Wednesday Morning

This morning saw us rising early, dressing in running togs in the bathroom so as not to disturb the sleeping MSH, and fixing a bowl of oatmeal preparatory to a bracing run at Green Lake with Hellcat.

Capital.

Now we are at work. Trying to concentrate on some boring shiznat and failing utterly.

Ah, more about North Dakota. I have this to say about the denizens of the northern Midwest. They are very, VERY nice. I have a friend who hails from there who is sweetness personified and I always thought it was just her and I'm sure she would be even if she was born on the bayou or the Rhine or anywhere BUT it seems to be a cultural thing. From the moment I got off the plane at our stopover in Minneapolis, people were striking up conversation in the bathroom like I was an old friend. As you can imagine, the effect was more pronounced at the family reunion, where I found everyone to be warm, kind and mostly working very hard to make a living. There was little discussion of politics at the reunion. (Reunion activities: eating, brief outlines of individual family histories by the Ten Cousins, talking, looking at pictures.) However, the area of Minot in general had lots of jingoistic rah rahs (Support the Troops, which I do, and God Bless America, about which I have more and graver reservations) on its marquees, readerboards, and bumpers. I can't help thinking, these people are farmers and hunters. They're all actually Democrats!!! It's just that the Republicans have excellent marketing, the Democrats have poor marketing, and the abortion red herring mucks it all up.

Have I mentioned that I heard John Kerry on the radio the other day saying "heavens to betsy?" Holy shit, dude. Winners don't say heavens to betsy. In the words of Private Hudson, "we're in some real pretty shit now."

jiggity jig

While in North Dakota, we spent a lot of times engaging in one of the state’s most popular pastimes: hanging out in bars. I can assure you I’m not exaggerating or looking down my snooty city girl nose, because we were in a town of 300 souls for the majority of the time, and while there was no grocery store, or any store purveying any food besides candy, there were two bars doing a relatively brisk business. I did not drink in Granville, however. I also did not drink Friday night or Saturday night in Minot (where our hotel was.) I’ve been thinking about taking refuge, in the Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist sense, the next time the opportunity arises. This entails a series of vows, some of which are easy for me: don’t engage in irresponsible sexual behavior, and others of which are more difficult to follow, such as: don’t consume alcohol or intoxicants. MSH and I aren’t big drinkers, but he expresses some reservations about this step which I’m pondering, since I’ve been his occasional drinking buddy. Anyway, I decided I’d better try all this on for size because I don't want to take the vows and then fuck them up (because I am a perfectionist who holds myself to a high standard,) or take all of the vows except for that one. You can, but that just ain't my style. So this weekend I had some practice just saying no as it were. And saying yes to root beer and orange soda.

My observations:

While it was very hard for me to initially refuse drinks, I didn’t wish I was drinking the beer. Apparently beer seems more appealing once you’ve started sipping. Everyone else did seem to have more fun than I was because they were drinking. But this still didn’t make me want to drink. It made me realize that sitting around in a bar just isn’t as entertaining as I’ve always thought it to be while I was drinking. I kept thinking I’d prefer to avoid bars in future in favor of more entertaining and/or productive pursuits. Also: From the inside, bars look just about the same everywhere. Except for, you know, the chi chi ones. But those aren’t really bars, they’re “watering holes.”

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun getting to know Mike’s cousins; I did. This is just about the drinking of the booze. And I think I probably got a clearer idea of our initial connection to each other without the false camaraderie created by alcohol.

As I read this over, this all sounds very not me. But there you are.

In our absence, fall has fallen in Seattle, and I’m wriggling with pleasure. Crisp, cold air on my cheeks! The promise of apple cider and jack o lanterns! I will toast my pumpkin seeds this year. When I get home from work, I will unpack all my sweaters and put them in my dresser (but leave in a pair of shorts, just in case.)

Strangely, in North Dakota/western Minnesota, they had a cold, wet summer and reported that the sunny, 75 degree weekend we had was the best weather they’d had. They stole OUR summer! As a result, their harvest is late and sucky.

Bumper sticker just seen at the *U*Village: “VEGETARIANS DO IT WITH RELISH (but use a condiment)”

More on NoDak tomorrow.

P.S. Everyone we met was VERY NICE!!!!!!!!!!

more epistles from dreamland

The return of the supercozy down comforter, one of the myriad perks of Seattle's newly cooler, wetter weather, has induced: deeper sleep! longer periods of REM sleep! and this can only mean: more wacky dreams for me!

4:30 AM
ME: I had a weird dream.
MSH: You always have weird dreams. Merfle.

So lastnight was like THE ROOMMATE DREAM. My memory of the dream begins with myself, my friend Kris, and my former roommate, now estranged due to her being my ex-boyfriend's sister, sitting on my canopy bed that I slept on as a little girl. N (ex-roommate) had dyed her hair a sort of purplish brown and gotten fake hair glued to her scalp, because her hair was thinning. She invited us to touch it and admire its real hair-like texture. Up close, the fake hair was distinguished from the real hair by its slightly more purplish shade. It was fairly soft. But weird. As you might expect. She did NOT, for some reason, want Kris and I to touch her hair at the same time! Oh no!

Hijinks, which I don't quite remember, ensue...

Cut to Kris and I bemoaning the fact that we were never roommates. (Chirks to ya, Miss Kris!! :) ) In the dream, though, I was living with a roommate, apparently OFF-STAGE somewhere. Or she was in the dream and I can't recall.

