CafeChatNoir

Is Carmen.  Sure, both the cats think he is the bees knees, but Carmen has decided that the dog belongs to her – not us, but her.  (Mind you, I can’t convince either one that the dog did not magically appear the day they arrived for their comfort and entertainment as it is.)

For quite some time, if the dog is around either Donald or myself, Carmen will come flying out of the woodwork and firmly plant herself in the lap of whomever is entertaining the dog.  Once the dog wandered off, she left as well.  For the longest time, I’ve just figured that Carmen was a jealous little git and wanted to make sure the dog wasn’t getting attention she should be getting.  Then I watched her a little more closely this evening.

The dog was in the basement and I was in the kitchen sitting on the floor with Lily & Carmen.  No sooner did she hear the jingle of his tags coming up to the stairs that Carmen raced to the basement door to wait for him.  Well, he blew by her.   (He has an unfortunate tendency to pretend they aren’t there – I assume it is some sort of self-preservation action on his part.)  Well, she *chased* him and then jumped up in my lap as he approached me.  As I watched, I realized she didn’t give a whit about keeping the dog away from me so I could give her more attention, it was all about her being closer to the dog so he didn’t give *me* more attention.

“Mox!  Mox!  Mox!!!  I’m RIGHT HERE!  Ignore the silly humans, I’m RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!!”

Sure, Lily loves nothing more than to dash up upon Moxley and hip-check him into the wall for laughs, but as far as Carmen is concerned, Moxley is most definitely HER dog.  (He might be more amenable to the idea if she could open the fridge and get out the packages of cheese.)

Perhaps that is why she sleeps in his crate so much – she just keeps hoping he’ll come in and they can snuggle.  I’m quite certain that’s why she ends up under the bed with him every night.

I wonder how many cats have decided that they have a dog of their very own?  I’m sure she can’t be the only one.

The monsters were boarded at Olde Towne Pet Resort again this Christmas.

The cards were obviously written before I had to go up to the cattery because Lily & Carmen refused to get out of their kennels and in their crates. Lily was easy – I just told her, “Lily! Get in the crate!” Done. Carmen decided this would be a good time to have a shitfit and it took 3 people, two pairs of falconers gloves, and a towel to get her in the crate. (I hit her with a bunch of rescue remedy, but it takes a few minutes to kick in, and a lot of it missed her. Next year I will call ahead so they can just dump the bottle on her head before I get there.) They claim she wasn’t like that the rest of the time – I hope they weren’t lying. Of course, once we were in the car, she was fine and didn’t even need any quiet time once we got home and has been purring up a storm since we got back. Lily has been merrily stomping about the house yelling her head off.

Moxley once again earned his status as the AwesomeDog:

“Moxley definitely enjoyed his stay here at OTPR. He was able to relax and look out the window in his huge room he had to himself! He loved his personal playtimes and walks that he had with our staff. Everyone enjoyed having him and he loved the attention. Moxley always behaved and was well mannered, making him that much better to have, We can’t wait for Moxley to return to us soon here at OTPR!”

He did get bored one afternoon and chew a hole in his bed. My fault for forgetting to take one of his toys to chew up. The cats on the other hand…

“Carmen and Lily are definitely a bonded pair. They are gorgeous felines who enjoy basking in the sun. Both Carmen and Lily were reluctant to play with any other felines but each other, though they did enjoy human companionship at times. Overall both girls did well during their stay. We do enjoy each visit with them and look forward to the next.”

In other words, my cats are little snots with a superiority complex who walk around saying, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” and “please move human, you’re blocking my sun.”

Last night I had a goofy dream where Little Bro was all tweaked out because I insisted on using the ice maker in the freezer. There was some upcoming holiday or other event and he kept saying we needed space in the freezer and had to dump the ice and we could buy more ice if we needed it. (The scene was fairly reminiscent of my favorite Thanksgiving episode in Mad About You where the MIL is going on about the fact that they dumped the ice trays to make room in the freezer – because they could just waste all kinds of money buying more ice – while everything else went to hell in a handbasket thanks to the dog…)

But for whatever reason this evening, I was just sitting there and my goofy-assed dreams of last night made me think of another dream that I had when I was much, MUCH younger. It would have likely been when sometime between 1st and 4th grade – while we were either in DC or Virginia Beach and spending some of the summers down at my Grandparents house in Sandy Springs, GA – and it was a summer when my Dad was able to come down south with the rest of us. I remember it as clear as if it were three days ago. (And yet I have to search for my keys on a daily basis.)

I dreamed that I had gone fishing and caught the limit on largemouth bass. (Dad and I fished a fair amount in the summers when he was not deployed, so the concept of fishing to limit in a day wasn’t beyond the limits of reason. The limits of reality? Perhaps, but that’s a whole other dimension.) I told my Dad about the dream the next morning. He informed me that we had obviously gotten our dreams mixed up, because he’d had a dream about being locked in an ice cream parlor. I was totally sure he was right and somehow our dreams had DEFINITELY gotten mixed up somehow, because as much as I loved fishing (and still do) being locked in an ice cream parlor was SO MUCH MORE AWESOME!

