*sputter*

It's been a fabulous morning.

My wife, on many days, gets up about an hour before I do. This morning, as per usual, she got up, and took her shower. As she was going about getting herself together for the day, I could feel a cold front rolling through the area. The temperature was dropping and rain was beginning to fall outside, cooling the air further. In the distance, thunder rolled. Lightning flashes crept in around the edges of the curtains.

I love storms. Especially at night. Or even in the early morning. That, combined with my wife getting ready for work, meant that I dozed rather than slept. I heard her leave, and shortly thereafter my alarm went off. I remained in bed for a while, waiting to hear if my daughter was going to get up. I heard her go into the bathroom to take her shower, so I closed my eyes again.

This time, I dreamed. I dreamed that I was actually taking a nap. I was dreaming about sleeping. I think maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me to go to bed earlier at night. Fuck you, subconscious! Are you going to write this manuscript I've been plowing through recently? I thought not.

However, if I was dreaming, that meant that I was sleeping. I suddenly realized that, roused myself from my dreams, and then jumped out of bed. It was a quarter after seven, which is thirty minutes after I need to get up. Fortunately, my son was already up. My daughter had eaten her breakfast. I was able to get him fed and even pound down a quick breakfast of my own. Coffee was thrown on, I jumped in the shower with a thunderstorm raging outside, and got cleaned up, organized-ish, and got everyone ready for school.

Unfortunately, when it was time for the bus to show up, it was still raining. I, personally, do not own an umbrella, ever since my trusty Notre Dame umbrella Swissified itself, bent its shaft, and refused to open OR close. How I managed to do that to an umbrella, I'll never know. So, I stood outside with the kids--who were crowded under my daughter's umbrella--in the rain. I tried to shelter under a pine tree, which sort of worked. What I was able to avoid from the rain I gained in the huge drops of water dripping off the needles above my head.

With the children on the bus, I returned to the house, finished getting ready, scraped together a lunch, and made my coffee. Unfortunately, one of my coffee cups was missing a lid. I used it anyway, thinking I would just hold the cup and drive slowly. I've done it before. I'd do it again.

The rain continued and, as I was driving to work, it intensified. I was able to pick my way through downtown on my usual route. Then, as I was about to get on the freeway, the rain lessened a bit.

Huzzah! I thought.

I got on the entrance ramp and began picking up speed when...I hydroplaned.

Spinning, I found myself suddenly turning toward the traffic on the freeway. I was able to correct the skid easily enough, to realign myself with the flow of traffic and seamlessly merge in with the other cars participating in the morning rat race.

Unfortunately, the coffee cup I was still holding did not move so elegantly while I was trying to regain my momentum. The coffee splashed, violently, over the rim of the cup and landed across my lap. Normally, this would not be an issue as I wear jeans to work most every day. Today, however, I wore khakis. Now, I'm wearing tiger-striped khakis.

But the fun doesn't stop there. As I continued on toward work, the rain reintesified. Lightning flickered and flashed; thunder roared and rumbled. I pull into the parking lot as several other people are making mad dashes for the door. I gather my belongings, lock the door and also dash toward the door.

And then, the person ahead of me by ten feet, who looked back and saw me, closed the fucking door on my face. She was in such a hurry to scurry into the building that she closed the door on me. She did not have the fucking common courtesy to hold the door for someone who obviously works here, who was using the same entrance, and who didn't have a fucking umbrella.

I'm mostly dry now. I'm cold, because the building hasn't adjusted to the fact that it's no longer 90 (you know, two days ago). My pants are dried, somewhat, but coffee-stained. And my shirt has that sort of clinging damp feeling that you get when you've been standing in the rain too long and you let the shirt air dry.

I'm sure I'll be dead by the morning, having caught some vile form of ague. Remember me fondly. And fondle me if you remember.

My Dream

I've been trying to get on Jeopardy for a while now. I probably should have tried harder to do the college championship back when I was in college, but at that point you had to drive to certain locations and try out. Now, you can access online tests to try and qualify for the show as well as try out with the Clue Crew tour bus. Of course then I might just stand there dumbly staring at Kelly or Sarah and miss my opportunity.

