JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU . . .

The Yankees won.
Again.
Swish, swish.
The Red Sox done been swept.
Now get out of my town.

***

The doors are inside.

Thanks to C and his "this ain't so heavy" good attitude, the hateful doors are now lying inside my apartment instead of smooshing the inside of my car.

Tonight, I even had the balls to open the packaging, bust open the can of paint (which thankfully contained the exact shade of white I needed ... I was worried because you never know if "white" really means "white." Kind of like how white people aren't really white. They're kind of peach-colored.), and PAINT them. Just the first coat -- I'm not so skilled a door painter that I can get away with one streak-free, blotch-free coat. But I painted them nonetheless.

It's interesting and insightful how small tasks become very significant to me, and how I derive great pride and a great sense of accomplishment from performing said small tasks. The two doors took me under an hour to paint in their entirety, yet just looking at their streaked glory makes me so happy. I did it -- I painted these doors. Granted, I will need assistance getting them into their tracks, but I painted them.

I think I like the doors now.

***

Greg Fisher Tassajara GS Female Specific Design, Size 13, Color Powder Blue.

It floats just a little outside my stated price range, but C and M and Tony The Bike Guy assure me it will be worth it even if I ride once a week, only during nice weather, and mostly on pavement. I trust them. Well, I trust M and Tony The Bike Guy, and I'm mostly just bullied mightily by C.

(I'll be fasting for the next few months to justify this purchase.)

But I'm excited to own this bicycle. I haven't owned a bicycle since my early middle school years. In fact, until last year, I hadn't ridden a bike since my early middle school years. However, there is definitely a freedom and a joy to be felt when the wind cools your skin as you whizz through it, and there is definitely a triumphant sigh to be let out upon overcoming a small, medium or even large and mostly walked hill. There is an ego boost to be had to look upon new thighs of steel, and the pain ... well, it's a good pain. There's something fantastic about not frittering away a weekend morning, when the sun is shining and people are in a good mood, and even the folks in passing cars smile and wave at you pedaling next to them. I won't be venturing onto the trails soon, nor launching myself over rocks and logs (except involuntarily) ... but I can't wait for after-work jaunts to my local library, weekend rides up and down the North County Trailway, general improved health and yes, thighs of steel.

Now, if I could just think of a decent name for it. Maybe when I see her, it will come to me ...

***

I think I'm developing an intolerance to pasta. As you might expect, this is devastating to me.

The last few times I have eaten a pasta dish, I have been beset with a sudden urge to poo (no diarrhea, thankfully) extreme gas pain and even more extreme lingering, unidentifiable intestinal discomfort that goes away after several hours and much burping. Tums, flat soda, warm water, cold water, stretching, deep breathing ... nothing helps but pooing, burping and more burping. And even then, I feel vaguely nasty. The worst part is that the constant discomfort and slight nausea makes me PISSY and GRUMPY. I can't banter with Hooch because I don't want to move in my chair at work. If the Boss asks me to do something for him, it's a Herculean effort to stand and not feel sick or feel pain. I can't interact properly with friends after work because I'm in a foul mood. All I want to do is go home, lie down and hope for the best.

What the hell is this?!

If I am developing some weird wheat intolerance or allergy, I'm gonna be REAL MAD. The bread and cake, I don't really care about -- I remove the bread from my sandwiches and burgers anyway because they get in the way of the good stuff (I'm no Atkins dieter. Please.). But if I can't eat pasta ... oh, man. I think I'm going to cry.

On the other hand, the optimist in me says MORE ROOM FOR STEAK. Hmm. Am I really deserving of any pity if my only alternative is more steak? MRS.G, LET'S GO!!!

***

I often have very realistic dreams, where everyone is the right color and we're all speaking the same language, conversing about something real and rational. These are freaky.

These dreams are even freakier when my dream-mind and conscious-mind communicate with each other, and when reality and my dream-life become one and the same. In other words, have you ever had a dream in which you were sleeping and your alarm was going off, and you woke up to the sound of your alarm actually going off? What came first, the dream alarm clock, or the real alarm clock? Does your mind anticipate the alarm clock actually going off, so it allows a dream in which an alarm clock is ringing? Or does the actual ringing of the alarm clock trigger a dream about a ringing alarm clock? Hard to say ...

I query because the other night, the night of a severe but quickly-passing thunderstorm, I dreamt that each town in my county was being systematically bombed, in alphabetical order, and all of the towns' citizens were being murdered in this fashion. The enemy was unseen, and is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the enemy, the bombers, would hover their bomb-dropping aircraft over each town and village, and announce that town or village's name over bullhorns. When your town's name was called, you knew that a bomb was seconds away. You also knew that certain death and annihilation were seconds away. In my dream, the bombers announced and eliminated town after town after town, until they got to my town. They announced it. In the dream, I braced myself for impact and death, and wondered about the afterlife and what it would be like to finally see God Face to face. The bomb dropped and my dream went black and I heard a massive, shattering, deafening, horrible boom.

I sat up in my bed, completely awake. I realized that it was not a bomb that had dropped on my town. I was alive. There were no bombs. No, but at the exact moment that my subconscious was dropping a bomb on me, thunder had crashed outside my window. It was pouring. Lightning was flashing. The storm had just arrived in my town, and the first boom of thunder had coincided with the boom of my town's bomb.

It took me several minutes to clear my head, to sort out what was what and what was happening where and in which reality. It took me several more minutes to fall asleep, as I wondered which came first: real life or my dream life? And how and why do they intersect and keep tempo so well together?

***

Holiday weekend coming up. What to do? Beach, BBQ (Banana loves it when I say that), sleeping in, dreaming about my new bike, not eating pasta, painting the second coat on my newly-likable doors, a potential round of golf that lasts longer than it should because I don't golf ... the possibilities are endless ...