I never write, I never call. Soon, though. Almost finished being busy here. Literally, I don’t know how I get everything done.

dream

Last night I dreamed Matt Damon and I ran into each other and got to talking and catching up on what was happening with our mutual friends. In the course of our conversation, we admitted to each other that we’d always had crushes on each other. No, not crushes… we were in love.

I made out with Matt Damon. We told each other in great detail how and when and why we each knew we’d fallen in love with the other. Then we realized that each of us was currently unmarried.

“Note to self,” I thought, “Break up with my fiance next time I see him.” Because, as much as I loved my fiance, I knew that I had to take the once-in-a-lifetime chance to find the ultimate romantic happiness with Matt Damon, who was so obviously, probably my soulmate.

Matt Damon and I made out. I decided I’d tell my fiance we should take a break from our relationship for a month, to make sure we wanted to get married for absolute certain. During that month, I told myself, I would date Matt Damon. I decided not to divulge that part of the plan to my fiance, as it would only hurt him. Also, that way, if it turned out that Matt Damon and I were not really soulmates, I could just get back with my fiance and move forward.

I thought my plan over and could see no problems with it. Matt Damon stepped away to speak to a mutual friend. I rode a very long swing that was hanging from the sky. I swung in great circles and picked a giant almond from a tree in an orchard full of giant-almond trees being tended by Miss Carmen Abrego.

I swung back to the park and Matt Damon was waiting for me. We kissed. Then, my fiance appeared at my side. “Oops,” I thought.

The End.

When I Woke Up

I realized how silly the whole thing was. Because, in reality, my fiance loves me very much, and I love him. So I know that, if Matt Damon were to come to me and tell me he’d always loved me, I could totally go to my fiance and say, “Baby, Matt Damon says he loves me. Can you and I break up for a month so I can see what’s up with that?”

And I know he’d say, “Sure, baby. I know you really like Matt Damon, and I wouldn’t want you to miss out on that chance.”

Also, Matt Damon is married to someone who seems really nice. So, the whole point is moot.

I’m getting older.

And I’m not sad about it. It’s not a bad thing, to lose patience for immature people. The best thing is that you can walk away from them without worrying that they’ll stop liking you, or that they’ll call you old or stuck-up or boring. You won’t care about petty shit like that anymore. It’s really kind of awesome, the not caring and the walking away.

Jesus

This blog entry’s gonna kind of suck because I have no time to write it. No time to craft. But y’all know why and y’all know that it doesn’t diminish the undying distant affection that I feel for each of you. Y’all feel that great impersonal artist-to-viewer love and want to reciprocate it in terms of book sales. Don’t you? Don’t you? Doncha just wanna, and make it all real to me? Give me the excuse to have been doing this for so long? Create my pay-off? Give me the royal nod? Vote with your dollars? Pay my commission?

Sure. Love y’all for doing so. Y’all are the bestest.

Halloween is over for us

because we had our party last night. Next is Thanksgiving, which I’m hosting this year, so I’ll have to get pretty obsessive and then OCD about every aspect of that. Then comes Christmas, which we aren’t really celebrating since it’s the year for the kids to spend it at their dad’s. And, weirdly, although you’d think I’d mind and I would’ve agreed with you a year ago, I now kind of look forward to the non-Christmas years just like sophisticated people always do in short-story collections.

You know — in award-winning short stories, people are always travelling in other countries on Christmas day and feeling only slightly melancholy, but still experiencing meaningful things that have some parallel or counterpoint to some aspect of the narrator’s previous Christmas experience. And the story ends on something poignantly tragic or quirkily literarily beautiful.

So it’ll be like that for me this year, except that instead of a non-American country, I’ll be in a dim sum restaurant. And, in addition to all the drama and angst and metamorphosis that always takes place in my head (and is painstakingly detailed there, and then recreated later on the phone with someone, late at night), I’ll have a culinary adventure, as well. Doubtless. Probably in the form of a dessert — a new-to-me formation of red beans and dough.

And it will be magical. The stuff Nobel Prizes are made of.

P.S.: If there were any particular excuse for me to leave my fiance for Matt Damon, it would be because my fiance keeps trying to pretend that he doesn’t know what American Thanksgiving food is. He keeps talking about brocolli rice casserole, and I keep getting mad to the point of tears while describing acorn squash and sweet potatoes. “Orange not green!” I cry. “THE COLORS OF FALL!”

I say we “keep” doing this and by that I mean once per year. We already had that talk this year, so it’s out of the way and we can move forward. He promised to try. I promised to try to show him. (I show him the recipes, and he cooks them.) That’s what being engaged means. It means a compromise. Before the compromise comes, it means making a concerted effort to figure out each other’s personal traumas and mental scars. His is autumn foods for Thanksgiving, which he knows all about and only pretends not to know about even though he’s been in this country since he was two. Mine is autumn foods for Thanksgiving, which I know all about because I obsess about it every year that my family cooks beans and rice instead.

Being engaged also means

calling each other fiance and fiancee instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. I know that now, because everyone keeps telling me. “Did you just say ‘my boyfriend’? I thought you guys were engaged. Are you engaged or not? Isn’t that an engagement ring you’re wearing? Do you wish you weren’t engaged? Have you called off the engagement?”

No, Mr. Damon, we haven’t. The engagement is still on. But, like I told y’all, it’s a long engagement. And the problem is, I can’t say the word fiance without feeling like Sigourney Weaver in that episode of Seinfeld where she keeps saying fiance and Elaine says, “Maybe the dingo ate your baby.”

