A little “off”

I’ve been sick for the past few days.  Nothing major, but something has just been a little “off”.  It’s going around work, and knowing that I spend most of my waking hours there, I’m not surprised that I’ve been feeling bad.  Last night, my husband bought a car.  Not just any car, but a 7-series convertible. Obviously, this did not happen in real life, unless he just received a $75K raise that he didn’t bother to mention. He also sold his truck (more on this later).  I’ll pause here, for those who are unfamiliar with my husband, and I will play a little game called “Vehicle Association”.  You know how they say pet owners sometimes resemble their pets? You know what I mean.  The best example would be the classic snobby, rich, not-so-pleasant-to-deal-with person who owns a fru-fru poodle or some other ridiculous species that should not qualify as a dog. Well, the same goes for vehicles. A middle-aged-going-through-a-life-crisis man would probably drive a yellow 2-seater convertible.  A thirty-something-with-three-kids-woman would probably drive a mini-van.  You get the stereotypes.  Well, my husband (in real life) owns a 4-door diesel truck.  It’s perfect for him.  I think it says, “I’ve obviously been raised as a country boy, but I am smart enough to know that this will also come in handy for the various honey-do’s that my wife is constantly nagging me about”.  Again, it’s perfect.  What’s not perfect, is a 7-series convertible.  Can you imagine my husband showing up to the hunt club, dressed in camouflage, gun in hand, stepping out of a BMW convertible? No. Absolutely not… but it gets better.  Remember how I said before that he sold his truck? Well, he sold it to one of our good girl friends that, if we are playing the Vehicle Association game again, would most likely drive a Range Rover (I won’t reveal what she really drives, but you get the point).  Can you imagine her pulling up to Neiman Marcus in a diesel truck? Again, I think not. Ugh.  Like I said, I’ve been feeling a little “off” and clearly, so have my dreams.

“Invitation-only kickball spring training for those in need of training”

Most everyone who is reading this blog knows that I play on a kickball team.  Everyone also knows that we’ve won the championship 3 years in a row (since the inception of the entire league, might I add J). Well… I think the pressure may be getting to me. Seriously. The league starts every April, and it’s only October, but for some reason I’m dreaming about kickball.  Not just kickball, but kickball spring training.  Not just kickball spring training, but, “invitation-only kickball spring training for those in need of training”.  Seriously – that was the name. And darn it, if I wasn’t on that stupid list.  I’ll pause here for a moment, since I know that our kickball coach reads my blog (he’s going to be so proud… and hopefully dismiss me from the “invitation-only kickball spring training for those in need of training”). It’s funny the people that I dreamed about in this training boot-camp.  Everyone there seemed like they didn’t need to go.  I mean, without naming names, there are DEFINITELY people in the real-life league that don’t just need to go to the “invitation-only kickball spring training for those in need of training”, but also need to go to the “get-it-together-and-learn-how-to-be-coordinated-after-thirty-or-so-years-on-this-Earth-training”, but no… none of those people were there.  Weird.

It’s taken me awhile to figure out this dream.  I mean, there are the obvious answers… (a) I’m super competitive, so of course I would dream about spring training so our team can win a 4-peat. (b) I see our kickball coach all the time. But, I wasn’t satisfied with just those answers. Nope, I just let it sit for a week, so I could figure out the true meaning. Thankfully, I saw an email in my inbox from my best friend sent from a few days ago, and that jump-started my subconscious memory.  We email a lot, but last week, she sent me an email to let me know that our favorite movie was coming out with a sequel.  (YAY!)  That favorite movie, of course, is Zoolander.  For those of you who can’t quote every line in the movie with the same enthusiasm as my best friend and me (in which in case, I’m questioning your judgment and will never ask you to pick the movie on movie night), there is a line that is repeated several times throughout.  For those of you who haven’t figured out the link yet, I’ll go ahead and give it to you… drumroll…  “The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too”.  Seriously.  Hello!? Look at my title. Now look at the movie quote.  There HAS to be a connection.  No one would dream about a camp called “invitation-only kickball spring training for those in need of training” if they weren’t subconsciously dreaming about the release of Zoolander 2.  Yay – I can’t wait!

