melatonin nightmares

It's that time of year where the weather gets cold and my zombie knee starts hurting. My brother Bob recommended I try melatonin as a natural sleep aid to help me sleep through the night (normally I wake up 3 or 4 times a night because my knee hurts), and it works. Except he forgot to tell me that one side effect is weird nightmares.

The other night I had a dream that an ex boyfriend invited me to go look at houses with him. He was going to buy a new house and had narrowed the decision down to two houses. The first house was really narrow with no windows and these weird boxy rooms that I could barely fit into. It was like a house made out of small cardboard boxes. After climbing into three rooms I felt claustrophobic and was like "this house sucks!"

The second house he took me to was a lot like his real house, except that it had a more open floor plan. I was like "yeah, this seems like a nice house" but then we got into the living room and there was a green microfiber sofa sitting in the middle of the room. There was no other furniture in the house. I thought it was odd that the sofa was there.

Then my ex sat down on the sofa and I noticed there were two dead bodies, both guys in their 20s, stuffed under the sofa cushions. As my ex shuffled around on the cushions to get more comfortable on the sofa the arm of one of the dead bodies fell out from between the cushions and was hanging down the side of the sofa. I was like "oh my god! there are dead bodies in the house!" and my ex was like "what are you talking about?" For some reason he couldn't see the dead bodies. Then he reached between the back of the sofa and the cushions and pulled out a snickers bar and started eating it. I was like "that snicker's bar belongs to one of the dead guys! I hate this house and want to leave now!"

Then I realized my ex was going to kill me and stuff me in the sofa with the other dead bodies.

Then I woke up. I haven't taken melatonin since.

thanksgiving project

Every time I go to my parents' house there's always some project that has to be done. This thanksgiving the project was finishing the attic. My brothers put up paneling and built some shelves. I helped my brother Steve build a box around some piping that my dad didn't want exposed. It took us almost a day but it looked pretty good:

I love that ladder, it's at least 45 years old

And no one was injured despite us using a saw and power tools.

My brother Steve is really getting into carpentry, and I used to refinish furniture. My aunt told me that we had italian relatives who were carpenters (like my great grandfather). I also found out the name of the village in Italy that my family is from, Caserta. We still have relatives that live there (I was able to see their houses using google maps) and my aunt is going to get me some contact information for them. I am thinking to go to Italy next fall to visit them. I once did a trip from Rome to the amalfi coast and must have driven right through my town without knowing. Caserta is known for a huge castle that's in the town and for being the village that Dr. Amalfi's (from the sopranos) family is from.

I also had to carry 5 bookshelves worth of books from the second story of the attic down to the first story, organize them, and then put them on the bookshelves. That took me 8 hours and then my dad mentioned, on the ride to the airport, that I had missed two boxes of books in the back of the attic. Oh well.

I would also mention that I was not sure how my Uncle Joe would react to my pink hair. At first he was feeding me shit about it and then, at thanksgiving dinner, he said "I actually really love your pink hair." Nice.

pets

I just returned home from visiting my family in Williamsburg. Of my siblings, I am the only one without a pet.

Their pets:

My sister's dog Max is staring at the door at the right of this picture because my brother's cat is in that room. Max sat there for at least 2 hours waiting for the cat to come out (we never introduced them because of the last thanksgiving disaster).

My brother's cat Greta hanging out next to a floral arrangement...

...and then hanging out in the floral arrangement.