Personal Perestróĭka

I slept in today. I woke up early. Like before 7:30. And I was awake. I could have gotten up. But I had a rough night at work last night, then stayed up another hour reading. And it’s another night of waiting tables tonight, so I opted to sleep.

As a consequence of the extra sleep I had weird dreams. One about grocery shopping. In one there was a 4th apartment in my house that a beloved friend moved out of. And for some reason as they were remodling it there were TV and DVD players all sorts of electronics in the yard which we all basically grabbed as much as we could of. Then I had a really long dream that I was catching up with a friend that I miss. In the dream she used to live next door to me and I was catching her up on everything that had happened since she’d moved. Which isn’t too far from the truth.

So this morning, I’m trying to read my email in all my multiple acocunts. I follow the same pattern: read, delete, read next, or read, reply, delete, read next. For some reason every time I try to delete or reply Yahoo! is making me reenter my password. It’s also reloading really, really, really, really slowly. I want to kick it, or blow it up. It is making me crazy.

There were a series of muggings in my neighborhood last night. Not surprising, as it’s not exactly gentrified, it’s summer, it’s hot and kids are out of school. Three 20-something guys got hit a couple blocks from my work and ran down to us to call 911. I saw this morning that a cafe nearby and few other individuals were hit in the area with in a few hours. Now I’ve mentioned before that I’m really unimpressed with the Nashville PD. But once again, I can’t figure how they make the decisions they do. So guys get mugged, call 911 and the cops respond in about 3 minutes. Then 3 cop cars hang out, asking the guys questions, and 15 minutes later the helicopter starts flying over. Um, okay. Wouldn’t it be better to have one cop car respond and interview the kids, and the others canvas the neighborhood on foot or in their cars? I’ve always wondered about the effectiveness of the copter, since there a lot of trees and fully wooded areas around here. It wouldn’t be at all hard to hide from a light in the sky. Plus it clearly did nothing since several other folks were hit, presumably by the same muggers, in the same area, after the first group of guys was.

Didn’t get half the things I wanted to do done today. *sigh* I never do. But hey, here’s some new Cherry Blossom Designs, so that’s something. More to come on Thursday too, when the resin is dry.

I have been having some seriously messed up dreams.  I can’t remember them when I wake, but I’m left with sense of dread and creepiness.  Bleh.

I find a high of 96°F with a heat index of 107°F to be fairly unbearable.  Yes, I know I live in Tennessee, I know it’s nearly August.  But man, I want to go for a nice afternoon walk outside without giving myself heat stroke and brain damage.

Song for today:  Passionate Kisses – Lucinda Williams (click to download)

This is a post I started on Saturday and got so scattered that I never finished it:

I’m going to go out on a limb and say I have PMS, since this just made me cry (watch the video, don’t skip it).

I am very scattered today. I keep thinking, “Oh I need to do X,” and then I’m go make a cup of coffee and entirely forget what X is. So I ‘ll start to do Y and think of something else in the middle of it, leave it and start thinking about X again, with the intention to write it down, but get distracted by Z and start the whole process over again. UGH. Seriously, it is hard to be me sometimes.

Now it’s Monday and I am still scattered as I was two days ago. Whopperjaw came through town yesterday. I made Thai curry, both green and red, yum yum yum. And then we took Ladybug to See Batman on the Imax screen. YAY BATMAN. I have complaints about it, but they are so minor and bizarre that I expect anyone listening to my complaints would just roll their eyes at me. I did totally love it.

This morning Whopperjaw and I were having breakfast in this little diner in my neighborhood, and the cashier, an older gentleman, was asking me all about my tattoos. Finally, done, he turned to Whopperjaw and said, “You got your hands full with this one.” WJ snickered, and all the way to the car he nattered on about how it so nice to have someone else recognized the trials of his life, having his hands full with me. Hmmm, I am perhaps not relaying this as amusing as it really was.

Okay, off to the craft store. I got things to do today and I have to start somewhere!

Last night I fell asleep to the sound of the rain.  This morning I woke up to it again.  Joy!  We really need the water.  And so calming.  Even with the low thunder rolling periodically overhead now, it just feels very peaceful.

I’ve been in absentia from the internets for a while.  My sister was here for ten days and we’ve been running around ding all the fun things I can think of (which, really, isn’t a lot).  We shopped and touristed and hung out and saw movies.  We went to Knoxville for a couple days and visited with Rhi and her beautiful babygirl and husband.  She took us driving around in the mountains.

YIKES!  Okay, that thunder is not peaceful. Yow!

Anyway, my sister is the most amazing, awesome teenage girl ever and I miss her already.  Seriously the world would be a better place if there were many more of her in the world.

