Strange dreams. I dreamt that my father was alive and my mother was kidnapped. That I had a flight to get to at 5.30a from California, so I took a nap and got up at 2a, and Mom was gone without a trace. It was very strange. So Daddy drove me to the airport, and we discussed that Mom wouldn't have just left, that somebody must have taken her.

Then I dreamt that these people in a horse-drawn carriage stole the geese from the backyard, and they were going to steal the geese from the front of the house but got scared off because they saw people there waiting to catch them (nobody was acting casual enough), so they galloped off. I grabbed a bicycle and chased them by following the horseshit.

I figured that they had gotten on a ferry, so I did too, but when I got to the other side, everyone used horses and buggies, so there was horseshit everywhere. I was trying to call people on my cell, but everyone I called ended up being different from the number I dialed. I finally called information (who recognized my voice immediately and said, "Don't you have a 5.30a flight?") to try to find where the farm was, but I didn't know what town I was in.

So my dreams were all about losing things and looking for them and not giving up. Sounds like my life recently.

And that dovetails right into something else.

About three months ago, I lost the ring that Omar gave me, I mentioned it in this entry, but I had lost it about a week beforehand. What had happened was that I took off my clothes and I piled them on the bed with my glasses and my ring and my necklace on the top. Then I took a shower. And when I came back, the ring was gone.

I knew that it was in my room somewhere, but my Christ, where? I looked under the bed, I looked all around the bed, I absolutely could not find it. I was really upset, my hand felt wrong without it.

So I looked and looked, but never found, and last week I decided that I really wanted to clean up this damn apartment and I really wanted to clean up my room and maybe I'd find my ring along the way. So every day I've done something, I've gotten rid of four giant bags of garbage, and no, it doesn't look any cleaner yet.

And yesterday I took out the shelf that fell on me. That I didn't realize before finding that link that it fell on me three years ago practically to the day. So yeah, that shelf has been in my bed for three years. In the corner by the wall, not taking up room, and it's a big bed, but still, it didn't make changing the sheets all that easy.

So last night, out it went, I changed the sheets, and I started cleaning around the floor on the edges of my bed (did that make sense?), and as I was reaching under the head of my bed, I turned my head and saw it on a pile of magazines just outside of the doorway to my room, but it was masked by more magazines, so it was only visible from the side like that.

And I burst into tears. I called Omar and left this almost unintelligible message, then Tracing called me and I started babbling about the ring. "That's a really good omen!" "I know, I was just thinking that!" "I need a good omen, I've decided that it's a good omen for me, too." "It's such a good omen, that everyone can have it!"

So there you have it, if you need a good omen, my finding Omar's ring is the greatest omen ever. And yes, I'm going to carry on cleaning my room until I'm done, I won't stop just because I found what I was looking for.

I feel like Sweeney Todd, "At last my arm is complete again!"

Got an email the other day that said, "wow, you've gone almost nothing good to say about anyone on your website. might want to look into that." I'm assuming that she meant "got".

My first reaction was wow, really? I know that I've gone through some tough times recently, but I didn't realize that I was coming off as, as the email was titled, "bitter bitter". And so I looked at my most recent entries, and literally all I see is "I love Omar, I love my friends, I love my pit crew, everyone in my life is so great and so supportive," and I figured that one sees what one wants to see.

I am famously Pollyanna-ish most of the time (a rather sarcastic Pollyanna, but a ridiculous optimist nonetheless), and when I look at other people's journals, that's what I see, and I guess that bitter people see bitterness where there is none and hopeful people see possibilities. And I can't say "where there is none", because there is always possibility. Because hope is the anchor.

On the other hand, I'm getting a ton of mail these days talking about how open I'm being and how I just let everything out and am so honest, and I look at my journal and go, "What? I am?"

I don't think I'm any different than I have always been, maybe I just have more shit happening in my dramatic little life this year so that it looks like I'm saying all this stuff that most people would hold back. But I guess since I've been doing this for so long, I don't know how to do anything else.

So what I'm saying is, I guess if I don't know I'm brave and I don't know I'm bitter, I don't know much about myself!

For the past five or six days, my backyard has been Cardinal Central.

The other day I heard this loud twittering and cheeping for a really long time, and I finally glanced up and saw a bright red bird eating the sunflowers and twittering away. It was a cardinal! I have never seen a cardinal before.

Then I got up and went to the window and saw that it was actually a cardinal family! There was a red male and the grey female and a smaller grey one with a red crest, clearly the baby. I took a hundred pictures, trying to get a shot of the parents feeding each other, but I never could get it.

I watched until they flew away, but they have come back every day since. All I have to do is listen for the loud, joyous chirping. "TWEET!" they say, "TWEET TWEET!" It's the greatest.

Today's horoscope:
The honorable course of action takes you along a difficult route. You find pride in doing what others can't. You'll know a comfortable style from the moment that you try it on.

One year ago today:
That's one thing that I love about knitting, you can just do it without really thinking, then you look up and suddenly you have accomplished so much!

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Last Updated Wed 3 September 16:39:09 2003