elanya

I had a dream last night/this morning. I tried narrating it to a text to speech thing on my hone but all I got out of that was a Mess, so I'll try it here again. For context, I used to play percussion in a concert band and marching bands for yeaaaaaars, basically all the way up until I left Fredericton for good.

In my dream I was in a marching band with a bunch of people that I knew. Somehow it came out that they were also in a concert band as well, and invited me to play even though I hadn't done anything like that in a while. There were a bunch of people I actually knew in my dream bu the only ones I can remember are my friend Gale and Kennesaw, ho both played percussion with me. Also there was at least one Matt, who was a tall skinny guy with curly brown hair down to his shoulders who might have been compiled from a few different people I actually know, or just a random dream figment. I knew him in my dream, though.

ANYWAY, as with most of these things, I remember a lot of little details that I don't really know how to fit into a narrative, like how at first I thought they didn't have a base drum but then I saw it just wasn't set up, and stuff like that. We were supposed to be playing this piece and I said I could do the tympani. Only I'd gotten these bi-pride covers for them that were like flags that were supposed to go over the heads, as a surprise for Kennesaw, and I wanted to install it. It shouldn't have been difficult, but as is the way of dreams there were a bunch of stupid obstacles. At first no one could find the key, but it turned out these ones just had a slot in the top of the rod and could basic ally be turned with anything. They were like real tympani, in that the rods were weird - more like just regular bolts in some ways, and despite seeming to be in tune before I started, it turned out one of them was missing. I was messing around with all this stuff and not actually playing in the song and people who didn't know me thought I was just fucking around and didn't know what I was doing, including the conductor. At the end of the run through it turned out that there was someone outside the room (Matt! or *a* Matt anyway - it might have been a different Matt, possibly Kennesaw's brother) who was playing the part on the other set of tympani no one had told me about. So I wasn't contributing anyway and my efforts to put together the surprise were also thwarted and had to be abandoned. Also, my hands were hurting from playing the marching stuff we'd 'done earlier' (part of the dream backstory).

Someone, maybe Gale, suggested we move on to a different piece so I could try something else. But they were playing base and Tall Matt was on snare and Kennesaw was doing something else? So all that was left was cymbals, which was a part they hadn't bothered with before. I was keen to do because I think there is a lot of cool nuance to playing the cymbals well that's not just loud clashing (although there is that when appropriate), but my hands were so sore I wasn't sure how long I could hold them effectively. I woke up before I got to pay anything though, because my hand was actually *really* sore from yard work yesterday and then I was sleeping on it badly.

So I know where some of this comes from - I'd been talking to another friend online about my percussion background not too long ago and that's clearly still in my mind. Another friend was showing off a bi-pride horse blanket she got for riding and I'm assuming that's where that came from. The rest is more speculative, but maybe just a general sense of being underestimated and a general sense of frustration with circumstances that I think probably everyone is feeling at not being able to accomplish what we want.

In other news.... yesterday was a really beautiful day and I spent a lot of it outside trying to work more on the yard. I picked up more trash out of the "compost pile". Which is the trash heap that the previous house owners weaseled out of having to clean up by bald face lying about what it was. Hot tip: neither plastic, glass, nor electronics are compostable. I also worked on cutting down scrub trees along the fence line - mostly hackberries. Some are growing into the freaking fence. Some could be just cut with pruning shears, but some need more serious treatment and I sawed off - thus my sore hands. If I'm being generous I got about a third of them done. The trees still need further thinning but if we do that it would need professionals again. We cut down all the manitoba maples last year and it made a big difference, but I'm realizing how much more work still needs to be done. Of course the same is true of the house itself.... we've done almost none of the stuff we talked about, lol. Which is exactly why I insisted on doing my room *before* I moved in... Anyway, other than yard work, I spent a lot of time playing with the new puppy, which he deeply appreciated :) He's 7 months old today!

Hi internets!

I slept a very long time yesterday, and had some very strange dreams.

( strange dreams! )

time to go walk Sierra....

Stepping out of the woodwork to record a weird dream I had last night/early this morning. I can identify some of the things that prompted it, I think, at least...

