webcowgirl

By the way, I'm going to see Lou Reed in April. I'm excited about that.

So I dreamed I went to the theater in London that was showing Xanadu: the Musical on the day before its last performance, and there was the woman playing Kira in the lobby, all sad and mopey. I had a program with me I'd just been giving for free because they had a lot left. "Don't worry about it closing," I said, "Xanadu is a great show. You're a great actress, umm, umm" (as I flipped through the program to find her name).

"It's XXX," she said, "and if I was great, you would have known. You didn't even bother seeing the show, did you?"

"No," I admitted. There were two more performances but I was going to slack off and hang out with my friends instead. "I love it, though, I love the music and I know all of the songs."

"That's great," she said, "I don't want to perform. You do it. You'd be better."

So ... there I was, getting the costume and makeup on, going out to perform Kira in a play. There was a scene with an old woman at the beginning, who nodded at me. It was great! It was a rush! Like magic, I knew all of the dance routines, the dialogue, everything.

During the intermission, someone came up to me: there had been a terrible tragedy. The old woman in act two had had a heart attack. Everyone in the cast was crying. The original Kira said, "I'm going to stop feeling sorry for myself and go back and do the show." Since I suddenly realized I didn't know the script at all, I was okay with it, and she explained to me how it would help energize the rest of the cast. I watched the rest of the show from the wings, then came onstage to play an audience member in the final club scene.

When it all ended, I found out it was all a hoax; the old woman had never died. Since Xanadu is about a place that "makes dreams come true," every night the first act is performed by a fan, whom has to be replaced in Act 2 when the real singing chops were called for. I did tell them about my idea for Xanadude, about a guy who only wants to own a drag club. Then I woke up and realized it was all a dream, and decided (since it was nice and cold outside) I'd go back to sleep and see what other great things my brain came up with, in this case a nice conversation with me and Harold Pinter in a park.

Today is going to be all about cleaning the house - the pile of laundry in my room is at wading depth and the bathroom hasn't been touched since before I busted my tailbone. I'm pretty well healed, now, so it's time to get back on the horse. But first, breakfast.

1. Mice in my fridge, eating olives. ICK.
2. Trying to take my cousin, my stepdad, and lovely_bug and ciphergoth to an Indian Food dinner together. WHY?
3. The joy of catching buses in American, with two miles between bus stops, when the driver passes your stop by.
4. Talking to fun and fuzzy stuffed animals.

Bad sleep in general, unfortunately. If I'd slept better I wouldn't remember all of this crap. And I'd already be on my way to work.

I've been waking up at a little after 6 every day this week. This is pretty much an hour and a half before I get up and it SUCKS. However, I think the time is changing this weekend, so I should be lined up correctly in short order.

My last hour of sleep was further disturbed by a dream in which I was trying and failing to get on a Eurostar train. The deal was that there was huge lines of people waiting to get on, due to low capacity, and every time I'd clear security, the train that was just about to go would leave, and the guards would FORCE ME BACK THROUGH SECURITY where I'd wait at the end of the line again. By the end of the dream I was trying to sneak through with large families and finally I tried to make the last wild dash for the train on horseback (including a jump on sidesaddle - don't think I could manage that in real life!). The extra irritating deal was that I had been trying to get back home to spend just a few hours with shadowdaddy after a work event, only as I was heading to the train he said it had all turned into quite a boozer and he didn't think he'd be getting home until well after I did. So I woke up already stressed out for the day.

And yet somehow it is Friday. That is good. Tonight I'm going to see Lily Allen. But first, I must get out the door ...

Dreamed that people were cross breeding my avatar with theirs to generate interesting critters that would sometimes have horns, sometimes have saddles, and sometimes twirl rope. The critters were mostly very My Pretty Pony but with a heavy dose of kittens. And beanie babies. So I had a cage full of beanie baby kittens that had all died because I'd forgotten to feed them - so they'd gone back to just being toys because, you know, they were never alive.

Except then how did I feed them in the first place?

Encroaching sanity, the first sign of awakening from the dream world. Only I'm not quite there yet.

Outside the window, the river is covered in fog. It's kind of like a picture of my brain. I wonder what the rowers represent? Do the singles mean something different than the doubles?

I slept hard, which is good, much better than the option of "fitfully due to worrying about things." I dreamed about silkyraven, who'd fallen asleep on my couch.

I awoke ravenous. Fortunately, I bought some things for breakfast yesterday. I didn't think I'd be this hungry, though.

Time to cook and then get the bed ready to be packed. It would be cool if I got a full eight hours tonight.

For some reason, last night I dreamed I was at a resort hotel ...

at which Sarah Palin was teaching water aerobics.