Free Gas

I got hit on at the gas station.  I pulled up to the pump, and out of nowhere, this guy asked if he could pay for my gas.  Who does that? The weird part is (if the first part wasn’t already weird enough), I turned him down on the free gas offer.  Who does THAT? I mean, it’s not like I could possibly be expected to give anything in return for that (hello, Mr. “I’ll pay for your gas”, I’m married).  After he paid for my gas, all I would have to do is get in my car and leave.   He could write down my license plate information, that’s about it.  Maybe he has a cousin that works as a police officer that could look up my license plate and give him my address.  But really, what’s he going to do?  Knock on our front door, and tell my husband that he was hitting on me at the gas station, and paid for my gas without anything in return?!? What an idiot. That’s what I dreamt about a few nights ago. For once, I am speechless. 

I have no cute anecdote that somehow relates back to this event.  No story of some dashing young gas pumper that offered to rescue another in an act of camaraderie at the gas pump.  Nothing.  So, I’m thinking that maybe (or hopefully), I’m starting to dream about future events.   Maybe this dream was a precursory warning for me never to make that mistake again.  Take the free gas! Take the free gas! I bet that’s what my mind was thinking that night after I turned him down.  So far, my theory on dreaming about the future has not been proved.  I dreamt this on Friday night.  Well, it’s Wednesday, and no free gas to date.  I’ve even lingered around the gas pump for an extra 30 seconds or so yesterday, scanning the crowd of my fellow gas pumpers, hoping to catch the eye of someone who looks like they want to pay for my gas. Nope. Not once. Or if I’m looking on the bright side… not yet.

I should have just done the “mom-arm”

Last night, sound asleep, I was driving my car (somehow from the passenger side) and my mom was in the driver’s seat (somehow as the passenger, not the driver).  My grandfather was in the back of the car.  Not the back seat… no, that was empty. He decided to ride in the waaay back. I had my cruise control on and apparently wasn’t paying good enough attention, because we entered a turn a little too fast.  I slammed on the brakes, but I still ran off the road.  While I did recover control of the car (like Danica Patrick…Nascar-style), the act of running off the road had apparently damaged my car and all you could hear was this annoying clank coming from the back.  What you could also hear, was my mom SCREAMING at me and my lack of driving skills.  Absolutely, SCREAMING.

This has happened before.  Not in fake dream land, but in real life.  I was a senior in high school when I got into my 1^st car accident.  I hadn’t even left our driveway yet.  For the matter, I hadn’t even put the car in drive… I was still in reverse.  You can go pretty fast in reverse though (or maybe you can’t, hence the accident). I didn’t see it.  In fact, I didn’t even turn around when I was backing up.  I should have completed  the “mom arm” back-up procedure, put my arm safely behind the passenger seat, and jar my neck like some ridiculous yoga pose, in order to back-up.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t even look in the mirrors.  If I would have looked, I would have possibly seen that my dad had stacked a pile of wood in the normal turn-around area of our driveway.  But I didn’t.  Poor Ford Explorer.  Poor Ford Explorer that is now missing a taillight, and will forever have the indentation of my carelessness. My mom doesn’t yell.  I can count on one hand the times that she’s really yelled at me.  Don’t get me wrong, she has threatened (i.e. I’m going to pull this car over right now if…), but she doesn’t yell.  I think yelling might be a trait on my dad’s side of the family, but my mom doesn’t yell… except when you back her car into a woodpile.  She totally yelled.  She may not yell often, but it was obviously so great at that moment, that her yell still radiates throughout my dreams.

Christy

There was a girl that used to work at the firm. Her name was Christy.  She left right before I started for one of our west coast offices, but from what I hear, she was about 6 feet tall, 110lbs, and blonde. I know… not really what you would think as a typically CPA.  Christy had a lot of the same clients that I have now.  I’ve been with the firm for almost five years, and I can’t really pinpoint when this started happening, but there’s a lady at one of my clients that thinks I’m Christy.  I’m not really sure how this is possible, since, while I may be blonde, I’m barely 5’5”, and I’m certainly not 110lbs.  I mean, she wears glasses, so maybe she needs to up her prescription or something.  But nonetheless, it’s been happening now for a while.  Too long.  Too long now to ever tell her that, “No, my name is not Christy, but I’ve been pretending to go along with that absurd idea now for 4 years”.  The bad part… EVERYONE at the client knows who I am (the real me… not the fake Christy me). So I’m terrified now, that we’re going to pass each other in the hall, the bathroom, the lunch room, etc., and someone, like the CFO, is going to hear her call me Christy.  How do I explain that? I should have just nipped this one in the bud. But now, what was a tiny snowflake of a mistake, has snowballed into something way bigger than any avalanche.  Ugh. The bad part is – she’s SO nice, which makes this worse, because I know she’s ALWAYS going to say something to me when we see each other.

