Time Flies

My husband was perfect, dreamy.

Which reminds me, I have very vivid dreams. People say, "oh, so do I" but they are wrong. Dead wrong.

My dreams will contain the textures of a scratchy wool sweater, spine tingling chills of fright, the smell of pine boughs at Christmas, the marshmallow-burnt taste of fire toasted bread. My dreams are nearly real, almost too real.

I met my sweet husband as I was finishing college, and went to escape to a cafe to have a cup of coffee to make it through finals. Out of seemingly nowhere, a handsome man appeared next to me and said, "excuse me, do you have the time?" I was taken aback, not sure if he meant literally or figuratively, so I pulled out a chair and said, "Yes, 1:30." We began to chat about the art of Da Vinci, the ideas of Aristotle, real "nerd stuff" my mother blamed for me never having dated. "Get your nose out of a book, or you'll never land a mate" she said, tsk tsking me. A year later, this magical man, too good to be true, married me.

It was then that I began to dream that I could fly, except it was not flying in the normal sense, more like leaping, hovering, travelling all at once. I would be walking in my neighborhood at a fast pace and suddenly my long stride would pick me up off the ground, like I was levitating, and carry me dozens of feet. I never felt so free, and wandered about like a toddler learning to walk, but staying close to home, close to the familiar. I never went past the stoplight down the road, staying away from the desolate outskirts of town by the woods.

One night, tired of flying near home, I went past the stoplight, "running a red" and leaping over the field of flaxen grass. I could smell the hay scent in my hair, and feel the grass tickle my toes as I landed. It was then that I realized there were no sounds, no rustling breeze, no chirping of crickets, nothing. I grew scared and flew home as fast as I could, except, it wasn't home. The giant oak out front was gone, the kitchen was now at the back of the home, the curtains were no longer white. I walked to my bedroom, weary, and found my dear husband gone. I called his name gently, but then more frantically, throwing up the now mahogany closet doors, flipping on the wrong light switches, and he was nowhere to be found. Exhausted, I collapsed into my bed, sobbing into not-my-pillow.

I awoke from my dream but the house was still not my own. I ran towards the field to try and make things right again, and felt compelled to keep running and flying into the far woods, to envelop me in the beckoning darkness. I landed hard from flying, my foot tangled in a root, and THWACK! I fell to the ground, my breath knocked from my lungs, my vision blurry. My eyes fluttered shut and darkness overcame me.

I woke up in my real bed, in my real house, relieved to have ended this terrible nightmare. I rolled towards my husband and pain shot through me, my leg was bloddied and swollen. Then, I saw it A note scrawled in my husband's messy printing filling up a torn piece of paper. It read,

I clipped my wings and flew home. Do you have the time?

happy dance

Brevity is not my forte. But here goesm I have a job! I know little more, will find out details tomorrow I hope. I am excited but also beyond nervous, after 17 months of no work I feel like I don't know anything anymore, or something like that.

Just Like Crazy Aunt Alice

  I have been told by my aunt that I remind her a lot of crazy Aunt Alice. Aunt Alice was my paternal grandfather's mum, a woman of Irish ancestry from the filthy tenements of Port Glasgow,Scotland. People called her crazy, reminiscent of that crazy cat lady person the townsfolk sort of ignored or avoided. My family seems to like to speak in vague terms or just ignore information all together, so I am not fully sure why she was "crazy". And who wants to be told they are like a crazy, nearly ostracized, deceased relative?

To this day, no one can seem to tell me why I remind them of Crazy Aunt Alice. And why was she crazy, you may ask? All I can find out is that she had premonitions. Somehow, saints or people destined to be famous can have them and the Catholic Church makes them special, but a regular Catholic lady has them and she is nuts. But come to think of it, I must be nuts too, cause I have dreams as well. I recall as a child, visiting my grandma's home in my dreams. I viewed the scrubby dry hillside behind her yard of avocado trees, suddenly scraped up by a bulldozer, and a cherry tree in bloom. Weird, I thought, that hill doesn't have a cherry tree and the hill is intact. A few years later, I went to visit her and lo and behold, there were the claw marks from a bulldozer, freshly upturned dirt and a tiny cherry tree. Apparently the bulldozer had left minutes before my arrival.

My premonitions or whatever did not occur to my knowledge for many years, until I was in college. I had a dream where I was driving over a hill, past a logging road on the right, with a hill sloping downwards on the left, a barn and home, an apple orchard shrouded in mist. A few months later, I went to visit my boyfriend in Canada and we went for a drive along a desolate mountain road, a place I had never been, a place that was really a nowhere of a place. We rounded a bend and I gasped. I told him that after the logging road ahead we would see a barn. I explained everything in exact detail before we got there.

I also had a few silly premonitions where the event happened the next day. A sparrow hitting the cafeteria window and dying, and that exact thing happening like I had hit replay, as I approached the cafeteria for breakfast. My toilet overflowing with raw sewage, and a broken sewer emergency the next day.

