Spilled Milk

I don't remember how it started
But I was there
Sitting on the floor

A ring
Two glasses of milk
(no I don't know why either)

I called you
I asked you to come
I told you I couldn't move forward unless you came

So you came
Reluctantly
With a chip on your shoulder
You came

I told you calmly while drinking milk (still don't know)
I couldn't do this
You were ambivalent to me
Ambivalence is my death
I deserve your passion

I handed the ring back
I told you to fight for me
I asked you to fight for me
I required you to fight for me

Because I deserved to be fought for
I deserved to be cherished
I deserved to be considered

The room was empty
But for you, me, a ring
Two glasses of milk, one full, one empty

You stood
Nudged the still full glass of milk with your shoe
Pushed it over
Walked away

I sat there, still
No ring
Crying over milk, spilled

Sing Sing Sing

I've been watching The Voice and loving it. In the beginning rounds the coaches had celebrity advisers and Blake Sheltons was Reba McEntire. We ALL know how much I love country music and all (insert eye roll here) but that piece of the puzzle is important.

I went to bed one night and had a dream....

I dreamt I was shopping at Macy's (which is odd because I never shop at Macy's except maybe to buy Clinique and even then I break into hives just walking into a department store, I really blame all those shopping trips with mom as an awkward adolescent) and I ran into Reba (which is odd because what is Reba doing shopping at Macy's in Cincinnati? What am I doing there for that matter?!)

As we walked around shopping together (which, WHY after running into her did I start shipping WITH her?) and she was lamenting how exhausted she was but she had this concert later that day.
I benignly comment that I'm sorry and I wish there was something I could do to help (I was thinking coffee) and she said, "Great! I'll just have you perform for me!" (uhhh....)
Then, as if that wasn't strange enough I AGREED.

We head back to her dressing room (which interestingly is just through the back of the Macy's dressing rooms) and she promptly lays down on the sofa and goes to sleep.
Her stylists descend on me and start plucking and primping me (one should never be ambush plucked, even in my subconscious it hurt)
I'm staring down at my clothes and I ask them what I should wear on stage. They say, "Oh, you can just slip into something of Reba's"

I glance at teeny tiny itsy bitsy Reba on the sofa and look at the stylists and say, "You think my thigh is going to fit in any of her clothes?!" The stylist said something about how they're all stretchy (there would need to be A LOT of elastic but, whatever)

After being plucked within an inch of my life they lead me to wardrobe and I stare mouth open at racks and racks of track suits, sweat pants and t-shirts. I spin dramatically around and proclaim, "That is not fancy enough!" and take off at a flat run through the store.

In a scene that can only be from the blockbuster 80s movie Mannequin  I start pulling and yanking and trying on clothes from all over Macy's (including oddly enough, the men and children's sections...) and the dream jumps to me stepping on stage in........

The red dress I wore to my senior prom, complete with bee hive french twistish hair.

Then I woke up.

I was a little sad that I couldn't see myself performing songs I didn't even know, but one can't have it all I suppose.

Wind Chimes

Wind chimes are at once soothing and relaxing to me while also a trigger for fear
I ran out of gas in the power washer the other day and sat down for just a few minutes on the patio. As I leaned my head back I smiled at the noise of the trees blowing in the wind, the wind chime tinkling and the birds cooing and sighed contentedly.

I drifted off to sleep in the way you only can on a warm summer Sunday afternoon outside. But as I was caught somewhere between awake and asleep the wind chimes started changing. They became ominous. In my head I was moved from the blue chair on my patio to the green swing on the porch of their house. The concrete under my feet changed to painted gray wood weathered by a generation of feet.
I could see myself sleeping with a book on my chest on the swing while it swayed back and forth unaware of the footsteps approaching me.

She walked up to the back of the swing.
She leaned over and with the smell of bitterness rotting on her breath she hissed in my ear, "Bethany".

I startled awake in real life. I looked around and didn't see anyone. I rubbed my eyes reminding myself that I'm not there, and I don't have to go there ever again. I rested my head back against the chair again and immediately fell asleep.

I saw myself. Sitting in the grass under a weeping willow tree. Listening to those same wind chimes and the birds in the early evening cooing and calling each other home. I watched through branches to the ground and the windows older than I as they walked around the house. I felt the breeze lifting the hair off the back of my neck as I shivered, knowing I had to go in soon.

I startled awake as the patio door opened. Shouting out my heart pounded as I realized I was no longer small. I was no longer there. I was no longer powerless or at the mercy of angry women.

Going to the Chapel

Alright, this may cost me my single and proud of it card but this is to hilarious to not share.
First, an important piece of information...I have a small crush on someone

I went to bed last night and first, had a dream that the Sugarbaker women built the Panama Canal. But that's because I watched a PBS documentary about the building of the Panama Canal and recently watched the 30 Rock where Liz gave the Sugarbaker speech to the writers. 
After I woke up, and tweeted that dream I fell back asleep and the following happened...

 I had a dream that I flirted, then dated, then got engaged to a person of interest to me. In the dream he lived in a city about 4 hours away and I was moving there to join him. In the dream I told my parents I was moving to that city, and they then announced their intent to retire to that city...I fear those things are connected in some way. 
 I also decided to let Pete continue to live in my house and rent it. But the hilarious thing is in my dream I actually worked through the math of how much his rent would be for the whole house etc etc. I mean, I did ACTUAL math while dreaming.

Even more so I actually moved to this new town, and went through most of the process of planning the wedding. I even fought with my "fiance" about what church we would be married in and who we would be married by.
 
It was quite ridiculous, and hopefully not prophetic (although as I do very much enjoy the town this person lived in in my dream and also as I mentioned earlier I have a small crush on him)

Feel free to shame me now.....

