House Dreams

Ever since I was a kid, I've consistently had dreams about buildings. They're usually houses--old, beautiful, crumbling, Victorian homes, creaky, rambling farmhouses, understated cottages on a bluff overlooking a lake. Sometimes it's a motel, always with long corridors and doors that open up to vibrant rooms.

Usually the building is in some sort of disrepair, and I'm there to fix it up. I've had dreams where I tear out this faded blue Spanish tile in a kitchen. There are other people coming in and out of the house but in these moments, when I'm on my hands and knees pulling out tile, I am alone. It's comforting and lonely all at once.

The cupboards are a disaster but I know one day I will sand them and put on a finish--maybe an off-white country feel, or a dark cherry wood. Very often these homes are haunted and the ghosts find me when I'm alone, tearing out this tile or up in my bedroom, painting a dirty wall white.

The ghosts are usually children or mothers. I don't know why. Sometimes they are terrifying--a dark shadow hovering over me while I sleep, or following me down long hallways--and other times, I find solace in their presence.

The renovating is strange, because I'm actually not very handy at all. I do enjoy watching reno shows and I've always loved architecture, but I've never been talented at either and these dreams have come to me long before I ever started watching home and garden television or flipping through an Architectural Digest.

The other night I dreamed about a motel in Mexico. It was a one-story, a sun-bleached ranch, located on a bluff overlooking the ocean. It was far away from any town. The motel was mostly empty, with a bar connected at the very end that had a disco ball and blasted music, but no one was dancing and only a couple of people sat hunched over their bar stools, drinking quietly.

There was a long corridor with flat, tired carpet. I walked carefully down it, and I opened each door in the hallway and peeked in. Every room had a different theme. I can no longer remember the themes, only the way they made me feel. One room reminded me of my neighbors growing up. What I do recall is that each room had a bright, garish color, and when I woke up I had a migraine and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was the colors that triggered it.

I've had a similar dream about a haunted house with a basement that was like the Mexican motel. The basement was a stretched out hallway that twisted and turned and seemed endless, and each room had different people and different themes, only it was more suspenseful. While the motel just gave this dreary, hopeless feeling of an eternal Sunday night, the basement felt like it held secrets in its walls, and in any given moment one of them would burst out and shock me.

A recurring dream I've had since I was little was of my old elementary school. That truly is a building to behold in reality. It's an old, three-story Catholic school that used to be a rectory for the priests, and after it became a school, was connected to the rectory where the priests resided.

It had long, wide corridors and faded brown carpet. When I was a kid my parents were co-presidents of the PTA and on the Sports Boosters committee, so often they would hold meetings in one of the classrooms at night, and we kids would have the dark hallways to ourselves to wander. We played this game where we would race each other down the corridors. One of kids died in a car accident years later, and I still have dreams about running down those dark hallways of the school, turning a corner and she is there--white, bloated, floating.

Another recurring dream I've had for as long as I can remember is at my own childhood home. Children in the neighborhood keep disappearing and my parents invite our alarmed neighbors over to the house to have a meeting about it. As they all sit around the living room discussing safety measures, an older, hunchback woman with crooked teeth standing at the edge of the room creeps over to me and cackles. When she gets near me I freeze in fear. In that moment I know--I know--she is the reason the children are missing. The fear grips me and I cannot move, I cannot speak, I cannot do anything but listen as she whispers in my ear "they're in your room."

Everyone fades away and even though in our small house, the living room was just mere steps away from my bedroom, it my dream it feels like I am separated from everyone but the old woman by miles when I end up in my bedroom. I am alone, deserted, the keeper of this terrible secret that I know with every fiber of my being. I shut my bedroom door. There, on the doorknob, is the Halloween bag my mother sewed for me. Normally there would be candy in that bag. But when I open it--and I know, I know, what terrible thing is waiting for me in there but I cannot stop myself from opening that bag--and inside are bones, hair, fingers of little children, and in my horror I open my mouth to scream but nothing comes out, and when I wake up I can still hear that old woman's cackle in my ears.

I've often wondered why I dream about houses and buildings and ghosts, and my curiosity has led me to dream interpretation books and websites. I've learned that exploring homes means you are restless and searching for meaning within yourself, looking at the past and working toward the future when you renovate the home, blah blah blah.

That may be true, but the first thought I always have when I wake up from these dreams is I need to write a story about this.

I've tried. But it comes across as so cheesy and cliched. I wish I could find a way to translate the vibrancy and love and suspense these houses hold into a story without it sounding like every ghost story every written or Under the Tuscan Sun.

Riding in Cars with (Aussie) Boys

When I make the move over to Brissy, I am well aware that I will be flat-broke. It's not like I can afford to ship the contents of my home over there. Matt's always lived at home or with roommates, so he doesn't have much in the way of furniture or anything either.

So, my definite focus when I emigrate to Australia is to find an affordable place with Matty, one that accommodates our pets and allows us some financial space so we can furnish it together.

Most importantly, we need a place that is close to the bus line.

I have never relied on public transportation before. Back in the days before texting and Internet, we were forced to Go Out and Do Something, which meant we rode our bikes everywhere.

But the bicycle was stowed away just after my sixteenth birthday, when I got my driver's license and was free to drive as far as my wallet would allow me.

Which was not very far. But still, it was freedom.

I won't be able to afford a car when I first move to Australia. And that's OK. I'm actually looking forward to the experience. I'm sure there will come a time where I miss being able to hop in my car and go, without worrying about train schedules and hauling groceries on a crowded bus.

