Especially the one time we forgot to flush before going out of town.
Science!
The little chain got broked around 2005, so I have to take the lid off and flush by hand once a day. I do keep a can of air freshener right there, and punch it before I wash my hands.
The accumulation is weird, use the bleach tablets and brush hard with bottled cleaner once a week. Either the porcelain can get scarred or there are layers of urea built up. Gotta get down in there with a scouring pad and Comet, I suppose.
Next year.
The little chain got broked around 2005, so I have to take the lid off and flush by hand once a day.
Wow, Bob. That's going on four years.
I hate sounding like 'Hints from Heloise', but I find dumping some Oxiclean in the bowl and leaving it for an hour or two before cleaning it works pretty well.
I eat too much asparagus to be conscientious about leaving it mellow.
4: What's in Oxiclean? Do you worry about what you're putting down the drain? I don't do a very good job about monitering exactly what goes down my drains, but I fret a little about it.
I hate sounding like 'Hints from Heloise'
Just don't go naming your kids after primitive astronomical instruments, and you'll never sound like that. Can we have a whip round to get Bob a plumber?
Can we have a whip round to get Bob a plumber?
Or a twisty-tie?
7: To fix the little chain? I dare say 98cents at the local hardware store plus maybe 10 minutes replacing the chain oughta do it.
2,7:It's a protest. Age collapses the quotidian, so replacing the guts every five years starts to feel like replacing the guts every week, and feels like you will be replacing next week. I only use it, no guests, it mostly works, and the thirty dollars and two hours feels like oppression.
10: Oh, well as long as it's for a good cause.
"It's a protest" is the new "because I'm a feminist".
I have more than a hundred home repair protests going on simultaneously. It's a burden, but I forge ahead without complaint. Because I'm an entropist.
I turn a blind eye to home repairs. Because I'm an optimist.
I think Oxiclean ends up being peroxide, which ends up being water. I could be wrong, but I believe it's about as benign as any cleaning product out there.
Quick googling confirms. It really does get stains out of a toilet nicely, without doing all that much -- dump in a scoop, swish round with a brush an hour later, and things look clean. I had thought our toilets were ineradicably stained when we moved in to this apartment, and the same stains were still there after we'd been here a couple of years. The first time I did the Oxiclean thing, they went away.
Those toilet chains are pretty fucking easy to fix yourself. Do you have a paperclip, or are those bourgeios?
I don't even think about home repairs. Because I'm a lobotomist.
16: That does sound easy and nice. I told Jammies about this, and he said that our problem is the hardwater stains around the rim, that wouldn't soak in the standing water.
I'm okay with letting them sit there. Because I'm a naturalist.
The easy solution is to seal the bathroom up and fill it to the ceiling with water and oxiclean, then wait an hour, put on your scuba gear, and run into the bathroom, twirling. That'll get pretty much all the stains.
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The easiest plans for tonight would involve putting Hawaiian Punch's carseat (and herself) in a Volkswagon Beetle for a 20 min. trip down a relatively busy stretch of highway. Statistically, a one-time trip like this should be totally no problem, and in fact we drive her on it all the time in bigger, heavier, cars.
Please offer support that I'm being unnecessarily worrisome when my stomach clenches up at the thought of getting into a wreck in that tiny car with Hawaiian Punch in the backseat.
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"Worrisome" is probably not the right form of worry in 21, but I'm sure no one here is fussy enough to point that out.
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put on your scuba gear, and run into the bathroom, twirling. That'll get pretty much all the stains.
No, for that you should leave off the scuba gear.
Sifu should have said "wetsuit" so I could have said "leave off the wetsuit" and my joke would have then made sense.
21: You're being unnecessarily worried. In a car seat, she's safer in a crash than you are -- if the car doesn't bother you personally, don't worry about it for her.
We also let it mellow, to the point that I sometimes forget to flush when company's over. We actually saw a pretty significant cut in our water bill. (This may also be because I've taken to peeing in the laundry sink and washing it down with maybe a cup of water--I call it our basement 1/8 bath, 1/16th being a floor drain. 1/32nd is out the window.)