The last thing I remember from this dream was: someone put a $100 bill in my wallet! Just slipped it in there anonymously! Like wow! I'd like to say: thank you.

smacka

Moody yesterday. Read _Dry_ by Augusten Burroughs. He is hilarious and biting and it makes for addictive reading. The type of reading one begins in the car at stoplights on the way home from the library, continues for an hour sitting in the parked car outside one's home, and then some more inside in one's comfiest chair until one's husband gets home at 7:30 PM. (And then on until one has finished.) Moody some more, some sleeping...this morning, very allergic and tired. P'raps a nice cup of tea.

Before bed, though, I read the first few pages of _Shadow Divers: insert long subtitle here but it's about two wreck divers finding a WWII submarine_. Riveting stuff, but the man's writing (grandiose and agog) makes me wince. Augusten would tear him to shreds.

I finally gave up on _Vanity Fair_. I just couldn't get into it, and you know what Nancy Pearl says.

My boss is out this week, and I'm leaving at a horrid hour of the morning on Thursday with my husband and father-in-law for darkest North Dakota. And if you think I'm exaggerating about the darkest, check the location of Minot. No link! You're on your own, lil' net detectives! But anyway, I have to be "productive" and "get things done" through Wednesday afternoon so you might not hear from me until I have tall tales to tell about the family reunion in Minot.

Oh, and there's a movie called "The Librarian" filming just now. S'got Kelly Hu in it.

Wouldn't it be nice to be in Paris this morning, in front of a cup of tea and a lovely pain au chocolat?

dream

This morning after MSH left for his early tee time, I fell back asleep and had a dream that I was a man named Manbuk Choudhury. I was a famous Indian architect, who had designed many important buildings, usually involving glass. My assistant was a white guy, very friendly.

My four-year-old son was named Bhopal. (He was very cute.) For no reason that I could tell, Bhopal and I were detained at a series of checkpoints as we tried to get to a meeting with my assistant. The security guards weren’t satisfied with my ID and it seemed to me I was undergoing racial profiling. (Because the building I was trying to get into was large?) I was especially nervous because I was planning on escaping with my wife and son. When I finally met up with my assistant, he called the place I was going to “the point of a hill in the middle of jungle.”

After waiting for more than an hour, they finally let us through so I picked up Bhopal and went up the escalator. We met up with my assistant and the three of us climbed up onto the pyramidal glass roof of the building, which was covered with a cloth or tarp. My assistant (I don’t remember his name) said he had a surprise for me, since the building was finally finished, and I was about to surreptitiously leave public life for that point of hill. With a flourish, he pulled the cloth off the glass at the pinnacle of the building’s roof to reveal the pattern of transparent glass—the surprise was that he had had the artists and workmen insert panes of colored glass, where the plans had indicated colorless glass. It was very beautiful. We went back inside and walked under the glass roof, enjoying the play of colors.

The dream morphed. I was myself again. Trying to get to work. In Seattle, but the landscape seemed vaguely more European, nothing like the real Seattle. Also, my sister and her husband were there, with their friends. They were getting to work in an open trolley car (note that I just got back from San Francisco, where I rode the obligatory cable car trolley) she had built. It only seated six and they were full up, but they kept driving back and forth, almost taunting me, but I didn’t seem to mind except that it broke my concentration and I was desperately trying to remember how I could get to work. Could I drive? I couldn’t remember if I had a place to park. Park and ride the MAX? Where was the parking lot? DID Seattle have a MAX? I thought it was in Portland. Could I ride a bus? (Odd that I would have an anxiety dream about commuting because my commute is seven minutes long, door-to-door, and I have a free parking space.) And every time I turned away, my car (which is also my car in real life) would move somehow. We were on the side of a wide thoroughfare to our left, divided by concrete strips—it was so wide I could barely see to the other side. On our right was a wooded area with some body of water but this was all fairly vague. My sister backed up onto a curb next to me so that three of the four trolley wheels started to drop off. They were wheels of the sort you find on children’s red wagons. I stuck one back on and ran to the next and the one I’d just put on would fall off again, all to the great amusement of my sister and her friends. Finally I spotted the problem. The trolley had just been lowered onto the wheels with vertical columns sticking into them, and hadn’t actually been attached, so the trolley was just resting on the wheels, like casters. I held up one of the wheels to my sister: “SCREWS?! Perhaps?!” Here my memory of the dream(s) ends.

hipper hold music

Speakeasy ups the hip quotient with hold music including Bjork and Morrissey!

liquid sunshine

This morning it's raining! Good for the dahlias, not as good for me, since I was going running. But I persevered and dug some foul-weather gear out of my basement. It's not really that bad once you get going, especially when you have a running buddy. Theriouthly. And my beta endorphin high is the best, baby! Work it. I do love the rain. Work it, rain.

MSH got a new fabulous digital camera in the mail yesterday, so he was playing with it, taking pictures of said dahlias, and reading the instruction manual, and petting it, and loving it, and going to Best Buy to buy it a case. And to Target to buy himself some socks. And me some stationery (I was there, too, and I bought the stationery. He bought me shoes (that I had expressed desire for) for my birthday but he doesn't yet buy me stationery). Word: Target's stationery is "off the hizzy" and very cheap.