Dream a Little Dream

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language. ~Gail Godwin

Woke up tired. Hate that...

Had weird dreams all night.

In one, two other friends and I dressed up like older, formerly famous has-been stars (I was Phyllis Diller) in order to get a free room at a hotel. Once there, I took a shower, but was shocked and amazed at all the gizmos in the bathroom, like heated tiles (that may be because MY bathroom has ICE COLD tiles in the morning to the point it's almost painful to walk on them -- I dance around on the bathmats).

In another, I had these new neighbors who made themselves at home in my house. Everytime I turned around they were in MY house: using the bathroom, raiding the fridge, watching TV, and never announcing their presence until I ran into them.

There were more (including one about a broken CD that I wouldn't throw away and prized more than just about anything -- almost had a breakdown when someone tried to take it from me).

My subconscious is a scary place.

Any weird dreams you've had lately that you'd like to share?

=====================

I used the Facebook Year in Status application to get this:



Kinda fun!

====================

Your Four Sided Personality is ADCG

Side 1 of your personality is assured. You carry yourself with confidence and demand attention. Side 2 of your personality is devious. You are calculating and enjoy being a little wily. Side 3 of your personality is cool-headed. You aren't swayed by emotional appeals. Side 4 of your personality is gregarious. You love to meet and converse with all sorts of people.

The Four Sided Personality Test

Pretty much right.

=====================

On NaNo and Dreams

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. ~William Dement

I'm alternately ready and OH-SO not ready for NaNoWriMo to start. I have a long list of ideas for scenes and have been messing with my favorite scene question:

What would (the character) NEVER do? Now ... find a way for (the character) to do it.

Always fun and challenging.

I also updated my collage for the story:



Geoff is going to be swallowed up into a family of crazy sisters -- all artists of some sort and full of fun and energy. He's a little out of his depth. And, if you look up in the corner, that's Liv and Mike. We'll touch base with them now and then throughout the story as well.

I know I have more to do to be truly prepared, and I have to figure out how to work around DH's "I'm off all month" November schedule to find time to write AND get all my work done.

I may need to commit myself to the funny farm come December 1st. Maybe before.

===================

I had an incredibly vivid dream last night. I didn't live here, I was in a house in the city with a smaller backyard. The yard was FULL of a thriving vegetable garden: tomatoes and squash. The plants were huge and full of ripe fruit and needed harvesting. The colors were so vivid -- I remember seeing heirloom tomatoes in all colors: orange, yellow, pink. Everything was too big -- the squash fruit was enormous, the tomatoes the size of my head. And I had to army crawl under them to get anywhere, and when I did I discovered that something had come along at that level and taken a bite out of every tomato underneath. I was also raising tomato worms in my caterpillar box!

My mom was there, and in the dream she and DD were leaving in her car to go somewhere and I had to harvest everything by myself. The tomato worms were out of food, too, so I had to replenish their supplies.

I think I need a dream analyst on staff. I have the strangest dreams...

====================

You Are Bold

You are a total go getter. You aren't meek about speaking your mind and taking action. You are successful and a high achiever. You like to work hard, and you like the rewards that come with your success. While you are very career focused, you are also family oriented. You seek a balanced life. You have lofty goals, but you still have your feet firmly planted on the ground.

The Snack Test

Pretty close to all correct.

======================

Rain, YAY!

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. ~Langston Hughes

I can't believe I'm so happy it's raining ... normally I'm more a "boo-hiss" person when it comes to anything wet falling from the sky, but it's been SO hot here and so dry and everything was dying unless I watered, sometimes twice a day. Even my drought-resistant, full sun plants (like my lambs ear... that I always just want to sit and pet) was wilty.

So let's hear it for rain! Plus it means I don't have to haul water -- because there is no hose to my veggie garden. So, I have to use two big watering cans, over and over and over....

====================

Things are VERY quiet in Pillar Place, though I'm betting Alpha will chose today to hatch, just to be ornery (since it's raining and we can't release him). Our last pillar, Epsilon, went on walkabout yesterday and is now hanging upside down on a stick awaiting her transformation.

So far we haven't found any more swallowtail babies, which I find amazing. From here on out, though, any babies we find would be overwinterers and I'm not sure I want to deal with that (though DD will probably file an appeal and win, cuz I'm a sucker).