Given that I still have nary a clue how 99.44% of the world and life actually works, I can’t say that maybe our dreams didn’t get mixed up somehow. Or maybe they were both spot-on, cause I did and still do love to fish and Dad always did love ice cream. But to have that little random memory pop up tonight did put a very large smile on my face.

Sweet dreams, kids – may they give you some random goofy smile on your face tomorrow.

Yes, it seems that magnificent time-suck having is some DNS issues resulting in it being inaccessible again this afternoon. Not the end of the world, but if you’re a true Facebook junkie, you may find yourself at a loss as to what to do with this newfound free time. Here’s a few suggestions if you decide that curling up in the fetal position and waiting for it to come back up is a little boring.

- Reintroduce yourself to your family. Face to face – you know, talking. Think hard – it’s what you did before Facebook chat
- Read a book.
- Go for a walk (Outside – it’s like FrontierVille, but it renders faster.)
- If you have cats, play with them. (Though they may point out to you that 4PM is for sleeping, and 4AM is for playing – at least mine did.)
- Play ball with the dog.
- Knit something.
- Catch up on some of those TiVo shows you’ve been ignoring while playing Farmville.
- Make something to eat. (Note: Unlike CafeWorld, It will likely take more than three clicks.)
- Take a nap. (Remember sleep? It’s what you used to do before you were constantly trying to level up in Mafia Wars.)
- Figure out how you can be the next Mark Zuckerberg and become a billionaire with a movie treatment.
- If you’re lucky enough to have a job in this economy, your boss would probably like you to do something actually related to said job.

I’d add more, but WOOHOO, FACEBOOK IS BACK UP AGAIN!

First, I have to thank my dog for always making me feel better about myself.  This morning as I made my coffee, I looked at the dog & kittens and said, “OK, what shall we all work on this year?”

Kittens: “What is this ‘work on’ thing you speak of?  We are perfectly cute, there is nothing to ‘work on’.”
Me: “Good point.”

I looked at Moxley.
“Well Mox, you’re the awesomedog and really, there isn’t a thing you need to work on either.  Guess it’s just me that needs to improve.”
Mox: *UUURRRRRPPPP* as he barfs.  (Fortunately in the kitchen, easy cleanup.)
Me: “Aww, OK, that’s nice of you.  You can work on not drinking your water too fast and then running around like a banshee and barfing.”

Beyond the dog not barfing up his water and the cats continuing their quest for world domination via cuteness, there are some other things I’d love to see in 2010.

– Lord Stanley’s Cup coming home with the Washington Caps.  (Who should be playing in the Winter Classic today, but NBC and the NHL are full of morons.)

– Civility in the political arena.  There is this really nifty concept where people “agree to disagree” on various subjects that works quite nicely in lieu of ridiculous name calling.  (Note to all parties: The minute you play the Nazi card, you automatically lose the argument.)

– For the economic recovery to actually make it down to regular people and not just Wall Street.  It’s great that the markets have come back, but until people can go to bed at night without worrying that they will lose their house/job/everything, the recovery isn’t complete.

– More reading.  I need to find my library card again.  (Or just suck it up and pay the $2 for a replacement, which will guarantee I find the old one.)

– More patience with my grandmother.  Things are only going to deteriorate, and she’s never going to get that prescription for Valium that the rest of us so very much need her to have.  On the flip side, I also need to remember she has never, ever called with an actual emergency, and she hasn’t died as a result of getting my voice mail instead of me, so the guilt needs to go out the window.  (Probably all easier said than done.)

– For the awesomedog & superkittens to continue to get along so incredibly well.  And for Moxley to not be quite so nervous when Lily is in “Oh Moxley, I LOOOOOOOOVE you!!” mode.   (Right now she is cuddled up next to him, on her back, fast asleep.  Shame she doesn’t feel secure around him.)

– To learn how to clip the cats’ nails.  I chickened out and had the kennel do it while we were in PHX.  (Which also reminds me, the kitty clippers were the item I forgot to get at PetCo yesterday.)  I suspect this may be the easiest of my 2010 endeavours.

– Improve my housekeeping skills.  OK, the skills are there, just getting off my lazy ass and doing it.  I just have a knack for finding a million things that are more interesting than cleaning.

– Finally, to find a bit of direction in my life beyond just keeping my grandmother from calling 911 to ask what day of the week it is.  I think this will be the most challenging task of this year, as my grandmother’s situation has become a bit all-consuming to me as I have been having a very hard time convincing myself that I do not have to make myself available 24/7, and this has put a real dent in my doing anything new or different.

That a full bottle of wine dropped on a hard surface will make a very different noise than an empty bottle dropped on the same surface?

