Dreams

When I was a kid, I used to think the Sandman put sand in your eyes and the sand contained the dreams you were supposed to have.  If you wiped the sand out of your eyes, you wiped away the dream.  Some people call the sand "sleep", although it's not really sand it does feel like it.  I don't really know all the science behind this, but will probably look it up later, as now I am curious.

My dreams are strange, probably last night's weird dreams were brought on by the cough syrup with codeine my doctor gave me.  I don't like it and had trouble breathing AFTER I took it, so I might need to be careful as I take it today.  Often, I enjoy my dreams, especially when they are like watching some feature-length movie.  I just wish I could remember them enough to write them down, I have had some interesting tales play out for me at night.  Thankfully, I am no longer having the Sam Peckinpah-worth nightmares I WAS having.

My husband got a c-pap machine with those BIG oxygen tanks and they are noisy.  I'm OK if I fall asleep before he does.  I usually go to bed before he does and am asleep by the time he gets to bed.  Last night, I woke up at 4 a.m. and couldn't really fall back to sleep.   UGH.  I am taking one more day off work, after a discussion with my doctor yesterday, so I will try to catch up on the rest.  I will probably adjust to the sound fairly quickly, after all, my ex-husband snored so loud the walls shook.   I once had a nightmare that an airplane was crashing through our bedroom window.  When I woke up, the NOISE I was hearing in my dream was him!

Sick.. Day Whatever....

Still sick and if this does not improve in the next day or so I see a trip to Kaiser.  Chris wanted me to go today, but they only have Urgent Care on the weekends and frankly the thought of sitting in Urgent Care for what could be hours was too much for me. But lest you think I have not been proactive about this let me tell you just what I have been doing:

Sleeping.  A lot.  Trying to sweat out the virus.  I know common current medical  advice does not hold with this method, but it always works for me.  I was running a fever which finally broke about 10 last night.  It's trying to come back so I am heading for bed after I

EAT!  I have been starving, so I let my appetite be my guide.  I have been eating spicy lentil and chorizo soup from Vons.  Yeah, VONS.  It's pretty good.  I sent Chris to the store and he got stuff for me to make my spicy garlicky chicken soup which I will be making tomorrow.

I have not left the house.  The wind is gusting something fierce up here.  I am going to stay indoors until Monday morning.  Usually I would be doing things around the house but I am not doing ANYTHING.  I need to get over this.  The MAC Board conference had to be postponed because I did not feel strong enough to make the day.  It's a good call on my part and I appreciate the rest of the board and their willingness to change it up. I still feel guilty, which is why I am approaching recovery in this manner.

In addition to the spicy soup, I am channeling my Dad and making hot tea with LOADS of sugar and ( big shock here) liberal doses of whiskey. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remember he had some kind of theory about sugar and coughs.  He also had a theory about turpentine and coughs but I am not going down THAT particular path.  The last two nights I have had SCARY ASS breathing episodes, or LACK- of -breathing episodes.  I could not catch my breath and it felt as if I had swallowed sand and it was blocking my airway.  I have been using the saline rinse, which is disgusting but effective.  I think this would have been much worse had I not started using it at the first sign of the cold ( which may be the flu, how the heck do you tell the difference anyway???)

So am I missing anything?  Comment away, what do you do to get over "the ick"?

Friday

I haven't written anything because I have been sick and struggling with this cold/flu thing.  It's a bad one and of course it defaults to bronchitis, so I have been coughing my brains out.  My head hurts...

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately, retirement mostly, as my peers begin to drop off and move on to that phase of life.  It's scary to me right now.  Like most people my fear is living longer than I have money for.  My divorce kind of screwed that up, My plan to retire at 55 went out the window, along with half the retirement I had put away during the marriage.  Yep.  That's the way Community property works. I have to pay him. Guess what?  It's WORTH IT.  If I have to work until I'm a little old Management Analyst, I will.  A discussion with LACERS, the City retirement folks, is in the near future.

