Recurring

I softly knocked on the half open door. The blinds were closed on his office window, so I couldn’t tell if he was concentrating on something and whether I would be interrupting him.

“Yeah,” he called out. He said it with a flat tone of voice, and I couldn’t tell what kind of day he was having. You never could tell with Greg, and no matter how hard I tried I could never seem to get him to smile. I practiced jokes in the bathroom mirror every morning, trying to perfect my delivery. My jokes were met with an awkward silence, and after a few months I gave up and resigned myself to serious workdays in a confining, gray workplace.

“Um,” I cleared my throat. I threw pleasantries out the window after a few months of working there too. Greg wasn’t much for pleasantries. “I have my ideas for the ads for the online campaign. Want to hear them?” I shifted my weight as I stood in the door, conscious of his gaze. He swiveled in his chair, after pressing the “save” command on his keyboard. His face always held an expression I could never decipher. It contained irritation, mixed with curiosity and a twist of sarcasm. It wasn’t exactly a sneer, but it wasn’t entirely indifferent either. This time he raised his eyebrows as if to say “Oh, this ought to be good.” Only he didn’t think it would be good at all. In fact, his expectations of me had become quite low.

He had two chairs facing the front his desk. I discovered on the day of my job interview that one of them squeaked loudly. Occasionally I forgot and sat in the squeaky one. On those days the squeak completely threw off my game. It distracted me every time I fidgeted uncomfortably while being scorched by Greg’s stare. With every squeak his stare grew harder. I couldn’t remember which one squeaked, and after debating for a few seconds I sat in the left one.  It squeaked as I sat in it, and it would look weird if I got up and moved into the other one.  So I stayed with Ol Squeaky.

He pulled a special wet wipe from his second drawer, and proceeded to wipe the lenses of his glasses with it. The smell of the cleaning solution wafted and stung my nostrils. It smelled like cheap citrus vodka. I gagged a bit, and tried to cover it up by clearing my throat again. Not for the first time I wondered how he could wear his glasses after he’d used those noxious cleaning wipes. The smell alone would make anyone’s eyebrows fall out; Greg’s were intact, however.  They were probably strengthened by all the sneering.

Greg replaced his glasses, and then wordlessly folded his hands on his desk. I’d learned in the few months I’d worked for him that this was my cue to begin. I set my notes on the edge of his desk, careful not to let my things mix with anything on his desk. Greg’s desk was sacred ground where my papers were strictly forbidden from fraternizing with his. I imaged one of his pure-bred printouts having to sheepishly inform him that she’d gotten knocked up by flea-bitten mongrel notepad. Greg would passive-aggressively inform the printout that she was a tramp and no longer welcome in his office. The print out would then fold itself inward, slink out of the office and swan dive into the shredder next to the photocopier.

Speaking rapidly and wildly tapping my pen against my thigh, I presented my ideas. I held up my rudimentary sketches, explained the concepts and the sites where the ads would run.   He raised his eyebrows at the stick figures I'd drawn.  I wish I'd hired some sort of artist to help me prepare for this presentation.  Maybe next time I'd hire a sculptor.

When I was done, he leaned back in his chair. He folded his hands, as if in prayer, and rested his mouth on his finger tips. He stared, blankly, at his desk. I couldn’t tell what he was looking at. Was it the brass clock in the shape of a ship’s steering wheel? Was it the decorative pen set that he’d glared at me for using once?  Was it the picture that I'd mistakenly thought was of his mother, but learned it was really of his wife? Then he fixed his gaze back on me. I knew this expression, because I’ve seen it on his face before. It was the “You are by far the stupidest person I’d ever met” expression. The stomach acid rose through my esophagus and I could taste its metallic flavor on the back of my tongue. It was the same flavor I’d experienced that very morning when I had grasped the guardrail and vomited on the side of the highway on the way to work in preparation for this very meeting. My palms began to sweat; I braced my hands against my thighs to stop the spasm in my quadriceps.

