breakfast with dad 2

Yesterday I went for another breakfast with dad at The Black Swan. It had been almost two months since our last breakfast when I came unglued at him and gave him shit about things I do genuinely hate about him but also shouldn’t have bothered to bring up because it could only have gone badly (and did). This breakfast went much better. I still had to swallow my rage at one point and “choose happiness” as Jenn used to say (now I say it to her and it drives her nuts) when he took a phone call from a guy on the mainland selling an old trailer frame that dad wants to buy and turn into who knows what. I was annoyed that he was letting his breakfast get cold, that he was ignoring me, that he was visibly excited about buying more literal garbage (twice he said “no worries, I have tools” which I know means the trailer is fucking trash but he is going to happily pay way too much for it and go through a ridiculous amount of effort to go get it from the mainland and bring it home, only for it to sit in his yard and do nothing but rot because that’s what happens with all of the garbage he buys — this has been his modus operandi since I was a child and it’s why he has one acre and counting of pure trash), and that I was witnessing him amass more shit, so I started laying into him when he got off the phone. I asked why is buys more projects when he already has countless other projects languishing on the property and his response was “never mind, never mind…” That drove me nuts too because it’s not an answer, and he doesn’t have an answer and doesn’t care that he doesn’t have an answer. As an addict of garbage, all he cares about is getting more garbage, and I want him to face that fact so fucking badly. I pushed a little bit more and he gave me another “never mind…” and at that point I said to myself, “you have to stop this now, there is no point and you did this last time and it went badly,” so I stopped. And you know what? It didn’t feel good to stop. It was the right decision to make and I’m glad I did it but the closest feeling I can compare it to is blue balls. I hate being that crass but it’s true. I really do want to scream at him about this stuff, and not allowing myself to is so completely unsatisfying — if anyone ever tells you that you’ll feel better letting this kind of stuff go, I think they’re lying through their goddamn teeth. Maybe I’m more spiteful or negative than the average schlub — actually I suppose I definitely am, but whatever. I feel how I feel and that’s that.

Anyway, so I started to give him shit but I reined myself in and it was for the best. The rest of the breakfast was…fine. He went on his usual Grandpa Simpson tangents and I had to tell him to get back to the point, he moved his food around the plate ceaselessly and pointlessly like I fucking despise, he tried to charm the waitress with what he thought was his cleverness and she ran away as fast as she could, after 1.5 hours I said I had to get going but I still couldn’t get away from him until 2.5 hours because he always keeps starting new dumb boring topics he HAS to tell me about. All the usual stuff. But, at the end he told me he was going to miss me when Jenn and I move, and I’m not positive but I think he got a little teary-eyed then. That surprised me because he usually has great difficult showing emotions — for example, I don’t remember him ever telling me he loves me. I’ve even tested that by saying it to him occasionally just to see what his response is, and all he ever does is growl or say something like “hey it is what it is” and stand there limply while I hug him. It’s bizarre, especially considering I’m the miserable one. Anyway, that surprised me and was nice, even if I struggle to spend any time at all with him. Some kind of emotional instinct in me to want my family to care about me, despite having shit relationships with them. Ugh. That will be a complex knot to untangle eventually.

The food itself was pretty decent, btw. I had an omelette for the first time in about a decade, and liked it just fine.

i like visiting victoria

Today I did some errands in Victoria. I wasn’t looking forward to it because I hate the drive from Ice Cream Mountain onward, heading south. There’s always some fucking annoying construction going on, and traffic in Vic is always rush hour now except for in the middle of the night. Those both still rang true today but the rest of it went pretty well and made it a pleasant experience overall.

First I met up with a lady and bought her used winter tires. Her price was good and she was pleasant and sweet throughout the entire transaction.

Next I went to Russell Books on a quest for some heavy, nihilistic reading. I like Russell Books because they have a good stock of used books, and they are all inventoried so I can just look online, or in this case ask a clerk when I get there if they have what I want. Of the ones I sought, they only had used copies of Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and The Monk by Matthew Lewis, which was fine because I read hella slow anyway.

I knew the bookstore was on Fort St but I wasn’t sure which block, and I wound up parking several blocks up. I was annoyed with myself at first but I ended up really enjoying the walk there — there are so many cool little stores in Vic that I think if I lived there, I would like to dedicate a few hours each Sunday to exploring a different block. I want to browse through a lot of the stores, try the different restaurants, bring home a few things from the various bakeries. It would be a fun way to become well-acquainted with the city.

