if it cuts down on those annoying emails...

One some times wonders why I haven't been fired yet.

My latest response to an email to join some new company community.

binders

I may be regressing on the snake thing. Or maybe I'm just getting a little freaked out because, with all the rain we've gotten the past few days I'm worried about snakes getting in the building.

Last night I had a dream that I was at a conference in a house in the woods. People kept handing me large green binders and saying I missed sessions that I was supposed to attend. But every time I tried to find the rooms where the sessions were held I kept ending up in this dining room area that looked almost exactly like the dining room in the house where I was writing when I was up in Banff.

Then the sessions were over so a guy suggested that I do the dishes to make up for missing all of my sessions. I looked in the sink and it was full of wooden blocks in the shape of cubes, triangles, and circles. I was like "I can't put those in the dishwasher" and the guy said "it's fine, they are dishwasher safe, see?" The inside of the dishwasher was full of the blocks. I was like "what are these for?" and he said "You roll out dough and wrap them around the blocks, and it makes a delightful pastry. Didn't you get one? No, I guess not because you missed all of the sessions." He said he was going to find one for me but someone had put them in the refrigerator and they were all deflated and not delightful at all.

Then a guy came running in and said "what are you doing???? your car is leaving to take you to the airport!!!!" I ran up to my room and grabbed my suitcase and tried to pick up my binders but there were too many to carry. I grabbed what I could and ran downstairs but the car had already left. I was like "fucking fuck, I am fucking up EVERYTHING on this trip!"

A guy told me that I could walk through the woods on this overgrown path to get to the airport but to watch out for snakes. I was like great. So I started dragging my suitcase down the path and there were snakes everywhere. The woods were really thick and the branches were hitting my arms and head and they were slimy. I was totally freaking out and mad at myself for being such a wimp in the woods, and I felt like I had been walking for hours and getting no where.

Then I saw a light that I thought was the airport. But I had to cross a huge river to get to it. There were some rickety wooden planks placed on rocks across the river. I lowered myself down the river bank down to the first plank, which was four feet below the bank. I went to grab my suitcase but the plank started breaking. I kept jumping from place to place as the plank got smaller and smaller and then I jumped on the last section and fell in the water.

The water was really cold and black. I was afraid a python would eat me. I couldn't swim because the current was so strong. Suddenly I was washed up on shore near the light and I realized it wasn't the airport, I was back at the house. I started crying because I had lost my suitcase and my binders, and because I had spent so much time walking through the scary woods only to end up back at the same place.

Then I woke up.

Publish Post

machete man

Last night I had a nightmare about the software tool I support. In the dream I had been kidnapped by a
drug cartel in Mexico. I was assigned to an elderly man and woman. They were both really short and
skinny, except for the guy, who had a pot belly, and they looked like migrant farm workers.

They were taking me around to different villages to kill people. I would draw a diagram to show them
what was going on in the village, and then run a report. They would take the report and kill the person
whose name was on it.

The woman would dig a hole and then the man would throw the person to be killed in the hole. Then the
hole was filled with sand so just the person’s head was sticking out. The guy would pull the person’s
eyeballs out with this metal scoop thing, and then the woman would stack sticks around the person’s
head, like building a tee pee. Then they would set the sticks on fire and the person’s head would be
reduced to cinders. The couple would dump sand on top of the cinders, and then a pool of blood would
form on top of the sand so they would know where the body was.

After each killing the guy would stop at one of those white kitchen trucks that sell food on the side
of the road in Mexico. He kept asking if they had salads to go, and then he would ask me what I wanted
to eat. I didn’t want to eat anything because I was so freaked out from the killings. Finally, after 3
killings, I told him I didn’t want a salad, though it was kind of him to ask, and that he and the woman
should get something to eat because I wasn’t going to eat anything.

He said he was asking for the salad for himself because he was old and needed roughage in his diet.
Then he said “you have to eat something, how about something sweet?” He looked around the different
foods hanging off the outside of the white food truck and then he said “look, raisins! Why don’t you
have some raisins?” They were raisins in that red package, I think they’re del monte raisins.

He gave me the box and I was suddenly very hungry, so I put one in my mouth and swallowed it. The
raisin hit me on the hand. I was like what the hell? And then I looked down and saw blood on the right
side of my shirt going from my shoulder to my feet. The man started laughing and said “we got you too,
and you didn’t even notice!” He had a machete in his hand and I realized he had cut the right side of
my neck. I felt my neck and there was a gaping hole. I thought well, I’m going to bleed to death now.

Then I woke up. I had a real pain in my neck from the shit pillows at the Holiday Inn where I’m
staying.

I was wide awake and freaked out from my dream, so I decided to imagine a parade of circus performers.
Focusing on things like that help me fall asleep, and I thought that thinking of a circus would prevent
me from having another nightmare.

But then I had a second dream that I was watching the circus, and then my sister came running by and
said we were supposed to be running the Circus 10K. So I started running with her, and on the side line
at the end of the race I saw my dad standing with my sister’s kid Nat. They waved to us.

At the end of the race we had to go through a haunted house to cross the finish line. We went up a
flight of metal stairs and then kept looking back waiting for my dad. My sister was impatient because
she wanted to finish the race, so she said we should go ahead and go into the house. I said we should
wait for my dad. He was moving really slowly through the crowd and then I couldn’t see him.

Finally he showed up at the top of the stairs, but Nat wasn’t with him. My sister started freaking out
and yelling at my dad “where is Nat????” My dad said she didn’t want to go through the haunted house so
he let her go to the movie theater by herself to watch a new kids’ movie called “hammer man”. Then my
sister started really freaking out and said “you let her go to the movies by herself? She’s only 9!
What if the circus people get her?”

My dad was upset and about to cry so I told my sister to calm down and that we would go find Nat. We
started walking down the stairs but all of the runners from the race, as well as the circus performers,
were trying to come up the stairs. I was getting shoved around and when I looked back I couldn’t see my
sister or my dad. So I started yelling and waving to get their attention and someone shoved me down the
flight of stairs.

I landed on the ground, in a sitting position, and when I looked up there was the fucking guy with the
machete again. He smiled at me and said “you aren’t getting off that easy, you know” and he swung the
machete into the side of my neck again. Asshole.

I woke up at 4 and decided to read the New Yorker instead of going back to sleep.

"thanks...not for me!"

Six hours after submitting my proposal to 6 literary agents, I got my first rejection. It said "thanks...not for me!" I thought the exclamation point was unnecessary but perhaps the agent was trying to emphasize her point.

But the good news is that I've heard back from my editor from Banff, Tony. I'm going to try to meet him up there for a little reunion. Hoping that some of the other writing crew from my program last year can make it too.

In other news I broke down and bought a GPS today for my car. I had to drive 30 miles to Georgia to get it because there aren't any stores around here that carry them. I was talking to the sales lady at OfficeMax and said that I decided to buy the GPS after spending almost two hours trying to find my way to Aiken from Columbia in the dark. She said "Girl, that's impossible! Why were you driving around in the dark?"

Why indeed.

So now I'll know where I'm going. But, I'm not going anywhere because I said in my proposal that my book was done. It's, hee, not done. Back to the grindstone trying to finish this thing off...