I need to win the Lotto.

The Lotto is up to ... what 230 million?  That's a number bigger than I can even envision.  I wonder what someone would DO with all that money.  I know I would like to win it, so I'd better buy a ticket.  I would hope if I DID win that money that I would remain true to my roots, kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies did, you know?  They had that big house but still lived simply.  I wouldn't be doing my laundry in a big kettle in the back yard, but , well, you get my meaning.  Not to have to worry about anything ever again would be very nice.  I know who my friends are, so "New" friends coming out of the woodwork would be out of luck if they just wanted a handout.Warren Zevon once observed that people with money spend an awful lot of time talking to accountants.  Accountants are portrayed as humorless souls, but I know at least one I think I could trust to help me IF I win the lotto on Saturday.  I have given this a lot of thought.  Dreaming is nice, isn't it?

IS it?

Feed a cold and starve a fever?  I can never remember the old adage.  I am home, sick, and thinking about a third cup of coffee to wash down breakfast. I'm RAVENOUS, which is probably a good and bad thing.  I am going to do a few things downstairs then go back upstairs to read and watch bad television and sleep.  I had a lot on my plate, but frankly I cannot TALK ( I KNOW, me not talking!)  

Yesterday's event for my retiring boss went off  well, but not without a few hiccups.  The secretary who was compiling the list was sick so she didn't get a chance to finalize it and alpha-sort it.  It was a little chaotic, but not bad.  HOWEVER  a group of people tried to sneak in.  Seriously?  You are business professionals and you think you can just waltz in and take a plate and not pay?  One woman BOLDLY set her plate on the check in table- she had helped herself to the buffet and had made herself a "care package"  They were not going to pay their fair share.  I made her pay me ( I'm the Dragon at the Gate, after all)  She acted offended, but I kept my smile as I insisted she pony up.  The unmitigated GALL of that woman astounds me!   Her check better not bounce.

I had told myself I could not get sick until AFTER the party and pretty much that's what happened. The sheer force of my will kept it at bay I suppose, but about an hour after everything was done, I lost my voice.  I made it through the rest of the workday but came home, had a tot of Bushmill's and crawled into bed.

McGroarty is doing their "Timeless Tiles" event on Sunday.  For 25 bucks you can create your very own tile, which will be fired at the Center and either displayed as a part of the House exhibits or if you wish you may take it home when it is done.  Either way, it's a very cool thing. I am supposed to bake cookies and will probably do so tomorrow when I am feeling better.  Come up to the House on Sunday at 10 and  have a little fun!  I am probably making my "world famous oatmeal cookies" but might do Chocolate chip or snicker-doodles too.

Music in my head

I hate my new computer.  I just typed a very long discourse about hockey and Warren Zevon that was VERY good and it DELETED it.  Seriously, this new program is going to take some getting used to, along with the TEENY TINY keyboard I need to replace ASAP.

So here goes.

I woke up this morning with Warren Zevon's  "Hit somebody" in my head.  Why is it that when you have a song stuck in your head, you can only dislodge it with another.  I love Warren Zevon and "Hit somebody" is the pithy tale of Buddy, a Canadian Farmboy who becomes a hockey "goon" while dreaming of that "one damn goal"  I don't know much about hockey, it's fun to watch but the nuances escape me. The joke is "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out."  don't get all over me if you are a hockey fan.  I realize it's more than that. Growing up in Los Angeles key was not part of my landscape.  I learned and PLAYED football, soccer, basketball and baseball.  I played tennis and badminton.  I played tennis and I biked.  I roller skated and even tried ice skating once or twice.  My ex played "broom hockey" but the appeal of freezing my butt off while watching a bunch of inebriated guys chase a ball of duct tape all over the ice with brooms got old after a while.