I know what people are worried about. They’re worried they’re going to get cheated out of a wedding. Particularly a wedding that Tad and I have slaved and OCD’ed over, which means that it’ll be the best wedding anyone’s likely to see in their lifetimes in this town.

Don’t worry, people. We’re still engaged, and we’re already obsessing over the wedding in our spare time.

Okay, that’s all.

I was looking for a clip of the dingo quote for y’all, but couldn’t find it. Sorry.

I’m thinking about getting a new car, by the way. Maybe two weekends from now. Send me New Car Financing vibes if you want. Or, better yet, just preorder my book.

Love,
(Impersonal, Distant, Nonetheless Heartfelt Love,)
Gwen

(And for whoever else can stand to read them or who likes to interpret dreams.)

1. Again and always with the dreams that I’m tricked into living with and/or marrying my ex-husband. KHAN! Last time I had a really involved one, in which I’d won a “dream” wedding from Sears/Macy’s. When I showed up to participate in it — a little late, a little tipsy, feeling celebratory — I found that the department store had misplaced my wedding gown and wanted to offer me a shitty Miss Texas sheath, instead. By the time I got that ironed out with a late-night shoplifting trip at a nearby costume shop and a run-in with the local Mafia, I was getting worried that it was too late to marry my fiance on Sears/Macy’s’ dime.

And then I arrive and see that the groom is my ex-husband. And the preacher is preaching, and I feel like it’s rude, at that point, to interrupt the ceremony and call off the wedding. And yet I’m determined to do it. And then I wake up.

Annoying-o-freaking-rama, as you can imagine. This dream is obviously about my annoyance with my never-ending forced involvement with that person, which always occurs against my wishes.

2. I always, always dream about monster fruit plants. Usually I dream that there are monster fruit stalks growing in my dad’s backyard, or next door to his house, and I’m trying to cultivate or harvest them, but people keep interrupting me and no one seems to value the fruit like I do.

But lately I’ve dreamed that I’m trying to purchase monster fruit plants on sale from various places. The weirdest thing about it, as I already told you on the phone, Ashley, is that, in the dream, I never realize how unusually freaky the fruit plants are. In the dream, they’re just valuable/awesome/beautiful/desired. When I wake up, though, I realize that they were kind of monstrous. They’re like corn stalks covered with bunches and bunches of giant plums that are stuck together like testicles. Or, like, giant brocolli stalks covered with giant, blood red, tumorous peaches. They are fruit plants to be feared, but not when I’m dreaming them. In my dream, they’re something to covet and acquire.

I don’t know if they mean money or artistic acheivement. Maybe both.

3. I used to always dream that I was trying to ride the Metro bus somewhere, and I got on the wrong bus or couldn’t find the right bus stop, and it was getting later and I was getting into more dangerous parts of town…

But lately those dreams have shifted into something else. I ride the Metro bus and get off downtown, before it can carry me somewhere wrong. Because I know that, downtown, I can transfer to the exact right route. So I’m downtown, trying to figure out where to get the right bus, and I try to take a shortcut by going through one of the big buildings that I used to work in or used to walk through when I was a teenager.

And then it turns into some thing where I’m screwing around on the elevators. I don’t know why. Sometimes I need to get on the elevator because it’s one of those buildings where the ground is uneven and can be on G or 1 or P, depending on what side of the block you’re facing. But usually it seems that I want to be wicked and nosy and ride up the elevator to see what I can see. Maybe even to steal something. And then, eventually, the elevators take us someplace weird or scary, like a boiler room. But I don’t care. It kind of thrills me and I keep riding. And the other riders, even though they’re dressed in business casual and I’m not, don’t question my right to be there. Sometimes they even follow me, as if I know what I’m doing.

I don’t know what this dream means. Maybe that I feel like I don’t belong in Corporate America, but I’m doing well there, anyway?

4. Sometimes I dream about stealing the purses of rich old ladies. Their purses are always ugly, but I steal them. And then I feel guilty. But also excited. The goal in those dreams is always to stop someplace safe so I can open the purses and see what I reeled in. But I never do get to stop, and usually I lose the purses while on the run.

I know this dream says something bad about me, like maybe I resent rich people and have a chip on my shoulder and covet other people’s stuff.

5. Three or four times now, I’ve dreamed that we visited New York. Usually it’s by accident, maybe because Houston’s Metro bus took us there without us noticing. Once we get there, we want to make the best of it and have fun, but we don’t know where to go, and the natives aren’t helpful. Or else we’re afraid to ask them because we assume they won’t be helpful, because I read Gawker and Overheard in New York all the time, and they give me the impresssion that native New Yorkers are assholes who take pleasure in being rude to tourists.

So we end up driving/riding/walking around the city, finding our own fun. In one dream we shopped in Chinatown at night. In one we found a carnival in the middle of Manhattan. In the last one, I walked through a Lithuanian apartment complex and looked into everyone’s dining room.

This dream says that I crave adventure but don’t have the means to get it on a grand scale, maybe.

the cats, good and bad

I like it when the cats lie near me like curved slugs, with their arms and legs tucked under them.

I don’t like it when Starbuck scratches the glass patio door because she wants to go outside. Like all cats, she only wants to be outside if we leave the door hanging open so she can come back in at will. But then flies get in. So she can only go out if we close the door behind her. So she only stays out for a few minutes, then scratches at the door so we can open it. Then, of course, as all cat owners can guess, she’s back at the door thirty seconds later, scratching to get out.