It’s more of a *thunk* than a *crash* but what it lacks in auditory flair, it more than makes up for with the visual of bits of green bottle everywhere surrounded by  red wine.

Bonus when it happens in the checkout line at the market.

So, the kittens are big enough they can be out and about in the house for a while each day.  Moxley feels the need to supervise their activities.  This results in a fair amount of barking.  Not barking *at* the cats, but *about* the cats.

In short, Moxley is a big tattletale.

It goes something like this…

“MOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”

“The kittens are fighting!”

“They’re running in the house!”

“They’re standing near the bicycle!”

“Lily’s in my spot on the couch!”  (Though he did attempt to take care of this himself by jumping on the couch and sitting on her.  Lily was unfazed.)

“Carmen is laying by the front door!”

“Lily is on my chair!”  (Followed by his jumping on the chair and Lily headbutting him.)

“Lily’s touching me!”

“Carmen went under the shelf by the door and I can’t see her now!”

The kittens have gone back upstairs for lunch and a nap.  The dog is utterly exhausted.

# Do you like your handwriting?

It’s not great by any means, but I do like my handwriting. It might take a second look to read some words, but it’s not as bad as a doc’s prescription.

# Do you prefer to print or write in cursive?

No actual preference, as I will switch between printing and cursive at will. (And yet didn’t realize it until my brother pointed it out to me just the other night.)

# Do you think handwriting should be graded in school?

HELLS Yes. Not necessarily “great cursive” (which we *were* graded on) but being able to write something that others could read at a later date.

# Do you prefer writing in pencil or pen?

Pen! Not that I do the NYT crossword in pen or anything like that, but I do prefer pen to pencil for writing, as pens go faster across the page than pencils do.

# When you write in ink, do you prefer a neutral color such as black or blue, or a fun color like purple or green?

I don’t know why, but I HATE blue ink. Black, pink, purple, green – it’s all good. Blue I will only use when there is no alternative. (I never said I was normal.)

I am a creature of habit. In less complimentary terms it has also been described as “predictable,” “pleasantly boring,” as well as “so ridiculously set in her ways she will never find a man that will put up with her.”

But I’m OK with it. I once asked a bartender if my consistency in ordering made me predictable or pathetic. She said, “It makes you a good customer.” She really knew how to earn her tips.

There is the rare occasion where I deviate from the norm. Not often, but it does happen. And it worries people…

This afternoon I submitted my final paper and put the lid on another class. I then picked up a non-textbook and went outside and sat in the sun and read and dreamed of world travels. It was a good, hot, sunny day and this put the idea of margaritas into my head. Had I actually had the ingredients to make a pitcher here at the house, I would have, but I didn’t, so I kept reading and drinking Gatorade for the course of the afternoon.

Hoofed it up to the pub for some “it’s Friday night/my class is done/my brain can rot for a month” socialization and libations. This is where it went a tad sideways, and eventually I got ratted out to the manager…

I still had margaritas on the brain and near had to jump the bar to keep the bartender from hitting the Guinness tap (she’s a very good bartender) to ask for a margarita.

Her answer? “NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (With a look on her face that said I asked for Red Bull and rat poison.)

But she came through for me and the margs hit the spot head on. Then I asked for a Corona as a chaser. Because you can’t follow a margarita with a Guinness. (They simply do *not* blend well.) This is when the bartender turned to the manager and said, “Cindy’s messing us up!!!!!!!!!” This particular manager, not knowing my habits like the back of his hand, looked at her and said, “Corona is good, what’s the problem?”

My brother nailed it quite well when asked why I was going off the rails as far as my usual consistency goes. “I think she’s in beach mode.” (He’s quite smart.)

Hot sunny day, the beach is a mere two weeks away, I can let my brain rot for a little bit? Yes, I suspect I am in beach mode, which is sunshine, fruity drinks, and Coronas.

It’s not a bad mode to be in, even if it does upend the bartender occasionally.

Walked into the pool hall this evening and things seemed to be perfectly on par with any other night, until a gentleman at the end of the bar said, “I’d like to buy you a beer on my friend’s tab.”

There appeared to be no intimation of further discussion or any other activties, just the simple offer of a beer to a fellow pub-goer.

I shrugged and said, “Well, um, OK.”

In return I got the Obama Terrorist Fist Bump and, “That’s just how we roll.”

I can deal with that. (I did apologize for my beer of choice being an import vs. a domestic.) They also purchased my next adult beverage with no expectations of conversation or well, anything. At the end of the night, the first gentleman did say it would be great if I could “smack [his friend] on the ass and say thanks” – except his friend was then waylaid, so I offered to smack him on the backside and say thanks and call it even. He was completely OK with that, and I had no issues with it. (It’s been a while since I had someone say it was OK for me to smack them…*)

So, I easily caved and gave him a whack on the ass with a sincere thanks for the beer and all went off with silly giggles.

