Dream Recap: Travel Prep.

It's what I am guessing is a Friday. I am supposed to leave to go to the Dominican Republic with my friend Kaylee but there is so much to be done.  I sit at my computer trying to finish up last minute work stuff.  With each email I check off, I discover or remember one more thing left undone.  Finally, realized I have but scant minutes to pack and leave, I decide to say screw it, leave the stuff unfinished and silently hope I still have a job when I get back.

While I am packing I snap at the girls to clean their rooms up so we can go.  When they ask where we're going it occurs to me that I haven't actually told them I am going away.  When I tell them I am going to the Dominican without them they whine and complain and are ever so slow to move.

I bribe them with the opportunity to go to the store if they just hurry up.  This puts a bit of speed into their step, but not much.

As I am about to rush out the door, I remember "Oh shit! The tickets!" and search frantically for them.  I find them on the dresser, two boarding passes.  Once again at the door I am struck with the thought that I'm going to need stuff to read, LOTS of stuff to read, what with all that time on the beach.  Scrambling, I stuff a pile of books into my bag with no regards to the titles.

All this time I am reminding myself to text Kaylee "Happy Dominican Day!" when I get a spare second.  I get the girls in the car and we get down to Barrie where I make a stop at a store, as promised.  My sister and brother-in-law are there, with all their kids, in two cars.  My girls, without saying good-bye, jump into my brother-in-law's vehicle, who drives away without a hi, hello, how-are-you.

At the counter I tell Nicky how ridiculous my day has been and mentioned that the kids just up and took off with Frank without even saying good-bye to me, even though I'd be gone for a week.  Nicky says something along the lines of "Yeah, a while back I told them to stop hanging around this store all the time."

This confuses me, since we don't live in Barrie.

While I am paying for my purchases (having bought a royal eff-ton of Coffee Crisps and Reese Peanut Butter cups for the plane ride) I count out my change.  I ask the clerk if she will take a Canadian silver dollar but before she can answer it disintegrates in my hand.  The thought that I should text Kaylee starts nagging at me again, before I realize with horror that she was supposed to ride down to the airport with me and I am already half-way to the city, and it will be a full forty minutes back to go pick her up.

I decide I will just drive back to get her, but first I decide to untangle the giant pile of dangly earrings that have accumulated in my purse.  I gently pull each earring from the clump and sort each pair on the counter of the convenience store.  Just has a I have the last pair lined up, that's when I wake up.

SOURCE

I'd probably be the best lottery winner ever.

I bought a lottery ticket last night.  The LottoMAX to be precise.  A friendly convenience store clerk talked me into it. By talked me into it, I mean she said "Ticket for tonight? 32 million." and I said "Okay, sounds good," so you know, not a lot of convincing needed.  I figured, I've beaten a lot of shitty odds lately - as in the odds of cancer before age 35, and the odds of having two sump pumps and a battery back-up fail at once - so I figured maybe I could beat some odds that would work out in my favour.

I don't usually play the Lottery, mainly because I am cheap, but also because I end up fantasizing of what I would do if I won which ends ups being a set-up for utter disappointment when I inevitably lose (spoiler alert: I didn't win).

You know those people that win lotteries and within two years piss it all away? Yeah, those people suck.  How does someone actually manage to piss away millions in a two to three year period?

Not I.  I like to think I have it pretty well thought out.  I have a list of things I'd do upon winning the lottery (estimated on a $32 million win).  Not necessarily in this order:

- Pay off this dump.  Put aside a chunk of money to flip it and sell it.

- Pay off my student loans and any other debts

- Start a search for a moderately priced, but well-built 3+ bedroom home with a second bathroom and a good chunk of property, preferably with water nearby.

- Put away 50k each for the girls education

- GTFO of town for a few weeks with the kids and the Well-Travelled one to get my head together and do some financial planning.  Road trip.

- Take a percentage of winnings and put into investments and high-interest savings accounts

- Put aside a chunk for my parents, my sister, and handful of close friends to help them out

- Sabbatical

- Go from there

One extravagance I think I would definitely allow myself would be to replace all the shitty MDF furniture my house with actual real wood.

I think if I was smart about it, I could live out the rest of my life comfortably and somewhat modestly, and secure a future for my kids where they may still have to work, but would never have to worry about food or shelter.

Sleeping through the apocalypse

Feeling like ass, I came home from work last night, fell into bed and proceeded to sleep through the next twelve or so hours.  Given the circumstances of receiving a cancer diagnosis and facing major surgery, I feel like should be exempt from having to deal with stupid piddling shit like periods and the common cold, but alas here I am, couch-ridden, coughing up gross stuff and generally feeling like my limbs are going to fall off.

