horrible dream

I dreamt that I neglected tens and tens of little furry animals. it was horrendous. I was with some other folks and we were needing to get soewhere, when suddenly I reamembered that there was a whole upstairs in this houseof mine (that I had been away freom) that was full of caged critters I had for some reason taken over the care of and I had not been there in three days, during a heat wave. So I went up there, on our way to take Gabe to one of his acting classes, and everyone was out of water and food, and many were dead or suffering extremely.
One cage housed hamsters and sugar gliders, and something like miniature moles. The moles had all pretty much died, and in their place was a teeming hive of those awful pincher bugs, those ear wigs.... eewww!!! I put a bowl of ..omg it was cheetos!... down for the hamsters, and the pincher bugs took over it. I had to ask someoe else to take are of those, because I hat them so much I couldn't go near them.
Another cage had this huge half cat half bunny. He was overheated and grouchy, big and black and fluffy. I took him out of the cage to soothe him and thought he was going to attack me.
I ended up cleaning up and restocking 10 out of the 40 or 50 cages in like an hour, and Gabe had totally missed his class. I felt neglectful, flakey, rresponsible, and evil because of the suffering I had caused. What a horrible thing to wake up from!!
I feel like I should be allowed to go back to sleep this morning and have pleasant dreams!

positive versus negative

Oh, it is 7 a.m. already.... not so much time to write, but a start is better than a ...umm.. a non start.

When was the last time I wrote?  (tuns to look), September 11th?!? Holy crap man.  What has happened since then?

I have reoccurring hives.  First time in my life.  Of course doctor has no idea what they are from.  Isn't that status quo from doctors?  Most likely stress I hear.  So it takes physical manifestations for me to acknowledge that I suffer from stress.  LOL.  After weeks of thinking things out and beating myself up for this lazy day or that undone to-do list, I came to an idea to try and NOT negate myself anymore.  If I made a choice, a choice to say NOT get whatever task done but instead lounge in bed half sleeping for half a day, then THAT is the choice I made, and it was a successful one, because I DID it.  My reasons for making my choices may be fuzzy to me, and I can explore these things, but to criticize my choice is ... well, it's silly really.  All it serves is to put myself in a place where I feel "wrong", or broken, not working or functional.  All of these things are VERY far from the truth.  I am a person, connected to all other persons and all life.  I breathe, I move, I eat, I sleep, I am aware, therefor I function, and quite well!  To put myself down for my choices is to say that whatever experiences I have had in my life that have shaped me into who I am and create my chains of thought that lead me to make said choices are invalid or worthless.  And when it comes down to that, I completely disagree.  My experiences throughout my life have created a wonderful, thinking, conscientious woman, and I feel the spark that lies within me, that lies within us all.  I can find that quiet place inside that exists without words or filters, that connects me to all others... therefor, I am not broken.  My choices are valid.  I do not make mistakes.  Sometimes I don't fully understand all the factors that make me choose what I choose, and that is where I continue to grow.

And life goes on eh?

Okay!  7:13.... must.... pull myself away from the computer, go forth and be a productive member of society!

Today I will venture over to Bethums to entertain and amuse her in her state of brokenness and drug induced lethargy.  As long as she doesn't ask me to COOK anything.... ;)

not another dream!

It's the ones that seems important, or uninterpretable, that I want to write down.  So :p

My dream was watching my son follow in my footsteps, literally, and forget to do his own life.  Him and I were at his school.  There were things I needed to take care of I guess, because I was staying there and walking around his campus, trying to find teachers and such... and Gabriel was staying with me.  Sooner than later it was after noon, after their lunch time, and he was still with me, and I was actually waiting in a line to talk to his teacher, when she saw him in line and called him over to inquire why he wasn't in class.  It all sort of shocked me then, I guess I wasn't really paying attention to his needs or his schedule.  He wanted to hang with me and I didn't mind that at all.  Realizing that I had been so wrapped up in my to do's that I had completely not paid attention to making sure HE took care of HIS to do's... it was just strange.  I felt dirty, like a bad parent who has been called out.

So that was not a fun dream!  Who wants to dream about being a selfish, self absorbed parent??

exercise

Yesterday was my ... (goes to count on calendar) sixth day at running as much as I could of two miles distance.  NOT in a row, I go three times a week, missed one Saturday.  It was also day 27 of my renewed exercise routine which is 6 days a week.  Also though, I did miss two days one weekend.  Still, I AM rocking it.

