Shaken and stirred

Wobbly. In between. Ookie. Like the time I took two doses of Dramamine instead of one. Hungover. Tingly in the head, my brain loose in my skull.

For reasons beyond my control, there was a two-day gap where I didn't take my anti-depressants or my appetite suppressant.

Not that one thing has anything to do with the other.

I lay in bed and felt I was melting into the mattress. It was like being comfortable, but it didn't feel right. It's hard to explain. Sleep seized me in its grip and a dream happened.

I was standing next to a wall having a conversation with someone unknown and then a hand was over my face and I was struggling to breathe. I woke up with a start. MathMan asked me what was wrong.

Bad dream.

I was drifting again even as my heart pounded.

Another dream. Nothingness then water closed over my head. Someone held me under water. I thrashed about, struggled to free myself. I wanted to break the surface, but couldn't.

Awake again. - What is wrong with you? - Another bad dream. Was I flailing around? - No. But you look sweaty.

My will to live is alive and kicking.

I was afraid to fall asleep. I fought it, but soon enough I was in another dream. The kind that seems to last a long time, fades into the next and the next and the next. Not a nightmare, thank goodness.

A new place to live. A rental in a mixed neighborhood. A house dead center of Gated Community meets The Projects. Nice neighbors, a kitchen with a tremendous amount of storage space. Commercial areas distributed around the neighborhood with shops, bars and restaurants. Elevators taking residents and the public up and down between the residential area and the commercial areas.

A cameo appearance by a past lover. A friend from high school. Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart wearing a bowtie and sitting a couple of tables away. He looks over and smiles. Don't I know you?  Yes. I'm friends with you on Facebook. A fan.

We make a date to visit a gay bar down the block. I hope you'll wear that bowtie.

The high school friend wants to show me something. A new iPhone app that shows you how many times a person looks at you. She wants to tell me how many times my old lover has looked at her over the course of the evening. Over 300 times. I am not surprised. He never stops looking.

All day yesterday, I waited for the dream details to fade. They lingered, littered my mind. I felt the occasional zap of electricity course through me. Felt faint a couple of times. Craved a  nap.

I picked up my prescriptions and took the anti-depressant before bed. I remember no dreams from last night.

I can't wait to reverse the process and get off these pills. What are they doing to my brain chemistry?

Not that one thing has anything to do with the other.

What's your Bunsen Burner?

That old chestnut

I dreamed last night that my mother cut my hair into a sassy style that I love, love, loved. It was short, but not too short, all tousled and cute.

In reality, the last time my mother cut my hair, I sat pouting on a stack of Sears, JCPenney and Montgomery Wards catalogs. She used a piece of Scotch tape and her sewing scissors to trim my bangs and even with those fancy precautions, my poker-straight hair went cattywampus. The tyranny of cowlicks cannot be denied.

More surprisingly, my hair color had reverted to its original chestnut.

Something shifted. The mood changed. My hair morphed into a mullet.

My mother disappeared. I stood in front of a mirror and glared at my reflection. Why did I let her talk me into cutting off my long, silver hair? It had taken me so long to grow it out, longer than it had ever been. Now it was gone. Snip, snip. Back to the beginning, Lisa Carole.

I woke up. My hand went immediately to my head. Still long.

I never know from what psychic crevasse my dreams pull themselves. What little thing or big thing or pattern of things stoked the engine of that train of thought? Was it the conversation I had with myself last week about the career choices I'd made? The fact that Chloe and I have been talking about what she's going to do after graduation? Could it be my involvement with the Silver Panthers, a mildly-militant group of anti-hair-color activists at the office? We do like to talk about how we liberated ourselves from the shackles of Clairol and told L'Oreal no más, merci.

Symbolism isn't my strength. I could guess what it meant. Rely on some half-formed assumptions I have about myself and my mother. Only half-formed because it's safer not to look directly into the sun.

A dump truck filled with what ifs backed up next to the bed and someone pulled a lever.

I drifted into a dreamless sleep covered up in issues like an old, worn security blanket.

MathMan didn't even stir.

Dream interpreter or dreamer? You're up.

I'm sprawled across the Davenport of despair*

Thought I'd finally cashed in my chips, did you? I'd see you checking in on me and I'd be all oh, man, I can't think of a thing to write and I'm letting these people down. Think, woman, think! Nothing happens. There's nary a creative thought to be found among the abandoned Habitrails, faded French conjugations, and cravings for Marathon Bars cluttering my cranium.