Back to my original thought.  Hearing Warren Zevon in my head this morning got me to thinking about the type of music I love versus what I am "supposed" to love.  I do not think, for instance that "Clapton is God" and  I don't think Robert Plant is the greatest singer in the world.  I saw Led Zeppelin twice in the late 70's  Good shows both of them, but not the religious experience a lot of hardcore fans profess it to be. I love the "California sound" folky stuff; thing that tell a story and I can sing along to.  I LOVE OLD  R&B, I once saw bluesman Charles Moore open for Bonnie Raitt and I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  The new stuff does not have the grit to it, too much polish to give it the earthy feel that I personally need in my R&B.

My once favorite radio station, 100.3 the Sound is going down the tubes.  They have a vast catalog of things, but seem to play the same songs day in and day out.  They don't repeat during the day, but I don't really hear anything new from the vault.  I was hopeful they would showcase new music from Classic artists, as there doesn't seem to be a venue for that and there needs to be.  I see musicians that I love struggling to get their new stuff heard.  What is is James Taylor says?  "Pay good money to hear Fire and rain again and again and again".  Don't get me wrong, I love the classic stuff, it would just be nice to acknowledge that these artists are STILL making music and not just rehashing their hits.

Tuesday

Not sure what I am thinking about this morning, but it seems harder and harder to get the motivation to do anything.  I think I need a vacation, one where I don't take care of anybody or have any real plans, just GO somewhere and maybe see some sights or relax without any agenda.  I wonder if I can actually DO that, it has NOT been my vacation MO for the last few years.

Last night I had a long conversation with a friend I had lost touch with after high school.  We had been the very best of friends, but things happened and we drifted apart soon afterward.  It was nice to reconnect with her and I hope to visit in person one day soon.

She and I talked about the writing we did as teens.  She wrote stories and poetry, I was strictly a poet.  I will be posting some of the things I have written recently, to try to edit them and hopefully get some feedback.  It's scary for me, as the poetry is closer to my soul than this rambling blog.  They are hard to put out there in the light of day.

On a brighter note, I think I found my 500-page book for my reader challenge.  Is it still counted if I LISTEN to it in the car vs actually reading it?  I have become addicted to books on cd.  That counts, right?  I am still trying to read the Riberio book "I would have loved him if I hadn't killed him.  It's just making TIME to read, which I am finding harder and harder to do.  I really should spend less time playing Facebook games- although the one "game" get me comps to Las Vegas and with enough of them, I may be able to have that vacation I am talking about in the first paragraph.  The one "memory game" was supposed to help me keep my mind nimble.  Not sure if it's working all that well, but I will continue to try to flex my brain.

Next on my list of writing projects is to really listen to some new music and review it.  Next up is Corrinne May's "Beautiful Seed"  I love her voice and I met her briefly at her Coffee house show at Peets in Encino.  She was very sweet and I love her version of "The Answer", which is on her "Christmas" cd but is more a devotional song than a traditional Christmas song.  I listen to it sometimes just to hear her lovely voice.

I have gotten out of practice with reviews and hope to get back to doing some real writing soon.

 I have always been a reader. One day my daughter, when asked, said she didn't read. SHE DID, but not books. She read mostly magazines, articles that interested her on the fashion industry. I told her as much , noting that almost NO ONE reads as much as I do ( as a recovering English Major, I feel like a piker if I don't have three books going at once.) I told her that once she found her genre, she would read more books, but that she did more reading than she thought. We need to encourage our children to read what calls to them. I can testify to the fact that some of the "classic" books we are told are good for us are deadly dull to children and teens.

Dreams, songs and books.....

I dreamed about the song "I wish for you"  last night.  I was in a car-wash and the radio over by the snack bar was playing the song.  I went over to hear it and then did not hear the verse I was waiting to hear,  the last verse:

Someone to stand with you wrong or right
Someone to love every breath of your life
I wish for you
Always
Wish you hope through your share of tears
I wish you peace all your living years
and when the moon is high
I'll wish you were here.

