and hit the leader up one more time.

"Now all I have to do is secure an invitation to that party for the rest of my group, and I'll be golden," I said, using my own internal monologue to make my request known.

"Not so fast, shorty," the girl said to me. "You're a good wing man, but you'll have to prove yourself on your own to get in with us."

I guess I never achieved that goal, since later on I found myself outside the party, and I had to use some kind of monocular to spy out what was going on inside through a window. I was going to relay the information to the other members of my household, providing whatever intel was going to be needed to crash the party.

Reice was going to give some kind of signal using beer bottles in the window as kind of cue, like a "one if by land, two if by sea" kind of a thing. There were three bottles in the window, so I think he'd forgotten the protocol and just started drinking and setting his beers down willy-nilly.

I couldn't ascertain the meaning of the the intel, so my roommates and I had to camp out on the lawn, my status as wing man secured, but my living situation with the roommates kind of tenuous. I had to awaken soon thereafter, so things were just left that way.

Ernest blathers on

 

Actually, it wasn't Ernest that was blathering, rather, it was Alan Watts. Ernest was just his unwitting mouthpiece. I had put on some lectures to fall asleep to last night, and the result was that my dream characters had a lot of pithy things to say on the nature of reality, enlightenment and so on. 

I don't recall a story or even a framework. There was a warehouse, and Ernest Serrano, the '80s cult prophet of Carl's Jr. was there, wearing a trench-coat and acting as a night watchman. I wasn't authorized to be there, and when he saw me, he locked onto me, as a pre-programmed video game opponent would upon being activated by proximity.

"Blabbity, blah, blibble, rather, I say, enlightenment, such and such, as it were, etc," he droned, engaging me with a sub-perceptual babble of witty Englishisms.

I picked up on the phenomenon right away, realizing that he was simply a puppet of some external audio program, and exited the dream.

What Happened?

 

I don't know. I woke up with an earworm. No, not some physical otological parasite, but the song by Ruben Blades, "What Happened?" I was in some situation where I was perplexed, and this was my soundtrack. "WTF! IDK!" to translate the message of the '80s salsa tune into today's text vernacular. It is a song about a drunk who causes himself and others nothing but trouble, of which he is stubbornly unaware.

---

I was up until 3 last night. GDF'ing Windows. I have 4 PCs that I keep networked on a home wifi/LAN network. The computers can all access one another without necessarily being online. To do this I disable the internet gateway and make a desktop shortcut with the simple \\COMPUTER NAME address. This keeps them from getting online, but allows them to communicate over an intranet type of network.

Usually. Until some Windows update comes along and fucks it all up by changing some setting which makes one or more of the computers invisible. "COMPUTER cannot be found because the network path is invalid." I am usually able to fix it by changing some setting in network connections or by re-enabling the file share option in Windows explorer. 

Not last night. I tried all my tricks, which mostly consist of cursing and repeatedly hitting the enter button until the problem goes away on its own. I cursed my voice raw and had to provide extra comfort to Patsy in the form of belly rubs because that's the deal: curse and get mad, pet the kitty. It works out pretty good for her, since she gets belly rubs, either way.

It is April 22, Earth Day. Happy Birthday, Me. I don't have any plans, other than that I will be attending my DBSA group meeting via Zoom tonight. It is Thursday, so that's what I do. 

I will be facilitating, which means I'll be the host, I believe. Perhaps, co-host, I don't know. It will be my first time, since I just completed the training last Saturday. The other facilitators will be there to make sure I don't fuck up or go on a tirade. 

It should be a pretty non-eventful event for everyone but me. I will be terrified. 

---

PHHFFFFFT!

Ok, since I woke up this morning, nothing has gone as I'd liked. Even my morning dump gave me a fight. If you can't take a shit without a struggle, what kind of a day do you think it will wind up being, really? 

I went outside to water and found a leaky garden hose. I tried to fix it, but the hose has expanded too much to be able to use a repair fitting. It's blown out, like my asshole feels after that dump. 

Next, I went back to the computer. Big mistake. Of course it still wouldn't be working correctly. I have narrowed down the problem, though. My VPN is somehow interfering with only one of my networked PCs. A quick chat with the tech at Nord left him as stumped as me. I uninstalled and re-installed the program, to no avail. 

My takeaway is that some days and some things will not go your way no matter how much you fight with it. Give up the fight. Let things be as they are. Decay and decomposition win in the end anyway. Get on board with that; quit being a human and stop trying to erect a tower to heaven. Admit defeat, mortal.

Oh, and the cat barfed right on cue, just as I was about to eat breakfast.

Can hardly wait for the meeting. Gotta see how brilliantly I fuck that up, given my track record today.

---

I spent the afternoon weed-eating and mowing the front strip of land on the street in front of my property. It wasn't the usual level of activity that I am accustomed to, as far as my step-counter is concerned. But the frontage is looking somewhat improved. I can only handle so much of that kind of exercise. My gut hurt from the strain of swinging the weed-eater around.

---

Well, the meeting went well. It was about what I expected, a bit rough at first, with some awkward self-consciousness when my mouth and brain didn't engage right away. Things evened out, though, after the members of the group started sharing. I became an "active listener," as opposed to my usual fly on the wall approach. 

I could feel myself opening up a bit to the possibility that some human emotive ability might reside in me after all. I'd always assumed I didn't come equipped with the empathy gene at all. I felt a rapport with all of the members and tried my best to respond in a thoughtful manner to each of their comments at check-in. 

Later on in the evening, though, I got a call from an old friend. I spoke with him for hours, listening to him recount the details of his recent divorce court date. I felt I was being encouraging and supportive, at least for the first two hours.

Then things took a turn. The subject of religion came up, and he became rather obtuse. I believe he gets this way when he's been drinking, but it may be the subject matter fueling his argumentative spirit. I listened to him make the same point for about 20 minutes, and I finally had to cut him off. 

It only got worse from there. He accused me of all sorts of things, some of which I admitted to, others I felt were inaccurate. In all, I was trying to be respectful, but at a certain point he'd worn out my patience. After all was said and done, we ended on a sour note, each of us convinced that it was the other whose perception of the conversation was faulty.

So I can facilitate a discussion group with 16 people, most of whom I only know online, but I can't manage to make a friend, who I've known for 30+ years, feel supported?

I am beyond tired from all of last night's computer frustration and from the emotional roller coaster I've been on this last day or so. Well, not an up and down roller coaster, more the kind that just pushes you off a ledge and drops you straight down.

I'm a mess. I don't care who knows it. See me, feel me, FUCK ME, heal me. DA na na na na - DANT DANT - DA na na na na.

Triple indemnity: we've got you covered

I can't say much more than this: I had a dream that kept putting the idea in my head that my insurance was inadequate. The insurance company had a phrase that looped around in my head but, of course, now is gone. It was something like, "This. That. The other. We've got you covered." Actually, it was nothing like that. It was very specific as to the "thises" and the "thats," but I couldn't tell you now.