I had dreams last night of the end of the world. I don't recall much, just that at one point the temperature dropped and snow fell in globs the size of cookie dough dropped on a freshly pre-greased baking sheet.  And then someone screamed something about the apocalypse so that's when I figured the world must be ending.

Upon partly waking an odd thought occurred to me.  Could it be possible to sleep through the end of the world?  

Think about it.  Going to sleep, snug in your duvet, and waking up to complete and absolute destruction.  Or nothing.  Floating in space, like the ivory tower in the Neverending Story. I think I might be inclined to roll over and go back to sleep.

I might actually do that now.

Dream journaling: Those who work in glass office buildings...

I woke up oddly disoriented after this one. It's been a while since I've been able to recount the details of a dream vividly.

I'm in a kitchen talking to one of my best friends about a party she's throwing for her daughters. She's freaking out a bit because in this reality, it's custom to purchase gifts for party guests, not the other way around. I'm not on the phone but I'm not really sure I'm speaking to her in person either. While we talk, I'm trying to get at a small CD player on the counter because I am determined to make my ex-husband listen to "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" for nor reason other than it's a pretty awesome song that I think everyone should listen to.

Having given up, I drive into work. Downtown is jam packed busy, so by the time I get there, it's after dark. My friend is there with her daughters. She is meeting me since I decided to give her some money to buy my kids present, since I don't really get why she's buying them anything when it's her kids birthday.

Getting out of the car, I notice that a huge crowd has gathered outside made up of my co-workers, Tim horton's employees (in this reality, Tim's hasn't moved down the street yet) and other various people who also work in the building. There is the sound of commotion and crackling electricity. Lights in the windows are flickering off and on and I vaguely recall that the building is scheduled for demolition. It seems odd to me that we all showed up for work anyway, and distressing that we're all standing in the parking lot instead of getting the hell out of there.

There an eerie silence as suddenly all the lights in the windows flicker and go black. I start to turn and run, but not before each individual glass pane starts shattering and blowing out wards. Shards and bits of glass rain down on the crowd and I run, admits the screaming, eyes closed against the bits of glass that have blown into my face and hair. Blind but aware of my friend and her girls near by I run across the street, oblivious to oncoming traffic, until I reach the opposite parking lot.

Once across the street, I carefully brush the glass off myself and pick it out of my hair and turn to survey the damage and wait for the eventually collapse, expecting something like what you see in those stock-footage reels of collapsing buildings.

I look over and a group of people have picked up my car and have managed to fold it like one of those collapsible laundry hampers. No, no no, I tell them but they carry it across the lot, unfold it and lovingly dust off the debris.

Later I am at an outdoor cafe, run by the guy who hosts our open mike. I can't get to my guitar, the place is too crowded. My Nanny is there and I'm trying to have a conversation with her, but my phone rings. A voice on the other end speaks in a muffled voice in a language I can't understand. The voice sounds apologetic, so assuming they have a wrong number I try to disengage, but each time I do, the voice on the other end gets belligerent and threatening. Finally I tell the voice that I am not paying to listen to this and hang up, but I worry after that the voice will call back to berate me some more.

Parenting Win plus Other Things.

Oh Hallowe'en.  Just because I've been slow on the uptake as far as preparations go, doesn't mean I don't love you as much as I always have.

I usually take this holiday pretty seriously.  My kids take the brunt of it.  The oldest one mostly just humours me but the youngest has taken my enthusiasm for blood and creepiness and run with it.  I dropped her off at a Halloween party at her friend's place today.  At the door we were greeted by a Little Red Riding Hood, and a cute little skeleton and an adorable cowgirl.

And then there's my kid, looking, very much of her own accord, like something coughed up from the very bowels of hell.  Gray, pasty skin, scraggly black hair and blood dripping from her eyes.

I'm so proud.

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Back in 2004, I took a road trip to Fort Frances, Ontario which is roughly a 20-hour drive away from where I live.  On the way, I stopped for the night and slept in the back of my car in the back of a Ford dealership outside of Wawa, Ontario.  In the cramped backseat of my 1992 Ford Tempo, I had dreams of my children turning into werewolves.

As of yesterday, a good chunk of that dealership has been washed away with a stretch of the Trans-Canada highway.  It no longer exists.

Yeah.. I was parked right around there.  - Source

I'm thinking that's a metaphor for something, but I don't know what.

Quick dream recap from last night

It's around twilight sometime in the spring and I'm walking up the big hill on hIghway 93. My feet are bare and there are broken beer bottles all along the dirt shoulder. As I walk I can occasionally feel tiny bits of glass dig into my feet. I keep thinking I should dig my phone out of my bag and post on Twitter in regards to the shitty walking conditions.