I don't remember ever trying running before.  It's hard!  My lungs are SO not used to taking in that much air.  That's what stops me after 3 blocks or so is the needing to catch my breath before I can start again, walking another 2 blocks til I can go again.  Yesterday though,  yesterday was the first day that I felt a difference.  I could go farther.  It felt better.  Just a smidgen, and by the end I needed a longer cool down, but my two blocks running two blocks walking turned in to three blocks running and one block walking.  And now, my legs, oh god, I feel it in my legs.  It's a good pain, I promise.  Still, it's an amazing thing, actually feeling my body start accepting something new.

K... here is the greatest thing about working out.  When I started, I was quite self aware the whole time, in the back of my mind  wondering what people were thinking,  how they must be judging or criticizing me.  That is going away, which is what I wanted so badly to happen ~ to get so into what I am doing that the world sort of disappears for a brief time.  Yeah... it's happening.  And that makes me so damn happy.  It is becoming mine, totally a me time thing.  Yeah.  I love it.

Sticking with it, I know it's going to be tough.  Gabe comes back on Saturday, and I get to learn how to incorporate new things into the "family" schedule.

OH, I forgot to mention, Monday at my training session (I only have three left, too poor to buy more) we did kick boxing.  Umm, helllooo, that was fun!

childhood idols

It's been filtering through my mind lately, this though about my idols growing up.  It was cool to be hard.  I don't think I ever was as a kid; I was soft, affectable, feelings easily hurt.  But I aspired to be that gal that was super fun and witty, yet had the ability to be unmarred by other peoples stupid actions, sort of rising above it all.  Later that morphed into trying to emulate the really selfish people.  Madonna I worshipped because of her hard edged self-centeredness.  I believed that if you acted like you deserved the best treatment, you would get it.  Unfortunately, my childhood had already preordained that I should play the victim role; the misunderstood and blamed one, the scapegoat.  I perpetually laid myself down to be walked on, so that I could recreate patterns from my childhood that were comfortable I guess.  Each time I would follow this by blaming myself for not being hard enough.

How many years of my life did I spend trying to be someone I am not?  Most of my life.  Somehow having a child allowed me to open up to the possibility that I am already who I am supposed to be, inside, buried underneath so many years of self effacement.  I look at my child and I see... I see a beautiful, amazing thing that is strong and delicate at the same time.  I look at him and I think of all the shame based identities I took inside of myself, and I think how could I have done that, if I was as glorious and amazing a child as this child is, how could anyone have wanted to destroy my spirit?

In my soul I can feel what is real truth.  In my heart I can feel what connects us all.  My sons spirit glows with love, he loves that he is so loved, as he should, as should we all.

keeps shaking my reality

So, UGH, another dream!  What is up with me having these dreams that affect me so much in the morning?  It's like a constant these days, that I need a little adjustment time in the morning to re realize what's real and what was dreamt.  I have NO idea what that means psychologically or anything.

So LAST night, I had a streaming dream (it kept coming back when I would go back to sleep) that I lost my car in a downtown parking lot, or that I lost my son in a residential neighborhood.  The losing my son ended up being more earth shattering (I've had dreams before where I lost my car, it wasn't where I parked it, or I forgot where I parked it). 

The police would only help me if there was a body to identify.  I kept "forgetting" that my son was missing whilst getting into my day to day activities.  I had NO idea how to look for a missing child without help, like a search crew.  I walked around yelling "GABRIEL".  I woke up numerous times having to remind myself that in this reality there was no missing child that I was forgetting about, that he was with family in our neighbor state, safe.

On the last episode of the dream, there was a man at the intersection where I last saw my son, and he had three tracking dogs, and was magically there to help me.  One of the dogs grabbed his scent and almost immediately directed us to the holes in the street, to under the street, the sewer I guess.  We somehow pried up a manhole, and I yelled "gabriel" into it, and LO, there he was!  He was all oily, but in very good spirits for having been underground and alone without food or water for three days.  So... *sigh*.... I woke up so severely confused and heart-shaken.

I did note that all THREE cats were snuggled in with me when I awoke.  Did they know?  I twas quite comforting.  NOw of course I want nothing more than to stay home all day and nurture myself, for I feel that I have suffered a very real near loss.

things that make you say....

... TWO movies have made me cry in the last 12 hours.

They both have everything to do with finding ones own happiness, believing in self, and not running away from what scares you.

