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I had Very Much Many dreams last night. I’m always really happy when I remember my dreams, pretty much regardless of content.

One of the earliest parts I remember was… sibling, M, and I were part of a vocal jazz ensemble… I think? Or some kind of performance group that didn’t have instruments. We had these kinda ridiculous uniforms provided us, short-sleeve button-up shirts and pull-on pants made out of low-stretch crushed velvet or like synthetic/cheap/fake velvet. Panne? And ALL IN BLUE. A very medium, strong blue, slightly lighter and teal-er than primary. You could probably call it “ocean blue,” I guess? So yeah, we all had these uniforms, and we had a little bit of time before the performance so everyone was meandering around the premises (this part kind of looked like high school iirc, but only kind of–the front hall area, satin white walls and dark floors, tall and completely empty) and not really keeping track of time. Suddenly it was time to be up on stage already, with everyone scattered around…. but I might not have known that at the time in the dream? In the dream, I might’ve been like oh shit, what if it’s just me that was losing track of time and failing to put on my shitty blue velvet uniform before our scheduled time to perform? But then I got to the stage kinda half-pulling my uniform on, and it became apparent that other people had opted not to put their uniforms on and look professional in other ways, and that the group was still getting organized before starting to perform.

Later on in the night, there was another snippet about M. She and Harmony were sitting inside a tall freezer with no shelving inside, running their hands through piles of frozen meat products (about a pound or two each, individually vacuum-sealed in plastic squares) to loosely scoop them up and let them fall from their hands as a way of searching through all the meats for something. They were doing this to help Kyle, who wasn’t there. But yeah…. this weird standalone bookshelf/closet-sized freezer with the doors open and both of them sitting inside, sifting through frozen meat. That’s literally the only image that stayed with me from that part. I am not sure what it means.

Next, another snippet… there were two predators and one prey animal. Idr whether the predators were the zebras and the prey was a leopard of some sort, or vice versa. I do remember thinking that you could tell the predator animal was the for-sure, true natural predator of the prey bc they both had white and black stripes. Normal dream logic. The predators were creeping up on the prey, but before they could reach it, I had decided to scare them off if not kill them. Independent of me doing anything, some kind of machinery came through and uh… flattened the first predator in front of me. It was like it was supposed to cut it but messed something up and just squonched it instead. I then went after the second predator by… dual-wielding what I think were like giant Hitachi magic wands. Not plugged into anything, not vibrating, and I used them like clubs to bop both sides of the second predator’s head until it fell to the ground, presumably unconscious but not dead.

The dream I remember most narratively came last. I was buying weed from a store, but the store was in this really weird, decrepit structure that looked like a house in places/at times, and at other places/times, looked like a kindergarten, or a shitty indoor mall. I got to experience a lot of these places and times bc for a while I wasn’t buying weed from the guy at the counter, I was running through all these empty spaces trying to keep space between me and a large spider. It was a very fast spider, and large enough that I could hear each leg tapping on the floor or wall as it scuttled around. Early on, I noticed that it had been painted with yellow stripes and the yellow number 969896, or 96896, across its abdomen that was somehow big enough for this to legibly fit. At some point in the dream that was less visual, I was talking to my mom about this and she fucking recognized the spider and was like “yeah my siblings and I actually painted that number on that spider way back in the day” like wtf ok???? After having that convo w her, though, the dream transitioned away from me being able to hear the plat-plat-plat of little legs running everywhere i went. I finally went to the counter and bought some weed from a guy who seemed really depressed and tired but nice. It was in a white cardboard box, which he set to the side while I was paying. The payment transaction thing was weird… I just had to hold my debit card up to this greyscale flatscreen tablet thing that had an enlarged vector-style mockup of a payment card, that as soon as I held my card up, started spinning through different card number combinations on the mockup. When it landed on some actual numbers, it didn’t match mine. But that was apparently fine and normal, so the sad guy went to grab my box of weed, and discovered it wasn’t where he’d put it. He and I searched around for a while, until this guy in the back of the store said he took it. I walked over to him. He was already smoking his own joint, he didn’t take the box to use any of the weed. He said he took it because I and someone else cut him in line for something earlier. (I don’t remember this happening in the dream, but I still believed him in the dream.) He was talking about something related to that for a little while longer, but I was distracted by the contents of the box… there were these long, thin things that were maybe supposed to be joints that were dimly glowing at the end. I tried to tap firmly on the glow to put them out, but one in particular responded to this by flaring up more, until it was so bright that the only thing I could do was inhale to not lose the entire stick to fire instead of smoking. So I was now smoking one of my “joints” next to this guy, and became aware that somehow I’d rolled it myself (having no dream recollection of this) and I was really bad at it, so it was about a foot long and floppy and crinkly, and also kind of damp. It is possible that it was rolled in a moist corn tortilla rather than papers. I had to support it with both hands while taking a hit. AND YET the guy seeing this who had his own j still wanted to swap hits with me and didn’t say anything about the shit quality of mine.