But the "we've got you covered" part reminded me that, at some point in the dream, I was on a ranch belonging to Shayla Sullivan. She wasn't there, so I wandered around the horse arena. It was a nice looking setup that had a grandstand type seating area with a roof and a wooden railing. 

I found a knife that someone had stabbed into the wooden railing. I pulled it out and tried a few stabs myself. It went in easier if you went with the grain. I found an upper rafter where the wood was already worn from someone making repeated hacks into the wood and went to town on it, like a cat using a scratching post.

Long about this time, Shayla walked in and caught me in the act. She had an identical twin sister with her, and they were both dressed identically: cowboy hat, red halter top and high-cut booty shorts. There was even a third sibling, a triplet, that was alluded to but never seen. 

"Ok, that's enough of that," Shayla #1 told me, as if she were scolding a pet.

I folded up the knife and put it away. I felt a little ashamed and tried to explain that a lot of the damage was pre-existing. But I knew she had caught me, and she knew what she had seen. It was her property, and she knew every inch of it. 

All the while my insurance company's remarkably forgettable catch phrase played on in my head. "This situation. That situation. Some other situation. We've got you covered." I can't imagine what exactly they would cover in this instance. My getting carved up by the three Sullivan girls, for vandalizing their wooden railing, perhaps?

QOTD

"And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered." ~ Ernest Hemingway

When Aunt Carol said "Pie!"

It was at a dinner with Uncle Steve, Sharon and myself, Thanksgiving, I believe. Don't ask the year; I can't be that specific. But we were at my uncle's place on Garden Park (now Carol's, rather, Tim's). 

We were somewhere near the end of the main course. Aunt Carol had a semi-glazed over appearance, the effects of the Tryptophan in the turkey kicking in (as distinguished from her normal, everyday, semi-conscious waking slumber). Eyes half-closed, she stared dreamily down at her plate. 

Someone, Steve I think, mentioned pie, as in who would like to have some?

From a dead slump, Aunt Carol jerked awake and upright. 

"PIE!!!" she squawked, like some human-sized tropical bird. 

I'm thinking of the "Chicken Lady" who screams out "EGGS!!!" with a similarly focused projectile chicken screech. It was wildly out of calibration for the room. An entirely too loud, over the top, zero to 500 decibals kind of a soundwave came out of her.

We just stood there and took it full force, in slow motion, cartoon-like, the blast blowing our hair straight back and causing our facial skin to ripple, as from a 50 megaton atomic detonation. 

When she said "PIE!!!" she meant it. There were no two ways about it. 

We were witnessing the birth of consciousness out of the primordial ooze. Like the big bang, first there was nothing, then -- BANG!!! -- or "PIE!!! as it were. It was a momentous event, and I'm glad that I was there to see it.

Gene gets evicted

I dreamed my friend, Gene Scott, had gotten himself kicked out of a roommate situation with his teenage girlfriend. He'd apparently said a few choice words to her, and now he was homeless, mopey and wandering around Chico, looking for a place to stay. 

His girlfriend had been living on Garden Park Dr., a couple of houses down from my uncle's place at the end of the cul-de-sac. While Gene lamented his situation, I went and paid his girlfriend a clandestine visit. She was having a garage sale, so it was easy to slip in unnoticed and observe.

She was in the garage, talking with another of her teenybopper girlfriends. Another of Gene's friends also slipped into the garage unnoticed, but he couldn't keep his mouth shut for long. As I examined a few of the items she had for sale, he made a remark that got the both of us kicked off of the property.

"Well, why don't you give me a try," he said crudely, "See, if you can get me pregnant." His remark didn't even make sense, and as far as passes go, it was one of the worst I'd ever heard.

"Out!" she snapped, and that was the end of our browsing.

I surmised there would be no reconciliation between her and Gene, so we tried to figure out where he could stay. My uncle's place was out of the question; too many people were staying there already. I had a place downtown but was concerned about moving in all of Gene's crap.

"How much stuff do you have, anyway?" I asked.

"Dude, I have a lot," he said mournfully.

I could tell there would be no easy solution, but I offered that he could maybe take showers at my place until he found somewhere else. At least he wouldn't smell like a homeless person. He seemed to think that was fair. 

That's about it for that. I woke up soon thereafter. 

---

It's Sunday. April 18. I picked up my prescription yesterday at Walmart. It cost $15 for a 30 day supply of Bupropion 150 XL. I think I'll wait til tomorrow to start taking it. I'd like to have one more coffee/cannabis breakfast before I jump on board this other ride. I'm not sure how the combo would interact with a brand new drug, and I don't want to begin my journey with a skewed perspective. 

I told my friend, Jeannette about it and asked for her thoughts. She was a pharmacist, so I figured she'd at least have had some kind of second-hand experience. She said she'd been on it for 5 days many years ago. It had done nothing positive for her, but it did give a screaming case of road rage. She felt agitated all the time while she was on it, so she discontinued it abruptly.

There are a lot of accounts of people having this experience, as it is one of the possible side effects. I am already pissed at the world, so I don't know if it will make this condition worse, or if it will have the reverse effect. I guess I've got to stick it out past the break-in period, at least 10 to 14 days, when most of the side effects tend to show up.

I'm kinda scared to give myself over to some mood altering drug. I want to get on a fun ride, not one which is likely to make me a bigger asshole than I already am. I can barely stand myself as it is. I'm telling as many people as possible, so they can be aware and monitor any changes. As always, I'll be making notes in the margins of my dream journal entries.

Sharon vs the CB

 

I dreamed of Sharon again. It has become sort of a normal thing, so I don't always remember to take note. But this time I did. 

I was outside of our house talking to a neighbor who I'd just met. I can't remember his name, which isn't unusual at all. I am terrible with names. I can tell you a million things about a person who I've just met, but their name is rarely one of them.

This guy looked like Matthew Gray Gubler, the guy from Criminal Minds. He was a kind of nerdy, skinny fellow, and I could tell right away that he was a CBer. You can always tell those types. They fall into two catagories: the obsessive tech-geek radiophile or the truck drivin', tabaccy chewin' redneck type. He was the former.

As we were talking, I glanced around the skyline and asked him, "Which one is yours?" referring, of course, to his antenna.

He didn't have to answer. I could just tell that his was the very dorky, slightly off-kilter crank up tower that had the look of one of those playground metal rocket ship jungle gyms. It was leaning to one side and had a network of guy wires holding it in place.

"It's that one, isn't it?" I said.

"You got me," he said with a guilty grin on his face.

"This is me, I guess," I said, looking up at the giant radio tower, some 500 feet or so tall, that seemed to have sprung up in my front yard during the course of our conversation. I was pleasantly surprised to have such a finely constructed piece of broadcast equipment suddenly at my disposal.

I went into the house to tell Sharon that I'd met a neighbor. I was cursing myself for having already forgotten his name. This wouldn't go over well, as she was always after me to remember things like that.