I felt myself fold inward and slink toward the door, like so many sullied pure-bred printouts. I cautiously avoided the shredder as I made my way back to my office. I paused at the water cooler to wash the taste of puke out of my mouth.

I flopped in my chair and scanned my emails, thankful that my office mate was not at her desk. I didn’t want to talk about it. She and I had spent weeks brainstorming ideas for the campaign. She, the employee that he interacted favorably with, was convinced he’d love our ideas. She appeared at the door not two seconds after I sat down.

“How’d it go?” she asked when she took her seat.

“I have to start all over again.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. And that’s the problem. I wish he’d just fire me and get it over with already.”

I thought these nightmares would have stopped by now.

I Am a Paddle Ball Ninja

Last night my boyfriend and I went to my co-worker Dennis’s house for his birthday celebration. On the way to the party we stopped to shoot some footage of a hurricane coming up the coast. We managed to record humongous waves slamming into the concrete walls of an abandoned building on the shore. It was quite beautiful, and I imagined it would be a welcome addition to some future video project.

We arrived at Dennis’s house, where upon entering the house I gave him his birthday present: a paddle ball.

He was, of course, thrilled with the present and invited us in.

For the rest of the evening we partied our heads off, and then woke on Dennis’s floor in the morning with absolutely no recollection of the night before. Dennis stumbled into the room, “Man that was a hell of a night last night.” Then he pointed to the ceiling, “OK, I definitely don’t remember doing that.”

Suspended from the ceiling were hundreds of paddle balls. The paddles were removed, and the balls were suspended from the ceiling by their rubber bands at varying heights. They were multicolored, and swayed in the breeze from the open living room window.

“Wow!” I gaped at the ceiling, “It’s kinda pretty.” My boyfriend scratched his head in agreement. He’s a man of few words, I like to say that it’s because he only knows a few. I briefly wondered where all those paddles ended up, and then decided that I really did not want to know.

“So, do you have any idea what happened last night?” Dennis asked, yawning.

I thought about it for a few seconds, as I strained to remember, “No, I really don’t.” Then I saw it sitting innocently on the coffee table, its silver casing shining in the faint stream of sunlight. “But I am sure we have video of whatever the hell we did last night.”

The three of us gathered around the camera’s tiny display screen and watched the footage of the hurricane ravaging the concrete walls. “What is this crap?” Dennis asked impatiently. “Fast forward! Fast Forward!”

We watched the disjointed video from the night before of all of our drunken antics. We winced at a few of the more embarrassing moments, and laughed at others. I uttered the phrase, “Oh no I most certainly did not do that!” at several moments during the viewing.

The video ended with a clear picture of Dennis’s couch. Then I entered the picture from behind the camera wearing my green wool cardigan sweater. At some point during the night I must have gone home to get it. The camera tipped on an angle; I must have failed to prop it upright. I whipped out the paddle ball from behind my back and held it out to the camera and roared, “I! AM! A! PADDLE! BALL! NINJA!”

In my drunken mind the paddle ball was converted into a pair of nunchucks. I swung the paddle ball wildly in front of myself. I may have squealed like a ninja from a Kung Fu movie, I will neither confirm nor deny this. The ball, tethered to the end of the rubber band stretched to the limits out of frame a few times as I whirled it around as they taught me in my paddle ball ninja dojo. Then the ball smacked me in the temple and I groaned out a soft, “Oof!” I reached out to the camera and shut it off, and the video ended in static.

I rolled over and laughed into my pillow this morning, that is before it occurred to me that I may have shouted out “I am a paddle ball ninja!” in my sleep.

Analyze THAT!

Hitting the Snooze Bar on Brilliance

I take my dreams very seriously. I keep a notepad by the bed so I can write things down that I come up with in my dreams. I came up with the premise for my novel in a dream more than a year ago, and I got up and started writing it.

The other night I had a great idea for a title for the book. It was great. It burst into my head and woke me up from a deep sleep. I groped for the notepad in the dark. It wasn’t there. I lied in the dark and debated on whether I wanted to get out of bed, and out of the snuggly warmth of the bed. I dreaded the cold house around me as I went downstairs to get another note pad. I imagined the cold of the wood floors, as I left my slippers downstairs.

