just be.

day 13: stuff that is a guilty pleasure

most things i like are actually guilty pleasures. i was raised by a catholic mother and a jewish father. there. you have just learned a Fact That Explains a Lot About Me.

with so many guilty-pleasure songs to choose from, i'll embarrass myself full stop. i'll give you TWO.

this is a truly terrible song. and i LOVE it and sing along with it joyfully.

 

a less terrible but still terrible song that i also love and sing joyfully (no, i do not like the video. but that wasn't the question).

 

and then there's guilty-pleasure tv. well, if you know me AT.ALL, you know that i loved "as the world turns"

 

and "guiding light."

 

like, i still haven't deleted gl's final episode off my tivo, and i am royally pissed that the series hasn't been released on dvd yet. not even one season! how hard would that be? and how much of a moneymaker? and worse, i still haven't even WATCHED the last seven episodes of atwt. i hate that those shows have left us.

and movies that are guilty pleasures? yeah. pretty much any seth rogen movie (whether written by or starring). i have some kind of weird crush on seth rogen. i think i fell in love with him, bizarrely enough, during "zach and miri make a porno." i know! how awful. that's a seriously embarrassing guilty pleasure.

 

sleep-study follow-up

so, you might recall that i had a sleep study recently to figure out why i'm so sleepy all the time. the doctors' hypothesis was that i had narcolepsy.

tl;dr that is still the working hypothesis.

but the sleep study also yielded a lot of other data that i'm trying to process. forgive me for doing it here.

the polysomnography was monday night, a diagnostic study to rule out sleep apnea, evaluate hypersomnia, and follow up with a multiple sleep latency test (mslt) the following day. the coded diagnosis following just this study was unspecified physiological, or organic, hypersomnia, periodic limb movement disorder, and "other" respiratory abnormality.

during the almost-ten-hour recording period, i slept nearly eight hours. it took me 53 minutes to fall asleep and 93 minutes to get to rapid-eye-movement (rem) sleep. (nb i thought i hadn't slept almost at all that night and was SO discouraged because i thought they surely wouldn't have been able to collect any data. interesting.) i spent almost a third of those ten hours in rem sleep, which is about twice normal for my age. (this comes as no surprise to folks who, like lisa, have listened to me recount my dreams over the years. i have a lot of them.)

they gave me a bunch of sleep-continuity figures of which i can't seem to make much sense. same with my breathing-pattern summary. i had some obstructive apnea (stopping breathing) and hypopnea (shallow breathing) and flow-limited events (the three of which together i interpret to be a measure of the zillions of times i couldn't breathe because of the stoopy wires and tubes in and around my nose because that's where i breathe) but no other apnea or hypopnea (so that's good). and another good thing was that i spent all of my sleep time in the top range (90–99%) of oxygen saturation.

for the mslt, which was the next day, consisted of four naps (which just means that the technician came in and told me that it was time for a nap, calibrated the instruments, and let me try to sleep for about 20 minutes before coming in to wake me up). it took me 7.5 minutes to fall asleep for the first nap, decreasing with each nap down to 2 minutes (yes, two minutes) to fall asleep for the fourth nap. (normal is about 15 minutes. and this decrease in latencies is apparently not normal.) i didn't achieve rem sleep in the first three naps but got 14 (out of 20) minutes of rem time in the fourth nap--a sleep-onset rem period (soremp). i slept for about three-fourths of the time in each of the other three naps. my mean sleep latency was just under 5 minutes.

the coded diagnoses remained the same for the mslt, but they had a few additional impressions: my results are compatible with pathologic sleepiness (what an awful term!) without definite evidence of narcolepsy, but the one soremp during the last nap is apparently also pathologic.

so the doctor is sending me for an echocardiogram in a month to ensure that i have no structural heart issues, and he's consulting with my neurologist who treats me for migraine, and then he's planning to prescribe a stimulant to treat the sleepiness. his diagnosis is currently narcolepsy without cataplexy. i wish we could start treatment sooner, but i'm trying to be patient. right now i just need to figure out a plan for work, as i'm unable to work more than about half a day most days.

anyway, that's the status. 

honkshu.