I went into her room, where I found her dead asleep. I woke her up, and she came to life. She wasn't cranky or groggy and looked glad to see me. I told her about the neighbor, and she seemed interested enough. But at my mention of the CB, something jarred her to remember that she hated-- couldn't stand-- despised my collection of old junk radios.

"And did I see yet another one in the living room?" she accused me, as if she'd discovered a dead body.

Indeed, I had brought one in the house and thought I could pass it off as a piece of guitar equipment. Those kinds of electronic devices had immunity from her wrath. But this was obviously a CB, and one with the cover off and all its guts exposed. It was an ancient yard sale find, an antique, but completely inoperable and unrestorable.

"I'll move it to the garage," I promised hastily. "Don't sell it."

"That's just what I ought to do," she said spitefully. "I could get $40 for it, even though it is a piece of junk."

I was out in the garage finding a home for it when I came across a metal sign she had bought me. It was a novelty metal yellow sign for the band Black Flag. It had their logo and some artwork from one of their album covers on it. It was a little dinged up, but that just added to its vintage appeal.

"Well, I'm putting this up," I said, showing her the sign triumphantly. "You bought it for me, after all."

She had no argument for that one. She was always buying me things. I went about looking for a hammer and some nails, and the dream began fading at that point.

---

In other news, I have my last DBSA facilitator training session today. I'm not super prepared, but I'm not worried. It has been pretty easy so far. We'll be doing some role playing today, so I might be a little awkward, but I'm still not sweating it. I never aspired to this role, it kind of just fell to me to go along with it. If I bomb, I bomb. I won't beat myself up over it.

I've been prescribed Wellbutrin by my psychiatrist. We had our second phone consult yesterday and he abruptly switched course on his previous anti-med stance. He'd seen my blood work and was satisfied that I was doing a stellar job of managing my health care, at least with regard to diet and exercise. Since my mood has still been unaffected, and he was out of other ready solutions, drugs it was.

I'll talk about this more as it unfolds. I'm somewhat hesitant to take meds, but am looking forward to something different in my life. The doldrums is not a place I can stand living in much longer. It's like the suburbs, only worse.

Green recruits get picked on

 

I was in some kind of school situation, and I was clearly not in the ruling class. I was a lowly scrub. I was among those who got beat up, picked on and pushed around for fun, or out of spite, by the upper classmen. 

Among my antagonists were some of my old Bible Study's counselors, such as Chris Knoll and Mario Huante, among others. These were the ruling elite of the cult I was in, back in the '80s. I don't recall any physical abuse having gone on back in those days, at least not to me. But in my dream they were doing a fair amount of pushing, shoving and shaking down for lunch money, like your typical garden variety thugs.

I felt the sting of shame and the burning of outrage as I got shoved up against a wall and had my pockets and backpack searched for valuables. I managed to hang onto my phone, but I think they may have gotten my wallet. I was too pissed at the whole incident to take an accurate inventory. I just felt violated.

I searched around for someone, anyone, who would hear my complaint and take some kind of action. What I got was enough repeated indifference to my requests to formulate the opinion that I was living in a reality with entrenched unfairness and that I should just knuckle under and accept my lowly position. Life sucks, get used to it.

Later on, I was in an assembly in the auditorium. Everyone was sitting at tables and looking in the same general direction toward a wall of windows with a view of the campus. I suppose there was about to be some kind of event, but it never got started.

First, someone noticed a few bits of ash or dust coming from the ceiling vents. Pretty soon everyone was looking around and seeing the particulates as they rained down on us. It became alarming when some live embers were mixed in, along with smoke and a heavy soot. Still nothing was visible from the nice picture windows, but this situation was rapidly developing and would need to be investigated.

Several of us got up and marched out, almost drill-like, to the corner exits. I was among them. I went, first in one line of people, then switched lines at the last minute and went out with a different group. Something told me I needed to be in one group and not the other, though I never found out why.

It turned out to be nothing. Some irresponsible students were burning the shredded paper documents in the library, and it was sending out a smoke plume that was causing the alarming debris to rain down. They were told to put a stop to it, and the investigation was completed. Case closed.

I found myself in a giant bathroom (never a good sign in a dream). I was fumbling around with my school issued uniform and wound up with arms and legs getting all confused as I attempted to disrobe so I could use the urinal. I wound up just putting the uniform back on and never got to pee. It was, however, my cue that the dream was ending, and I got up to pee.

---

It was early still, so I tried to get a bit more sleep. Alas, this wasn't to happen. I have a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head at the moment, most of them related to an upcoming appointment I have with the behavioral health psychiatrist. My bottom line is: I ain't happy.

I have many supporting arguments to back this up, but I'm afraid that I won't be able to formulate them into a cohesive statement. I will wind up getting tongue-tied and forgetting my lines, and then the narrative will be hijacked by the shrink, who seems to have his own agenda regarding the (non) dispensing of medication.

I don't really want to take medication. I just wanna feel better. I don't want to do any more research on what dietary supplements will produce more serotonin or dopamine. I can't buy into "the Secret" or any such fairy tale magical views of the universe and its so-called law of attraction. And I feel I'm too far down in the pit that my poor thinking choices have created to dig myself out with simple cognitive therapy tools.

I want an easy answer to the most complicated questions of life, and it doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Why am I here? What's it all about? What do I do? But most importantly to me, how do I feel better? My non-dual, non-philosophy of laissez-faire lethargy isn't cutting it. I need a simple agenda that even a sloth can get on board with.

If my shrink is so all fired anti-antidepressants, then what, if any, cool drugs could he prescribe me? I am guessing Ecstasy or shrooms would be out of the question. Maybe some Quaaludes or Zanax? I dunno, whatever makes you feel good. I'm not as worried about long term damage at this point. I think more damage is being done by my not getting out of this chronic depression.

I had a whole bunch of logical debate points coming up in my mind, but of course when I go to try to write them down, they all evaporate. This is what I was afraid would happen. Now, when he calls, I will be forced to endure another lecture on the evils of big pharma and the benefits of a paleo diet with protein cycling, keto and intermittent fasting. Fuck me!

You know that thing you do?

You know, the thing that's like, so--you? That thing. Could ya knock it off? Ok, thanks. Good talk.

Greasy Like Sunday Evening

 

Sunday mornings are easy, but Sunday evenings have their challenges. I dreamed of Sharon again, in a typical Sunday evening situation. I was making dinner, or had made dinner, and we were just eating it in the bedroom, in front of the TV. I was finishing up, slurping down the last of some greasy chicken broth, and I made the impromptu suggestion that we make love. 

"Oh, I don't know," she said, non-noncommittally. 

This was out of character for her, in a dream or otherwise. In real life, I'd have been the one begging off, since it was Sunday, and well, work, you know, or the dishes, or whatever lame ass excuse for just not wanting to.  And she'd be the one disappointed and trying to convince me to quit being an old man, and get jiggy with it already.  

Apparently, we'd fallen into a rut, and I was going to have to do something about it. I told her that we'd better get to doin' it while there was doin' it to do. We weren't getting any younger, and this routine we'd fallen into was going to have to be reversed before it became permanent.

