My Fresh Hell
Life in Scribbletown.

You Are Getting Sleeeeppyy!

2006-11-10

Poor sexy Ed Bradley. I�ll miss him. Not that I�ve watch �60 Minutes� since I lived at home but I liked knowing Ed was in the world somewhere doing his thing. Did I recently see him on The Daily Show or am I hallucinating?

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Last night after bath time, Red ran naked through the house and hid in the closet to avoid getting pajama�d. As I was combing Dusty�s wet hair I said that I thought Red�s brain went to some other planet than Mars because she was such a funky kid.

Dusty agreed and said, �Jupiter. My brain goes to Mars and hers goes to Jupiter.� Which explains a lot but I�m not exactly sure what yet.

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I had trouble waking up this morning because I was in the middle of a weird and disturbing dream. If you don�t want to read about it (and why would you?), skip this section.

My husband and I lived in a condo (we�d just recently moved there) in the city (not a fancy one; in fact, it was only like three rooms big) with Dusty. Red did not exist. We wanted to see a movie but had no babysitter. My husband left and in a few moments came back with a neighbor woman down the hall who�d agreed to watch Dusty.

As we were leaving, we walked through the kitchen. Three large black men � friends of the woman, I thought � were cooking up a huge meal. Mostly vegetables. There was a skillet of tomatoes, one of mixed vegetables, every burner was in use. Some kind of meat was in the toaster oven. I thought, �I hope they clean the pans really good when they�re done. I hope I don�t have to do all these dishes when I get back.�

Two of the men were cooking and drinking beer and laughing. Clearly quite at home in my kitchen. I have no idea how they�d gotten all that cooking done in the milliseconds between my husband leaving and coming back.

The third man stood in the corner, very angry and militant looking with some kind of semi automatic weapon hung from his shoulder. He eyed me as I left and I suddenly realized my predicament. I�d let four strangers into my house, ostensibly to watch my daughter, and I was � best case scenario � going to be robbed.

My husband informed me, on the way to the car, that they�d been robbing the woman�s condo when he�d showed up and they insisted on coming to ours with her in exchange for not hurting my husband who could now identify them to the police.

I walked to my car, which was parked in the alley, and noticed it had no gas. So we went looking for the car � a Ford Fiesta-type car but a foreign make � I�d just bought that day but couldn�t remembered where I�d parked it. I could barely remember what it looked like.

We wandered around the neighborhood. I checked my watch. 8:30pm. The movie started at 9:00. We�d be cutting it close if the car didn�t turn up soon. I�d forgotten to be worried about Dusty in the condo with the woman and the robbers. I never once thought they�d hurt her. I was resigned to having what little I had be gone when we returned. I made no effort to change the events � confront them, stay and make them leave, call the police � nothing.

My husband then said he was hungry and wanted to stop somewhere and eat. 8:45pm. Hopeless. We�d never make the movie now. We went into some neighborhood dive that handed out magazines. Inside the magazine, they said, were menus. Anything pictured in the magazine, they could make. It was all that kind of soupy, indistinguishable Indian food. Bowls of hot brown liquid with stuff floating in it. You knew it would taste good but it was horrifying to look at. We flipped through the pages and I began to panic. We�re going to miss the movie! I can�t find my car! We�re being robbed! Right now! My husband was unconcerned with any of this.

And then the alarm went off.

Actually, I think I can interpret some of this myself. A lot of this imagery mirrors the kind of week I�ve had. Sigh.

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Okay. You can go now and have your weekend. I am planning my annual IKEA trip with my sister on Sunday in which I will spend money I don�t have on things I need. All in a quest to simplify and tidy up my life. How does that work, exactly?

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9:16 a.m. ::
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