Bucket List: Almost a Year Later

Accomplished 4 in the last 10 months:

-Visit another country. Any other country, just leave America.

-Went to Mexico just this month.

-Start a teacup collection. My aunt had one in a really nice glass cabinet that I always liked…

-It's not an extensive collection yet, but it's a start!

-Have a gorgeous wedding ceremony and an even more perfect marriage to someone I love.

-Be a truly involved and loving parent. We’re talking PTA Mom of the year style.

-Write a book. It might not even be a good book, but I at least want to finish one story that I’ve started.

-Plant a garden and eat what comes out of it. Maybe I’ll even learn how to can things.That’d be nifty.

-Learn more dances! Become really great at waltzing.

-Legitimately go camping. Not in some dinky little park… Somewhere without other people where I have to hike all day, then stop, wake up in the morning and hike home.

-Ride the spinning teacups at Disney World. Preferably whilst wearing a mouse ear hat with my name on it.

-Learn to play piano well

-Go horseback riding somewhere pretty.

-Go ice skating outside somewhere, instead of an indoor rink.

-Grow my hair out long enough that I can donate it to Locks of Love.

-Rescue an animal from a pet shelter and give him/her a loving forever home.

-Visit a psychic.

-Go back to Christmas World in Michigan and actually buy things that I want to buy… Use this as my one chance to splurge on completely unnecessary items and get lovely gifts for everyone.

-Learn how to golf. Not even well, just learn how to do it.

-Go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

-Milk a cow while sitting on one of the little wooden stools like you always see in the movies. It would be even cooler if the cow’s name was “Bessie.”

-Have a library in my house.

-Get all dressed up and go see The Nutcracker.

-Jon and I went to see it this Christmas!

-Get kissed under the mistletoe.

-Go on a real date.

-We went to the Tall Ships Festival in Pennsylvania!

More Terribly Screwed Up Dreams

Woke up at 6:50 a.m. on April Fool's Day, sobbing. Here is the delightful dream that caused it. I'll be telling it in first person, because I'm going to have to do dream work with it anyway in one of my classes, and our professor makes us tell our dreams like they're happening:

Jon and I are waiting outside, near some train tracks. It is winter. There's no snow falling, but the ground is completely covered, and I can see my breath in the air. We are waiting for a bus of some kind.

There are six people with us: two white couples, and a black couple. We are all discussing an article in the paper, about how Mekhi Phifer was arrested for killing four people. I tell everyone how much I liked him in "ER."

We are all waiting for some weird bus. This trip is supposed to be some sort of big experience. (When I wake up, I will think about it like the acid trip buses in the 1960s. Then I will be reminded of the movie Inception, the idea of waiting for a train, and that while you don't know where the train will take you, it's okay, because you're together)

When the bus finally arrives, it's absolutely packed. The whole back of the bus lowers like a drawbridge, and it looks like a bar inside. The floors are wooden, and there are wooden stools next to the bar. It's dim inside, except for lights over the bar and televisions glaring.

The other couples we are waiting with get on the bus. One of the white women got on, but the man she was with, her boyfriend, isn't able to get on the bus. The woman starts screaming, and the bus stops to let him cram in too.

Jon and I watch this, after having walked into and then back out of the bus. We look at each other and share an unspoken thought: "We don't need this."

We walk away, with everyone asking about it. Everyone new to the bus stop wants to know what it was like. Jon and I just smile, and I tell them that we didn't go. As we walk away from them, I turn back to smile and say, "I hope you find what you're looking for." The people at the bus stop smile back at us, and everything is perfect.

As Jon and I walk away, we feel so completely alive, and untouchable. But the further we get from the bus stop, the more we start to feel like something is wrong. It is still dark out, and we are trying to make it through town, back home. It starts to dawn.

Suddenly, we are back by the train tracks again. It is dark, and we are dodging trains. Suddenly, the tracks are all full with trains in both directions, and I know what is going to happen. I know something is very wrong.

As we dodge, I see a small gap in the trains for us to squeeze through. I get where I need to go, but Jon dodges the wrong way. I scream, "JON!" But it is too late. Jon dodges left instead of right.

The train hits him, tearing him completely in half. It's seamless. The top of his body is there, and then it isn't. The train stops as soon as it hits him. The driver gets out and sees what has happened. He throws up, and then begins to look for something

Jon's blood is such a strange color. Sort of purple-ish and metallic. I think of Harry Potter, and how I always imagined unicorn blood would look. (When I wake up, Jon will say, "Like motor oil?" and I will be surprised how well he pictures what I mean) The color is so strange against the white of the snow.