25: But I'm not nearly as concerned about my personal safety.
26: What, you don't have a mountain laurel?
Not to undo the support being offered in 25 and 27.
30: Of course not, you're merely negotiating.
Exactly! I want the best possible terms for my support, so I don't walk a way wondering if I got scammed.
That's dumb (this is a supportive tone, right?) -- if you get killed in a car crash, that screws up her life. Valuing her life more highly than yours might make sense if it was a one-or-the-other option, but if you're worried about her, being careless about your own safety is just as irresponsible as being careless about hers.
If something's too dangerous for her, it's too dangerous for you unless it's necessary to protect her. If it's safe enough for you (which driving in a VW Beetle is, honestly), don't worry about it for her.
My wife lets it mellow. I think its gross. This is one of the bigger conflicts in our marriage.
34.last: Vote of confidence for the marriage if that's true. (Unless you *really* care.)
HB: Probably nothing you can do about the stomach clench, but she is safer back there than 99.99% of the infants were on any ride in a car before 1970.
35: Yeah, it sure beats having arguments over, say, money.
Assuming you're talking about a state highway, the baseline crash rate (which is higher than it is on an interstate or US highway) is 199.68 per 100 million vehicle miles, which means that absent any other factors your chance of having a crash (which I think might be defined as an injury causing crash? not sure) is 0.0002%. If you're on a divided highway of any kind, you're even safer.
If you let HP drive, you're even safer, with only three of the 781 traffic fatalities in Texas in 2008 comprising a driver under the age of 15.
From elsewhere I see that child safety seats reduce the likelihood of death for infants by 71%.
Possibly your trip will be slightly more dangerous because you're in a car without modern safety equipment, but HP will have modern safety equipment, and it's almost certainly more-than-offset by the fact that you won't be able to speed even if you want to.
If you'd like to bore yourself even more with statistics that mostly go to show how safe driving is if you aren't a drunk 15 year old in the passenger of a car being driven 100 miles an hour by another drunk 15 year old, see here.
Are we talking old Beetle or new Beetle? New Beetles are little, but modern -- I doubt they're egregiously less safe than another car.
My parents, being both ecologically conscious and having a septic system, have very specific rules about the toilet. 1) If it's mellow, let it yellow. 2) No unnecessary paper down the chute (ie, they throw non-befouled toilet paper in the trash). I don't mind #1 but #2 is strange to me.
40: I assume we're talking old Beetle. I would suspect new Beetles are safer than average for new cars.
At that point, I think I'd want to install a bidet.
If it's mellow, let it yellow.
I have discovered an exploit for this rule.
41:
In Costa Rica, all paper goes in the trash can, not the toilet.
46: Yeah, that's actually where I think my step-father picked the habit/idea up.
That is often the case in countries with crappy (no pun... actually, what the hell, pun intended) septic systems. I've seen it in Mexico and Greece.
25 and 33 seem exactly right. Generally, one of the hardest things about being a new parent is the (mostly completely unnecessary) worry. Don't worry. Babies are pretty tough. They are made that way, because on the veldt . . . .
In high school everyone referred to my Karmann Ghia as the coffin on wheels. I have to admit, I was offended. That was my baby they were talking about.
My use of statistics in 38 was so terrible. The baseline probability is 0.0002*(the number of miles to be driven). Stupid, Sifu. Stupid.
39: "a drunk 15 year old in the passenger of a car." Wow. Precocious.
I've seen it in Mexico and Greece.
Syria too. There's probably a map devoted to this somewhere on the internet.
55: possibly, but it evades the real questions.
48, 55: Turkey, too. The luxuries we take for granted...
So did you determine that this was the easiest way you could reduce your water consumption? Or would that have been too much work?
From the link in 58:
CHeese is very fun!Wait, what?
Thanks, all! The only area that I have paralyzing amounts of irrational fear is around cars and my baby. This was helpful.
So did you determine that this was the easiest way you could reduce your water consumption? Or would that have been too much work?
This was the thing to do if you're too lazy to even make such determinations. So yes to the second question.