I dreamt last night that I was in the early school classrooms section of my old school.  My mom’s previous co-worker (mom used to be an early school assistant) was there too.  I was writing my to-do list on the chalkboard. (This is too funny. Or kind of sick, depending on how you look at it… I can’t seem to get away from work. It doesn’t matter if I’m awake or dreaming, I’m always thinking about what’s on my giant to-do list). After I finish the list, me and my mom’s co-worker walk out of the classroom, and there we run into her.  And of course, she called me Christy.  Luckily no one heard it but me.  I have been spared another day… meanwhile the snowball keeps growing!

Correction… the roof is not on fire, it’s leaking

So, the whole point of this blog is to analyze my dreams.  Well apparently, I got it wrong. My husband informed me (and I hate to admit that he may be right) that my dream about spraying the ceilings of my parent’s house with a water hose (see “The Roof is on Fire”), may have been misconstrued as an attempt to subdue the extreme temperatures in their house.  Instead, the dream probably relates to the fact that everything that I currently own is leaking.  For those of you who read my facebook several weeks ago, you may already know this. It’s a little funny that he wanted to bring this back up, since, to date, 2 of the 3 leaks are still not fixed as promised almost a month ago now (apparently he’s a glutton for punishment).  Remember that 2 day stretch of leftover storm Nicole? Yeah, that’s about when I started to carry an umbrella inside my house and inside my car.  The car problem (hopefully) has been fixed. The house… not so much.  My co-worker is always talking about being positive and looking on the bright side, and I PROMISE I’m trying, so here goes… The first leak in the house is in our bedroom, right next to the bed. I’m always complaining about how I wake up in the middle of the night because (a) I’m thirsty or (b) he’s snoring. At least now, all I have to do to solve (a) is lean over and open wide. Or, I can solve (b) and just push him underneath the Chinese water-torture device that is now custom-made in our house. See, that’s looking on the bright side.  The leak in the garage is so bad it’s starting to tear down the drywall.  The bright side… it’s just tools out there (what would I do with those anyway).  In conclusion, I’m pretty sure this will be the last time that my husband suggests that I was wrong about my blog. I love looking on the bright side. J

Entitlement

This makes me sound SO old, but what’s with kids (and some adults) these days? Everyone seems to think they’re owed something. They’re entitled to something.  I don’t get it.  When did that mentality change? I mean, don‘t get me wrong. I remember wanting plenty of things as a kid and thinking that I deserved them (i.e. my own phone line, a Barbie jeep, an older brother that would bring over his hot friends, the list goes on…). But wanting and receiving were almost opposites growing up in our household. We didn’t keep up with the Joneses, the Kardashians, or any other family clan (we couldn’t… we didn’t have cable TV until I was mid-teen). Ok – so we weren’t completely without either… just somewhere in the middle. 

My husband and I live in a neighborhood with a TON of kids. Our household is seriously bringing down the neighborhood average of like 6 kids per house. It’s kind of cool though. Neither one of us grew up in a typical neighborhood.  There weren’t 50 kids to choose from.  We were forced to play with our siblings (thankfully mine’s pretty awesome) and if we were lucky, maybe one other kid lived within 30 miles.  So when we first moved in our house, I was SO excited about the idea. Three years later… I’m annoyed. These aren’t the kids that I had in mind.  These are the entitled kids.  They walk in packs, 5-wide, in the middle of the road and expect, for some reason that I will stop, politely wait for the opposing traffic, and proceed home after my 10 hour day at work. I mean – I would hate to have to trouble them to move. Sometimes they just sit in the middle of the road.  I cannot even begin to express my frustration at this. It is just ridiculous.  Out of everywhere in the entire world I could possibly choose to sit, today or as a kid, I can assure you, I would have never chosen the middle of the road. As I drive by on the other side of the road, I always have a fleeting thought about what would happen if I didn’t move over (but then I realize the consequences, and after I write my congressman about my jail idea – see “The Roof is on Fire” blog, I don’t want to be subject to that kind of torture again). 