And the sound of her claws on the glass is very, very, VERY annoying. So I yell at her to stop. But she seems to think that me wanting her to stop is only a very temporary condition. So she goes back to the scratching again and again, until I take more drastic action.

And that is not one of the highlights of having cats as pets.

Equal opportunity: I don’t like it when Toby acts possessive over me. Sometimes it’s funny, but then sometimes he gets all testosterone-y about it and I have to remind him that I’m a human being and not his conquest, and I have to throw him off my bed or whatever. And then he gets pissy and takes it out on Starbuck. Which is probably why she always wants to go outside all the time?

I just realized that my cats might be living in a Sartre-esque hell of my making. But oh, well. It’s better than living at the county shelter, I’m sure.

the photo thing

I feel like I’ve said this before, but need to say it again and will do so as simply and directly as I can.

1. I only put pictures of myself online if I think I look good in them. So, if there’s a picture of me on this site or on my Flickr, even if it’s not a stereotypically “good” picture, one can rest assured that I like the way I look in that picture. “I’m Gwendolyn Zepeda, and I approve this photo.” Like that. Usually, I only want to share a photo because I like the way it looks.

2. But it’s hard to say that. It’s hard to say, “Hey, y’all, I think I look awesome in this photo. Check it out. Check out this awesome picture, the subject of which happens to be me-e-e-e!” So, I don’t. I skip that part and talk about the more modest other part, like “This is how much I weigh” or “This is an old t-shirt I wear” or “This is a new hair color for me.”

3. And then I always manage to come off like I dislike the way I look, or like I need reassurance. And then people (very nice people) are quick to reassure me and tell me that I look nice/pretty/good/decent.

4. And then I feel guilty and gauche, like I was fishing for compliments. When I wasn’t. Wanting to share a nice picture isn’t the same as fishing for compliments, is it? I don’t think it is. Not for me, at any rate.

5. And then I bury the picture under a lot of other pictures or posts, because I am embarrassed.

Does all that make me crazy? No, I know: It means I over-analyze the shit out of my motivations and the impression I’m making on others.

But that’s okay.

In related news: There’s this person in my life who makes me a little nervous because she’s always commenting on things that I say or do. Like telling me to relax or telling me that it seems like I worry too much. And, when this person does that, it makes me way less relaxed than I’d normally be. And I don’t think this person does it to be annoying — I think this person does it because that’s normally what people want to hear from this person. And, finally, the other day, I had to tell this person that I liked myself the way I was, and that the way I was totally worked for me and made me a success. And this person accepted that, and I was relieved.

There are two people in my life, actually, who are always telling me to chill out and to act more confident and not to let on that I feel worried or insecure…
And I’m starting to think that these two people, who seem super confident and secure, actually aren’t. And that they’re telling me all this in order to remind themselves.

But I’m okay, really. I swear to God, if I didn’t like myself and have self-confidence and feel secure, I wouldn’t be able to talk about myself so much on the Internet, would I? Not for eleven years, I couldn’t. Really, it takes all the false modesty I can muster to keep you guys from realizing how conceited I really am.

Think about it.

Don’t worry about me, people who worry. I’m happy.

the other day

I played Rock Band with my son and his friends who’d come over for a slumber party. I played because no one else wanted to sing, and they needed a singer for extra points. “Want me to sing?” I said.

“Your mom sings on Rock Band?” one of the friends asked my son Josh.

“Uh, yeah. My mom’s, like, a trained singer,” said my son Dallas. But not in an “I’m so proud of my mom” way. It was more like “Duh — why wouldn’t a grown-up who knows how to sing, sing on Rock Band?”

So we played, and it was fun because we stopped being mom and sons and friends of sons, and became a force. A team. A rock band. We had three rotating drummers who I assigned to songs according to their skill level. Aside from that, there was almost no talking. As the evident band leader, I reminded myself to praise each member after particularly difficult songs. But that was it. And we racked up some serious points. And I felt the same feeling I have when my coworkers and I get through a really tough project. (We unlocked “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, and that’s my very best song. I’m going to sing that next time I go to a karaoke bar.)

I went to bed at 2 AM. The next morning, we woke up and went outside and saw one of my neighbors walking over from across the street. “I’m so tired,” she said. “We stayed up all night playing Rock Band.”

I’m telling you, man. The families that Rock together stay together.

I had a lot more to tell y’all but it’s night now and I can’t stay focused well at night. I’m really only worth anything (besides Rock Band) in the mornings. So hopefully I’ll wake up early tomorrow and get some novel-writing done…

Y’all have a good night, okay? Y’all have good dreams.

I went to Flickr, was disappointed that no one’s posted many xmas photos, then reminded myself that I haven’t posted any, either.

Our Christmas went really well. Hope yours did, too. We baked. A while back, my youngest son Rory, now 10, had found some retro recipe for cookies shaped like mice. He became obsessed with the idea of baking them for Christmas, no matter how many times we told him that a) they’d be a pain in the butt to make, and b) mice have nothing to do with Christmas. But he wouldn’t relent, so we did. We took him on a special last-minute drugstore trip to purchase strawberry flavored licorice for mouse tails. We puzzled out how to get the tails into the cookies — Tad thought of putting toothpicks into the mouse bodies to keep a hole in place while they baked. But we had no toothpicks, so I thought of rolling up tiny bits of foil. The mice had chocolate-chip eyes and peanut ears. While baking, they each doubled or tripled in weight. We decided they were mice preparing for hibernation. Or else, simply very fat mice. The aluminum tails popped out and the licorice tails popped in (with minimal inappropriate innuendo, heh), and the end result was awesome. Rory’s cookies got their own display plate, and he enjoyed showing them to everyone who showed up at our party. And I hope I haven’t created a baking monster now. Just kidding. We also made other cookies, and mini rum cakes, and white chocolate popcorn as gifts. And if I had known before how easy it was to work with white chocolate bark coating, everything in my house would have been dipped in it by now…