And since I have this fanciful fantasy about being on the show, I often dream of a chance to have a Final Jeopardy category pop up with something like "The Periodic Table" or "Notre Dame Football" or something like that. While I haven't successfully made it onto the show (yet), I do play the online game every week--I'm only 30,000 points away from getting a "free" PS3!!! Woot! While this isn't wholly satisfying, I did manage to get "Chemistry" the other day as a Final Jeopardy question. I only read five words before I started looking for the answer. I'm just that awesome.

Anyway, the other day I was watching Jeopardy and, perhaps, the greatest category to fulfill my sick and twisted Jeopardy fantasies (at least the ones where Kelly and Sarah keep their clothes on) popped up: "Elemental Latin". Or it was something akin to that; I was too busy sprouting wood and dealing with diverted bloodflow to pay that much attention.

Essentially, elemental Latin was a category in which they gave you the Latin name for an element, and you had to give the English name. I would have uttered a high-pitched squeal of delight had I been on the show and that particular category popped up.

And then, to top it off, one of the Daily Doubles was in that category. Holy shit! I would have been like "I'm betting it all, Alex, and I'm betting her money, too!" while pointing at the vapid chick standing next to me. The answer was "Natrium", which is not really the Latin name for sodium...it was sort of back-translated. Natrium was the Romans' name (via Egypt) for sodium carbonate. Regardless, the dude who had the Daily Double all to himself botched the question.

Anyway, it got me to thinking what the ultimate Jeopardy board would look like for me:

• Obscure Shit About the Periodic Table
  
• Characters from Bleach
• Tad Williams Books
• Places I'd Like to Put My Mouth on Scarlett Johansson's Body
• REM Songs
• Latin Profanity

I figure, with those, I should be able to expertly coast through, unless I was competing against my clone or, worse, my doppelganger.

And then I thought of what the worst board for me would look like:

• Reasons to Give a Shit about Lost
• Funny Jay Leno Jokes
• We Love Purdue
• Russian Ballerinas
• Vegetables
• Operas that Aren't Madame Butterfly

I'm pretty sure that, if I had to suffer through those categories, I'd just stand there, staring straight ahead, clicker hanging limply and uselessly in my hand.

But I'd be thinking about places I'd like to put my mouth on Scarlett Johansson's body...

Lucid Dreaming in a Lucid Dream

I had a rough night last night. Well, to be more honest, I had a rough night early this morning.

Allow me to preface this all with a little backstory. Last week, I didn't get my monkey ass to bed until at least 1:00 every night. I was up either doing research for this book that I'm starting, or I was playing a game, or I was having the sex (it's what married people do, sometimes). And then I was up at 7:00 every morning. In college, this was fine. However, I graduated from college eleven years ago (to the day, in fact), ergo, this is not fine.

This has all added up and now I'm pretty fricking exhausted.

Last night, I went to bed at midnight. And I was okay, mostly. I fell asleep and stayed asleep, which is something that doesn't happen to me much. It was a good, crisp night, good for snuggling up to the already warm form of my wife and sleeping the night away.

Unfortunately, I woke up around 5:00 this morning. My wife gets up at 4:20 and smokes a big bowl to get ready for the opening shift at work. For whatever reason, I woke up at 5:00, through no fault of hers (though the light on downstairs was a wee bit distracting), and I stayed awake. Worse, I began to have one of those senses of dread and doom that have been plaguing me lately, where my guts tie themselves up into knots and I feel like there is some darkness lurking over my shoulders, waiting to fall on me at any moment.

Finally, I was able to fall back asleep. And that's when the dreams began.

I was back home in my house in Indiana where I grew up. I was trying to get my brother and my sister ready for school, and I got in my car and drove out of the back of the yard and went down an alley that led to a side street. As I got toward the end of the alley, where I was expecting there to be a sharp left turn that takes me down toward the river, I found an elementary school on the right-hand side of the street and then a huge Catholic Church that was all lit up with sodium lamps, giving it that amber color. It was suddenly night.