So, knowing all of this, you will understand why I woke up completely irritated this morning.  I had a dream that I was driving through my neighborhood and the kids were blocking the entire road.  I came to a complete stop, and they just stood there.  I even honked. Nothing. No response. Nada. I give up. I can’t win with these kids.  Real life. Dream life. They rule the neighborhood. For now, all I can hope is that they don’t read my blog and egg my car.

The Roof is on Fire

We live in one of those “green” houses.  Really. It was a selling point on the original flyer (which I still have neatly placed away in a yellow folder labeled ‘House’).  The flyer said that the owner went to great lengths (i.e. new windows and expensive insulation) in order to efficiently heat/cool the house.  He must have done a good job – our HVAC rarely runs.  Compare that to my parent’s house.  I think it must take 3 HVAC systems, 2 wood stoves, and a matching pink scarf and glove set to keep warm in the winter, and in the summer… ugh, don’t get me started.  There’s no escaping it.  Of course growing up, we didn’t know any better.  I didn’t know that my organs were being slow roasted in the crock pot also known as the upstairs of my parents house BY CHOICE.  That wasn’t until my sister and I were old enough to visit other friends’ houses, whose parents keep their household at a very comfortable 72 degrees.  Whoever invented the genius that is the HVAC system was either (a) a woman or (b) had lots of sisters who owned hairdryers.  It is physically impossible to dry your hair during the summertime when at 6am, it’s already 82 degrees inside with 100% humidity.  It’s torture.  Maybe I should write my congressman and suggest that method for murderers, thieves, etc.  It’s gotta be worse than jail.  If you don’t believe me, look at my yearbook pictures from ages 13-17. You can’t get that hair by accident. Let me say, however, just in case mom reads this, that being a homeowner now I totally understand (ok that may be a little much…. I sort of understand).  It’s expensive.  It’s VERY expensive.  Especially if my entire house could fit in the laundry room of theirs.  So I get it.  (Of course, to cut down on expenses I think I would sacrifice TV, food, and maybe even my oldest daughter (just kidding sis) if I were them, not a few degrees on the thermostat… but hey, I’m not them).

So, knowing all of the aforesaid items, it’s pretty obvious and hilarious that still today I have dreams about this experience as a result. This time, I was in the inferno part of parents’ house (I mean the upstairs) and I was holding a garden hose.  My brother-in-law was there, and so was an Indian co-worker of mine, and they were looking at me like I was CRAZY. Of course, I was spraying the ceilings with the water hose…. Like they were completely soaking wet. I sprayed my old room and my sister’s old room.  That’s where the dream ended.  I woke up this morning and kind of laughed at my dream.  I knew exactly what I was doing. It doesn’t take Freud to piece this one together.  I have subconsciously been terrified that as a result of the scorching heat inside my parent’s house, I thought the roof was going to catch on fire. I was just trying to help.

Jem and the Holograms

When I was in 2^nd grade, our teacher had a system to keep track of how “good” we were in class. It was your basic ploy to keep 7 year-olds in line, and I was drinking the Kool-Aid. Basically, if you followed all of the typical grade school rules (i.e. no talking while the teacher is talking), you would receive a gold star for the day (and on very special days, I believe they were apple-shaped stickers…which, needless to say, were totally awesome). She had a whole chart. One hundred and eighty days.  As I think back, this is my earliest memory of my competitiveness.  I hate to lose.  I hate to lose at anything, I hate to lose at anything, whether or not there is a prize at stake…. But I especially hate to lose when there are gold stars and apple stickers involved. So there I was sitting at my desk, NOT talking while the teacher was talking. And there was “Courtney”. (I have obviously changed her name for her own safety as well as the embarrassment this may cause her). Courtney sat in the desk in front of me.  Except at this moment, she sat backwards at her desk, blabbering on about Jem and the Holograms (yes, they are truly outrageous), and I knew it. I just KNEW it.   Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. And certainly do not get a gold star for the day. Ugh. My. Life. Is. Ruined. Permanent record destroyed.  I think it must have been somewhere around day 85 when this happened and that was it.

Now, present day. I dreamt about Courtney.  I’ve dreamt about her before.  This time, we were just riding in the car together.  I don’t know where we were going. I don’t think that necessarily matters. I think the whole point of this dream, is that some day, some time, somewhere, I’m going to run into Courtney and let her know just how I feel.  I’m going to let her know just what I went through that day.  I’m going to let her know, that she totally owes me an apple sticker.

Karma - you got the wrong one!