Somehow she divined I was there to mock her and would not let me get into the swimming pool.

I also dreamed about chariots pulled by flying lions.

And it's snowing outside, but that's not a dream.

The bells of St. Mark's are ringing nine - another busy day of hustling tourists ahead.

Dreamed last night that Spikeylady got a job at my company (but only 15 hours week), while for some reason Bathtubgin was off to an interview wearing a fluffy gray wig.

I was asking my sister what her older son thought of Obama, and while she gave me a detailed answer about her son's response to Obama's stance on "the issues," she skipped what I wanted to hear about, which was whether or not he found Obama an inspiration. This morning I was wondering if her younger son found him inspiring, then realized he was so young that he would grow up never knowing a time when a black man couldn't be president. Now, _that_ was inspiring.

Two mornings ago I was sitting at breakfast and J asked me how I'd slept. "I'm still tired," I said. "I blame the penguins." "They are frequently at fault," he responded.

It is now probably time for me to not be wearing jammies and see about breakfast.

Man, I can barely cross my legs after yesterday, and even walking is a bit of an effort.

That said, Time Regained is at page 39. The narrator has spent a bit of time talking about World War I, which is really odd given that the entire rest of the novel (all six books) has seemed nearly removed from history other than the Dreyfus affair (which was only really dealt with insofar as it made it difficult to create a invite list to a party). The discussion is focused on what people are wearing and what people are talking about at parties, however, so it still fits in with the rest of the novel, except insofar as it's now got such a particular date associated with the events that are being described that it's like someone has used a pushpin to attach the novel to a history chart.

I dreamed last night that shadowdaddy had misread the terms of our lease and decided we were moving. I came home and all sorts of our old friends (i.e. sallysimpleton and others) were putting things into boxes and the living room was already two thirds cleared out. I had to shoo everyone away and explain to J that we still had two months before we had to move, and since we had to pay rent during this time, we might as well stay. I was sad about leaving our place, though - where could we move that would allow me so much time to daydream? That said, I'm irritated about another £70 rise in our rent and wonder if we should look at a different apartment. A one bedroom would make a LOT of difference in our monthly rent output.

LATER: I was chatting with silkyraven yesterday about American culture, specifically the "pot luck" (versus having dinner parties), and I mentioned how people at really big events were a bit competitive about who would have their food finished first. What I forgot to mention was the parallel track of entering your food to be judged in the county fair. I used to do this, and brought home many ribbons for my cookies (and sometimes for my cakes) in my division. I'd do it again if I could. At any rate, fun article about this in the New York Times today (in Marquette, Michigan, of all places, long time home of shadowdaddy's younger uncle) - read it! "In judging the fair’s baked goods over the last decade, she has demonstrated almost supernatural abilities, as if she can detect margarine in your banana bread by sight." Oh yeah!

I dreamed I was working at a coffee shop slash art gallery slash theater that I'd taken over so that it wouldn't close. That meant that I got to make all of the customers' orders, bus tables, and wash dishes while other people were performing on stage. I also got to spend my paycheck from my real job buying supplies as there wasn't actually enough money coming in to, oh, buy coffee and dish soap.

I also dreamed I saw someone on the streets outside the coffee shop skateboarding on the walls - dressed like Guy Fawkes - having a shootout with some invisible people driving a van.

When I woke up, I noticed that I was on the edge of the bed, shadowdaddy was in the middle and had both pulled the blankets off (making me cold) and colonized fully half of the bed, and the cat had taken over an entire half of the bed to herself - roughly three times the space I was occupying. No wonder I wasn't sleeping well - and let's not get into the dream about the time travelling ninjas.

The score is now Night Nurse: 1, Irritating Cold: 1. (Yes, I was up coughing a lot last night, and I had dreams about my mom chasing me around the house with a knife while my aunt was telling me what a bad daughter I was to her. At least I could sleep between coughing fits.) I have very charming circles under my eyes now. Clearly the going to bed at 9:30 thing is good for me as it has been giving me enough pillow time to make up for the time lost due to coughing, but my midnight return last night didn't do me any favors. And I think I forgot to take my amoxicillin this morning due to being tired - and I left it at home. Bad, tired, stupid me.

There's a travel article about Cairo in the New York Times today that includes a slide show that has the pictures I wish I had taken of modern life in Egypt. They also went places I didn't have time to make it to, but, oh well, I can always go back, after I visit Greece and Turkey and Morocco and ...

I did make it through Othello last night in one piece but I don't really have time to write a review right now. It was really cool to be about six inches away from Ewan McGregor, but we were both wearing all too many clothes for my taste.