I tried to meet up with Dane to borrow some guitar gear from him but he was busy. That’s ok, I have a few other errands I will need to head back to Vic for next week so I will try to meet up with him then.

With meeting Dane off, I headed out to Gordon Head to meet with a guy who responded to an ad I put up regarding ugly 70’s shit that I want. The guy sounded like a weird old man in his emails and on the phone, and he was. He was a low-level hoarder, with several old Mercedes in his driveway, along with an assortment of undesirable old and not so old junk. He mentioned he had some old toaster ovens so of course that got me excited, but they weren’t old at all — they were maybe 10 years old and hideous (in the wrong way), and stored underneath a rotting old VW van in the carport. He took me inside and it appeared his adult daughter was having some kind of zoom or skype meeting on her computer in the kitchen, and glanced blankly at me a few times. Unfriendly vibe, didn’t like her. The old guy showed me a few other things he was offering up, most of it sucked. There were a few wine glasses made with coloured glass that were neat but we already have some neat wine glasses so I didn’t bother with them. Eventually I bought a large southwest-style plant pot and its cast iron stand from the guy. He didn’t want to part with it, said it had sentimental value (like all the rest of his piles of junk, I’m sure), but I he eventually caved to my inquiring. He wanted $50 for it, I had been thinking $20 (which is still way too high for a tightwad like me), I offered $40, he thought long and hard about it, and finally took it. I’m not sure why I was willing to pay so much more than I wanted to. It’s not like I felt sorry for the guy. Maybe after the tires and the books, I was in a shopping frenzy, unable to control my impulses. Nah, I think I just got it because Jenn especially likes southwest stuff and I think she’ll dig it.

Anyway, while driving around Vic I noticed a ton of really cool houses and buildings. There is some really sweet old architecture all around the city, and from a wide range of decades. I love it. Some places are abandoned, some are updated, some are alive but neglected, and it’s all cool to me. That’s another thing I’d like to do in Victoria more, just walk around and admire the neat houses.

warmth and kindness in the age of the coronavirus

Another day, another coronavirus blog post. I’ve noticed something weird since covid-19 started blowing up, and since all the social distancing and whatnot went into effect.

On one hand, people are stressed to the tits, losing their minds and being more rude and selfish than ever. There’s the most obvious example of people panic buying shit, but some people have also been hoarding supplies and then reselling them at inflated prices, and Jenn has seen panicky people driving like maniacs and running into parked cars, only to speed off without leaving a note or anything, as if they need to make a break for it to escape the coming plague. That’s fucked.

But on the other hand, I’ve noticed a lot of folks being warmer and friendlier than usual. In particular, there’s a lot more smiling and waving between strangers going on. I think it’s because we are scared of this strange, new, ominous situation, and we are having to avoid other people for the most part. These things are making us yearn for connections and comfort that we normally don’t require and can get by without.

I don’t like the negative response but I love the positive response. It’s nice to see people being more open and neighbourly. I know that as a misanthrope and a nihilist, I shouldn’t say that but hey, maybe I wouldn’t be those things if people were kinder more often. Maybe I’d change my tune if humanity gave me a reason to. I guess you could say I’m always hopeful that humans will get it together, I just don’t believe they ever actually will.

Still, it’s nice to see people be nice to each other, even if it’s a token and fleeting gesture.

Yes, more subtly evil clowns waving, definitely.

Another post on home heating, just what everyone is clamouring for (and I decide to sell my old metal shirts, I think)

I’ve been bucking up, splitting, and stacking firewood in my free time over the last few weeks and I’ve got a lot of mixed feelings about it.

First off, I’ve decided that this is the last year that I collect 4-5 cords of firewood to heat the house. I’ve been doing it for over 10 years now and while there are benefits to it, I’m just fucking sick of the negative aspects. I hurt my back getting firewood a few months ago and it has taken a long time to get back to normal, and I think that’s the single biggest inspiration for me to quit doing it. Life is just too dang short to risk further injuries doing this sort of thing.

But also, I hate how filthy burning firewood is on an environmental level. I feel guilty about all the smoke we’ve poured out of our chimney for these last 10 years, regardless of the wood being dry and seasoned and us being diligent to keep the fire within the correct temperature range — “burning cleanly” with a wood stove is still an ass-load of emissions.