My pleas for the cats to do something bloggable go unheeded. In a lame attempt at slapstick, the cat who's older than Sophie prat fell off the back of the davenport yesterday. It was like watching someone's grandmother tumble down a flight of stairs. My shocked laughter was muted by my concern with whether she'd broken a hip.

"Oh, Daisy! Are you okay?"

She shot me a reproachful look, shook herself and said, "I don't plan to sue." As she strolled away, she looked over her shoulder, her lip curled in defiance. "This time."

I used the word davenport because it doesn't get used enough. I looked it up on wikipedia. A proper noun first, it morphed into a generic term for sofa in the Midwest and Northern New York. Which would explain why my thoroughly Midwestern mother used davenport interchangeably with the harsher sounding couch. When I was a child, I liked it when she said davenport. It seemed more exotic with its multiple syllables.

The family has been no help either. They haven't said or done a funny thing in over a week. Unless you count Sophie telling me that having sex burns calories so I should keep doing it. The friend she was showing off in front of laughed at the irreverence of the exchange. I pulled out my phone and poked at the keyboard.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm texting Daddy."

"About sex?"

"No. About calories."

I thought about telling you about the strange dreams I've been having, but instead I'll show you this visual and leave the rest to your imagination.

It's fair to say that I have anything to offer. I'm profoundly sorry for this lapse. I'm distracted to the point of scrubbing old cookie sheets with a solution of baking soda and peroxide. They don't yet gleam, but give me time and a few more news stories about the ongoing attempts of the Right to dismantle the hard-won reproductive rights of women or another beating of a gay teen and those cookie sheets will be mirrors upon which we can all scrutinize our foreheads for etched lines of confusion and consternation.

You can't rub those lines out with your thumb either. I've tried.

Now I'm turning to you. Suggestions for topics are welcome. Questions, ideas, a first line, a last one? Want to guest post? Fire away.

P.S. This.


*Not really, but I love this line from the Warren Zevon song Disorder in the House.

Don't ask me how the foo dog got into the dream

I lay in bed willing the next new scene of the work in progress to present itself. Between sleep and awake, cozy under the blankets, glad it was Sunday and I could sleep in.

Instead I was rewarded with a dream. We lived in a highrise city apartment. I was in the lobby in a hoodie, sweatpants, no bra and having gone two days without a shower. It suddenly occurred to me that I was enrolled in some seminar that morning but I couldn't remember a single detail or whether or not I'd received a registration confirmation.

MathMan arrived in the lobby, Sophia in tow. He was putting her in a cab to go somewhere unexplained. Nathan and some of his friends sat at a concrete table on the sidewalk. I peered through the window of the building next to me and realized that was where the seminar was happening. I'd dash upstairs, have a quick shower and get back maybe ten minutes late. Not a lost cause.

I yanked open the glass door and bee-lined for the elevator bank. It was only after I stood for a moment in the immobile elevator that I realized I'd gone into the wrong building. I'd have to go back to the lobby and into my own building.

I punched a button and nothing happened. I pushed another. Still nothing. Fine. I hit the open door button. As the doors opened, the elevator lurched. First up, then down. The doors partially opened, I could see the innards of the working system.

The elevator expanded, growing to at least three times its initial size. It was a large, moving room. The doors continued to open and closed but now they looked like a mouth with a crazy grin, sharp teeth.

There were windows in the walls and up on one window ledge sat a large Foo dog with two legs instead of four. More like a garden gnome with a Foo dog head.

The elevator reached the first floor where the seminar was beginning. The attendees were seated on sofas all facing the speaker. In the audience were my childhood friend Tanya and Raj from The Big Bang Theory. Everyone turned and looked at me. I was acutely aware of my lack of hygiene and proper breastwear.

MathMan stood outside on the sidewalk talking to Nate and his friends. I opened the door and joined them.

"I thought you were going to the seminar," MathMan said.

"Not until I've had a shower," I replied.

"Okay." MathMan was looking at me funny.

"I'm going to take the stairs....."

I don't remember many of my dreams, especially not with this level of detail. Do you?

Indications That I'm Reading Too Much Neil Gaiman?

MathMan's alarm sounded at 5:45a.m.  I'm part relieved, part not. But not for the reasons you might think.

I was dreaming.

It was early morning.  We were just stirring.  Chloe was here instead of at school.  The first up.  She'd had a shower.  I could smell the cocoa butter scent of her body wash when I went into the hallway.  She was just finishing dressing in the living room when the doorbell rang.