monday night and tuesday were my sleep study. i had two sleep studies, i guess, really. monday night was a polysomnogram, and tuesday were multiple sleep-latency tests (how long does it take me to fall asleep? and do i dream when i do sleep?). things i didn't like about my sleep studies:

• wires and tubes in my nose and trying not to disconnect the zillions of wires connected to me from scalp to shin
• hospital food for breakfast and lunch. blech.
• gunk in my hair to stick the wires to my skin. i shampooed when i got home, but some of it remains. yuck.
• sleeping on a hospital bed. not as comfy as my wonderful king-sized bed at home.
• sleeping with light cotton blankets and flimsy disposable pillows instead of my kickass pillows at home plus blanket, comforter, and quilt (i like a cold room and lots of covers)
• sleeping without zuzu, chloe, and jack-jack snuggled around me. as much as i gripe about them folding me up into origami sleepy girl every night, they really do keep me warm, and their breathing is very soothing. except when chloe won't stop kneading. that gets annoying.
• being told when to sleep and when to wake up. apparently, i don't take orders well in these matters.
• not being able to use my usual comfort things to fall asleep. i have a weird thing i do where i put my hand, covered with a blanket, up to my mouth. if i can cover my upper lip, i am instantly soothed and will fall asleep quickly. i'm sure it's a holdover from thumbsucking. anyway, the wires and tubes in my nose blocked me from doing this (or, if i tried to, i'd end up moving the wies and tubes out of the way and the tech would come back in to put them in), and i swear that's a huge part of why i couldn't sleep.

so basically i didn't sleep well at all monday night--they wouldn't let me go to sleep until about 10:30, which is later than i usually do, and then i was so worried about hurrying up to fall asleep so they'd have lots of data that i couldn't fall asleep. and then tuesday i was so sleepy from not having slept well monday night that i didn't want to be awake at all, but i couldn't fall asleep when i was allowed to--still because i kept worrying that i wasn't falling asleep quickly enough. nice.

but this means that last night i slept like a LOG. zonk. did my nightly crossword puzzle, got into my usual position, and thud i was asleep. and i didn't wake up until andrew kissed me goodbye when he left for work. even then i was reluctant to get out of bed, but i knew that two cats would die of starvation if i did not get up and feed them.

so what i liked about my sleep study is my newfound appreciation for my bed and for sleeping.

while i was trying to fall asleep at the sleep center, i would try to picture sleepy things. pictures of animals sleeping that i'd seen online, or the sound of jack-jack purring, stuff like that. so when i got home, i started a pinterest board of those kinds of images. that way, next time i have trouble falling asleep, i can look at my pinterest board and be soothed to sleep.

honkshu.

i sleep a lot.

like, a lot. like, i sleep every night for nine or ten hours, and i take usually two two-hour naps every day. that doesn't leave a lot of time for working, let alone exercising, cooking, or having a social life.

all my life, i've just figured i'm lazy. or had low blood sugar (eat!). or that my low blood pressure was causing my fatigue. or that i was depressed (but i don't *feel* depressed!). or that my snoring husband was keeping me awake. or or or or or. a million things.

finally, a good conversation with my new doctor (yay!) led me to a sleep specialist. at first, i was like, "what? i don't stop breathing when i'm sleeping. i don't snore. i don't fall asleep while i'm walking like those goats in the movies." turns out, it's a little more complicated than that. (surprise!) 

you know how i remember my dreams most of the time? and they're usually vivid and complex and intense? yeah. that happens when you awaken straight from rem sleep. entering rem sleep almost immediately is a symptom of narcolepsy. i do that.

i've had an episode or two of cataplexy, most notably one in my teens (when the doc seems to think this started for me) in which i collapsed to the ground and, well, wet myself right in the middle of a walk down the path to pine ridge with chocolisa and a bunch of other folks. i was dumbstruck but never thought much more about it and have experienced only a couple of similar episodes since. but cataplexy = one common symptom of narcolepsy.

Attacks can occur at any time during the waking period, with patients usually experiencing their first episodes several weeks or months after the onset of EDS. But in about 10 percent of all cases, cataplexy is the first symptom to appear....Although cataplexy can occur spontaneously, it is more often triggered by sudden, strong emotions such as fear, anger, stress, excitement, or humor. Laughter is reportedly the most frequent trigger. (all quotes in this post are via)

the most-common symptom, of course, is excessive daytime sleepiness. did i mention that i sleep a lot? a lot.