It’s also filthy on a household level. The dust in our house in the winter is absurd because every time you open the door to the wood stove, so much airborne ash comes out. And mountains of the stuff come out when I clean the thing every month or so, too.

And I’m sick of having to monitor the fire all day, every day throughout the winter. You have to make sure the wood you’re burning is seasoned, you have to be aware of what kind of wood you’re burning since certain woods burn hotter and some burn faster, you have to consider the size of the piece of wood, you have to constantly adjust the choke…if you are trying to burn cleanly, it’s non-stop work.

I don’t like trying to track wood down each year, either. Paying for it sucks and I’ve been lucky enough to avoid that throughout my firewood tenure but finding wood and then processing it myself takes a lot of time and work. I don’t mind some parts of the processing — splitting in particular is actually pretty satisfying, stacking is ok — but I don’t have any love for the rest of it.

About the only thing I will miss is the physical exercise. As tedious as countless hours of bucking, splitting, and stacking can be, it’s a really good full body workout. That’s good. Oh, and I will miss the satisfaction of seeing several huge stacks of firewood in the yard. Looking at those has always made me proud of the work I’ve done, and secure in the knowledge that we will be heating our house without paying through the nose for electric heat.

Anyway, all of that is coming to an end because we’re finally going to get a heat pump installed in our house, and I am way more excited for it than I would have ever guessed I would be. The idea of having constant, reliable, clean heat that we only need to flick a switch for is a dream come true for me at this point. And having air conditioning in the summer months will be a nice bonus too.

This is what it’s like to fully become an adult. I should go out and buy a pair of khaki pants and a blue shirt to tuck into those babies. Then my transformation will be complete.

How did this perfectly unremarkable combo become the uniform for the world’s blandest people? I guess I just answered my own question.

Oh, a few days ago I went through my closet and put a bunch more of my old heavy metal t-shirts in the basement. Since making an effort to dress like more of an adult (albeit not the blue shirt and khaki pants kind of adult I just mentioned), I have been wearing those metal shirts less and less so they have done nothing but take up space in the closet. But I went through a phase many years ago though where I threw out or otherwise destroyed some old metal shirts and I have regretted it ever since so despite the temptation to get rid of the shirts now, I will not be doing so. At least, not yet. Maybe in the future. I am confident I could sell most of them for some decent money and get them into the hands of people who will wear them with pride but what if, two or three years from now, I decide I want to revisit the metal look? It seems highly unlikely but it happened once before so it could happen again.

Then again, when I look back on my initial metal-style era (throughout my teens) and second metal-style era (from my late 20’s to my mid-30’s), I never find myself saying, “that was a good look.” I don’t think it’s very likely I will ever have another reason to wear those shirts. Maybe when I’m a 65+ senior? It might be kind of funny then. Seems unlikely though. Fuck, maybe I should just sell them now. Cripes, I hate hanging on to things. Ok I think I’m going to sell them.

disco ex machina

I just got back from a short trip to Victoria. It sucked.

The address I had for my doctor’s appointment was incorrect and I couldn’t find the place. I called the office to get it sorted out but they didn’t answer my first few calls. I was walking around hurriedly in the blazing sun, looking for an address that didn’t exist, sweating from the heat and being nervous about missing my appointment.

I finally got to the office a few minutes late but it didn’t matter because the doctor was 30 minutes late himself, of course. What makes doctors think their time is more valuable than anyone else’s? Self-centered pricks. If I was consistently late for my job, I’d be fired. And if I was 30 minutes late for my appointment with him, he’d tell me I’m shit out of luck. I don’t like that power imbalance.

The music in the office was dreadful, insipid modern adult pop shit — the sort of stuff that is supposed to be so perfectly vanilla that it’s inoffensive to everyone, yet I find it more offensive that virtually anything else on the radio.

Once his majesty finally deemed me worthy of a few minutes of his time, I was brought into his squalid personal office. I’m not kidding when I say the guy is a fucking slob, bordering on being a hoarder. There were giant plants in pots stacked on top of dirty old water-stained cardboard boxes. Boxes and papers stacked all around the room. Pictures to be hung that were leaned against a wall at some point years ago, then had boxes stacked in front of them, and were forgotten about. His desk was a pigsty. The whole room was a disaster. I wondered what his house must look like.

The doc asked me questions then cut me off mid-sentence at least 10 times. I answered the same question multiple times, and he still didn’t get my story. It was like he was on autopilot, going through a protocol without being present or engaged.

