Not To Bore; But On Dreams There's More

Another restless night and another series of off-the-wall dreams. I'll get off this kick soon, I promise. If I get a good night's sleep, I usually don't remember what I was dreaming.

But, as I said, another restless night. I first awoke about midnight and watched the clock step through the minutes until somewhere around two twenty I either went to sleep or lost interest. Anyway, I spent most of that time puzzling over the dream I had earlier.

It was the work environment at a company I had worked at for twelve or more years. I was having some computers moved and others replaced in a "hand-me-down" fashion. There was a guy from maintenance and a rep from the "Information Management" (IM) department with me.

As we left my office area, my administrative assistant was giving remodeling orders to someone and they were arguing that it would cost too much. I remember thinking that I would have to get involved once I got the computer changes complete.

I won't go through all of the steps that I remember our going through, in terms of relocating machines on several floors, but two occurrences were strong in my mind when I awoke. One was the running debate I was having the IM troop who was very unhappy that I was reallocating all the good machines to my personnel and only letting the junkers go back to IM. I was getting irritated with him as the machines had been purchased out of my budget and IM had been trying to take the new ones all along.

The other strong memory was from an maintenance admin that handed me a requisition to sign that would have charged me eight hours for the two hours of labor the maintenance guy would spend on my project. I told her that I wouldn't sign anything like that, but it wasn't her problem nor would I debate with her over it. I told her I could see adding a couple of hours for the overhead of getting equipment and going to location, but that six hours was totally unreasonable. I also told her I would go to the department head and argue it out with him. The admin was happy with that saying the department head was better now and would be up for the discussion. Somehow I knew the department head had been very sick.

Here's where things start getting fuzzy because it was about here I woke up. I do remember walking the halls toward where I thought the department heads' office and someone telling me that it was a different person and in a different place. Then I happened to glance down and realized I was wearing only a T-Shirt and it was wearing spills from my supper the night before. I knew I had to go home and dress properly before anyone saw me and ....... I was awake.

As I said, I laid there watching the LED clock measure the minutes until sometime after two. Then I apparently went to sleep and had a second dream that is a bit vague to me now. I do know that we, my wife and I, were organizing things for our three boys. I can't tell now whether it was memorabilia or materials for school or jobs. We were having to go back and reopen the containers to add stuff or to move stuff from one boy's container to another. Then the containers became picture albums and I realized that we couldn't change them.

Then I was staring at the clock again and it was three ten. I continued to watch the digits come and go until near four AM when I must have dropped off to sleep again. Another dream, another scenario that was completely different than the previous ones.

In this dream, I was following my youngest son, driving a Jeep - which could have been his car - while he and his wife or girlfriend, I wasn't clear on which, were driving a vehicle ahead of me. He entered into a spiral ramp similar to a road going up to a mountain top. At the base, the road was "snaky" with curves but as you got closer to the top, the curves became sharper to where they were almost spikes going out and back. I remember hearing him comment to his wife/passenger "Wow, these are really tight turns" when he was the loop directly above me.

I remember thinking that with the wide track of the Jeep I would not be able to navigate as far up as could he when I realized I was looking at the clock again and it was seven twenty AM.

End of sleep and end of story.

I have heard that there are those who can remember all their dreams. My youngest son claims to be able to as he has made a practice of jotting down his dreams each morning. He anticipates using the material in a book some day. He has published two books, one self published and the other published by a publishing company. He hopes to become a full time writer and gathers information from diverse areas.

I suspect that if one could get a full capture of their dreams, night after night, and if each dream would be complete in a plot, it could make for a fascinating book. However, I know in my case that most dreams "transition" such that I may start out in a business environment but segue into some completely different venue. I can remember pieces of dreams where I did just that.

Once I was going down to the basement to play a game of some kind but when I got into the basement, it was a conference room and I was immediately involved in a meeting there. It's been so long ago that I don't remember what we were meeting about, whether the basement was supposed to be my house or any other particulars. I just remember wondering after I had awaken about the shift of scenes and format in the dream.