My little town had neither a Catholic Church nor an elementary school. Nor did it suddenly become night in the middle of the morning. I knew something wasn't right.

I saw a sign for interstate 44. Somehow, I knew that I was in Oklahoma. I was driving around, and I was suddenly on some interstates, but I knew this wasn't right. I shouldn't have been able to go from Indiana to Oklahoma without...a few states popping up in between. So, I knew it must be a dream.

I even announced this aloud in my dream. Knowing that I needed to wake up, I started commanding the dream to do things for me. I tried to sprout wings from my shoulder blades like an angel, but to no avail. I always try various ways of flying in my lucid dreams--sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Also, I try to command people to be naked in my dreams. This works a lot more often than the flying.

As I was driving along, a police officer began to chase me, but I eluded him somehow--maybe he was after someone else. I do remember making a few turns to try and elude him, and it was, perhaps, the slowest police chase in history. Finally, I pulled over and made myself wake up...

...and I was in my house this time, in North Carolina. But, I was still trying to get my brother and sister ready for school. And Carrie Fisher was there. A young Carrie Fisher, from the Blues Brothers/Princess Leia days.

Also, there were all these cars parked in my driveway and in my yard. I looked out and saw that a large group of people had gathered to dismantle my neighbors' houses. Two of them were being pulled apart, piece-by-piece. I was going to call my wife at work and ask her if she knew anything about it, but I knew that I had to get my brother and sister ready. So, I turned around to get in the shower and noticed that the dresser was gone in my bedroom. And the toilet was gone in my bathroom. The bathtub was full of stuff, and I was trying to clean it out. That's when Carrie Fisher showed up and I asked her for help getting my brother and sister dressed and to tell the people tearing down my neighbors' houses to get out of my house, there was nothing wrong with it.

That's when the sink and the vanity disappeared in my bathroom and there were people down in my kitchen taking out the dishwasher and all the pots and pans. I yelled for them to get out, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was dreaming once more. So, I tried to command my dream, and for a second, I had it. Once I had control of the dream, I began putting the missing things back where they belonged and got the tub cleaned out. Then, mercifully, I was able to wake up.

I laid there for a few moments, hoping that I was finally, really awake. I heard some banging around and, for a moment, was terrified that the dream about the people taking all my stuff had returned. Fortunately, I realized that it was just my daughter getting ready for school. The alarm went off and I rolled over to turn it off, then laid there in bed for a few moments trying to calm my mind and organize my thoughts for the day.

It was not easy. My mind is always a wreck when I go through a series of dreams like this because the vividness of the dream was enough to make it seem as though it was a true substitute for reality. Finally, I got up and started the day, managing to get my kids ready for school without driving to Oklahoma.

I don't know what it was that touched me off this morning. Maybe it was because I walked by the melatonin at Kroger and thought about picking up a bottle, just for shits and giggles, and this was my mind's way of warding me off from it. I don't know. I just know that I don't want to drive from Indiana to Oklahoma like that ever again.

A Midwinter's Night Tale

Fire up the coffee grinders, Ma, 'cause we're gonna have us a long day.

It all started last night. Partially because I'm too stupid to go to bed at a decent hour, and partially because I was trying really hard to muster the inspiration to finish another chapter in my current manuscript.

Down the hall, the Little Boy was coughing. And coughing some more. He's just getting over a cold, so we didn't think too much of it. But when he coughed and it sounded like product was behind it, then we panicked. Coupled with the crying, we knew we were in for some trouble.

As I went running into his bedroom, urging him to find a toilet into which he should deposit expectorate, I was punched in the face by an odor that came from the very bowels of...well...my son...but it smelled more like Satan himself had been eating kimchi and guacamole before going out on an all-night bender of vodka, everclear and souls. And then he pooped. Satan, not my son.

Well, I dunno. My son could have pooped. After he was done puking, that is. I wouldn't know because I went into action, wherein I started washing his puke-soiled bedclothes and pajamas. Using a plastic bag and a spatula, my wife mucked up the splatter and then scrubbed up the stain.

