A Nightmare on Elm Street

I've had a couple odd dreams the past few days, trying to walk myself through self-analyzing them.

Dream One: I somehow convince the US Army to overlook the whole cancer survivor, not-having-two-lungs thing and enlist in the Army, entirely for the attention and so that everyone will shower me with the attention and love they shower on soldiers who are away from home. In the rush to emulate Chris I forget to make sure I get a job I want and will keep me safer, relatively, and end up a paratrooper and die.

Dream Two: (Not part of the dream, but back story--I had a managers meeting to attend this morning but skipped it because of the car being broken and Denise needing the other one so she could be at work). I go to the managers meeting anyway, and the kids and their sitter are attacked by a goon-for-hire with a shotgun, while I'm forced to stay and work a full shift; and though the kids are ultimately ok physically, are extremely traumatized when I return home.

Neither of these dreams were in any way pleasant to me. I feel like the first one speaks to my feelings about how useless my current job is, how it does nothing to better humanity on large or small scales and so, thusly, reflects on me as wholly unimportant; and my fears that if I tried to change things and be unimportant, the failure would be dramatic and catastrophic. I think the second one extends the job feelings and adds some monetary stress along with stress involved with our law suit over Lash's abuse by Bryan.

Today I'm missing my happy thoughts.

My Week Thus Far

Drew recently mentioned some 50 book challenge on his blog, and I've decided to give it a go--reading 50 books in a year. If Dubya can do it, anyone can, and I've practiced too much illiteracy over the past couple years. So far, I'm off to a slow start, having only completed two books (both of 'em trashy "beach reads"): Going down in la la land by Andy Zeffer and Hard by I forget who. The former was pretty boring, the latter was engaging but nothing special.

Speaking of special--Amazon is having a 50-60% off sale on TV shows on DVD right now, making me wish I had more money. If you jones for tv on dvd, check it out.

School began this week. I'm in a Theory of Literary Criticism class that I need to finally complete my MA (hopefully in the fall) and Poetry: Form and Practice. With them I've decided to take up jogging on my walks home. Last night was a real bitch of it.

The winter holiday went off fairly well. The kids all had a grand old time and I was able to get Denise her laptop for her Yule-slash-anniversary present. Which after that, bills and tuition, my grant is gone and I'm broke-ish again--I couldn't get my PS3 (this is me pouting a lot). And of course, the van picked after this to decide to let us know it was dying, so I don't know what I'm going to do along that end. Hmph.

I went with Chrissy last week to drop Chris off for basic. It was really hard (moreso for her, natch) and we're all already really missing him.

Ain't it cool news: Rael is really working hard at communicating. He still makes no sense most of the time, but he's got "mom, Lash, bye-bye and night night" down, and earlier this week I told him "I love you" and he replied with "I love (pause) too." That was cool.

It ain't cool news: They're offering Bryan a deal--10 years (probation in 8.5) and two strikes; if he turns it down it'll go to trial and he could get life, but that would mean Lash will have to testify after-all, which wasn't the case when the trial was still in our county. Hmph. I don't like the downsides to either option; I want him there forever without putting Lash through it all again.

More news later, folks!