Weird dream last night/this morning that I was on a road trip with a bunch of larp peeps. There were 4 or five if us in a black car driven by D. F. He and the person in the passenger seat got out at some place (to do.... something?) leaving myself and A. S. in the back seat. It was a standard and for some reason he'd left it in neutral, and the car started rolling into the street. After a brief moment of 'wait this can't be happening', I desperately tried to get into the driver's seat to stop the car (I was behind the driver's seat). Only when I got there, my glasses were all fogged up and I couldn't see at all what was happening. I managed to get us stopped, but we were in the middle of a street. So I thought that it would be better to try and move off the street or more out of the way (only I still couldn't see well). we'd wound up in the wrong lane and there was an oncoming car that was trying to move around us as I was trying to get back into the right lane... The car was not running, still just rolling in neutral (I'm not sure how we'd gotten it moving again anymore... dream logic!). I somehow got us around the other car, but there was, for some reason, a GIANT (like 20 feet tall) snow bank in our lane, and I gently rolled into that.

At this point, D. and co. returned from wherever they had been to see the chaos that had ensured. he was pretty pissed but I think we gave him shit for leaving the car in neutral and it all balanced out somehow. Also we'd somehow arrived at the little remote chalet that sold fancy larp supplies anyway - we just had to get up the steep snowbank/hill on the side if the road. It was a nice chalet and they had some cool stuff, very little of which I remember. I remember A. caught some shit from one of the proprietors (maybe dream H. I.?) for doing people's nails to test out their nail polish selection? Also they had some cool little enameled metal puzzles and I thought about getting one for Wererogue, but when I was talking to the sales person, it turned out that my 6 yo nephew had been here like three months before and solved them all, even though they were supposed to be super difficult, so I decided maybe they wouldn't pose enough of a challenge. And that's basically all I remember at this juncture :x

I'm on mobile so this will be a mess.

I'm visiting college station and I just had a stress dream so bad that I woke up crying.

Do I have issues with my PhD experience? Gosh maybe.

The dream was very much inspired by reality but with heavily fantastical elements. I wasn't really me at all, I was a character, but that character's experience was similar to mine, especially on an emotional level.

As part of this program, we were supposed to make a dinner for the faculty to express ourselves in some way. I'm not sure what they expected - that was part of the problem. No one had really explained this to me. There was one person who went before me (who was an amalgamation of real school and LARP people I know. She put on this bug feast aytslked about the meanings of all the dishes as metaphors and I left to sulk and freak out because even if I had ideas and understood the expectations, I had no time to prepare because I was so busy. I'm leaving out some of the cool background fantasy things, like the moose and dragon wars, and the setting, but there were a lot of background politics about everything going on in the background too.

Eventually I went home to see my parents, and my mom (not my actual mom, clearly) and dad (who were divorced in this dream even if they weren't my real life parents) didn't have any good ideas or help anyway. Like many real-life situations where someone who doesn't really have the full context is trying to help but their suggestions just aren't practical. One if them suggested that I take the faculty out to the woodlot that my dad (my actual dad) owns and talk about that, for example, but that would have entailed getting them out there and still serving them dinner, and I didn't feel like the hike would have gone over well when what they really wanted was for students to suck up to them with food.

Some of the faculty were real people too, proffs from my last two degrees, haaa.

My parents essentially told me they couldn't think of anything either. My dream-parents (and it was my dream-parents who delivered this) didn't think I was interesting enough to have anything to express to these people.

Waking-up but still semi dreaming me decided that the best solution was just to serve them plain ramen, and to tell them that what they got out if me entirely related to what they put in, and so this is what they got. Maybe I would have things they could put in it with me and they could try and earn it, but this was basically a protest anyway, because is was an absurd expectation.

Anyway, it was stressful and upsetting and I do think that the fact that I'm in CS is related. Ugh.

However real life me doesn't have any plans to spend any time with my department other than my friend Megan, who I saw last night and is really the sole reason I came to town.

I had *really* weird, elaborate soap-opera-y dream last night and I'm scrambling to write down the bits of it I still remember. I haven't had a weird dream like this is a looong time. I blame... reading through bits of my sister's 20th anniversary edition of Changeling: The Dreaming yesterday, and the number of amusing Thor things that I've been seeing on tumblr lately.

It involved the Addams Family (kinda), and Thor (kinda) and Hela form Marvel (kinda), and my friend C (kinda).

