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.