Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

I dreamt last night that I was going to Burning Man with a family, including children under ten, that I don't know that well in their RV. It wasn't what I'd call a good dream.

I'm surprised and maybe a little sad at how little I want to go this year. Last year was indeed the Hit Me Where It Hurts Burn. And when I do go I think I'm due for some glamping. Last year one of my campmates who's roughly my age told me she'd looked in the census report at the number times people reported going to the Burn. There's a big falloff after seven. I've done six, if you'll recall.

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When you're riding your bike, do you ever get passed by somebody who then slows down enough to be annoying, so that you end up passing them right back, permanently? And is this person always an older white dude who isn't wearing bike gear? Yeah.

Dudes, I'm not randomdreams but I ride about 10 km most days. There's a good chance my bike dick is bigger than yours, so it'll be better for your fragile self-esteem if you just stay back there.

If you're no longer a maintainer for a particular service and you've mostly moved into less technical management, and you've sensibly suggested an additional reviewer for my change, I don't think you should be surprised when I take his approval and your day-long silence as permission to proceed, especially when you've - unusually - set the repository up to prohibit merging without at least one approval. Le sigh. I could have seen that coming. Luckily, nothing's broken. There will be discussion.

Speaking of broken, I awoke to the sound of the on-call alarm from my phone this morning - except my phone was silent, and I'm not on call this weekend. It was a dream. This happens a few times a year.

My sharps (i.e. syringe & needle) disposal container filled up this past week, so I took it to our fancy new transfer station and hit the Walgreen's that was on the way back for a new, empty one. I noticed that the price was a little high, but I didn't feel like riding the extra 20 blocks it would take to do the comparison shopping at Bartell's. I got the new container home, and it was a perfectly reasonable stout plastic container - with a whole lot of supplies and instructions for mailing it elsewhere.

Mailing a full sharps container anywhere is unnecessary if you live in Seattle because you can - wait for it - take it to a transfer station. It's more than a little crummy that a) this kind of public service apparently isn't universal, and b) Walgreen's didn't give me the option not to pay for the mailing stuff, even though Amazon suggests that some manufacturers do.

Salty food for lunch & dinner last night meant waking up at 0300 last night for epic pee. Then it meant tossing & turning until 0700, when my alarm goes off. So of course I fell asleep right then until I got a work-related Slack message.

To quote Daffy Duck, this is getting monotonous. It happened a lot right after the election, but I had hoped it stopped.

( CW: spiders. )

I have a date of sorts with Much Younger Woman on Sunday: she wants to walk around Lincoln Park, which for you non-locals is a big, lovely bluff and beach on Puget Sound. The wrinkle? M'boy is supposed to be with me then. She said to invite him along. All righty, then. She is, as always, the queen of surprises.

It's nice to know I didn't become unattractive to women over the winter lull.

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Vile nightmare last night that woke me up at 0426: I was supposed to euthanize Puppigrrl with a shotgun. My son was with me, and she was curled up on a dog bed in the back of my Sanctimobile. I refused. Jeez, she didn't even look old, as she was when we had her put down for real.

I dreamt that my Evil Sister had invited me out to lunch with her high school friend G. I drive up to this restaurant at the edge of a gorge, and apparently part of it has fallen in. The table that we're seated at is sloping toward the gorge, with nothing but air between the far side of the table and a drop of tens of feet. I sit on that side.

There are ropes tied to rings that have been helpfully bolted to the exposed rock next to the table. I tie one of the ropes around my waist.

I said something like, "You sure picked a dangerous place to have lunch."
She said something like, "No more dangerous than what you're doing."
I can't remember what I said next, but I was confident. It might have been, "That's my business," or, "It's only dangerous because of people like you."
I looked at G, who was silent the whole time. "Do you think we should be subjecting G to this?"
"No, I guess not."
End of dream.