Frankly, I'm nervous to drive over there. I don't know if I'll ever get used to sitting in the passenger side to do the steering, or barrelling down the wrong side of the road.

It is the wrong side, you know.

Public transit will be a good thing to utilize when over there. It's a rather organized way to be introduced to a city. Randomly stop here and have a walk around. Snap some photos and hop on the next train.

Transportation in Queensland is impressive. It's very efficient and rather painless. The most unexpected part was the motion sickness. For the first week over there, I was nauseous on the bus trips. There is a lot more jerking around on the roads over there--definitely more roundabouts, going up and down the hills.

But especially the roundabouts. I think we're up to four roundabouts in Kalamazoo now? All built within the last couple of years.

We're getting used to it. It's all good.

I still maintain that it makes more sense to drive with the gears on the right side of you, on the right side of the road.

An American in Brisbane

I dedicated a whole blog to writing about my adventures down under.

Check it out here:

http://anamericaninbrisbane.blogspot.com/

There's an App for That, and It Sucks.

Well, I'm on day two of my post-a-day challenge. I got home close to 10 pm, and instead of hauling my beloved pink but clunky laptop out (it no longer runs on any kind of battery power, it must be plugged in at all times), I figured I'd type out a post on my handy-dandy DROID, all whilst eating a juicy, tart apple and laughing--yes, laughing! Chortling even!--at the irony.

And before you can point out that's not really ironic (don't you get tired of someone inevitably pointing out the irony that the song about irony isn't really ironic at all. If I were Alanis I'd want to kill myself, for possibly more than just that reason), I discover that the Blogger app is a dangly, corn-filled piece of shit.

When I open the app, I get a window flashing at me that says "No Blogs Found. Please create a blog on www.blogger.com."

Below that, I get three options:

1. Go to Blogger
2. Switch account
3. Close

When I click on "switch account," with the hopes that I'll enter my account info and therefore have all my info automatically brought up in the future, I end with a new window that tells me I can either sign in to my default gmail (some crap email the guy at the Verizon set up for me that I never use, because he so horribly butchered my name and failed to give me my password, that I can't even figure out what my default gmail account is on my phone) or I can click "Add/Manage Accounts."

Obviously I click on the latter, and when that pops up I click on my personal email account, and that sends everything all-a-twitter (not that Twitter) and then the app then shuts down on me.

So I start all over again, but instead choose "Go to Blogger" for my first option. Here, I can actually login. Awesome sauce. Done-zo.

My account verified, I click on "new post" and enter a title. No probs. Heheh, this is cool, I can just free-write a bit on my phone while in bed.

Not so fast, Jennicki!

The keyboard disappears into some sort of Droid App Abyss. The Black Hole of Mobile Surfdom.

How am I supposed to write a post with no keyboard? I am not at all tech-y savvy like Mr Birmingham. I can't talk at my phone and have it write for me. Hello, I can't even get Taz to sit on command. He only does it once in awhile, when he's bored and wants to be entertained. Oh, how I dance and clap when Tazzie sits on command!

I digress.

There are many things and ways in which I suck immensely, but something I am rather good at is looking for another door when the other one is locked and stuck-er than a muck-er in a Ford (I made that up. You're welcome).

I bypassed Blogger App that Shits Me and went to the web version of the Blogger on my phone. Aha! So wise, am I.

But, goddamn it, shit a brick, same issue. I logged in, entered the title of the post, and then the keyboard is gone faster than the adolescent dads on 16 and Pregnant.

So it was back to Ye Olde Faithful, my pink-tinged lappie with it's built-in keyboard.

I love you. I shall write in the pinkish hue of a working PC.

Day two, bitches!

My Post About the Olympics

Today, I am going to write about the Olympics. Not that I'm particularly enthralled with the events--it's a lazy Sunday, and I will flip the channel over to watch some synchronized diving, in hopes of catching some gymnastics action later. But as for writing an enthusiastic, play-by-play account of the freefall-to-fourth-place Michael Phelps, meh. I'm not that into the Games.

The truth is, writing has gone from a fun past-time to a fearful task for me. I don't know when that happened. Especially since I've had some pretty life-altering developments unfold over the last year, and I want more than anything to share them.

It seems like the more important something is to me, the more impossible it is for me to write about it.

For example, my trip to Australia. I have been writing and re-writing my adventures in my head from the moment my plane departed Brisbane. I have gone through thousands-literally thousands-of photos taken and picked the ones to include for my future posts about my experience.

I even re-vamped my blog and created a new one specifically for my Australian Adventure posts.

When I'm at work, running errands, at the gym or going for a drive, I am constantly writing out my posts in my head. And it's perfect. But the moment I sit down to actually write or type it out, this crippling fear takes over.

I cannot do it. I just cannot.

It's the same thing when I try to work on stories or poems. My brain just shuts down the moment I grab a pen or put my digits to the keyboard. I've got everything going on in my brain--dialogue, plot, everything--and all I have to do is transfer what I see in my head to paper. But I just can't do it.

I've noticed people are getting back to blogging again. Moko, Girl Clumsy (she never really stopped, I admire her discipline) and Dr Yobbo to name a few. I've been telling myself for awhile that maybe if I just get back to blogging daily--even if it's just silly nonsense like this--maybe I can finally work my way up to writing the projects I've been fearfully putting aside.

Out of the blue this week, my friend Kat (http://iwishidknown.wordpress.com/) contacted me and asked me to be her writing accountability partner. It was a sign, and a much needed kick in the ass. I said yes immediately. And today, is day numero uno.

Thanks for reading my post about the Olympics.