After I got up at o'dark thirty this morning and got Miss Delena out the door and onto the bus, I lolled about on the chaise lounge Not Doing Jack Shit and managed to fall into a bit of a fitful sleep.  It's not like that's an unusual situation because it seems like "fitful" is about the only way I've slept for the past month or so.  I got into some stupid dream about how my little speckled dog, Muggles, had gotten whacked by a car (not an altogether imagination-stretching prospect since the damned dog is what we in Kentucky would call "a runner," meaning that the second the dog sees an open door or a chance to get through the fence, the dog is out like a bullet and flying through the woods with her mama, the not-wild-but-terrified-of-people dog who lives under my VW bus in the front yard).  In the dream, she'd taken the other two dogs with her and I was frantically trying to lure them back into the house with pieces of tri-tip.   Mind you, the concept of luring them back into the house is also not foreign, but with tri-tip?  Child, that dog would die of old age out running squirrels in the woods before it would get some perfectly good tri-tip.  Obviously, I've lost my mind in dreamland as well as in the real world.

No doubt, there's some kind of "casting my pearls before swine...or dogs" message in that one.  There was a time when I had either exciting, Indiana Jones-type adventure dreams or else dreams that were fraught with marvelous spiritual allegory.  I would chew on the dreams through the day until I found the profound message my subconscious was sending to me.  Now, they are just stupid dreams like me feeding the dogs tri-tip or the choice one I had a couple of months ago where I dreamed that I was sleeping.  Now there's one fun-filled, action-packed ride. 

I used to have this marvelous recurring dream where I would go back to a house where I used to live (a real house where I'd resided in my real past).  Not any specific one in particular, but any of the few hundred or so that I've called home.  Being a military family, there are plenty of those.  In my dream, we'd roll up to the house and of course, someone else would be living there.  Invariably, they would invite us in, feed us (I must be fed or I will not go) and then one of the people living there would mention that oh! Did I remember that I'd left a whole bunch of crap there?  They'd take me *somewhere*, either to a big shed out back or an attic upstairs or just a room in the house and *voila!* there would be all of the crap I'd lost over the years or had owned and forgotten about.  They were great dreams, but I would wake up feeling antsy and unfulfilled because of course, like realizing I can't really fly, I'd wake up and not have my crap that I lost.  It was still lost.  That dream went on for many years, dreaming it at least once a week, until I really started using them as tools. 

After I had the dream, I'd really probe the lessons I felt I learned in my life while living in that house, revisiting every experience that I felt significantly changed who I was or how I thought and making sure I was still putting those lessons to use in my current life.  After I did that with a few different dream houses, the dreams stopped and I haven't had them in years now. 

About a year ago, I stopped having another recurring dream that kept me busy for almost a decade.  In my dream, I'd be living in a house unfamiliar to me in "real life," but a house that I knew was my own house in dreamtime.  In every instance, I'd been living in this house for a long time.  In the course of the dream, I'd find a staircase in the house that I'd forgotten about and when I'd go up it, I'd see cages and tanks and aquariums of animals.  There'd be fish and turtles and frogs and all kinds of crap in there.  They'd been breeding like mad since I'd last been up there and were absolutely starving and their water was gross and pondy and I'd have to spend my whole night cleaning cages and tanks and feeding starving animals.  I'd wake up feeling all helpless and inept because I'd never get done and the animals were starting to die and all in all, it was not a happy dream. 

Finally, the dream hit on a night when I didn't have to wake up the next morning at any particular time and I kept forcing myself to re-dream the dream.  Mind you, I can never do that with some fantastic, randy, trapped-in-the-elevator-with-Johnny-Depp dream, but give me some hungry animals and nasty, shitty aquariums and baby, I'm there!  I determined that I was going to by-God get all those little bastards cleaned and fed and so all through the night, I kept waking and going back to sleep and resuming the dream and waking again and on and on and finally, in the dream, I got every cage, every aquarium, every little nest clean, all those little buggers fed and I took my ass back down those stairs, a job well done.  I never had THAT dream again either and boy was I tired the next day. 