Let us pause here to remember one Han Solo, who, though he may have been made of plastic, suffered immensely during the Revolution of My Son's Stomach. He's in a better place now...which would be my kitchen sink, where I tossed him AND the spatula on my way past while running puke-sodden fabric articles to the washing machine.

As this was perhaps the foulest smelling thing that I had experienced since my last kimchi-vodka-souls bender, I decided to run the puke-filled bag out to the garbage can where some unknowing sap kind-hearted custodian would cart it away to the town dump in the wee hours of the morning. Hopefully, for his sake, it would have frozen by then.

However, as I was trotting, in my all fatherly glory, to the trash can at the end of the driveway, the herd of deer that live near my house decided to stampede run through my yard. You might remember my Seven Awesome Ways to Die, in which I am terrified of being attacked by a deer caught in mid-coitus. You can imagine that this noise, coupled with the large, bounding creatures in my vicinity, caused my heart to shiver and leap from my chest, abandoning me so that it could run back to the house. Deer: one; me: zero.

Finally, we settled back down, I went back to avoiding hammering away at my manuscript, and finally called it a night around 12:30. I tucked myself into bed and laid there, drifting off to sleep. I was ripped from my restfulness just as sleep was beginning to settle itself onto me by the sound of my wife's my guts churning. Quieting myself over the very normal sound of her my body, I began to drift off again, when I was ripped once more from the clutches of Lord Morpheus by the sound of the shower expunging a few drops of water that had finally slipped down to the faucet. Again, calming myself, I was beginning to slip into the dream world when I heard the boy berfing once more.

Another cycle of getting him to the bathroom, changing his pajamas, washing his covers. Finally, once everything had been settled down and he wasn't erupting forth into fountains of vomit, I settled my brain for another night's worth of nap. Except, now, I had a hard time sleeping because I kept hearing the dryer (you know, the new one), tossing the clothes and such around, and every so often something with a zipper would smack against the side of the drum. *sigh* I finally managed to find some fitful rest. I had maybe slept fifteen minutes when he was up again.

I'm often glad I have a penis. I love you, little guy. I mean, uh, I love you, long, thick, girthy guy! Yeah, that's more like it. I was very glad when the boy was calling for "Mommy" to come and help him. Of course, my wife had to ruin it by asking me if I would go get him some water to help wash the puke taste from his mouth.

Know your role, woman!

That just bought me two months of forced abstinence.

He puked at least two more times, but aside from the first two, he got to the bathroom and made his deposit in the bowl. And who says you get prepared for college only at school? Not my children! Puke in the toilet, or the sink, or in your almost girlfriend's trash basket! Not on yourself or in your own bed!!! All valuable lessons for maximizing your secondary-educational experience!

So finally, with a sum total of four hours sleep (maybe), I'm here. I'm upright. I'm thinking about being productive. As in, "Hey, wouldn't that be nice? To be productive? Right after this short catnap...Zzzzzzzz..."

However, if someone has a cot or a couch or a warm, pillowy bosom I may rest my head upon for fifteen, twenty minutes (or more, depending on how pillowy that bosom is...), let me know. I'll be right over.

Just, please forgive me if I smell a little bit like puke.

To Sleep Perchance to Dream: Aye, There's the Rub

So, I had a dream last night.

I suppose I have dreams every night, but this one struck a chord.

I was hanging out with my grad school buddies again, Dr. Assy and Captain B. You might remember Captain B from suck such pick-up lines as "California? I'm from Connecticut! They both start with C!" Dr. Assy was the other guy I lived with in grad school.

Well, we were back together and we all had our respective degrees. This was kind of odd because two of us are married and Dr. Assy is busy curing Cancer or some other sign of the Zodiac. But, we were hanging out and, when the three of us were together, there was usually a lot of alcohol involved. I may or may not have mentioned this in the past.