I stood at the top of the short flight of stairs that leads to the top floor of our rented split level.  My eyes met Chloe's.  She must have still been dancing because she wore a red leotard and black tights with black shorts over them.

"I'll get the door," I said before descending the stairs.  I looked down at myself to see if I was dressed, but I don't remember what I was wearing.

As I turned the doorknob to the heavy-looking, but quite cheap hollow metal front door, the door pushed in and three women and a young, fat man stood just inside the living room.  We have no foyer or hallway entrance.  The front door opens right into the living room.

I craned my neck to look around the women and man and saw that the wooden stairs leading from the sidewalk up to the house was lined with people and a crowd had formed on the lawn.  More people streamed off a tour bus.  It wasn't a fancy charter bus.  It was a yellow school bus.

"Whoa!  Hang on!"  I shouted at the woman in the lead.  She was taller than me, pretty of face.  Her makeup was nicely done and she wore her dark blond hair in a stylish cut.  When I was a kid, we called her hair color dishwater blond, but I'm not sure that's such  a complimentary term anymore.  You don't hear it much.  And what with so many people having dishwashers, would anyone really know what that means these days?

"I used to live here!" The woman was speaking to the crowd as much as to me.

I put my hands up as if to push the crowd back or to at least ward them off.  "Yes, but it's early.  There are people just waking and getting dressed."  I glanced up the stairs and saw MathMan, his hair still damp from his shower, in the hallway looking annoyed and confused behind his glasses.

"I want to show them the basement.  The walled-off room." The dishwater blond woman was saying.

I looked at her and her large hazel eyes and red sweater.  Someone snapped a photo.

She was talking again.  "There were murders here.  You did know that, right?  People were killed in this house."

Time stopped for just a second.  Over the noises of the crowd, I thought I heard Chloe gasp, but maybe the gasp came from me.

"Yes, of course, we knew about the murders," I lied.  "But you really must wait outside.  My family..." I looked at the crowd.  All the women had dishwater blond hair, nice makeup, stylish haircuts and pretty faces. They all wore red sweaters.  Some had windbreakers on over their sweaters, but they wore them unzipped so that the red of their sweaters showed through.  Like their chests had been sliced open and were bleeding.

I thought about what Nathan had said about the basement creeping him out when he used to have his bedroom down there.  I thought about the occasional strange noises that came from the laundry room. I thought about how our cats pawed at the wall that separated the laundry room from the garage and the storage area beneath the stairs.  I looked at the woman in the lead.

"Murders, you say?"

Her chest heaved with excitement.  "Yes.  Downstairs.  In the room that's been walled off."

I looked again toward the stairs.  MathMan was still there.  He shrugged.  Behind him, Nate was coming out of the bathroom.  He must have showered.  A towel was wrapped around his waist, his chest was bare and he wore a towel like a turban wound around his head.  I thought of Ferris Bueller.

I turned back to the woman.  Chloe was right behind me now.  She pinched my elbow and said, "Mom? Murders?"

"Okay, but you'll have to go around to the back," I pointed out the door that was now jammed with people.

"That's fine.  I'll lead the way." The woman who was just stating the obvious pushed through the people toward the door.

The crowd turned in unison and followed her down the wooden steps.  I could see her in the yard waving her arms and speaking to the crowd of red sweaters.

MathMan's alarm went off.  It's on his phone and has a kind of Eastern tone to it.  Like Bollywood telling to you to get a move on.

I rolled over to see MathMan checking messages on his phone.  The dream was gone.

What Will Make You Believe Me?

I keep dreaming of tornadoes.  I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Last night, I didn't dream of tornadoes, but at one point I did rest in that in-between state - not awake exactly, not quite gone.
And I thought about how lately I see an abundance of the Chevy trucks like the one I lost my virginity in all those years ago.
Having your cherry popped in the bed of a truck does not make for a great romantic tale.
Except there were stars overhead somewhere, I suppose.
I couldn't see them though because my eyes were probably squeezed shut and the camper shell would have made it impossible anyway.
Those were the days.
When I thought Micelob beer was the height of sophistication.
And he was pretty special.  Or, at the very least, convincing.  No, he didn't have to get me drunk or marry me first.  Yes, I'm now friends with him on Facebook.  I mean, how else would I have a complete set?  He's key to the Old Boyfriend Buffet, right?
So now I see those trucks all over town and here's the thing that causes me to notice:
Those Chevy trucks are adorned with those Antique Vehicle license plates and since it's all about me, I conclude:  My virginity is an antique.