People with EDS describe it as a persistent sense of mental cloudiness, a lack of energy, a depressed mood, or extreme exhaustion.

how many times have you heard me say i just feel out of it and want to go lie down? a lot.

sleep paralysis: lots of times i want to move (say, to acknowledge my husband leaving) and can't.

The temporary inability to move or speak while falling asleep or waking up also parallels REM-induced inhibitions of voluntary muscle activity. This natural inhibition usually goes unnoticed by people who experience normal sleep because it occurs only when they are fully asleep and entering the REM stage at the appropriate time in the sleep cycle.

and the hallucinations. my husband can tell you the zillions of times i used to get angry with him for playing music or the tv loudly while i'm trying to go to sleep, when we discover later that he'd been wearing headphones the whole time or hadn't had any media on at all.

these delusional experiences are unusually vivid and frequently frightening. Most often, the content is primarily visual, but any of the other senses can be involved. These hallucinations represent another intrusion of an element of REM sleep-dreaming-into the wakeful state.

and i can't tell you how many times i've been certain that he was in the room doing something, or that a car was driving by playing a certain song, or that something was happening that totally wasn't. i flippantly refer to my mostly auditory hallucinations as my brain radio, but apparently, it's a thing.

In most cases, symptoms first appear when people are between the ages of 10 and 25 but narcolepsy can become clinically apparent at virtually any age....Whatever the age of onset, patients find that the symptoms tend to get worse over the two to three decades after the first symptoms appear....If left undiagnosed and untreated, narcolepsy can pose special problems for children and adolescents, interfering with their psychological, social, and cognitive development and undermining their ability to succeed at school.

i've managed to work my whole life around jobs that permit me to work when i'm at my most alert and sleep when i'm not. even when i've had office jobs, i've never stayed in the office for more than four or five hours at a stretch. 

To gain greater control over their symptoms, many patients take short, regularly scheduled naps at times when they tend to feel sleepiest. Adults can often negotiate with employers to modify their work schedules so they can take naps when necessary and perform their most demanding tasks when they are most alert.

and my social life. i always consider myself socially awkward, don't like going out, the wet blanket, blah blah blah.

people with narcolepsy may become socially isolated due to embarrassment about their symptoms. Many patients also attempt to avoid experiencing strong emotions, since humor, excitement, and other intense feelings can trigger cataplectic attacks.

avoid intense feelings? me? who won't see an intensely sad, violent, suspenseful, or otherwise upsetting movie? yeah. check, please.

hermit?

Moreover, because of the widespread lack of public knowledge about the disorder, people with narcolepsy are too often unfairly judged to be lazy, unintelligent, undisciplined, or unmotivated. Such stigmatization often increases the tendency toward self-imposed isolation.

check.

all i can say is that it is incredibly comforting to know that there's a reason i am the way i am. i'm not lazy. i'm not bored. i'm not depressed. i just can't always tell the difference between wake and sleep, dreams and reality. there are worse afflictions.

you know those days? my law-school friend heather used to call them ebola days: when you wake up with bad hair and, by the end of the day, so much has gone wrong that you think that all that's left is ebola.
i had one of those today. nothing huge, just little things. (and yes, i am full of the linkies today.)

i've been having REEEEEALLY sad dreams. like, wake up sweating with drenched sheets and pillows and in tears or near them. can't shake the sadness. reeeeally sad. i'm-failing-the-world dreams. stuff like that. and then i wake up, and i cannot shake the feeling.

so this morning, since i had zero work, i headed for lunch at the shop. traffic made me cranky. everybody was the worst driver in the world. and the people who weren't driving were the worst pedestrians in the world. and they were all wearing the worst clothes in the world. and the wait at panera for our food order was the longest in the world. and the not-baked-but-regular chips i got were the worst order-filler's error in the world. and the enormous fountain drink i was transporting was the most inconvenient thing in the world. and so on like that.

in the car, i thought that maybe it's me worrying about my little brother that's got me so...whatever i am. i want a do-over. i want him to be a little tiny boy again and we do things differently, and i live in virginia and see him every sunday for dinner and he grows up with no setbacks and becomes a pro goalie and lives happily ever after.

