RV'ing The Dream

Too Pooped To Party

What a day!

I started out in neutral, wandered a while in reverse, revved up to way too many RPMs, and then idled to a dropping stop by 8 p.m.

I am now too pooped to party. And even too tired to cry about my latest loss. A verbal boohoo will have to do. For now . . .

Today ended the longest five minutes of my life. I hear you all going “huh?” in the background. Let me explain.

Six weeks ago my dear hubby did everything but spit polish our truck to put it up for sale. Her pewter paint shone in the August sun like golden spun silk. After ten years in service, she was still as beautiful as could be. And to prove her regality, she lured a buyer not even five minutes after Ken parked her on the corner. The ink was still wet on the signs. The test drive was completed within an hour, and she was all but sold—until I could not locate the title. I made myself miserable staying up half that night searching through all the files, pertinent or not. I searched everywhere I thought it might have been mislaid and everywhere it could not possibly have been. I knew for sure that a year and a half ago, we had that title in hand, in the presence of our attorney.

Screech! Put on the brakes. He must have shuffled it into the papers he kept when he was helping us sort through some legal matters last year. Woops.

A rousing game of telephone tag followed, as he is no longer local, but evidently his files still are. He has found something, I am not sure what, answering machines and all that confusion. Undaunted, we approached DMV for a replacement title.

Drum roll, please.

Six weeks and $77 dollars for the replacement later, the title finally arrived in our mailbox. Yippee, but was the fish still interested, or had he found some other way to spend his wad of cash?

Yes! He was still interested! Even bigger yippee! Only, he was out of town. Bummer. A few more days must go by. Even after we had the time and date set to his choosing, we still had to wait for him to arrive at the bank. How long can I hold back the tears?

So, all things said and done, a simple five minute sale took over six weeks to complete.

And now she is gone. She was a great truck. I am a little dismayed that the new owner is just going to flip her. I had hoped to meet her new parents and wish them well. It wasn’t until the very end that I learned they own an auto company and will most likely resell her. Ken tells me not to be sad. (But look at his face.) He said at least he got his asking price. It’s not like she was one of my precious pets. I guess I should stop calling her a she, but I cannot help myself. I really enjoyed driving that truck.

And that was all before noon.

From there, I cried about the truck. I cried about an article I read in a magazine.

I cried about all the people participating in Occupy Portland, as we drove through downtown on our way to Beaverton to visit some friends. We did start quite a ruckus though, honking and waving. We could hear other honks and cheers going on for quite a while after we drove past the park full of tents.

I cried when I spoke to my dad. He is in the hospital again.

I cheered up when we finally made it to Beaverton. We haven’t seen Bob and Sandy quite often enough lately. Dinner and a movie was the plan. I am afraid I might have talked her ear off. Sorry, Sandy. A new ear is on the way. Ides of March and then Olive Garden. Ken told me not to get popcorn since we would be having dinner right after the movie. Bad move.

I could have chewed my own arm off by the time we ate. After an hour’s wait in the crowded lobby. We were all so famished, we fell on the calamari as soon as it arrived. We even forgot to bless in our frenzied state of hunger—until dessert arrived and it all of a sudden hit us. Woops again. Lord, please forgive our ineptitude. We are only human, after all.

But what a day it was.

TELLING DREAMS

I am not one to normally remember my dreams. Usually in the mornings I have a fleeting sense I dreamt something but cannot remember what. Any dreams I do seem to remember tend to follow a theme, even if at first glance they do not seem to be connected at all. The theme continues, or the dreams will repeat themselves, until I figure out what they are trying to tell me. I know that not everyone puts stock in the meanings of dreams, and I usually don’t buy into the explanations that the dream dictionaries give, because everyone is different, and there are many nuances to each dream that no dictionary could possibly cover. Having said that, I do believe our dreams come from our subconscious minds. In our sleep we try to solve the day’s problems. Or we wrestle in our sleep with something we are totally unaware is bothering us in our waking world. Though, sometimes I am aware of a general nagging feeling but I cannot place it, until my dreams explain things for me.

Since we left a week ago on our maiden voyage in the Raven, I have been having bizarre dreams. Most of my recent dreams include my birth-family members, which is odd because I have not seen them since shortly after my mother passed away almost three years ago. It is a long story, which I will not divulge now. We have our differences of opinion. ‘Nuf said.

The first dream I remember this week involved my twin sister, a friend of hers, and me being honored at a charity benefit. I was upset because they were late in picking me up. The entertainment portion of the program was top notch, and I had helped arrange most of it, but I was missing it because of them. When we finally arrived, they chose to sit in the second row, where we were noticed by everyone as we sat down. It would not have been so bad if my sister and her friend had taken the inside seats and left the outer one for me (since I was last to sit), but they made me crawl over them. Then my sister kept pushing me and telling me to scoot over, but there was a large woman and her small son sharing the next seat. My sister would not stop pushing.

The next night my dream was brief and disconcerting. It was auditory instead of visual. I clearly heard my cat crying, meowing for help. It woke me out of a sound sleep and I later had to call my son to ask if Julius was okay.

The next night, I dreamt that the status quo for the neighborhood we lived in was to dress all little boys in pink. There was even a committee of spinsters and busybodies to discipline those who did not comply. I refused to dress my son in pink, not because boys cannot wear pink, but because he and I were not being given a choice in the matter.

Last night’s dream was totally off the wall. It had many parts. I had parked the Raven at our local Fred Meyer store, intending to go into the deli to get us some jalapeno poppers. For some reason, I wandered all over the store before making it to the deli, and when I did make it to the deli, there was only one popper left, so I did not buy any at all. In home goods, they were demoing wines and they kept pushing a glass of red wine at me, even though I explained that I cannot drink red wine because of the sulfites causing migraines. When we attempted to return to the Raven, I could not find it. The parking lot was full of motor homes, and someone had moved the Raven. From there, I was immediately at my mom’s house. She was going on and on about her boss and this disabled child he was sponsoring. At work, she said that he had declared it left-handed day because the boy was left-handed, and so she wanted to do the same at home. I was fine with it, since I am left-handed. There would be no adjustments I would have to make in order to comply. My siblings, however, were very upset. They thought it was unfair that I did not have to switch hands, too. My argument was that it was left-handed day, not switch-hands day. After that, mom demanded that I take my oldest sister to the dentist the next day. I adamantly refused, saying, “I will not take her and her screaming children anywhere!” My brother was trying to quiet me, but I said that I did not care who heard me. “I am not going to do it. Why wasn’t I asked instead of told?”

To surmise, it seems I may be having internal struggles with my nonconformist choices. Society says that you must have a sticks-and-bricks dwelling and, therefore, a permanent physical address. Society says you must maintain roots, hold down a 9-to-5 job, and do things as everyone else does them. I fear these conflicts with the “norm” threaten our plans. I worry about those I am leaving behind. I fear others may be jealous of our ability to live out our dreams. Even with my fears, it is good that even in my dreams, I am beginning to stand my ground. I am not the mealy-mouthed pushover I once was. In my dreams, I struggle to become the person I want to be, so that maybe my struggles in life will be less.

I have never really fit in anywhere, at any time in my life. I have always tried to do as I am told, even to my own detriment. Now I am standing up for myself. I am choosing to live my own life the way I choose. I was never meant to simply be a follower, though my upbringing and early life tried to keep me down. I am my own person, and at 43, it is high time I figured that out.