Something must seriously be wrong with me I think.

identifying issues

I have reunited with an old, old behavior of mine.  I see a pattern.  Within the last year I have had four times where I turned to physical validation to escape my insecurities.  Each time alcohol was involved.  Each time, in the moment, it felt so completely okay, and ended either with me feeling even more insecure and out of place, or one time even ruined a friendship (but it was a destructive friendship so I am probably better for it).

This identity of mine, this need for people to accept me and desire me, is old old old.  When I was younger, it worked for me for a very long time though.  When I was growing up I learned that basically the only way I was going to get any acceptance was to be the Marilyn Monroe of my social circles.  Modernized, of course; embracing sexual freedom and not being dependent on any one person to "complete" me.

Years of self abuse, physical and emotional, have occurred. In a non self pitying way I can see that I am both more damaged and in other ways more healed than I was previously in my life.  My identity being wrapped up in getting that validation though, is still a tangled, gnarly mess.

My living situation is odd.  I live with a very depressed person.  He still looks at me as someone who can be HIS validation.  He doesn't yet want to grow out of his own feelings that he needs someone else to complete him.  His feelings that he puts towards me are weighty, and bring me down when I don't fight them.  Sometimes it is like I am battling my own issues and someone else's at the same time.  I wish living alone was a simple, clean solution, but it is not, I can't afford it, and I don't like the idea of moving now just to move again a year from now when hopefully the man I do love plans on moving to California.  I need to deal with the situation at hand, not run away.

So... what is my solution?  First... I need to learn how to not act on impulses.  I need to learn to implement my schedule of self care and stick to it.  I need to look to the end of a choice, and try to see all the possible consequences.  Very important, I need to acknowledge that how I am feeling when Im drinking is not necessarily how I feel when I am sober, and to stay with people I know I feel comfortable being myself around.   Mostly though, and here is the one that sounds sooo hokey; I need to self parent, cuz what I am wishing I had was a nurturing, compassionate, loving adult in my life to guide me and support me, but since I am a GROWN UP, I am supposed to be that for myself.  Gah, just writing that makes me cry!  This grown up stuff sucks man!

So... off now into a shower, and pushing myself to clean up this hell hole of an apartment.

night fears

I awoke at 4:00 a.m. from a dream that I guess really shook me up.

MG and I were in my car sitting in a parking lot.  What store and the why I do not know, only that I was tired and I believe I laid down on the front seat.  A car had pulled up two spaces beside us, full of truly ugly and badly aged men, and Michael knew them.  He had gestured to them, but it seemed to go unnoticed.  He gestured again a few minutes later and a few of the cronies nudged one guy in particular who was the "go to" guy I guess.  It was a drug deal.  The superlatively wrinkled man comes to the car with a bag and they do their "I'll take this and this, and three of that...".  In the front seat Im wondering how MG managed to hook up with new dealers here in Sunnyvale, why he decided to do this now in the middle of the day, in my car, without telling me beforehand.  The group of thugs in the car are now saying rude things MG's way about how indiscreet he is being (and really it's the other way around) and why is he still there... yada yada.. and MG is taking it.  I finally sit up and look over at them and say how we could have been long gone had they not waited so fucking long to come over to the car and still now continued to yak away, making things obvious, and more obvious still how stupid they were.

Then I drove away.  And MG was really pissed at me, starts yelling at me and calling me a ducking bitch or something.  Just for calling them out on their extremely stupid stupidity and bullshit.  He is humiliated that I busted their chops, it seems he want's their respect.

So there is a huge fight occurring between MG and I, as I am trying to drive.  He is leaning over from the back seat and yelling at me and I think even interfering with the steering wheel.  I decide Im going to pull over and just let him out, he can walk home, Im so pissed at this whole ordeal.  I am going too fast to stop as succinctly as I want to though, and we go careening in a circle in the middle of a highway.

At one point MG hands me the bag, saying "look, look what I got!", and it looks like treats and wine from 7=11 that he buys almost every day in real life.  I drop it out the window to show him that I don't care about that kind of crap anymore... and it falls and shatters, to which I feel bad about for about 7 seconds.  He is incensed.  

There is more driving while fueled with rage.  More careening.  At one point I am trying to get him out of the car, he is in the front seat now, and the passenger door is open, but he will not get out.  I want him to shut the door, but he is so wasted he can't manage anything, and I start swerving to avoid hitting parked cars with the door.

