My Blog… My rules

June 4, 2014
Why do I dream?  Why do I dream about the future?  Why, sometimes, do I dream about the past? Why do I dream about sex, ice cream, falling, swimming cats, running, people I love, people I don't care about,being chased or chasing? Why do I dream about loud music, bright sounds and complete silence?  Why do I dream about people in my past, my current waking life and people I have never (yet) met? Why do you dream?

She appeared in my principal's office one morning without notice.  Fancy and clean, a touch snobby and put together in a stylish fashion. In a way, she thought she was better than everyone else (but this is my dream and my rules).  Her name was Fern Lawn and she was the new principal.  The office was bright and sunny and her dark blue business suit was clean and pressed and perfectly tailored.  She was here to run the show and knew exactly what she was doing.  No one asked any questions.  She was here to stay with her fancy mahogany matching desk set and engraved fountain pen set.   

Within two months of having this dream, my current and favorite boss/principal resigned and Fern Lawn has not entered my sleeping life more than once.  She is also a topic at dinner conversations and sometimes lunch.

J.S.

January 17, 2014

He was a good soul. He was kind and he was an amazing teacher. He was a good friend. Since he has passed away, I have dreamt about him twice. This part of his story needs to be told. This story is who Jeremy really was.

 I met Jeremy when I needed a friend most.  I had just moved to Philly after spending 10 years in Seattle and I had not one single friend in this big dirty city. Speckles was in nursing school and I was unbelivably lonely and sad.  No one knew the extent of my sadness.  I never ever knew I could feel such a deep and dark level of depression and darkness. I had dark thoughts.  Philly was very different from Seattle. The smells, the sounds, the people and the schools.  The schools had metal detectors and security guards.  I was working as a full time special education teacher between two schools.  One of the schools I worked at had a principal who was terrified to leave her office.  She had good reason to.  She was awful.  The kind of awful, that would give me aniexty attacks on the way to school and wake me up around 4:00AM on the days I had to be there.  The kind of awful that still causes me anger when I think about it, but mostly, the kind of awful that reminds me that my very worst day today, would not even compare to my very "best" day at that school.  The second school I worked at was very different.  The staff was a lot nicer.  This is where I met Jeremy. The very first day, he took me around to meet the other teachers and staff.  We became friends fast. He reminded me of a professor, or more so I saw him as a being a professor one day.  He was too good.  Too good for this school and too good for this dirty ass city where no one gave a shit about anyone else.  He was extremely intelligent but often grumpy and spent a lot of his day mumbling shit under his breath. Maybe because he was smarter than everybody else and he knew that.  We sat in his classroom and talked.  We played video games on the computer. We went out for lunch, often coming back late.  He was a great teacher.  He opened his classroom doors to everybody, students on IEPs or not, it did not matter to him. He had so many students coming in and out of his classroom, he told me he thought about looking his door, and he did, for only two days.  After he unlocked his door, students continued to congregate in his room.  Family Night rolled around.  He and I, because we shared a caseload of students looked forward to meeting the guardians and parents of our students.  As Jeremy and I talked, a parent walked in looking for Jeremy.  Jeremy stepped forward to introduce himself and instead of the parent thanking Jeremy for his hard work, for supporting his child, for being a mentor.... the pissed off parent told Jeremy to stay away from his kid, reminding everybody in the room that his kid was "not special ed".  Jeremy was very kind and polite about it.  He was agreeable and patient.  Jeremy did not mention how desperatly this kid needed a friend, guidance and support.  Jeremy did not mention anything about always keeping his classroom door open for everyone.  The parent walked out. This for me was one more reason to hate this city. Not Jeremy. If he ever cared, he didn't talk about it.  Ever.  We stayed in touch, on and off.  We talked and texted. In August,  I invited him up to Maine to stay with me and Speckles because I knew he was going through a rough time.  He agreed it was a good idea. He talked about moving to New York and starting over. He talked about buying a house in another city.  I told him Maine would be a great place to start….

He took his own life 2 weeks after our last conversation.  He became an organ donor.  I wonder who got his heart. Two days ago, he turned 29.  Forever 29.



#1 I am walking around my old school in Philly. The halls are packed with students wearing their typical uniforms of  light blue button down shirts and navy blue pants.  Everybody looks the same and I am struggling through the crowded hallways looking for him.  I ask everybody I see if they have seen him. I don't wait for an answer, I move on to the next person. 

#2 I am laying down looking at the sky.  He comes and lays down next to me. I look over at him, look away and then look at him. I am surprised to see him because I know he is gone.The very first thing I notice is his expression.  He looks..angry? Sad?  He says, "This sucks.  It is no fun. Don't do it" 

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.