Well, this subject has been thoroughly beaten with a stick, so let's let it die a peaceful death.

Bye.

Sometimes A Dream Can Be A Scream

A former classmate and e-mail friend of mine and I have had several conversations regarding dreams. He is inclined to be a dream interpreter while I tend to believe dreams are the sub-conscious "cleaning house", i.e. working out stresses and kinks that we all accumulate each day.

Anyway, what brought this narrative on was a dream I had last night. I have mentioned in earlier blogs that I am a councilman in a small city in the Midwest. In this dream, I had agreed to take on some project that I don't remember now, but didn't seem to be a biggy. I started to leave the house to go to the garage to get my car. We have a separate garage that sets back from the house about forty feet.

As I stepped out of the side door to the driveway, I saw a temporary two stall garage had been erected in my back yard and the were two cars in it, facing toward the driveway. As I stepped out of the house, one of the them was running and the driver rev'd the engine as though he was ready to run me down. I stayed on the side stoop and asked them what they were up to. There appeared to be four young people in the yard. I told them I was going to call the police.

I went back into the house and opened the phone book trying to find a specific name. The name of a former Police Chief in our city. My wife and one of our sons were in the kitchen area with me - our boys have grown and left the house more than a decade ago.

I was unable to find the name I was looking for (yes I know, one cannot read when one is dreaming. I read that somewhere and have been trying to read in my dreams since. I now can occasionally recognize a word or believe I have read the word). I realized, or my wife said, that the name I was looking for was no longer the police chief. It was a classical "duh" moment even though it was in a dream. I started across the room to get the phone, knowing the phone number for City Hall that I needed to dial.

Our son reported that those in the back yard were disassembling the temporary garage but they were also in our garage taking my tools and anything loose. Either I suggested or my wife thought that I had told our son to go out and watch them as she objected strenuously to him going out. I concurred and our son stayed in the kitchen.

I got to the phone only to find that "they" had captured my line somehow and were saying repeatedly that I would not be able to use the phone. This was intermittent with music playing and the message that they would not release the phone for my use.

From here, the dream becomes jumbled, probably because I was starting to awaken. I do remember more people in the drive way and feeling threatened, but then I was awake.

Okay, dream imagers, do your thing. As far as I am concerned it was just a collage of images that interwove the concern I have about our budgeting process in the city and the rich dinner my wife and I had shared the evening before. The feeling threatened probably stems from my frustration with the way a city has to account for their expenditures, applying each minute an employee works to various tracking accounts set up for streets, parks, library, city hall, etc. When each employee's wages are divided amongst seven or eight accounts, it is a nightmare trying to ensure balance amongst the departments and manage the inflation that all dedicated employees drive into an accounting system.

Such inflation of costs are often attributed to greed or empire building, but in our case, I can say with confidence that each of the departments are striving to provide optimum service to the citizens. But, how much can a city of approximately seven thousand afford? We border on the second largest city in the state, so we don't have a retail business district with the related tax income. Further, we have a tradition of keeping our taxes below that of our two bigger neighbors which we are able to do because of the high level of volunteer work we benefit from.

Our Police Department is now full time and all professionally trained officers, but our Fire Department is still ninety percent volunteer. In both cases, we try to keep the officers and firemen equipped with contemporary and quality tools with which to do their job while at the same time ensuring the streets, sewer and water system are maintained plus providing a functional library and parks system.

Each of those service functions have hopes and dreams of providing additional capability or services to the citizenry. Whereas we strive to keep our expense growth commensurate with inflation percent, equitable raises and "improvement" projects strongly drive the budget askings from each department. A new fire truck here, data modems and intersection cameras there, new playground equipment and, oh by the way, circulation is up so high in the library that they need new space, etc., etc.

