Man of My Dreams

When I was very, very small, I had a dream.  In this dream, a bad man was executed.  First, his skin was peeled off.  Then, his muscles were boiled off.  His skeleton fell apart, and so he was nothing but veins and teeth and eyeballs.

He didn't die--in fact, he managed to escape into the woods.

I've always been prone to recurring dreams, and as I watched and rewatched the bad man's unsuccessful execution, he watched me.  In perfect dream-logic, I knew he was angry at me for witnessing his humiliation and escape.  And that when he got better, he would come for me.

He did.

It took a couple of years, but I dreamt of a house.  A giant, ancient, four-story house where the rooms were connected by balconies overlooking a central great room.  I was in my early teens at this point, and Antiques Roadshow was pretty much the greatest thing ever.  So while the adults argued over boring legal stuff, I went exploring in rooms untouched for years.

He was following me.

Not obviously, but lurking in shadows and flitting out of the furthest reaches of my field of vision as I turned my head.  He was keeping some distance, so I pretended I didn't see him.  I slowly began making my way back to the great room, where the adults still shouted.  I still stopped in several rooms--my curiosity was unabated, and I didn't want to blow my cover.  As I got closer to the stairs, I realized:  He knew I knew.  He was teasing me, luring me into a false sense of security. 

I abandoned a trunk of clothes and toys and hurried to the door, trying to look casual.  The staircase was a large stone spiral, and the sound of my footsteps was so much louder than I wished--not casual at all.  I abandoned that tack and ran.  The man--all in black, with a hoodie or jacket pulled up so I could never see his face--his footsteps echoed above me, gaining on me.

I missed the door to the first floor, which would have led me to the great room, to my family.  It was too far from the stairs to that huge room, and he was too close behind me.  I'd never make it.  I kept going down.

There were several basements, and all of them were twisty and confusing and damp and cold and dark.  It seemed I could keep going down those stairs forever.  But he was very close behind me now, just around the bend of the spiral.  Desperate, I ducked into a room and hid behind the open door.

There was immediate silence.  Had the man in black run past me?  Or was he standing on the other side of my door, relishing my fear while he waited for the perfect moment to grab me?

I wake up at this point. 

I've had this dream so often now that I know that house backwards and forwards.  I know all the basements now, and where the kitchen is (on the far side of the house on the first floor, with a large table for prepping), and what the exterior looks like (large tidy lawn, bushes below the first floor windows, six stairs leading to the heavy double front doors, columns holding the balcony above).

But the man in black isn't trapped in this house.  He lurks in dreams about my job, about grocery shopping, about cupcakes and any other crazy thing that swirls through my sleeping brain.  In these other dreams, he's at his scariest--he waits.

Yeah, I Say "OreGON." And I Sort of Hate Myself For It.

(Content note:  The experience described below is a lot more universal than you're going to want to admit.)

When I was in grade school, the best days in computer class were when we were allowed to play Oregon Trail.  This was back in the day when a computer was still called a MacIntosh, and the green oxen pulled a green Conastoga wagon across a black screen.

Obviously, when naming the members of my party, I borrowed exclusively from my friends and, more importantly (sorry, friends), always included the name of my latest crush.

Because that's the height of romance in fourth grade.

Invariably, my crush would drown during an attempted river-fording (I knew I should have paid the Indians to guide me across!) or succumb to dysentery.  There were other diseases in the game as I recall, but dysentery seemed to be the only one that could actually be fatal.  That and ford-crossing.

Because I was a particularly twisted child, these deaths were always very amusing to me.

A few days ago, the Dude sent me a photo--he'd set me up as a test patient of the hospital that for some reason employs him.  The first thing that popped into my head?

Via

Naturally.


(True:  I just went to the bathroom and discovered there was toothpaste on my ear.  What?!  How!?)

Why I'm Too Grateful to My Body to Diet

I always knew my body was a capable one. 

I remember being small, and deciding that my family was waiting too long to put up our Christmas tree.  So I dragged the box--probably bigger than me at that point--carefully downstairs, negotiating several tight corners and a narrow, steep staircase--downstairs and set the thing up myself.  It became a tradition for me to do it, and early enough on that I don't remember how our family did the tree thing prior to that.

I remember how easily I'd get bored of my bedroom, frequently rearranging furniture for a change.  I almost wrote "quick change," but it wasn't a quick process at all.  I could only push or pull one end of my dresser a few inches at a time, walking it forward, and then moving my bed in the same manner.

