maybe the new paint will hold up the walls

Last night I put together an etagere for my new teensy bathroom, and then I had a dream that my apartment was falling apart.

But before I get into either of those things, let me begin by apologizing that my posts have been so sucky lately and have mostly been about my apartment and/or the fact that I have nothing to write about. But, um, this post is going to be about my apartment because I have nothing else to write about.

On we go.

Yes. I bought a chrome etagere (at least that's what they called it on the box - it's a shelving unit that fits behind/above your toilet) from Bed, Bath and Beyond last week, and I finally put the thing together last night. It was actually quite enjoyable. I like putting things together (which is why the thought of buying things at IKEA sends me into a fit of giddy anticipation). I like seeing the finished product and being able to say, "Hey, I did that and it looks pretty cool." But anyway, in this case, there were a couple minor setbacks. Not with the construction of the item, but with its placement in the bathroom. First off, there was this butt-ugly yellowish "thing" attached to the wall behind the toilet that I desperately needed to get rid of because the sight of it made me want to vomit. I guess it was an attempt at a shelf to put tissue etc. on, since the toilet itself is one of those industrial ones that doesn't have a tank. But anyway, it had to go, so go it did. But behind it was all this discolored, chipped paint that I'm either going to have to Spackle before repainting, or try to sand down to a smoother texture. Secondly, I found out after setting the thing up that the unusually long toilet seat lid doesn't clear the bottom shelf. So now I am going to have to find something to put underneath it to raise it an inch or two. As it is, the toilet is set pretty far back, and is perhaps not the most comfortable seat what with the shelf directly behind it, but the added discomfort of having to hold up the lid ... well, I'm not going to let that happen. And lastly, it's not exactly stable at the moment because I had to leave off the bottom bar in order to get the thing behind the toilet to begin with. Now that it's in position, I can attach the bar for that added stability, but I don't want to do that until I do the painting in there that I intend to do at some point. Because if I attach it now, I'll just have to detach it again when I remove it to paint, only to reattach it when I'm done. Screw that. But yeah. It's in there. And it looks pretty cool.

Then last night I had a very scary dream. I dreamt that I woke up to an apartment that was literally falling apart. And this was one of those super-realistic dreams that leave you wondering if it really happened. In the dream, I woke up late because of a faulty alarm clock, opened my bedroom door and saw my place in a shambles. I leaned against my bedroom door frame, and the entire wall started moving. It was like the walls weren't attached to the ceiling anymore and were slowly crumbling and falling down. My parents were there (inexplicably), and I tried to show them what was happening, but they didn't seem to understand the urgency of it. My apartment walls were falling down!! This was bad!! I showed my Dad how I could literally push a wall over with the weight of my body, but he just kept putzing around the kitchen as if nothing was happening, and said maybe I should call the landlord and see if he could fix it. So I went downstairs to see if I could find someone else in the building who might be able to help or explain what was going on, but the apartment complex looked more like a hotel with red velvet all over the place, and all I could find was this restaurant, but there was nobody inside. I felt like I was in some kind of Stephen King story. When I actually woke up from the dream (on time, but to a faulty alarm clock that gives me loud static along with the alarm), I was incredibly relieved to see that all of my walls were firmly attached to both the floor and the ceiling, and my Dad was not putzing around in my kitchen.

So that's that. Maybe one day I'll be interesting.