So, we're hanging out, talking, my buddies and I, in this dream, when Dr. Assy does his patented arm-wave. This was something that happened one night during a particularly drunken Groundhog's Day where we passed out watching an endless loop of The White Shadow on ESPN Classic. At one point, Dr. Assy started waving his arms around and I was like "What the hell? Are you an anemone now?"

"No," he responded, "there's just a lack of alcohol in my vicinity."

When you get science-type people drunk, you get conversations featuring words like "anemone" and "vicinity". And "backside attack".


So, in my dream, Dr. Assy is waving his arms around looking for alcohol, but there is none. I decide it's my duty to head down to the liquor store and buy some alcohol for the three of us. Captain B decides he's coming with. I start walking through a bunch of, what I can only describe as passenger cars on a train, because I keep opening and closing doors and ending up in a long, hallway-like area. And Captain B is right there.

I can tell, because he's got his hand on my back. And, apparently, he's getting more and more desirous of that alcohol, because he's pushing me harder and harder to get to the liquor store. Now his hand on my back is beginning to hurt. Finally, after about ten minutes of this, I turn to tell Captain B to fuck off, stop pushing on my back. But, when I turn, he's not there.

"Ah, hell," I said, "this is a fucking dream."

Which instantly caused me to wake up. Only problem? The pain in my back was still there. As lucidity slowly returned to me, I realized that my wife was sleeping with her knees in the middle of my back. *sigh* Once again, I've turned into Al Bundy.

Since it was the night of our anniversary, I decided not to start pushing her around the bed (heh), but instead shifted myself around so that I slept around her knees. After a couple of minutes, apparently satisfied that she had ruined a decent part of my night sensing me shifting on the bed, she rolled over and fell back asleep. A few minutes later, I also fell into a steady, dreamless slumber until the alarm went off a few minutes later.

Notice how I told this entire story about Dreaming, and didn't mention Sandman once.

Well, guess I fucked that up...

Painting the Town Polka Dot

I'm not really here today. Instead, I'm on a plane, headed to Springfield, to view the famous Springfield Tire Fire and the now defunct Springfiled Monorail (too late, mom, the crowd has spoken...). Hey, it worked for Ogdenville.

Oh, what? Wrong Springfield? Ah, silly me. I wondered why no one was yellow with big bulgy eyes. Anyway, I'm having a coffee with fabulous blogger friend Sass. And then we're going to get mo.stoneskin (kinky) and we're all headed off to meet up with Scope and see Cowguy's band play. Ah, fuck it. You can read about my adventures yourself.

You should also cue up R.E.M.'s Losing my Religion for when you read it.

Aren't I clever?

Anyway, I shan't leave you without a fun little story while I'm off to Springfield, painting the town with Sass et. al. So, I'll tell you a little tale of what happened to me yesterday.

I got an email from my wife, the Comely and Buxom and Ailurophobic Boudicca. She was telling me about her lunch, and how she decided a pickle would go perfectly with her sandwich and chips. So, she reached into the pickle jar and pulled out...a pickle. But it wasn't just any pickle. It was a pickle that reminded her...ahem...of me.

Now, there's a euphemism for masturbation one uses from time to time: "jerkin' your gherkin". I had no idea how dangerously close to real life this could be. See for yourself.

Nice, huh?

Though, I have to worry if my wife thinks something so small which is green, spotted and knobby reminds her of me. What's that I feel? Oh, it's the beginnings of a complex. Fantastic.

And just for your personal edification: she ate it. Popped that thing in her mouth and swallowed it right down.

Now I know she was lying when she said it reminded her of me: she didn't even dip it in mayonnaise first!

That Was Just A Dream, Just a Dream...

Breaking news: North By God Carolina blogger had a dream last night...and feels the need to share it.

So, I was transported back in time. I was 16, and for some reason, I lived in a house that we shared with another family. The family had three daughters. The oldest daughter had great legs--fantastic legs, long, shapely, tan, smooth, silky, shiny...I know this because this is the only thing I ever saw of her. She stayed in her room all the time and draped them over the arm of her couch while she watched television. The youngest girl was like ten or twelve or something, but the middle girl was my age.
For some reason, I went in their half of the house, I think to ask the middle girl a question. It was an actual serious question, but I ended up forgetting what it was I was going to ask, and then, shrugging, I asked her if she wanted to go to my school dance with me. She agreed readily, and then that's when I threw in the hook: it was a costume party dance. She still agreed, and so I went back to my half of the house to get ready.

