We leave tomorrow!

I arrived in L.A. yesterday and the first thing we did was go to In-n-Out. Yum! Then hopped on the 405 and sat in traffic. Welcome back! We headed for Nicole's friends' house--Aaron, whom she teaches at La Mesa with, and his wife Kim. They have an 18 month old baby girl, Kara. She is so cute! She was a little unsure of me, but while I was there, she played fetch with Ellie (their min pin), and giggled profusely at the dog's reaction to the squeaky ball. She ran across the yard with Aunt Nicole. She stared intensely at her shelves of books until finally picking out two for her daddy to read to her. And she ate a tomato like an apple! Earlier in the day, Kim had told her that she could go outside after dinner. So when Nicole and I came in with the food, she immediately went to put on her shoes. What a memory!

I tried to sleep on the plane and thought I would do really well, because I was feeling nappy when we first got on, and I figured taking 2 benadryl would seal the deal. But it was still pretty much a very deep "rest" more than a light "sleep." I think the key is the alcohol-benadryl combination! Also, only a 5.5 hour flight, in the middle of the day. The flight to NZ will be 13 hours and overnight, so that will also encourage sleep. The onboard movie was He's Just Not That Into You, which I'd already seen, so I didn't bother watching it. But afterwards was an elephant documentary which was very interesting. You know how most nature films they're like, "This baby has wandered away from it's mother and will surely die. Elsewhere on the plain..." and you're like, "You're right there, why don't you help it for crying out loud??!" Well, this film was about people who DO intervene to help, so that was very satisfying. I saw the part where they had to sedate a baby and its mother to give the baby an injection of antibiotics for its broken foot, which had become infected internally. High drama, because there was a risk that the mama would pass out on top of the baby. Then it looked like the mama was going to land on her chest, blocking her airway. They had to tie ropes around her and use their vehicle to roll her over! In the end everything worked out though. My kind of animal documentary!!

So I made it until about 10:00 pm last night, which is 1am Eastern time, before I had to crash. I slept until about 6:30. I had a disturbing dream in which I took my iPhone out of my purse, and a bracelet I'd brought was wrapped around it. The problem was, the bracelet was magnetic (?) and had messed up the phone pretty bad. (Of course, there is no hard drive inside the iPhone--it's flash memory--which is not affected by magnets. But you know how dreams are!) So in my dream I was very upset because the phone basically wouldn't work, and I could take it to the Apple Store and have them restore it to factory settings, but then I would lose all my content. Not forever, because it's on my home computer, but my home computer is 2500 miles away at the moment! Oh so distressing. I was very relieved when I woke up and realized it was a dream! I do have to call AT&T customer service, though, because yesterday at Dulles airport I was unable to use the AT&T wireless service which is supposed to be free for all iPhone customers. It said something about not recognizing my number. When I called the wifi customer support, they said something is wrong with my account, but of course AT&T is closed on Sundays so all he could do is authorize access to the wifi as if I'd paid, and then I could deal with AT&T the next day. I swear, I've had nothing but problems w/ AT&T. If I was not absolutely head over heals in love with and addicted to my iPhone, I would go back to Verizon in a heartbeat. I have heard rumors that Verizon might be getting the iPhone next year, and if that's the case, I will be switching back for sure. I don't care if I have to pay an early termination fee! At least Verizon doesn't screw up your account twice in 4 months!

Whew! I must be in a mood to type! I haven't posted this much in eons. The plan for today is to get pedicures and maybe go to the movies. Pretty chill. The weather here is super nice. Unseasonably cool for June. I'll take it! Mid-70's all week, while it's high 80's and low 90's with thunderstorms in NC! That is one part of NC I won't miss while I'm gone! I do miss my baby, though. Comet is in good hands, though, and I am just going to keep telling myself that animals don't really have a sense of time, so me being gone 3 weeks isn't different from me being gone overnight. Hard to believe, but that's what they say.

Okay, ta ta for now!

Wacky dreams

My brain has been on overdrive at night lately. I've had a bunch of bizarre dreams. Last night I dreamed I was on a tour of a parrot preserve in Korea. The birds were beautiful and I was trying to take pictures but a) we were on one of those moving sidewalks, so you couldn't stop and look, and b) I only had my small camera and the flash wasn't strong enough. The people who worked there were handing out candy at random times and the other tourists would get all excited. Afterwards I went to the cafeteria to eat and had a hot dog on a bun with a creamy orange-flavored sauce. Yikes!

The night before I dreamed about a big litter of white kittens. I wanted them so badly!

At some point, I forget which night, I dreamed was on a land line phone with a super long cord. I was able to leave the house (it wasn't my house) and walk down the street with the cord trailing behind me.

Yesterday I watched Oprah about past life regression, and how you can get hypnotized and find out who you were in a past life. I don't know if I believe in it or not, but it would be interesting to know if my dreams have anything to do with previous incarnations. They interviewed this one guy who always dreams about flying, and it turns out supposedly he was a war pilot who got shot down in a previous life.

More weird dreams

I dreamt last night that a sister of a friend was pregnant, cheerfully walking down the street with a big belly and cute flippy hairdo; I was riding a motorcycle around a town that was part Las Vegas, part Savannah, doing 60 in a 16 zone (16?); staying in a hotel room full of dust bunnies clinging to the walls and a gang of spiders that kept disappearing; trying to take a photo of a sea creature in one of those aquarium touch pools, and it turned into a piranha and bit me on the hand; going down stairs without guard rails which caused me to fall; and shopping in Big Lots where I spent $85 on Big Lots crap, and I had to bag my own crap.

So does all this wacky dreaming mean I'm psychic, like my mom says, or just severely disturbed?

What on earth?

Last night I dreamt that I bought lunch for all the participants in one of my training sessions. For some reason it was not held at a school, but rather at a storefront in a strip mall. So I went next door to the chicken place and ordered the 66-piece platter of nuggets, and 12 ears of corn. It was the kind of place where all the food is laid out in bins in front of you, and placing an order that large caused quite the resentment among the workers because I was basically buying them out of chicken and corn and they were going to have to rush to make more for the other customers. They tossed my abnormally large chicken nuggets (think grapefruit size, and yes, they were spherical) in some sort of thousand island dressing concoction, but more resentment resulted because they didn't have a bowl big enough to toss 66 at once. After I paid (it was $116 and I thought to myself, my boss will never approve this expense) I asked for some little cups of bbq sauce, and they said that would cost extra. I was like, dude, I just spent over $100 for chicken nuggets and you can't give me free sauce? And that's all I remember.

Birds & bees

I had a dream about bees last night. I was trying to collect them from a hive, using a plastic trash bag. My first attempt was a disaster. I managed to get the bees in the bag, and close it up, and they were like this solid mass at the bottom. But then I let some air in, which caused the bees to go crazy and start buzzing around so much they caused the bag to blow up bigger and bigger until I couldn't keep it closed anymore. So I threw it away from me, but being a plastic bag, it kind of blew back towards me, and the bees came after me. At any given point I only had one bee on me, and I managed not to get stung.

Then, in all my brilliance, I decided to try again. This time, I used some of that taming smoke that beekeepers use. I pumped it into the bag, got the bees in there, and then started smothering them. The more I rubbed the bees in the bag, the more molasses was created. Well, it was some sort of dark brown liquid, so I can only guess it was molasses, although I suppose it could have been honey. Anyway, that was what my subconscious decided to reveal to me last night. Go figure.