dream on

I believe I have had no fewer than ten dreams about moving since I signed my new lease. Can you tell what's been weighing most heavily on my mind lately? Yeah. And these dreams have actually been pretty funny. In one of them, the apartment I was moving into was much larger than I remembered it being when I first looked at it, and had quite a few more rooms. I kept saying to my friends who were helping me that this couldn't be right! This place is way too big! And I had these weird flashes of what the apartment REALLY looked like, but then it went back the way it was. In another one, my roommate was moving into the same building as me, and we got to share the cat. :) In yet another one, I moved in to discover that the bedroom was minuscule, and had no closet. Not only that, but there was a staircase that I had not noticed before, which led up to two more (occupied!!) bedrooms, one of which slept four people! So I was moving in with 5 roommates instead of living alone like I had thought. And then last night happened. I seriously dreamed of moving the entire night. It was like a dream montage that just wouldn't end. In one part, a friend who was helping me move ended up moving IN with me and completely took over the place. In another part, the bathroom was in a different place than it should have been, was much tinier, and couldn't fit the shelves I had bought for it. In another part, I was being chased through the courtyard and alleys by someone who supposedly only wanted to show me the laundry room (there was a pool, though, so that was cool). And in the final installment, I heard this noise that I didn't recognize (it sounded kind of like the sound my phone makes when I get a text message). Turned out it was a Thai food delivery guy buzzing to come in. I hadn't ordered any Thai, so I told him it must have been the neighbors. He knocked on their door, and they took the food and paid for it, but didn't give him a tip. I felt bad for the guy. Then when I woke up this morning, I discovered that I had a new text message. :)

the wierd world of my dreams

I had a very odd dream two nights ago. I dreamt I was inside a house, and Kristentatious was also there. She walked outside, and then called to me frantically to come outside. When I got out there, I looked towards the backyard of this house. There was a fence around the yard, and it had these thick wooden posts, with wire strung between them. There were a couple of dogs inside the yard, and a couple on the other side of the fence, but none of them belonged to me. I quickly saw the reason that Kristi had called me out there. A few of the dogs had apparently just been fighting, somehow, through the fence. One of the wooden fence posts had splintered, and there was a little black and brown puppy caught on it. The wood splinter had gone through one side of his stomach, and out the other side, just under the skin, and he was hanging there, struggling and squirming, in pain and bleeding, trying to get down. I ran out to him, and yelled back to Kristi to call the vet. But before I got to him, I began to wake up. In that sort of half-asleep, half-awake state, where I tend to try and finish up dreams I was in the middle of, I imagined that I had gotten the puppy off the splintered post, pressed down on his tummy to stop the bleeding, and brought him inside. And when the vet arrived, she got him all fixed up and he was good as new. Had I actually stayed asleep, I don't know if this is the way it would have worked out, but I'd like to think so.

The wierd thing now, is that every time I see a dog, or a picture of one, or even the roomie's cat, I remember that dream, and it's kind of disturbing. Let's just hope I never have to see a puppy skewered on a splintered fencepost in real life! Actually, let's hope no one has to.

Goodbye Doppelganger

So last night on Project Runway we said goodbye to my twin. Well, not really my twin, but Katherine is gone anyway. I didn't really think her dress/doggie hoodie combo was really all that bad other than being a little plain (Bradley's hideous concoction was a lot worse, and it got high marks from the judges!!!!), but I guess plain just doesn't cut it in the fashion world. Not for couture anyway.

So now I'm going to cut and paste my previous assessments of the contestants and add in my new observations from this week's episode (in red):

People I liked last week:
Laura - one of my faves so far, a very classy lady - she's turning out to be kind of a one-trick-pony - her design this week was a bit too similar in style to her ep. 1 design - move to ambivalent category
Robert - he used to design for Barbie!!
Uli - I loved her design in ep. 1 and ep. 3
Kayne - he was SO EXCITED to design for Miss USA
Allison - I like her personal style and want to see what she can do - thought she should have won this week

People I don't like:
Vincent - annoys the crap outta me and doesn't play well with others and designs ugly clothes
Angela - kind of incompetent but keeps getting through by the skin of her teeth - let's hope that doesn't last much longer - in her defense, I didn't think her outfit this week was as bad as everyone else did
Keith - he's a little (a LOT) full of himself after his win in ep. 1 - and nothing has changed here, even when he decided NOT TO DO the dog part of the challenge

People I am ambivalent about:
Katherine - she's the one who looks like me, but I've yet to see what she's all about - Bye Bye!!
Bonnie - don't know much about her
Bradley - seems sweet, but I HATED his design in ep. 1 ... and ep. 3 - if he doesn't prove himself worthy soon, he's moving to my dislike category
Jeffrey - his tattoos are a little wierd - jury's still out
Michael - I want him to be great but I'm just not sure yet - moving him to the like category - I'm diggin his designs

So that's the long and short of it. But seriously, every time I watch this show, I want to get back into fashion design, and start sewing things!!! Maybe I'll yoink my mom's sewing machine tonight ...

