A Looping Dream and Ja'Makin me crazy!

You Tube.  It's dangerous!  You want to learn how to make amazing meatless meatballs, also called cheatballs?  Go to YouTube.  You want to learn how to stack wood so it does not cave in?  How about put together a drum set?  Oh, I almost forgot... Want to see a skydiving- scuba diving cat?  Or, watch a cat eat with chopsticks and another cat use the toliet?  Yep, you guessed it, YouTube!  Not only is YouTube entertaining, it is also addicting and watching it before bed may lead to some very bizzare dreams.

I am driving in a parking lot when a lady of Jamician decent,wearing a fancy dress and red checkered headscarf cuts me off, reverses her bright blue mini-van (with the doors open) at full speed and crashes into a parked car and speeds away. The windows of the car she crashed into shatters and the roof collapse and I shout out to her, "What are you doing? You need to pay for this" She yells back in a thick accent, "Leave me alone!" I start driving after her, chasing her down in my car and as she zig zags through city blocks.  I try to get closer to her car and read her license plate but I can not remember the numbers on her plate, no matter how many times I read the numbers.  I reach for my cell phone to call 911. A recording comes on telling me 911 can not be of any assistance because my area code does not match the city I am in.  I lose her car, take a couple of turns and catch up with her, try to read her plate, can't remember the numbers and call 911.  A recording comes on telling me 911 can not be of any assistance because my area code does not match the city  I am in.  I lose her car, take a couple of turns and catch up again...

Dark and Murky: A terrible dream

As you know, dreams are not always made up of ice cream buffets and swimming cats.  Sometimes my dreams have dark sides too. Sometimes my dreams seem hours long which is always strange to me because in explaining a dream it usually takes just minutes. Why do scary dreams happen?  How is it thoughts I don't think about in my waking life and people I have never met happen when I dream?

Speckles and I are swimming in an enormous indoor pool.  I jump in, she jumps in and goes to the bottom.  My feet touch her and I can feel her warm body on my feet, but she does not come up to the surface.  I do not know if I should swim down and pull her up, or get out and call 911. I end up getting out of the pool.  I run through the main area, which is set up like a fitness center, screaming at people, telling them to call 911.  My voice does not sound like mine.  Instead it is horse and crackly.  No one is listening.  I get the 911 operator on the phone but she is slow moving and seems to be asking all the wrong questions.  I become frustrated with her, putting her down and calling her names.  I slam the phone down and run back to the pool.  I can hear the sirens in the distance.  I run back through the gym, heading toward the pool, hoping to run into Speckles, but knowing I won't.  I enter the pool area and the water is black and murky.  In my head, I realize she is gone. 

little, the cat and an inflatable raft

Introducing...little the cat.  She will bite you if you pet her too much and bite you if you don't pet her at all.  It's not a gentle bite either.  It's a big bite, a blood-drawing bite that causes scarring for several years. She is also a vengeful cat and will remember if you push her away because you really do not feel like patting her at that particular minute.  Just ask Speckles (she just showed me again for the thirtieth time) And to add "insult to injury"or however that quote goes, she also uses her claws, donkey kicks and hangs on for a bit, and stares at you the whole time without blinking, as if to say, "What the fuck are you going to do now?"  Or, "I dare you to try and to get me off of you...go ahead use your other hand...."  And, not to accuse anybody of anything because I do not have a kitty cam, but I really wish I did, I am starting to think little was the one who scratched Rio's nose and left a little pink scratch across his shiny black nose last month when he stuck his head in the cat door when we were at work.
Yeah, it is not fun at all, getting bit by little.  The craziest part about little is she is really cute and almost inviting with her multicolored paws and tuxedo front and clear green eyes.  And if you think you accidentally ended up at a cat lovers blog, you didn't. You are still at honky baby.  If you are bored, oh well.  I kind of warned you.  Maybe there is not a whole lot going on...Maybe summer break has changed my dreams a bit.  Maybe, I am swimming too much, or eating too much whipped cream or rainbow sprinkles, or chocolate jimmies...Whatever it is, I love summer.

We are floating on an inflatable raft, little and I.  We are on a lake and no one is around.  Just little and I, on an inflatable raft.  The sun is setting against a backdrop of the outline of blue mountains and orange sky.  As we float around on the lake, she crawls down the raft into the water, takes a dip and climbs back up.  A thought crosses my mind, that she may pop the raft, but it passes...

Cory Road

She would have been 97 years yesterday.  To some that's a lifetime or two, to me it is not enough. Oh, the conversations we had together.  She made me feel important.  She made everyone she talked with feel important. She closed her eyes when she laughed and told jokes. She loved animals and was kind even when it was not easy.  On the day of her funeral, the rain poured and poured. Sometimes on rainy days, I can't stop thinking about her.  As I was falling asleep last night, the sky opened up and it poured and poured.  I fell asleep thinking about her.  In the past 2 years that she has been gone, I have dreamt about her and the house nearly every week. Sometimes twice a week. The dreams have changed over time. She made a lot of cameo appearance and we talked, now she just exists as a feeling and I can not see her anymore...
If I could be anything like her or even close to it...

