Move over Timothy Leary, you've got nothin' on me!

I've had my fair share of strange dreams in my lifetime. I have some that I wake up and I'm scratching my head, saying, "Huh? I have NO clue where that one came from." Last night was one of those nights. I had a series of dreams, because I kept waking up, listening to see if Matt was home, looking at the clock, and falling asleep again. These dreams were not really tied together by any normal sense of logic known to man, but to me, they wove seamlessly together.

I should preface this by saying, I had only non-alcoholic drinks at dinner last night, and I did not take any sleep aid, either over the counter, or prescription. This is purely a product of my sub-conscious.

Let's begin with me arriving home, to discover that we were out of something, and so we went to the grocery store, which was closed. For some reason the manager opened the store for us, and I was stocking up on meats to freeze, because apparently there was a smokin' deal on meats at 12:30 at night in a closed grocery store. I got up to the till and found that my husband had picked out some new shirts for me, because that's where everyone buys their new clothes, right? (They were pretty cute though.)

I left there, and got into my truck and drove to a nearby luge track (of course) where Apollo Ohno was teaching people how to ski, (yes - ski, not skate) down a luge track. It was pretty fun, but Apollo was bossy and I got kind of annoyed with him, and decided that I wasn't going to race him after all.

My friend Robbie was there, and she asked me if I would mind hauling her horses home. (Because everyone brings their horses to the luge track to learn how to ski down it, right?) I said, "Sure, no problem." I've never hauled a trailer before, but in dream world little details like that don't really matter. So I hooked the trailer up to our truck and started towards her house. At this point it must be about 2:00 am. I go past our store and see that the gates are open, and all the lights are on. I stop to check it out, and discover that my sister is throwing a huge party in our store in the middle of the night, and people are leaving the adjoining movie theater (didn't y'all know that our store has a movie theater attached to it?) and coming in and joining the party, and then some of them wanted to shop. I went to start turning out lights, trying to get people to leave, and was turning out the lights in the locker-room style bathrooms that we now have, (with hospital curtain dividers instead of metal dividers) and discovered some creeper lurking in the corner. I yelled at him to leave, and at this point I was getting angry, I really wanted all these people out of my store.

I started yelling at my sister to get rid of all the people when the phone began to ring. Stupidly I answered it. Next thing I know, I'm completely overrun with customers at 3:00 am, and then my father is standing next to me, asking me how to run a second batch of credit cards, because the normal business day's batch had run before my sister started this Midnight Madness-esque sale we were now having, and he didn't want that to interfere with the next day's sales. I tried to explain to him that I don't know how to do that stuff, that it's his job, but he got cranky with me and left.

Next thing I know, it's daylight out, and I think around 1:00 in the afternoon, and I'm still trying to get these horses home. So now I'm driving the truck and trailer towards Robbie's house again, and my sister (who was stone cold sober during her party) is in the backseat, and she's drunk and keeps asking me where we're going, and basically just won't be quiet. Also in the backseat, and I have no idea how she got there, is Robbie's daughter Annika. Annie wasn't at the luge track with us, and she certainly wasn't at Kimberly's party... so I haven't figured that part out yet. I was almost to Robbie's house and slowing down so I wouldn't miss the driveway, and I got distracted by Robbie's pretty new fence across the front of her property with these beautiful arbors over each driveway. The arbors were covered with these gorgeous pink climbing flowers of some sort, and I was so enthralled with them, that I missed the first driveway, and Annika started yelling at me that I missed it. I told her that I would just turn into the second driveway, but she started reenacting the famous "You're doing it wrong" scene from Mr. Mom and I decided that I'd better back up and turn in the first driveway after all. As soon as I started making my turn, and telling Kimberly to stop talking because she was distracting me, the sound of our front door closing woke me up.

So I guess we'll never know if I made the turn ok or not. Also we'll never know if I actually went home and put all that meat in a freezer, or just left it in the truck during my ski-luge lessons, and mid-night customer service session.

Maybe if I ever get my own time machine, I can go back in time and ask Dr. Freud what he makes of this one, but alas, I don't see myself getting a time machine, because as I recently read, there's no future in time travel.

Is there a Short Bus to Makeup School?

I went out to dinner tonight for my friend's birthday, and I told her that I was even going to wear makeup for her. So I got home from work and started getting cleaned up. After my shower, I decided that there wasn't time to do hair and makeup so I was going to have to have my "anything goes" hair, where I just let it dry on its own and hope for the best.

I pulled out my makeup bag, which contains all sorts of things that really should be easy to use, but honestly, they defeat me on a regular basis. Much like dogs are supposed to just know how to swim naturally, I think that it's assumed that girls' will naturally know how to apply makeup. If that's the case, I suck at being a girl. I start trying to put the stuff on, and my hands start shaking like I'm going through DT's. When I'm finished, it looks like I was attacked by a wild eye-liner. I have to take a Q-tip and use it like an eraser. Maybe the fact that I was never good at coloring inside the lines has something to do with all of this.

So I got the eye-liner somewhat tamed and down to a normal level, and switched to eye-shadow. Once again, Bobo the blind, drunk, lab monkey takes over, and I've got glittery smudges all over my nose, my eyelids, under my eyes, and, even a little on my cheekbones. I'm still not sure how that happened. Once again, the trusty Q-tip came to my rescue, and I managed to remove stray smudges, and then used a tool meant to smudge and blur stuff, and got the rest of the mess smudged into some semblance of normal makeup, almost like I knew what I was doing.