The basic gist is that someone came to the Addams' to help them bring people back to life who had been dead for years. This involved putting them into other people's bodies and some kind of rite where they had to marry children (like, older children, who had to 'agree' to this)? It was really *really* elaborate. Like, seriously it was watching some weird soap opera with whole different generations of stories. Things I remember:

-This was all taking place in some kinda southern gothic plantation mansion house
-The three people being reincarnated were Hela, Thor, and some woman with chin length black hair named Janet
-There was a little white terrier of some kind with brown on its face that later became a plot point
-Possibly there were time-travellers? Or something?
-Theoretically everyone was acting together to bring these people back, but in practice there were different factions who wanted their person awake first. Only Morticia and Wednesday really knew how to do things, and everyone else was sort or scrambling to figure it out or guess. I don't remember why the Addams' agreed to do this.
-This had been done or tried with Hela before? she didn't have much presence in the dream, except people were scared of her and she had some associate with Wednesday. Either Wednesday married her, or she was reincarnated into her? Maybe the kids who 'married' the people were the actual hosts?
-While Hela was basically Marvel Hela, Thor was not, or he was more entitled arrogant early-first-movie Thor who did't really question what he had or why he had it
-Thor got done first. The person whose body he'd gotten reincarnated into had a loyal and dutiful servant who was mistreated and used as comic relief, and didn't really understand what was happening to his master. -When Thor got reincarnated into his body he a: was a kid and b: didn't know who he was and was kind of mean to him and it was sad.
-At that point they were basically in a fight of some kind and Kid Tho was like: Oh a fight! Fetch me my hammer! His servant had wanted to be his second, but Thor'was like 'lol you can do my laundry' or something along those lines and he was crushed.
-Possibly this whole thins was an elaborate plan to get control of mjolnir? They didn't have the hammer, but I think they needed either Thor or Hela to get it back in this battle.
-Janet (or whatever/whoever she really was) was only brought back as a secondary consideration, because someone (possibly Morticia) had insisted she would be important, or had just cared for her/missed her sort of thing. Like if this was the plan of some evil overlord, and she was his rebellious daughter that he loved and wanted back even though she was a goodie two shoes. Something like that. Maybe they just needed to do three for Reasons? Oh - maybe she was supposed to be Jane, from the Thor movies, only.... highly filtered :p
-Her ritual didn't get brought back until the others were already awake, because she wasn't a priority and the people who were in her 'faction (one of who might have been Rupert Giles, or looked like him), knew the least about what to do and had the most moral quandaries about all of it. There were people at the house who cared for her and were genuinely worried about what was going to happen to her in his scenario.
-Predictably when she was brought back she was confused and horrified, but she wasn't as powerful as the others.
-The others were off at the fight, but she was still weak. Someone came to report that there was 'some Inuit girl' (WHAT BRAIN) collapsed on the grounds.
-It was my friend C (who is... not Inuit IRL, nor was she in the dream? But people thought she was?).
-Janet had apparently known her in life and insisted on being brought out to see her. I don't actually remember what information she was acting on in he dream - if she just wanted to go see the hurt person or what.
-She was helped/carried out to where she was lying, and then freaked out because it really was C only way older than when she'd seen her last (they were childhood friends?). She healed her some and they talked a bit about what she knew was happening which was not much.
-They wanted to help each other more, but it was deemed too dangerous, and Janet thought that if C were brought to the house she'd probably be killed (though someone was arguing that she might die anyway, I think? But maybe they were lying?), so C had to run away to...wherever she'd come from (still unclear)
-Later I was in the heads of two people who'd been sent to figure out what was really happening, if the rumors were true, or what.
-They had known some of the people involved, especially Janet, but also some of the behind-the-scenes folks, in an earlier generation (i.e. the bad guys).
-When they came to the door, the dog (who had also been de-aged? Or brought back?) recognized them and was SO EXCITED to see them! So they were able to convince the people who had come to the door to give it to them by saying it was theirs and they had lost it (?). This was close to when I was waking up so the logic was extra shaky. Like the people at the house were afraid that if they didn't just give up the dog they would get caught out somehow, but the people who'd come to check them out were like "omg its totally [dog] but de-aged into a puppy again so we can totally prove this is happening!" Neither of these arguments really hold up to scrutiny of awake-logic. I think the people at the house felt that no one would believe them that the dog was de-aged even if they knew, and that it was better to let them take the dog than to stay around the house. And they couldn't pretend it was a different dog because it was clearly so happy to see them in particular. So both sides were pretending to believe the lies of the visitors about the lost dog? That makes a little more sense, ish.
-the dog was Janet's though, and I think they were going to use it to show people and recruit allies. Janet was sad to lose her friendly little doggo, but glad that it got away to friendly people
-That's really all the details I can pull?