We didn’t do a lot of gifts this year because, like a lot of people who drive cars in America, I’m pretty freaking broke right now, and there aren’t any Black Friday sales worth the credit card interest, as far as I’m concerned. So we traded very small, inexpensive things, or else things that we’d made for each other. And, honestly, I think it came out just as well. The kids said it did. Maybe they were just being gracious, though. They’re so gracious. My dad came over and gave them all Best Buy gift certificates. Rory asked him the amount they contained. My dad said, in the dry tone I know as his joking voice, “I’m pretty broke this year, so they’re $8 each.” All three kids thanked him. Then, my dad said, “Either 8 or [way bigger amount], I forget.” And I understood that they were of course for the bigger amount. The kids thanked him again.

Then, the next day, Rory told me, “Grandpa gave us $8 each for Best Buy, so that’s $24. Maybe we can get a game with that.” And he seemed so excited. His brother Dallas somberly agreed that they should pool their $8 cards. I said, “No, babies. He gave y’all [much bigger amount] each. Not $8.” And they go, “Oh-h-h-h…” Fifteen-year-old Josh rolled his eyes and laughed. He’d gotten the joke.

Okay, enough bragging about my kids. They’re going to their dad’s today, for his part of the holiday. It’s kind of unfair, because our school district rearranged their calendar again, so I’m getting the kids for almost no time at all. But at least I got them for Christmas. Next year I won’t, and that’ll be sad. We’ll have to bake for Thanksgiving, instead. Because I think we finally started the tradition of it.

I was glad that my boyfriend Tad liked both the inexpensive gifts I got him. Y’all know how mens can be hard to shop for. So it was a relief, to see him look sincerely pleased. He got me three very inexpensive gifts, one of which was the wrong size. (“Oh. I didn’t see the sizes on them. I just picked the color.”) But that’s okay, because I already know what I’m getting for my birthday, which is tomorrow. I found out by accident. I’m excited. (But I hope it’s the right size.) More on that later, after I come back a year older and hopefully wiser, too.

sad media agenda

This morning, on our local news, the newscasters were at the malls telling us that all the stores had extra, special, super, duper, slashed-prices after-xmas sales today. Because — surprise! — no one sold very much before xmas.

And I’m thinking, if people couldn’t afford to buy gifts before xmas, why do the malls think they’ll suddenly have money afterwards? And why is the news pushing the idea? Is media conglomeration that bad now? Does Time Warner own Wal-Mart now? I mean, I know you can no longer read magazines without fully expecting them to push the books/movies/music umbrella’ed by their parent companies, but dude. What’s up with the newspeople encouraging me to shop today? Give me a freaking break.

It reminded me of the days after 9/11, when George W. Bush told us the best thing we could do for our country would be to shop our brains out for xmas.

Honestly? I like shopping as much as anyone. I’m a straight-up consumerist and it gives me the DTs not to shop on any given weekend, and the signs that say 70% Off call to me like sirens with long, well conditioned hair. But still. Even I have my limits. Don’t ask me to shop when every not-rich person in America is broke. Tell Halliburton to shop. Tell Texaco to shop. Tell George W. Bush to shop. I’m not listening.

consumerism!

However.

I do have a couple of gift certificates to spend, so I will do that. First stop: Barnes and Noble. Also, I would like to have my nails done in the trendy style — short ovals with nearly-black polish. We’ll see. I have to count my pennies first.

Last night we caught the tail end of Bad Santa, and I watched Billy Bob ask his fellow criminals why they needed all the crap they were stealing from the department store. Why, indeed? They were stealing tacky trash. I would’ve stolen way better.

The other day, as I told y’all, my boyfriend Tad and I went to Neiman Marcus, which is an expensive department store, as some of y’all might know. I don’t go there often, because their target market seems a little older than me. When I do go, it’s to purchase the occasional Bobbi Brown product, and their cosmetics sales peeps are always very cordial.

But we went there the other day to look at the clothing, as I told y’all, and ever since then I keep dreaming about it. I dreamed we were suddenly rich and my boyfriend went to the office of the CEO to speak to him about merchandise. Meanwhile, I waited in the wood-panelled waiting room, and South American women struck up conversations with me in rapid Spanish. I thought, “They think I speak Spanish, and they think I’m rich.” Then, I thought, “Oh, but I do, and I am.” And then we talked about how much we liked shopping at Neiman Marcus. It was funny.

Tad’s brother and s-i-l are rich, and they shop there often. So Neiman Marcus sends them beautiful Vogue-mag-sized catalogs, which they flip through and discard. Tad asks if he can have the catalogs. Then he takes them to my house, where he and my youngest son and I peruse each page and laugh or sigh at the insanely expensive stuff. Tad wants a mink dinner jacket. Rory wants a diamond skull-faced watch. I want a python bag, but I feel sorry for the pythons, that they spend their lives growing so thick, only to end up a bag for some lady. So I’ll take a diamond Hello Kitty watch, instead. The one with the white ceramic band. Even though it has Kimora Lee Simmons’ name on it, and she’s not my type.

Wanna hear a dirty secret? Even though I’m not a teenager anymore, I do still cherish a fantasy that I was meant to be rich. That I’m destined for it, sheerly by virtue of my impeccable taste.

