Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

I am either being haunted by my grandmother today or something they used on my hair at the salon smells like her perfume. I will never smell Shalimar without thinking of her.

My husband is very easy to rile up. I love it when the forked vein in his forehead appears. It happens when he’s upset.

Tonight I discovered that one of my metal mixing bowls had a dent in it.

Me: What happened to this bowl?
Him: I kicked it.
Me: What? You broke my bowl?
Him: It’ll pound out.
Me: Pound out? That was my mom’s bowl!
Him: It was?
Me: So what else have you broken? Besides my heart?

At this point I was in the pantry trying so hard to keep from laughing that I was making sniffly noises. He thinks I might be crying.

Him: Are you bleeping serious?
Him: Are you bleeping kidding me?
Me: *snort*

I came out of there crying from laughing so hard. He is not pleased with me. Yeah, it was my mom’s bowl, but I think she probably got it at the grocery store for a buck.

P.S. He’s been saying a lot of bleeping things since then. I am still wiping tears from my eyes and giggling.

So today Caroline was crying about something and after she calmed down, her nose was still a little runny. “How does water turn into boogers?” she wanted to know. I explained to her that what was in her nose was not, in fact, water but rather snot.

The knowledge we take for granted…

Couple of highlights from Independence Day.

My house is under constant attack by roaches, and I’m sick of it! Late at night they’re all over the place. Constant amusement for the cats, not so much for me. Oh, and we have been battling meal moths in the pantry for months, and the dirt daubers keep coming in through the cracks around the living room window somehow.

It’s the little bits of the recurring dreams which percolate into my wakefulness, making me wonder if they were dreams or they actually happened. Although the events were unlikely, they just seem so damned real. Is there, somewhere, an elevator without a door which I have to get into and go to the 40th floor? Is there an airplane with soft honey-colored leather seats set into a U-shaped configuration where I sit when I fly places? The ATV I’m on the back on as we round the corner of the fenceline to the fork in the road – to the right is the tank, to the left is the old house where workers meet… will I meet this ATV someday? It’s dark blue with white markings.

The plane. The elevator. The piece of land. Sometimes my old house, which has been dramatically altered. In fact, I had dreamt about the second story being added to it approximately two years before I drove past and realized they did, in fact, add another story. The relief was that my dream-house was brown stucco, and the real one was blue shiplap. Less chimneys, too.

Are these symbols only, or actual players in a future chapter of my life?

Or a past one?

Sometimes the echoes from the dreams are so strong that my conversation trails off as they take hold. “Yes, get some cat food and paper towels… and… puppybiscuit-” I am lost as Walter Mitty. I remember the plane being parked next to the ranch house; walking up its stairs to see what looks like a country-decorated living room complete with old radio and hand-made quilts. As I step out of the plane, the gas station on the horizon goes up in flames. So that’s why there was a crowd out there. Everyone watches it burn.

Do I dream them, or do they dream me? Romantic to picture a battle between Through the Looking Glass and The Real World, both sides solipsistically demanding they are the one. A tug of war, and the knot is centered at the mirror.

Tonight’s decision is resoundingly in favor of real world. I decide that my imagination is playing with me, tickling my nose with dandelions as I lie in the sunny grass with my eyes closed. My mother said there were tales inside of me. She didn’t mention they would fight so hard to get out. I am not a character in a book tonight. I am real as Pinocchio. I wonder: what happens if we go looking for a ranch to buy and I see the one I dream about? Not the ranch-of-my-dreams, but the one I have literally visited in my dreams? This thought intrigues me; it repulses me. It makes me sit forward eagerly in my chair; it makes my skin crawl. I listen for the still, small voice and pray that it is the right one to hear.

Testing out dashboard posting…

Can you identify what movie these scenes come from? Even without the actors in them?

Happy fourth of July to everyone (even you non-US readers!). When you get a moment, you might want to tell Michael Ignatieff how you feel about his essay. You could talk about stuff like “glass houses” and “cast the first stone”.