It was waaaaay more complicated than that, with the multi-generational thing and the ritual near the beginning and everything

I just had a stress dream about some non-local friends. They had bet and been befriended by this person who was just completely taking advantage of their kindness and generosity in ways that seemed subtle but were really glaring from the outside, and I just didn't know what to do. I have no idea were this dream came from!

( Dream! )

Despite saying I have no idea where this dream came from, I can probably piece together a few things. My friends have been dealing with family health stuff and not around much, so I am concerned about them being isolated. I'm worried about my own ability to fit in to new communities and make friends. And of course I've just been reading a lot about, basically, radicalization of young white dudes into the alt-right. Apparently these things are not a good mix for my imagination.

I slept for crap last night. As much as I say I'm getting better, is seems like I wnd up coughing a lot whenever I actually go to lie down to sleep, so that's fun. But the sinus congestion is definitely improving, so there is that! last night I also wound up getting disrupted a few times a I was going to bed, and it took me longer to actually get there than intended. I've been having sort of stressy dreams the past tow nights as well, but I barely remember any scraps of them. I think last night was employment related. I know I wound up doing a lot things I wasn't expecting, and basically never got to stop/sit down, and that my attitudes o thins in the dream were mixed. The night before last they were more violent, with me trying unsuccessfully to harm people I care about. Thanks for that, brain? I don't remember a lot of details, thankfully, but they felt very vivid and true at the time, so extra ugh.

I had kitty cuddles last night during family Voltron time ( have seen the whole of the show, but no one else here has yet). I took a reactine, knowing I would then have a terrible antihistamine hangover today. I do in fact have one of those - I slept in until 11 and had a hard time making myself get out of bed, and have been exhausted and brain-foggy all day, despite caffeine. It never used to have this kind of effect on my (other antihistamines do it too, and they also never used to), so yay body, thanks for that.

Despite the brain fog, I went out to the mall with my sister to use a coupon on chocolate, then helped her make soup for dinner, baked a cake, and made some valentines for the family (mostly for the kids, but enh). Dinner shortly, I believe, to enjoy that soup, which smells amazing.

The cake is for the 'Family cake walk'. There is a cakewalk at school tomorrow, but the kids wanted to have one at home. So I said I would bake a cake, but that we would draw names, and whoever won gt to decide what kind of cake to make. And I won! So I'm making my classic childhood birthday cake, which is a black forest (but not an authentic one.... chocolate cake, cherry pie filling, and whipped cream). I'll make the cream for it tomorrow and we can have ti for dessert. Nugsy thinks a cake walk should be when you walk and eat cake. I can't disagree that it's a great idea!

And now - dinner time :)

This is one of those entries i am probably going to have to force myself to post rather than just delete. But I haven't posted anything in 5 days, as I've been away. I did write some paper journal entries on...less than half...of those days. Ugh. I had good intentions, I just didn't have a lot of time to myself, and not a lot of emotional energy.

The service was nice - an informal drop-in sort of thing for people to come see the family and such. I think it was a lot more work for them emotionally, especially Cat's mother and grandfather, than they probably needed. Just a lot of people to talk to and so on. I saw a few people I hadn't seen or talked to in years, and met some more relatives and co-workers. There were pictures up, and some figurines we'd brought from his house, and a slide show of pictures. Afterwards, a bunch of us went to the Diplomat, which is a 24hour Chinese-Canadian restaurant where we used to make many a late night foray. They did some renovations to the place since we used to be there all the time, but it was the same as the last time we went as a group which was about 2011. the food was pretty much the same, though they have really changed their soup portions and now they are huuuuge. This restaurant is responsible for my disappointment that sweet and sour chicken doesn't come as battered chicken balls everywhere. They also have some pretty good cakes and cheesecakes, though they didn't have the one that Pretentia wanted.

It was really really nice to see her, and to be there for her. She and Cat were closer than siblings in a lot of ways, and I know she is totally devastated. She is also closer to the family, and has been helping Cat's mother with a lot of things. I did go up to his place a few times with her, and we checked in on the kitties (so fat.... so so so fat), changed their litter, fed them, petted them. We did some nominal tidying to start (some had already been done), but I ran a load of dishes through the dish washer, and such. I compiled some notes from IRC friends who has messaged him there before he fell offline (;_;) for his mother, and took down some information about some other servers where he may have spent time so I can let people there know as well. I think all the major place have been contacted though. His mother has basically given us (his friends/online friends) leave to deal with his computer/online things as we see fit, but unfortunately it isn't all that simple, as there is money and authority involved, and as the executor of his estate, there will be things she has to handle at least initially. Things like pics accounts set to automatically renew, and his websites and all of that :/ I made sure to upload some of his one page sites into the wayback machine, and will probably let them go. But the wiki we have used for our games for the past ten years is in his name, and that needs to get sorted out. I also tried to copy the dice rolling script that he wrote and that we used for a lot of out online games..... but I can't get it to work :( I really want to have that available still, as something that he made for us.