The longer I live, though, the more I suspect that I’m not meant to be rich, because it wouldn’t be as much fun. If I were rich, I wouldn’t have a reason to shop the most run-down thrift stores anymore. I’d have to do “vintage boutiques,” instead. If I were rich, I’d miss the obscene joy of rescuing someone else’s Neiman Marcus catalogs from the dumpster.

I.

Every year of my life, I try to work on my issues and improve myself as much as possible. This year, I’m working on two main things: Eradicating all passive-aggresiveness from my life (not practicing it, not tolerating it from others), and the ghost-issue of control.

I say ghost issue because it’s not something that ever really happens, just something I irrationally fear. Like, for instance, here’s a fictional example, okay? Let’s say I’m fat, and I want to lose weight, because I want to wear nicer clothes for cheap, all right? And let’s say that I’m reasonably intelligent and experienced in these matters, so I know how to lose weight. I’ve done it before.

But, at the same time, I’m afraid. Maybe every time I try to indulge in a fantasy about weight loss, my mind derails and takes me back to a time when I was thin, and someone hated me for it. Very vividly, instead of being able to think of a dress on clearance at Target, my mind calls up a woman who went to my church twenty years ago, who said to me, in front of the priest and everyone, “But I guess with that cute little figure of yours, you don’t have to be smart.”

Or it calls up the sensation of a man on the bus, twenty-two years ago, who purposely rubbed against me on the way to his seat. Or it calls up something disgustingly inappropriate that I heard someone say to a thin woman just the other day. Or the completely fictional idea of being raped.

And… this is not a real issue. Because, hello–people say rude things around me all the time, whether I’m fat, thin, purple, or green. There are haters and perverts everywhere, and they victimize whoever they can, no matter what. So why should their opinions matter more if I’m thin?

I have an irrational feeling that my control over my own body extends inversely to the minds of the people around me. As if losing ten pounds will make ten more people try to break my boundaries, and therefore force me to be ten percent more vigilant, or ten percent more afraid. I know it’s irrational, especially to people who know me in real life and know that I’m way too much of a bitch-face to get sexually harassed very often. But I still feel this irrational feeling, hypothetically, and therefore I have to work through it.

I try to explain it to my friends, and I’m not sure that they understand. One friend does, actually. She says it’s probably PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as we all know, can be worked through. All you have to do is identify irrational thoughts, and then rethink them. Like this:

“A lot of people are assholes, but that’s no reason to let assholes affect your decisions on what to do with your life.”

There.

(Even the hypothetical not-rude, not-offensive behavior starts to upset me. Just thinking about the fact that when I’m thinner, more people talk to me, smile at me, and like me… bothers the living shit out of me. It makes me want to stay fat, sometimes, seriously. I feel like, the people who like me at this weight are the only ones I want as friends. People who only like women of a certain weight, I don’t want anything to do with. But that’s a different issue, I think. Not a control issue, but rabid, hypersensitive feminism and anti-lookism, and a deep, futile desire to be respected for my mind. One of my friends says that this observation is untrue–that people aren’t treating me better because I’m thinner, they’re treating me better because I’m radiating more happiness and confidence. But I don’t believe her. She’s only ever been young and thin, and I’ve been both fat and thin, both young and not-young, so I think I have more bitter, real-life experience with lookism. Unfortunately. Stay gold, Ashley! Stay gold!)

II.

My boyfriend says I had a lot of nightmares last night.

“You had a lot of nightmares last night.”

“I did? No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah. You were all yelling and trying to run in your sleep. Oh, and you had that one where something’s wrong with your hand.”

Remembering.
“Oh! Did I wake up and tell you my fingers were broken? I dreamed my fingers were all bent the wrong way, and then I woke up and pulled my hand from under the pillow to make sure, and my hand was asleep, so I thought it really was broken, and then I yelled for you to take me to the hospital. But then my hand woke up, so I went back to sleep.”

“You always have that dream when I spend the night here.”

“I know. It’s because, when you’re next to me, I don’t have any place to put my hand. We need a bigger bed.”

This morning I made an announcement to a couple of friends. “I have given myself permission to stop writing.” My boyfriend told me he would support me, if that’s what I really wanted. My friend Julio told me I was full of shit.

But that’s not what I want, and not what I meant. Of course I’m going to keep writing. I just gave myself permission to stop. Meaning, I don’t have to write (or sell) another book right now. I don’t have to do anything I don’t feel like doing. If I want to paint or sing karaoke for a while instead of writing, I will. If I want to lie in bed and watch TV, I’ll do that, too.

Really, I’ll probably start a new book soon. But I like doing so without the pressure. And so, I let myself off the hook.

Summertime: Living Is Easy, Grooming Is More Complex

It’s getting to be funny now, how exactly like clockwork it is that the sun’s heat can change my mind about certain style choices. Before the heat, I can’t wear beads or sandals or self-tanner, and I can’t even really think about highlighting my hair.

But it’s been getting hotter lately. Hot enough for sandals (and therefore pedicures). Hot enough for jewelry I thought was tacky a month ago. (For some reason, metal is for winter and beads are for summer, in my mind.) Hot enough to do my first batch of self tanner, when mere weeks ago I was saying that I’d never do that crap again.

Not yet hot enough for highlights, though. Today I still feel like last year’s blond highlights were a mistake–a little tacky–and that I’ll never do them again. However, I’m prepared to change my mind by the end of May. Really, it’s funny how some things look different in the heat of the sun. I guess the heat just makes me crazy.