BTW, heebie, once your baby gets old enough to go through that stage where they think its funny to drop items in the toilet (i.e., wallet, cell phone) you may be revisiting the whole "let it mellow" issue.
I had the exact opposite reaction when I became a parent. In the first year of parenthood or so, I kept thinking "No, I can't do that, because I'm not allowed to die."
I refuse to compromise on any dimension of indoor plumbing, it seems basic to civilization.
If it's Yeller let it meller less'n you got to shoot it.
There are plenty of places where you are expected to put all the toilet paper in a bin. I've used squat toilets with bins (and ones with no paper, just a small tap) in reasonably touristy places in France and Italy.
I find, that with 4 children using our toilets, that flushing is rather more haphazard than I would like.
And I'd put HP in her carseat in the Beetle (as long as it fit securely).
Otherwise competent adults seem to think that a granny with a tube of toothpaste presents a risk of blowing up a plane.
I finally got the lightbulb over the head thing from a couple of Swiss journalists today by pointing out that if you flew to the US with five tubes of your favorite brand, you'd definitely be subject to indefinite detention. If certain people were allowed to ascertain risk. Turns out, both of them bring at least that much whenever they come, because their brand isn't sold here.
I drove my firstborn in an old bug, and would do so again without reservation. I'd also let people bring toothpaste on planes, though, because I'm just that kind of a daredevil.
LET it mellow.
And if it's brown, leave it 'round.
And if it's brown, leave toss it 'round. mash it down.
If it's orange, it could be a digestive issue. Because nothing rhymes with orange.
OT: Can someone in the U.S. click on this Google books link and tell me if it's full view or snippet view?
I'm getting snippet view here, but it used to be full view and I'm trying to figure out if I can't read it because I'm in another country, or if Google is a cold monolithic corporation who cares little about providing access to public domain work if it's in their business interest to change their algorithms in ways that rip stuff back out of the public domain with no explanation and no warning.
74: Appears to be full view, in the Land of Lincoln.
Full view, with downloadable pdf, apparently.
Stupid copyright treaties. It probably should be public domain here too, but Google's probably playing it safe by keeping to the U.S. public domain. And I can't even really blame them for that. Damn.
When I go visit my family, I guess I'd better pick up the pdfs of the stuff I bookmarked in google's "my library" service.
Do you want me to download and send it to you, eb? Or will it be too big?
Thanks for the offer, but this is non-serious research, at least for the foreseeable future. Just something I go back to, from time to time, which I might turn into some writing or might not.
Know anyone in the US who could help you get such things via a proxy server?
Okay, but if you ever do need something, let me know.
69: I had each kid on the back of the motorcycle as soon as I could trust them to hold on. I wouldn't do that in L.A. traffic though.
84: I can get you in a new car, Stanley. How do we do it? Volume!
86: Others have suggested State of Play, which features John Simm, one of the leads from Life on Mars. Beyond that, I've heard something called The Wire is supposed to be pretty good. I might check it out after I'm done reading the Twilight series. (Kidding aside, I watched the first movie the other night. Wow. Not good. Really, really not good.)
I can get you in a new car, Stanley. How do we do it? Volume!
Specifically, the new car's volume being greater than Stanley's.
reading the Twilight series.
I just had a "Sure, you're allowed to read it. You're allowed to read anything you can lift. But I'm not buying it for you -- get it out of the library or borrow it from a friend if you want to read it" conversation with Sally about those, pointing out that a book about a relationship with a man whose main attraction is that he probably won't kill you if you don't screw up and drive him to it is kind of gross and bizarre. Hopefully I've sucked all the fun out of it -- sucking the fun out of things is my primary parenting strategy.
And I should quit cooing over Life on Mars, I just found it remarkably involving compared to most TV. We watched the last episode of the first series last night, and I was actually getting sniffly watching Sam playing soccer with his dad.
I've sucked all the fun out of it
Heh. Honestly, it's horrible story horribly rendered for the screen. It has none, not a single one, of the features that made Buffy so fantastic and all of the creepy overtones that always made me squirmy about watching Sarah Michelle Gellar prancing around in very short skirts.