I dressed up as Darth Vader. Except, it wasn't really Darth Vader...more like "albino" Darth Vader. Yeah, my costume was all white. Cape. Pants. T-shirt. Helmet. Oh, I was stylin'.

I got in the car and drove to the other side of the house to pick the girl up. I don't remember much about her costume other than she was wearing red flip flops, but I do know that she had beautiful, long, blonde hair and I have no idea what her name was. So, you know, it was like a perfect date. Nothing like sharing a house with someone and not knowing their name, but dating them nonetheless. Awesome.

So, we're driving to the dance, and I'm headed down the street that goes past Notre Dame stadium. At this moment, there's a pep rally going for a football game. Only problem was, there were some fans from other schools. Like, there was a small cadre of Boston College fans there (Candy, I blame you for this unsightly smear on my otherwise unsullied dream) and there were some people from the University of Pittsburgh. It was an older man and woman, and they had one of those huge, fake, plastic bullhorns and they're lobbing insults on the Irish. I know they're from Pittsburgh because they have the blue and yellow outfits on, but the kicker is they have "Pitt" scrawled across their chest. I'm still wearing my white Darth Vader suit. My date is still in the car.
How dare they! I think and I stop the car, get out, rip the bullhorn from the man's grasp and I decide, then and there, that these two need a lesson taught to them. I go into full crowd-incitement mode, using the bullhorn to call attention down on these people and to get the crowd to turn against them. All while wearing my white Darth Vader outfit. With the voice modulator in my mouth so that, when roaring into the bullhorn, my voice is threatening to deafen people for miles around.
It works wonders. I whip the crowd into a frenzy, telling them that our space has been invaded by these plebes and that we should do something about it. Even the football team is fired up and ready to crack some skulls, so everyone starts chasing after these two people. I keep inciting the riot until the crowd has chased the people away, and I open up the door to my car, toss the bullhorn in the back seat, and slide into the drivers seat and get ready to go.

That's when my date turns to me and says, in as flat and cold a tone as possible, "You know that was my mom and dad with the bullhorn, right?"

I actually woke up laughing. I laughed so hard, I had to get up and pee for fear of wetting the bed. It took a while to fall back asleep since I kept giggling.

I had another dream after this one and it was about as exceptional as the first, but I've forgotten most of the details and I don't want to tell only half a story. However, this one goes down in the annals of dreams so fabulous they must be told to others.

Question for you All

Have you ever had that dream where you're cruising around in a Ford F-150 with Rick Majerus riding co-pilot, and you're driving down some back roads in the country on your way to Sonic with the coach and you're talking basketball strategy with him and trying real hard not to work the term "cockblock" into the conversation?
Uh, yeah, neither have I...

A Dream Dies

Sorry for the silence on this end of the spectrum. I've been on a vacation, of sorts, since last Friday. Except, we didn't go anywhere, so according to CNN and their online 'writers', I wasn't on vacation, I was on stay-cation.

Which I, of course, read as "stay cat ion" and immediately think "well, that's dumb...it would immediately go searching for an anion or, at the very least, a lone pair of electrons." Whichever, it's a lame word.

My kids, of course, are also on vacation as my daughter shuffled off this scholastic coil back in early June, and they're quite pleased to have me home. So much so, that they wake when the very first ray of dawn peeks itself over the edge of the world and filters through the trees that surround our house. It wouldn't be so bad, but they begin fighting immediately upon waking...maybe not fighting, but it involves lots of little screechy 6- and 3-year old voices being raised above a comfortable level for human ears.

This isn't too much of a problem, but these tiny voices usually culminate in the coup de grace, wherein Tank, my three-year-old son, comes into the bedroom and demands politely asks for me to make him breakfast. This is nothing new, as he requests of me every day that I make his breakfast. I'm fairly used to it as it's a daily occurrence, so it's not much of an issue.
Except for the other day.