and i am sad that there's no do-over. it all makes me very, very, very sad. i love him so much.

and then i realized that, although i *am* indeed sad about those things, i also have the pms. so. that explains a LOT.

a lot.

so i was bitchybitchy all day (even more than i realized i was being--my poor shop friends, i'm so sorry i subjected you to me today!). frustrated at every turn. cranky. argumentative.

naturally, i started a new project. which went *GREAT*, let me tell you. i only had to rip and re-crochet every.single.row. literally. but i have the pattern down now, thanks to steven [edited to fix linky!] and carla.

thank god for my friends. i cannot imagine life without these people. anna, yvonne, monica, teri--everyone was great today. (of course, if you are a lady, you know that the flip side of the bitchy is the sentimental and weepy, which is apparently the state i'm in now.)

but the happy visited tonight, too. when i got home, andrew, the dogs, and jack-jack greeted me at the door, as they always do, and one canNOT be cranky around labs. you just can't. wagging tails, velvety ears, big loving brown eyes, giant panting smiles. there is no room left for sads in the room.

and andrew said, "you got a package from lisa." squee! i knew that this would bring me happies. so i opened the package (as she knew that i would: i cannot wait, not ever) and found four.awesome.things. of course, being in my hyper-get-organized mode, i have put them all away and didn't take pictures. but i shall describe them to you and the joy they brought me.

thing 1 was a pretty little fancy box containing a button that said "happy camper" on it. well, really it said "happy" and then had a picture of a little oval camper-trailer. but you know. SO CUTE.

we both love campers and fancy ourselves trekking about the country in them in our twilight years.

that's twilight as in old enough to trek about the country all the time, not twilight as in edward/bella/whatever the other one is.

thing 2 was the goose book. the goose book is a little blank book that we bought in a tiny little book shop 25 years ago or so. well, it was blank when we bought it. and it has geese printed all over the cover (hence the name). in it, we write questions to which we cannot imagine the answers. i shall share some some time when i get the book back off the shelf on which i have already placed it. right now i am teh tired. anyway, the point of the book is that we have been swapping it back and forth for 25 years and think of things to put in it from time to time, and whoever has the book at that time has to remember to jot that down.

we are easily entertained.

thing 3 was some lip balm i'd left behind on my last visit to see her.

which was awesome.

the visit. the lip balm is also awesome. but you know. visits are better than makeup.

and thing 4 was a natalie dee t-shirt that proclaimed, "cupcake + multivitamin = super breakfast!"

www.nataliedee.com
so naturally, i am happier now. still weepy and sentimental but looking forward to ice-cream pie for dinner (= super dinner!) and working on some knitting and chilling. and going to bed early. and getting some work done tomorrow.

and such as.

more than you asked.

• people accused of crimes really do themselves no favors by talking directly with the press.

tonight, a bonus: a little primer on u.s. supreme court justiceship.  

• article iii of the constitution gives the supreme court specific areas of jurisdiction: any case arising under federal law; any case affecting ambassadors, ministers, or consuls; any case involving admiralty or maritime matters; any case in which the u.s. government is a party; any case in which two states are the parties; any case in which a state brings suit against a citizen of another state; any case in which citizens of different states are parties; any case in which citizens of one state claim land under grants of different states are parties or in which a state or citizen is a party on one side and a foreign state, citizen, or subject is a party on the other side.
  
• it has *original* jurisdiction (that is, it can be the court in which the case is brought first, without first ascending through federal district and circuit courts) in cases affecting ambassadors, ministers, or consuls and in cases in which a state is a party.
  