I hit... something... somewhere.  I don't remember if it was a hit and run, a pedestrian, a car, lots of speed bumps.  I am becoming worried about the condition of my car, and of the possibility I have done illegal driving moves I will get fined for.  SO there is a large forested park in the middle of the city that I slow down and start to cut through on the road.  It grows dark in there, covered by huge trees.  Suddenly a light comes on inside my dashboard that says car has been disabled, and I no longer have an y power in my vehicle except to brake.  It is pitch black, I can't see anything, the parked cars, nothing.  All I want to do now is park my car so my eyes can adjust and I can figure out what has happened.  My mind is racing with the possibilities of my dash lights meaning; did I damage my car too severely, did someone write down my license plate and the police remotely shut down my car?  I start asking drivers by for help parking my car, because I can see them via their headlights, and finally a guy pulls over and helps me, and gives me his cell phone.  I think I call Scion, and the news I get from them is... I don't remember... but I was feeling a little less hopeless about the situation.

Then my mother pulls up, and walks over.  And I am relieved to see her!  She hugs me, and I smile up at her and ask her how on earth she knew where to find me... 

Her voice is sweet and caring, "Oh, honey, you have no idea what this is all about?  Shar, you practically killed someone"

And inside me there is a tidal wave of life change.  Suddenly because of my rage and recklessness, my life is changed forever, and every direction I thought I might be going in my future is altered.  I felt weak and sick and horrified.

And I woke up.

Dreams that shake me so to my core are few and far between.  I have some ideas on this one, that I will ponder later.

dreaming of water and dirt

This morning in my dream I was landscaping a grandmothers yard.  I don't know or remember exactly who's house it was, but t was someone's grandmother.  It was located on a dead end street like my fathers mother, long since passed, but the house was nicer in my dream.  I had hired two friends, well one friend and her accomplished landscaping friend, to help me clean out these severely over weed infested flower beds.  They cleared out one flower bed on the side of the house only to discover an enormous jade plant.  It was beautiful, only they called it a maple tree or something.  In the front of the house there was a long rectangular flower bed running half the length of the yard, in which I discovered one long, super prickly blackberry vine rooted down in about 10 places.  I tried pulling it once with my hands, and got pricklys all in my fingers.  So the "accomplished landscaper" came over to help me, and we cut the vine and pulled out all the roots.  What we found underneath the mess in that flower bed was an oversized tree root from the huge tree in the center of the yard.  Supposedly it was the roots fault that the yard was such a disaster.  We cut it back, and they left a bunch of flowers for me to plant, and the yard looked gorgeous.  Only I was the one in the house, "grandma" was nowhere to be found.    Hmm.... at one point when I was cutting out the blackberry vine, a branch landed on my friends foot and she freaked out because she is allergic to ivy, and suddenly the blackberry vine was poison ivy.

Okay though, the weirdest, or perhaps more meaningful part of the dream, was after all this.  There had been heavy rain somewhere near where I was, but we weren't anywhere near an ocean or any large body of water.  It had not been raining where I was in the dream either.  None the less, suddenly up the street I saw a rush of water coming down towards our dead end.  It was a flood.  Oh yeah... hen I first walked out of the house, after the landscaping, the ground was covered with about 4 inches of water, and it hadn't been raining.  that's when I realized something bad was afoot.  Then the crashing wave of water about 5 feet high that came rushing down our dead end street, dissipating through the red cedar and chain link fence.  I went running into the house to catch the news, on the huge wooden cabinet console tv. 

Then my son woke me up.

I was full of inspiration this morning, but I went on to twitter first, and was amazed to see I had followers I had no idea about.  I got so caught up in checking them out that time got away and now I must leave soon to take the spawn to his LAST day of school as a first grader!  I took him out yesterday and splurged, got him a digital camera that does a nice amount of video too onto a 2 gb sd card.  It is a sweet little camera with user friendly cartoony icons, the brand is not coming to me right this second.  It ends in "ax", that is what I can remember.  From Wolf I also got him the two year protection service plan which will repair ANY damage.  Smart purchase that insurance I thought, for a soon to be 7 year old.