=====================

Check this out... it's SO COOL. If I ever get a rat again, I'm training him.



=====================

You Crave Money

Some may say it's materialistic to crave money, but for you, money represents freedom. You do have a taste for the finer things in life, and you'd also like the option being able to do what you love for work. You don't chase money at every opportunity, but it certainly factors into your decisions. You have some pretty ambitious financial goals, and it's likely you'll achieve them.

What Do You Crave?

Actually.... that's pretty much correct. Especially the "money represents freedom" thing -- DH and I want to move in the worst way, and can't because there is no work for him where we want to live. If he could move back into the blue collar sector and we could still survive, we'd be set. And I could start an animal shelter. He could fish and boat to his hearts content. I could have a greenhouse. He could have a 1985 Toyota 4X4 like the truck at the end of "Back to the Future" to restore. Just gotta win the lottery, or become a NYT bestselling author. Or, yanno... BOTH. *G*

=======================

I'm Dreaming....

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. ~William Dement

Last night I dreamed that DD had found a caterpillar. She kept telling me it was a Tiger Swallowtail, and we needed to get maple leaves, but the pillar she held was black and red with knobs and bumps all over it.

I asked her if she was certain it was a Tiger Swallowtail, at which point I got the "Duh, Mom" look.

Funny thing was part of my brain knew it wasn't, but my dream-self totally bought into it. Of course, upon wakening, I had to know what that other pillar was.

Here is a real Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar:



Here is what DD was holding in my dream, a Pipe-Vine Swallowtail:



I'll give YOU a "Duh, Mom" look.

=====================

Hey.... got a cool blog? Have a friend with a cool blog? Check out the contest Maria Zannini is having in her quest to find and highlight cool blogs!

======================

I wrote another 1000 words on "Now and Forever" yesterday. It was good to sit and write. I need to do a search of horror movies, though, because Cori is going to refer to her soon to be MIL by a variety of names, most recently "The Mom of the Black Lagoon".

Any thoughts?

======================

You Are a Corn Dog

You are lively and carefree. You are playful, and you enjoy food that is fun! You are easily delighted. The smallest pleasures in life make you quite happy. Whenever there's a party, you're not far from it. You live for the good times. You are an engaging and interesting person. You make an excellent impression and find friends easily.

What Type of Hot Dog Are You?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA... No.

=====================

Home Grown

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. ~Henry James

I picked five squash and our first cucumber yesterday. Nothing tastes as good as freshly picked ANYTHING. It's amazing how much better veggies taste from the garden -- they are crisper and yummier. WAY more flavor. Summer spoils me for store bought stuff. My tomatoes are all splitting before they get ripe, though. I need to look into why that happens.

In Pillar Place: Monarch, Lenape and Maria are both in a "J" and Jane is on her roof, so I anticipate her making her J soon. I'm glad, actually -- it means they'll all hatch around the same time and then it'll be done. Still, I'm really horrified at the small number of pillars we found this year. It really brings home the fact that the monarch is having issues.

Butterfly Tidbit: Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature falls below 86 degrees.

I dreamed last night that we had two raccoons and a bear at our bird feeders, and I tried to scare them off with my pooper sccoper... lol. If that isn't full of symbolism, I don't know what is.

You Are Cobb Salad

You seem simple, but you're actually a very complicated person. You stay well organized, and because of that, you're on top of all the chaos in your life. You work well with others. You are able to check your ego and cooperate. You are also very open-minded and accepting. You're happy to let people do their own thing.

What Kind of Salad Are You?

Um... about 75% right... You? As an aside, I love Cobb Salad, especially the bleu cheese crumbles. I bought some at the store yesterday, opened the dish and DD proclaimed "It smells like dirty socks." I told her she didn't have to have any :-)

==========================

Tail Wags

Happiness is excitement that has found a settling down place. But there is always a little corner that keeps flapping around. ~E.L. Konigsburg

When Dakota wags her tail in her sleep, what do you suppose she's dreaming about? Is she dreaming that her friend is coming up the street to play? That Daddy is home? That she has a chipmunk treed?

She's the most expressive dog I've ever seen, and her sleep is no different. She usually sleeps on her back and she dreams all the time: growling, barking, twitching. But my fave thing is her tail wags.