"If we don't do it now, we may never do it again. You know how these things go," I warned.

This must have scared her a little, because her "I don't know" turned into a "maybe." That was all I needed to hear. 

I got up to put the dishes in the sink and go fetch some weed. I knew if anything would turn the tables, it would be getting her and I a little bit stoned. It would spark some of the old feelings we'd felt in the past and make us want to get exploratory once again. 

On the way to the kitchen, I spilled some chicken grease on the floor and bedroom door and had to wipe up the mess. It proved rather challenging, and at first my efforts just resulted in a lot of smearing around of the spatter, leaving a greasy film. There was some screen printed writing on the door which was getting damaged by my spreading the chicken grease around.

I was certain this poor cleaning job would cause someone to slip on the slick floor, so I got some Windex to finish the job properly.  Things went from slippery to sticky, as now the clean spot had given the floor an uneven walking texture. 

I gave up on trying to conceal the fact that I'd made a mess and proceeded downstairs to fetch the weed. In the meantime, Sharon had gotten up and followed me out to the kitchen, where Hannelore was having a late night snack and commenting on my poor housekeeping. 

The sliding glass door was open and Sharon ceremoniously shut it, which signified that the games were about to begin. The door was usually left open for the cats back in those days. Shutting it meant that the cats were in the house, and now the evening's irresponsible festivities could begin. 

I commented to Hannelore about Sharon's walking around, since it dawned on me that she was up and about. She seemed impressed by it as well.

"Did you see how she just shut that door?" I said, marveling at the seemingly insignificant act. "Like nothing. As if she'd never had a disabled day in her life."  The full weight of it was starting to sink in.

"Yes, and now you'd better get to it, young man," said Hannelore, uncharacteristically approving of our planned intoxicated debauchery. 

We headed for the bedroom, but that's as far as my dream carried me. My dream visa expired, and I was transported back to the realm of the living. 

Oh, wait. One more thing...Somewhere after the chicken grease and Sunday activities but before awakening fully, one other snippet occurred. 

I was on the front porch and I saw my neighbor Stan, doing some work with his Caterpillar on the easement next to my property. As usual, he was mowing the weeds a little too close to my fence. I heard a metal scraping sound, and I headed over to investigate, prepared to dish out some critical words.

He sheepishly held out a piece of orange plastic goat fencing that our neighbor, Woijak, had recently installed. Oh, well, I'd let Woijak yell at him, I figured. I was going to go back in the house, but Stan had another concern.

"We need to store this lube somewhere," he told me, sniffing around my storage barn for a suitable area to keep his 55 gallon drum of axle grease. 

I supposed that the "oil room" would do just fine for that, and I didn't have any real objections, since he'd done quite a bit of free earth work for me in the past. I wanted to keep the wheels greased, so to speak.

Ok, that's it for reals. I have some breakfast to attend to, as well as an instant pot turkey to prepare. There may be some actual, real world grease for me to contend with.

Bald eagle cat

I dreamed Sharon and I were living in a split home. It was two adjacent houses, actually. I was having to communicate with her on an Ipod that was somehow also a phone. (Imagine that, they actually have those now. They are called Iphones. Duh.) But this was an older version, so it still had the thumbwheel. 

At any rate, it didn't work all that well, and I found myself wishing I could just connect the two buildings with a long hallway, so I wouldn't have to keep going out the front door and around to the other property just to talk to her.

I was contemplating this when I spied an enormous bird flying low in my front yard. This had just happened to me the other day in real life, so I was trying to identify it this time around. It appeared to be a bald eagle. It turned around in mid flight and landed on a terrace not 10 feet from me. 

I was terrified that he was going to attack me, and I ducked behind the trash can that I was carrying. He stared down at me with his eagle eyes and held my gaze. A cat jumped up next to him, apparently unaware of this giant bird's presence. I was sure the cat was a goner.

But without breaking my gaze, the eagle transformed into a cat as well, defusing the whole situation. He had awfully large eyes for a cat, though, giving him a rather owl-like appearance. I woke up soon thereafter, still a bit unsure as to whether I'd been dealing with an owl, a cat or a very clever shape-shifting eagle.

It's only 3am, so I guess I'll try to go back in and find out.

A cream colored Plymouth

 

I don't know what's with the theme of Mopar products these days. Perhaps they are sponsoring my dreams, so that all the vehicles wind up being one of their products. I don't remember much, as the dream occurred hours ago, and I forgot to write it down.

I was working again. I'm not even going to mention where, since it is always the same. Manny Salazar was there, alternately helping and mocking me as I did some inept bungling, per my usual modality. I wound up taking a car out for a test drive and getting stuck, run out of gas or something.

The car was a cream colored Duster. It was a convertible, I believe, but it could have been a soft top, I'm not sure. I was having trouble with the gas and brake pedals. I kept telling myself, "This is just like Gracie's Impala," but I just  wasn't getting the hang of it.

While I was stuck and looking around for someone to take me to a gas station, I spied a guy who had a five gallon metal gas can. I asked him if I could get a few drops to put in my car. I only needed a few drops because -- surprise, surprise -- my car was not a cream colored gas guzzler after all. 

I was now in my black Honda Fit, so I knew I'd only need a little gas, just enough to coast on down to the gas station. We struggled to use the gas can's built-in spout, which just wasn't long enough to reach the tank. I spilled more than a few drops before deciding to make a funnel out of some rolled up paper. 

This paper funnel proved ineffective as well, but I finally found a way to pour the gas directly into the gas tank's internal tubing, bypassing the whole funnel scenario. The black Honda Fit had now kaleidoscopically morphed into a 1963 Dodge government surplus van that I had once owned and used as a camper back in the '90s.

This was a very disjointed dream, with no real point or even stable reference points. These are just the few scavenged details that I remember after waking up early to go and take some fasting blood tests at the Ampla Health clinic. Now, I'd better eat something before my stomach eats me.

Another psychic visit

 

I just dreamed for a moment or two this afternoon. I fell asleep to an audiobook called "The Parable of the Sower." No reflection on the book, I was just tired. My subconscious was working in overdrive, though, and I had a whole framework developed and some kind of life that I was living.

I was roommates with my friend, Jeannette, the psychic. I was playing an audiobook on my phone in the dream, and it was starting to piss me off. I kept hearing Bible quotations, and it was just bugging me. I tried, to no avail to shut the phone off, but you know how that kind of thing usually goes in dreams.

"If I hear one more Bible quotation, I'm going to fucking scream my head off," I screamed out the instantly self-fulfilling prophecy. 

To add to the frustration, I saw that my kitchen trash can was inundated with tiny sugar ants. I stared at them for a while, half in denial and half in fascination, as they made their way up the side of the white plastic waste bin from parts unknown.

I noticed that Jeannette had left the room, and I endeavored to knock on her door to apologize for my outburst. I never got to do that, nor was I able to turn off my phone, which kept droning on and on until I finally awoke.