90 contains a spoiler! Seriously, I'm not there yet, LB, so please don't say any more (actually, I think I'm watching that episode later today). But yes, I agree that it's very good television.
Oh, hell. Sorry about that, but at least the 'dad' bit is clear before the opening credits -- his identity (outside of the general "just how crazy is Sam" question) is not a suspenseful element of the episode.
Also, I think the main attraction of the vampire in Twilight is his hair (which I found incredibly gross). Or maybe that he sparkles in the sun and is incredibly athletic. Speaking of which, that scene, of the vampire family playing baseball, because "it's the American pastime", was a tiny island of funny in a vast sea of morose suck.
93: No worries. I'm soulless enough not to care at all about spoilers. Or maybe I don't care because I'm a historian, and thus almost always know how the books I'm reading are going to end.
Me neither, which leaves me feeling terribly guilty when I screw up because I know other people do care.
And now, speaking of books, back to work: reviewing a book about the so-called re-wilding movement, which is kind of cool but seems incredibly impractical.
I always hated reading crim law cases, because I knew that every one of them was going to have a bad ending.
he sparkles in the sun and is incredibly athletic
At first I read that last word as "apathetic", which seems more interesting.
Specifically, the new car's volume being greater than Stanley's.
The problem with my current car is indeed an recent unexpected reduction in the car's interior's volume, thanks to some hydroplaning and a guardrail.
Yow. Hopefully no passengers suffered a related reduction in volume.
At first I read that last word as "apathetic", which seems more interesting.
Oh, that too, depending on where you are in the series.
101: It was a solo performance, and I walked away okay. You shoulda seen the other guy guardrail.
104: I spent a considerable amount of the movie shouting at Edward every time he showed up onscreen: "Buffy would fucking kill you and your whole fucking family, you fucking morose fuckwit! You don't even know how to smolder as well as David Boreanz, you fucking gel-haired loser!" My wife barely tolerates me.
The really sad thing about that is that David Boreanz doesn't smoulder all that well. Mostly he just kind of stands there.
I meant to imply the substance of 106 in 105. Or at least that was what I was thinking when I was shouting at the screen: "Boreanaz is pretty awful, sure, but YOU'RE EVEN WORSE!". That said, Boreanaz was pretty smouldery when he first appeared on Buffy, if memory serves. I seem to recall that he lost the smoulder with repeated exposure.
ftr, I wrote and posted 108 before seeing 107. Having now seen 107, I would like to revert to my original (mis)spelling.
I think he lost the smoulder when they started giving him lines more than a couple of words long. And I have no idea how his name is spelled once you get past the first four letters.
I think that's right. Also, once they asked him to deliver some funny, even occasionally, it kind of rendered him permanently unsmouldery. Hypohtesis: t's hard to be both smouldery and also fleshed out as a character.
The Boreanaz-muppet was a pretty great actor.
I had a classmate at school the other night LIGHT UP when she talked about Twilight. It was uncanny, and endearing. She went from talking about economics to talking about glittery vampires with a single enthusiastic bound!
||
I hope I did that right. I just wanted to announce that all of the incessant swimming talk around here finally sunk in, and I have switched my gym to one with a splendid 25 yard pool in which I will be shortly distressing the population by causing them to momentarily fancy a killer whale has been turned out in their YMCA!
I have bought myself a new swimming cap and some nose plugs and goggles and it is all very exciting! I have not swam in years. I expect I will not even make it through one lap on the first go round without a rest, which is why I shall be swimming at times when there are no people there other than possible the water aerobics people. And if they mock me I will mock back, by gum.
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You go, winna.
For the mockers, I recommend that you pretend you can't see them while loudly and repeatedly shouting ou "Marco!".
That sounds like an excellent plan. I will do that, instead of telling them Esther Williams did it better, and with more grace.
They will probably be older people who would have known Ms Williams' work, so my original plan might have wounded them too deeply.
That should either be "out", or perhaps I was referring to the French version of the game: Ou est Marco?