I then realized that I had quite possibly prostituted myself out to someone with a mild spanking fetish for two beers. Not sure what it says about me that it really didn’t bother me that much… Cause it’s not like there appeared to be any expectation of anything else.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink what my next move in life is.

* And I could only do it in exchange for money for the soda machine. But it was great to have a coworker that you could say, “I need to hit someone… I’ll buy you a Coke for it!”

Like many people in the world, I hit happy hour more than a few times a week. The only difference is that my happy hour starts at 2330 hours rather than 1730. I simply run on a different time loop than about 90% of the DC Metro area.

Now, when one takes the late shift, there is a better than good chance that you’re going to run into someone that started their happy hour at 1730 and is still going at it full bore at 0100 hours. Can’t really judge on that one either – it is what it is. We all have bad days. However, this has given me a few insights. One of them being that most of these folks seem to be from the defense contracting sector of the beltway world. (Perhaps just a inevitable issue of living where I live…but it tends to not happen with non-govt-contractors, so I cannot help but sense a trend. Possibly a weird coincidence, but I think not.)

That all being said, I can remain quite unfazed when someone walks up and says, “I’m quite inebriated, but…” Because I could tell you were six sheets (yes, twice the traditional three sheets) to the wind even before you opened your mouth. I will certainly not be offended by the fact that alcohol may have helped you walk up to someone you don’t even know and say something complimentary. Let’s face it, alcohol is essentially liquid Xanax when consumed in sufficient amounts. (And a hell of lot easier to wean yourself off when you don’t need it anymore.)

However, there comes a point where you’ve just had one Vodka Xanax too many. And you’re describing in Cinemax-worthy detail of the ways in which you would be a GREAT boyfriend. (Or the ways in which you *think* you’d be a great boyfriend.) That is when you’ve crossed the line from “courage to talk to a stranger” to “courage to be a total freaking idiot in front of a complete stranger”… This is the point I will create an invisible super-awesome boyfriend out of whole cloth if needed. (And oh yes, I will do that if I have to. I am not above that kind of deception when required.) Or an invisible boyfriend based on a real person who I know will go along with the story if needed*… And trust me, said invisible boyfriend will be all that and a bag of chips, far and away beyond anything you think you can offer. If you’re lucky this is the point where your spectaculary more sober friend will come up and distract you with something shiny before you embarass yourself any further. (And apologize profusely for your behavior. And 5 minutes later will say, “Crap, I lost him again!”)

I will not argue that alcohol can be an excellent social lubricant. There have been countless social and pseudo-social events I have attended over the years that have been made exceptionally more tolerable with a dirty goose martini to kick things off. But really guys, you need to know where that line is – and stay on the right side of it. Or at least have friends that will keep you from speaking to any strangers when you go careening sideways over said line.

Just sayin’…

*Thank you, twas a lifesaver.
Black 47: The Reels

But damned if I know what it is. I can say with a fair amount of confidence that Timmy isn’t stuck in a well anywhere, so that’s something.

However, given the wide range of “sitting up with paws folded” cuteness posistions can mean, I really have no idea. It can mean any of the following:

Let’s go play ball!! It’s the middle of the night and the light-up balls have disappeared in the backyard.
I’m hungry! Except that he’s gotten multiple treats since I got home.
Rub my tummy! Did that and it made no difference.
Just sit on the floor with me! Did that, too. Still getting the ‘dog imitating a meerkat’ routine.

Sat down and cuddled with him one more time, and he just gave up. He’s now on his blankie on his side of the couch looking decidedly annoyed with my ability to read his mind.

Note to self: Find the light up balls so we can play catch at night…

So, I’ve had a head/chest/ear thing going on this week, with a lovely cough, the cough really being the most annoying of it all.  I try to avoid cough/cold medicine, not because I am organic or any of that stuff, it’s because whatever they put into it that makes it work turns me into a cranky bitch.

So, I started with hot tea and lemon and honey and cough drops.  Worked semi-decently.  Not great, but better than nothing.

Then I decided I would beat the cough into submission with beer.  This worked surprisngly well.  Which makes sense when you think about it – alcohol does have mild anesthetic properties, and hence, less coughing.  The only problem with this is it’s not a practical 24/7 solution – mainly due to my own shortcomings – I’ve not been a member of the beer for breakfast club for years.  Also, there is the issue of your liver deciding to drunk dial your inner ear and make you walk into a wall.  No solution is foolproof.

This morning I gave up and went to the store to buy cough syrup.  Dammit.  I get pissed when I can’t intimidate my own body into doing what I want and I have to bring in Vicks products.  Of course, it’s been at least a year since I needed to get cough syrup and of course, all the formulations have changed.  So I’m literally sitting on the floor in the CVS with half a dozen bottles of medication trying to find something that doesn’t have Phenylephrine or Pseudoephedrine in it, cause I have figured out that’s what makes me a very angry little person.  Success!  Dextromethorphan only.