Friends will be friends

I dreamed I let David Chanh and his family stay in the fish hut at Grace and Bill's place in Lake Isabella. It was a little bit of a mess and had fallen into disrepair since Grace and Bill passed and left me responsible for it.

I spent quite a lot of the dream looking for an AC vent cover, you know those band-aid colored stamped metal grates that cover floor ducts. I kept finding ones that did not fit or were simply made for other purposes. Not having the right vent resulted in the AC not working properly, since the airflow was dictated by the back pressure created by the vent's restriction.

I thought to look in the garage where Bill used to park his El Camino. I knew the garage was locked and felt like it would be an impossible task, since I didn't know where they had stashed the keys. As soon as I had that thought, though, I found the keys in my hand. 

I opened the garage and found that the the El Camino was gone. I believed it had been sold right after the funeral, though I wasn't sure as to the whos and whys of the matter. I looked around the garage, remembering that Bill had raised meal worms in a barrel of corn meal. I avoided looking for the barrel, since I didn't want to know what a barrel full of corn meal and meal worms would look like after many years.

David's family was settling in nicely in the fish hut. David had gone shopping, and there were some shopping bags he'd left outside the hut, which I thought to move inside, since it looked like it would start raining soon. David returned just as I was moving the last bag into the hut.

We continued looking for the correct AC vent cover but never did find the exact right one. We wound up settling for something that looked like a foot measuring device, like you'd see at a shoe store. It was made of the same flesh toned stamped metal and had the appropriate number of vent slits, so I guessed it would work. David had just been using a bit of carpet to cover the vent, so this was at least an improvement over that.

The song "Friends Will Be Friends" was playing continuously throughout the dream, so that is my earworm for the day. That's about it. Thanks for playing along.

A brief visit from my psychic

 

I had a conversation with my psychic friend, Jeannette, the other day, in which she mentioned that her cats routinely woke her up at 4:30 am. I replied that that seemed a little late, as the witching hour was at 3:30 am, a fact she'd been unaware of. 

I suggested she conduct her psychic business at that time, since the "veil between realms" was thinnest during that hour. She said she would give it a whirl. I also told her I'd look for her in my dreams, and she laughed.

Sure enough, last night I did see her in my dreams briefly. 

I dreamed I was in some car borrowing situation with my uncle. Jeannette had my uncle's car, and he wasn't too thrilled about that. I had loaned him one of my cars, and I was stuck with my old crappy 85 Honda. 

I came upon Jeannette just after my uncle had got done yelling at her for keeping his car too long. He repossessed it and left her car-less and a bit hurt with his abusive tone. She played it off by smiling a world weary smile that said, "I've seen much worse, I'm used to this sort of thing."

I felt bad and tried to work out another car swap, so that she could still have a vehicle. That's about all I remember, and I may have the details a bit off, as to who was driving who's car. I just know my uncle was pissed, since he was out of a car and was somehow blaming it on my friend. 

Now I'll have to ask her if she had any sort of communication with any pissed off spirits at about 3:30 am.

Football on the roof

 

I ought to be able to bring you back more than just a title and a couple of lines, but alas, I fear that's all you're gonna get.

I was engaged in a backyard game of football, and the ball got chucked up onto the roof. The rules allowed that ball was still live as long as it hadn't touched the ground, so the opposing team captain and I endeavored to find a quick way onto the roof to retrieve it.

I started out going about it the hard way, climbing up a ladder, grabbing the flimsy rain gutter and attempting to swing my leg up onto the roof. This wasn't very effective, and I wound up just hanging there looking rather dumb. 

No one else had figured out anything better, and they all were busy mocking me, so no one noticed when I climbed back down the ladder and went around to the back of the house. The back porch had an easy access point; all I had to do was climb up on the railing, and I was already level with the roof.

I was up and on it in an instant, but wouldn't you know, the other guy was soon up there as well. We vied for the ball, which seemed to be greased, as well as being pigskin, for it slipped and slid around the roof, eluding our grasp. I had it and lost it several times, and it wound up being caught and dropped by both sides.

It was ultimately called a fumble, but the ball was still in play when the dream switched to something else, and I never got the official results of the play. It could still be in play right now, for all I know.

Tune a guitar, already

 

I dreamed I was going back to school. Nothing serious, just electives. I was going to learn some guitar stuff from a lady music teacher.

Naturally, I showed up without my guitar, so I had to go home and fetch it. It was only mildly embarrassing, since I lived close to the college. 

Of course, when I opened my guitar case, I found my
guitar was not only out of tune, but partially disassembled. I took an extremely long time trying to tune it, and broke several strings in the process. 

Feeding the new strings into their proper holes with the guitar in pieces proved too much for me. I spent the entire rest of the dream struggling with that.

There was another lady, a school administrator, who was kind of sweet on me. She was a large black woman wearing a loose fitting chiffon type blouse, the kind typically worn by older, heavy-set office workers.

The guitar teacher lady and I had just been talking about her when the amorous administrator showed up and started complimenting me on one thing or another. It was a bit awkward, since I was still struggling with the damned guitar string business. 

I had another dream earlier with details I shan't be dragging out here. Suffice it to say, it was a lurid sex dream, and it left me with a <ahem> bad taste in my mouth.

Write what you know

                   

                                                    

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The End.  

8 fingered monkey, motorcycle in the back seat and Samantha Stevens' gender assignment

 

I was in someone's living room, sitting on the couch. David Chanh came out of the bedroom holding a monkey, which appeared to be the age and temperament of a four year old human, only more well behaved. David made it a point to show everyone that the monkey was special because it had eight fingers on each hand, which collapsed, one over the other, like a folding fan, giving them the appearance of normal fingers when not in use.

It was the sweetest little thing. He greeted me with a hug and kept wanting to give me kisses with his funny little chimpanzee lips.  I talked to him a little bit, but he wasn't a talking monkey, so it wasn't really much of a conversation. Still, very cute, even with the extra digits.

Next, I was out on a main highway on a motorcycle. I'd run out of gas and had been pushing it for a while. Out of the blue, a guy driving a black Plymouth Challenger, similar to the one in Phantasm, showed up and offered to give me a lift.

I struggled to put the motorcycle in the back seat, but I managed to get it in there, somehow. Quite the feat, really, for a two-door and a full-sized road bike. The guy was perfectly fine with this arrangement. Actually, he acted as if it were my car, and he and a buddy just left me there with it.

After this, I was on a pier, about to do some fishing. I'd seen a lot of people who were catching fish when I was out driving my car and motorcycle around. They'd been catching them everywhere, on the street corners, just walking; fish were that abundant.

On the pier, I saw Bob Hansell. He was fishing, of course, as it seemed to be the thing to do. I was getting set to cast out but leaned too far over the railing and was in danger of falling off the pier.

"Can you pull me back?" I asked Bob matter of factly, not betraying my sheer terror. 

He pulled on my jacket, and I regained my balance, keeping my composure the whole time. I kept thinking, "Man, Bob Hansell just saved my life!" He didn't seem to think it was a big deal, so I didn't mention it.