"Broken glass everywhere. People are assholes."

For some reason I don't get around to it, in spite of the fact that the two sentences are swimming through my head. Instead I press on, up the hill.

Out in front of Smiles Per Hour I spot another phone on the ground. Picking it up, I examine it a bit and eventually decide to toss it away. I continue walking but I find it more and more difficult to avoid the glass that has become increasingly noticeable and irritating. I worry a little that I may seriously cut myself to the point that I cannot walk any longer and decide to cross the road to the other side where there is a sidewalk.

Next stop, buy some shoes.

I reach the mall and my youngest daughter is there, sobbing that she had found a phone and tried to call me but she couldn't figure out how to use it. I reassure her and we go into a restaurant. Upon entering it appears there is some kind of raucous party going on. I quickly find myself shoved into a corner near a dark, wide staircase.

Suddenly four guys carrying a fifth guy in a wheelchair start pushing their way through the crowd towards the dark staircase. I have to do some fancy footwork to avoid being shoved into the abyss as they crowd past. I mumble apologies but stop, because suddenly I'm a little pissed off that these guys don't seem to have any regard for their surroundings. Just because they have to carry their friend in his wheelchair it doesn't mean that they get to be jerks about it.

Some kind of witty title about teeth.

Two consistent themes that appear in my dreams are stairs and the feeling that my teeth are crumbling and falling out. The staircase dreams aren't bad, but these dreams that my teeth are falling out drive me up a frackin' wall.

I had another one this morning. In this one I still had the caps and spacer that I had gotten during the dental surgery I had when I was about four. Not only were my teeth shattered, the wires in the spacer were all bent.

I check out some dream interpretation sites to see what they had to say:

From Dreaminterpretationguide.com:

If you lose your teeth, you will have burdens which will crush your pride and demolish your affairs. If they appear decayed and snaggled, your business or health will suffer from intense strains. To dream of spitting out teeth, portends personal sickness, or sickness in your immediate family.

And from Dreammoods.com:

To dream that you have rotten or decaying teeth forewarns that your health and/or business is in jeopardy. You may have uttered some false or foul words and those words are coming back to haunt you.

So our lesson for today? Fuck online dream interpreters. I'm gonna go brush my teeth now.

Vaguely creepy dream recap...

Had to get this down.

Foreboding, my stomach is in knots.  I can't rid myself of this nervous feeling.  I'm home, alone.  The house is dark and it may or may not be raining outside.  It's inarguably windy.  I sit down at the computer, and I'm trying to write something, a blog post, a short story, who knows? I struggle to type the few choices phrases that float through my head.

"It's a good night for a killing."
"Suicide is the last great performance art"

I try to write but my efforts are continually interrupted by the howling wind and my need to check door locks, and windows.  To peer into the bushes.  My heart won't stop racing.  I hear faint music and I realize my cell phone is beside me, ringing.  It rings, but is not lit up.  picking it up, I answer:

"hello?"
"Hi," a masculine voice answers.  The voice on the other end is smooth and calming, but I am anything but calm.
"Can I help you?"
"Not today."
"Pardon?"
"I'm a slave."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm a slave, that's all."

At this point I force myself awake.  I'm still tense and I have a sense of unreality, as I am hearing breathing which I think is my own, except that the sound doesn't match my rhythm.  A slight movement and I realize that one of my daughters has climbed into my bed.  Again.

Not sure what is going on my subconcious.  Last night it was tornadoes.  We were caught up in a tornado that threw our car a few hundred feet, then roared overhead as we (me, my girls, my friend and her daughter and my parents) hid in an old pre-school building.

Something is up with my sleep patterns.  It's going to be a long night.

Hidden Staircases, Secret Rooms

So, being thirty has its perks, aside from being able to date from three different decades without being (terribly) creepy and the assumption that if you're living with your parents it's because you're taking care of them in their twilight years and not still mooching while you finish college.

Of the perks I just found out is that I get to join Studio 30+ which is a nifty group for bloggers over the age of 30.  The following is my first weekly post for this group.   The prompt is "Childhood Dreams".

******************************************************

I'm on the floor again.  It's the third night in a row.  The third night sleeping in the big giant bed in the loft at my grandparents house.  The third night I've woken on the floor beside the little dormer window, the one where you have to crouch down because the ceiling slopes so low that it's impossible, even for a little girl such as myself, to stand at full height.  I'm chilled, in my thin purple nightgown with the kittens on the tummy. Rings of frost circle the leaded panes of the window.  I can see my breath hanging in the night air.

source

Groggily, I turn to crawl back over to the enormous queen-sized bed with the royal blue spread, but out of the corner of my eye something is not right.  In the tiniest corner of the room, right next to the window, the only window in the room, right where normally there's stood only an oddly angled door to a small storage cabinet - angled oddly to compensate for the low sloping ceiling - there in the mist of the vague light of the earliest time of the morning is a staircase.