• other than those specific instances of original jurisdiction, the supreme court is a court of appeals. this means that it is not hearing issues of fact except in those cases—it is deciding strictly issues of law, and historically (usually) as narrowly as possible and only those issues brought by the parties.
• that's it. a supreme court justice has just those powers and just those responsibilities. it hears matters of fact only in those specific instances of original jurisdiction. otherwise, it hears matters of law alone.
• so what qualification must a supreme court justice have? he or she must be able to understand and interpret the law as enacted—whether statutory (codified by a legislative body) or grounded solely in precedent (i.e., a court does not typically rule contrary to precedent set by prior court decisions, at least not in that court's own jurisdiction—hence the motivation to decide cases on as narrow a basis as possible).
• and that is it. if the justice does not like what the law is—whether statutory or based in precedent—it is not the justice's right, authority, power, or responsibility to decide against that law (unless a law itself is being challenged, as in the case of a challenge against a law's constitutionality, in which case the law being interpreted is actually the constitution and whether it permits or prohibits the law being challenged). if the justice does not like the outcome of the lower cases, it is not the justice's right, authority, power, or responsibility to rule on those facts again.
• thus, as you can see, the supreme court justice has specific powers and specific responsibilities. just like for most jobs, the most important considerations in choosing a candidate to fill this position are the qualifications to perform those responsibilities and respect those powers. other considerations may also be important.
• the short version? i do not care one whit about the content of your past decisions—whether i agreed with the outcomes. what i care about is whether your past decisions reflect your understanding and interpretation of the applicable law.
• actually, the same is true of any appellate-court judge.
  

in less pressing news, i am 10 rounds away from the toe decreases on my latest sock, which makes me very smug and happy. and for reasons that escape me, i continue to dream about seth rogan. like, more than once a week. strange but true.

book of dreams

i'm an odd egg, i know. i have dreams every night that i remember well. but it's more than memory. the characters i create in these dreams—who usually don't seem like i created them myself but like people separate from me—stay with me. all day, and often longer. often, they make repeat appearances in future dreams.

during the day, i think about them and the things we didn't resolve during the dream. last night, for example, i had two dreams, both rich in characters and in plot. you know what i learned in one of them? the symbolism behind smocking in a child's dress. i don't know whether it's true—whether smocking really does symbolize anything, let alone the interreliance of generations in that child's life—but it was real. profound, internal. 

my first love appeared in that dream, too. it was a complicated dream. there was fear but mostly really intense emotion, which is what i usually experience in my dreams.

in my other dream, the one that has remained with me and persists in distracting me from anything else i try to do today, including work, i was another person—i often become someone else during the dream, who has a whole identity, name, life, history, experience. i was ema la-somethingfrench (when i was in that creating part of the dream when i have conrol over things like that, i changed it to lalongue, which didn't stick, and kept becoming lavertu, just because that's the surname of an author i've been editing recently). i had a huge family of siblings—foster, adopted, step, half, a huge blended family—and a family lineage a la harrod's—the patriarch was the current in a long line of owners of a major department-store chain, and we had money out the wingwang. and i was intensely, passionately, devotedly in love with an employee, a nerdy, not-in-my-waking-life attractive geek who was working along with a huge team for years on a project to prove the innocence of my deceased brother brian in some scandal. 

but i digress. the point is that these people are real to me, in a way. not real like my real-life friends or family, but as real—no offense—as, say, a reader i've never met. obviously, i know that you are real, if, in no other way, in a cartesian sense. you are reading this, so you exist. and they aren't real in that way. but they are real in their persistence and dimensionality.

it's that that gives me trouble. i can't always abandon them—did i mention that i can't stop thinking today about the events, personalities, and emotions in the dream i had last night? part of me wants to, feeling either silly or unable to deal with them in any way that makes sense in this waking, real world. i can't just blather on a blog about every dream i have. sometimes they're far too intimate to share on a blog that otherwise identifies me. but part of me really wants to hold onto them. to memorialize them. to figure them out.

i think about trying to turn them into short stories (some would really be novels). but i lack confidence in my fiction writing and worry that i couldn't do them justice. i think i need to find a way to blog them anonymously. somehow, writing them down in some computer file or paper journal doesn't feel like the right answer, though i can't really pinpoint why. it's like i want these characters and stories to be out there, outside of just my brain.

geez, sorry for the rambling. these thoughts have been rattling around in my head all day, and i just had to get them out.

in heaven, you can feel the rainbows.

this was just one image from last night's dream.