And then I woke up at 9:12, because my sleep schedule fuckin sucks. I don’t have a clue how I’m going to deal with the earlier shift next week.

dear wp what the fuck is up with line breaks and starting to type on a new line, i promise my keyboard did not magically go anywhere

yesterday was kind of exhausting, both bc of the weather and bc of a long conversation with R in the evening. even though i’ve been feeling better about our sex life, it’s not because there’s been an increase in physical intimacy; i was just able to adjust my expectations and not take it personally/feel insecure all the time. it ended up coming to a head again yesterday bc i feel like he’s really been dropping the ball on playing with my body in ways that I’ve told him are sexual for me, and that usually elicit obvious sexual responses, but without any sexual intent on his part, just to be like…. hehe tits funy… which would be totally cool and fine if it was just a sometimes thing, but it’s like… multiple times daily, and combined with not getting laid, makes me feel frustrated and sad. so we talked about that again and he apologized a lot and acknowledged that he hasn’t been working on it as much as he said he would last time we talked. I didn’t really feel that much better by the end but at least he was able to identify specific things that he CAN work on, should he choose to work on it. it’s not a dealbreaker… yet. there’s a lot of other stuff in our relationship that I love and that makes me happy.

there’s a lot of room cleaning and setup i could be doing today. i hope it happens.

oh, also worth noting–i finally scheduled a doctor’s appointment for myself, literally days before a year since the disastrou$ urgent care visit. fucking hell. i wonder if i’ll have time to address everything i want to w/them. the receptionist wanted me to give him a quick rundown of things i’d like to discuss at my appointment and internally i was like uhhhhhhhhh we’re in a fucking lobby i don’t feel comfortable sharing these things with you or with anyone else in earshot but externally gave him a couple things that let him connect my records from previous visits, so that’s good and useful and important. maybe next time i’ll actually stick up for myself lmao. now if i can just get set up with a therapist maybe shit will start to get better for me

maybe less worth noting, but i actually finally threw some money at an important cause. it’s pathetic that that’s progress for me, but I’ve done a shit job of donating or taking literally any action before this, so .. i figure i should maybe record that i did it so i can keep that shit rolling.

oh oh now i’m remembering more! i got a 10% raise at work. which is still uh hmmm a little more than half of the median income here. but STILL ten percent is a lot oh shit and i need to figure out 401k stuff. uhghghghgh anyway i like my supervisor and why yes that does incentivize me to stay and also feel better about staying. eheheh i wonder how much of a raise my shitty coworker is getting when his time comes

c’mon let’s doooo todayyyyyyyy

the actual non-remix of Futile Devices (yes, more devices)

I guess I’m up this early because of tequila and pizza sending me and M to an early bed. God, I didn’t want or need that level of junk food, even if it tasted fucking delicious. and it was lovely to have K pick the episodes of Lost Girl, since I usually go for the same handful. five slices, man. FIVE SLICES.

sleep was rly weird last night, though. I kept having iterations of the same dream. being at work and running into cute coworker, or contriving to, or thinking about it. the building was totally different, though… it was almost like we were part of some weird fucking strip mall (why would anyone want us there) and if you walked far enough through our stuff, you’d come to a makeup store. not sure what was on the other side. despite that feeling of constantly waiting and contriving and being aware of him/his absence/whatever, my brain decided that he and i would barely ever run into each other, and if we did, like…. no words would be exchanged. how un-exciting and disappointing. at one point i woke up and refilled my water bottle and tried to talk at whatever part of my brain might be responsible for this travesty, letting it know that it would be more fun if there was kissing and/or sex involved. or to pick a different dream.

i didn’t get dream sex but i got a different dream. being in the city. i remember at one point being near some fucking… weird-ass trolley thing, the end of the track, in a big field kind of like at the Center by the fountain. except it felt like it was maybe slightly farther uptown. there was a… wall, maybe a tunnel where the trolley could come out, across the field. on the left, when it was approaching us + the end of the track, the art on the ground and on the trolley was of nyan cat. when it switched over to the track on the right to go back the other way, the art over there was of tac nayn, and the trolley would also transform to reflect this. so fucking weird. xD i love it. the next thing i really remember is being in a semi-shadowy room, lighting kinda scarce but giving a gentle, warm, reddish glow. like some of m’s string lights. could’ve been a remix of our place. probably was. rushi was there. we were all talking. m was lying on the floor between the couch and glass table for some reason, i was sitting, he was standing. at one point he struck up a conversation by asking if either of us had ever watched a show called “poops dumps”. that’s…. even funnier when i’m typing it out. neither m nor i had seen or heard of it, but my main response was to squeeze in next to m and say to her, “hi it’s vince with poops dumps” and cause (1) her to huff with anger and amusement, and (2) rushi to actually laugh at something we’d said. after everyone had recovered, he either described the show to us briefly or showed us a clip, and it was just…. people recording themselves on their phones while they took a shit. just faces, mind you, like any old selfie.