Non! Il est un poisson hors de l'eau.
winna, that is completely fantastic. I hope you take to it with surprising ease. If I may offer a couple unsolicited tips:
I would bet money that even if the first lap feels distressingly hard, a lot of what is going on is that you aren't sure of your breath. So, like, if you had gills, the swimming part of the swimming wouldn't be the part that is exhausting you. I'm thinking that when you figure out the timing for the breath, and do that easily, your body will already be ready to swim a lot farther.
Which is why I have a second unsolicited tip. Those people who are walking their laps in the pool are also getting strong and doing work. It doesn't feel as hard as swimming because they're always breathing. So maybe after your first triumph of a lap, maybe try walking a couple?
I think it is so completely great that you're taking this up. I hope you love it.
Soon winna will be talking about protein with the best of 'em.
Oh winna. When you want to talk protein, I'm here for you.
(I suppose that if you want to talk about carbs, Otto could do that. But I can't see why you ever would.)
So maybe after your first triumph of a lap, maybe try walking a couple?
Interesting advice. There's a heated/therapeutic pool at the place I attended PT for my lower back, and one was *always* called upon to walk back and forth for 15 minutes before moving on to anything else. Water resistance and all that.
It felt to me about as silly as (speed-)walking on land does in comparison to running, but hey. It works.
Clarification: speed-walking is terrific (particularly for those of us who can't abide anything very high-impact). I don't mean to deride it in any way.
I think he lost the smoulder when they started giving him lines more than a couple of words long.
In fairness, in the beginning of the show he couldn't really be trusted to deliver lines more than a couple of words long. His performance in the first two episodes, for example, is giggle-inducing.
When Boreanaz tries to smoulder he ends up wincing.
I keep wanting to read that as Boreas and so I then wonder how could he smolder.
I have had completely random sex dreams about both Boreanaz and Pattinson, which is weird because I have no interest in either of them or any of the shows or movies either of them have been in.
On the other hand, this is not weird because I have a lot of completely random sex dreams.
I think I've maybe had one sex dream in my entire life. At most I'll have wanting-to-have-sex dreams, or hand-holding and heart-beating dreams. Also I have been completely unaffected by pregnancy and nursing hormones and, at other times, birth control pills. Perhaps I'm dead inside.
Up through college, I had a lot of frustrating not-quite-sex dreams. But as I got older I had more actual-sex dreams, and now, suddenly, at 30, I have honest-to-god orgasmic sex dreams. I am not sure how common this is, but I don't hear ladies talking about it much.
A true lady never talks about her sex dreams.
She's saving talking about them for marriage?
I know. But I sort of end up having to talk about them or I feel weird. My roommates in Cleveland got used to hearing about which of them was involved and what they did. My sex dreams seem to draw characters from movie advertisements, people I'm spending time with, random people in my social circle, or whatever, and it always deeply changes the way I feel or think about the person, probably more than it would if I actually slept with them. I have no idea why this happens, but sometimes it is very awkward.
I also feel compelled to talk about whatever happens to me, and on a certain level don't understand why people have boundaries. It's just that the sex dreams don't happen to me.
It is possible that my chronic singlehood and sexual frustration have something to do with it.
Perhaps. Maybe my dreams are all about getting a good night's rest.
Maybe you dream about forgetting your dreams.
S-A, T-U-R, D-A-Y...Night! S-A, T-U-R, D-A-Y...Night!
...I gotta go to sleep. So tired.
Teo dreams about killing his dreams in his dreams.
Huh, maybe all the time I spend killing other people's dreams has had negative effects on mine.
At most I'll have wanting-to-have-sex dreams, or hand-holding and heart-beating dreams.
Truly, you are the Twilight demographic.
What I have a lot of is dreams about very complicated houses, and their layouts.
And moving dreams, packing and moving and having complicated moving histories among different houses. Although these have waned now that I don't move as often as I did a decade ago.
And the HGTV demographic, apparently. Not a lot of overlap between those two demographics, I'm guessing.
But of course. Why do you think it's called HGTV.
No, oddly enough it stands for hwnie-gwnie TV.