Later, in Bob's station wagon, we were headed out somewhere on the freeway. I think the motorcycle and the monkey were in the back. It was crowded, and I didn't have a proper seat. Bob kept putting on the brakes, sending me and the monkey flying, which I found rather annoying.

There weren't many proper segues in this dream, so next I was in a walk-in freezer type storage area of a restaurant. I was trying to engage a waitress in a conversation about a factoid that I'd heard. It was not going well, as I kept putting my foot in my mouth.

"Did you know that Samantha Stevens was a tranny?" I asked her.

"Samantha Stevens was not properly gender assigned at birth," she corrected me. 

I could tell I'd stepped on some sensitive toes, and I couldn't seem to extricate myself from the hole I was digging myself into. Apparently, words like "tranny" were just not uttered in polite company, because she left, and I had to try to explain myself to the next person that walked in to the storage area. 

"And I know her name is something else, too. Samantha Stevens was just her TV character's name on Bewitched," I offered feebly. I was thinking of Elizabeth Montgomery, but the words just never made it out of my mouth.

---

I'd fallen asleep to an Alan Watts lecture, and the theme of enlightenment and cosmic oneness kept popping up in the dialogue of my dream characters. I can't think of any specific lines they quoted, but at one point I asked the guy with the Plymouth, "It sounds as if you listen to a lot of Alan Watts, am I right?"

I never got a direct answer, but I've experienced this phenomenon enough to not be surprised. I used to purposefully put on audio tapes to try to manipulate dream scenarios, with varying degrees of success. 

Sleep hypnosis, as a whole, though, never seemed to be an effective therapy for me, as the subconscious suggestions never really took root in my everyday awareness.

Some rando thoughts while out walking with the text editor

 

New note

It was bound to happen. I go out walking, all by myself, day after day; I’ve started to talk to myself.

Well, isn’t that what they tell you to do? When you are being plagued by a plethora of negative thoughts? Either give them their voice or offer some resistance.

I had some thoughts earlier. Simply breaking out this device seems to have quelled them for the moment. Do I really want them to return, now that I am prepared to write them down?

Am I prepared to spellcheck them and punctuate them correctly? Maybe I should just jot down a few titular notes, and I can come back and revisit them later. Here goes:

A wiring issue.

Something about how we are supposed to be wired up emotionally to feel good, as a reward for some positive action, thought or impression that is made upon us. I will have to expand when I’m not being chased by mosquitoes. Suffice it to say, I don’t feel that my positive reward centers are correctly wired.

I need a psilocybin facilitator.

I thought about asking Jason from group. He seems to be an intuitive empath, or at least he fakes it very convincingly. Really, though, I need someone who can get in my head, when I am under the influence of something that would make me highly impressionable, and not muck it up worse than I already have. Since, on a good day, I don’t buy into the standard model of reality, I can’t have someone in there who is going to try to convince me of a bunch of BS.

While I’m on the subject, and talking behind his back, I have to ask Jason how it is that he doesn’t get triggered listening to whiners like myself drone on. I don’t have 1/10 of the problems that he has had to deal with, yet I act like the biggest sad sack of shit, with the most piss poor attitude that a human being could ever conjure up.

On the subject of suicide.

I am thinking of making a playlist. Scratch that. I was thinking of making a playlist, to kind of be a soundtrack for my demise.

Then I started thinking about how iTunes works, and about the various associated technical hurdles I would have to overcome to arrange the songs in a particular order, so that they would be played at the appropriate time. That kind of thinking is living thinking. Problem-solving. Doing.

A suicidal person need not be concerned with such things. Just fucking do it. If you’re going to kill yourself, do you take the garbage can out to the street?

My uncle put a tarp down to preserve the living room from blood spatter when he blew his brains out in the easy chair. He didn’t, however, use any toilet bowl cleaner, or bother with a whisk, at any time in proximity to the event. Yeah, it was pretty spotty and black in there.

It seems to me.

That was a heading, by the way. It seems to me that engagement is critical to being alive. The mere exercise of going for a walk, without engaging my brain, is almost completely pointless. I fail to notice much beauty anymore. Sunsets and greenery don’t have the effect they once did.

My eyes tend to fall upon the elements which bring sadness to the forefront, though. I notice dead trees. I think about the future of cattle who are grazing. I can conjure up any number of negative stories by simply focusing on the sad elements.

But even by doing what I am doing right now, writing down these dumb thoughts as they occur to me, I am actually distracting myself from the feeling of overwhelming sadness and lethargy that seems to be pervasive in my psyche most of the time. It is as though I actually think, however erroneously, that what I am doing has some significance. Why would I do it, if I didn’t?

I’ve also succeeded in distracting myself for the last mile or so, walking uphill and now downhill, so congratulations, me. Another 2 miles and I’ll be home making dinner and sitting in front of the television and feeling crappy once again. My evening.

 

 One more thing.

One more thing, as Columbo would say. When AI and human/computer neural linguistic interfaces become a reality, and thought recorders are as common as iPods, I wonder what the text editor’s version of my thoughts will look like when they are transcribed?

Back to my thoughts on suicide. And that playlist. I have at least 20,000 songs on one of my iPods. If I were to play them all sequentially it would be 67 days worth of straight listening. If I bit them off in chunks, say two hours at a time, the length of time of one of my walks, that would afford me a good two years or so. I know, because I just did the math. In my head. (Sike. I did it at home, when I edited this.)

But the idea is: at the end of the last song that ends with ZZZZZ, I would kill myself. No rewinding or pausing. Just do it. How much would I savor each of those crappy songs that I normally would just fast forward through? It’s just a thought, mind you, not a plan. I’m just not that committed to anything.

Yeah, I don’t think I could even get through Adyashanti before I either gave up on the idea or pulled the trigger prematurely. That’s a lot of listening to someone yammer on about the essence of the essence of nothing.

I tried walking in silence, according Adya’s prescription. Ha. What silence? I was assaulted by the sound of birds, my own footsteps, distant traffic and my ever present stream of thought bullshit.

I think my thoughts are kind of like those birds, yapping on about who knows what, endlessly: "I’m a bird. I’m a bird. I’m a bird. I got a worm. I didn’t get a worm. I wanted a worm. The other birds all got worms. Where is my worm?"

And my thoughts play on, similarly. Maybe I will translate them into bird speak. Is that what tweeting is? Chirp chirp chirp cheep cheep cheep squawk.

More random headers, since I am on a roll.

Tooth decay, thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God.

The coddling versus cuddling controversy.

And finally, suicide is preventable, but why? And by whom? Random thoughts about intervention.

I love it when you call me Big Poppa

 

"I love it when you call me Big Poppa," I sang out from the shower to my wife, Mrs. Christopher Wallace.

Yes, that's right, I dreamed I was the late Notorious B.I.G. himself. In the flesh. All 300 soaking wet pounds him.

Things weren't going so well between Mrs. Wallace and myself. She was pissed at me, presumably for doing my gangster shit out of our penthouse apartment. She let me know this by wrecking the joint, making quite a mess of the tile countertop. 

