Dreaming
I dreamed about my dad again last Monday night. I was lifting weights with my old workout partner from college. My dad showed up and was showing me something he thought I should try. I can't remember hearing his voice at all, but I remember talking to him and working out with him. It just seemed perfectly normal that we were bench pressing in the middle of the driveway, and that I was somewhere between 18 and 25 years old and so was my friend (which was how old we were when I knew him.) My dad must have been about 55 or so. It hadn't occurred to me until now, but I apparently don't dream of my dad as being as old and thin as he was around the time he died. I dream of him as looking the way he did when I was in high school and college. And judging from this dream, apparently I dream of myself that way sometimes, too.
I also dreamed about my mom and 2 of my sisters. In the dream, they were all 3 ganging up on me, doing things to annoy me just for the fun of it, while pretending they hadn't done anything at all. I had forgotten how they used to do that. The dream seemed very real. It was a strong reminder of how things were. And it was unpleasant.
But it was good to see my dad again.
So anyway, some of you seem to have noticed that I'm not able to be around as often as I normally am. Well, there's a good reason. When we began preparing to close on our new house we had a schedule that we expected to follow. As part of that schedule, we assumed that we'd both be in the new house within a month of closing. So we set the phone to be shut off at the old house for that time frame. As it happens, I am still living in the old house. Only now I have no phone service there, beyond my cell phone. Along with the phone went the internet connection.
Shit!
So, I can't access the internet when I am at home. And that's a big damned deal.
This weekend I learned that it takes exactly 2 1/2 hours to mow 1 acre of overgrown yard with a 21 inch pushmower. Yay!
My allergies are punishing me for mowing the new yard by all ganging up on me at once. I feel as if I have the flu and my head is trying to explode. I suppose it would explode if not for all the pressure being released through my nose in the form of a constant stream of snot.
If I was a sexy man before, you should see me know. I am bringing sexy back! Yeah, Justin Timberlake brought back the grandpa hat. I am bringing back the grandpa handkerchief.
I am a trendsetter, bitches! Word!
My new neighbor was trying to have a party on his back deck while I was out mowing. There are no fences in my new neighborhood, so there I was in all my shirtless glory, pushing this loud old lawnmower, kicking up tons of dust because everything is dry and dead, and he was trying to have a beer with his friends and be cool in the midst of it all. I hope my great sexiness didn't upset any of the envious men or cause their women to drool too much. Yeah, my hotness is legendary. I'm surprised they didn't put down their beers and take pictures. It isn't every day you see a body like this, ladies. Don't be shy.
Well, OK, so it probably is every day that you see a body like this. But I did talk to the owner of my new gym about getting a trainer. So hopefully my actual physique will catch up with my imaginary physique at some point. But you know, I'll never be 25 again. Not that my abs were so awesome even then, but I did have a rock solid chest that got me some action. And a runner's ass.
I'll pause while you all think about that.
Well shit, that didn't take long. I was hoping to distract you while I went to take a pee. You're all still thinking about that amazing girl with the gigantic breasts in my previous post, aren't you? Yeah, me too.
So anyway, our cat apparently loves the new house with its hardwood floors and sliding potential. She runs from one end of the house to the other and then slides around the corner into the kitchen. Then she'll run around and slide somewhere else. We can hear her everywhere she goes. I'd swear she was a dog if I didn't know better. She sure acts like one. Her claws are so long and sharp that they click on the floors, just like a dog does. So we hear every step she takes. And she seems oblivious to this. Still, it's entertaining as hell.
We have an interesting situation with our 2 houses. I'm staying in the old one, sans internet. My Wife is staying in the new one, sans cable/satellite TV and sans computer. The new house should be internet ready, but I haven't gotten the computers over there to set it up yet. Even when I have set them up, My Wife won't care a thing about it. But she does miss the extra TV channels. I really wouldn't care about them if I had internet. I could find plenty of other ways to entertain myself. Ironically, we have each found other ways to entertain ourselves. We're both reading a lot.