I was pretty peeved in the dream that they were playing to song on the radio and were truncating it.  It's a beautiful song and one I put in my ad in my daughter's senior yearbook in high school.  I remember one of her teachers coming over to me and telling me how much it moved her.  It IS a perfect piece for letting go of your child and acknowledging that it is time for them to spread their wings.

It was a weird dream, including getting into a pink and black VW bug and driving it through the car-wash, which was vertical, then we could not get out of the parking lot and they closed the car was because someone was sick and they were waiting for the ambulance, so we were all stuck int he parking lot of the now-closed and shuttered car-wash.  Just... weird.

Dreams are funny, aren't they?  Sometimes, my dreams are like long feature films and I wake up wondering if I should start writing down the story.  That's how James Cameron developed Terminator.  It was a nightmare he had; or at least that's the story I heard about it.  Sometimes my nightmares wake me, screaming.  I know it must freak Chris out.  I have very vivid dreams, I always have.

I hope to recommit to writing this blog every day or nearly every day.  I need to ease my mind in my art, if I may call it that.  Is this writing I am doing actually "Art"? I never thought of it that way, maybe more a craft than an art.  It's something I have always done in one way or another.  I am fascinated with words and language.  I love the fill-ins crossword puzzles, where they give you a list of words and you plug them in on a crossword grid.  it's somewhat mathematical, a logic puzzle, more than a vocabulary puzzle and I love doing them.  Since my computer is still having issues, I may not be spending as much time online as I have been and maybe devote more time to reading and housework. well reading anyway!  I am taking the 2015 reading challenge and first out of the box is  a book with 500 pages.  Any suggestions????

Happy Birthday Mom

I woke up sobbing this morning.  I had been dreaming about my mother and waking up I just missed her so badly I started to bawl.  Today would have been her 89th birthday, but we lost her to Alzheimer's ten years ago.  I "talk" to her all the time and hope my heart is hearing her response.  I know wherever she is, she is loving it, hanging out with my Dad. I do believe in heaven, so I think she is there with the rest of the family.  She is not ravaged by that sad disease that stole the vibrant person she had been and left only a shell.  But for today, allow me to be sad and to miss her.  I know she would have loved Kate's son, Bobby with a fierceness that can not be matched.  He looks like her, a bit.  I see so many of my family members in his face.   Funny, isn't it how that happens?

We found some photos my Dad took and later on today I may try to post a few of them on Facebook.  I hope she won't mind if I post pictures from the 50's of her and my Dad at the beach or at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.  There is a cool one of her, wearing white gloves at the UN.  She was really impressed with the UN and wanted me to work there.  I have a facility for language and she really thought I should pursue a job as a translator.  It might have been interesting. Politics is not my thing, however.  There was a Gidget movie where she gets a job at the UN, I think it was Karen Valentine playing Gidget.  She could barely speak ENGLISH so they gave her a job as a tour guide.  She falls for an older man, but Moondoggie comes back to profess his love and they get married at the end of it.  FINALLY.  Geez, the world's longest courtship!

How did I get veer off to Gidget????

Nostalgia has taken over my brain these days and I yearn for a simpler time, when I had less responsibility.  Maybe that's it. There is a photo exhibit from the music scene of the late 70's early 80's in Los Angeles that opens tomorrow at Central Library.  I am looking forward to seeing it, hopefully see some of the bands I used to work with or those we used to see.  I didn't go out to see bands, I was "working" even if we weren't getting paid.  My then-husband and I did lighting, special effects and sound for a number of bands that never made it.  Some of them were VERY good, but egos and relationships got in the way.  It will be interesting to see those photos and talk about that period in history.

But Happy Birthday, Mom.  I love you and I wish you were here to sing Hippo Birdie to:

Hippo Birdie two ewes
Hippo Birdie two ewes
Hippo Birdie deer ewe
Hippo Birdie two ewes

( with thanks to Children's author and artist Sandra Boynton)

Tuesday Morning

I swear, I am turning into "Grumpy Cat"  I seem to be more "bleh" about things these days and am trying to find my "happy place.  It's hard, as the arthritis has kicked back in and i HURT like heck all over.  I hate when this happens and I am trying to get more exercise and watch the trigger foods that contribute to the pain.  Aleeve is my new best friend.