This stuff doesn’t work for crap.  It could be the fact that I can’t actually down an entire dose of it at once, thanks to the wonderful “berry blitz” flavor.  You can’t tell me with all the scientific advances we’ve made over the years, we can’t do better than cough syrup that tastes like a wild cherry life saver that has been under the couch cushions for three months.  Maybe it’s because it doesn’t have the “make me psycho” ingredients.  All I know is that this stuff definitely no longer has any benefit whatsoever for me.

Not only did the beer work better, it also had the added bonus of making everyone around me more attractive.

I’m back to the hot tea and honey and cough drops.  And I’ll just tell my inner ear to ignore any prank calls from my liver later tonight.

And yet, not 100% because I am quite shallow.

This afternoon I spied a cell phone in the grass between the sidewalk and street while I was out running.  While I did think about leaving it so the owner could backtrack to it, that was outweighed by the scattered rainstorms and the potential for kids deciding to play street hockey with it.  So, I picked it up and took it home.

Tried to call the phone to leave a voice mail for the owner, thinking they might be checking it remotely.  Great idea except that the voice mail wasn’t activated.  No “Home” or “Mom” or “ICE” in the contact list.  Put a found posting on Craigslist and a note at the bus stop where I found it.  Sent a text message to a female contact in the recent calls list.  (Dunno, just didn’t want to send a text to one of his potenially whackjob friends – mainly because I know how many whackjobs I have in my own contact list.)  And waited.

The phone rang and I answered – the owner calling from a friend’s phone!  He apparently parks his car right near the bus stop and dropped/kicked it out of the car.  Got the address for the drop off – he said, “You can drop it off at any hour, someone will be up.”  AKA, we have a house of half office workers, half restaurant industry. :)  I was on my way out, no big deal to make a 1/4 block detour to drop it off.

And this is where shallow comes in.  The voice was of a 6′2″ Tennessse farm boy between the ages of 22 to 35.  When I dropped off the phone, I was met by a lovely Indian lady at the door (wife/girlfriend/landlady/roommate) who seemed to be aware of the situation and happily accepted the phone (or had no idea and thought, “Hey, free cell phone!”)

So the phone was returned.  (Hopefully to the right address.)  But dammit, I wanted to see the face that went with the voice!!

But the phone is back with it’s rightful owner (in theory) and that has to be good enough.  And I can live with that.

***Warning to all gentlemen who may think I am dateable – this may very well change your mind***

I don’t know about anyone else out there, but if I don’t dream, I don’t have a good night’s sleep.  When things are going even marginally well, I dream nearly every night.  (And it doesn’t matter how long I sleep, as long as I dream.  12 hours with no dreams is worse than 6 hours with dreams.)  My dreams are exceptionally vivid, and about 3/4 of the time I remember the details.  (Mainly if I happen to wake up near the end of the dream and make a mental note of it.)  Otherwise, I do at least remember the fact that I had some kind of whacked out dream.

I’ll admit it – my subconscious mind is much smarter than my conscious mind.  I lost count of how many seriously screwed up help desk tickets I figured out because my subconscious mind took over and when I woke up, I had the answer.  Or, when my subconscious mind told me it was time to move on from a job that I kept hanging on to.

Such as the dream I had about physically putting out fires around the office in one job I had.  Mind you, I did have practical experience with it when my boss set his trash can on fire, but still – it was a sign that things simply were not right.

There was the dream about picking up a neighbor’s key after the electrician had come and calling said neighbor to let him know I had the key.  I actually had to call my neighbor the next day and ask if I’d called him in the middle of the night about the key.  (This is also compounded by the fact that I have had people call me in the middle of the night and I was in such a deep sleep that I didn’t remember the conversation.)  Like I said, exceptionally vivid dreams.

So dreams = good sleep.  Unless they’re nightmares of some sort.  And for the last 6 months or so, I’ve either not dreamed at all (which is bad) or had nightmares (not ‘getting shot and killed’ nightmares but just as disturbing in their own way and resulting in no real sleep.)  They have been one of two:  Either I can’t get the damn phone to stop ringing (my grandmother calling every freaking 5 minutes) or, my Mom, Dad, and/or my Grandfather showing up (all deceased) and getting into LARGE arguments about why they aren’t here to take my grandmother onto wherever ones goes when they shuffle off this mortal coil.  Neither one is conducive to a decent night’s sleep, whether it’s 3 hours or 12.  (I stopped asking my brother if I had ignored an early phone calls after a while – I realized he’d ask why I didn’t answer if she’d actually been calling – but that’s how stupidly real they were.)

After this last trip to Phoenix, I knew I’d be seriously wound up for a while (which I was) and adding Mother’s Day and then my parent’s birthdays into the mix (yes, same day, same year, and yes, May is slightly rough, why do you ask?) my poor little brain apparently couldn’t even begin to come up with some good action-adventure stories for me.  So I haven’t even been dreaming at all.  Which sucks.