Anyway. I flew back to Ontario on Monday night, into Hamilton, then drove an hour and a half to London, and then left again for Windsor, where I am now. I'd told Nary I would come spend a few days with her when I got back, since she couldn't come to the memorial, so here I am. I wish I had brought my dog though. I miss her fuzzy face - someone else's dog s not *quite* the same, even if they are a very nice giant fluffball, as Argo is. I also feel guilty because I had originally told my sister that I would go with her when she went to get her tattoo today (and then leave early to get the kids after school), but there was some miscommunication about the fact that I was going *and* I had completely forgotten that it was this week (despite remembering last week? I don't know, my brain has been a mess). And I don't know, I'm just feelign very stressed out.

I had a lot of stressy dreams last night, mostly Larp-contexted. I think probably because I realized that I am missing an event this weekend that I had hoped to get to, as it seemed like a nice casual opportunity to rp, and the single day events are generally easier for me to get to, so meh. But it was a lot of things like.... my tent was covered in giant angry bees/hornets that were also dying, so I couldn't get into it and then I had to be careful, I'd forgotten all my gear, or had gear for the wrong character, or I tried to borrow stuff from my sister without asking and she was cranky with me (deservedly). I don't remember them super clearly, because I kept waking up in the middle of the night (or partly waking), and then trying to go back to sleep, so it is more like a string of snippets I only half remember than anything coherent. The tent was exactly my tent from my last summer at the buttermilk excavation, when I borrowed Brad's tent, set in the same copse of trees and covered with a tarp sunshade in the same way. The bees/hornets were the length of my palm. I could probably describe some of the larp clothes I had and didn't have. One of the characters I had was entirely a dream fabrication, and they wore this cool leather dress/bodysuit sort of thing that was so unique I couldn't wear it for my real character (Zia). I don't remember anything else about them.

I have things I should be doing, and things I could be doing, and I'm not doing anything. On the one hand it is nice to have some alone time, on the other hand, I am missing having my own space today. It is grey and blah out and I basically feel the same way. I feel like I'm living in other people's lives without actually living my own, and I feel frustrated and tired and stuck. But I also want to be left alone, and not have to talk to anyone unless I want to. Meh. I'm going to do some knitting and see if I feel any better after that.

I slept in way late and had weird dreams. I'll grab the recap form facebook, since that was easiest to post to this AM:

I had a dream I was hanging out with my friend Mara. We were playing internet games and scratching lotto tickets. She and my sister had been playing a lot of the same online games produced by this one girl, where you could nominate characters. Someone (Mara or Nary?) had nominated a bunch of characters from tabletop games, and Mara had gotten a poster that had art of a bunch of Adventure World peeps, and we were trying to find where, and also find something with the 'invisible girlfriend' character.

Then we (? not sure who) were at this big outdoor craft/yard sale place - it was like a cross between downtown Bryan and the venue for the Woodstock Fiber Festival. I kept buying bacon cheeseburgers from the same kid for every meal. The third time we went, we parked close to where the cheeseburger table was. There wasn't really parking, but people moved an empty table for us so we could park.

Out of courtesy we looked at stuff on the tables around the car, and on one there was a pile of jumbled clothes that included a Fredericton Quilter's Guild vest (in the 80s, members had to make one). We have my mom's, so I was going to buy it to put in the kids' dress up box (where mom's is) so the could each have one. Then I broke down crying while talking to the woman who was selling it, who didn't know that mom had died, and I had to tell her.

--

In other news, this is one of those days where I'm having to remind myself that I have, in fact, done things today. I walked the dogs (twice!), I vacuumed upstairs in the hall and in my room, as well as the stairs. I did some writing, I helped with dinner prep (more in making sure we had the required dishes and a clean table), I played some with the kids, and just now I made brownies and did some kitchen tidying/cleaning. I still feel like I have been sitting around all day doing nothing, pleh.