Saturday, March 30, 2002
DREAM
Part of this dream was influenced by the radio this morning as I was listening to "Calling All Pets" on WPR. I remember seeing a bunch of rodents, mice and ferrets. I put my hand in with one of the ferrets to pet it. It looked like a cat. I was rubbing its head and was annoying it, so it turned to bite me very hard--fortunately I was wearing a long sleeved coat so I didn't feel the pain. Then I remember driving around in either Fort Collins or Madison, looking for a specific "house upon the hill" (from a Door's song). I think it must have been on the west side of Ft. C. as opposed to Madison, but that's just because the area looked really familiar...around Vine and Shields area, perhaps...somewhere around there anyway. I don't know why I was trying to find this house...it had some meaning to me. I had it in my mind that it was a one story with an attached garage with strange skylights over the garage and an attic space over the garage too. I found one house that partially fit the description although it was a two-story, but for some reason I knew it was "the house." I went inside. I could hear a woman's voice, and I saw a young girl about 9. I followed her down a hallway. She was confused as to who I was and what I was doing there. The house was about as old as our house in Madison, with an equal amount of original features and updates, except it was bigger, with a secret staircase in back. I went down the staircase and found a bunch of odd doors, mostly closets. There was a doorjam that had a pillar-like structure. I oohed and aaahed over that. I went back up the secret staircase, and as I got up to the top, I had a hard time fitting through the entry...it was child's sized. A very strange Alice in Wonderland sort of dream.
Posted by Ann @ 09:09 AM CST ..::Link::..
Friday, March 29, 2002
Bad Friday
My email is down. All my accounts except my ISP. If you need to email me, try ssstudio@globaldialog.com
One of our newts died yesterday. It had bloat. I hope the other fat one doesn't get that. You try and give them enough food so that the skinny ones eat, and the fat ones, the ones that don't need it, hog all the food. Fat ones get fatter, skinny ones get skinnier. I think our newt aquarium is a good example of a modern capitalist society.
Posted by Ann @ 02:54 PM CST ..::Link::..
DREAM
I was with some people who were part of some stupid reality-based tv show where they went around to different houses and apartments and lived in them for a short time while they were being filmed (I do not watch reality-based shows myself, but am aware of their existence). I guess I was one of the people to be part of the "documentary" (if you can call it that). We were going from a rather wealthy house to a lower-class modern-era apartment dwelling with peeling black and white paint on the outside. I didn't like any of the neighborhoods we were driving through....they were too new, not enough trees, too crowded, too minimalistic. I also remember reading some sort of weird celebrity magazine, but I realized the person they were interviewing in the article was Mister Rogers. I thought that this was hilarious, only if in an ironic sort of way. We arrived at our destination in the parking lot of the apartment buildings. It was at night. There was weird stuff hanging from the electric lines outside...very large black and dark colored glass/plastic structures that looked like props from The Road Runner cartoon, if the Road Runner was live action instead of animated and was more gothic than southwestern. As we got out of the car, which was a cramped two-door subcompact, Hieronymus, who was travelling with us, got outside. He looked more like a small long-haired terrier/mutt mix instead of a Pug. He was running all around a strange shrubby/grassy area. I was afraid of him getting hit by a car. I was finally able to grab him by the collar (IRL he doesn't wear a collar since his accident). One of the people I was with was carrying some sort of box that contained a musical instrument or an amplifier or something. We started walking toward our destination, but I don't know where that was. I also remember being part of an art exhibit that was taking place at a large church, like Methodist or something. There were all these elderly women in charge, and they were all fawning over me. They were saying that even that I only had paintings in the show, they listed me in some place where they had the craft artists listed as well. I didn't know whether to be thankful or insulted. Then I saw my name on some newspaper, but they had my last name wrong. They had me listed as Ann Shorewood. Weird.
Posted by Ann @ 08:45 AM CST ..::Link::..