In the middle of our appointment, his receptionist opened the door and put a mug of coffee and a piece of a chocolate bar on his desk. A few moments later he absentmindedly said, “oh, good,” as if he only noticed them after she had put them down and started walking away. He then nibbled and sipped at them throughout the rest of the appointment. That whole thing really drove me crazy. Can you imagine if bringing coffee and broken off pieces of a chocolate bar to an arrogant, filthy man were part of your daily work duties? I was horrified for her, disgusted by him, and embarrassed that I had to witness any of it.

I was glad to be done with the visit to the doc, and proceeded on to my second errand in Victoria. But I was hamstrung by Victoria’s roads which allow virtually zero left turns from dawn to dusk, and had to drive far out of my way and sit at many red lights in the scorching sun before I finally got to my stop.

Unfortunately, there was no parking anywhere close to my destination, which meant I would have to lug a 50-lb vintage stereo down the street.

When I tried to pull into a parking lot, a clean cut young man who looked to be about 18 walked in front of my car. It was fine, I waited for him, but for some reason he was staring at me, and we locked eyes for a second. He had a “I’m pissed off and tough” look on his face but not knowing the gent, I thought he might just look like that all the time so I looked away. But he kept glaring hard at me and it became obvious that he didn’t like me. It was very weird. I smiled at the situation. He kept glaring. I think I laughed, at which he turned his whole body to face me in a “come at me, bro” manner as he continued walking away. He was out of my way by this time so I moved on with my life and promptly got myself stuck going the wrong way in a tiny one-way parking lot with no spots available.

I eventually found a parking spot on the street and humped the giant stereo for a block to the repair shop.

You can imagine I was in a foul fucking mood by the time I left Victoria. I stayed in that mood while I fought traffic all the way out of town. But at some point on the drive home, Sylvester’s Dance (Disco Heat) came on the stereo and what do you know, I suddenly felt much better.

Jenn and I recently listened to a podcast on the disco phenomenon and it mentioned that a common complaint against disco in its heyday was that it was an opiate of the masses — whereas rock music of the 60’s had been a way of addressing political events of the time, disco music was just about dancing and fucking. It was a distraction from dealing with unpleasant yet important things. I understand that complaint, but also think there should be a balance in art between being topical and mindlessly fun. All things in moderation, I say. And today was a good example of how beneficial some mindless disco music can be. My diaper of a day suddenly wasn’t so bad after all, and I think there is great value in something that can improve my mood like that.

That said, I’m not going back to Victoria any fucking time soon.

All those emails with Bill, lost forever.

I think I’ve been emailing with Bill on at least a semi-regular basis for close to 20 years. Often we email multiple times a day, sometimes we miss days, but it’s generally been pretty consistent. I really like that because besides just having a good buddy to yak with all the time, it’s nice for us to have these emails as records of various events in our lives — if I ever wonder, “when did I first go to Sointula?” or if Bill can’t remember when he started his new job, we can just search our emails for key terms and bingo, there it is in the dialogue we’ve kept up over the years. It’s sort of like a diary or a photo album.

I was telling dear ol’ Tom about this at a party a few days ago and he was shocked that Bill and I have been emailing that often for that long. It got me thinking about exactly when we started emailing, so today I checked my primary email address for the oldest email from Bill I could find. It was only from 2007. “Peanuts!” I exclaimed. I logged into my old email account (which I’ve had since ’97 or ’98) and checked it, excited to see what we were jawing about way back when.

Unfortunately, the earliest email from Bill I had in that account was also from 2007. I was quite upset, and incredulous — what happened to all those older emails? Then I remembered: long ago and for no particular reason, I used to be fastidious about deleting emails that were more than a year old. You see, my father is a hoarder so I grew up hating clutter and am a fairly tidy person because of it. Unfortunately, this is one of those instances where I am too tidy for my own good, and threw away years of history that I didn’t care about at the time but now wish I still had. It’s a bloody shame, and I have only myself to blame.

So, 12 years is all I can confirm for my pen pal relationship with Bill, Tom. Sorry to let you down.

I might have to take up smoking.

I’ve been on a kick of replacing lots of our household stuff with neat vintage and retro shit so I’ve been spending lots of time at thrift stores. I’ve noticed that there is a section at the local Salvation Army for ashtrays, and virtually every one I’ve seen there is hideous in the most exquisite and retro way. Like this

And this

And this

I guess there is a glut of these things because the 70’s was the golden age of both loud, gawdy housewares and ubiquitous smoking. It’s amazing.