We are sitting in her kitchen. Talking.  We are in the same seats that we used to sit in when we talked.  It is stormy and raining outside and the kitchen is dark.  I do not see her sitting across from me but I know she is there. 

BIGGIE-

I get home from work and Speckles lets me know BIGGIE has a new habit of jumping on the counter.  Let me explain my side for a moment before you judge....

BIGGIE and I have been through a lot together. She has seen and heard much in her travels from Boston to Seattle to Philadelphia to Maine. She is 16 years old.  She has driven cross country with me 2 out of the 6 times. She has flown cross country a few times too.  She has been to the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, The International Peace Park, The Petrified Forest, Oklahoma City and Yellowstone. She has been to Texas and Missouri. She also camped (in a tent in Idaho), and had to listen to K and I do to karoke!  Yes, if you are wondering, the campground did have karoke! Oh yeah, she also got pulled over in Winslow, Arizona and watched from her kitty carrier as my bis sis D. talked her way out of getting a speeding ticket.  
In her younger and wilder days, she was stuffed in a backpack and got stuck in high places like roofs and trees, all her choice. If  I could have bought a kitty bjorn, I would have (that would have been my choice).  After  "Boy-Who-Got-Pulled-Over-for-Driving-too-Slowly" and I broke up, and my sister, K. left Seattle to get a job on a cruise ship, she left BIGGIE with me. Alone in a big city.  No friends and no family. Just BIGGIE and me. BIGGIE and me became roomies. I told her my secrets.  She responded by staring. She kept me warm at night. I bought her free range, hormone free sliced turkey from the supermarket  She was my catalyst for sleeping with girls....just kidding.
 I don't want to say BIGGIE was replaced by first another cat (little), then a girl that decided to stick around (Speckles) and finally a slobbery dog (Rio).  But you see, I used to bring sliced turkey home from the supermarket for BIGGIE and sometimes, like this past Saturday for example, when I passed the deli counter at the supermarket, I did think about BIGGIE the cat. She has a special place in my heart.
So when I get home from work and ask Speckles about her day and she tells me in an annoyed tone how she was making a turkey sandwich, and "the cat jumped up on the counter and would not get down", it all makes sense. 
Funny how you can be with someone for almost 7 years and they never knew you used to buy your cat sliced turkey from the supermarket.

Dream #2 BIGGIE
Speckles and I are swimming in a clear and sparkly blue pool.  The sun is out and it's warm, no hot.  I go under water and I come up and BIGGIE and little are swimming in the pool too. At first they are hesitant but after a little bit, we all begin to swim around the pool. BIGGIE goes under and she sinks to the bottom.  It is a graceful sink, purposeful.  Everything feels calm but she is staying on the bottom.  Speckles dives under, scoops up BIGGIE and brings her to the surface.  Speckles drops BIGGIE off at the edge of the pool.  BIGGIE shakes off and scampers away leaving a wet print on the cement.    

Dream #1: and an explanation...

Honky Baby-My Dream Blog

There are many reasons I am starting up a Dream Blog.  My good friend did this a while ago and I loved reading her blogs.  Also, I have too many dreams, sometimes several just in a night and just keeping a dream journal is not enough. If you are offended easily by say....spelling errors or.... anything else, don’t read my dream blog. In fact, I probably don’t know you and my dreams will not be very interesting to you and if I do know you, or you know me, and you offend easily than oh well, because I have to put up with you also. I dream about events and they happen, I dream about eating meatballs and creamy cupcakes, I dream about the living and the dead…

The two things that make me cry to talk about are Seattle and my Grandma.  I miss them everyday and I will continue to miss both for a very long time. I dream about both often. I live with my amazing wife whom I will call…. "Dreamy Green Eyes with Golden Speckles" or "Speckles" for short.  (She choose that name for this blog).  We co-habitate with Rio the dog and Sadie and Hazel the cats. They also respond very well to "BIGGIE" and "little-shit-who-bites-you-if-you-pat-her and-bites-if-you-don’t". She has a very very loud meow and was found under a porch by a co-worker in Seattle when she was just a kitten.  When little gets issuey and bites and Speckles gets mad, I calmly tell Speckles, “If you were abandoned under a porch, you would have issues too.” End of conversation.

We hope to have kids one day.  (We already have a rockin’ swing set where Speckles can often be found swinging, full speed, after a stressful day). My sister and our accountant like to remind us we should adopt babies /toddlers who have special needs.  I like to remind them I do this all day and as much as I love my job and my students, at the end of the day, especially after a particularly long day of say…..doing a 15 minute restraint on a student who wants to tear apart a classroom and bring several people down with him, I just want to come home to a naughty, predictable, or boring kid whom we have had from the beginning.  Which brings me to the dream that inspired "Honky Baby… My Dream Blog".

Dream #1 Honky Baby…..
If you have not guessed by now, the name "Honky baby" is not in reference to a white trash baby but a baby that honks. 
Please feel free to share your dreams or make a comment! Don't hold back just let it go.  

My sister K. has adopted a toddler who was born with a physical disability.  The baby has an unusually huge and long nose and honks when it talks.  I say to K., “Do you just love your new baby?”  The baby starts honking. The baby starts honking so loud I can't even hear K. talking.  K looks at me and says, “One day I will.”