I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie, sleepless

For the love of Oprah it was like Grand Central last night with all the noise and shocking dreaming I was doing. I didn't sleep a wink!

I hadn't even gone to bed yet, when at 11ish, a white van with two adults (which is still being debated) and some kids, came down the street SCREAMING! No...reallly....it was the fight to end all fights on our sleepy lil street. And god forbid they might push on the gas pedal and get off our block. It was like some slow moving screaming parade!

"Don't you lay a hand on me!"

::::smack smack::::::

"Shut up bitch

::::smack smack:::::

"Don't you call me bitch when I gots my keedz in the car!"

::::smack smack smack::::

I finally shouted, in my 'man voice', "Shut the hell up!" I stripped my vocal cords cuz I figured if I didn't put a lil mustard on the volume they would never hear me over their own screaming.

In the midst of dreams where men were pulling me from the car to attack me, which caused me to bolt upright from my stuttering slumber, and dreams of my childhood dog having seizures, I heard a noise.

clang clang clang!

It worked into my dream at first. I wasn't even sure it was really happening. I thought a metal bell was sounding somewhere in my misty dream world. Then Roxy 'woofed' and I shook off the dream cobwebs holding my consciousness down.

clang clang clang clang clang!

I, of course, had to get up and look. There was a yellow security light rotating through the neighborhood to the right. I would have to go to the office to see anything. 2:34am as I passed the clock on the other side of the bed.

Without my glasses and sleep still fuzzy in my vision, I made out a truck of some kind. Two people stood on the parkway by the curb with a long pole in the ground. They were sticking it with a hammer.

Then I saw my next door neighbor come on her porch. "You can smell it over here!" One of the guys that was hammering walked over and sniffed the side of the house. "That's a release valve. You would smell something there."

I some how put together that the neighbors had a gas leak and they were trying to turn off the shutoff valve at the street. They just replaced our city gas line with some "high powered" one. Now I'm worried ours is going to have problems!

Great.....I suppose I won't get any sleep worrying over that now.

Hopped up on psychic goofballs

I was reading a book, by Deepak, about how there are no coincidences. That everything happens due to a combined consciousness that we all share. But somewhere we forget we are connected.

Lately I've been "tuned in". Things that I would just assume were coincidences, I'm looking at a lil more closely.

Last week I saw a license plate frame that said "Tucker Auto" on it. It just stood out for some reason. Then in the paper was a letter to the editor relating how the Tucker car played some importance locally. I didn't relate the two.

Then my sales rep brought me art to do for Tucker Automotive. Both the other things clicked in my head, like a reminder, "See...told you this was coming."

Last night I was dreaming, and I'll keep it short cuz there is nothing more boring then hearing about someone elses dreams, that I was on the hood of a semi truck (lots of car images lately). Over the radio I heard that a president had died...or someone of political importance. I woke to find out that Senator Kennedy had died.

I feel like I'm plugged in lately. Not sure if that can happen. Or if maybe I'm just becoming more aware of my "talents". But it's kind of shocking to dream something and then have it happen.

So much for spontaneity.

"Is this room....actually stretching?"

I can NOT express how excited I got when my favorite artist, Shag, got commissioned to do the art for the Haunted Mansion's 40th Anniversary at Disneyland.

Now...if you know anything about me, you know my favorites include: Halloween, Disneyland & Shag. A lot of pee came out on that! You couldn't hold me down with that news. I was "beyond"! Out of my human shell and over the moon.

Then I found the preview of the items that would be released for sale. I need the win the lotto so I can own each and every one of them.

I mean....they made an URN Cookie Jar people!! That's freakin' AWESOME!!! Who wouldn't want that? It's the ultimate Halloween item: Shag's rendition of the hitchhiking ghosts on a urn that's a blessed, fucking cookie jar?

I think more pee just came out!

