Dream Diary Post 2

Just a sliver...

I dreamed I had laid out an apple cinnamon donut in the window of a storefront on top of a paper towel.  I was eating something else as well but I can't remember what it was.
The donut was actually pretty good, which surprises me everytime because my anticipation for apple-cinnamon flavored things is less than enthusiastic, but before finishing it I wanted to warm it in the microwave...

 My friend was holding some sort of a meeting in some sort of cafeteria...they were serving free Indian food, I was very excited, I had to pick up some papers, everyone else there was there for an important meeting, I don't know why I was there...I was trying to think of a reason, trying not to be annoyed that I wasted a subway swipe coming down to the cafeteria..thinking about the free food, hoping it would be redemption enough for the $2.50 I spent...

Life Is a Bitch and Then You Die/Youth Is Wasted On the Young

When you're a kid you beg to stay awake and then when you grow up there's not enough hours in the day to stay curled up in your blanket

When yor're a kid they beg you to eat coaxing you with kid food and everything, even a chicken nugget or some ice cream, sushi, anything, and then you grow up and all of a sudden you do have an appetite but you're constantly being told stop...STOP

Getting clothes as a present used to be the worst thing ever, and then you grow up and realize how fucking awesome not paying for clothes is

 I used to never know what I wanted for my birthday or Christmas whenever adults would ask...and now I could list a billion of things I want but no one asks anymore

They should make

They should make a timer that starts ticking right after you've emailed a potential employer and anyone else that you need something from, counting down to the next time you can email them without sounding like a desperate prick.  For the first two emails the timer would start ticking down from 1 week.  But after that the clock jumps to 2 weeks, or 2.5 weeks, or 3 weeks (I haven't decided).  Long enough that they forget the last time you contacted them, so it doesn't feel like you JUST sent them an email, but short enough that they remember who you are.


Applying for jobs is a bitch.

Asking for a favor from someone who doesn't see any personal benefit from helping you ('cause who does shit out of the good of their heart anymore), is a bitch.

Dream Diary Post 1

I still don't know dream summary etiquette.  I know "I had the weirdest dream last night" is supposed to be a cue to stop listening.  But the thing is, everyone wants to share that weird dream, that unshakeable twisted feeling while you found a secret garden or talked to your dog in English while having breakfast with George Clooney.  But no one wants to hear it. Why?  1. They had to be there. 2. Dream recounts can often be an implicit boast of "check out my interesting brain, yo!"

And I think back to the times that I've listened to other people's dreams...ok so my eyes do glaze over when I hear about the fantastical stuff...tap dancing on a frog while jousting with your principal...save that for your drawings, I guess.  But the realistic stuff, having a dream that you were still in that horrid AP US history class and 4 journals of homework uncompleted, that you made up with that estranged friend and woke up and realized you didn't...the dreams that are obviously tied to conscious preoccupations...those I don't mind hearing about as much.

This wasn't the most interesting, but I dunno today was the day I decided to actually write them down

I had this dream where I had six unannounced guests in my house, my parents' house, rather.  I was practicing piano with someone I don't remember, feeling annoyed that one of the lines required me to reach my pinky octaves lower than the rest of the melody, and pop back up.  An acquaintance appeared sitting on the white couch and made some inappropriate lewd comment regarding a princess illustration on one of sheets of music (evidently the sheet music transformed to nursery tunes) and I walked out of the room.  Then my 6 guests arrived.  I felt a flash of panic and wondered how my mom would take it though she was standing not 20 feet from me.  I eyed the giant oriental rug on our family room floor imagining them side by side like pigs in a blanket thinking...well it's not so bad if they stayed there...not very obtrusive...I imagined them walking through the halls touching things they saw touching the things in my room and my stomach clenched...
all of a sudden I was waking up in the top bunk of a bunk bed, of two bunk beds in my room, I looked to the right and saw two recognizable curled bodies on the other bunk, confused for a moment because one of the boys was not there the evening before, and thinking, well of course he's here, he's always mooching off of other people...a couple people were already in the midst of leaving, going wherever they were going in the haze of the morning...
and then I was on the floor next to the bottom bunk of my bed and there's my friend, but with the body of a baby...with the chubby face and chubby hands and abbreviated chunky torso...and my other friend remarked matter-of-factly (with a tint of I-can't believe you didn't know this) everyone wakes up with the body of a baby...and then we grow throughout the day...and I thought, oh really, as I picked up my friend, holding her with my hands under her armpits dangling her in front of me...and when I looked up again all my other friends became mounds of sleeping babies...
We're on the floor of the foyer and there's two groups of kids getting ready to go upstairs for their science lessons.  I'm usually with one group but wander to the other because a lot of them have been absent...I look in my hands and there are giant plaster models of ears and noses...evidently we were going to stick fake earwax and boogers into the respective crevices to learn about germs.  This second group acts like I'm supposed to be there all along, and I see my group of kids walking up the stairs to the labs already...I feel like I'm getting left behind, being somewhere I'm not supposed to be...
I'm in the apartment of a fictional sister of my friend, I was staring at her under the pretense she was a stranger until she starts talking to me and recognition dawns instantly.  She had just graduated from college and was holding a diploma and wearing her robes...it was an amazing feat because she was around 32, even though her face was still oily and pockmarked with acne, and had an 8 year old daughter. She thanked me for reading to her daughter while she was away and I said it was no problem I do it all the time and started giving some advice about hard work vs being smart how being smart is only half the battle blah blah blah (this was the most lucid part of my dream where my conscious brain was contributing) and then I woke up.