“Nah, I’ll remember it,” I told myself. “It’s a great idea, I’ll totally remember it.” I rolled over and dozed off.

I woke up in the morning, empty. The idea was gone. Vanished. Vaporized. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t reproduce it.

I mentioned it to Todd the next morning, hoping that he would say “Oh yeah, you were saying something in your sleep. It was blah blah blah blah…” No dice.

Instead he said “You always think that the ideas you dream about are brilliant. I’ll bet it was really something like ‘Concrete Bananas’ though. Then when you get up in the morning and look at your notepad you’ll say ‘What? I thought that was brilliant?’”

Notepad has been restored in its rightful place by the bed. Hopefully it’ll come to me.

A Whole Lotta Anxieties Rolled Up In One Dream

I think the winter blahs are hitting me pretty hard. I am having the damnedest time getting out of bed in the mornings. I start work at 8, so that I means I need to be out of the house by 7:30, latest 7:35. It takes me about 35 minutes to shower and get ready. I also like to eat, make lunch (not war), put the dogs out for morning pee and feed them before I leave the house.

Lately this has been my wake up routine.

6:00 the alarm goes off. Hit snooze.

6:09 the alarm goes off. Hit snooze.

6:18 the alarm goes off. Todd groans. Turn alarm off and tell self “Get out of bed at 6:20.” Doze off.

6:23 wake up with a start. Tell self “Get out of bed at 6:25.” Doze off.

6:34 wake up, glance at clock, groan.

6:42 actually swing feet out from under covers onto the floor. Fumble in the darkness on the way to the shower while rubbing eyes. Shower, dress, make self look presentable,

7:15 Glance at watch on the edge of the bathroom sink. Mutter to self “Holy shit, I gotta get moving.” I open the back door and release the hounds with a “If you don’t come right back and I am sending your asses to the pound. I mean it this time.”

7:17 I am lucky, they come back and tap on the glass door to be allowed in. I shower them with treats, praise, and most importantly, breakfast. Sometimes they don’t come back. Sometimes I have to put on my dog chasin’ shoes and tromp through the woods to get them to come back. My dogs don’t respond to threats. They’ve heard it all before. Chasing them knocks a good 5-10 minutes out of my morning, depending on how far they’ve gotten and how cooperative they are feeling. I scramble around the kitchen making lunch, eating my own breakfast, and getting my act together for the day.

7:35 I go back upstairs to take vitamins, brush teeth, put shoes on, and kiss Todd goodbye.

7:40 I pull the car out of the driveway, and set my GPS for work as the destination so I can see the estimated arrival time at the office. It says “8:03” and I curse under my breath. But I’ll still do something time consuming like pull into the library to return my books to the drive up chute on my way to work. Because there’s no way I could possibly do that after work. Nuh-uh, no way.

Last night I dreamt that I overslept. In the dream I opened my eyes and the clock read 8:30. I fumbled for the phone, called my boss to tell her that I overslept and I wouldn’t be in until 2. I assured her that I’d be in at 2, and would take the day as a PTO day and still work the final 3 hours, you know, just to be fair. She told me to come in by the back door so that the big boss wouldn’t see me come in so late.

Then I wander outside and see that the neighbor, whose house I can barely see in real life, has deposited a number of broken down cars on their lawn. I am completely pissed about this, and storm into the house to discuss the matter of critical importance with Todd.

At some point my cousin had come over and dropped off her toddler son for us to babysit. In response to my tirade about the neighbor, Todd stood up, walked into the other room, and retrieved the toddler.

“What the hell is that?” I asked. Um, a penguin?

I left the house at 1:30, to make it in to work by 2. God knows what I did with the entire day in that dream. I think I spent it agonizing about the neighbor’s broken down cars, the toddler in my home, and the fact that there is no back door at work.