Since traditionally, houses represent the soul, I don't much want to think about what all of the hungry, nasty, dilapidated little critters inside that house symbolized.  Ahem.  New subject, please...

 ~ * ~ * ~

I should have known the weekend was off to a bad start. Thursday night, we got word that our friend (local), Dan, had been in a truck crash.  The front tire blew, the truck flipped and he woke up in the hospital all banged up and needing surgery.  Of course, since he's a long distance driver, he wasn't exactly in Marshall Hospital, but in Winnamucca, so Jodi had to shag herself all the way down there to the armpit of Nevada to see if he's OK.  To my knowledge, they're still down there and none of us up here know anything about how he's doing.

Friday night was good with Burger Night and all, but then I had a dream where Delena and I had Steve Burton (a handsome fella who is on "General Hospital") up on a treadmill and were putting these charity T-shirts on him for ten minutes at a time, then we'd auction off his sweaty t-shirts.  I seriously need help here, I'm telling you.

I woke up tired on Saturday morning from all of that auctioning and started cleaning house and making 7-layer dip for my grandbaby's third birthday, then as soon as Eric was done with the mail, we started the trek to Volcanoville Road in Georgetown or in Volcanoville or where ever the hell that was to get to where they live.

Before we left, I'd been in the shower shaving off my lady mustache and I happened to nip the edge of my lip a little bit on top.  I felt the razor zig when it should have zag and because mouth wounds bleed like a sumbitch, pretty soon, I looked like Dracula, so I got out of the shower and dug around for a styptic pencil and of course, we don't have one A) because Eric doesn't use a razor to shave and B) because no one really much knows what a styptic pencil even is any more, so here I am with the toilet paper stuck to my lip, rapidly filling up so that I'm inches from putting a tourniquet around my neck to stop the bleeding.

Eric was feeling a little antsy and was just fussing up a storm a good bit of the trip.  We took the route through Coloma and Lotus out Missouri Flat Road and fortunately, he has no qualm stopping to ask directions, so we stayed to the good route and were finally making our way down Wentworth Springs.  I told him about my lip and he said that he noticed I'd shaved, which kind of freaked me out.  A much-known not-secret about we ladies is that we're a little sensitive about the whole lady mustache that seems to just sprout up out of nowhere around the beginning of the slide into menopause, so guys ought to be really delicate about mentioning it.  Telling a woman you noticed she's shaved it off is about like a woman pointing and laughing when I guy's undies are dropped.  The horror of it is fairly extreme.  I asked him if it was so furry under normal circumstances that he'd actually notice when it was gone and he said that no, it wasn't that it was so furry, but more that I had a big ol' tan line there now."  (?!)

[Betty, stop laughing, this isn't FUNNY!]

So now I was feeling all insecure about this giant, white tan line, probably with some little tan line hairs coming out of it, that was parked across my face.  Nice.  Plus there was a baby-sized gash on the edge of it.  Great.

After driving about 10,000 miles of road that was about like a cross between Happy Valley Road and Logan's Grade, we finally got there.  We'd never been out there and they've lived there for a year, but they always come up here to visit us, so going out there hadn't really been necessary until now.

We didn't know anyone there but them because it was all Valerie's family there.  They're big smokers, so I was pretty much wishing for an oxygen mask about an hour into it.  One of the gals had a little baby who was probably about 18 months old or so and, as kids will do, he fumbled a step going down the front porch and whapped a good one on his forehead.  He was upset, of course, but the mom freaked out and I don't mean she was gasping and "oh no!"ing, I mean she picked that kid up and was screaming her ass off.  The way she was howling, I thought the kid's head must be off or something.

It was a really good sized goose-egg with a decent scrape in the middle, but the kid was laughing and playing 5 minutes later and 30 minutes later, she was still howling and crying and being held and comforted by everyone there but me.  Those who know me know that I just don't have any patience for drama.  She wasn't a first time mom and had a kid who was about 6 or so, I'd guess, so I'm not sure where all of THAT came from.  I doubt you could even tell the kid fell by now, but she's probably still traumatized and going through intense therapy for it.