It sucks on levels beyond just the fact that no dreams = crappy sleep.  When my mind is allowed to really wander, I have some seriously whacked out dreams.  Not scary, just off the wall and entertaining as hell.  Some folks do dinner and a movie – I do sleep and a movie.  I love my whacked out dreams – especially because I also tend to have lucid dreams, which makes it even more fun.  You *know* you’re dreaming, so you’re ten feet tall and bulletproof and can fly and breathe underwater and any number of cool-assed things can happen.

And as I said, it’s been a good 6 months plus since I had that kind of fun at night all by myself.  (And drinks/no drinks doesn’t matter.  I do know if I take anything stronger than Advil before bed to kill a sleep-preventing headache/backache/whatever, I will not dream.  So, I don’t self-medicate to sleep.  I will just stay awake until I think I can sleep.)

When I went to Phoenix, Sharyn* assured me many times over that things weren’t as bad as I thought (I only get the bitchy negative calls from my grandmother, so I know I don’t get the whole picture) and I did get to see how my grandmother instantaneously became calmer (and nicer!) when Sharyn was around.  It just didn’t really sink into the recesses of my mind until the past few days – and I *know* it has sunk in.  Not only am I dreaming again, they are the really fun, cool, whacked out dreams that have nothing to do with family.  (Unless someone randomly enters stage left for no reason – and if they get killed by a ninja, it’s their own damn fault for showing up.)

A quick sample from the past couple nights where it’s back to “sleep and a movie” rather than “sleep at your own risk”:

– I’m in Miami and protecting a 5 year old from a hail of gunfire and explosions.  Sounds like a nightmare, but no – I had kickass ninja skills and we both emerged unscathed.  (I probably should stop watching CSI: Miami, but hey, we escaped the bad guys!  That and a lot of my dreams key off what I’ve seen on TV.  3 seasons of The West Wing in 4 days – I had dreams about working in the White House for 3 weeks.)

– I’m working at my old help desk job and they are cutting people left and right.  Suddenly, Gabriel Byrne shows up as the employee advocate!  (Oh if we’d only had a union and him as our rep back when I actually did tha for a living.)  Telling management that if they force us to stay as pitifully understaffed as we were, we still needed more support and that we needed to have at LEAST one “wizard” on staff for us to all consult.  (Not like a Harry Potter wizard, more like Apple’s “geniuses” – I’m not *that* much of a geek.)  Of course, also a sad note on how my mind works, when I should have been seriously hitting on Mr. Byrne, I was back at the tech manager’s desk offering him a dollar for the soda machine in exchange for my being allowed to punch him.  (Which we actually did when I worked there.)  But, damn, GABRIEL BYRNE advocating for us help desk punks!!  If that’s not a dream, I’m not sure what is.

– I’m sitting in front of a stack of papers, not sure if it’s work or classwork, but get a call from someone I am quite interested in.
“Hey, would you like to do something tonight?”
*Looking at random papers in front of me*
“I’d love to, but I have all this work I need to take care of.”
“Oh, OK.”
Hang up the phone, pause a moment.  I DID NOT JUST DO THAT, DID I????  (I actually double checked my phone in the morning.  I have had phone conversations that I did not remember because they were in the middle of a deep sleep.  Apparently I did NOT turn anyone down by accident at 3AM.)

– I am the stunt double or some close extra for Emily Deschanel in Bones.  I spent the whole time running around shooting things with David Borneaz, and he wanted to go for drinks after the shoot.  Not so bad!  If I can figure out how to get a repeat on that one – I may never wake up again.

So, haven taken a few minutes to analyze my subconscious for the past couple days, I see why I’m far and away more relaxed and less strung out than I was even this time last week.

Let’s all go have some fun and whacked out dreams.

*The freaking angel sent from heaven or Minnesota who looks in on my grandmother every day and keeps her on an even keel.  Something I could never manage in my entire life.

So, last night summer was officially kicked off (at least for me) by heading up into the city and meeting Plaidy and Liss and going to see Carbon Leaf at the 9:30 club.

Now, it’s been forever and a day since I’ve done a girls night out, so I was really looking forward to this.  98% of my social interactions are with guys, which is great, cause I can spit and scratch and swear around them, but we don’t really talk about a lot of girl stuff.

In short, we had a blast – can’t remember a night where I have laughed as long and hard as I did last night.  Carbon Leaf was great, Nellie’s has really good empanadas, and Duffy’s can pour a good pint.  Or three.

Some of the more memorable utterances of the evening…

“Do I go towards 11th or 15th street?  I just managed to walk in a circle.  But I know where Ben’s Chili Bowl is now.”

“How about Nellie’s?”
“Sure.”
“It’s a gay bar.”
“Switching teams may be an improvement.”

“The entire Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue is sitting at that table.”