The driver is saying, "We have to find the other half of his head." I have been screaming, but suddenly, I calmly point beneath the side of the train, and say "It's right here." I am dialing a number on my Blackberry. I thought I dialed 911, but Jon answers the phone.

I am looking at the train, confused. I am sobbing, and I hear Jon's voice on the phone. "Hey, Baby!"

"Bunny?" I reply. (That's what I call him)

"Yeah." Jon answers. "What's wrong? You sound upset."

I am crying, and smiling an odd smile, trying to keep it together on the phone. "Oh, nothing, Bunny. It's just... Something real serious just happened here, and I needed to hear your voice, okay?"

"Okay, babe. I love you."

As I am saying, "I love you too," I am crying harder. I know that when I hang up the phone with you, everything is over.

And this is where I wake up crying.

In my dreams, I almost never hear the dialog. I just know what it is that has happened or was said, or everyone speaks in my voice. Never before have I so clearly heard someone else's voice in a dream. I woke up crying and couldn't go back to sleep. I scared Jon to death because I gasped so loud when I woke up.

Oddly enough, he said he'd woken up a few seconds before I did. When he stays over, he always likes to be touching me, even if it's just a hand on my shoulder. He said that as soon as he touched me, I woke up crying. Even stranger, as I was describing the dream, he could see a lot of what I was saying. (The way he described the blood color really freaked me out.)

So that's my latest, very odd dream.

Wait... What?

This evening my mother called to tell me that she's going to start packing stuff up. I thought that was pretty vague. I asked why she was packing, and she told me that they're probably going to have to leave the house pretty soon.

I knew things were bad, but I never knew it was that bad. They're going to take our house, and my parents are going to be homeless. I'm not going to have anywhere to go back to. The house I grew up in, that has so many memories, and has always been a part of my life is just gone.

But what did she tell me? Not to worry.

How do I not worry about the fact that I have no home anymore?

Dream from Ages Ago

I had this really weird dream January 9, and I wrote it all down so I could type it out here and figure out what it means, but I ran out of time, and then there was a whole other slew of weird-ass dreams to contend with, so I'm just now getting it out.

Jon and I were out in the woods on some kind of day trip. There were other people with us, but I don't remember who they were right now. I know there was a sheriff or park ranger of some kind, but that's about it. Anyway, we were out in the woods, and there was this big, evil, demonic deer.

The deer was very tall, but really skinny... Kind of like the skinny "got milk" vow. He had long skinny arms and legs too. His head was really, REALLY big though. His snout was long and sort of wideish, but it was open on top, and there were about fifty or so spikes sticking out of it. He had antlers, but I don't remember specifics. What I remember most were his eyes, which were small and white, and very evil.

I don't know what all was happening, but the basic gist of it was that he was after Jon, myself and the rest of our group. It got to a point where it was just me, Jon and the sheriff person in the woods, because everyone else had been killed. The sheriff had something to do with it... he'd unleashed this deer's power somehow.

Jon and I went to this little tipi village to find out what had happened. It turned out that a man (I think the sheriff) had played some kind of dice game with this little Indian girl, and he'd lost, so this deer was roaming around killing people. So, Jon and I decided to play against this little girl to see if we could win and stop it.

Jon rolled the dice, and lost, but I rolled against her and won first try. This old Indian woman, who I assume was her grandmother, told me mysteriously, "You've always been lucky, haven't you?" Basically from this point, the idea became that because I was so lucky, I was invincible, and thus could be fearless.

The dream sort of fast-forwarded, and I was scaring the deer into the woods, growling at him and making clawing motions at it. The deer just looked at me with hatred and vengeance, and took off running after Jon, because he couldn't kill me. I ran off after them, just in time to see Jon kneeling on the ground facing me, with a spear impaled through him from his lower back out through the middle of his chest.

I got angry because the deer had killed Jon, and I jumped up into the air with a stick of my own, sort of like a big log. It was like slow motion, and I jumped unnaturally high and came down unnaturally slow. I missed the deer, but I knew I had to bounce on a log.