Well, we do segue easily from dreams to reality don't we? One never knows where they will end up when they dialogue with me. And since we are in the midst of the budgeting process, I can't tell you how that will turn out and since I am awake, there will not be additional scenes from the dream, so I guess I'd just as well sign off.

See ya.

Grandkids Are Neat; But They Leave You Beat

Our oldest son and his wife had an opportunity to visit Las Vegas for a week with a group of family and friends. They have two daughters, ages seven and five. They asked if we would watch the girls while they were gone, making sure the girls got to their various schools, Girl Scout meeting, pre-school and religious education class. Sure, we said, assuming that we would have at least three hours a day for chores, shopping and miscellaneous.

Well, a strange thing happened to Iowa this week. It got moved to North Alaska. Honestly, we got seven and half inches of snow locally Tuesday night resulting in all the local schools being closed Wednesday, then an Arctic zephyr came to town leaving us with colder temperatures than they were experiencing in Nome Alaska. So, the schools were closed Thursday and again Friday.

Ever been cooped up with two dynamos for three days. It was too cold to let them go out to play, so grandma and I were their primary diversion and entertainment. Now, grandma has the knack of getting into their imagination games, something that is not in my repertoire of grandfatherly skills. I'm their coach and mentor on computer games that we have accumulated through four grand kids, the Fisher Price, Putt Putt, Pajama Sam and Jump Start kinds of games. So they cycled between the two of us for three days.

Well, on Friday, our oldest grandson who is fourteen, came over since he didn't have school and our other local daughter-in-law dropped off our youngest granddaughter, aged one, to watch while she worked. Talk about a house full! The only up side was that the four of them kind of entertained each other, but grandma and I were kept busy refereeing, cooking and nursing bruised flesh or egos.

I can tell you that picking up our oldest son and his wife Friday night was the highlight of our day. We got them home with kids and a truck load of clothes, games, puzzles and a lasagna that grandma made for them. Then we made a bee line home, grabbed a wine for grandma and a Captain Morgan's for grandpa and unwound! Slept like a babe that night!

We do love our grand kids and enjoy having them here, but getting older exacts its price! Grandma raised three boys grouped nineteen months apart for the two older sons and then five years later for the youngest son while I worked the typical fifty hours or more a week expected of engineers back then plus traveled about half the time, monitoring vendor quality compliance. Now even having one baby all day leaves us knowing we have been busy. And with four......

I just remembered one of my favorite anecdotes about having children. As I said, our two oldest were nineteen months apart and the youngest was almost five years later. That is the source of this remembrance.

One morning at breakfast, grandma mentioned she would like to try for a girl. We often discussed things that we wanted to keep from the boys at breakfast as they slept as late as we would let them. I was neutral but said something to the effect: "If we are going to, we need to do it now because I'll be pushing sixty when they are in college and the way industry dumps older employees, we may not be able to afford college for another one.". Grandma though for a few minutes and said, "let me think it over a while before we decide".

So we did.

Two or three weeks later, maybe a month even, Grandma again raised the subject at breakfast. She said that it wasn't a good idea since both boys were out of diapers, the oldest was starting Kindergarten and she was beginning to have so time to herself for the first time since we started our family. I said okay, it's up to you. Then she jumped up, ran to the bathroom and lost her breakfast. And it wasn't a girl after all.

Stuff And Nonsense From Literary License

This morning as I awoke, a word started playing around in my head, "billitu". After a while I was able to pin down where I had run into the word. It was used in "The Blue Sword" written by Robin McKinley and was defined in that story as a woman lover. It was used in jest towards an older warrior who complimented one of the female warriors.

Anyway, I couldn't get the damn thing out of my head, so I went to Encarta to check it out. No such word, I am told. Just because I felt like it, I Goggled the word and actually got a couple of hits on the same spelling although the rest of the thousands were "similar to". They don't count. The one hit that I opened apparently was a site for those with a fetish for eyes. I didn't bother joining so I could explore the site.