"That's never been there before.." I think to myself.  However, I am very small, and my mind is always jumping.  But I'm sure if there had always been a staircase there, I would have noticed.

Hunched over, I crawl back towards the window.  Looming before me is a dark, narrow, foreboding wooden staircase.  The top steps are obscured by the blackness of the tiny passageway.  I can only imagine what waits at the top.

Over the years I've dreamed time and time again of familiar places, places I have been to countless times, spent countless hours in, visited on numerous occasions.  My grandparents house, my high school, the local post office, the library.  I dream of these places, and always, in my dreams there is something new, something undiscovered in places I thought I knew as I know my own body.   Always there are stairs.  Reaching conclusions, making discoveries, stretching the boundaries of my imagination.  My secret, hidden surprises.

Fire, Fire, Fire. Fire in my Brain.

I woke up this morning with no alarm.  Thankfully I startled myself awake about ten minutes before I usually get up.  I showered and when I returned to my room, I was confronted with the unmistakable odor of a feline that had decided to declare something as 'His'.

My winter coat that, in a moment of sheer and utter laziness, I had dropped on the floor just behind my bedroom door upon entering the house the previous evening.  Lovely.  That will teach me to be more fastidious.

The fire alarm went off while at work today.  I promptly evacuated, and to clarify I mean that I left the building, not that I shat my pants.  Thanks, Vicky, for making sure I am more careful about that particular word in the future.

As I left I glanced at my wallet on my desk but decided to leave it.  I did grab my coat, as why escape a potentially burning building, only to die of exposure to the cold.  This is Canada, after all.  Always thinking.

As I stood in the parking lot with three out of my roughly 15 to 20 co-workers, along with a handful of Tim Horton's employees, I wondered what all of our elementary school teachers would think of this gross lack of respect for the fire bell.  In the time it took our staff to wander their way out, half of us could have been dead.

Source

I entertained the fantasy that if the building was indeed about to burn to the ground with my wallet and all identification within, I could jump in my car and assume a new identity in a new place.  I could be a dancer, or a surly truckstop waitress, or join a carnival.  I could buy a farm and grow tomatoes and sell pie at the side of the road.  I'd send for the children and they could join me.  We'd live in relative obscurity, off the grid.  Maybe open a small restaurant.  The cats would be left the little dollhouse, free to leave their smellieness where-ever they please.

Like Edward Norton's character in the 25th hour, just drive.  "Nothing at all for miles around"  Like Monty Brogan in that fantastic ending, that ending that you are never quite sure is the actual ending or just a work of Monty's imagination.  Like that, but without all the drug charges and such.

There was no fire.  I returned to my desk.  My wallet was there, my identity safely tucked inside each of the little slits meant to hold licenses, credit cards, rewards cards.  Life goes on as usual.

Sometimes, my mind wanders.

Update from the sickbed

Day four of this godawful throat-infection whatever the hell I have.  Second day home from work.  For four days I've felt like I have a giant gob of something or other right in the back of my throat, but whenever I try to dislodge it through swallowing or coughing I'm wracked with pain.  My ears are starting to hurt as well, and I've taken to turning the closed captioning back on the myriad of movies I've been watching in order to pass the time.  I'm hungry as all hell but the only things I've been subsisting on are soup and toast and tea.

I called my doctor's office to see if they were still running a walk-in clinic.  It seems I had this wrong, it was an after hours clinic, appointment still necessary.  Now, first off, my doctor is awesome.  I credit the guy with saving my life on more than one occasion.  He's always been good about answering any questions I've had (or my mom's when I was in hospital), checks to see what my drug coverage is before prescribing me stuff (when necessary... I left my old doctor because I felt he was a pill pusher) and always asks about work/home/ general stress levels and such.

But oh my god, I hate my doctor's office.  Getting an appointment is a pain in the ass.  First, the line is always busy.  If I do manage to get through, I am inevitably put on hold.  This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't for the fact that one day I was in the waiting room when the phone rang and I watched as the receptionist put the caller on hold to finish the story she was telling to another assistant.  NOW whenever I get put on hold I sit and wonder if they're just standing there talking about their weekend.   As someone who answers phones as part of her own job, it's appalling.  I'm pretty sure if I were to put a customer on hold so I could finish telling someone about the party I went to on the weekend, I wouldn't have this job very long.