I don't know if I actually killed the deer or not. The next thing I remember is coming to a cliff, and diving off the side. This 20-sided die appeared as I was falling into oblivion. Knowing that I was lucky, I took the dice and rolled a twenty. This hexagon-shaped object (which kind of reminded me of a children's toy) appeared, and I could spin it backwards as far as I wanted.

It was like a time machine, and I turned it back further and further until Jon and I were unpacking at a beach. To avoid the deer and everything else, I'd apparently just changed our plans. Then all of a sudden, it was me watching this beach scene on TV at Celia's apartment. My godson tottered down the hall, and I took out the beach DVD so he could watch cartoons.

And THAT is my crazy ass dream.

What Does a Dream Really Mean Anyway?

I've been having a lot of bad dreams lately... Not scary like monsters, but scary like it was just too real. This morning I woke up in a panic, because I was dreaming that I was back home. I was caught in the middle of another argument, and my parents were just screaming at each other... Their dream fight was up there with the worst they've ever had. It's been a long time since I've witnessed one of these fights, but it was frightening just how much the dream really scared me. It felt very, very real.

Thursday night, Jon spent the night. I woke up forty-five minutes before my alarm in a complete panic, and jumped onto him on his side of the bed, clinging onto him like I was drowning. I felt really bad, because I really scared Jon, but I needed to know he was there, and that this was what was real.

I had dreamed that I was back home in the shopping center, and Jon and I were in the car with some people I knew when I was a kid. I was looking for my bag in the trunk and the backseat, and I guess I wasn't moving fast enough, because dream-Jon freaked out and started yelling at me and throwing things from the car and trunk. Dream-me acted predictably, and cried and walked away. One of the other people in the dream walked with me and said something about him being crazy, and how he wouldn't even party with him because he was scary-crazy when he drank. Dream-me said that Jon didn't drink, and the other guy in the dream looked at me like I was fooling myself.

Then Dream-me walked over to Dream-Jon, and he kept yelling, but we were staring to talk through it. Suddenly, this man walked up to Dream-Jon, and asked for drugs. Dream-Jon was a dealer, he just gave me this look... like he was sorry but I should have known better, and he said, "Don't act like you didn't see it." Then Dream-me was scrambling to pick up the things he'd thrown on the ground, like my purse, and sweatshirt and television remote. (the items don't make sense, but I could see them so clearly... down to tears on the sweatshirt and stuff like that)

It was about then that I woke up and freaked out. I woke up crying because it felt so real. Jon just hugged me until I calmed down, which I appreciated, but when he asked me about the dream and I explained it, he seemed mad at himself. He thinks it's his fault because he had a cigarette with his coworkers and told me about it. (He's mostly quit, but has slip-ups often)

So that's been my last few days.

My, How Time Flies...

Got my first invitation to a 5-year high school reunion this morning... I wish I could say that I took it better. True, I didn't go off on the person. I actually haven't replied at all yet, but nonetheless, all I could think was, "Why would I want to come back and hang out with people who were mean to me in the first place?"

I always thought that when I got to this point, I would be more excited about going back. In reality, I can't believe it's already been five years. I know that I'm doing better than many of my classmates in a lot of respects, but I feel like going back is only going to make me compare what I've done and where I'm at to them, and that's not a good idea.

Most of all, I thought that after five years, I wouldn't care so much about the way people treated me in high school. On the contrary, I've found that I don't want to go back... I'm afraid to see these people again, and afraid of how they'll treat me.

You apparently don't get over someone telling you to kill yourself every morning. You don't forget people making fun of the way you laugh. You'll always remember the way people ignored you, were snarky to you, and used you.

I guess I just thought that at 22, with a degree, in graduate school and with a steady job and boyfriend, I would feel more confident in what I am and who I've become. I just feel like the second I stand in front of these people, I'm going right back to who I was then, and I'll be staring at the floor, afraid to make eye contact, and scared that they're going to be the same people they were then.

Reminiscing

I was looking back through my old posts, and I found this gem, where I was talking about watching the movie "Love Actually" with my friend Connie:

At one point, I got agitated, looked at her, and said,

"Why isn't he running after her?!?! Why won't anyone run after anyone?"

And Connie just very simply said,

"Nobody runs after anyone in real life, Amanda."

She's right. (May 9, 2009)

While this seems somewhat depressing (It is, I suppose) the comment that was posted was from Kellie, my high school English teacher. (She's inspired me more than she'll ever know) Kellie simply said, "not true! not true! the right one will always run after you."

You know what? I'm finally at a place in my life where I believe that.