the dream began when a friend and i were in a basement and turned to try to run back up the stairs out of it. but instead of being a basement staircase, we found ourselves on an aircraft carrier, with raised-dot metal floors, battleship gray everywhere, and the staircase up was narrow and tall. as we ran for the stairs, a uniformed man stopped us. we tried to stammer our way out of why we were there, and he said, "what kind of air force people are you, anyway?" i said, "um...new ones?" he was friendly about this and whisked us off to his office, tiny and gray, with lots of computers scanning radar of the islands, the ocean, and the weather. he showed us one with a huge, colorful touch screen. he pivoted gridlines to zoom in and change angles, zooming in on a small set of islands, and then made little circles to create weather systems. soon, a huge tornado threatened the largest island, hovering over a volcano. he changed the view slightly, then made a dozen or so smaller hurricanes over the surrounding islands.

after he released us to leave, we made our way to the ship's deck. soon, it began to pitch and roll (it was now much smaller than any aircraft carrier, just a big boat now), water washing over the deck. people began to struggle toward the railings at the stern, where a safe dock seemed to be looming and a larger-than-life woman appeared ready to help--but not everyone. she asked us a riddle and said that the first person to respond correctly or to give a "come up" (i didn't know what that meant, either) would be saved. i cannot remember right now what the riddle was, but i remember that someone else gave an answer that was wrong and was swept away into the water, much to the horror of the rest of us, clamoring for the woman's hand. then something occurred to me, and i responded to the riddle--not with an answer, exactly, but a "but wouldn't this make this happen?" kind of question in response. she brightened, offering me her hand, and said, "you came up with a come up!" as she lifted me to safety. the cries of the people left behind faded as i walked up the dock.

at the top of the dock, which wasn't a wooden dock but cement, like the kind you'd back your boat up to from your car hitch, lowering it directly into the water, i found myself in sort of an ethereal park. people there were at peace, some alone and some in pairs. i felt the same way. i heard a voiceover, sort of, the whole time i was there, as though i were explaining to someone (myself?) what this place was all about. no one here felt anger or pain. but we could feel anyone else's feelings by becoming part of them. not like living people did--we didn't absorb others' pain in any kind of pathological or harmful way--but in the deepest sort of empathy and compassion.

and we could feel the rainbows. not just the stripes, but the whole thing. doing this looked sort of like looking at a supersaturated photograph, but with the kind of splash across the image that one might create accidentally by letting acid wash over it quickly. a silvery-gold, translucent sheen over the scene that covered us in the warm, peaceful feeling of complete love and goodness.

there was a lot of interaction during this part of the dream, me meeting people and feeling their feelings. it was a beautiful time, a good feeling that stayed with me throughout the day in kind of a bloodstream kind of way.

one bad part came when the friend i was with (a different friend from the first part of the dream) and i went to the dock again. he asked a question about the passage, something about living people, something that made the woman who'd helped us out of the boat and to safety very angry. she said that this meant that he would have to go back, and he protested to no avail as she lifted him easily from the dock and back onto the boat. those of us on the safe side who had watched this were horror-struck. i made my way back to the beautiful spot again.

the worst part of the dream, which was quite brief, had me back on the struggling side of the boat again--i'm not sure how i got there, but you know how dreams are. i was frightened this time--not completely peaceful and unafraid like i'd been the first time i'd seen the water wash over the deck. the first time, i'd known no fear and knew that i was going to be all right, even as the water swept over me. but this time, i knew that i would not be safe. i was alternately terrified and just sad, feeling the terror in the people around me. i watched as our hands reached in vain for railings and the water sucked us under. it was an awful feeling, and i knew that this was hell.

most of the dream was joyful and full of reunions with past loves and friends. somehow, the message throughout the dream and especially upon waking was live without fear. i think that it came from this idea that i could deeply interact with those around me, relating to them on a profound level, but remain safe, sane, and at peace. somehow it was helpful to me as well as to them to do this, and somehow that translated to living without fear. and it's how i've felt all day. i wish i could explain it all better, but i hope that the feeling stays. i've had dreams like this before--i mean, not like this one in subject matter, but in terms of depth of feeling and message--and it's lasted for months.

weird.