Dreams About People I’ve Never Met

Last night I had a dream about the woman who writes dooce.com. I’ve never met this woman and though I read her blog on occasion I haven’t really thought about her all that much except for when I think to click over to her site and read about what she’s been doing. I am a very sound sleeper and I rarely remember my dreams—yet I remembered a dream about a woman I’ve never met whose life is nothing like mine.

In the dream, this woman would occasionally have people over to her house for a salon. Apparently being invited to this salon was a very big deal, and Todd and I were thrilled to attend.

The invitation said that we would be discussing her artwork. We arrived at the house, which was unlike any house I’d ever seen in my awake or dreaming life. Her house had a lazy river that went all through the bottom floor. It started on the front porch, where she encouraged her guests to flop onto an inner tube and float along the current through her home with a beer in hand as they admired her paintings and photographs which hung on her walls at different spots along the edge of the river. Then at different intervals the current in the river would speed up, which propelled a few tube riders closer to other tube riders, presumably to encourage mingling among the salon attendees.

We floated on the river in Casa Dooce, among her Pollock-esque paintings, her photos of farm animals, and her sculptures that were constructed of aluminum foil. We clinked beer bottles with bathing suit clad strangers; we ate finger food positioned at strategic spots along the river.

But, really, how cool would it be to have a lazy river in your house? Want to get a snack, just paddle on over to the fridge. Laundry would be a snap--just toss it all in at the start of the river, and fish it out at the end--lather, rinse, repeat. And you could totally surprise your spouse with a gondolier on Valentine's Day too! It's a win-win proposition!

What the hell did I eat last night?

About a Boy

I had a crush on a boy named Mike during my freshman year of high school. It was a very embarrassing crush, as everyone in my small high school knew about it. (To give you an idea of how small my school was, I graduated with 71 people. Everyone knew every one at East Windsor High.) During this crush on Mike I channeled my inner puppy-dog and hung on his every word. Mike, understandably, avoided me like the plague and eventually I got over my crush.

I began to date one of Mike’s friends, Karl, my sophomore year. We hung out with Mike on occasion, and he became a friend who hovered on the edge of my circle of friends. My perception of Mike changed from object of affection to a cool guy to hang out with. He was intelligent, funny, and had this insanely high level of energy that he could just barely contain.

Half way through junior year Karl and I broke up. The summer after junior year I began to hang out with Mike’s older brother Leon. I ended up dating Leon for my entire senior year, and I hung out with Mike again just because I was Leon’s girlfriend. I went off to college and my relationship with Leon disintegrated with my wanting to explore my life on campus without having a boyfriend at home. I didn’t think about Mike or Leon very much for the years I was in college. Occasionally in the summer I’d bump into either of them when I was home for breaks, but that was just about it.

I graduated college, and Leon and I started up again while I was living at home that summer. I moved to the Boston area, and our boyfriend/girlfriend relationship became that of distant friends. Every now and then we’d call or email to say hi, but that’s it. I think the last time I ever saw Mike was in 1996. I think. At one point Leon had told me that Mike was diagnosed with cancer, but that his energy was carrying him through the grueling chemotherapy, and he ended up in remission. At another point he told me how Mike had moved to the Fort Lauderdale area, and had gotten into kite-boarding.

There was a period of several years where Leon and I didn’t talk. I admit I didn’t think of him or of Mike very much at all in those years. Then last year I heard that Mike had died of cancer. I looked up Leon’s address and sent him a card, and put my phone number in the card in case he wanted to talk about it. He called a few days later, just before Thanksgiving, and we got caught up and talked about Mike.

Since then I haven’t really thought about Mike at all. In March Todd and I went to dive in Fort Lauderdale and we watched the kite boarders from the dive boat, and I wondered if any of them knew Mike. But it’s not like I am sitting here missing Mike. How could I possibly miss him when I haven’t seen him in over 10 years?

