Today it:
1.) was the ugly-not-refreshing kind of rainy, dark at 4:30 p.m.
and I:
2.) had the day off so I
3.) made some necklaces while I listened to Nick Drake
which is:
4.) the best / worst music for this kind of day.

Ace is mine. The rest are for sale on Etsy, even though they are still less than smooth-edged.

On Sunday my dad bought an old rifle – “you know, the cowboy kind” – and later at home sat in his rocking chair and loaded three shells into it while my mom talked on the phone. When she passed the phone off to him, she started examining the gun – not checking the action and unaware of what he’d been doing – aimed at the ceiling, and fired a round through the roof. My dad retells the story last night on the phone, gasping for air, laughing hysterically, as if delightfully unaware of his own mortality.

Arms are for hugging, kids.

and all the friends that you once knew are left behind
they kept you safe and so secure
amongst the books and
all the records of your lifetime
what will happen in the morning
when the world it gets so crowded that you can’t
look out the window in the morning?

Oh also, last night I had a dream that I ran into Ian Keplinger in a barn at a fair and one of his arms had been medically or otherwise amputated. I had to stop for a moment and think, “did he have this arm the last time I saw him? Would I look stupid if I asked what happened because I should know because he’s been this way for awhile and I’ve just forgotten?”…… I hate feeling stupid in dreams. Especially over something so obvious as Ian having his left arm or not having his left arm the last time I saw him. So in the dream I started thinking about the real-life last time I hung out with him, and I remembered that it was the night that Doug, Chad, and Ian found a bunch of half-inch wooden dowel rods in Mikey’s room as we moved him out, and then spent a good half an hour beating each other with them in the kitchen. I was finally forced to take them away (in real life) when Chad and Doug backed Ian into a corner and he was begging for mercy. I decided, in the dream, that Ian could not have dowel-rod-sword-fought two other grown men with only one arm, so he must have had both, and so I should ask him what happened. But then I woke up. When I woke up I thought about the dream and remembered my first memory of Ian (and Stefan)… they were in a barn stall at the fair, chillin’ with one of their grandpa’s hogs.

How’d a memory from 20 years ago and a memory from two years ago fuse themselves with the weird book I’m reading (involving teleportation and not making it back home with all of your molecules intact and thus having a weird deformity or missing limb) and make it into last night’s dream? I want to be a neurologist.

Last night I had one of those unprepared-for-a-test dreams, only it was totally different. Total panic and that ”how did this even happen?” feeling, only there was a baby. My baby. A boy, no name. Apparently everyone at home sort of forgot that Mikey and I were having a child… I can hear my mother-in-law giggling a “no way in hell” giggle… so there was no shower. No one had gotten us any baby stuff, and we hadn’t remembered to get anything either. So we come home from the hospital with our new baby boy, who actually looks about four months old (think Aaron on Lost… actually, I think it WAS Aaron), and I immediately get online to order a bunch of cloth diapers and covers. Bummis, to be specific. I get really upset and nearly hysterical about the fact that we are going to have to use ONLY disposable diapers for the six to ten days that the shipping confirmation is telling me it will take for the diapers to arrive. This is the only thing I’m upset about… not that the baby has no clothes or that none of our family or friends even remember that he exists.

I got a new issue of Mothering yesterday and left it on the table with the other mail because I didn’t have time to read any of it. Kelly Swan, this particular demented dream is YOUR fault!

I have the day off tomorrow, and have made myself a whole list of things that I plan to accomplish. We’ll see how I do.

I’m never gonna know you now
but I’m gonna love you anyhow

I had another murder dream last night – second or third this year. I was standing in (not my) yard, and some really really young kid pulled up in a vintage mustang convertible and asked if I wanted a ride.

“Where to?”
“Anywhere.”

And I pulled out a gun and emptied the whole clip into his chest.

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME??

I keep telling myself that yesterday Mikey, John and I discussed guns, and this is why I had this dream. And plus I sell collectible cars at my job.

That reminds me: sometime last week a mid-thirties looking guy came in and wanted to look at a bunch of different cars – average $50 - that are kept in floor to ceiling glass display cases. We looked at a couple of Bentleys, a Porsche, a BMW… at some point I asked if he was the collector or if he was looking for a car for someone else. He just stared at me for a moment and then said “well…. I collect the real thing. These are just for my little son.”

Oh. Cool. I collect… a Honda.

I think that hearing about other people’s dreams is really boring unless they are especially demented, and so I try not to talk about my dreams too often. However, I can’t pass this one up.

For the past several years, I’ve had a dream every couple of months or so about hiding dead bodies. They aren’t people that I’ve killed, and they are rarely people that I know. Sometimes I know who killed them (it’s always someone close to me), and know that it’s my job to get rid of them. Usually I end up frusturated because I’m doing it all wrong, or freak out later because I realize that I did a totally half-assed job and the bodies are going to be found and Mikey (or whoever) is going to be totally let down that I couldn’t do one simple task right – that I just carelessly threw them in a ravine or whatever. Always the body-hider, never the killer. Usually a really bad body-hider.

The night before last, I was the killer. Sniper-quality. Four men, all strangers. Three of them I shot expertly in the head as I was falling through the air, sprawled on the ground, pinned to a wall – impossible things. The other one died because I beat his head repeatedly against the hood of a red car until he stopped moving. None of them bled. They were all wearing suits and red ties. I didn’t care about any of it. When I woke up all of my muscles hurt. Did I kill people in my sleep for the first time because I am messed up, or because I’d just rewatched the pilot episode of Oz?

Last night I had a dream that Mikey and I had a new baby girl and he missed her birth because he was at band practice. I also didn’t care about that. I’m getting really apathetic in my dreams.