It's been weird lately to see things from my past popping up on Facebook.  Well not my EXACT past, but a shared past that keeps appearing.  Strange to see ads for the Lincoln Mercury dealership that bears the name of a long-ago friend.  It says it's "family run" but the people shown are NOT the guy I knew.  It was a shock to realize that those must be HIS sons.  I forget we all age and in my mind he is frozen in time at his mid twenties.  I looked him up and think that he himself has retired to Arizona or something.  I laughingly wonder how he could have found someone to marry him and have children.  He was quirky when I knew him, but hey someone married ME, didn't they, with all MY quirks.

Facebook has allowed me back into the lives of people I have loved in the past.  Sometimes, it's enough to meet with them once for some type of closure on our friendship and in some cases it is a joyful renewal.  When you are a teen, you have friends from school, but as you grow what bound you together sometimes slips away.  There are some people I am glad are no longer in my life when I see them on Facebook and others I am glad to meet again.

There is an exhibit opening at Central on Thursday of photos from the music scene in Los Angeles.  I was on the fringes of that scene during that time, so I am going, just to see if anything is familiar to me.  It was a heady , wild time and I have some great stories from it.  I still see people from "back in the day".  I am reminded of the lines from the Bob Dylan song "Tangled up in Blue"

So now I'm goin' back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
They're an illusion to me now

Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters' wives
Don't know how it all got started
I don't know what they're doin' with their lives

It looks like an interesting exhibit, as most are at Central.  It is bringing up all kinds of wistfulness in me, that I am not sure I like at this point.  Still, it will be fun to look at the old photos and laugh about the past. 

Happy 2015 New Years Day musings.

Sitting here after my third cup of coffee, having watched the Rose Parade from the comfort of my couch.  I did get an invite from a friend who had an extra ticket, but I woke up with a sore throat and a bit of a stuffy head, so I had to pass.  I think I would like to go one day, just not this time.  I might go see the floats, but that is a huge crowd and I just don't know. One year I actually worked on getting a float ready, but NEVER again!  Well, never again with the Burbank Float Association.  They were unbelievable.  They had a nice spread of food- FOR THEMSELVES, nothing, not even WATER for the volunteers.  They YELLED at us for having any kind of water near the prep tables, but didn't allow the poor high school kids, who needed the volunteer time, ANY breaks during the shift.  The woman running the thing took her management style from the Nazis.  Humorless and unfriendly, she made the whole experience a bitter one for me, a seasoned volunteer.  I actually said something to her about making the experience a positive one for the kids would get them involved in MORE volunteering. She said she didn't care, that there would always be kids who needed the service credit.  Well, she lost an ADULT volunteer that day.  I also discourage people from doing Burbank's float because of it.  I see the City of LA does a float.  Maybe I can do that next year and see if the experience is better.  I know people who do it all the time, so it can't be as bad as all that, can it?

I don't really do resolutions, but this year I promised myself I would make some changes and get more exercise.  I have been low energy and sluggish and I need to get moving more.  I really want to go roller skating!  I know I used to love it and it's great exercise, but I need a buddy.  Seriously.

Looking back over 2014, there's not much that I would have done differently and a LOT of good things happened.  I want to spend more time with friends and family.  I want to not be such a couch potato at the end of the day.  My work can be exhausting and I just want to veg some nights, but that should not be the norm.  So I will be looking for new adventures this year.  My resolution every year is to do one new volunteer thing this year, so I will see what comes up.  My union is involved in a lot of community outreach, so that will probably present an opportunity to do something.  I am still working the LA Marathon and the Delores Mission meal service.  I spend a whole lot of time with my beloved McGroarty Arts Center.  We have a lot of cool things happening this month!  It's going to be busy, but that is a good thing, isn't it?