A horrible nightmare, possibly foreboding.

A few nights ago I dreamnt:

I'm asleep on the subway, slouching down in my seat with my legs pulled up a little above me, and suddenly there's someone on me just choking and choking and choking me, but I'm too sleepy and I can't look up, even though it's terrible and I know something is wrong, and suddenly as I'm still being choked I summon all the energy that I have and I manage to open up my eyelids and look up to where the person or whatever it is is, and then the choking breaks off, and then I'm awake in real life on my bed in my room, only I see a hazy kind of balloon down at the far end of my bed rise up from over by the corner of the bed and into the ceiling, as my consciousness spins a little bit and it's like I'm spiralling down somehow in my mind, since my field of vision is bigger and closer to objects then it normally is prior to its sinking back to normal, though I'm not moving in any way at all, I'm just lying in my bed in my room waking up somehow.

And I'm awake, and it's like my dream had continued into real life and I saw something in real life.

I hope nothing bad happens to me on my birthday this year.

Trying to comfort a cat.

This one resthome resident who worked in PR had to go away for a few weeks, and his cat that he got recently is staying back at the resthome.

Everyone is taking care of her and stopping by to check on food and water for her and to take some time to sit there and pet her, but she's still pretty lonely, and when you go to open the door she's sitting there meowing, even though before all of this she was the most standoffish cat ever, and it was rare that she'd even pay attention to you, let alone come and get some petting from you.

So, one day I ran around and got some empty cardboard boxes from the trash holding rooms on each floor, and then I went and set them up all over the room for her.

And, every time I was on shift, I made sure to go in the room and rearrange the boxes for her, to give her some stimulation.  Once, I even realized that I could push two chairs together and set the box upside down over on top of them to create a stable platform that she could get up onto, and I put it over by the window so she could sit on it and look out, since the window ledge there is too narrow for her to sit on and really probably even to walk on top of.  And, since I wasn't sure if she knew how to use the window, the next time I went in to the room, I picked her up and set her on top of there, and then when something was happening on the street below, I stopped petting her and began looking out the window at the activity there until she joined me, to try to teach her that interesting things were happening out there and that she should look at them.

I told all of this to my one assisted living client with disabilities and her (lesbian) sister, and they both were like, "Awwwww, we're training you to be a cat person."

I also said that I felt I had to teach her what a window was since I wasn't too sure that the cat understood how to use it, and my assisted living client thought that that was a good idea, since "sometimes cats can be dumb like that," an observation that she made and then laughed about, though not in a mean way, just instead because it's more like the truth about some animals.

I wonder if there's a kind way to say that an animal isn't too smart, though.

My regimen returns.

So, after my worktrip abroad, I began doing what I've been meaning to do for a while, beginning again my reading and writing regimen that I had back in graduate school.

Which is, I write down in quarter hour increments how much time I've actually spent reading and writing, and I try to hit a certain number of hours per day or per week or whatever.

My current goal is at least 16 hours a week of reading and writing, with at least 4 hours of writing among that, and so far I've had no problem hitting it.

I also shelled out like sixty-five bucks and bought an app for my smartphone that lets me block the internet for huge chunks of time. 

I've been using that to restrict myself most days from online stuff during the morning and the evenings, and it really helps to detox you from national events and get you in touch with what's happening around you.

Some mornings I have my coffee and work on Egyptian in the late morning light, and it's just so idyllic.

I used to do that with Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and now I'm back there.

A dream of things decaying: Blue jeans.

Last month I dreamnt:

I'm sitting somewhere looking at a pair of my blue jeans that I'm holding in my hands, and there's a number of small holes scattered in the crotch area, maybe a millimeter or two across each, from where my legs meet and rub the fabric together.

And, I think to myself, "These are my last pair of good jeans."

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Water outage.

Earlier this month, one boiler gave out at the apartment building of my one assisted living client with disabilities, so they had to shut the water off at her building one morning in order to try to fix it.

So, the night before, part of my duties was to fill up a lot of pots with water, in case the water was off for longer than they had said it would be.

The day after the water outage, I checked up with her on how that all went.

She said they fixed it quick, and the water was actually on, just no hot water, so it ended up just being really painful for her to wash her hands, the water was so cold.

So, I told her that the next time the water gets shut off and she needs to wash her hands, she should get some ground beef instead and rub her hands on it, then have her cat lick it off.

She said she'd consider it.

Tip from a jazz bassist.

The other week at the Hanukkah party at the resthome, they had a jazz ensemble in, and afterwards I told the double bassist that I used to play and that I'd been meaning to get back to it for a long time, like relearning it and joining a community orchestra or something, and that I really enjoyed watching him play.

And, he was like, "Go check out this pawn shop at [name of an intersection] by the [name of a theater]," and he clued me in to a nice bass that they had for $950.

"No way," I was like.

"It's really nice," he was like.

"Why is it so nice?", I was like.

"Probably because they don't know where it came from," he was like, as old people with walkers flowed through the lobby around us, making their way towards the second round of hors d'oeuvres.

 . . .

Long and short of it is, it was sold, but I talked to the store owners by phone and it's a legit music place that trades in used instruments and they have a guy who supplies them with double basses, so I told them what I was looking for and gave them my phone number, and they're going to get in touch with him for me.

I'm thinking that I have the money now and I'm turning 40 soon, so why not, $950 or so is cheap for a midlife crisis.

It would be fun to relearn the bass, and I can probably check out musical scores and CDs from the main library downtown, and play along to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony or Wagner or whatever.

Doesn't that sound like fun?

Addendum:

The next afternoon when I went to go into work, the tray with the peas in it and the peeled potato quarters and the carrot chunks and some more peas, too, all of that was still out on the pavement in the subway station near my house.

And, I noticed a few stray bean sprouts mixed in there, too, which made me think that this was somehow a tray of vegetables that a (Chinese) person had been carrying, though I couldn't quite figure out how bean sprouts would square with potatoes and peas and carrots all in a single vegetable mix.