2002-10-22 - 8:09 a.m.

Well.

Ok, now that I started with the obligatory starting word, I'm free to continue on with my entry.

Damn this little desk thingie is cold. The metal ring around the edge of the table top is icy against my forearms and makes me desire to have a poodle affixed to the edge of my desk for the purpose of leaning my forearms against.

Right. So yesterday.. um.. I'm just stuck in yesterday when it comes to my entries. Why is that so interesting? It is kind of the point of this diary to be a record of who I was, and yet I take that to mean that when I am writing I should carefully lay down a history of who I was the day before. I still haven't got the point that if I write about who I am right now, then later on it will be who I was.

So, screw yesterday. At least, I'm not going to wrack my brain trying to come up with every little thing I did, how well work went, etc. I may definitely mention yesterday if I feel like it. I'm releasing restrictions, not creating new ones.

I want cereal.

Anyway, yesterday I had a wicked headache at night. I didn't go to my AA meeting in part because I was feeling so shitty. Instead I tried to invite myself over to Tanis' place and have tea but she wasn't in the mood for company, so instead I had a bath and read my big book, then got ready to totter off the bed around 8:30.

I made spaghetti sauce last night, and a damn nice double batch at that, biatch. So I had to take that off the stove and put it away after my bath, and around that time Tom called to say he wasn't getting any content with this version of the app that he is demoing today. I got him to switch ClientIDs and everything worked fine which is mighty strange indeed. It's all Dan's fault. :oP

So some things delayed my entry to bed. Ack. I want to erase what I just wrote. What is the point? Except for the double batch, biatch, it's all so .. um.. why would I want to read this dry pasty word-pat�? Hmmmmmm.. I'm always having this battle. Am I writing from the point of view of who I am, the person who wants someone to listen to every little detail because that's what I care about right now (I think?) or am I writing for the person who is going to be reading this, who wants to be entertained and read deep revealing meaty texts.

I think I write best when I don't even think of that stuff. The trick is to get my mind off it long enough to let go and let flow. Kind of like having to pee.

I feel extremely rested this morning. For once I went to bed really and truly early, at least by 10:00! I listened to the Ocean Sounds cd I burned yesterday and it was great. About halfway through the first whalesong track I started to hear the girl upstairs moaning which was very distracting. But still, the ocean sounds are a great concept for sleep assistance. I don't remember the last surf sound track at all. I think I want to make a whole cd of just surf sounds. You can't beat that peace.

The gulls can be distracting, though. I'd need night-time surf sounds. Preferrably the kind with the rattling of pebbles being dragged back and forth by the waves.

It's amazing how many things I don't write in here in case my mother ever reads it.

So not much is going on with me right now. I think that's a good thing... I need a simplification period. I need to slow down again. Luckily I feel that work is not overwhelming, even though I'm being very busy and productive. Normally I would feel opressed by the 9 to 5, but instead I look forward to the labour because, really, that's all I have to do to haul in a fat paycheque. Other people have to go look for jobs, or work shitty ones. I learn about how to program computers all day for money. I'm basically getting the best possible education and being paid for it. What more could I ask for?

It's all a matter of perspective.

I talked to my grandfather last night. They are in Amherstburg visiting my parents on their way to Florida. I told him how he was a good example for me to follow: work hard and retire with a summer home in Florida. I also said I felt like I was starting late with my savings and he told me that was nonsense because he started much later than me. He did, however, agree that it was a very good thing that I'm seriously managing my finances now.

My grandparents have been the picture of supportive figures to me. They've been content to let me go out on my own and screw up as much as I wanted, and they've just stayed right there for me, being continually supportive whenever I tried to better myself. They've never judged me or given up on me.. I could learn a lesson there.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing them again when I finally move closer to them. I may even make it down to Florida this year to visit them if my job holds out long enough for me to make some extra money. It won't take long at my current wage to save some extra cash.... we'll see.

I want to write down some of the stuff I dreamed about last night before I go. I woke up at 5:30 this morning after one of the dreams and I lay in bed thinking about it. As I was laying there, I got the strangest memory of something that I thought had really happened, but that I subsequently realized I had dreamed about instead. It was a dream I'd had within the last year - I think - and which I'd forgotten, but which came back very strongly and with a lot of details, each of which however being rather fuzzy.

So first, last night's dream. Somehow, money had been stolen or found or something like that.. big piles and wads of cash, like millions worth. This had been stashed away somewhere and it was our task now to go and find it. It doesn't seem like the money was stashed in last night's dream, rather that it was from a previous dream and this dream was the story of retrieving it.