Now I am trying not to let overwhelmed by my own to-do list.  I’ve actually made sub-lists in it by subject.  It is large and really I’m not sure where to even start.

Copied and pasted from and email from my father:

Fort Nashborough must be agreeing with you.  I was surprised to learn that the town was founded by Capt. John Donelson, as I remembered there is a Capt. John Donaldson/Donelson (both spellings are given) in our family tree, who was the progenitor of the Tennessee branch of the family, including Abram Rodgers, my dad’s great-great grandfather.  I checked a little further and the Nashville founder is one of the elder John Donelson’s children, but it was another son, William Donelson, that’s our direct ancestor.  Still, you ARE related to the founder of the town.

So there you go, when people ask why I love Tennessee so much, I can tell them it’s because it’s my town!

My sister is here.  So far it’s been like summer vacation (except where I have to work every night).  I think we’re either hitting up the pool or the museums today.  See?  Summer vacation.

Am better than I was yesterday.  Low blood sugar? Hormones? Who knows, it was just wreckitude all around.  Work last night was INSANE. Busy is good because you make cash, but man, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen it like that on a Thursday night in the summer.  YIKES.

Lucero tonight! WOO! Am anticipating being hungover tomorrow.  Lucero always does it.  I swear, even if I didn’t drink tonight, I’d still be hungover tomorrow.

Song for the day: What Else Would You Have Me Be – Lucero (click to download)

Today is just not an okay day.  I have high hopes that it will get better.  But so far it is grim and complicated.

Here is a song: Sad Tale – Amy Rigby (click to download)

Last night I dreamt of complicated relationships, both romantic and platonic.  I ran through sleep confused and little sad.  Mostly trying to get to my big sister, so I could talk to her, so I could relax, so I could stop worrying. There was a nice date in the dream that consisted of lots and lots of of amazing Chinese food.  And closets full of clothes I’ve never seen. But mostly it was dreams of painful situations and anxiety and complications.  Um, Boots, clearly I need to call you today.  I have a ton to do, but I’mna try and set some time to empty my head to you.

Sometimes I feel like the past chases me in this weird way. Like I rarely dwell on it.  I remember the good times fondly and I’ve made peace with the bad parts. I live entirely in the present and look positively toward to future all the time (maybe too much, but that’s a story for a different day). And yet the past often haunts my dreams.  Not specific incidents, but people from all through it, elementary school, High school, college, last week, all seem to pop up in random storylines in strange dreamscapes. I don’t know what this means.  If I should look more to the past, or if I should simply remember that going forward I am only made up of the past.  I am nothing but an accumulation of my experiences and so, even if I’ve made peace, I am still carrying all the past with me?

Work last night was killer.  I am generally aware that I have one of the most simple jobs.  It’s really pretty easy for the most part.  But, wow, fuck me, after having a week off, I’d forgotten how hard it is to wait tables.  By the end of the night, my back hurt, I was exhausted.  I could talk to people just fine, but I’d lost the body memory of the job.  Like I wasn’t able to move around right in the kitchen and cramped spaces with other employees, I was bumping into things and generally was not at all graceful.

Also it was nearly 90 at midnight last night and swampy.  The rains rolled in this morning.  The thunder was incredibly long and loud and close for for what seemed a very long time.  Like storm wasn’t rolling over, but rather just hanging over us.

I got featured on Etsy!  Of course it happened with a piece that I have very few of up on the site right now.  Alas, such is the world.  Mostly I’m pleased that someone saw it as the weird, vaguely creepy Victorian souvenir that I intended it to be. Hurrah! (Um, yes, it’s the Barcelona resin pendant that’s mine.)

A song for today, and yesterday, and the day before, and hopefully not too much of the future.

Waiting for My Real Life to Begin – Colin Hay (click to download)

I haven’t had lunch.  Things that I have in my fridge that I could be eating include:

• pita with hummus, tzatziki or olive tapenade
• summer sausage
• left over saffron rice
• left over tabouleh and kebobs
• boiled eggs
• at least 7 kinds of cheese
• spinach & other salad makings
• angel food cake and fresh blackberries

This doesn’t include dry goods and frozen things.  I have plenty of healthy things to eat.  And yet I might just have candy for lunch.  Because when left to my own devices I make bad choices. Ugh.