shortly thereafter, i woke up and took a shit, sans recording. lmao.

the other thing that was weird about sleep was the couple of times where, very briefly, i felt intense dizziness. it woke me up both times and was powerful enough that i felt anxious that i was going to have to throw up, but it abated so quickly. so weird. not sure if tequila-and-pizza-related, or maybe more just overtime stress-related. i’ve been surprised that i haven’t had MORE side effects of stress, honestly. haven’t been getting great sleep, pulling 12-hour days, all this ridiculous business with cute coworker keeping my heart rate up and my armpits way too sweaty, running up and down the stairs frequently. if the election was enough to make my chest feel like it was being squeezed to death, this…. what is this? not to mention how much drinking there’s been this week. my poor body. :/ i… need to work out. fuck. i need a doctor. i need a job with health insurance. i need the energy to job hunt and be a worthwhile candidate. i need a doctor. ๐Ÿ˜› OH almost forgot on top of these things, my fucking car started acting up again this week. i think i’ve isolated it to maybe only happening when i’m braking and going rly slowly and turning the wheel a certain amount, which is something i’ve noticed before…. it’s also a little delayed when i’m shifting gears. well. not just delayed. the rpms drop a startling amount. that’s the whole thing. it acts like it might stall–thankfully, i guess, hasn’t happened yet *knocks on wood and bird* and i feel helpless and terrified. what i need to do is look at the list of known issues from the place that sold it to me and make a phone call tmrw when the mechanic a few blocks over is open again. and do some more googling. jesus fucking christ. with the low mileage i bought it at, this was supposed to be a good fucking car that lasted and didn’t have a bunch of bullshit. fuck. </3 i’m sorry i don’t know how to handle you, at least not yet.

it would be good to go to the mall area today and buy some perfume and maybe stop by home depot and attempt, *attempt* to get some matches for the paint.

if busy season is going to give me another good paycheck or two, it would be nice to get a couple of bigger-ticket items. like finally getting my fucking tattoo, if my acne behaves long enough :P. like finally finishing the new build. and like…. if i took out of savings, i’d have enough for the tattoo whenever i wanted. god, do they even still have my art on file? it’s been almost two years since my initial appointment. what shitty fucking timing. if i’d gone in without a specific artist in mind, maybe i could have gotten it done before i got laid off instead of sitting on the waitlist until it was too late. and now, after having m snap that area repeatedly with a rubber band as hard as possible, i’m kind of terrified of how much it will hurt, or at least that i won’t be able to handle it. or both.

phone bill due soon. thinking about upgrading this os, starting to be less worried about app compatibility.

nobody would want *me* for a job, lbr. i will probably lose my parents’ health insurance and not have anything to replace it. oh good yes let’s overwhelm ourselves with helpless thoughts

i have Everyday Devices stuck in my head for some reason

Dreams. I hope I can remember them.

One where M and I drove into… I guess the area where my elementary school used to be. And went to what must also have been an elementary school, even though i wasn’t thinking of it in those terms. But we were on a mission. we had a thing we’d brought from Ikea: this weird, massive, onion-shaped enclosure that I have no idea how we fit it into the car (since it was fully constructed when we got there) and it took up a whole room, swaying gently as it was suspended from the ceiling. The other thing, the more important piece, was….. this magnetic knife strip? For some reason, that was the thing it was really important to me that we share with the kids in this classroom. And that’s the other thing–it was a very specific classroom and teacher. We knew where we were going and where we were setting this up. And we’d set up the wooden hanging onion room already but not the knife strip when the teacher came over to be like “excuse me but wtf” so we told her, in what i recall being very optimistic terms, like “i want to share this with your kids” or “i want to make sure they have access to this” or something like that, something that sounded Big and Important. And somehow…. she was all for it! She completely bought it (i don’t know whether “it” was the truth or not) and then was like “but only if I get a realtor’s fee” or something like that. I was still worried she’d misunderstood about the knife strip and would freak out, started wondering if this classroom was too young to be handling blades (answer: it’s an elementary school, what was my brain thinking) when, as she was explaining or starting to explain what a realtor’s fee is (or perhaps she was handing it off to one of her students? or another teacher? at some point there were other teachers milling around and it was kind of like the setup of 4 classrooms, 2 grades per classroom that I had, and the teacher we were working with was the 3rd and i was relieved that we weren’t giving knives to the youngest group or something) but anyway as the explanation was taking place, i saw her bringing out a pile of big metal scissors, presumably to be moved into the new onion room. double relief. i feel kinda like i wasn’t supposed to question the knife strip, like it was maybe something else originally but my brain got it mixed up or something. the last thing i remember in this dream was realizing that my double bed was in there, and turning to M and saying “this means we have to ask my parents for their spare bed immediately” and then getting confused trying to think of how everything would shuffle around, but like, not questioning that my double bed was in this room that was going in an elementary school?