Pretty Boys (and a Pretty Girl)

My friend Ashley tells me I have a thing for pretty men. All the actors I find attractive, she says, could just as easily be girls. I don’t know why, though. I never noticed til she said.

Last night I dreamed I was dating a very beautiful man, with green eyes and black hair. Meanwhile, an overweight, sad man (with brown eyes) was upset with me because he loved me but I refused to love him back. I tried to explain to him that it’s wrong to get pissed off at people, just ’cause they won’t love you.

Meanwhile, my pretty boyfriend wasn’t very polite, and wasn’t very considerate. After I got done talking to the sad man (and my lecture didn’t work), I chased my boyfriend through an indoor lake of dark green water. As we dried, I scolded him, saying that he was spoiled. I said I didn’t want to date him anymore, because being beautiful had made him a rotten person. And yet, while I said this, I never let him go.

Pretend I’m not talking about my weight.

I stopped trying to do Atkins, because it no longer works for me. In fact, I gained even more weight last month, even though I dieted very diligently.

So now I’m doing it old-school style. I did the math and the science, and now I’m counting calories. I am eating 1600 calories or less per day. (That’s how many I need in order to lose weight at a healthy level. Science.) I always thought I’d hate doing that sort of thing, but actually I’m finding that I like the math. It’s kind of fun, adding up my meals in my mind before I eat them. And I like that it has an underlying formula: [your weight] X [a variable relating to your activity level] – [500 for one pound a week] or [1000 for two pounds a week]. Also, it’s kind of fun to eat carbs again. I admit it.

I’m not telling you this so that weight-obsessed people can come out of the woodwork and give me unsolicited, pitying, patronizing advice. I’m telling you this so that, if it works, you’ll know. And also, because I like the math. Really, I’m just telling you that math is fun.

Seriously, though? If I don’t lose any weight after a month of this, I’ll start freaking out a little. This is the longest I’ve gone without being able to lose weight relatively easily. I know–I’m getting older, and that’s what happens when you get older. But still. The new resistance of my fat is unsettling. I don’t mind getting old; I just don’t want my body to fall apart in the process. Ha.

Okay. That’s all. Next time, I’ll tell y’all something interesting.

I had nightmares all last night. First, a crazy person I know had swelled to eight feet in height and was trying to get at me through the chain-bolted door. The instruction manual said that, to make her go away, I had to throw my cat into another yard. I grabbed my cat and ran it out the patio door, threw it over the fence. She scaled the fence and stared at me through the chain links. “Why are you doing this?” she said. I sighed, because I knew it wasn’t worth explaining, because cats don’t understand superstitions.

Later, the psycho came in and made a magical talking worm start telling me about its depression. Boring!

Last night, I lived in my boss’s house, which is nightmare enough. I couldn’t stop working until a visiting client requested that I play golf. Okay. I got ready. First, I had to check on my boss’s wife’s baby. Then, oh my god, there were giant lizards in the courtyard. Red and gold. I ran to tell my boss and he did nothing. Then, the lizards were growing, became big and ornate like Chinese dragons. Hungry ones. Mean. There were children all around them, laughing and teasing obliviously. The boss’s wife’s baby was heavy on my hip, needed to be put down for a nap. Why was I the only one concerned? Why wasn’t anyone helping?

I think this medication I’m on (cabergoline) is making me have crazy dreams, because I have them every night, all night long.

recent common dream themes

1. I have to live with my boss, or at my workplace. (This means work takes up a lot of my time.)

2. I have two houses, one in the suburbs that I can afford, and a new one in the city that’s beautiful but small and possibly unsafe. I wonder why I accidentally bought the city house, and if I can afford it. (This is related to my desires/fear regarding my day job v my writing career.)

3. I have to deal with kittens or cats. (Used to think this meant responsibilities, but now I think it means creative projects.)

4. I find out my house secretly has a lot of awesome rooms with antique furniture, and I’m excited, but then I find out my ex-husband lives with us and I have to put up with him if I want to explore the rooms. (Same meaning as Number 2, I’m sure.)

And that’s all. That’s all. No sex, no romance, no flying, no chase scenes. Just the same old worries about my work. And monsters. And babies, and kittens. Jesus Christ. That’s why I’m a morning person: I wake up early to escape all that work and get myself some rest.

why I hate Tarot.com

I’m starting to suspect that Rick Levine, who writes the daily horoscopes for Google via Tarot.com, has a Capricorn acquaintance who he hates. A lot. Because I’m Capricorn, and my horoscope is always negative as hell. Even when it’s good, it’s bad. Old Rick finds a way to ruin it for me. Like: “Capricorn, today you will win the lottery and have sex with anyone you want, with no respite. But don’t get too excited yet. Venus is in the Seventh House, which means you should probably look in the mirror and ask why someone who’s as much of an asshole as you deserves anything good at all.”

You know? I need to find another horoscope, that sounds as true but that’s more diplomatic.

classic guilty pleasures

I discovered a new guilty pleasure. Well, I rediscovered a recurring one: Riding in my car alone, singing aloud to ’70s rock songs. This is especially pleasurable now that I have a boyfriend who’s a little younger than me, who therefore can’t tolerate any music without synthesizers.

The other day, on my 1.25 hour commute home, I ran into a good string of singable classic dinosaurs. Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California,” which has nice octave-jumping lows and highs for me. Then Styx’s “Renegade,” which is cheesy as hell, but so awesome to wail along with. Then, one of my faves, Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time.”

After that, the DJ says, “And that was Foreigner, number 7 on Rolling Stone’s Guilty Pleasures Band List.”

And I’m like, “WTF??”