The list goes on...all your(my) favorite moments in the haunted mansion ride are done by Shag as well. They released the items on Aug 9th at Disneyland and Shag (Josh Angle) was there to sign stuff. If only I wasn't 3000 miles away, that would have been a :::cough cough::: sick day fer shure!

The irony of my fascination with the Haunted Mansion is that as a kid, we would go on "Telephone Employee night", an annual event put on by my dad's union, and it would be a fight to try and get me INTO the Haunted Mansion.

As a tyke it scared the bejesus out of me and I swore to never go back into it. So my poor mother was forced to relive Small World for YEARS do to my phobia. (which included fits of crying and stomping of feet)

Then one year, on a girl scout trip to the Magical Kingdom, the troop was headed to the Hunted Mansion. Well I couldn't be the only pusscake that won't go on the ride!! So I toughed it out. Maybe it was my age, maybe it was just that it wasn't as scary as my childhood nightmares had remembered....but now I LOVED IT!!!

At about that age I became fascinated with home haunts during Halloween as well. And so my favorite holiday was born!

So it's no mystery when I say one of my favorite movies is Nightmare Before Christmas! It's an equal thrill to go to Disneyland at xmas time and see Jack and the gang as they live in the Haunted Mansion for the holidays.

I'm saving all my allowance, just in case, they have some left over items from the anniversary celebration. I wonder if I can carry on an urn on the plane?

It's so hard to find good help these days.

So my honey had a kidney operation and it turned into a weeks worth of "R&R" in ye ol' hospital, rather than the two days, promised by her surgeon.


It was scary. To see your soulmate in so much pain. And there ain't a goddamn thing you can do about it!


I'm a "trouble shooter". I see a problem and I get on it. I figure it out. If there is an issue with a person, I cut right to the chase and ask what the deal is. Shoot from the hip. It's like my super power.


Hospitals are my kryptonite.


All I could do is hold her hand and try to hold back tears that burned to leak out everytime I saw her vision go fuzzy from the pain and she would check out. It could have been the horse size shots of morphine they gave her, or it was just easier to go to her happy place as the pain seared through her abdomen. But to look into her eyeS, so filled with pain and suffering. It killed me.


I couldn't fix it.

I swear by Apollo, the healer

Hospitals are funny things. Not unlike an ant hill of activity: Nurses and doctors up and down the halls. Patients, shuffling with their chrome rolling posts, decorated with plastic bags of various liquids, swaying in time with their efforts to put one foot in front of another. Digital boxes hanging by the bed side, beeping like droids, with pressures, dosages, and heart beats.

Medical staff is reduced to uniforms of linen type pants with ties instead of buttons. Some try to bring a lil character to their drab uniforms with decorative scrubs: butterflies and smiley faces.

"Starting January 1st, we have to all be in dark blue," said one nurse. "We hate it."

It seems for a job where you clean up body fluids, hear the moaning and pain of so many people day in and day out, you'd give them the 'happy' scrubs.

You're put into a room, with no personality, but all the needs for functionality. Wall plugs galore, oxygen spigots in the walls, sinks and sanitizers. Cabinets full of patches and tape. Even the restroom is functional for wheelchair or walker access, hand rails and emergency rip cords, if assistance is needed.

Sometimes you get a roommate and the only separation is a curtain. Which the staff pulls dutifully almost like they believe it will actually create privacy. While your room mate can't see your nether-bits, the nurse will expose them for everyone to see on your side of the room.

"I'll have to expose your chest."

"Oh...no one tied your back side up."

"I just need to look under your gown."

The old saying that no one sleeps at the hospital is true. You no sooner close your eyes than someone wakes you up to check on you, poke you, roll you over or feed you food that's not fit for human consumption.

And what about HIPA? Does that not pertain to people in the hospital? Your room mate knows your business. Your nurses are talking so loud it sounds like shouting about your 'issues'. All the world knows what's going on with you.

Hospitals, built for healing people, appear to be the worst place for someone to heal!

Privacy my ass...literlly...it's hanging out my gown!