See, the other day, I was having that dream again. You know the dream. The one where I'm playing football for Notre Dame. Oh yes. Chubby Chuckles [1] liked me, because I was a leader on the field, barking commands back and forth with the other players. Normally, I'm an offensive guy, but this day, I was special teams and defense. I remember screaming "No blocked punts! No blocked punts!" up and down the line, and, after we punted the ball away, trotting to the sidelines where Chubby Chuckles himself slapped me on the helmet with the color-coded play-chart of genius and told me good job. I went back out on defense and after a series of plays, I nabbed an interception off a deflection, but I caught it in stride. I came around the lines yelling "Blockers! I need a blocker! Block that guy!" The offending would-be tackler was taken down, and there was nothing but open grass and the end zone before me.

I should, at this point, tell you that the offense had managed to push the ball deep into their zone before my deft interception, so I had a long way to run lumber before I could score the touchdown, but I knew it would be no problem as I heard the entire stadium going nuts (this was a home game) screaming for me, chanting my name, bringing me home. I even saw someone on the edge of my periphery, and I changed directions late and high-stepped out of his tackle. My team mates were screaming, jumping, yelling, pumping me up with their enthusiasm, and there, sprinting down the sidelines like a big, fat ghost was Chubby Chuckles himself. And I heard one voice, above all others calling for me:

"Daddy, can you make me some breakfast?"

And there, inches from the goal line, enveloped in my finest hour, with all the glory and tradition of Notre Dame football basking down upon me, my reverie disappeared in a single, sudden, soul-crushing "pop".

Instead of adoring fans, cheerleaders, guys dressed like leprechauns or overzealous teammates, I was greeted by the beaming face of my three-year-old pride-and-joy. As the last wisps of the dream faded into the ethyr, despite my desperate attempts to cling to them, to wrap them around my mind like a suit of protective armor, the gossamer lines of my early morning dreams blew away like dust on the wind. The words "Do we have any Pop-Tarts?" ground my morning bliss into nothing more than a memory whose colors were already fading.

Defeated and demoralized, I pulled myself from my bed, yanked a shirt over my head, and staggered downstairs where I prepared three bowls of Coco Puffs--one for each child and another for myself--and as I curled into a ball on my couch, came to the conclusion that I was decidedly not cuckoo for Coco Puffs.


[1] Until the stain of 3-9 is atoned for, I shall refer to him as this.

Is this a Bad Sign?

Do you think it means anything when I have a very long and very detailed dream that Mike Rowe and I are driving a truck filled with dry ice from Texas to California in order to help make some Hollywood special effects for a movie about fish?


I didn't think so, either.

The Beauty of Dreams

So, yesterday I told you the tale of Tammy Pfaltzgraf and how this related to my elementary school girlfriend, Maria Ramirez.

Well, last night I had a dream about Maria Ramirez. I'm sure this will make my wife jealous, but I found it amusing that she popped up in a dream for the first time in, oh, 20 years or so. I'm easily amused by things such as this.

Anyway, the dream wasn't juicy or saucy or anything. It was basically me if I hadn't met my wife. I was a 31-year-old loser (so far, nothing is a dream) without a wife, kids, family...the works. I think I still lived with my parents (but still worked in North Carolina, because a couple of my friends from The Old North State showed up) and I was desperate for a date. Well, I ended up asking out Maria Ramirez...but she was like this South American princess or something...or that's what I told my parents because...well...they're not the most tolerant people on the face of the planet.

Anyway, I remember going this whole big way to end up at the airport in Indianapolis where I could pick up Ms. Maria and take her home to meet my parents. In the end, we just stopped at a bar halfway between Indy and my parents' home (so, I'm guessing it's somewhere around Muncie...) and going to a bar and me telling her "You know what, screw my parents, they don't deserve to meet you."

That was pretty much the dream. As I said, nothing flashy, nothing saucy, but amusing nonetheless. At least to me.