I surveyed the damage and realized that it was me that would have to do the repairs. I'd also have to consider changing my ways if I was ever going to get back into her good graces. I puttered around making mental notes of all the things that were broken and made plans to set things right.

There's a lot more to it, I'm sure, but I had to pack my mental suitcase rather quickly, and this was all I could grab. I can't blame the guineas today. I simply left the notebook on the other side of my brain, and it stayed on the pillow when I awoke.  

---

Manny Salazar, a guy I used to work with, introduced me to that phrase by Biggie. He'd use it on the rare occasion that he was struggling with something difficult on a car. At the moment when he finally prevailed against a stuck bolt or a troublesome ball joint, he'd bellow out at his vanquished foe:

"I love it when you call me Big Poppa!" And we would all know that he had beaten the unruly component into submission.

He was pretty persuasive with humans too. Whether offering encouragement to someone or mocking them for failing to grasp an elementary principal that they'd overlooked while struggling, he'd utter this simple yet effective rejoinder, designed to rattle you into productivity:

"COME ON!!!"

He said it so loud, while in relatively close proximity to you, that it would radiate through your chest cavity. You could literally feel the weight of shame and the powerful infusion of his energy as the sound waves caused you to vibrate with the words. You'd not be forgetting the lesson he'd imparted. 

Feeling inferior was the price of admission, but it was usually worth it. He was, after all the Chiludo, the big cheese, 30 years of experience, and all that. He wasn't gonna just pass along his wisdom for free. If you asked him for help, he'd give it, but with the caveat that you'd be subject to public humiliation for your ignorance.

"COME ON!!!" usually rang out throughout the shop at least once or twice a day. We had a lot of knuckleheads working there.

Sharon Robertson, bank manager

 

I dreamed it was 2016. I was living with Sharon, in a town by the beach, somewhere in Northern California. She was bedridden, and it was near the end. She was on hospice, and I was once again the stressed out caregiver, seeking diversion and distraction from my job.

I was found it in the form of a bank manager named Sharon Robertson. This wasn't my friend's mom, who also bears this name, but lady of about 50 or so, who was an attractive, but overworked district manager for Rabobank. She oversaw the bank display designs and had very discerning eye for details.

She was setting up a display at an outdoor fairground amphitheater. There were horses there, and hers was among them. I was playing around with something or another, trying to be helpful, and she was picking apart the minutia of some coffee table arrangement.

"Don't touch that!" She intoned harshly. "I'll have to fix it."

I had been fiddling with the creamer or the sweetener and was getting powder all over the glass table. I decided that the table needed a good windexing and gave it a thorough spray and wipe. 

This must have impressed her, because she changed her demeanor toward me. As I went back to working around the horses and doing truck related things in the amphitheater, I heard her talking about me. I made my way to a seat right below where she was seated in the upper part of the amphitheater.

"How would you like to go with me to to Monterey and help out with the horses?" she asked me, looking down from her top row seat. "I need someone as thoughtful as you around to help with the pasturing, and then, of course, later on, to accompany me to dinner and whatnot."

I was excited by the offer, but somewhat conflicted about the "whatnot." It seemed like she was asking me out on a date. We'd be sleeping in the same motel room. It felt wrong, but I wanted to do it, nonetheless.

Of course, Sharon, my Sharon, wouldn't be on board with this. I'd have to arrange for her to have a babysitter, and I'd have to make up some lie about where I was going. It just wasn't going to be an easy affair.

I decided to just tell her the truth. So far, nothing was overtly implied in the proposal. It would just be work and a little entertainment. But it would be a road trip, and it would take me away from my dying wife's bedside. I was torn.

"I can't do it, anyway," I told her. "I'm not going to leave you here, to go with some strange woman to a hotel. I have to stay with you right to the bitter end." I wasn't mincing words, and it didn't go unnoticed.

She said something to the effect that she thought I was cheating anyway, so what difference did it make? I felt like I'd have to address this, so I asked her point blank if she was accusing me of cheating. She didn't say yes, but she didn't say no. 

"If it walks like a duck, then you make up your mind," she said, mixing metaphors and admonitions. 

On the one hand, she appreciated the horse aspect of my proposed trip. She was more jealous of that part than anything. She probably even understood my need for some kind of attention, sexual or otherwise. We'd had a rich sex life, but this was near the end, and there was none of that anymore.

She endorsed my trip, but with a couched sense of envy and bitterness about it. She was, after all, the horse person. I was probably just using this as an excuse to get with the sexy older bank lady. 

"What about if you take me with you?" she offered. "You could use that sling that they use for the horses and a Hoyer lift to hoist me into the back of the truck."

This seemed immensely impractical, and I told her so. I'd always been the one to shoot down her ideas and find the flaws in any suggestions she made. They usually involved me doing a lot of extra work, and I just didn't wanna.

The dream ended with me planning to go on the trip without her and possibly get myself into some amorous situation with the bank lady. I felt crummy about it, but no crummier than I did when she was alive, and I had let my mind roam free with all kinds of similar fantasies, none of which ever played out.

Guilt, the final frontier. These are the voyages of my Dreamship, Nocturne. 

My five year mission:

To dream up situations and scenarios in which I will absolve myself of survivor's guilt, shedding the associated baggage that has attached itself to me, barnacle-like, since Sharon's illness and death. 

To seek out new life forms and have occasional flings with them. 

To boldly go where I have already gone before... and rewrite history. 

This will be the return to myself, the  return to innocence.

Woe is me, Nellie

 

I was out walking on a mountain road with a very narrow shoulder. There was a steep drop-off on the side, which made it all the more precarious. I'd either be in danger of getting winged by traffic, or I'd be sliding down a mountainous hillside into an abyss.

I was walking this fine line between those two alternatives, and I found myself slip-sliding away. I grappled and clawed at the gravely pavement and managed to pull myself back onto the road. Cars were swerving out of the lane to avoid hitting me.

One of the cars was driven by a lady who seemed to be a bit of a philanthropist. She took pity on me and let me follow her home. I was in her house getting the homeless person makeover as she took the time to lecture me about traffic safety.

Later on in the dream, I was out and about and found myself the subject of an inquiry. I was rounded up and brought before a large gathering of people, all of whom wanted to hear my story. Apparently, there were charges against me and my only recourse was to tell them my side of things. It would either exonerate or condemn me, depending on how I wove the tale.

I got the impression that it was all an elaborate hoax and that they were just desperate for entertainment. I felt that when I was done, I'd be the hero for sure. The suffering saint, the Seinfeld of tiny traumas. "Woe is me, Nellie" would be my name, and they would all laugh and cry along with me as I recounted my reasoning for all the things I'd done.

I never got the chance, though. I couldn't remember all the crimes I'd been accused of. I think it came down to four things, but damn me now if I can remember even one of them.

I should have woken up at that point, but I was stubborn and wanted to go back to sleep and dream my way out of this. I had another dream, which now I is fading, since I had to sit here and type this one.