Then if you get through, it's usually a three week wait to get an appointment, which is useless, since I'm sick now.  This usually means going to emerg, or ploughing through and doing nothing.  To me the Emergency room is for emergencies.  You know, when you're having a heart attack or you've just chopped off an extremity or have been shot in the ass with a pellet gun or you're doubled over in pain from some mystery ailment.  Sore throat and general malaise is not an emergency. 

I accidentally let both my portable phones go dead.  Seems when I made banana bread last week and needed to free up an outlet for the mixer I unplugged the phone charger, not the charger for the powerdrill.  As a result I had to call from my cell.

Rec:  Doctors' Office, Can I get you to hold please?
Me: Uhm, no actually, I'm calling from a cell phone, I'd rather not hold.  I just have a quick question.
Rec: *exaggerated sigh* What is your question?

Seriously?  Pardon me for not wanting to pay by the minute for dead air.  Nope, don't even get the benefit of cheesy on hold music.  Just an intermittent 'beep beep' to let me know they haven't hung up on me outright.

Speaking of cheesy music, I feel I am failing as a mother.  Yesterday my nine-year-old asked me to mail a letter for her.  It was a fan letter.

To Ke$ha. 

T's new role model.  Oh lucky lucky me.  *sigh*

Yes.  My darling oldest daughter has decided that's she's going hero worship a watered-down Lady Gaga who likes to sing about brushing her teeth with Jack Daniels.  Her new ambition in life is to be a fashion designer so she can make clothes for this woman.

Bask in my pride, all. 

I think this is her way of rebelling early.  She plays Top 40 radio in her room, and next thing you know, she'll be wearing Aeropostale and watching reality TV.

I do kind of wish I had scanned the letter before I sent it, though.  I may be failing in exerting my cultural influence, but on the bright side, her penmanship has already surpassed my own.  So that's something. 

While we're on the subject of cheesy music, I've had Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" in my head all morning.  After a broken sleep of many small snippets of bizarre yet vivid dreams that are all but faded from my memory now. Something about a dock, and swimming, and Reegs as a baby, and Hamish Linklater being my cousin, only his name was Shaun.  Weirdness.

So me and my swollen-ass glands are headed back to the couch to rewatch a few more movies until it's time to go pick the kiddies up from their dad's. 

Today's Dream

I'm sitting for a friend's son who is a bit older than my eldest child.  He's a little wound up today.  I ask him to pick up some toys that are scattered around.  With a yell he jumps into the pile but knocks a large wooden bookcase over and it lands on him.  After a moment's panic, I reach down and with seemingly superhuman strength, I lift the bookcase off him.  Despite the size and weight of the bookcase, and the fact it was covered with any number of breakable glass Christmas ornaments, he's miraculously unscathed but understandably frightened.  I give him a hug and he's calmed right down.

I may be reading too much Comics Curmudgeon?

I'm with the band?

Managed to remember smidgens of last night's dreams:


On a bus of some sort.  I'm with two girl friends from high school.  The windows are tinted, but we can see out to the vehicles on the highway.  I'm smiling at some people, making faces at others.  I'm not entirely sure what sort of bus we are on, or where we are going.  It starts off cramped.  I turn my head though, and the back of the bus has opened up somewhat.


There is music, loud, hard rock music.  I see guitars and drums and various PA equipment. A guy comes out of a back compartment, wearing some sort of mask, quite hideous.  As another couple of guys come out, more in masks, one dripping in stage blood, I realize we must be on a tour bus.  I figure it's either Slipknot or maybe Gwar.


Giggling excitedly over this turn of events (I'm not a huge Gwar or Slipknot fan, but hey rock stars are rock stars), the blood covered guy takes off the hood covering his head and reveals the face of a friendly, somewhat bookish looking gentleman.  He singles me out of the three of us, and asks if I've been to the upper level of the bus.


I shake my head no.  He picks me up in his arms easily and declares that I can't leave until I've seen the hot tub.  As he carries me up the stairs I hadn't noticed until that point I try to crane my neck to see the reaction of my friends, knowing the one friend will be particularly jealous, having a craving for the high life.  The upper level of the bus is a palatial mansion with aforementioned hot tub, large bar, plush couches etc.

Alarm.  Roll over.  Snooze.  Close eyes.

My youngest daughter has a huge eye infection and is crying.  I'm trying to clean the gunk away while explaining to her that once we've got her eye clear we can give her some drops.   However, as I'm wiping the gunk, it comes away in long loopy strands, and i can imagine that I'm pulling away some kind of membrane that must be reaching back towards the back of her skull, there's so much of it.

Alarm.  Awake time.

Dreams in between the rare bout of insomnia

Usually I never have trouble sleeping.