Bottom line, it was a word that Ms. McKinley apparently made up. The Blue Sword is a well written book and one that I read a couple of times a year because I enjoy it. I may be odd as I also reread several of my books such as The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey and several of my Mercedes Lackey and Madeleine L'Engle books.

So much for that.

We are not extensive bird lovers, but we do keep a couple of feeders full all winter, suet block out and have a heated bird bath that keeps the water ice free. We like to watch the birds out our patio door as they fight over position on the feeders and argue about who's in and who's out of the bath. Trying to sort out the various breeds of sparrows is a career in itself.

But, how do they know when bad weather is imminent? I almost titled this piece "There They Go; How Do They Know?", but I found a piece of a blog I had started several days ago and decided to use it instead. But, what am I mumbling about?

Well, in periods of calm between our winters storms that we have on almost a daily basis, the birds are thick around the feeders and on/in the bird bath. (Do you know that birds will bath at twenty degrees? I shudder to think about it.) Anyhoo, they will suddenly disappear. I mean completely, not just to near trees. And when we see them do so, we know that either the wind or the snow is here. Sure enough, within the hour the storm starts.

How do they know?

Mock Turtle Soup Threw Me For A Loop

For some reason I began to think of the Mock Turtle Soup I used to get at the corner drugstore down from my father's auto repair garage when I was in my teens. I really liked the stuff to the point that when I got tips from customers, I would run over to the drugstore to get a bowl. The pharmacist and owner learned to double his stock during the summer when I was at the shop every day. He had a display with cans of soup running up on each side and a heating plate in the middle. As I recall, it was all Campbell soup.

I don't know what caused me to go there, but I was warming some Campbell's Clam Chowder at the time so that may have poked at my memory banks. Anyway, after lunch, I jumped on line and Googled "Mock Turtle Soup".

I was completely floored by the number of recipes for Mock Turtle Soup and further dumb founded by the ingredients. I really don't remember the taste of the soup anymore, but I didn't expect the main ingredient to be ox tail, or the skin of a calf's head. The milder versions start with ground beef. I quit after viewing two or three recipes although I did print out the first two. I may try the one with hamburger and see if it triggers any memories. I doubt if it will.

Interesting things, these blogs. If you don't tell anyone where it is located, the odds are that no one will ever read them, which is alright with me. I don't even know why I wanted to start one nor why I would enter updates, but here I am keying away. Freud would have a heyday with me. And not just because of blogs, I suspect.

We have two of our grand daughters staying with us this week, ages seven and five, while their dad and mom spend some time in Las Vegas. They are very competitive over grandma's attention with the older girl very unhappy to have to go to school and leave the "playing field" open to her little sister. And "playing field" is the operative word as grandma has the knack of getting to their level whether playing dolls or box games. Grandpa is fine to quarterback PC time, but Grandma is the preferred playmate. That's fine with me, but Grandma hollers for help every thirty or forty five minutes. Sometimes the girls will let us deflect them, but not for long and not every time. They view their playtime with Grandma as the highlight of their visits.

Grandma and I will be heading to Las Vegas in another month to visit our number three son and his wife. They are both dealers at Bill Tavern on the strip. Neither Grandma nor I are gamblers, so we will spend our days with our son and evenings with our daughter-in-law as they have to work different shifts. Their employer has a rule against couples but bent it for them if they agreed to stay on different shifts. That allowed them to "transfer" from Harold's in Lake Tahoe to Bill's, both of which are owned by Harrah's.

I'm getting bored with the snow again, as I do about this time every year. We had an official seven and a half inches of snow Friday night that left a foot of snow in my drive and on my stoops. Then yesterday we got another three inches (my measure) to snow blow off. The weather man is promising another one to four inches tonight. Meanwhile, we are dressing for sub-zero temperatures.