It’s obviously getting close to Halloween. Spiders are everywhere! Unfortunately, not just the decorate-for-Halloween type either. As part of my daily OCD habits, I was “straightening” up the guest room a few mornings ago when I spotted my #2 biggest fear trying to set-up shop in our household. (My #1 fear is frogs, and will hopefully NEVER be mentioned again in this dream blog. Seriously. Don’t even get me started about those disgusting creatures. Ugh.)  Anyway, this sucker was HUGE.  Generally, if someone were describing me, I feel fairly confident that the word “independent” would be used….but in this case it would be used with a big fat asterisk next to it. I would rather sell our house at a loss, rent a storage unit for all of our stuff, rent an apartment while we are hunting for a new house, and buy a new one (sans the spiders) that will most likely be smaller than our current one because we somehow have to pay for all of the aforementioned items, than to remove the spider by myself. This distressing event has obviously had a huge impact on me because last night, while I was sound asleep, the ghost of spidy came back to haunt me.  He was affixed to my arm, latching on to me for dear life (or in this case death, since my husband had already killed him several mornings before).  It was one of those nightmares that’s SO traumatizing, it woke me and my husband up! (Mainly because I almost fell out of bed trying to get that thing off of me).  After I realized that I was dreaming, and that the “incident” which occurred several mornings ago was indeed in the past, hysterics ensued. The good kind.  The kind where you can’t stop laughing because you realize what you just did was so embarrassing and yet so ridiculous.  I mean, thank goodness the ghost of spidy landed on my arm.  What happened if it landed on my face? How could I possibly explain to my co-workers this morning that in the middle of the night, I was attacked by my dead-ghost-arch-enemy-back-to-life-to-terrorize-me spider and thus have suffered abrasions on my face? No explanation for that. Secondly, why was I attacked? I didn’t kill the thing. My husband was soundly sleeping, probably dreaming about unicorns and cotton candy, while I’m being tortured.  Karma definitely got this one wrong.

Night in the Life…

I got to work this morning and my co-worker informed me that her husband had started blogging… After numerous questions, I decided to give it a try myself, and here’s why: 

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with that same co-worker about our (my husband and my) financial “plan” to eventually start a family, send our kids to private school, and still afford the small luxuries in life, which from here on out shall be called my “slightly large, but not overly ridiculous shopping addiction”.  I was complaining to her that I have (other than my degrees and current job) no real skills/talents to make money outside of my career.  My husband tints windows on the side. My brother-in-law takes in odd-jobs, like power-washing sidewalks, etc.  One of my friends DJ’s …. apparently EVERYONE has some extra skill in life except for me! I mean, I used to babysit, but why, after the age of 16 does that job stop paying? It’s not like, at the age of 27, I have nothing better to do than to take care of someone else’s [crying, grouchy, smelly, crazy] child… for FREE. Insert: the blog.  Apparently, people get paid to blog (I’ve seen “Julie and Julia”… she got a book deal, a movie and I’m sure a big, fat, paycheck). Finally! I have some sort of extra skill that I can (hopefully one day) get paid for.  Ok – so I’m not the next Virginia Woolf or Candace Bushnell, but I WAS allowed to skip freshman English in college because of my mastermind writing skills (or maybe because I did well on my SAT II’s, but still, that’s something, right?!?). So, the only question that I’m left with is the obvious… what to write about?

Well that’s easy. Since I’m already piggy-backing off of my co-worker’s idea, I might as well keep going.  It’s weird. Both of us dream almost every night.  She keeps a journal of all of her dreams and is planning on publishing it into a book one day (which will no doubt top the NY Times best seller list, and I am assured an autographed copy!). So there it is. This will be my dream blog. Sort of. I’m going to blog about the events that cause my crazy dreams. Hence the blog name, “Night in the Life”.

I’ll have to write this early every morning, because after about noon each day, my head is swirling with numbers and thinking only about what’s for lunch. But today, you’re in luck! While I can’t remember now the extent of the dream, I do remember the characters. Last night, I had a dream about John Stamos. Yes. THE John Stamos from the now classic TV show “Full House”. I don’t think that I’ve (consciously) thought about this man since 1993, but for some reason he showed up last night in my dream.  Unfortunately now, I can’t remember where/what/why this happened, but I’m sure it’s from the years of TGIF Friday nights spent with the family.  Kind of cool that he came popping back into my head after all of these years though. Gotta love Uncle Jesse!