Parenthood is my Guilty Pleasure

There are some people who angrily exclaim that there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure. If you like it, then there should be no reason to be ashamed, they cry.  There is no such thing as high brow, low brow, it's an idea invented by ignorant snobs.  I disagree. There are just some things that I enjoy that I just can't stand behind.

Parenthood is one of them.

It's melodramatic, the situations are contrived, they use the same old gimmicks of unexpected pregnancies, affairs, cancer. Besides basic personality traits, each season the characters respond differently from how you would expect them to the previous year, Jekyll and Hyde fashion.  Assholes become angels, and vice versa.

The revolving door of serious love interests for the unmarried mother daughter duo-- it's not the number of boyfriends that is the issue, but the feeling that the writers have a Taylor Swift-ian addiction to falling in love---but they don't know where to go after that.

Whenever the four siblings get together to discuss their parents, the camraderie and teasing and cross-talking feels forced, a too-obvious display of look-how-dysfunctional-we-are-but-we're-awesome.

What saves the show, however,  is how they react beautifully to their situations. once you get over the  the soap opera-y circumstances, you appreciate that dialogue is mostly honest and realistic.  The mother that would rather be working in the office than be present for every dance class and baseball practice.  The marriage that seems to be on rocky ground after several decades.  The father that doesn't love his new baby yet.  The daughter that feels overshadowed by her autistic brother.  Despite the sappy moments, it's the only dramedy that explores family life without veering into Afterschool special or Anti-Hero (A la Tony Soprano or Don Draper) territory.

I don't know anyone else who watches this show, and definitely not anyone my age.  Unless they knit.  or have 3 cats. Or listen to Contemporary Country Music.  Watching it makes me feel like some stay-at-home mom.  I don't watch it on TV and I never see it mentioned on websites, but somebody's gotta be watching it if it squeezed its way into a 4th season.

I think I'd miss it when it ends.

I love the Yeezus Album Cover

Yeezus Album cover,  I love it.  I have a soft spot for any usage of minimal red as a focal point.  But it's so on point (pun wasn't intended, but now is), so in tune (pun wasn't intended, but now is) with what Kanye West wants to offer on the album musically . Bareness. Spareness. Yet Riveting.  The simple piece of red tape applied not perfectly on the edge of the horizon line.  That contrasts beautifully with the filmy silvery iridescence of the disc.  He made us appreciate the beauty of the blank CD itself, a fascination usually reserved for babies and the Amish.

  Instead of brainstorming the most complicated, unusual design to plaster on the cover, West walked in the opposite direction and presents something just as visually impacting, if not more so.  He spoke softly, but carries a big stick.

The Type of People who Volunteer/Do Community Service

1. Do gooders that want to help others
2. Confused people who are trying to make sense of their own life
3. Overcompensators that want to show the world how they're gooder than everyone, the ones that ham it up for the foster kids and homeless and senior citizens but turn a stoic face to "the normals"
4. People being punished

I volunteered at the Bingo night at a nursing home yesterday. Being there reminded me of those times we visited during Girl Scouts projects and with the cobbled together kid's chorus group made up of our neighborhood's Taiwanese Christians. And me.  There was this constant inner conundrum of wanting to be accommodating yet not condescending.  The excruciating wait watching some of the Bingo players with their knitted hats and long triangular fingernails gingerly locate and cover the called number. Some of them wore homemade beaded bracelets, with the same kinds of chunky glass and base metal beads that were in my beading kit I got for Christmas in 5th grade. I wonder if some kid gave it to them or they made it in the Arts and Crafts room.  A man wore a beaded necklace.  It was stupid, but it made me happy that they still treasured pretty things, pretty and intrinsically worthless things, just like the rest of us.  That if it was a kid that gave it to them, it wasn't just a polite exchange made more in an attempt to make the giver feel important, but it was special to both parties.

There was a male senior who shook my hand and spoke only German.  Or Russian. I forget.  And soon after he shook my hand they said they needed a male volunteer to stand next to him instead because apparently he liked to touch people in places that would still be covered by a bathing suit.

I wanted to yell at the middle-aged men that were excessively superficially hammy with the seniors, you're not better than them, you're just not There yet.