I'm ready for a thaw and a break from three snow storms a week! Maybe being a snow bird isn't such a bad idea after all. All I need is for the stock market to recover all my money it mislaid plus some so I can pay for the travel and lodging. We don't have enough relatives spread around to do as some, go spend a week with each and be gone from Christmas til April Fools day. Besides, I do believe mom's adage that "Guests, like old socks or fish, begin to smell after three days."

Well, that's enough nonsense for today. Enjoy.

Baby's Stay Can Make A Long Day

Not that I don't love, like and generally enjoy the little ones, but a one year old has a knack of dominating the time and lives of two people. The GM (you can decide for your self whether that means General Manager or Grand Mother, I've made my own determination) was the young lady's favorite for most of the last year, probably because she was the one that did most of the feeding, playing and diaper changing. Not that I didn't serve in said capacity frequently when the BROOK was here. Brook Thomae is the handle. No e please.

Anyway, last Monday while we were watching her (we watch her one to three days a week while her mom works) I fired up the games PC we keep for the grand kids and put a pre-kindergarten "Jump Start" CD on, hauled Brook up on my lap and ran through the various activities on the CD. Instant karma! Now, as soon as I head to my den to "do my thing" (write checks, check my e-mail, surf, hide, etc.) there is the pitter-pat of tiny bare feet heard down the hall, a tiny hand tugging my jean leg with an "enh enh" ringing in the air as she points to the game PC. Up in my lap she comes as we roll across the floor to the game PC ( I have an office chair in the den - after parking my butt in one for forty years, I have become accustomed).

I fire up the game and we play the various activities for maybe ten or fifteen minutes and she wants down. I cancel the game and get started on what I had in mind only to hear the pitter-pat, the tug and the "enh enh". Back on the lap, roll to the game PC, restart the game and viola! She wants down to go find the GM and interrupt whatever she, the GM, is doing.

This goes on all day except for nap time, eating time and play with GM and Papa watching time. The latter being several periods, about an hour at a time, spaced throughout the day. Don't cha love it!

Actually, I do.

There are many frustrations, disappointments and general malaise in getting old. But having grandchildren is not one of them for me. We have been blessed with a grandson, now fourteen, and a granddaughter, now one, plus two step-granddaughters aged fifteen and ten by our second oldest son and two granddaughters aged seven and five from our oldest son. Our youngest son, world traveler, writer, artist and bon vivant married a lovely Romanian lass last year. Time will tell if anything transpires there as he is less than comfortable in the presence of babes. Less than five year olds, that is.

I could go on about aching ankles and knees, degrading strength and agility, etc. etc. but that would bore me as much as it would bore you. Let me repeat my mothers mantra, who is still mantra-ing at ninety two, "Growing old isn't for cowards". In the decade after I qualified for Social Security, I began to understand her message.

Anyway, while I doubt that anyone but me will ever read these ramblings, let it be said that aches and pains are better than the alternate of the "long sleep". Plus, one would miss all the great interactions I have enjoyed with my sons, their wives and our grandchildren. I wouldn't miss this stage of my life for nada.

Okay, enough of that. What next beer belly?

I won't bore you with the issues and problems that a small city councilperson deals with. But I will say to any and all that might stumble on these ramblings, that if you ever get a chance to serve on a city council, preferably a smaller city council, grab it! You learn more about how things get done, the surprises one can get when buying property - or more accurately, after buying property from city planned projects. One should always visit their city's engineer, mayor or city administrator before signing on the dotted line. The realtor doesn't always know or some avoid knowing about upcoming street replacement, sidewalk projects, storm water projects, etc. that end up being direct assessments to the property owners. Some real education opportunities there, let me tell you.

Anyway, I are one and in future ramblings I may blow some steam about that venue. There are things that frustrate. But by and large, the citizens we have the pleasure of dealing with are mostly polite, articulate and willing to compromise. Yes, there are some real nasty folk in the city, but they are very few compared to the number of people we come in contact with. It is a real satisfying activity that I do recommend to each and every one.

Well, we are rambling for sure now, so it is obviously time to quit. Be good.