it feels weird to be blogging--even thinking--about anything besides joe these days. but i went out yesterday to the waterfront with smartboy for the first time in...i can't remember how long. weeks? months? it felt great to get out of the house and feel normal for a little while. i'd dropped my iphone (!) on the sidewalk friday night and broken the glass, so we started our morning out with a two-hour (!!) trip to the apple store. since it was an accident that caused the damage, warranty--even my special paid-for warranty pro-apple-take-care-of-me care--didn't cover it, really. it couldn't be repaired and had to be replaced, which cost me $250. they gave me not only the new iphone, though, but also the broken-glass one, so i kind of have an extra ipod now. i wouldn't want to carry it around with the broken glass, but i could put it in my ihome and use the big ipod that i have there for...something. put it in my study with some speakers? i don't know. it's nice to have (though a little embarrassing that i now have a first-generation shuffle, a first-gen 60gb, a broken but functioning-except-for-the-inactive-phone first-gen iphone, and an iphone). and a macbook. and my work mac. i think i am, as accused, drinking the kool-aid. i also bought (duh) a case for it this time, which i'd looked at several times before and never did. learned that lesson once. anyway, i really like the case i chose--rubber, very tactile and easy and comfortable in the hand--and i think it'll prevent it from slipping off a stack of papers again if i should be dumb enough to put it there in the future. (which i doubt.)
so after that little adventure, we lunched at la feria (yum!), where we haven't been in ages. so good. i had the vegetarian sandwich with their salad that is SO YUMMY and a freshly squeezed limeade (gigantic and delicious), and we shared a plate of the sweet-potato chips with huancaina dip, because you just have to have those when you go there. omg. i was stuffed after not-so-much food, but it was worth it. yum. did i mention yum?
finally we were off to the waterfront. i walked a bunch while andrew shopped in places that tire me, and he met up with me later at target. and boy did i score at target. fancy new hair dryer (i do this once every couple of years--get a wild hair [pun intended] to try straightening it again and buy the latest new gizmo to help me do that; this, too, shall pass--a bunch of my new favorite hair product (infusium 23 leave-in treatment*, you ROCK!--thank you, emy, for showing me the way!)
also: a hello kitty lunchbox/purse thingy. SO cute. a few ideas of what i'll use it for, but really: $4? i couldn't pass it up.
the CUTEST tweed jacket for fall that is, of course, not pictured on target's web site. you'll just have to trust me that it is GORGEOUS. wide portrait collar, gorgeous shade of blue, fitted, perfect length, straight out of jackie o's closet. i nearly bought another style on the same rack, a cropped empire-waist jacket, but chickened out. i was going to go back online to buy it this morning, but it's not there. there are some adorable swing jackets there, though. :sigh: i cannot own every cute jacket and sweater on the planet, can i?
okay, enough of that. also bought a troy polamalu jersey--licensed, but a third the price of the ones at dick's. i am so excited. i put it on this morning (it *is* game day, after all!) and asked smartboy whether i looked like troy. he laughed and said, "yeah, it must be all in the number." i told the dogs that now i am all speed, agility, and quick reflexes. they'd better watch out.
found an adorable little evening bag in pewter satin with some pretty lace--clutch or it has a little chain strap--to take to wedfest07. gotta love target.
but the real score of the day: in the dollar section, it's an office-rama. i scored pens, paper, notepads, memo boards (takes me right back to college), mouse pads, sticky notes, and mugs, all with different office quotes on them. i could have bought more (not just because i'm obsessive, but because they had more different designs), but i stopped myself. i just don't use that much paper in my life. but gah. i was so stoked. i love a good dollar section. and i loves me a pen.
in other riveting news--because i know you've been on the edge of your seat up to now--i had not one but two romantic dreams last night. the first was odd (well, they're all odd, but you know). i'd gone to some remote northern locale with my mother, and we'd decided to play like we were foreigners who didn't speak english as our first language (stay with me here: the remote location was, i guess, in like canada or maine or something. i don't know. it was a dream. geography was clearly not the important part here.). so we put on these accents and pretended. we went to the train station and were totally baffled about the whole token system for getting where we needed to go, and this handsome young man who turned out to be grady something or other (remember him: he's the love interest in this one) turned right around from leaving the joint and followed us back inside to help us. he stayed with us, took us back into town--the little village where we were headed--and on the trip, apparently, he and i fell in love. very sweet story.
but fast forward a month (in my dream--overnight, of course, it was just a few hours, if you're keeping track), because i won't bore you with the sweet, romantic courtship, though it really was a fun dream, with townspeople and festivals and laughter, but he and i are inside with a bunch of townsfolk, and he's professing his love for me and, i think, about to ask me to stay there with him and be his wife. apparently, he's some sort of prince or something, i've come to learn, so this is why the townspeople care so much about what happens to him. anyway, just then, my mother comes to the door of this glass-enclosed room where this is all happening. it's snowing and blustery outside, and she's knocking on the door in the dark, all cold and wet and not wearing a coat. i blurt out--for the first time, breaking my accent in front of these people--"where is her coat?" with grave concern--and realize that they know. grady has already gone to the door to let her in by then, but she wants to talk to him outside. i know that he knows now that i've been keeping this from him, and all i want to do is tell him the truth--myself, and explain. inside, the townsfolk are moving away from me, suddenly hurt, bewildered, angry at the girl they'd thought was so wonderful and perfect for their darling grady. i am sad--SO sad--and mad at myself for not telling him sooner. he comes inside, and, before he passes me, another good friend of his--a female friend--takes his arm and wants to talk to him. he has this kind of glassy look in his eyes and doesn't even look at me. i try to get his attention and say that i really want to talk to him alone. he sort of says, "yes," absently, but walks past me, where another female friend takes his arm, and he turns and, again, in this distant voice, says that he's going to talk to her first. i am utterly dismayed. i am a pariah.
i leave, and the rest of the dream is scenes of me trying to explain it to him when we see each other on various occasions later, over a period of years. but he won't listen. he jeers, makes jokes, teases, never letting anything get close enough to hear. clearly, i've hurt him so much that no one can get close to him any more. i awake so sad that i'm actually crying.
i tried to go back to sleep to make the dream restart and go a different way, but he was no more. instead, it went a whole different direction. this was an entirely new dream, all happy. this time, i was the love interest of bobby flay. this dream was totally different. we were always in happy places, lots of laughing, and i was always me. his parents were there sometimes cooking with us--no fancy show kitchens, though: outside with picnic tables. totally funny people in this dream. and we were very snuggly--sitting on his lap, kissing. fun. of course, smartboy started making noise in the kitchen just as we were getting to the naughty parts, so he must have some kind of sense of timing or something :) good man.