I'll go brush my teeth. Chat amongst yourselves.
Most of the dreams that I remember seem to involve me being in danger. Luckily I don't remember very many dreams.
The dreams I remember almost always pivot on having forgotten to register for a class I need to graduate high school or having missed an exam in a class that I need to graduate high school or having somehow bent time in such a way that I find myself back in high school having forgotten to take an important class or having failed an important test. I've never been able to figure out what these dreams have in common.
Clearly they point to a grave psychosexual disturbance.
Early in grad school I had a dream, several times, that it turned out that somehow I hadn't actually completed the requirements for my undergrad degree and I was kicked out and made to go back and repeat them.
Amy Adams just showed up in the pilot of Buffy. Who knew? (I'm guessing oudemia, rfts, and probably several others. But who's counting?)
160: I thought that, in one form or another, was the standard anxiety dream of educated people.
I've rarely-to-never had a school anxiety dream. Clearly I don't care enough about my studies.
High school? Sure, that's probably right. Oh wait, you're calling me trite, aren't you? Well, fair enough.
166: Mine and my family members' adulthood versions of the dream all seem to be set in college rather than high school, but there are lots of variants. It seems to start with being at school in your underwear and work up to the forgotten class, forgotten exam, the exam-night dream where you wake up in a panic at 4:30 am because you dreamed you were sleeping through the exam, etc.
Thing about dreams is, the tigers come at night, and then that song is stuck in my head.
having somehow bent time in such a way that I find myself back in high school
Your dreams involve finding yourself in a classicPolish modernist novel?
170: Oddly, yes. Or perhaps not so odd after all, as I am a classic Polish modern.
When I had no final exams, just final papers, and all my work was due and done before the end of the exam period, I would dream during the exam period that I had overslept an exam. Then I'd wake up and remember I was done.
I watched Twilight last week and thought it was hilariously bad. My daughter and her friends assure me the books are better (although they are still further towards the eye-rolling end of the spectrum over the books rather than the SQUEEE end).
I'm like heebie in the delightful hand-holdy dreams realm. Except for once when I had a rather intense sex dream, about a colleague, involving feats of great athleticism and gymnastic equipment. I still can't quite bring myself to look him in the eye. My high school panic dreams tend to be about getting to the softball game and discovering I forgot my glove and cleats.
Putting a denture tablet in the toilet overnight or for 20 minutes can disinfect it. Swish it around with a brush--or not--when you want a little bit of cleaning but don't have time.
This is similar to using oxiclean, but less work at night. Oxobrite has sodium percarbonate and sodium carbonate (aka washing soda--which Arm and Hammer sells alone, but you can never find) in it.
You get some kind of oxygen out of it which is what does the bleaching and disinfecting bit.
|| So, I order Werdna's Utopia from Amazon, and what is recommended, on the very next screen? Sarah Palin's. Is this some strange dream?|>
176. Very weird. Perhaps "fishing" is in the metadata for Palin's thing (along with hunting, snowmobiling, etc...). I feel badly for Werdna.
My anxiety dreams have a tendency to be about baby-care rather than academics, the last decade or so. Sex dreams are a variant of the heebie/di pattern -- while I have dreams where I have sex with people, they tend not to be sexually exciting, it's just sort of stuff happening. Dreams that actually involve sexual feelings are usually not-quite sex -- making out at great length. And the people involved are fairly random. (Although never David Boreanaz. That's just sick.)
I dreamed that I left a grammatically abominable comment at Unfogged last night, and my dream came true.
I dreamed I was a real dish in my Maidenform bra.
I think she dreamed she was a mermaid dish in her Maidenform bra.
Megan, you are always so kind. I will toss a burning couch off a roof with you any time you would like.
I always have hideous dreams about missing exams, made worse by the fact I once actually did miss an exam. The professor refused to let me make it up. I still did okay, but I still remember the sick feeling I had when I walked into the classroom and all my peers were walking out.
Then there are the dreams about being unable to turn on light switches, which sounds silly but are terrifying. You're in your house at night and it's dark and none of the light switches work. At that point disembodied voices start shouting at you. It is not a pleasant dream.
