Committed

I had two apocalyptic dreams last night, and woke up in time for an earthquake. If that's not the world telling me to get a move and a shake on, I don't know what is.

The dreams were kind of interesting, actually — scary when I woke up out of them, but thinking back not so horrific. In the first, the human population had been decimated by some disaster, and, on the island of Manhattan, was split into two factions. I somehow was one of the leaders of one faction, and was trying my darnedest to convince the leaders of the other faction that it would be best for humanity to join together to the cause of survival. My persuasion techniques included rhetorical argument, an appeal to common sense, and womanly wiles. I had to convince all the leaders before the conflict escalated into a full-out war ... as much of a war as an endangered race of beings could have.

In the second dream, we were cleaning out and packing up the house in anticipation of the next morning, when "they" would come pick us up with large buses and take us away. (Side note: whenever I dream about my "home", it's usually the house my parents currently live in, and which I lived in during middle and high school, but always on the street we lived on when I was in elementary school. Not sure what that means.) My dog Chloe was there — in real life, she died 10 months ago — and after the cleaning, the entire neighborhood was at the bar partying it up like there was no tomorrow. Probably because none of us expected to be alive tomorrow. I made a goodbye call to my best friend, who was really rather blasé that my world was about to end. I woke up just as the white (yellow? I don't exactly remember) buses pulled up into the cul-de-sac, and the call was out for us to get on them.

All sorts of surreal.

In real life:

Bad thing that happened this week: I came home Monday evening to find burnt beans in my crockpot, instead of baked. Not enough liquid, I guess, but it was disappointing. What a waste of bacon.

(One) Good thing that happened this week: I came home today to find the photo prints I ordered last week had arrived. Now I just have to sort through them and put them into albums. The prints span over the last two or three years of my life, and I'd been wanting to print them up for a long time. Digital pictures are nice and all, but I feel like you don't get the same enjoyment from them as you do with an actual physical print. Call me old-fashioned, I guess.

Kodachrome-Colored Glasses

Cute Guy(tm) told me the other day that I need better pictures on my OkCupid profile. This was not an unprompted comment, by the way: it was after I told him that I hadn't had any dates since the Jew dumped me in March. I said I'm not very photogenic. He doesn't believe me, and made an off-hand offer to maybe get together over 4th of July weekend for a photo shoot. I am considering taking him up on it, if he was serious.

In the meantime, I decided this evening to comb through my digital photos for replacements of the ones currently on my profile — I must have some decent pictures of myself, right? Ones that don't involve alcohol or hugging men — and ended up instead getting sidetracked on Memory Lane. Look at my life in pictures, and it seems pretty frickin' awesome: I have tons of friends, we've done tons of goofy things. I have smiled a lot in the camera's eye. I kind of forget about that when I'm in the Moment of Sad.

Reflecting back on those days when I've been restless and depressed, I'm starting to regret keeping my photo albums hidden in the closet. And I'm also starting to regret being cheap, and not printing out more of the photos I take, letting them instead get uploaded to my computer and then forgotten. I could use those memories the most when I'm at my lowest.

At any rate, if you're feeling sad about what's not in your life right now, I recommend going through your pictures from the past few years. Don't think about what's happened to the people since, just think about the moment when you were there, smiling, drinking that drink, doing that crazy thing. That's why we take them, right? Investment against future sorrow.

I was supposed to have plans this weekend. However, my car decided otherwise: just before I entered the freeway on-ramp, which would have lead me to crossing the Bay Bridge, she shut down completely — no radio, no ignition, not even hazard lights. Really glad I have AAA road side, and really glad that it was a near miss: one of my nightmares is having a breakdown actually on the Bay Bridge, where there's really no safe way to escape. People are grumpy enough about the S-curve, I don't think they'd be able to handle a stalled Ford Escort as well.

So instead of seeing a movie and going to a barbecue yesterday, and instead of celebrating my mother's birthday today, I've been cooking and Netflixing and gaming. Today I walked from my apartment to the JCC and finally got Bruce ready for his first firing. It's been quiet, and I've been trying not to worry about whether or not this is The End for my car. I love that car, by the way — and yeah, I know it's dumb to love an inanimate object. But we've had 11 years and 125,000 miles together. Whoever takes her place will have some big tires to fill.