Wednesday, March 27, 2002
The Kitchen
Yesterday after our vet appointment with Persephone, (she's doing fine...just an annual check up and the vet recommended some joint supplements because we think she might be getting arthritis, or just stiff joints) we went to southeastern Wisconsin. There's a few greenhouses down there that I like a lot, and we just had to go for a ride and get out of town for a short time...cabin fever, you know. Tim is on spring vacation, down in that part of the world visiting his parents on their farm for more than a week (aaarrrgh!!). We stopped by for a short time before we headed back to Madison. It's always rather strange. His mom will always ask us if we want soda, we'll refuse because we don't want to have to go to the bathroom on the road, but she'll give us some anyway, and she'll ask us the same or at least very similar questions to those she's asked us before. We sit in the kitchen at the table with the vinyl tablecloth, and I internally freak out by the mass quantity of Catholicabelia...Jesus as a nice young hippie man, Jesus as a nightlight, some disembodied bleeding heart of Jesus, Jesus here, Jesus there, Jesus Jesus everywhere. Thank goodness my mom didn't allow my dad to have that sort of stuff in their house. I keep thinking that this would be funny if it was a kitschy ironic statement. But it's not. It's totally serious.
We've never seen the rest of the house, other than the kitchen and the bathroom off the kitchen. According to Tim, his mother lets guests further into the depths of the house depending on how much she likes them. Only a few of his friends have gotten past the kitchen. We never had, and I'm afraid that this last visit cemented that. First of all we happened to mention our "being like Tim" as far as being "Democratically aligned, politically." (The rest of his family are staunch Republicans.) Then when she was asking me about painting, I mentioned that I had a Master's degree in Art, "In fact, we both do," I said, referring to Stan. "Oh, you have Master's degrees! I had no idea you had Master's degrees!" Master's degrees in the Fine Arts don't fly too well on the farm. Then I brought up the fact that Stan and I don't want kids, and we're happy that other people are having them instead. "Well, to each his own," she said. Top that off with me being an only child of two only children, and the fact that Stan and I were married at a Justice of the Peace, that's just too much for a conservative German-American Catholic Republican from a very large family to handle.
Nope, we'll never get past the kitchen now.
On the bright side, Tim's dad is a nice, friendly farm guy. He doesn't have the intellectual interests as my dad or Stan's newly found biological dad, but he's the most normal of all our fathers. On the mother side though, I think Stan and I have pretty nice ones. It's odd how we all revert to being a teenager whenever we visit our parents. I think Jerry Seinfeld may have observed that first, but it's true. When I visit my parents, I immediately switch from my normally mellow and calm self to becoming fiesty and confrontational, like a rebellious teenager. Tim goes from his normally loquacious and loopy self to subdued and quiet. Whenever I see parents, be they my own, my in-laws, or my freinds', I always feel like I'm living right out of a Seinfeld skit. He truly mastered the art of adults interacting with their older parents and their quirks that they've been cultivating for 40 plus years.
Posted by Ann @ 09:37 AM CST ..::Link::..
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
DREAM
Confused, mixed up dream. I was with someone who was opening up a pizza restaurant on a street corner. They were putting the finishing touches on the words "pizza" on a beveled stone sign, as well as another word, but I forgot what the other word was. It was as if the store was out in the open instead of inside a building. For some reason, everyone in the dream knew it was doomed to failure. Then I was riding a bicycle on a sidewalk in an old residential neighborhood. I was a very short distance behind the woman on a bike I was following, as I had to keep applying my brakes so not run into her. We approached one driveway and there was a car blocking my way, so I had to walk my bike around it, and as I did so, the group of bicyclists I was with went into the house, an old bungalow decorated in colors of brown. Once in the house, I realized I probably shouldn't be there. It was a party being thrown by George Bush The First. He was behind a wet bar, watching the people I was with and was looking disgusted. I left the party and went downstairs into a part of the house that looked very new and institutional. I entered a room and Stan was there along with Dave his cousin (who did our mortgage refinancing for us), our insurance agent, Ray, and some other guy with a moustache, and weird curly blond hair on the top of his head. They were all sitting around a 4x8 foot table doing some sort of legal business. I said "hi" to Ray, and then Dave said "Hi Ann" to me, so I said "Hi Dave" to him. Then the other guy said "Hi Ann" to me, but I couldn't think of his name, so I said "Hi Ray" to him, even though he wasn't Ray. I felt embarrassed. I also remember being in a Wax Trax style record store in some city somewhere looking at old vinyl.