In high school, in the season I didn't play a sport, I lifted weights for fun.  In field hockey season, we'd run miles during practice, much of it in a semi-squat.  (Yes, it's a bit of a different sort of sport.)  My idea of fun as a child was riding my bike up and down our dead-end road or horseback riding.  I never worried about whether my body was capable of accomplishing a task or participate in an activity.

I got sick my junior year.  It took a while to diagnose (an undifferentiated autoimmune disorder, which is what they diagnose you with when they know the problem is with your immune system but not what the actual cause is), and the first few months were frightening.  I became so accustomed to hearing the latest worst possible prognosis that I forgot that there was any other option.  This viewpoint was helped along by the chronic fatigue and pain I was dealing with at the time, and exacerbated by the fact that I was unwilling to give up a single activity, pushing my now-limited endurance far beyond what was reasonable.

Suddenly, playing field hockey was not just physically challenging, it was incredibly painful and exhausting.  There were days I was too sore or too tired to manage a flight of stairs.  I refused to give any extracurriculars up, so it was the norm for me to go from class to field hockey or softball practice to play practice to prefect duty and then home at 10:30 to start four hours of homework.  It kind of sucked there for a while.

I got my health under control my freshman year of college.  I was angry for a long time that I'd ever had to go through all that, but now, almost decade later, I see the experience differently.  My body made it through that mess as best as it could, even while I was ignoring what it needed to get healthy.  My body works hard for me, and I've gotten better at treating it right.  I eat better, sleep more, and call it quits when I'm running out of steam.  I try to be active, though I hate working out.  Since getting my health under control, I've climbed all the stairs of Notre Dame and tackled the Eifel Tower and huge national parks.  I live in a third-floor walk-up without a problem.  I got an air-conditioning unit up those three flights of stairs alone.  My body works.

So I'm not going to hate it just because my thighs touch or because my belly has a bit of squish.  It's been too good to me to turn on it for such a petty reason.  It's a (mostly) healthy body in a normal body fat range.  If that changes, I'll need to renew my dedication to treat my body well.  That doesn't seem to be what dieting is about.  The focus of dieting has always seemed to me to be deprivation--punishing yourself.  I owe my body better.  I used to worry about my weight all the time, constantly striving to keep it in check.  But I've come to realize:  this body of mine?

It's good.

I used to weep drunkenly into my keyboard, obviously.

In the mirror, no one stares back.
Eyes and lips are drawn, lids and cheeks colored.
And so a face appears from nothing.
The mannequin, costumed, proceeds to the door
And out into a world, peopled.
Chatter can be heard--syllables crash and twinge and jab.
The sounds wash over each other and away
With the smog of the evening commute,
Leaving only traces of grime on unoccupied bus stop benches.
In the night-place, there are box-sounds and can-laughter,
And dinner, which is the same.
Finally, the face and day are scrubbed away--
Only naked honesty remains.
In the mirror, no one stares back.



Don't be alarmed.  I am perfectly (I almost wrote "pervertly," and that's pretty accurate, too) fine.  I just sort of stumbled upon/remembered a bunch of things I wrote in/immediately after college.*  Some of it isn't half-bad.  Some of it is pretty awful.  Some is super-dee-duper angsty.  And most of it was written mid-drunk.

Dear readers, let me introduce you to me, five years ago...



A Downer Commons Lamentation

"Why ever did I think
It'd be a good idea to sink
My teeth into that fried
Wildebeastie?" I cried.
Now my belly's a-churning
And my mouth is a-burning.
I think I'll just lay down and croak.
Do you have Sprite?  No, not Coke.
Alkaseltzer or Tums?
When I'm gone, tell my chums
That I'll miss them.

Ode to Vicks

You smell real nice,

And make me tingle.

My sticky chest

Keeps me single.

But it's hard to mind

When you're around, dear,

Since you've the talent to

Make my nasal passages clear.

Some people don't like you,

But I really don't get it:

There's nothing better

When I'm feeling like shit.

To sum up, quickly:

When you're looking sickly

There're no excuses

Not to use this.

Rather than toaster and tub

Try Vicks Vapo-Rub!

*Some of this may or may not be posted online in an abandoned blog.  No, I'm not linking to it.  By "some of it is pretty awful" I mean, good lord, almost all of it.

(True:  It is probably terrible that now-me finds past-me pretty freaking funny.  If, you know, hungover.)