My Wife has been reading these books about a female private eye who gets her car blown up a lot. I think they're by Janet Evanovich? You can correct me if I'm wrong and you know what books I'm talking about. Apparently, despite the lack of referrals from Queen Mother Oprah, these books are highly popular with women. Anyway, My Wife swears that this woman writes exactly like I do and that I could write these same stories myself because it's just the sort of thing I'd come up with. I haven't read any of them, so I have no idea. But blowing up cars and having Grandma shoot a pistol throw a dining room table does sound like something I'd write. Still, I've almost given up on my idea of being a writer and started looking into another business I might like to try to start (i.e. Get a huge-assed loan to start.) It's far, FAR less exciting or glamorous than writing, but even so, it just might be worthwhile. Still, it's not interesting enough to blog about, so that's pretty much all I'll say about it.
Our office flooded over the holiday weekend, and is still halfway underwater as I write this, so that is adding to my already free-flowing allergic response to the world as we know it. Yay allergies!
The Little Girl ate a lizard's tail yesterday. Apparently the lizard itself got away, leaving only the tail behind. Not one to admit defeat, the cat swallowed the tail in one gulp and then went looking for something else to torture. I never knew that cats would eat lizards and frogs. In fact, until she carried a frog up to our back step, still very much alive and kicking, I was under the impression that frogs were so nasty that no cat or dog could stand to have them in their mouth for more than a few seconds. I remember the dog we had when I was a kid picking one up and quickly spitting it out once he'd had a taste of it. He'd eat anything and anyone. He even chomped bumble bees out of midair and swallowed them. But he never picked up another frog again after the first one. I guess carrying them with your teeth, but not letting them sit on your tongue is the trick to it? She has apparently mastered this.
I have a lot to do. I should have come into work yesterday even though it was a holiday, but I was feeling rotten all day. So I need to stop here and get back to it. I'm just sitting here thinking about what Steph in Sydney, Australia blogged today.
Apparently some world leaders are there in Sydney today and the city has gone into lockdown mode to make sure no terrorists or Cindy Sheehan show up and attack one of them. This has been somewhat annoying for Steph, as the police insisted on dumping her purse on the sidewalk, and even played with her very expensive shoes, but refused to strip search her.
I thought this was odd, not because the offer to strip search her is so incredibly tempting that only a very, very gay man could say no, but because whenever President Bush or former President Clinton or Al Gore or some other flatulent political bigwig comes to Memphis, we don't go into lockdown mode at all. Oh sure, there is a big Secret Service motorcade surrounding them, and Memphis cops get redirected to make sure they don't get caught up in any random drive-by shootings, but aside from the very localized protection, life here goes on pretty much as always. We have the same number of gang attacks and random shootings and crazed ex-wives of former state senator Ford crashing their Jaguars through various living room windows of random people's homes and all that. The number of attacks on white people by screaming racists doesn't decrease any. The traffic in the Cordova area kills just as many people as on any other day. There are just as many escaped criminals running around hiding in their family's apartments and trailer homes as ever. Someone is going to get their SUV stolen just like every other day, except that when the Feds are in town it usually turns out to be one of theirs, complete with machine guns inside. But that's because they are so arrogant as to assume no one would have the nerve to rob them - WRONG! In short, nothing changes in Memphis when any world leader, including our own President, comes to town. We kill and rob and rape as many men as any other day. And the women don't get treated any better, either. I guess the only real difference is that with the cops all being so distracted, there are less incidents of people getting tasered or pepper sprayed than normal.
It occurs to me that Sydney must be a much more civilized place than Memphis. The fact that they can spare the police for random sidewalk searches and near-molestations shows that they have things basically under control there. Whereas here, in the land of The Memphis Blues, every day is Iraq. Not to make light of it, but several times in the news they have featured stories of soldiers who survived Iraq only to come home to Memphis and get killed within the week. I shit you not.
So on that note, and for no other particular reason besides my stream-of-conciousness writing habits, I need to get back to work.