And speaking of clothes, I had a dream last ngith that I had a closet full of beautiful dresses!! I was trying to decide what to wear to a Prom (maybe a remnant of yesterday's convo with Jillybean about her Prom party?), and also trying to pick out a dress for ... my brother!!! Yeah, none of my dreams can be normal - there always has to be that one little part of it that reminds me that it's just a dream. But Oh how I wanted this one to come true when I woke up!! All those dresses! And I don't even wear dresses!!

Scary

I was just rereading an earlier post entitled "Red-Winged Blackbirds," and it reminded me of a dream I had last night. I dreamt I was walking around my parents' neighborhood with an old childhood friend, and there was literally a strip-mall's-worth of businesses IN the subdivision that were new since the last time I'd been there. There actually WAS a Starbuck's, McDonald's, and a plethora of banks and gas stations, mixed right in with the houses! What is this (dream) world coming to??

Of course, this dream also included me having to go to court with a bunch of stuffed animals (penguins mostly) in costumes in order to get a doctor's note signed ... so maybe I shouldn't really attach any meaning to this ...

sleep-telephoner?

The other night I was having a dream about a coworker who sits in the cubicle next to mine, and in the dream he collapsed and was knocked unconscious or something. I heard him fall over so I went into his cube and saw what happened. I decided I needed to call 911, so I reached over to use the phone on his desk, only as I was doing so, I started to wake up. As I opened up my eyes, I realized that I had grabbed the stuffed dog that was on my bed next to me and was currently in the process of bringing it up to my ear to make a telephone call.

And then I laughed myself back to sleep.

Okay, okay

So, I only posted the last post an hour ago and already I feel guilty for being so negative. I mean, I really do feel like my whole body is in a vice, but I don't need to subject everyone else to my misery. So here are some other thoughts for the day that are a bit less dismal.

First off, I had a wierd dream last night. And it was especially wierd because even though I kept waking up and looking at the clock (yeah, one of those nights), the dream continued from where it left off when I fell back asleep. It started out where I was on a bike ride with some friends from work out in a small town in the middle of nowhere. We stopped at this empty building to rest a while and suddenly I was on a mission to pick up a friend of my brother's at the airport. Apparently there was a small airport in this town that I could get to by bike. Well, for some reason, my Dad was there and was asking where I was going but I couldn't tell him, so he hid outside the building and when I left to go to the airport on my bike, he followed me on his. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, but he didn't know that I had seen him (he was trying to be stealthy), so I tried to lose him, which I did, but only temporarily. Eventually I arrived at this airport and found the girl, who said she was my brother's girlfriend. And then my brother himself showed up with this other girl who I thought was his girlfriend, and it's all confusing, and then my Dad finally showed up once he figured out where I went and he was all confused as well. Anyway, we all had to get home from the airport but we didn't want to ride our bikes anymore because suddenly there was a ton of snow on the ground, so we found an abandoned pick up truck, which only sort of worked (it sputtered and kept dying on us), but it managed to get the lot of us home safely. Then something happened involving sleeping bags, and I think there was a carnival, but I can't remember any of that.

It was very strange. But I guess you had to be there. :)

And another thing that just popped into my head ... I really dislike the phrase "fix dinner." Not only does it invoke images of a disgruntled housewife performing the daily drudgery of making dinner for a family, but why do you need to "fix" dinner? Is it broken? I'm sure I'm not the first person to ever ask this question, but it just doesn't make sense. And something about that phrase just sounds so tedious and old-fashioned. I prefer "cook dinner" or even "make dinner." In my life, I swear I will never, ever "fix" dinner. If it ain't broke ...

And I'm spent.
H