Come to think of it, the guy with a moustache and blond curly hair on his head looked a lot like Howard Sprague from Mayberry. Picture Howard Sprague with blond curly hair on the top of his head and you get the picture. Now that's a scary dream...Howard Sprague and George Bush Senior in the same dream.
Wasn't Howard an accountant in that show? I shudder at the interpretations of the dream....a mortgage broker, an insurance agent, an accountant and Stan, sitting around a table waiting for me to enter the room. Is that ominous or what?
Posted by Ann @ 08:12 AM CST ..::Link::..
Monday, March 25, 2002
DREAM
I dreamt this after I already woke up, had breakfast and coffee in bed, and then fell back asleep.
I was without clothes, lying on the bed and the venetian blinds were open (IRL, I had clothes on and the venetian blinds were closed). Our new neighbors who just moved in were in their back yard getting ready to leave for work. I realized they could see into our bedroom. It freaked me out...I lied still and hoped they didn't see me. Then somehow I did have a nightgown on (I never wear nightgowns...I don't even own one) and I was in a different room entirely. It was more like a college art studio, or a gymnasium/cafeteria from a high school. I got up to close a large steel door so that people wouldn't be walking through the room, disturbing my slumber, mistaking the room as a hallway. I heard people talking that the professors didn't want to catch anyone living out of their studio, that it was ok to take a nap there, but not to use it for a bedroom. I looked over at my area, which was a matress on the floor. I noticed I didn't have any personal items lying around, so I assumed that no one would be the wiser that I actually lived there. There was a woman talking, and I thought it was Johanna, about her life, about her parents, and as I slowly woke up, I realized it was just the radio, a show on the Catholic priest/celibacy controversy, a caller talking about her positive experience with some priest.
Posted by Ann @ 10:19 AM CST ..::Link::..
Sunday, March 24, 2002
Animal or Vegetable?
New SQUARE jPEG, Barbara.
It's spring now, and still very cold. March has been colder than February. Weird year. I've been paying more attention to my houseplants than anything else lately. Sometimes I think I'd rather be a plant than an animal. Maybe I like the passivity, or the concept of being rooted in one spot rather than having to move all the time. If I were to be an animal I'd have a hard time choosing between a cat or a dog. Stan and I had this discussion last night. He said he'd rather be an insect so that he could have several short lives. I told him that having several short lives would be bad because the memory of the previous lives would be too close. I'd rather not want to remember my previous lives. I also like the thought of asexual reproduction. I heard a strict vegetarian talking about why it's not OK to eat animals and he stated that plants have no feelings. Somehow I don't believe this at all. People thought such of animals a few hundred years ago, too, and look how wrong they were.
Posted by Ann @ 09:33 AM CST ..::Link::..
DREAM
80s flashback dream. Stan, Tim and I were going to see the Kinks in concert in town at the former colliseum (I have no idea what it's called now...Alliance Energy Center?). For some reason, a friend we knew a long time ago popped in on us. We told her that it was good to see her because we thought she was dead. I asked her if she broke up with her husband. She said that they split up because she just doesn't have time for that now. She was putting on a front like she was a busy career woman. Then we drove over to the colliseum with Tim driving (yeah right) and he stopped by a McDonald's drive-through to get some food before the show. I then realized I'd forgotten my ticket, so we had to go back home. I can't remember what happened at that point, but when we went back to the colliseum, I didn't have any place to sit. I thought I might have to sit on a ledge because there weren't any seats left. Then someone else from my past got us some weird food in a bowl. Lots of the people I was around were rejecting this food, and I was especially hungry and was wondering if I could have their portions.