All in all a good long weekend.  Whopperjaw came up to play.  We had a nice dinner with Ladybug and Miss Sparkle on Thursday night and then drank WAY too much wine.  We shopped and hung out on Friday, made tons and tons of Middle Eastern food, ate with our new neighbors (two fabulous gay boys), went and watched the fireworks and generally just chilled.  Saturday we saw Hancock (ignore the reviews, it was very entertaining and I’m not just saying that because of my ridiculous love for Will Smith), then went to the park, cooked more, ate more and chilled more.  Today was similar. So basically, Whopperjaw=food, chillin’ and relaxing.  Can’t really go wrong with that.

Now Ladybug and I are finally watching the season finale of Supernatural, and I’m sitting around feeling sorry for myself because I’m not getting the work done I need to (I just can’t find the damn answers I need) and ’cause Whopperjaw is back in Memphis and things seem a little less, well, chill than when he’s here.

The next week is work work work and hopefully finishing everything before my sister gets here for 10 days.

Everyone else have a good fourth? Anything fun?

I just realized that I never posted a link to my Seattle pictures. There are very few of them, actually. I either forget to take pictures, or some horrible psychological, deep buried, homesickness was going on and I was too paralyzed by it to take pictures, I’m not sure which. Anyway, the ones I did take are here. Mostly scenic, or of something I has some weird need to capture.

I know many of you out there are always looking for good sources of pertinent information. It’s important to be able to reach out, in a just a few clicks and find all the answers you might ever need. In the interest of shoring up gaps in your world knowledge, I give you this fine link.

So earlier I sent my sister a MySpace message to ask what mom was doing because I needed to call her.  Here is an edited (only took out the irrelevent parts) of my exchange with my awesome baby sister:

CrackerjackSis:  speaking of which, is it weird that i feel like Zooey is our family combined? I kept thinking it when I was reading that story

me: like Franny and Zooey?  Salinger?

CJSis: yeah

me (later): Mom just told me that she couldn’t ever understand what Seymour’s problem was, that she always wanted to live with the Glass family. I told her apparently she’d managed to make her own Glass family.

CJSis: Yeah. I read the two stories like 4 months between each other and I totally forgot the whole story (I don’t even remember if they explain Seymour in Franny) but for most of Buddy’s letter I thought Seymour was his boyfriend.

AHAHHAHA!  Seriously, she’s like the best teenager ever.  And she’ll be here in two weeks! I will be smarter when she leaves.  That’s just how it goes!

There has been huge hawk circling my house and yard this morning.

Yes, okay, I get it.  I am focusing now.  Just as soon as I eat.

A conversation I had last night with Whopperjaw prompted me to dig up this CD my mom gave me a few years ago. It’s a recording of my grandfather telling stories about his childhood to my cousin, T, who was 8 at the time (so I was probably about 19, I guess). The recording is probably 18+ years old and made just a couple years before my grandfather died. I’ve never listened to it, despite knowing the tapes existed for many years and having had the CD copy for several years. I’m torn. Like I really, really want to hear those stories told again, to hang onto that piece of my childhood, but at the same time, I’m not sure I can deal with actually hearing my grandfather talk. It just seems like it might be too upsetting. He’s been dead for 13 or so years. I’d expect my sadness at his loss to be lessened by now, but really if I think too much about it it still makes me cry. Like I am doing right now just typing this. I will, however, probably give the CD a try. Hopefully it is interesting enough to report back on. Maybe it will help me push the happy memories to the forefront and feel less sorry for myself about my loss.

I dreamt of a place that looked very much like where I grew up. My whole neighborhood, the city of my youth, bent to hideous dystopian proportions. Grim, darkly terrifying, very unsettling. There were giant spiders of all sorts, creeping in windows and trying to fill rooms when you weren’t looking. And I was still so young, my mom trying to protect me, even though I was about to rush off and get married. I had bodyguards to carry me through the city, until one slacked and another made a mistake and then I was alone, in a gorgeous, richly and multi colored, bejeweled, handmade wedding dress, running through the terrors of the city alone, trying to find someone to help me. Ugh. (Robbie Bunny, if you are reading this, you were one of my bodyguards in my dream, the one who tried to save me).

Earlier in the dream, before it got terrifying, I was looking around for the coffee shop that is about to open next door to me in real life. Except I was in the neighborhood I grew up in. I finally found it, behind the gas station on 10th/Broadway and Roy. It was strange. I can’t remember the last time Seattle appeared that prominently, that clearly in my dreams. It was a very specific Seattle construction, that looks a little like the city, but appears in my dreams, always in that form and often with same emotional tenor, which is full of fear, and sense of always being rushed, and loss of privacy and security. Yet it feels strangely like home, or a place I’ve known as home even if it isn’t now.

I also stayed up too late working on some coding problems and dreamt snatches of code and fleeting ideas to solve problems that I can’t grasp the tail of now that I am awake.