Maybe I could call up Mr. Clean and have him make me a Makeup Magic Eraser? I don't understand how some people actually do this every single day? I just don't have that kind of time... or that many Q-tips. (And I buy them at Costco by the hundreds!!!)

Maybe next time I'll just promise to have pretty hair. Might be easier, and safer for all involved.

An Owie in the Armpit

From Lucie's point of view...

I went to work on Wednesday, which is unusual for me. Even though I don't usually deal with change very well, this was a nice surprise because I got to play with my sister, Josie all day long. Towards the end of the day, my Mom noticed that I had an owie in my "underpit." I could have told her that much earlier if she'd bothered to ask. Anyway, she saw that it was kind of raw and oozy and gross looking. I tried to tell her that I would just keep licking at it, or at least as close to it as I could reach, and it would be fine. She didn't listen.

We drove home, and she refused to let me stick my head out the roof of the car because she said we were going too fast and that it could be dangerous for me, blah blah blah. So I pouted in the backseat and ignored her. Then when we go home, she immediately told my Dad that I had an owie, and he wanted to see it. Then he decided that we had to do something about it. I heard my Mom say something about a bath, which was when I decided that I needed to follow Dad out into the backyard, and quickly! I thought I'd escaped that most terrible of fates when Mom started cleaning the kitchen and scrubbing countertops. Then, when I thought I'd be able to make it through the night without her remembering her awful threat, she turned to me and said those words I dread the most, "Bath time Pup!"

I went and climbed into the tub where Mom began to spray me with the hose, which isn't so bad, and then she put that stinky stuff on me and started scrubbing. Every single time I get myself smelling really pretty, she shoves me in the tub and makes me stinky again! I could tell that she felt bad about this bath though and was being really careful with my owie. She kept apologizing to me, and then she finally let me out of the tub and dried me off with the towel, which I kind of like too.

I thought the worst was over, but then Dad asked her where the medicine was, and he started poking and prodding at my owie and spreading sticky goopy stuff on it and telling me that it was for my own good. But then he said the most wonderful words, he said to Mom, "I guess you'd better take her to the doctor tomorrow." At this point, I was beside myself I was so happy! But I had to play it cool because I was still really ticked off at my parents for the bath and the medicine.

Mom went to bed that night, and tried to coax me up to their room with her. I ignored her for awhile and then decided that I'd go lay on my bed with my back to her, letting her know exactly what I thought of her. Apparently my silent treatment worked because she felt really bad and told me I could get up on the bed with her. At this point I had to decide which I wanted more, to punish Mom, or to sleep on their comfy bed. So I compromised, I got up on their bed, and turned my back to her and slept down by her feet ignoring her.

Yesterday when we got up, Mom immediately started poking and prodding at my owie again, and determined that while it looked better, I should probably still see my doctor. I was still mad at her from the night before so I just played it cool. She called and made an appointment and when she hung up she told me that Dr. Erickson was available to see me that afternoon. I love Dr. Erickson. He's my favorite person at the Dr's office. I decided that since she was willing to take me in for a date appointment with Dr. Erickson, I'd better start being nice to her again.

Time passed pretty slowly until she finally said we could go. I jumped in the car and we were on our way. When we pulled into the parking lot, I could barely contain my excitement. She clipped my leash on me and we went inside. I politely jumped up and put my paws on the counter to let the nice girl behind the desk know I was there. Then I started tugging on Mom's hand trying to take her to the backroom, that's where all the fun stuff happens. The girl behind the desk said we could go to the exam room. I tried to take Mom past that boring little room and back to where I knew that Dr. Erickson hangs out, but she wouldn't let me.

Instead I was trapped in a little room with only my boring old Mom. I could hear someone in the back, who I didn't know, but I'm sure we'd be best friends, and he was barking and howling, and I kept trying to tell Mom that I should go back there and hang out, but she told me to hush up and lie down. Finally the moment I'd been waiting for came, and Dr. Erickson came in. I was so excited, I ran over to greet him and he gave me a cookie, and all was right with the world. And then he wanted to look at the owie in my armpit. I was a little sad that he didn't just want to visit. He started poking and prodding at my owie, and then he found another owie that I'd managed to keep hidden from Mom and Dad, and when he poked that one, I'd had enough! I jumped up, grabbed Mom's hand and took her to the door. Unfortunately she didn't think that it was time to go yet and wanted to hear more of what Dr. Erickson was saying.

Then he started to move towards the door of the backroom, where all the fun stuff happens, so I let go of Mom and rushed back to him. He tried to tell me that I didn't really need to go to the backroom, but I stared him down, and he agreed that I could at least go back and get a cookie with him. He took me to the magical backroom of wonders where I rushed around greeting all my old friends, even the ones I'd never met before. Then he made me go back to my stupid old Mom. We waited in that little room for another few minutes, which felt like hours to me, and then he came back and brought my medicines. I wasn't excited about having to take more pills, since Mom opens my mouth and crams them down my throat, but then Dr. Erickson said I could have my pills in toasted marshmallows, which happen to be one of my very favorite things in the world!

So all in all, it was a pretty good day.