The dreams I remember almost always pivot on having forgotten to register for a class I need to graduate high school ...
I have a reoccurring anxiety dream in which I am registered for some class (or, in a couple of cases, that I've gone back to school for a second bachelors) and there's some major paper that I've been supposed to be working on for the last month that I haven't started yet.
I have, on more than one occasion, woken up with a genuinely serious triage plan for how to deal with this -- "I can get to the library today. Maybe if I take this approach to the paper it will be doable in the remaining time. Do I have anything scheduled that I can cancel. . . ."
That's a disturbing feeling.
I hate being late. I was raised to be really paranoid about being late. It's really hard for me to function in work environments where everyone is regularly late, like at one of my current jobs where people trickle in about half an hour into a scheduled meeting. I'm sitting there anxious as fuck about having been 30 seconds late, but I'm the only person there for fifteen, twenty minutes. But I have a ton of anxiety dreams about being late to teach. It's like the world is going to end or something.
Once I was actually 20 minutes late to teach because my train got stuck underground for 45 minutes. When I got there, about to have a heart attack from the stress, all my students were still sitting there, starting to discuss the book and concerned about my welfare. People are pretty nice.
I have the usual kinds of anxiety dreams, plus a whole class of anxiety dreams about Mormonism. In them, I'm either a missionary again (as in, for some reason I've signed up to do another go-round), or I'm back at Big Mormon U., and I get into a conversation with fellow missionaries or Mormon U. students where they're talking about how awesome Mormonism is or how worried they are about measuring up as Mormons, and I start thinking, "Wait a minute, I don't believe any of this, and I'm gay. What am I doing here?" I usually then start thinking about how I should quit the second mission or leave Mormon U. in shame, or (and this is a bit more helpful in alleviating the anxiety) I realize that since the whole thing is absurd I can just go along with it but not stress out about God getting mad at me for breaking the rules, having gay sex, or whatever. I've had a dream like this at least once a month for the last ten years.
I've only had the dream once, and it was realizing there was a class I had registered but then forgotten about and never attended, and the exam was coming up.
My sex dreams (at least the ones I remember) are very few in number, but in my teens they tracked very precisely the gradual increase in my understanding of what sex was all about.
In high school I ended up enrolled in a class without my knowledge. I found out on the mid-term report cards. It did get fixed but it continues to cause nightmares.
Flip side. I have dreamt—more than once—that I turned off the alarm clock (or even better, that I've washed and dressed) such that any anxiety about being late for work vanishes. So I slept on and was late for work.
176, 177: There's an ad for Sarah Palin's book up on Lawyers, Guns and Money.
188: Well, they do talk about it a lot.
I have dreamt--more than once--that I turned off the alarm clock (or even better, that I've washed and dressed) such that any anxiety about being late for work vanishes. So I slept on and was late for work.
Yep. That's the only recurring dream I have. Luckily, it tends not to make me actually late.
When I was a kid, I used to have falling dreams. They ended when I woke up on the floor. Eventually, I stopped tossing and turning so much, but for a while my parents put a chair next to the bed so I'd run into it and wake up before I fell.
183 I've had that dream.
I didn't have much in the way of sex dreams as a teen, in spite of pretty much constant fantasies when awake. They came in my twenties.
I dreamed last night I was attacked by lampreys in the Antarctic. And leaches and little worms in my bloodstream. All with toothy circular mouths. We found the body of Bob Hope, a mere shell. For real, it woke me up at 3, and I wasn't sure I could sleep.
Definitely a sex dream.
I have nightmares about needing a paperclip to fix my toilet chain, but never finding one, not for years and years and years.
I once dreamt that I won a big fat grant (one for which I have never actually applied) and woke up feeling extremely pleased. Then I realized it was all a dream! Later I found five dollars.
Academic wet dreams come without happy endings.
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A paper clip might very well work.
All right, 197 made me laugh a lot.
I have recurring dreams that I really have to pee.
I have recurring dreams that I really have to pee.
And then I wake up and, what do you know, I really do have to.