The first part I remember is sitting around a table with some police or investigative people that were asking about it and acting like I knew nothing about it. At one point, some guy at the table (a co-conspirator it turns out) shook some salad dressing onto a leaf of lettuce and offered it to the police who ate it. I thought it strange at the time and I believe that the later absence of the police was something I explained to myself using the fact of the lettuce eating to say they were given some sleeping drug in liquid form, shaken on the leaves.

Annnnnnnnnyway. Sort of irrelevant. The next thing I remember is talking to these kids and asking them if they knew where the money was. I'm thinking it's the son of the guy who stole the money or something.. anyway, the kid knows, so me and these three kids go to my car.

The car is my parent's old toyota corolla. An 88, this thing is pretty shaky. Not only that, but in a recurrent feature of driving it, the brakes hardly work. The next part is important and .. scary.

I open the driver's side door and the eldest of three kids is sitting in the driver's seat. Nothing much happens or is said, but the kid moves over to the passenger side. The important thing is what I was thinking. In my head, I went immediately into dominant parent mode where I was giving the kid an evil stare to let him know I was displeased and that he should move right away. Also, I was patiently standing there willing to act like a child until he moved. I remember thinking this was a good plan.

So with one kid out of the way, the next problem becomes that the two other kids are arguing or sitting in the wrong places. They need to switch, but the younger one is being stubborn. So I tell the kid to move. He doesn't listen, ignores me instead. At this point I yell at the top of my lungs for him to move. No go. So I grab the kid and manhandle him into the air, all his hard stubborness gone and replaced by fearful tears. But of course I'm being gentle, I think. I gently lower him into his seat thinking all the while that I'm doing ok and that this is normal and that there, now he sees that if he'd only do what I tell him everything would be fine.

All of this stuff happened in practically no time. Maybe 5 seconds. But the thoughts that were going through my head during this time came back to me very strongly when I lay awake at 5:30. Some part of my on this inside thinks of these tactics as the natural way to deal with children. This bothers me immensely. Maybe it's not actually the way I think I should act, but it actually did happen to be the way I acted in my dream, and I take my dream self seriously.

So we take off and right away are having troubles since the car hardly has any brakes. Out onto the highway we go, and I'm driving in the wrong lane on the highway. Come to think of it, I was on the right side, but the traffic was on the other side. Regardless, I can't slow down enough to stop for cross traffic so I throw the car into a skid and luckily we end up facing the right way. The spot is just ahead! Second left!

We come careening into some parking lot and stop then enter a gym shower. Suddenly the dream changes and I'm following just behind two people. They are going through these half-hidden doors and I'm following them by going through the door that just closed kind of thing. There are about 20 doors in a row, all in small rooms, and it's quite the interesting path. This reminds me of my earliest childhood for some reason. I've had lots of dreams of finding interesting paths through houses.

We eventually get past civilization and into some muddy, sandy caverns. Here we find the final room before the treasure. It's all decorated in Christmas themes and there is one access hole that I can't remember and the other is a fireplace. So I grab my backpack and stuff myself up the chimney and lo and behold the people just ahead of me have found the stash and are whooping and stuff.

So I get a wad of wrapped up cash to stuff in my backpack and head back down the chimney. When I get down there, it's like a convention of tourists has arrived and there are a dozen 40ish women talking about what makeup products to buy and looking out the windows. (There were no windows before, we were in a cavern). So now my job is to hide my loot and pack up and leave. However, there are things strewn all over the floor, right down to the cap for my contact lense solution being off the bottle and laying around.

So I say something to the effect of being a bad tourist because I was acting like I would be the only one there, and I'm cleaning furiously and packing all the stuff in my backpack, being careful not to let on that I'm retrieving stolen money.

I don't remember how we got in the car, but we had a hair-raising drive back to the house that ended in me not being able to stop and ramming the neighbor's car. Only slightly though. But the neighbor comes out and bitches, saying it's happened before, and that the damage is estimated at $3,000. I say no problem, that I can pay it by the end of the month.

Kind of interesting that I once skidded my car into the neighbor's fence post at the bottom of my parent's driveway because I was driving my car too fast in the snow. Also, I nicked a car while backing out of my friend's driveway and - although there wasn't a scratch to be found on my car - the damage came out to be $3,000 on their car. Evidence that small town repairmen who are members of the mafia have nothing against charging people extra when insurance is paying for it all. Am I ever glad I moved out of there.

So.. what a wild and wacky dream story. I wanted to write "whacky" but this dream wasn't one of the ones where I hit people endlessly, trying to kill them but not succeeding. Thankfully I haven't had one of those in a while. I need to find some wood to knock on.

Anyhow, time to go and eat. It's ten after eight already and I must get going.

Ciao.

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