I have had a few dreams that were so real that it was hard to differentiate them from reality. One was of my father dying, and it was so incredibly vivid and real that I could not shake the funk the next day. I called my mom to be sure my dream was not true, and she informed me that my dad had began the 17 hour drive to come visit me, but had turned back and gone home an hour into it, racked with anxiety. I cannot help but wonder if he, too, tapped into Crazy Aunt Alice and knew something was wrong; perhaps, had he driven, he'd have passed away. When my mom cautiously informed me he'd not make it, knowing I would be upset, I breathed a sigh of relief. Sure, he wasn't visiting, but he'd be home, under her watch safe and alive. Because you never know when a dream is a premonition until it comes true. I have to treat every nightmare with extra caution and fear, for the nightmare could be reality.

Don't Light My Fire

Image courtesy of the original Lorax film.
And yep. Evacuating a forest fire looks and feels
like this. I feel ya' Humming Fish. I really do.

The smell of burning wood evokes the joys of summertime to many but, for me, nothing else strikes as much fear.


I grew up in the tinder box that is the forests of Southern California, which make the news yearly due to devastating forest fires. These events scarred my psyche, giving me nightmares about tsunamis of flames engulfing my home and killing my pets. My nightmares and reality have made me hyper-sensitive, like a wild dog who can smell fire before anyone else.

I remember a few times as a child, watching the flames climb up from the valley below, sirens blasting, smoke choking the air. Panic. Packing what we could into the car, not sure if we'd ever see our home again. My home was like a family member, keeper of all my memories and secrets. Toys forgotten, books left behind, everything I ever knew could be gone in a flash. We would often evacuate in minutes, racing to leave before the police came door to door or via helicopter to scream “get out now, you can't stay here”.  Our early exodus was before the rush of tens of thousands of residents on one winding road, rushing out, tempers flared, eyes filled with tears. The exodus was reminiscent of the scene in the original Lorax when all the furry creatures leave the town behind.

In high school, a fire started near my town over the weekend. Surely we were evacuated and school was cancelled. The fire came so close to my best friend's home that her yard was scorched, and our other friend's home was barely saved by a desperate father who helped the firefighters save his property surrounded in flame. My break from school was not enjoyable, not knowing if I had a home to go home to afterward. I remember scavenging for relics afterward, finding burnt timbers and scorched hoses, helmets and coats from the firemen. We played in the smoky embers, and filmed some silly apocalyptic film lying in the smoking dust like dead people. It was our way of dealing with things.

The snaking flames inch towards my home

The Old Fire hit my hometown in 2003, burning over 91,000 acres and taking 6 lives and 1,000 structures with it. I did not live in the forest, but remember watching it from the valley, as this gorgeous glowing orange snake of destruction inched its way forward, like Satan himself wiping the forest away. I remember watching the news in horror, watching homes I knew (Oh my...there goes my school counselor's home...) burn before my eyes. My mother had been evacuated and we drove her around a bit to try and get her mind off the fire. She was a mess. She had only a few belongings with her, whatever she could grab quickly.  She sat in the back seat of our car frantically calling people, clutching her purse with shaking hands wet from tears, voice wavering, spitting out nonsense words. She would call me and say that the neighbor's uncle's grocery clerk's friend said the fireman had tried to save her home and couldn't. Then a call that her pet peacocks were heard a mile away, safe for now. Then, that the home was perfectly safe. That it was someone ease’s home, someone we knew and I grew up with. Conflicting stories, hearsay  strong emotions and the thoughts of loss clouded any truth and made it utter hell.  My parent's home was left intact and the peacocks were found, but our town was never the same. After the fire, I toured the outskirts of the areas destroyed from the fire, and still to this day have not gone into the neighborhoods destroyed, for fear of strong emotions. A childhood friend's home, the place we went sledding, the tree we hid behind, all gone. The fires were over, the town scarred, and life went on, for a while.

yep I'm two-timing yeahwrite with yeahwrite

Meanwhile,  I had gone to college, been married, and moved  near my hometown again, surrounded by forest. A fire came near my home, flaming tongues of fire were in the canyon below me, and we got the requisite knock on the door to evacuate. There weren't any available hotels for miles, so we had to drive 60 miles to find a place to stay, a place full of other evacuees. I recognized cars and family name bumper stickers, faces of people from the grocery store and the like, and the smokey scent and eyes of uncertainty. Again, we were lucky and our house stood unscathed.