“It’s just like the sports pub at home.  I’m not getting laid there either.”

“I’m a straight single girl sitting in a gay bar – the fact that my martini doesn’t qualify for happy hour pricing is the least of my problems.”

“The ‘nice’ filter in my brain has been switched off.”

“Twenty Two??!?!”
“I thought he was older!”

“And he was missing an arm.”

“I’m 5′11, I should be able to find guys that aren’t short.”

“I just need to find one.  The harem was too hard to deal with.”

“Grab his ass.  He’ll move.”
“Umm.”
“You’re straight, he’s not, he won’t take it the wrong way.”

“If it’s the 9:30 club, why do the hand stamps say 8:15?”

“The opening act went on early?  This is rock and roll, it’s supposed to run late!”

“See the guy in the hat?  Do you think that’s his girlfriend there?”
“I think the hat is doing very bad things for his nose.”

“I’m pretty sure the guy standing next to me is a serial killer.”
“Do you want to switch places?”
“No, it’s more an observation.  If you hear about 20 hookers being slashed in 10 days, this is the guy.”

“I’m sorry, but the kitchen is closed for the evening.”
“No problem, we’re here for the ‘and pub’ aspect.”

So, it would seem that the bar has been set extremely high for the rest of the summer.

If you exercise regularly (or even not so regularly) you may know that a really good workout can leave you in a happy-sleepy-euphoric state.  (Especially if there is swimming involved, at least for me.)

Now, if it is a late evening workout, there’s nothing wrong if you decide to pop by the pub on the way home for a pint and a to-go order of wings, especially since you’re probably not feeling like whipping up a hot recovery snack when you get back to the old homestead.

Just keep in mind that no amount of happy-sleepy-post-exercise-euphoria can make your chapped lips withstand hot wings…

I’d write more, but I have to go drink a quart of milk and slather a block of lard on my lips and hope the pain stops in the next 24 hours or so.

“You have an important new business development shaping up.”

Sounds awesome.  Except I have no known business developments on the horizon.  Kinda takes the wind out of it.

Usually I get useless ones that say something along the lines of, “You’re a shiny person!”, but tonight’s was a little different.

“Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned.”

Kinda gives me something to think about.

Up to the pub for beer and SportsCenter this evening.  Nice time, and I come home, ready to curl up and nod off to dreamland on the couch – forget actually trekking upstairs, I’m freaking TIRED today for no good reason.  Come in, let Moxley out, apologize profusely for the fact that the backyard floodlight went out sometime in the past two hours and promise that I’ll get it replaced tomorrow.

Dog back in.  Dog out again.  Dog back in.  (We call it the in-out syndrome.)  Dog out one last time.  Dog back in, with what appears to be one of his stuffed animals in his mouth.

Except it’s a little on the large size for any of his toys.

Trots over to the middle of the living room while I am shutting the back door, drops it, and trots back to me, EXTREMELY proud of himself.

I get a better look at his gift to me.

A squirrel.  A very dead squirrel.  A very LARGE dead squirrel.

I am not horrified that he has brought me a squirrel.  He’s a dog.  Dogs do that.  I really wish he HADN’T brought it in, but not much I can do at this point, since I didn’t even see what he had until it was too late.  Given the amount of rigor and/or effects of deep freeze, I’m fairly certain the dog did not actually dispatch said squirrel himself and it had died of natural causes and fell out of a tree into the yard.  (Quite possibly on his head.)  Given his lifelong quest for keeping me safe from the squirrels via chasing and barking, I really do understand how pleased he is with himself over this spoil of his continuing war against Sciurus Carolinensis.

I am very rattled nonetheless, mainly because of my concern of this turning into some zombie squirrel movie where the damn thing comes back to life while I’m trying to get it out of my living room.  So of course, my first move is to call my brother.  Why?  I don’t know, but talking to someone seemed to be the logical thing to do next.  (OK, maybe not talking as much as freaking out in as even a tone as possible.)  It went something along the lines of “YOUR DOG brought a dead squirrel in the house.  YOU NEED TO TELL HIM NOT TO DO THAT ANYMORE.”

Needless to say at this point, I’m certainly not sleepy anymore as I look at the dog and tell him, “Take it back outside.  Please.  Seriously.  It’s like Mom always told me, ‘Wild things need to stay wild’ and I couldn’t bring frogs in the house, so you can’t bring squirrels in the house.  Take it back out, please!”

No, Mox is still sitting on the other side of the room, tail wagging, so very pleased with himself and not quite understanding why I am not as thrilled at this gift as he is.

OK, so the dog isn’t going to take the squirrel back out, and I’m not going to wait until my brother gets home because frankly, it could thaw and come back to life in that time, and the last thing I need is an undead squirrel running around the house.  First, I thank the dog for his present and give him a pat on the head and ask one more time if he would please take it back outside.  No need to get mad at him, cause he won’t understand anyway and he’s SO proud of himself.  Sure, I’m not thrilled with him at all, but scolding him isn’t going to do anything but confuse him.