"That's where I'm a Viking!" - Ralph Wiggum.

As mentioned, it been a rough week and stress brings odd and vivid dreams.  Oh, and I cut off all my hair yesterday, so that plays into this as well.

In the first part, a friend of mine decides to get a neck tattoo, which starts out as a subtle vine of flowers just above the collar bone.  I'm in the Legion, and she rushes in with her daughter, and I can tell something is very wrong because she's holding her head down as far as humanly possible.  I ask what is wrong and she tells me she went back for more inking.  Looking up, the tattoo now extends up to her chin, where it goes from being a jungle of vines and flowers to something that looks like a cross between Optimus Prime and the Thundercats logo, right under her nose and around her mouth.  She's obviously very upset.  I laugh, but in that horribly guilty "Oh my god, I'm so sorry I'm laughing" way.  We try to come up with a solution for the new face-tattoo, but come up with nothing.

Then I'm in a bathroom that looks alot like the upstairs at my friends place.  About five of my co-workers are jammed into the bathtub together.  I'm using (clean, unused) tampons as curlers, trying to curl my newly shorn hair into something respectable, and trying really hard to ignore the fact that five of my co-workers are crammed into the bathtub behind me.
In an attempt to break the tension, I say "Please don't mind my tampon curlers.  I don't have any real ones."  One co-worker hems and haws and tries to think of other household products that could be used in their place.

Alarm.

My trip to the psychic fair

Yesterday two good friends and I, in the name of doing something fun and different and relatively cheap, decided to check out a psychic fair.

In matters that one might call 'supernatural', I'm kind of what you might call a hopeful skeptic. I have an interest in things like clairvoyancy, mediumship, telemetry and whathaveyou, but still not sure I really believe in a lot of it. I've seen and experienced things that lead me to believe that there is a lot more out there than modern science has found explanations for. However, there are other things that people claim to be supernatural can really be chalked up to psychology, and unfortunately in some circumstances, good old hucksterism.

I think there are planes of existence and dimensions that science is not yet capable of exploring and explaining but may be able to, one day. Just look at the atom. I'm sure that once upon a time, the idea that all matter was made of tiny little particles that you can't see probably seemed like a whole lot of bunk, until we were able to create the technology to prove such things.

Anyway, the fair had about a dozen or so booths, a number of people doing readings and such. The aromatherapy/reiki booth was interesting and the two girls (twin sisters I believe) who worked the booth were fun and interesting. My friends both had some kind of foot therapy thing done, which they said was very relaxing. This is one of the areas I have an easier time buying, as I think a lot of it is psychological. Who has not been triggered by a scent at some point or another? At the same time though, it all may come down to a form of meditation, and forcing yourself to RELAX. I think a lot of the reason reiki and aromatherapy and the like seem to work is because you have someone there to guide you in your state of relaxation because in this day and age, it really is something that a lot of people are incapable of doing on their own.

A lot of the booths had people doing readings of all types, and since I was broke I kind of bypassed them. An amusing Scottish man did a quick (and I mean that literally, the guy spoke SO fast) numerology thing for each of us. Horoscopes and numerology rank pretty low on the credit scale for me because:

A) if people want to believe in something bad enough, they will see evidence that supports their belief and ignore that which conflicts.. this is confirmation bias.

B) I never seem to fit the descriptions of my 'signs', or I'll only half-fit them. The exception to this is my chinese horoscope. Last Christmas my co-workers and I all went out for breakfast at a local Chinese place and there was a fair amount of laughter all around when I read that 'Monkeys generally have a low opinion of others'. What, me? Really? nooooooo.

And again, with the numerology guy, some stuff fit me (jack of all trades, master of none.. yup. I also liked 'You do good things well, but you do bad things just as well when it comes to the drink and sex' - haha, nice.) but a lot of it I just kind of shook my head and said no, that doesn't sound like me.

There were also some booths selling some very nice artwork and handmade jewellery and such.. these had more appeal to me than trying to find my spirit guide or my guardian angel. Spirits and angels and communication with the deceased are more things that I have a hard time giving credibility to, especially as recently I've been privately grappling with a lot of my own beliefs/ideas regarding what happens after we die. But again, there are things I have seen with my own eyes that won't allow me to write off the idea entirely - Mom, you know what I'm talking about.

One of the readers was in Barrie for the first time so they were offering a 'One question' reading for free (usually for $15). I don't see the point in turning down anything that's free, if my effort is minimal, so I signed up and when my turn came I went into talk to Mother May, a matronly Jamaican woman and apparently third-generation psychic.