It wasn't a "drop off your kids and we'll play for a couple of hours" party, but a family-centered, "stop by at 2 or so and stay until morning, drinking and talking and hoopin around" party.  We cut out after the cake was served, which was around 8:30pm or so, I think.  We got there a little before 4, but it was hot and I was wilting and as good as it was to see the kids, I just wanted to be home again.  Kayleigh (7) doesn't have much interest in me and Lailoni (6) loves me to pieces, but was busy with her cousins.  Aiden (3 - the birthday boy) was hanging around me a whole bunch, so I got lots of grandbaby loves.

Eric was being his usual Eric self and socializing with everyone and being in the middle of the conversations.  Valerie's mom has never much seemed to like me.  Not sure what's up there, but she talks to me only if I speak to her first and just stand there and make her answer and beyond that, she acts like I'm not around. Ultimately, I ended up cuddling Aiden and talking to Josh (my #3 son). 

Eric had been hitting the Coronas with lime pretty consistently, so it fell to me to drive home (he was considerate enough to ask me before he started drinking, God Bless'im) and you have to know, I was not paying one damned bit of attention to where we were turning and when, being so distracted by my lady mustache tan line and all.  Fortunately, he was still in his right mind, so he could tell me how to get home from inside the Georgetown labyrinth (I swear, you can smell meth just driving into that town). 

When we had just gotten onto whatever road it is that takes you to Green Valley Road (I might have that wrong, but it's the road that Missouri Flat Road turns into if you keep on going) from Coloma, my Spidey senses started tingling and I just knew the car behind me (I could only see headlights) was a cop, so I made sure to go just at the speed limit and when we turned onto Green Valley Road (or whatever), sure enough, I was right. 

Because Eric fusses about how I drive, I self-fulfill that prophecy and always drive like ass when he's in the car, so I was nervous about being under legal surveillance.  I get all tense and worked up and will about do anything to keep from having to do drive while Eric rides.  When he had his Lasik eye surgery, he had the seat reclined, was under the influence of a ridiculous amount of Valium and was blind as a bat and still bitched incessantly about my driving. 

On the way up, he'd been flying around the hairpins turns and I'd said something about how he was driving at "warp seven with his hair on fire and his ass a'catchin'."  This led into a dreary discussion of how I use that phrase way too much and that it didn't really mean anything in the first place and... gah.  Too much?  How often does a person even get the opportunity to work "warp seven with his hair on fire and his ass a'catchin'" into general conversation, I ask you??  How could I possibly use it too much?  For THAT matter, how could a person every use a cool phrase like "warp seven with his hair on fire and his ass a'catchin'" too much?  So I think he was feeling a little sensitive about the whole "warp seven" thing from the ride up and was scrutinizing me on the way back (plus, since he was minus a jazzy expression to use to describe my driving, he was likely even more pissy than he would normally be).

By the time we got home, I was ready to sleep and I crashed hard.  My eyes opened around 8am yesterday and I looked at the clock and the next thing I knew, my eyes were opening again and it was 9:45am.  I can't remember the last time I slept that late (no dreams).  At 10:00am, David (son #2) phoned and said that the and Amber (his significant other) would be up in a couple of hours, so I got up and started straightening up a bit and trying to get some site work done I'd been putting off.

We had a nice visit with them, then Eric went to town to get some things and I did more computer work.  It's been getting pushed aside lately and I am eager to get caught up.

The week is stretching out ahead of me, looking wonderfully empty and filled with possibilities.  All I have booked are exercise times with Andrea after the kids go to school (we took today off), a GFORCE meeting on Wednesday and the Pig Roast/Last Burger Night on Friday, then a big, empty 3-day weekend.

As it turns out, I am, today, being called back into postal duty.  Eric just called from Somerset and said they have ridiculous amounts of mail there, so he'd like it if I did Grizzly Flats today.  Guess I might see some of you today after all.  But then, this is just one little island of obligation in an otherwise uncluttered sea of Lolling Around Not Doing Jack Shit.

Life is good.

Be particular,