Was I a sea monster? A recalcitrant pot farmer? I dunno. It's not coming back to me. Oh, well, I won't sweat it. If it happens, it happens.

Meanwhile, it is now Sunday Funday. I had some online training yesterday, which preempted my Saturday routine. I'm getting some instructional training on how to be a facilitator for my DBSA group. They need a few extra hands to lead the group from time to time. 

It is a peer led group for people with bipolar and depression, so I don't need to have any formal education, just the basics on how to guide a group discussion, avoid interpersonal disputes, handle meltdowns, you know, that kind of thing. 

I've been attending the group for the last year, and I have seen how it is done. At times it looks easy enough, like the group could just run itself. Other times, I can see where the facilitator has the difficult role of trying keep people on track or steering the conversation out of the ruts, as people can tend to get overly chatty or clam up altogether. 

I don't know how this would be a good fit for me, since I tend to do both myself. I won't be alone in the task, though. There will always be a senior facilitator on hand to make sure I don't stray to far outside of their guidelines. Most likely I will just be providing them with a little respite from handling the formalities of the weekly reading and calling on folks routine.

We'll see how this goes. It will be a huge step outside of my comfort zone, that's for sure. It's a step toward <argh> wellness, a word I'm reluctant to use, as it is one of my triggers, along with the G-word, the deplorable word, "Gratitude." That's a rant for another day. I've got a family Google meeting to attend.

Gary and the shoe goo

 

I was re-reading and editing some earlier posts, when I came across one about a dream in which I stole someone's else's shoes because mine had been stolen. That reminded me of a true story that happened to me when I was working at Wittmeier Honda in Chico.

I was a newbie lube tech, still in school and working part time at the dealership. There was the typical locker room situation, where guys would change into their uniforms for the day. None of the lockers were locked, and everyone was pretty much on the honor system. 

One day, after finishing my shift, I went in to the locker room and heard a guy bitching about how his shoes had gone missing. I thought nothing of it and went home.

The next day, I came to work, and he was there in the locker room, still going on about his shoes. He saw the shoes, he said under someone else's locker. Rather than steal them back, he was going to fill them up with axle grease as a prank. He would then wait around til the end of the day to see if someone would step in the goo. 

Unbeknownst to him, we had identical shoes, him and I. The same size, brand, color and everything. Somehow mine and his shoes had gotten mixed up. I had taken his shoes home the night before and then worn them to work the next day. My shoes were out of sight, under a locker, so he'd missed them when he left work, and had to wear his work boots home. 

When he saw his shoes the next day in my locker, he went ahead with his axle grease gooping plan. When I finished my shift, I found the shoes I'd been planning to wear had goop in them. I took them out of my locker and set them on the floor in front of some other lockers. 

That's when I noticed my own pair of shoes under the locker. I went ahead and put them on and saw that they had a slight discoloration from the red dirt at my house. They were definitely my shoes. The shoes with the grease were his. 

When he came back into the locker room, he saw me putting on my shoes and was livid. He thought he'd gotten me back by putting grease in my shoes, but there I was wearing them and not the least bit concerned. Inexplicably, he then put his foot in his own shoe, the one with the axle grease, and started cursing, hopping about on one foot.

"Goddammit! I gooed my own shoe!"

Congratulations, it's an "it"

 

So, we're picking our pronouns, now, are we? I got an email from someone and at the bottom, in the tag line, it mentions that this person's pronoun choices are she, her and hers. It seemed appropriate enough, as the person's name was Jill. 

But I was in the doctor's office the other day, filling out some paperwork so that I could get my Covid shot, and I ran into the same thing. On the form, it asked me to state my preference of personal pronouns. I picked "he, him and his."

Thinking it over, I should have opted for "it and its." I don't really know what I am, truly. It goes beyond gender. It goes beyond even being a human. I simply don't know the totality of what I am. So why should I be restricted to a gender or even a species? I'm fairly confident that I'm some variant of "life form." 

I know it means a lot to some people to express their innermost feelings about their gender identity by making the statement to the world, "I am a he (or she)," in blatant disregard for whatever appendages they may or may not have hanging about their loins. I'm not belittling anyone's struggle with identity or their difficulty feeling accepted by society for who they feel they are. Really, I'm not.

Somewhere along the line, it was deemed necessary to make distinctions based on sex and assign separate pronouns to the different genders. I really don't feel the need to buck the status quo on this one. I've got a penis, so I'm a guy. Guys are hes, hises and hims. Simple. 

But since we're opening up the field to any and every form of self-identification, well, I think I'll self-identify as a purple cabbage. You are what you eat, right? Well, I eat a lot of purple cabbage, and I just happen to like the color purple. Most cabbage you see at the supermarket don't self-identify by gender. Hell, they don't self-identify at all, as far as I know.

That's me. I'm just a vegetable on a shelf. If you refer to me, please use my proper form of pronoun. Say, "It's hungry, and it would like to have breakfast" instead of "he's hungry and would like to have breakfast." Be respectful. Plants are people too.

Unsuccessful jam session with Ernest Serrano, the salad bar prophet

 

                 Actual photo of the salad bar prophet (left) and myself.

I had a jam session scheduled, and some people were over to the house setting up for it. There was a lot to do in that regard, such as building a stage out of lumber. It was all very confusing, since there was no one really in charge. 

I went around to the various rooms of the house and found that most of the people had either left or were sleeping in the guest beds. There were two twin beds in each room, so I'm guessing this had been planned for. 

I went downstairs and started having my own little solo session, playing all of the instruments myself and recording them. I left the door ajar, in hopes that someone would hear me playing and come join in. That never happened, so I went back up in search of the missing band.

Ernest Serrano was the only one I encountered. He told me that the rest of the band was either sleeping or had gone down to the park to smoke marijuana with some prostitutes. Only he specifically said that they went to the park to "NOT smoke marijuana with some prostitutes," which I took to mean that that's exactly what they were doing. 

---

Ernest was not one to mess around. In the church/cult that I attended in the '80s, he was one of the few people who had the balls to stand up to the leader, Pastor Robert Leon. Of course, this got him kicked out, but I'll say this: he went out with a bang.

It was during a worship service, right at the beginning, when, out of the blue, he stood up and proclaimed, "Thus, saith the Lord..." In that moment, I knew something epic was going to happen. No one had ever stood up during the service and prophesied before. This was gonna be good.

"Thus saith the Lord," Ernest repeated the words to a now dead silent room. "You are leading my people astray with your wicked example. You are stealing salads from the salad bar at Carl's Jr. You pay for one salad, and you pass the plate around to the brethren. Woe to you, for you are a stumbling block to the world!"

I don't recall if I ever heard a "get out" out of Robert or not. It was a foregone conclusion. Ernest packed up his briefcase and left the building, never to return. I spoke to him many years later on Facebook, and he was still adamant about the salad issue.

That's all I got. I believe I was going to make a frozen pizza and maybe head down to the park with the other band members, but nothing ever materialized.