So this morning I tell my boyfriend about that, and I passionately declare that anyone who calls Foreigner a guilty pleasure is just a little bitch who’s too afraid of the opinions of others. And my boyfriend says, “I bet Styx is on that list.” And I say, “I like Styx,” and he says, “I know.”

And he says, “I bet Journey’s on it, for sure.” And I think about that and admit, “That would be a guilty pleasure.”

And I brush my teeth, and I think some more, and then it hits me. “I hope Rush isn’t on the list. I mean, I know it has to be. But I really love Rush.”

My boyfriend nods. He knows. He’s heard me sing “By-Tor & the Snow Dog.” He didn’t want to see that far into my soul, but he had to live through it, for love.

So, this morning, I call up the list. And, guess who’s number one.

Damn you, Rolling Stone. Damn you with all the speed of the red barchetta that Geddy Lee’s uncle gave him.

Recent dreams:

1. My ex-husband died, and I had to think of a way to tell the kids, and I wondered if I should call my lawyer. (And then I woke up and wondered, if my ex-husband died in real life, how I would find out.) (Knock on wood. I don’t hate him, I just wish I didn’t have to deal with him. Not that he would die, though.)

2. I was getting ready to go to the prom with my boyfriend. I spent lots of time putting on lots and lots of sexy blue eyeshadow. Then I threw on a wrinkled fuchsia satin dress from my closet. Knee length. My boyfriend showed up and frowned at my clothes. After I begged him to, he admitted that he thought my dress looked cheap. He took me to a costume shop where he knew one of the employees (a white chick). She said she only had a few plus-sized dresses. The ones we found were ugly and hopelessly vintage. She gossipped with my boyfriend instead of helping me look for more. I was annoyed.

3. There were spooky monsters.

4. I left work because of a fire drill or something, and went to the mall that magically appeared across the street. I shopped and shopped, and eventually decided to skip out on the rest of the work day. I didn’t even care. I couldn’t find any good clothes, but I was glad to be at the mall instead of at my job.

5. Oh, god… Every single day for a week or more, I dreamed that I had a baby, and that I wasn’t doing a very good job of taking care of it. Other people were handling the baby while I ran around doing readings or whatever. In a way I was embarrassed about it, but then again I wasn’t. But then I felt guilty about not being embarrassed. Sigh.

Real Life!

1. February 17 is Chinese New Year. So begins the Year of the Golden Pig. That means that any babies born this coming year are guaranteed to be rich.

2. I went to the doctor and they told me I gained seven pounds. “But I’ve been dieting!” I whined. “Maybe it’s my boots. They’re heavier than my shoes were last time…” Plus, I’m still wearing the same clothes. (So I haven’t gained inches, either.) The doctor gave me a paper about weight loss. It had a lot of math and science on it. When he was done explaining it, I said, “But that sounds hard.” He said, “I know. That’s why I’m fat.”

3. The medicine they had me on, for my hyperprolactinemia? Has stopped working. It worked really well for two months, but now the secondary symptoms are coming back. Those are: Every time I get stressed, or excited, or after I eat, or just whenever my blood goes fast, I guess–I immediately have a hot flash, with side orders of nausea and dizzyness. IT SUCKS. But the double periods haven’t yet returned.

Please, Lord, help Dr. Smith figure out whatever the hell the deal is. Also, please make my insurance plan stop sucking so bad, because I can’t afford to pay full price for my doctor visits for much longer. (Or if it’s easier for You to make me have more money, instead, then that’s okay, too.)

4. I think my body is mad at me because it wants a baby. I don’t want a baby, but I think my body’s not used to sleeping with the same person for 3 or 4 years without getting knocked up. (New readers: I am 35 years old, and I have 86 kids.) Hence, my body keeps trying to ovulate twice a month. No matter how much medicine I put into it. I mentioned all that to Dr. Smith, but then he said, “What’s that?” and then I said, “Oh, nothing.”

5. My Chinese sign is Pig, but nothing I read today said anything about me getting rich this year, in the Year of the Golden Pig.

However, I remain optimistic.

If I found myself stranded downtown without a car, I would call a friend. Failing that, I would call a cab. I have the number for Yellowcab right here on my phone.

Why, then, do I dream on a twice-monthly basis that I’m stranded in downtown (or, worse, at high school) and I have to take the bus? And I don’t know which bus to take, or where my stop is? And the bus is full of mean people?

I’m not taking the damned Metro bus, because I don’t have to.

I didn’t work my butt off to become middle class so that I could get stranded downtown and take the Metro bus.

Eff you, Metro bus dreams. Go to hell, Metro bus nightmares.

Just kidding. I’m not really that angry about the dreams. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be poor and then work your way out of it. Apparently, it means you never stop having nightmares about being poor.

Eff you, too, annoying conservative radio show hosts.

Also, lately I’ve been hearing a lot of ignorant right-wing people in Houston say things about poor people “bettering” themselves. Mostly it’s been in response to the proposed minimum wage increase. They say that min-wage jobs are only entry level for “responsible” people and that poor people who really want to will “educate themselves” or “better themselves” and then quickly move up from minimum wage.

Let me make this clear, first of all: I am a political moderate. Also: I can see both sides of the min-wage debate.

However: If you didn’t grow up poor, then you don’t know how easy or how difficult it is to work your way out of the lower class. And, therefore, you should shut your mouth. Shut up about it. Seriously – you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, so just stop talking.

Especially if you’re spouting your ignorance on the only radio station in the city that gives traffic reports every ten minutes, and double especially if you have a whiny, poor-man’s-Limbaugh voice.