* hint: though there are five lines of this stuff, i compared the ingredients. *cough* geek *cough* the leave-ins are all the same. (i compared because i wanted a giant bottle for reserves and a smaller bottle for traveling, but target had only repairology in the supersize, and i wanted to be sure that this would be relatively similar to the frizzology. whatevs.)

last night

last night's Dream was about keith olbermann.
longtime crush, no surprise. (that photo from a great story about him in rolling stone, btw.)

other excitement in my life last night: i ordered shoes to try on for wedfest07. three pairs from zappos and one from piperlime.
[brown shoes from zappos]
i'm wearing a vintage brocade dress in a sort of muted celery color that i bought on ebay last year--three-quarter sleeves; deep squared neckline; fitted bodice; full, pleated, tea-lengthish skirt.
[black shoes from zappos]
i'm positively giddy to report that the zappos order, which i placed at probably 7ish last night, shipped at 4am and is scheduled for delivery today.
[aubergine shoes from zappos--i think i'm in love with the color of these]
i've ordered with them before and experienced their amazing service and shipping, but they continue to amaze me nonetheless. [black shoes from piperlime]
when i was looking for wedding shoes, i'd looked everywhere in town and found nothing; eventually, i ordered six pairs of shoes from them, tried them on at home, returned four--no hassles, no cost whatsoever--and kept the two i wanted. they give you everything you need to complete the return and it could just not be easier at all. totally easier than shopping in person, even. and the prices are competitive with dsw--better than most places, and a selection that cannot be found anywhere else. and the search is without comparison: you can filter by shoe size (including width), heel height, color, and price, and sort by even more options. you can also browse by brand. i just can't recommend them enough! (my piperlime selection is *adorable* but hasn't shipped yet. they charged me $10 for two-business-day shipping or i could have done free 4-to-7-day shipping; zappos does free overnight shipping automatically.) anyway, the ones i like best may not be the most comfortable, so we'll see. soon!