A few years later, being nearly the present time, I had a child, lost a job, and a bunch more random drama and decided I did not want to deal with devastating fires again, among other bothersome events that come about living where I lived. So now I live in the 'burbs with plush lawns, cement, Stepford Wives style people (ugh) but guess what? Sure a fire can still destroy my home, but it is much less likely. And I haven't had a fire nightmare since. But, I can still smell a fire no one else can, and can recognize evacuees like nobody's business.

f#$%ng call centers and customer service

I get it. Call center reps work hard and I would never ever want that job. Ever. Regardless, I HATE them. Sure, hate is a strong word, yes, yes it is. Purposely. ---- So I called my 401k or 403b or WD40 or C3PO (gosh I hate acronyms) because I wanted to withdraw some funds.....much paperwork, faxes, a month later, lost in the mail...I am back at it again. Except this time, you know, because waiting a month and having money gets lost in the mail wasn't enough, this time; they claim my social security number does not exist. You know the one I have had for a handful of decades. The one I used to call in about my withdraw before and after they lost my freaking check. So I rather firmly said, yes that is my social security number ,I am not mistaken, fix it

So. We also switched banks. We had some bill that went through and they did the no funds so let's charge you a no funds fee. I mean, here you are unable to pay a bill so let's take more money from you cause you don't have money. That's some common sense for ya. So then, I have an account with my parents from high school that I haven't used in over a decade. So they take money from my mom. Oh no you didn’t! Yeah. They did. So we straighten that crap out after they claim they need all parties’ signatures. Mine notarized and theirs in person. Umm my parents live 14 hours away buddy. So after some bickering we fix that and I go in to get a statement. Except I cannot get my statement because I am not on the statement. I have my id, my bank card, an old statement, and the computer shows I am on the account but since the statement lacks my name, I can't get it You know, they can charge my mom instead of calling us and saying "hey a bill went through, can you pay it?", you know, get all 007 and find an ancient account I am tied to to get money, but since my name appears on everything but the statement, I cannot have it. Then she hands me the statements of my mom's, you know, the account I got myself off of since I haven't used it in a decade? The account I am no longer on, I got access to. So today we get a humongous verizon bill and hubby is all, "da fuq ?I paid them and then your mom's account paid them. Call them." So I oblige as, if we paid them twice, and they say none, it makes me mad. So I call and the guy acts like I am stupid and a liar. He asks for me to reference my bank statement for the ref number of the payment and I am all, umm no one will let me have my statement but we paid, he says ," you paid or your husband.". I respond that my hubby did, since we switched banks and everything went funky, he was better at figuring it out. Then he has the f$%&ing balls to say. “Are you sure? Maybe your husband really didn't pay the bill, maybe he lied since you don't have the statements". Seriously. He said my hubby lied to me. I'm all, I know we paid it because I have withdrawal charges or whatever, from my account and my mothers, charges that you took from us so dangnabbit we paid you. Ugh.

my homies poop here, and tan chest hair

I found a new blog to follow, and it inspired me to blog about the not so golden state. A lifelong native, I have some hatred towards it, and hubby says, "the grass is always greener on the other side" and I am like, yeah, cause they get rain and so summers are green!" Seriously, I had no concept that so much of the USA is green in summer...naturally. sure, Oregon is (the Western, populated half) cause it is a temperate rain forest, duh. But boy was I in a shock for it being green from Maine to Virginia, Missouri to Michigan, and probably other places I have yet to go. Anyways, whoa, off track there missy. I was reading a blog and wanted to write my own version except I could not have written it better...it is like she snuck into my head and read my mind. So check it out at heatherchristenaschmidt.com/2012/10/02/the-worst-part-about-california/ which I will attempt to turn into a real link when off my nook. The only thing she forgot? The graffiti. I have been to Gary In, NYC, Wash DC and nothing tops them but my part of the golden state. Not only are walls covered in a human version of dog pee (tagging), but trash cans. Sidewalks. Parking spots. Every sign. Flood basin creek things. Trees. Fences. Cars. Roofs. Gas pumps. And my favorite? The freaking toilet seat. They tag the freaking toilet seat, I guess to mark where their gang has the privilege to poop cause nothing says prime real estate for a gang turf war than a dingy, sticky floored, hope I don't catch something, convenience store bathroom's toilet seat.

–But alas I will be here for life. Why? Well it is not easy to move when you own property, and moving costs money and sucks. Add in some of hubby's in laws here. And the biggest part....? Hubby likes it here. I don't get it. He has traveled the world, lived in probably a dozen states and a handful of countries, and chose here. Why? Oh. The weather. He hates the cold, so snow is a no-go for him. He said if he ever had to go somewhere else, it'd be Texas. His dream is to live in Palm Springs and sit on the porch and get a bronze tan, complete with chest hair and gold chains. No joke. His dream is sun and heat all day every day. I tortured him enough making him live where we got actual winter, and he complained every day, and so that is done with. Back to trash strewn, hot, politically insane, criminal filled, toilet tagging la la land. But hey, visit here! Everyone else does.

The dark side

I have joined the dark side by now having both an iPhone and twitter account (my twitter stuff is to the right and down. Follow me please?)