But it’s also a fucking shame because I already have a retro ashtray that has some sentimental value to it, I don’t have multiple residences I need to furnish with this kind of junk, I don’t smoke, and not many of my friends smoke. I can’t justify collecting these things but man, I wish I could.

I suppose I could buy all the ashtrays I like and then rotate them. Have one for each month, something like that. That might be fun. But it seems like a dangerous game of toying with a hoarder-like obsession, and I’m terrified of that. My dad is a level 100 hoarder so I’m very familiar with that world, and I don’t want to fuck with it.

But damn, I love those ashtrays.

Hmmmm.

i’ve had some good craigslist experiences lately

In the last few weeks, I’ve really kicked my craigslist vintage shopping into high gear. I’ve been checking a few craigslist-like sites for vintage shit on an almost daily basis, and the results have actually been great. I’ve scored some really neat things at good prices but what is most noteworthy is that a few of the recent craigslist interactions have not been total fuck-arounds. Astounding, I know, but true.

First, several weeks ago I contacted a guy about some beautiful old vintage tins he had for sale. There were very reasonably priced, and the seller ended up being a very interesting guy who was knowledgeable about a great many things, and his house was absolutely full of beautiful old stuff. Virtually everything I looked at was worthy of consideration. He was happy to show me a bunch of his neat stuff, and we commiserated about the trials and tribulations of dealing with craigslist dickheads. He hated them at least as much as me, possibly even more, so that was funny. I probably spent close to an hour just BS-ing with the guy. What a welcomed change that was from the usual craigslist freaks one must contend with.

Something this first guy said really resonated with me. He said he had accumulated tons of this vintage stuff throughout his life, and now as he is getting older, he decided it is better to sell it to ensure it gets into the hands of new owners who will hopefully cherish it as much as he did, rather than hold onto the stuff until he dies. Because when you die, he pointed out, your family doesn’t care about your vintage cookie tins. They’ve got a whole damn house to clean out before they can head back to Vancouver so they’re going to toss everything that is not obviously valuable in the trash. To someone like himself who cares about those items, that’s a sad waste of beautiful things. So, this fellow reasoned, he’d rather sell it now, make someone happy, and use the money to do something fun like take a trip at the end of the year. I loved it. Sage wisdom.

Second good recent experience: I posted something for free on the local used stuff site about a week ago and instead of the usual “gimme gimme gimme” responses that never follow up, someone came and picked the items up when they said they would. Wow!! They even emailed me afterward to thank me and tell me how sweet our dog was. That was lovely of them.

And third, today I had an experience similar to the first one I just mentioned. I bought a bunch of vintage xmas decorations from an older couple and spent about 30 minutes with them, chatting about the family history of the decorations I was buying — how and where they hung them, who in the family liked them most, how carefully her mother put them away each year, etc. They also took the time to show me how to set them up, which I really appreciated since some of these things were like a Rubick’s Cube. I ended up telling the old couple what the first guy had told me about getting these things into the hands of people that appreciate them instead of leaving it behind to get thrown out, and the old couple agreed wholeheartedly. So it’s been nice to connect with a few people through craigslist that I have some things in common with.

However, it’s not all roses, of course. The items I gave away for free to the grateful person were two partially used natural deodorants — it was sort of an experiment to see if anyone would actually want used deodorant (one time, Bill gave away a half-used bag of kitty litter and I always found that gross and wanted to outdo him) or if the ad would get pulled over breaking some kind of ‘no used personal hygiene items’ rule. So that was kind of interesting.

Don’t put anything past a hippie, I learned.

And I did have a bad experience with some clown who had a cool old vintage vase that I wanted but they were terribly inconsistent about replying to emails, took multiple emails to give me the info I asked for right at the start, and then never answered their phone or responded to text messages. At one point in the middle of our two-week long back-and-forth, they apologized for their tardy reply and said they had been dealing with a family emergency for the last several days. I’ve been pretty clear on how I feel about the old ‘family emergency’ bullshit craigslist excuse so I pretty much gave up on the stupid fucks (shout out to golda for that little gem) after that.

THE FUCKING VASE I WANT. JUST GIVE IT TO ME, PLEASE.