This was my second time ever speaking to a paid psychic (I have a couple of friends who 'see' whom I have spoken with). My first paid experience was for lack of any other better word, terrible. I came out of the reading very upset with some of the predictions she had made. The fortunate part was that her visions concerning my personality and my family life and whatnot were way off (she claimed I had unresolved issues with my father and that I didn't get a long with my sister etc etc.. yeah, FAIL.) so the predictions she had made were pretty much inaccurate too.

The only nice or good thing she had told me was that I should take up painting, so in an effort to take something positive out of the experience, I gave it a try, and well, I enjoy it. So that's something.

The woman I saw previously gave me a very negative vibe as soon as I had walked in. Mother May on the other hand gave off a very soothing kind of air. I asked my question (I'm going to keep it to myself, as it's personal) and she gave me an answer I had already kind of figured for myself. Although the confirmation was comforting, the skeptic in me couldn't help but think "but isn't that what anyone who asked such a question would 'want' to hear?" I felt my own confirmation bias kick in, as most of the things she said applied pretty closely to my situation, except for one.. but you find yourself going "but by *this* she could mean *this*" to which point even the stuff that doesn't make sense, makes sense.

All in all, it was a fun way to kill an afternoon, and it got me thinking about a lot of unexplained phenomena that still exists in the world, things that we still have so much to learn about like dreams, and deja vu and why some people seem more attuned to the energy around them. Why, when I walk into an old old house, do I feel a warmth or well-being that I don't get walking into a pre-fab model home? Is it the ability of inanimate objects to absorb the energy of people they once belonged to?

Being skeptical doesn't necessarily mean that seeing has to be believing, but it does mean questioning what our senses tell us.

well, that's all for today. I'll be mulling these questions and more while I do laundry. Oh Sunday.

Quick dream recap

lots of weird dreams last night, can only remember dribs and drabs

- Making plans to bathing suit shop at the beer store with my mom
- ending up on some kind of lunch date with a mid-aged bookish gentleman who played a number of musical instruments, and kissed me passionately before leaving to play a show somewhere
- Standing in a tourist-type gift shop (I know this, because there are racks of t-shirts that have wolves and eagle designs on them) in a white teddy/negligee, ransacking my overnight bag wondering where my street clothes are
- Finding myself outside on a small residential street. Everyone is outside on their lawn enjoying the day when one neighbor decides to come out and start lobbing grenades that look like giant lead fishing weights into the street. They don't explode so much as break into a lot of pieces but I am distinctly aware of their potential to hurt the bystanders. After one nearly hits a baby in a stroller in the head, I walk over to the grenade thrower and berate him. I think I punch him too.

I have issues, I'm sure.

Do you think they'll hire me?

I saw a twitter post today advertising a high-profile position with the CBC - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for all my yankee friends - as Executive Producer assigned to Radio3

I decided to go for it.

Here's my cover letter:

To Whom it may concern,

Please accept this application and attached resume as an indication of my interest in the available position of Executive Producer assigned to CBC Radio 3.

As you can see from my resume and application, I have little to no relevant radio experience, nor do I really have much management experience to speak of. My French is marginal, but I can guarantee I have nearly 30 years of immersion in the English language.

You may ask what I could possibly bring to this position? I can assure you I would bring an almost fanatical love of music, and a fierce loyalty to the many talented artists that inhabit this country of ours. I also offer a severe distaste for the bulk of the sample-driven, re-hashed, all-flash-and-no-substance vitriol that the listening public is continually spoon-fed on a regular basis by commercially driven private stations.

I also offer up my desire on the whole to exert my influence over the listening habits of others, as I generally consider my tastes to be far superior to that of the general public. Lastly, I bring with me an agenda that involves giving close, musically-inclined friends and well-wishers of mine an 'in', if you will, with the Canadian Music Industry.

I look forward to an opportunity to meet with you and further discuss my dreams of gaining enough money and power through employment with your organization that I can someday retire an independently wealthy, delightful eccentric who drinks mimosa's for breakfast and may or may not own a number of cats.

My sincerest thanks for your time and consideration,

Best Regards,

Andrea Howe

Do you think they'll hire me?

Strange Dreams a plenty

Had some odd dreams last night. Started off as a sort of Movie preview, only all the upcoming attractions were rehashes of old tv shows and sequels to movies that stopped being cool decades ago. A reworking of little house on the prairie, and a very unecessary threequel to Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, with an aging Keanu Reeves in a bad wig and a rather haggard looking Alex Winter. I mean, is that guy even still alive?



To make it odder, the 'sneak peek' was being acted out in my kitchen, which actually looked a lot like the Carstairs' kitchen or at least what i can remember of it.