Background: I've been Facebooking back & forth with my cousin J who lives in Oklahoma. He's a decent, non-transphobic guy maybe ten years older than I am who recently found out to his dismay just how often queers, and especially trans women, get bashed and murdered. Maybe that's what nudged me into dreaming about blood relatives.

The whole dream also reminds me of the famous two-hour argument that Good Sister and I had in a restaurant in June of 2010. Frankly, I can't imagine Evil Sister being as civilized as Good Sister was.

So that's three dreams about family members I've lost in as many weeks. That means they stop now, right?

I just gave my Deltron 3030 ticket to ionan, the one who turned me on to them, because I'm still not quite feeling up to a night at a show. I must say, though, that it's been more than 24 hours since my last debilitating head rush.

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And maybe the ick is responsible for my dreaming of looking for my son in an unfamiliar old schoolhouse (?) and finding my late father instead. I wish I could remember what he said. That was a disturbing way to wake up.

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But I have happy plans ahead: Aspiring Ex & the Wendling will be visiting AXMom in SF the weekend before Thanksgiving. That means I'll be staying at the old place in Kirkland to look after Bigpuppy. Temptress & I have made plans to make use of the house (ahem) and go out to Ceremony on the 15th. This is where I cackle and rub my hands together.

Had a lovely time at Carpet Samplez last night with cute lesbians and a couple of lovely Manhattans with some lovely Bulleit Bourbon. This last may foreshadow what came next.

I turned out my light last night at 2345, pretty much as usual. Then the fun started:

0330 - Nightmare in which I was in a standoff (Did the police arrive halfway through?) holed up in large, expensive, tastefully-decorated residence that wasn't mine, shooting at but missing the more deserving of my co-workers. I can't believe I'm that bad a shot. It may have been a hostage situation, but I'm not quite clear whether the hostage was my son, my Aspiring Ex, or my PM.
0435 to 0600 - Text conversation with Temptress to arrange a first date. It turns out she gets up at 0400 to go to work (!) and I was already awake.
0630 - Work-related automatic alert that fixed itself and required no action on my part.

I got to work after noon today. I'm lucky that I work at a company where I can do that. And oh by the way, I have a date soon with a woman who I know is interested in me.

I moved faster than I got advice and sanded the purple stains off the shelf on my bathroom mirror. Good: The stains are gone. Bad: There are a few scuff marks in their place. Middling: The porcine housemate with whom I share that bathroom is unlikely to notice the scuffs, as is the landlord whom I haven't seen in who knows how long. Besides, I could probably cover the scuffs with a wax pencil or paint or something white & gooey.

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I dreamt Sunday night that I was responsible for inserting a record for Yoko Ono into Major League Baseball's scoring database. It caused a problem during a game broadcast. Apparently I didn't mean to leave it there. Yoko had to let me and a co-worker into a medium-sized ground floor office space somewhere to fix the problem. She didn't say anything, but if she was mad at us, she didn't show it. Very sporting of her.

Dream: I've been accepted into Princeton (?) as an undergrad (?!) and, just like the last time I was an undergrad, I'm getting ready to go there in boy clothes and hair. Aieee! But I still have my girl eyebrows, and I'm checking them in the mirror.

Good dream last night, over the top good. Mom took me out shopping for a really nice outfit, all white, something like a debutante's, brand new and on her. I'm a little fuzzy on what the occasion was, but Mom was planning to be there. She asked me if I wanted a top hat and I told her, "I would totally rock that." Strawberry Blond Sister was shopping with us and not giving me grief. There were brief negotiations with the hatter; I attribute that to getting estimates on my bathroom. The whole dream I chalk up to the Spain trip. I can't remember the last time I had such a ridiculously happy dream. Maybe I never have.

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Nibs gets bombed again today. She's been in a lot of pain and she's been sleeping even more than usual lately. This better help, not least because m'boy comes home tomorrow.

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Oh: you might have noticed that I've started friends-locking every trans-related post. That's because it may be only a matter of time before my son takes a peek at my journal.