One of my later dreams…. is gonna be confusing. I was … huh. There was another, possibly related game dream, where M and I went to an actual fucking Gamestop to buy a game. And it was weird and the guys on duty (?) walked in right before we did, and I don’t remember a cash register being involved. or any of the normal annoying questions that accompany a purchase there. and then he had some kind of question, and i gave a weird/flirtatious answer–something that would have seemed weird if you were an innocent bystander who knew nothing about my relationship with m. it may have had something to do with a strip search? i don’t fucking know.

okay okay so the actual confusing dream may have shared a setup with that one… similar/nearby location.. hell, maybe it was in my old college town. but it also feels like where grammie used to live, at parts. anyway for whatever reason, there was a con or something going on and there was this… group i was going with, and then there was basically Everyone Else pitted against us. It looked like a lot of queer youth trying to protest non-violently. They tried on multiple occasions (but not very hard) to impede the passage of the group i was with. there were ppl in my group with more power than me. there were also ppl with less. maybe we were escorting a prisoner or something? but idk, that doesn’t seem quite right. at one point, though, the group got separated due to a couple ppl going off in different directions, and the rest of us splitting up to keep track of them/bring them back. it was during this period, i believe, that there was a bunch of stormy weather and we had to camp in some shitty woods for the night, or maybe just while the weather passed. but the guy i was following, he found this tiny little lizard and kept talking about it as it was pinched between his fingers. Bright green and blue. He gave it to me after a while and then was gone. like any small animal, this lizard hated being pinched between my fingers and kept thrashing around, trying to escape, trying to bite my fingers. i couldn’t tell if the lack of pain was due to the lack of power in its bite, or due to this being a dream. i remember being worried that it was going to hurt, though, thinking maybe he just hadn’t really gotten close enough to bite me for real yet. in my other hand, i held the blue spongy attachment for the dish scrubbing wand. i used it to try to prevent him from flailing so much, keep him still, keep him away from my fingers, with only mild success. i don’t remember how this one ended at all.

there was another one, the most recent one, but all i remember about it is that there were a bunch of us in a field, and i think a lot of them may have even been real people, but the only ones i remember for sure were me, m, and austin for some reason.

i just cried a little at the thought of ds9 ending. after looking up andrew robinson on imdb for whatever reason. god. i’m midway through the sixth season, and i’m scared that i’m too invested in certain characters to enjoy the rest as i should, that it’s going to be over too soon, before i’ve seen what i want to see because what i want to see has never existed there.

the haircut place is open now. i should call and try to make an appointment but that sounds scary. maybe instead i’ll sit here for another week, putting my hair up constantly, eating massive amounts of sugar every day, thinking about but not actually using my gym membership… why? why don’t i do things? it’s not like i feel a great amount of anxiety, i just…. don’t. talking on the phone feels too out of my control, i guess. at this point i expect an answer that won’t work for me. and i expect to be overheard by m while calling. i at least need to wash my hair before getting a haircut, though, and also need to wear appropriate clothes. oh, and put the example photos i saved into my phone so i can share them. as for the gym… i think about how much energy it’s going to take. how much of a slog it is to work out. my brain has successfully uncoupled that sense from the enjoyment and endorphins that usually accompany the slog… i guess those come along slightly later. but, god, i’m so unhappy with my body. another uncoupling of cause and effect, i suppose. i guess i should tell m not to bring me any more sweets from work lmao i sound like such a fucking middle-aged white lady.

there was something this week… m had a picture on her computer whose filename was “captain death” and i was trying to help her figure out why it would be named that. i searched our chat transcript logs from the year when she received it and the year after, and ended up reading some unrelated stuff. of course. it was entertaining toย  read myself being so… animated and clever about shit. and it reminded me that she and i used to talk all the time, like, SHARE things. and used to have things to share. things we felt like sharing. and idk, it reminded me a little of the romance we’ve had. it reminded me that it’s not gone, just kind of… forgotten. dissociated. ๐Ÿ˜› maybe rereading those could be helpful in the future… maybe. revisiting that shit has caused plenty of emotions across the board, that’s for sure.

am i going to do any of the things? ๐Ÿ™