Next I am tobogganing with Cory Emerson, in what seems like a large cave. There's a big frozen lake in the middle and I am unsure of the condition of the ice so I'm hesitant to slide across. We somehow make our way to the bottom of the hill, and tread carefully along the edge of the ice. Down the way, some drunk frat boys are sliding down the hill and across the ice. To my horror, there are holes opening in the ice and below the thick sheet, the water appears to be boiling.

Turning around to climb back up the hill, I'm faced with what is no longer a hill, but a sheer ice face. I make my way towards where the frat boys were playing, but this too has become a 90 degree climb. With a resigned sigh, I reach up, and I'm surprised to find I suddenly have the agility of Spiderman, and am able to scale the cliff without issue.



Cory follows me up and we go out the door into what appears to be a 'fitness' area in a large administrative/hospital type building.
The building is quite crowded and it resembles a cross between one of the older buildings at Georgian, and the Ontario science center. There's a pool with old ladies in an aquafit class to the left and people are milling around.

Cory tells me she's leaving and I say good bye, then realize that I don't know how to get out of the building. I run up a flight of stairs and find myself in some kind of maternity ward, with women in old fashioned nurses uniforms pushing baby carriages.

Turning tail, I go back the way I came, and with an odd sense of urgency push my way through the crowded halls until I find myself outside and in the thick of some kind of outdoor festival, with a midway and a concert stage. Again, there is people, people, people, everywhere. The dim light and faint mist leads me to believe that it's sometime in the the very early morning. I scan the parking lot and begin to panic because I can't remember where I parked my car. Wandering down a steep, dirt road, I find my car at the bottom, parked next to a ditch. With relief I run toward it. I have to climb into the ditch to reach the passenger door. In the mud next to the front wheel, is one of my poetry books from highschool. That's when I woke up.

There's seems to be a lot of themes of being stuck, or lost, and kind of an agoraphobic type mood. Hrm.

I aimed for 'sweet' dreams, alls I got was weird.

Okay.. so bear with me, this gets a little strange. Surprise surprise.

There's a beach, with a dock. The dock is painted with colorful scenes in bright primary and secondary hues.

On the other side of me, is an open field, with a few trees on the perimeter. It's a bright, cloudless day, and there are little african children in colorful daishiki's (I don't know how to spell it. *shrug*) running in and out of the trees. The impression I get is the Savannah, or my imagination's interpretation of it, anyway.

Looking to the horizon, I see dozens of birds soaring through the air. A closer look shows they are not actually birds, but cows that look as though they are being catapulted through the air. I whip out my phone and start trying to take pictures of the flying cows that are thankfully off in the distance, because at some point it occurs to me that it may be dangerous to be in an area that is being over-run with cows that are plummeting to the Earth.

Yeah, analyze that, Freud.

they just keep coming...

Last night's dream:

I'm in the playground of an elementary school and there are people milling about all over the place. Out of the corner of my eye I spy a former flame, who I had been off and never-quite-on with for quite sometime. My first instinct is to flee, safe under my cloaking device, but in a moment of illogical empathy and understanding I decide to say hello.

Disarming my cloaking device I approach him. Within moments, I'm regretting my decision and wish I had my cloaking device again so I could sneak away. I find myself disappointed and vaguely disgusted with the self-absorption and arrogance, not to mention the lack of remorse or even recognition for harm done in the past. Instead I feign a need for the bathroom, and duck around a portable and make my escape.

Later, I am on a break from work and taking my daily walk. The point of view is sketchy, I am looking only at my feet as I carefully make my way along a steep embankment. My eyes close and flutter open - I am suffering a case of narcolepsy. I wake in front of the Bay Street building, looking up at the darkened glass and realizing that not only have I been sleepwalking through town, I've also Rip-Van-Winkled myself right through the five-o-clock whistle, and everyone has gone home for the night.

Just as I start to panic, wondering how I'm going to get home with my keys locked in the building, I happen to notice them hanging from a nail near the entranceway. On one hand, I appreciate the gesture, however on the other I know this means that my absence has definitely been noticed.

It is daylight again, early winter, and I'm back in the Bay street lot with a couple of non-recognizable friends. I run up the street to meet up with a very Irish looking young guy - red hair (in dreads and a kerchief) very pale, freckles and a sort of fu-manchu type facial hair. It seems my faceless friends are trying to set me up with
this gentleman. He has a sort of adventurous 'back-packing through the mountains' type air about him. However, he also seems completely disinterested in any type of conversation with me, and walks along rather stoically, responding only with the occasional grunt.

Back at the lot we're met by a friend from far away and his wife and new baby. I'm quite excited to see them, it's been a while. While we are all socializing, night falls suddenly and a snow whips up out of nowhere. the group of us decide to take shelter in a small indent in the side of the building.

Then I woke up.