Month: January 2015

Sirens outside, streets away but sounding oh-so-close. It’s not even 6am when I hear them, and my first thoughts are Who is even awake right now to need sirens? and I hope everyone is okay, because concerned confusion is becoming a default, it seems. If you’d look outside the window right now, everything is pitch black and absent, so the sirens feel like reminders that there’s really a world out there and it’s filled with trouble. (There are two different sirens, one that takes longer to cycle around and another that’s choppier, faster: Two different types of responders? Fire and ambulance?)

It’s been a hell of a week, one that’s just seemed to burn through all the psychic goodwill left over from the holidays and leave me exhausted already. Something about waking up today and hearing sirens in the distance feels appropriate.

And then there was the time when I dreamed that I was in the middle of preparations for a wedding — my sister’s, I think, but not the marriage she actually had, close to two decades ago. She was getting married to the same man, I think, although both he and she only made cameo appearances at best in the dream. Instead, it was a wedding that was happening that afternoon, and guests were still arriving at the airport, which just so happened to be directly outside the house we were all in, which was somehow a country house in the middle of a shopping mall that, of course, doubled as an airport. Such things happen in dreams.

The part I remember most clearly, though, was being told by one of the guests I had just met — a man who looked like no-one as much as Lou Ferrigno, thank you subconscious — that it would be rude not to drink the milk that had been provided for me. I drank the milk, and it tasted amazing: refreshing, full, creamy, the whole thing. I can remember the taste even now, awake with all the other parts of the dream either fading or entirely gone. I feel as if, the entire day, I’m going to be haunted by how great this imaginary milk tasted.

“Giving Medication To Your Dog at 6am While Your Wife Sleeps” could be the name of a terrible self-help book, I suspect, as well as a description of what I’ve been up to (and up for) for the last couple of mornings. Such an activity is a lesson in restraint and patience, as you first have to prepare the medication — grind it up into powder, then essentially hide it in what you hope will be a delicious foodstuff that he will eat — and then try to get him to eat it. Which, at 6am, is harder than you might think.

In many ways, that’s understandable; imagine someone woke you up at 6am and tried to feed you, after all. Your first impulse might also be “What? What’s that? Maybe I’ll try a little b — no, no, no. I’m not hungry. Let me run to the other side of the bed. No, wait, let me try again. Hmm. Maybe. What if I just take it in my mouth and spit it out? No, that’s no good. Don’t want it. Wait wait wait. Maybe I do. Nope. Actually, maybe.”

He does, in fact, eventually realize that this isn’t a dream and he is getting a delicious treat while it’s pitch black outside, and I eventually get to go to work for the day, safe in the knowledge that the first of his three medication deliveries for the day has been successfully delivered.

Hrm. High points are actually harder to identify than low points, to be honest: I liked some work I did, and I made more money with it than the year before, which was nice enough. Launching the Wait, What Patreon and people being excited and generous was a thrill, especially hitting the $500 mark right at the very end of the year. Other than that, uh… making it through, I guess…?

In terms of low points, Kate’s brother died in a hit-and-run early in the year, which colored a lot of what followed in big ways and small. I was a lot more hermit-like than I would’ve wanted to have been, for reasons that didn’t really consist of more than “I wasn’t up to being social,” which is shitty. A couple of big work things fell through for reasons that left me feeling very down on particular people that really depressed me (or, in one case, left me feeling very angry, but powerless to do anything about it). Friends had bad times that I couldn’t help with.

It wasn’t a banner year, by any means. I wasn’t being sarcastic or funny when I said I’d be glad to see the back of 2014 on the podcast. It was a fucker of a year, all told.

postcardsfromspace:

Moody and I marathoned it a few years ago. I love it fiercely, and one of my life goals is to organize a Village flash mob.

I knew you’d like it. Now I’m all curious if you’ve seen “If…” and “O Lucky Man,” which always go along with “The Prisoner” in my head (Especially “If…”)

As bad as this question is, it’s worse that I didn’t have to think about the answer: F New, M Uncanny (Assuming it’s the classic Claremont run), K Astonishing.