Giggle Cereal

Last weekend I was scrolling through the IFC channel looking for a new show set in Portland that's starting soon. I had clicked on the channel and it was playing in a little square while I flipped.

As I was half watching while scrolling I started thinking about how the show looked familiar. So I watched a few minutes until I realized, with a jolt of panic and horror, that I knew what the movie was.
It's called The Gate
You will have to google the trailer, because I can't even link the trailer because I'm kind of a baby.
But I digress.

The point is, for years I've been trying to find this b-horror movie that I watched back in the early 90's. It scared the crap out of me, but I was SURE it existed. All I knew is it was about a brother and sister, home alone, when a gate to hell opened up and swallowed their house. I also had a clear image of a demon rising out of a pit in the middle of the living room to try and swallow the brother. (I know, creepy right!?)

But, guys, it was The Gate! I didn't make it up!
Nor did I watch it, because I would like to be able to sleep in 2011.

However, I was about 75% sure I had made it up. Because, it wouldn't be the first time I completely made up a product and believed it was real.
When I was a teenager I swear to you I saw a commercial for Giggle Cereal.
I STILL can see the actors in the commercial and the design of the box of the cereal.
An elementary school teacher had to step out of her classroom to speak to someone and while in the hallway kept hearing a ruckus in her room. When she walked back in the room the kids were all rolling around laughing and laughing and laughing.
The teacher giggled a little and said, "What did you all eat for breakfast?!
The kids replied in unison, "GIGGLE CEREAL!"

But I have never been able to prove the cereal (or marketing campaign) ever existed.
It wasn't the first time I believed a dream to be fact, but hopefully it's one of the last.

Elevator Action

So Friday night I put on clean sheets and crawled into bed at 730/8ish and watched some TV. Since the night before I had only gotten about 3 or so hours of sleep and then worked out and worked all day I was pooped. Completely wrung out.
I just remember rolling over and pushing play on the iPod and the next thing I knew I was living in a condo in Toronto (I blame Sandra Rinomato and Property Virgins).
I headed out of my condo and down in a giant elevator knowing I was going to meet Alaina and our band of "don't let the man hold you down" brothers.
I got all the way to the parking garage and realized I left something in my place. So back up I went and back down I came. Except, when the elevator was almost to the ground floor it stopped and tipped, like tipped over.

We could see out of the corner of the elevator but that was it. My cell phone was in the car and I started to panic about getting to our rendez-vous point.

While dreaming that I was in the elevator panicking about being late I started to flash back in my dream about the meetings. How we were planning to "stick it to the man" using an elaborate plan of scaffolding, parade balloon animals, fireworks and all of us dressed like ninjas.
It's hard to explain, but imagine the set up looking something like the Hollywood Squares boxes all stacked up.
We would meet in Alaina and I's old dorm room in YSU, which was located in a building that looked like the dorms at BGSU and had the inside layout of Alaina's old factory apartment in Cincinnati. I know...it's all very tres tres chic.

When I finally got out of the elevator I ran Sydney Bristow style through the streets of Toronto until I arrived and was able to watch (but not participate in...boooo) the gloriousness of the plan come off.

I'm still not aware of the point of it all, other than the usual result of Alaina and I's master schemes, which was a crap ton of fun.

Welcome, to the Night Mare

I've decided to try to read 52 books this year again. Last year I only made it to about 35 but I'm trying again this year.
I won't be reviewing them like I did last year, if you can call it that, but creating an epic (ok that might be a stretch) list for posting the end of 2011. I've already got 3 under my belt, so we'll see if I can keep on track.
But I digress.

So I was about 100 pages from the end of Every Last One and could just feel the climax of the story coming. It was pretty close to 11pm so I thought I would read a few more pages and then call it a night.
Except the climax of the story was a home invasion and homicide.

:gulp:

Yeah. So, sleep didn't work out so well for me that night.
I jumped at every noise and even at the shadow of my elbow in the light of my iPod.
I couldn't lay with my back to the door like I usually do because that's how the woman was laying in the book. My shoulder blades were just itching with the anticipation of a butcher knife in my back.

It took me until almost 2am to fall asleep, and of course by fall asleep I mean "pass out from sheer exhaustion".

But I am happy to report that I did still get up in 3 1/2 hours and work out like a champ.
I did pretty good energy-wise until about 430, when I crashed and hard. I was out like a light by 9pm that night. For the next almost 14 hours.

Ahhhh, paranoid delusions how I loathe thee.

I Am Not

I woke up this morning with an odd heaviness on me. I showered, dressed and drove to work. Then I started seeing snippets of my dreams.

Walking by the one room school house
Swimming in the pond
Sitting on the porch swing
Running past the scary totem pole

I yelled back at you to hurry up. We'd been there to long we had to go.
Throwing ourselves through the sun porch door we gathered our things and cast one last look back through the window to the sink she so often stood at, dutiful as ever.
Collapsing on the stoop we raced to lace up the shoes we needed to run to the car for our escape.

But it was to late. In she pulled. Scowling and wretchedly intent on being unhappy as ever.
I don't remember what happened after that. Only the feeling of heaviness. The feeling of dread.

I hate that she's still in my dreams. I hate that she's still floating around in my blood.
When there were rumors of a secret those many but fleeting years ago I, like a child, wished and hoped that it was she was not really blood. I longed to hear that she was other, not the same, not connected to us by anything more than unlucky circumstance.

But there was no such secret.
There was no such luck.

I don't have to run anymore. We've disconnected her from us with the messy chops of a dull knife. But still she remains. Connected all the same.

I know it was just a dream. I know it wasn't real.
But still I woke heavy this morning, trying to remember that she was wrong. That I am not a bad girl and that I am not who she said I was.