2001-02-02 - 986030038

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Cocaine", Eric Clapton or one of his bands.

I bought an Entenmann's filbert ring today after I went to the post office. I am a happy gal.

Or is that a happy guy? According to Poindexter and this test, I am a guy. The test said, in fact, "You are DEFINITELY a man."

I have been a very, very bad girl lately. There's nothing critical going on at work, so I am finding it very hard to work on the non-critical projects I have lined up. (These projects have no deadline, see, they're like general research type stuff.) I end up web surfing a bit too much. Whenever I get a direct request from someone, I'm all over it, so that's good, but otherwise...

I'm suffering from guilt. I need to either get my ass in gear, or find a way to rationalize my not working (Poindexter has tried the latter, but it's not working). Suggestions?

Good news: Pop-Pop moved into the assisted living place and, according to my parents, is ecstatic. Very happy to have his own place again. He's got his TV, couch, and chairs in one room and his bedroom and typewriter in the other. Meanwhile all the women love him, and the podiatrist made him kiss her on both cheeks. He's quite a charmer. I can't wait to see him next weekend.

When Melissa was here during the Super Bowl, and we were talking about tornadoes, I mentioned having a tornado nightmare. She asked me if I have a lot of nightmares, and I said not a lot, maybe once a week.

Well, this week my subconscious seems determined to prove me wrong. I've had one each night that I can remember. Ugh. Then I wake up and I'm hungry.

My nightmares seem to fall into the following categories:

- Disasters (tornadoes, earthquakes, nuclear war, tsunamis, plane crashes, etc.)

- The unidentified thing/person I must make sure does not get me. I try to run away, or run around locking doors and windows if I'm indoors. This could be the result of watching too many Scream movies.

- Getting shot.

This week I had a new one. I was trapped on a ledge sticking out from the roof of a skyscraper in Manhattan. I was too dizzy and scared to move and get myself onto the roof where it was safe.

I die in my dreams a lot. What happens is that everything goes gray, then white, then I wake up. I hope real death is like that. That's not so bad.

On the Gnomeboard we're discussing childhood toys, and I corrupted the thread a bit to talk about childhood made-up games. There's a few games I want to make sure I remember when I'm 80 or so, all of which were played by me, my brother, and Stacey and Billy. Here goes:

The Bucket Game

Girls go upstairs to Evelynne's room, boys go downstairs underneath the south window. Boys and girls exchange random objects (dolls, acorns, cicada shells) by means of lowering and raising a bucket through the window. Insults are also exchanged on little slips of paper.

The Angel Game

The basement in my parents' house is reached via stairs going down the center of the room. There is, effectively, a circular "track" on can follow around the stairs.

Back when we were afraid of the dark, we'd take turns going around the track in pairs with the light turned off, using only a glow-in-the-dark angel for illumination.

As we got older and the dark was less frightening, we'd set up obstacles for the pairs to bump into. Obstacles included plastic bowling pins and a refrigerator box. My brother had the clever idea of sitting on top of the upright freezer (you can climb onto it from the stairs) and reaching down and grabbing people as they walked by.

New York Information Center

Stacey and Billy had a playroom that contained, among other things, an encyclopedia and a set of Barbie phones. We would "answer" the phones with "New York Information Center, may I help you?" and would look up, in the encyclopedia, answers to the imaginary phone requests.

If we were kids playing this today, we'd probably use the web to get the information.

Another childhood story I want to remember:

One day at my grandmother's house, all six of us cousins (including Stefan and Benedict) behaved in a sufficiently annoying manner as to earn our banishment to Aunt Marianne's old bedroom.

Well, after sitting around moping for a while, someone got the idea that we could escape out the window, which was only about 5 feet above the ground at most.

Stefan and Benedict were really little at the time, maybe 6 and 3, tops. (They are now bigger than any of the rest of us.) We decided to have Stacey and Billy go out first, then those remaining inside would pass Stefan and Benedict out the window. We were extremely careful, and Stefan and Benedict were tickled pink.

We got everyone out except me and Stefan, who was probably on the windowsill at that point, when some adult had to go and ruin it by coming in to check on us.

Stefan and Benedict's mom was furious, saying we could have hurt them or been hurt ourselves. And we were really in trouble after that.

But you KNOW those grownups were laughing fit to be tied as soon as they shut the door on us again.

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