It’s been awhile since I written anything of substance. Anything that had meaning or relevance. I poke my head into Journal-space, read up on m’friend’s lives, maybe take a silly quiz and post the results. *sigh* Not a very good way to maintain a journal.

I dreamed last night that I was in a hotel. It (the dream) was very gray and umber and sienna. In trying to describe it to BFF, The closest I could come was “it was terribly X-filean”. I hate using a TV show as a description but that’s the best I could come up with. Everything that I saw, I just took for granted. It was gruesome in places but, not shocking.
At any rate, I was going through the rooms of this hotel looking for something. Not sure what. I came to this one room and there were these huge cocoons with people inside. I knew that they’d been injected with a venom that was causing them to liquefy so that something could drink them. But, as I said – it didn’t shock or alarm me. Just something that I knew and made note of.
That’s about all that I remember of the dream. The weirdest part to me is that what disturbed me the most about the whole thing is that I was more upset by the colors than anything else.

My cat’s looking at me from the pile of clean laundry next to the desk that I keep meaning to put away. She looks so comfortable. I’m not-so-secretly convinced that she’s a plush toy brought to life. No other cat I know has fur as soft, as thick, as luxurious as she does.
Behind me on my bed, my daughter sighs in her sleep. I told her she couldn’t sleep in my bed; that she had to sleep in her own room tonight. “I want snuggies” she replied. I’m such a marshmallow.

It’s quiet and dark in here.
I hear outside noises. Voices, doors opening and closing. Car sounds. “the People” the Girlie calls them. The folks who live in our apartment complex.
“Girlie, what’s that noise?” I ask.
“The People.” she solemnly replies, eyes wide.

I feel like grieving tonight – I’m not sure why. Not that I don’t have reasons for sorrow. I do. It just seems like a night to grieve. Not in an over-the-top beating your breast kind of way. More of a deep, quiet river of melancholy that winds through my soul. so much has happened in these last few weeks, months.
I realized yesterday how and still September 11 affected my world view. What did it take? A couple of jet planes running maneuvers over the place where I work. They were very low; and running in circles. They passed overhead 8 times. Each time they did, my heart froze a little more. Nobody else seemed to notice or care. I can put it off to my paranoia but what caused the paranoia in the first damn place?

Today is my mother’s birthday. I gave her a call and wished her a happy birthday. She told me that she’d already gotten her gift.
More time with Dad. Poppy, as my kidlet calls him.

Dad had surgery last month. 3 weeks ago, actually.
Details, details…the devil is in the details. My father has a whole string of things wrong with him. ‘4 outta 5’ is how he puts it. Congestive heart failure, morbid obesity, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, insulin dependent diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver (due to his weight), capillaries seeping blood in his stomach because of the liver damage. He’s 59.
The doctors were not optimistic at all. They told him that he had 2 years (maybe) to live if he didn’t have the surgery.
Do you know what’s involved in a bypass? what about a triple bypass? He came out of the surgery with staples in him to hold his chest together.
I know that he is ok. I know this because he did amazingly well in the surgery and recovery. I know that he is fine.
That doesn’t change the fact that someone had to saw through my father’s chest so that they could hold his heart in their hands.

I can remember Dad sitting in the garage fixing my bike chain. He’d invariably (at the time) have a Kool King 100 burning, hanging from his lip. He always sat cross legged – tailor fashion.
Sometimes when the smoke from his cigarette curled just right around his head, catching the sunlight he’d look like some god of ancient times. A big god, a laughing god. A god who liked to fix things; and who loved to eat. A god who made the best cannonballs in the swimming pool, ever. The god of my youth.

He’s ok – he went home in record time. Of course he’s sore and weak. But according to the doctors he’ll be better able to shed the weight and attain a far more healthy state. Far more so than the state he’s been in for the past forty or so years.

I must go and bathe and get ready for sleep. I think I need snuggies too.