But shit, you can’t win ’em all, and with three good recent craigslist experiences, I really can’t complain. I’ll save that until next week when things go right back down the shitter in the usual craigslist fashion.

an urge to fix shit that ain’t broken, aka making life more difficult for no good reason

jenn’s got a little old civic that she loves. it’s a real beater. we got it for $1000 several years ago. it’s rusty, dented, leaks when it rains, stinks like wet dog, has high kms, etc. but it drives great and gets better mileage than most new cars (it averages 17 km/L, aka 5.8 L/100 km, aka 40 mpg), and she loves driving it. she says it’s like driving a go kart.

so we have absolutely no reason to replace it. and yet i can’t stop myself from perpetually surfing craigslist and looking for possible replacements. there’s an old nissan sentra wagon nearby with low kms that looks well taken care of that i could probably get for $1000.

there’s something fantastic about ugly 80s station wagons that i just can’t quite put my finger on.

why do i do this? why do i spend any time at all looking at and considering stuff like this when the shit we have is just fine? i wonder if it’s car culture, or if it’s consumer culture, or maybe human nature, or maybe i’m a hoarder at heart. i don’t know. but i fucking hate it. i mean, don’t get me wrong, i love looking at 80s station wagons, but i hate the mental turmoil that goes along with considering a swap like this. “what if something goes wrong with it soon after buying it, it looks so cool and it would be nice to have more space in her car, the civic has been so reliable so far though and doesn’t need anything,” blah blah blah. i wish i could just stop looking at these things.

my brain is my own worst enemy. i should get it removed.

unlikely companions

i just had two horrible nightmares.

in the first one, i dreamed that a friend had bought an old house that looked really cool but gave me the worst feeling when i approached it. it’s the same as most of my nightmares, where nothing bad actually happens and instead, i just sense a powerful, negative, evil force. in this case, the house and property were basically haunted by some malevolent force. i went inside the house so my friend could show me around and i was absolutely terrified, like i was putting my spirit in great peril. i can’t remember how but i managed to make an excuse and get out of the house ASAP and felt better once well away from the property but woke up feeling the same terror i did in the dream house. also, i could hear jenn’s cell phone charger making that weird, super high-pitched whine that is barely audible but incredibly annoying, and i wasn’t sure if it was real or i was losing my mind. i unplugged the charger and it stopped so i hadn’t lost my mind. yet.

i eventually went back to sleep and this time i dreamed of an entire landscape that wasn’t quite possessed by evil but had been ravaged by it. everything was grey, sickly, deformed. the horizon was a mix of dead, flat grey and apocalyptic reds, both dead and dying, and the light from it gave everything an awful haze. it was like during the forest fires last summer when smoke choked out the sunlight and gave the world an orange hue. all the houses and fences were dilapidated, falling apart. it looked like all life was slowly eroding. i dreamed i was at my dad’s property and for some unexplained reason, he had been looking after my chickens. i checked on them and they looked like survivors or children of some nuclear fallout. some of them now had extra legs or heads. their plumage was now dull, what was left anyway. they were emaciated. their eyes were cloudy. i was disgusted by them. but their eggs were even worse. my dad had stopped collecting them (probably because they were obviously no good to eat), and the hutch that they laid in was overflowing with pale, translucent, soft-shelled eggs. through said “shells” i could see some had 3, 4, 5 yokes in them. some had dead chicks with multiple heads. i wanted to both barf and die from this cornucopia of sickness, this abundance of rot my hens had birthed in the hutch.

i went inside the house to ask my dad when the hens had become so sick and fucked up but he acted like nothing was up. him and my step mom had just hired a therapist to help them with their hoarding problem, and inside their house actually looked quite nice and organized for the first time ever. i was like, “better late than never i guess, but it looks like we will all be dead very soon anyway.” i don’t remember him or my step mom reacting at all, and that was it. i woke up feeling disturbed, more concerned about the future than usual. sickened. and now those feelings are still lingering like dream-feelings sometimes do.

our brains sure are weird. i wonder what brought all that on. i think the first one comes from a conversation i just had with spencer about him and julia considering moving to vic, and i think the second dream was inspired by the gross, shell-less slime eggs that plucky (one of my dear hens) has been laying for a few months now. i’m hoping it’s just a phase and she starts laying normal eggs again soon but it may never happen. it’s not a big deal because i like her too much to get rid of her but i sure wish she was healthy and able to contribute like the others.

life. dreams. weird.