Archive for October, 2008

Why It’s Not a Good Idea To Eat Three Slices of Bacon and Half a Pomegranate Right Before Bed.

Last night I dreamed that I had a playdate with two fellow bloggers, Suburban Turmoil and Busy Mom.

That premise is bizarre on several levels– not the least of which is, hello, playdate? My kids are 16 and 12, Busy Mom’s are around the same age, while SubTur has a preschooler and a toddler! But the weirdest part is that in my dream, we are all sitting around someone’s lovely living room (details were fuzzy, but I think it was Lindsay’s) and suddenly someone (again, fuzzy, but I think it was Busy Mom) casually starts rolling joints!

Yes! I am not even kidding.

So, in my dream I’m just sitting there watching these two lovely ladies getting ready to break out the blunts, and I’m having this whole existential conflict inside myself about the fact that  A) I am SO not a pot smoker! At all! and B) I really admire these two women and want us all to be bloggy BFFs. They both live here in Nashville, they are really funny and smart, they have both been very welcoming and nice to me and also, come on– I partied with these women at BlogHer while wearing a McDonald’s bag on my head and that, my friends, is a bonding experience. However no controlled substances were involved at CheezburgHer, nobody got drunk and threw up in the hotel lobby or danced naked on tables or anything. (At least when I was there!) So in my dream I was more than a little surprised when the two of them suddenly went all Snoop Dog on me.

Ok, so the three of us are just chatting and laughing, sitting on the floor leaning up against the furniture and they start passing the joint between them. We’re talking about our blogs, our kids, writing, blah blah blah. I’m sitting there with this bright forced smile on my face trying to figure out how to politely opt out of this mommyblogger ganja party without being awkward.  I keep nervously talking more and more, and faster and faster (Yeah, just like Charlotte, see last post),  and then I gradually realize that this is just their little thing and they are not really planning on offering me any.  I am SO relieved! I’m thinking, “Yay, Nancy Reagan was right, I can hang out with the cool kids and Just Say No to Drugs!”

But then… I start getting kind of cheesed-off that they just skipped right over me! I’m feeling a little offended that they didn’t even bother to SEE if I might want a little of their Acapulco Gold. Yes, of course I would have said “no thank you” (it’s called manners, people), but still. A girl likes to be asked.

 

And then, you know that thing that happens in dreams sometimes where you suddenly become aware that it’s a dream and you remember that you can control it? That happened! One minute I’m sitting there in a bit of a snit and feeling kinda fragile because Suburban Turmoil and Busy Mom aren’t sharing any of their drugs with me, and the next moment it dawns on me that this is so stinking weird it just can’t be true. So I turn to them all excited and say, “OMG! I am totally dreaming right now! You guys aren’t really big ol’ pot heads!” They start laughing and high-fiving me and saying, “Of course not– aren’t dreams crazy?” And I say, “Yes! And I can’t wait to blog about this!”

 

And then I woke up.

 

**OK, your turn! How about this: give me your best interpretation of my dream (a la Old Testament Daniel) OR tell me about your weirdest ones! There will be no furnaces or lions involved if you can’t make heads or tails of my dream, and also you will not be held legally accountable for any drug references that might show up in yours. (No sex dreams though, because EWWWW! I don’t want those pictures in my head!)

Blackout in Brentwood! Alert the Media!

So here’s the breaking news from the B’hood:

Tonight the lights went out for over an hour.

Yeah, I know that’s not exactly a big honkin’ crisis but hey, this is the ‘burbs– even our emergencies are laid back! The girls and I were minding our own business, all of us in different parts of the house when suddenly the lights flickered and we were plunged into darkness. Charlotte immediately started calling to me from the family room, “Hello! I hate this! Bring me a flashlight please!” Madi yelled down the stairs that she was heading into Charlotte’s room to wait it out because she wanted to have a view of the street to see how many houses were dark; turned out it was as far as the eye could see in every direction. Luckily, I was in my bedroom when it happened and I have this little handy dandy reading light on a cord in my nightstand, so I turned it on, hung it around my neck like one of those St. Bernard rescue dogs and took off up the stairs to find mah chillren. After I reassured them that this probably wouldn’t last long, I started digging out all of my candles and placing them everywhere. Ok, I have a lot of candles. By the time I fired all of those suckers up, we had lights all over the house, like about 30 of them. It was kind of cozy.

Charlotte was right behind me the whole time I was lighting candles, following me reeeeeeeally close, all up in my grill. Every time I stopped she practically rear-ended me! The child is not a big fan of blackouts. We even went out on the deck and lit a few candles out there, too, so that everywhere we walked inside and out we had at least a little bit of light. She was kind of nervous, which makes her kind of chatty (I have no idea where she gets that), so she kept up a running commentary everywhere we went. Eventually she relaxed a little and we actually really had fun. The flickering candles cast a soft light all over the house, and there were no electronic devices to distract us and interrupt the quiet– no computers, no television, no Wii. It was great! Char brought the dogs up into my bed, which is like Christmas for the little yappers and they were so excited they started going totally nuts, diving into the pillows and chasing each other everywhere. We were laughing so hard, and playing with them and talking and suddenly in the middle of all the canine hilarity, boom! The lights were back on! The three of us went around blowing out the candles and turning down the blaring TVs, which now sounded like they were turned up full blast. Eventually we each drifted off to our different rooms to continue doing whatever it was we had been doing when we lost power.

I’m thinking I might fake a blackout every once in a while, just so we can have some more evenings like this one. It was very Little House on the Prairie-ish, only with more dogs and less, uh, churning. I liked it.

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