OK, time to get the late, great, and damn large squirrel out.  The upside is that he appears to be near frozen solid, so there are no bits-o-squirrel scattered about the living room.  Really, nothing more than a trash bag needed.  But not the kitchen garbage bags.  The undead squirrel will leap to life, come right through them and kill me.  Nope, time for not one, but two of Costco’s super heavy duty 55 gallon contractor rated trash bags.  The environmental lobby can bitch all they want about waste, I am not going to have my obituary read, “Killed by an undead squirrel.”

Get the damn HUGE critter wrapped in one bag and deposited in the other one.  I know we have pretty porked out squirrels around here, but I never have been this close to one of them – my god, they are very well fed.

Out to the trash can and thanking my lucky stars that it will not get above freezing tonight, and that tomorrow is trash day.  I feel ZERO guilt for any noise in getting the bin out to the curb – it **was** a low volume trash week for us and I wasn’t even going to put it out for collection, but now that there is a dead mammal in it, all bets are off.

The dog keeps walking over to where he left the squirrel and looking and me wondering where his awesome find went.

I really need to get that floodlight replaced so I can see what the dog is bringing in before he brings it in.

Inauguration Day will be a historic day to be sure, but my plans are quite sedate.  I’ll be taking in the festivities from my comfy couch, likely with a warm blanket and a hot cup of coffee.  There’s a good chance that I’ll head up to the pub for a celebratory pint that evening.  No parties, no big food extravaganza, just another day with a historic event in the middle of it.

However, I apparently am the only one taking that approach.  I went to the market and was greeted with a sign saying that “In Order To Serve You Better On Inauguration Day, We’ll Be Opening at 4AM on January 20th.”

4 AM?  I’m out in the suburbs.  It’s not like our local streets will be jammed with traffic all day.  Even if people are having parties, lots and lots of very large parties, I am not quite sure I see the need for the grocery store to be open at 4 in the morning.

1.  Stay awake very late so that your prisoners are up as well.  Get them sufficiently wound up that they cannot possibly sleep for at least another 2 hours after you go to bed.

2.  Have the thermostat turned way down and provide blankets that aren’t warm enough.  Sleeping while cold is exceptionally difficult if it’s not cold enough to induce death by freezing.

3.  Lull the prisoners into a false sense of quiet by having the radio in the other room at a reasonable level.  Even turn it off after a while.  Then turn it up to the threshold of pain in the middle of the night for fun.

4.  When you do get up, be sure to make as much noise as possible!

5.  Have blackout shades in the prisoner’s room so that they have no sense of time and will not wake when the sun comes up.  That way you can call the neighbors and gossip about how they’re “still not up yet” and act like you’ve been up for several hours when in  fact you’ve only been up for an hour.

Just some handy tips for the next time you want visitors in your house to be running on 3 hours of sleep a night.  Trust me, it works!

I say Slinky Cat…

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/2008/11/noodle-kitteh-i.html

Safe For Work.

So, I’m sitting here watching college hockey and enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon when suddenly the dog goes NUTS barking at something.

I take a look outside – no dogs or cats or squirrels or moose.  Then I look up a bit and see it.

The neighbors directly across the street are on their roof cleaning out their gutters this afternoon.

Now, I’m not quite sure why this upsets my dog so greatly – I can only guess he’s concerned for their safety.  (He’s also a touch obsessed with them anyway, there is a fair amount of activity at the house in general and he likes to sit and watch through the window.)

Now, what I want to know is why he doesn’t really look out for ME?

– No!  Don’t try that recipe, it will be terrible!
– No!  Don’t answer the door, it’s political campaigners!
– No!  Don’t doze on the couch, you’ll get a crick in your neck!
– No!  Don’t wear that shirt, don’t you see where you spilled something on it earlier?

I got a tech on the phone at Cox Communications who…

– Had a sense of humor
– Wanted to be helpful (though there really wasn’t anything he could do)
– Saw no need to “pull up my account” just to give me info on the outage in my area

I called to see if I could get any info on the cable beyond the generic recording of “they’re working on it” and I got a very nice guy who explained that they didn’t have a timeline on when it would be done, because it was a fiber cut and they just didn’t know how long it would take to fix it.  Then he asked,

“It wasn’t you that did it, was it?”
“Um, no, pretty sure it wasn’t me.”
“Are you sure?  Because if it was, I am going to call all the other customers and send them to your house.”

Usually I get some cranky beeyotch who insists on pulling up my entire account history before she sees fit to give me any system status information.

XKCD.com on the eve of the potential end of the world…

Good Moms let you lick the beaters when they make cake.

Great Moms turn the mixer off first.

Happy Mother’s Day.

With something that made me smile. (I probably didn’t get enough sleep.)

Waltzing Cupcakes! (SFW)