The website launch went well yesterday! Only a few broken links (thanks, Dru, for your email!!!) and one glitch -- the inability to return to the shared front door once you're on one site or the other (we're working on that).

I can't tell you how relieved I was. Phew.

=======================

I set a live trap for my vole last night. I just couldn't kill the bugger. The lady at Agway gave me a bit of a hard time about it, but ... I kept imagining him dying a long, painful and lingering death from poison, or finding his little corpse squished in a trap.

This morning... no vole and the trap is unsprung. If I don't catch him soon, DH is going to put his foot down and get poison himself.

C'mon little vole... climb into the nice trap.

========================

I'm trying to catch up on my backlog of blog posts. Holy cow, I opened up Google reader and I'm in triple digits!!! I visited a few folks last night, and I'm working on getting to you all one at a time... I've missed you!!

=========================

DD is supposed to start recorder lessons today. They're being taught by a woman from a small, local homeschooling group. I just am not at all sure I'm going to be able to find where I'm supposed to go. I have a serious problem with my internal GPS -- zero sense of direction. It's a sad, sad thing and honestly often keeps me from taking trips to places I'd like to go to because I'm not altogether sure you wouldn't find my dried up bones years later, and miles from where I was supposed to be.

Wish me luck!

==========================

BLUE

You give your love and friendship unconditionally. You enjoy long, thoughtful conversations rich in philosophy and spirituality. You are very loyal and intuitive.

Find out your color at QuizMeme.com!

Only In My Dreams

Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare. ~H.F. Hedge

I wrote a blog post in my dreams last night. It was fun, and clever -- and it was a meme to share. I remember thinking how I needed to write it up today. Of course, this morning, I can't remember a word of it. Should I find it strange that I'm dreaming about writing in my blog?

==============================

I'm feeling a little odd. I got a request for an interview last week. Like... yanno... I'm somebody people would want to read about (beside you discerning folks who, unexplicably, like to hear my babble daily). It was very weird.

My Samhain novel, "One Love For Liv" has made it through the FLE (would you want to be called a FLE? -- that's Final Line Editor, btw, but I love the acronym), who amazingly caught MORE typos and other various errors despite my eyeballs and my wonderful editor's (waves to Eve). I'm consistently surprised how many things can be missed, despite several pass throughs by more than one person. Anyway, next is galley and covers. I can't wait to see what the cover artist comes up with... I've always been impressed by the Samhain covers.

================================

Puppy training is moving foward slowly. I was SO spoiled with Bailey... she was an amazingly good dog. The kind of dog who wouldn't touch turkey bones in the garbage or food on the counter, and would die a thousand deaths before she'd pee in the house. I'd forgotten how much work a puppy can be.

I can't complain. She's really quite good (for a baby) and smart as can be. It's also been interesting to see her establish her place in the pack. I'm definitely the alpha, with DH a close second (it was this way with Bailey as well -- since I'm home, I get to be #1). DD and Dakota, though, are still duking it out for spot #3. The puppy won't bite me any more (unless she's gets REALLY overexcited), though she does snap at the air nearby. But DD? Fair game.

My poor two-legged girl was so excited to get a puppy. Now, with scratches and bites all over her hands, and a hole or two in her clothes, she's not so thrilled. I have TWO critters to train: Dakota and my DD. We're getting there, one step at a time.

You know who has training of the puppy down pat? The cat. She got that darling dog in line in a matter of minutes. I suppose, in the pack order, the cat is number three behind my husband and I. LOL...

==========================

We're planning a big Valentine's Day bash in our new Yahoo group... but I'd like to see a whole lot more members so we can entice as many authors as possible to show up, share their work and hold giveaways. Have you joined yet?

Why not? The link is here. Come on... you know you want to.

===========================

Because so many folks hated yesterday's game... I'm giving you one that's a bit easier today:


Get Flash Games for your MySpace Profile

Enjoy!

I'm Positive

“It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.” - Robert H. Schuller

I'm a little like Tom Cruise's character in Cocktail (much as it pains me to say that I am like Tom Cruise in any way): I always have some sort of non-fiction self-help type book on the nightstand. Mostly they're about health and nutrition, but not always. Currently on my nightstand? "How and When to Tell Your Kids About Sex" and "The Courage To Be Rich" by Suze Orman.