Every so often Leon will shoot me an email, and I’ll respond. Last week, the day before Thanksgiving Leon sent me a link for a blog on which one of Mike’s friends wrote in memory of Mike. It was a beautiful entry, and featured pictures of Mike goofing around. The kind of pictures that you look at and wonder how someone with that level of energy could be gone. It was nice to see his face, and I can only imagine how bittersweet it was for Leon to see that entry. To see the wonderful words written about his brother, yet the heartbreak he must be feeling over missing him especially at this time of year. I wrote back, and still didn’t think all that much about Mike.

I woke up at 4 this morning from a dream. I dreamt I was having Thanksgiving dinner with Leon and his parents at their house in our home town. In the dream Mrs. Q, Leon’s mom, asked me to get something from Mike’s room, which they’d left untouched in the dream. I walked into Mike’s room and it smelled like him. I looked around at the room, at his clothes strewn all over the place and smelled the smell of Mike. I haven’t ever really been that close to Mike that I would know what he smelled like. I think I only ever hugged him once or twice. But in that dream I could smell Mike. How could I possibly remember how he smelled when I haven’t seen him in over 10 years and never really stuck my nose next to him and smelled him? It was probably one of those things where in the dream it’s understood that something is one way, but it really doesn’t look that way. Maybe it was understood that it smelled like Mike but it really didn’t. I went back to the dining room table and saw that Mrs. Q was using the bass drum from Mike’s drum set as a side table to hold some of the food, as a way to include Mike in the meal, I guess. How weird is it to have someone I haven’t thought about in over a decade permeate my dream like that?

I woke up from the dream and was lying awake thinking about Leon. This time of year is so hard when you lose a family member. The first Christmas after my mom died I was a sobbing mess straining myself not to cry all day. Each year I am less and less the sobbing mess, and have gotten to the point where I won’t cry at Christmas anymore. I can only hope that Leon and his family will get to that point too.

Field Hockey Dreams

I used to play field hockey when I was in junior high, high school and for 2 years in college. I was a goalie, and like to think I was good at it. In seventh grade my team was not only undefeated but also un-scored upon. In high school my team went to the state tournament 3 times, 2 of which I was the only goalie for the whole season.

I remember when I agreed to be the goalie. Coach Lap, who was my coach in sixth grade, asked who wanted to be the goalie. I raised my hand, and she tossed me the gear. I went home, excited, to tell my Mom.

“Guess what? I’m the goalie!”

“What?” Mom asked. “Don’t you think that’s kind of dangerous?”

“Come on, Mom, I am covered head to toe in padding. I’ll be fine.”

I was covered head to toe in padding, but the thinnest part was on my thighs, which were always covered in bruises from taking shots against them every fall. My senior year of college was the worst, when I didn’t have adequate thigh protection. I wore my bruises proudly, as I was the bad-ass goalie.

I loved the sport when I played in high school, but actually hated my teammates and coach. My love for the sport kept me playing, but my hate for most of the girls on the team kept me sitting alone on the bus to away games without talking all that much.

My sophomore year of college I decided to play again. My freshman year I had backed out at the last minute because I was concerned with having enough time to study—I had just become a DJ on the campus radio station and I had a boyfriend too. Sophomore year I joined the team, and met some of the nicest women I’d ever met. They weren’t at all like the girls I played with in high school, who were also those mean cool girls that you hear about in high schools. My love for the sport extended to actually enjoying spending time with my teammates as well, as we partied all over campus after games. The sport was fun for me again and I wish I could find a league in Rhode Island and play again.

Ever since that first fall with I was in sixth grade, I have had dreams about playing field hockey. The dream is always the same. I am standing in the goal cage, and the ball is coming at my non-stick side—my left. In the dream I kick my left leg out to stop the ball against my shin-guard. In my bed my left leg actually kicks one frantic time, to stop the ball in my dreams. Whoever happens to be in bed with me inevitably ends up with a bruise in his shin as a result of this dream.

I had the dream the other night. I haven’t had it in a few years, because the last time I actually played was 1995. It was a beautiful dream, and I woke up smiling. Now off to scour the Internet to see if I can find a local league to play on.