I shouldn’t be punished for wanting to avoid slow traffic, dammit. I’ve already been through enough.

One Last Thing

Do you ever drink something hot while sitting, and then feel little spears of sweat behind your knees?

That just happened to me. But I had to drink this Cup O Soup. It was keeping me alive.

1. (Instead of being sad that I have to live in my dad’s house, or deciding to clean up my dad’s house,) A bunch of irresponsible people have moved into my dad’s house, and I have to decide whether I want to kick them out, or clean up their mess, or just party with them and then leave.

2. There’s a big vegetable garden at/near my dad’s house, and I’m about to harvest the monstrously huge mutant vegetables, with or without the help of my family, but constantly get waylaid.

3. I’m walking near my dad’s house, noticing all the insane gentrification going on all around it, alongside abject decay. (That part’s straight out of real life.) And then I arrive at a series of antiques stores run by liberal gentrifying white people. And they let me in to browse, because I look like them. But then, I can not resist plotting to steal from their stores.

4. I’m driving to or in a small Texas town near the coast. It’s quaint, and yet contains an establishment filled with hipsters my age, including one or another of the hipster white boys I’ve loved in my real-life past. Nothing happens between me and these boys, but I don’t care because I have money now, and I often have my kids with me, too. So I spend money, and being in those towns becomes a mini adventure.

5. Either I find a cool little house I want to rent, or else I discover that the small house I’m renting is secretly way bigger and cooler than I first realized. But then, in either case, I realize that I can only rent this place with my ex-husband, because he’s the co-signer on the lease. I feel torn between staying in the house, ignoring my ex, and leaving him for a smaller, less-nice house where I won’t have to put up with him anymore. Usually I’m about to leave when I wake up.

6. I have to do a show with the poor-kids musical theater troupe I used to perform in as a kid. Whereas the dreams used to involve me being unable to find a costume in my size, or not knowing the choreography or the words to the songs, now I just improvise a costume from my own clothes and plan to get on stage and improvise the song and dance, as well. And I can’t wait to do it, but I always wake up, first.

All my dreams are about money or success, it seems. Very few dreams about love or whatever else.

Every night my boyfriend dreams someone’s trying to kill him, or that he’s trying to protect people he loves. We think it’s because he has sleep apnea, and his mind must manufacture a reason for him to be struggling to breathe.

Sometimes my boyfriend dreams that I’m cheating on him, and it makes him sad. Sometimes I dream that he doesn’t love me anymore, and it makes me very sad and angry at the same time. Once I woke up and kicked him, I was so upset. He said he was sorry and we went back to sleep – him so he could protect me from killers, and me so I could make enough money to make our best dreams come true.

I had a small get-together at my house so my family and drinking buddies could finally see it. It was gratifying to have people compliment my decorating style. (As opposed to being married to someone who constantly ranked on it and called it tacky. As if we didn’t live in a MOTHERFREAKING TRAILER.) (Okay, I’m going to quit saying stuff about my former marriage now. I swear, I don’t even think about it very often, but then once in a while, something will bring it up.)

I got everyone hooked on DDR and Karaoke Revolution, which is good. Except that PlayStation doesn’t give commissions. And the only Karaoke Revolution games they sell at Best Buy anymore are the country music ones. But that’s what eBay’s for, right?

We made the dining room into a spare living room for the sake of the party. Now, however, I like it that way. We have two living rooms, back to back. Or, I guess you could say, a living room and a den. I like to sit in the den when I’m not watching TV. We moved the dining set to the breakfast nook. If I described how the living room/den look, with two couches and a sectional all in close proximity, it would sound very bizarre. But when I walk into the house it looks nice. Like it has pretty good feng shui. Not that I practice that. But, hey, I feel vibes like everybody else.

Also, Tiffany said that the placement of my bedroom means I’ll make more money soon. Awesome.

I mowed the lawn last night, but not until after Josh and I poured gasoline all over the grass, by accident. I was a little worried that, when I mowed over that spot, the lawnmower would explode. Sometimes I’m not too clear on the chemistry and physical science, I admit. I have a weed-eater, but I don’t yet know how to use it, so it’s waiting in the garage while runners grow around the swing set that the sellers left behind. (That Helen was supposed to pick up, but she didn’t. Helen! Come get this swing set!) I’m scared that if I try to work the weed-eater by myself, I’ll cut off my hand. Yes, I could always just read the instructions first. But, instead, I’m going to wait for my boyfriend to come over this weekend. Showing me how to work the mower and the weed-eater and the garage door makes him happy. It makes him feel helpful, and that is good.

Also, I am going to buy an electric hedge trimmer this weekend. It looks like a little chainsaw. Maybe I should also buy a hockey mask.

A Dream for Rose Only

Last night, among many other things, I dreamed I walked into a school or something, and a tiger with whom I was formally on good terms growled at me. I hoped it was because I had a bag of McDonald’s in my hand, and not because he had lost trust in me and now wanted to kill me.

I set the bag down on the school nurse’s counter and told her my theory. Saying it aloud made the tiger comply; he walked up and let me pet his grizzled head. Then I picked him up and held him to my chest, and he was a baby who tried to suckle through my shirt. I asked the nurse for a pacifier but she only had a milk bottle. I asked her for extra milk to top it off, but very soon the tiger/baby held the bottle at the proper milk-dispensing angle and fell asleep in my arms.

(I used to dream all the time about tigers escaping the zoo and walking the streets, keeping me terrified in my dad’s house. I guess I’m over that now.)