Okay, I had a dream last night.  It was all about the sons last day of school, and my memory.  The dream started with me at work and it was nearing 5:00 p.m.   think I realized that I was supposed to pick up Gabeish at 11:40 and started panicking that I would have missed the pick up AND that no one called me, when I realized he was there at the office with me.  I was n a deeply puzzled state, because I realized I had no memory of anything before the present, no memory of getting him to school, getting to the office, picking him back up, anything.  It was seriously freaking me out.  So much so that there was a deep deep sense of relief in me when I finally wriggled in bed and saw my bedroom window, which dragged me far enough into wake land to realize it was a dream.  The most alarming thing of the dream is the sense of panic it instilled in me, the WEIGHT of the relief was solid enough to actually cut with scissors I'm sure.

There were other things in the dream too.  Monica had bought a huge amount of chocolate ingestibles, I assume for her trip to LA, and the fridge was full of cookies, chocolate milk, little cream filled bite sized chocolate thingys.  I succumbed, eating handfuls of snacks.  Her dogs were blocked off to half of the downstairs of the house too, doors were shut and couches and pillows were stacked up in childhood fort style, to keep them from the rest of the house.   Neither of these things would ever happen in real life.

So now it is getting later and I want to shower before I venture out into the "THEM" that is this community of man I live in.  I want to stay home today!  I want to write!  I want to craft!  I want to collect massive amounts of cat hair on my back side from lounging on my bed!  And for your viewing pleasure, to go with my wants list, here is my baby Spackle watching me knit the other day.  You can almost see the evil glint in his eyes as he fights the urge to slay my yarn.

randomness

I forgot my blog password!  I had many, many brilliant things to ponder, and the writing of such things has all been lost now due to my inability to record passwords....

I cut up all my credit cards today.  It may be true that my emotional waves this past week are all extended-PMS-caused, but it is also factual tha

t I have a SERIOUS emotional connection to shopping, and it is getting me into some serious trouble again.  Cutting up all my cards is step one.  Step two I believe is adding up all my credit card debt and writing out a biweekly payment plan I can afford and can stick to.  Lately it seems credit cards are the way I have been able to stick to my spending plan for paying my share of rent and bills and still escape emotionally into my world of carefree excess.  I have a problem!

Problems.. bleh... it seems I am in a living quandary.  I do not feel comfortable with m

y living situation right now.  I am the single person responsible for house cleaning, grocery shopping, calendar keeping, cat upkeep, bill paying.  I can't completely complain about this, since I do seem to be a person who likes to be in control.  Or I should say, I am more comfortable being IN control than NOT in control.  Being the one person who cleans house and does all the home management stuff also makes me feel more inclined to pay less toward house things also, and that's a good thing.  There is a depressing air here though.  There is a "den of iniquity" so to speak also, drinking, smoking, sleeping all day, waiting for me around every corner of this home, more than willing to let me slip into it's anesthetizing haze.  I get frustrated feeling like somehow I always need to be a little bit stronger than I am.  Of course, I also set myself up to feel like I fall short of where I think I am "supposed" to be, because feeling not good enough is my old comfort zone.  I am tangled in a mental mess of misconceptions and emotional scabs.  Eewwww...

My shopping therapy today consisted of roller skates and all the gear for my son and I!  Yes,

 this was immediately before I cut up all my cards.  Roller skates are something I have wanted to get for a couple years now, so it is sort of SERIOUSLY cool, es

pecially since Gabers put them on and is all ready to learn with me!

Hmmmm, do I have anything else to mutter about tonight?  No, not really, since Gabe is here now needing to be prodded into bed instead of Watching MG play GTA4.  I still have to get two hours of work in.  I had all weekend to do this work of course, but I am a professional procrastinator.  it seems the amount of TV I watch is directly proportionate to how much work I also need to get done over the weekend.

small appreciations

There are things in my life I am acutely aware of loving deeply.

I love watching my son sparkle and glow when he figures out how mathematics work.

I love my cats' affection for me.

I love cocoa butter on my skin from my bath water, because I love how soft my skin is.

I love the end of a day after I thoroughly enjoyed everything I accomplished, then curling up on to crisp clean sheets and doing crossword puzzles until my eyelids are heavy.

morning fuzzies

My thoughts... my brain.. always running, flying off in multiple directions, makes it hard to go to sleep at night.

What frustrates me the most about my mental capacity is that it is so controlled by my hormones and whatever other chemicals in my body change my daily emotional state.  One day I can have something deeply personal all figured out, like the oneness of life, how we are all connected, and feeling so content in my little place in it all.  The next morning I can wake up and be paranoid that I am too fat, too brain damaged, too slow witted, too *insert myriad of other delusions here* to really fit in or be accepted anywhere.  

IS it like this for everyone???