I'm not talking about the sex one. You're not my kids and you probably already know the basics. BUT, I had a bit of an epiphany while reading my nightly chapter in Suze's book. She (like most of the known world) talks about the power of positive thinking. I sat there and read and thought, blah, blah, blah, nothing new here.

Then she wrote: Do you want that to be true?

It was as if someone whacked me over my head. It's not just the power of positive thinking, but also the power of negative. Sure we can take moments through the day and think positively (you know, things like "I will win the Powerball tonight"), but we can also influence our life by the other times when we throw negative things out there.

Her point was to follow up any and all thoughts about yourself (she was speaking about your finances, but I took the idea and ran with it) with the thought, "Do you want that to be true?"

"I just can't write today." Do you want that to be true?

"I feel blah." Do you want that to be true?

"We're broke and I can't afford to enter that contest." Do you want that to be true?

"This is a stupid story." Do you want that to be true?

"I'm too tired to exercise." Do you want that to be true?

"I don't have the time to write." Do you want that to be true?

Well, you get the point. So, today I'm going to do that and see how often I'm negative about all different aspects of my life. I'm not typically and happy, positive person, so this will be a challenge. Because after I ask Do you want that to be true?, I need to change it so that it becomes something I DO want to be true.

Last night, I dreamed about the new Battlestar Galactica -- this is an odd thing because I don't even watch it. But I dreamed that something had happened to Adama and he'd come back in the form of a woman (but still had his own voice) and that the same thing had happened to Starbuck (edited to explain: I meant that the sex reversal thing happened and the female Starbuck became a man). This was probably my own wishful thinking: that whole "buck" thing that means MALE being applied to a woman... anyway, I'd read something at Tori's blog about 'the five cylons' and I'm sorry to say that the cat woke me up just as I was finding out who they were.

Weird.

Do you remember your dreams?

Hope and Dreams

When the world says, "Give up," Hope whispers, "Try it one more time." ~ Author Unknown

Excuses. The world is full of them. We all have them, for all parts of our lives.

I don't have the time. My life is too stressful. I'm not good enough.

Bull puckey.

Make the time. We all have stress. And you ARE good enough, if you think you are.

If you can dream it, really dream it, then you can find the strength to make it happen.

My husband's dreaming muscles are very small. They don't get a workout often. Last week, the Powerball was an estimated $240 million and I couldn't resist buying a ticket (yes, just one -- so my odds were 1 in 8 gazillion... is 20 in 8 gazillion really any better?).

I tried to dream with him. It took him a while to get warmed up but he decided on a big barn to house all his restored 1985 Toyota pickups and his other toys (the boats, the snowmobiles). And he dreamed about not working -- at least not for money. He talked about volunteering for somewhere like Habitat for Humanity full time. It was a start, a decent though modest beginning.

Me?

I'd like more than one home. I'm a nomad at heart, but I also like roots. So having two (or more! Hey... it's my dream) homes would be perfect.

I'd also like a private jet. Seriously, I just don't like to fly anymore. It's a pain, it's more stressful than it ever used to be, it's expensive. Ugh. So I don't really travel. But a private jet? Oh yeah. Leg room (heck, a bedroom to sleep in while you're waiting for takeoff), liquids, a clean bathroom big enough to turn around in (I had to change my DD in an airplane bathroom once -- OMG, it's funny in retrospect, but not so much then).

In all of my houses, I'd like a small theater. With movie popcorn.

I want my OWN house ... just a little cottage that I can decorate and live in any way I want. Sometimes it's hard to continually compromise with a husband. I love flowers and frills, he loves guns and mounted deer heads.

I want to be able to put my daughter into any class she wants: singing, acting, drawing, swimming, karate... whatever. And I want a limo driver to take her there.

Then... I want to sponsor homes for battered women or needy children. I want to be able to show up at the local food pantry with a years supply of food. I want to expand our library and add more reading programs for kids. I want to give the no-kill animal shelter food and blankets and toys for the critters. I'd love to build a kitty place where all the cats could run free instead of being cooped up in their kennels.

I can dream.

Unfortunately, we didn't win the Powerball. But that doesn't stop me from dreaming. If not the Powerball, then maybe I'll be the next Nora. It's close enough, and it would fulfill my other dreams.

What about you? What do you dream? Don't put limits on it -- DREAM BIG! If you can't dream it, you'll never get it.