Defining Dreams (Chasing Rainbows)

The title of this post has a lie in it.  It has nothing to do with chasing rainbows. I’m not sorry I lied.

Most mornings, anymore, I haul myself out of bed after the alarm has sufficiently pissed me off and not a moment before.  I stand up against the will of morning gravity and immediately start processing all the things that I have to start doing and how long it will be before I can lay back down.  This morning was different, though.  This morning I woke up before my alarm and felt rested.

Why?  Because I had a great dream.  Al Gore was in it.  Now get your mind out of the gutter.

In my dream, I was fighting Al Gore in a toy store.  We weren’t really fighting, necessarily, but sort-of wrestling about without any real punching or kicking.  After I’d whale on him like an older sibling would do, I’d run the aisles and collect a toy or two before he could catch up to me.  I stock-piled them in one area, waiting to collect them at the end of the fight.

While I do love toys, I don’t feel any need to beat up Al Gore.  Maybe that’s the game though, because for a shopping spree, I’d definitely fight him.  That’s the obnoxious kid in me, I guess.

Speaking of toys, have you seen these Zhu Zhu Pets?  What the hell are they trying to push on us now?  From what I’ve experienced, a Zhu Zhu Pet is basically a toy car from the 80s (the kind that would drive around all crazy, run into walls, turn and go another direction) wrapped in a hamster suit that is sometimes made to look like another animal and all sharing the same electronics so they make the same varied animal noises when they bump into something.  I don’t get it.

Beyond being a very simple toy, they’re $10 freakin’ dollhairs each!  Of course this was the only thing my oldest daughter was asking for, so we bought two, but that seemed like such a lame offering that I bought some “track” for them as well.  They are a lot more fun in the track, but need constant supervision or they’ll fall over and get stuck, or escape and roll off the table.

I guess chasing toy hamsters around the room makes my dream about wrestling Al Gore sound like a decent alternative.

What’s your weirdest recent dream?

The People I’ve Seen

The yard sale at the church was a success in many ways.  We sold a bunch of crap we didn’t need, gave away some crap that wouldn’t quite sell, and added some more money to the jar.  Best of all, we saw and talked to some really odd people.  I can’t imagine a better forum to make fun of people I don’t know, and somehow I know that you’d have all done the same thing.

Some people would come out of nowhere, because there was a big parking lot next to and behind the church we were set up at.  One very young couple did just that, except their arrival was marked by a caramel colored pit bull, running around without a collar or leash.  Obviously, having a pit bull myself, I wasn’t too concerned, but a pit bull off the leash doesn’t do well to draw in families with small children.

We made a comment when they arrived that their dog was very pretty and they stood and talked to us and didn’t stop to look at any of our stuff.  The guy had spiked hair and the girl was dressed like a hooker with a ton of make-up, hair done-up and a dress which she had folded over her belt to raise it to just under her ass.  She was also wearing a lot of pink costume jewelry and wearing heels.  That’s right, heels at a garage sale.  In the dirt where it had been raining all night.

They wanted so much to tell us about their dog and all the stuff she can do and so on and so forth.   They tried getting her to do some tricks, but instead she just ran around and sniffed all the children.  Finally they wanted to show us how excited she is to get a treat, but the treats were in the car so they left to get them and promised they’d be back.  Thank God they were as flakey as they were crazy.

Regarding people who take their dogs to yard sales, there was a couple who were probably in their 50s, both overweight and both wearing giant bluetooth earsets like they longed to be in a sci-fi movie, on the deck of some collosal spacecraft. The man was wearing a lycra Starter shirt, probably intended for workouts, but it was stretched skin-tight over a giant pot belly and two pointed and perky man-boobs.  Their dog was shedding, evidently…

I know this particularly well because they told us how bad she was shedding.  They said how bad it normally is. Of course, he also had to show us, so with the wind blowing toward us, he proceeded to pull out big chunks of fur and let them loose to fly all over us.  While this was happening and we sat in disbelief, they proudly told us how they were able to use his shedded fur to make both a cat bed, and a dog blanket for her cage.

Sure some people are just dumb, and they don’t really mean to offend anyone.  Others, on the other hand, are just assholes.  For example, Mrs and I went to the sale next door and left a friend watching over the sale for us.  A woman asked about the price of jackets and coats and our friend said $3 for the jackets and $10 for the leather coat.  The woman wanted the leather coat for $3, because it wasn’t leather, she claimed, because it was suede…  The same woman wanted a $10 quesadilla maker.  She offered $3…  Our friend countered $7.  She offered $5 and our friend took it.  (It is a yard sale and I don’t want to haul all this crap home)  She agreed, although irritable, then complained loudly that she didn’t see the box to go with it, or the instruction manual…

The list goes on, but those folks stood out.  We made about $200 between Friday and Saturday and only managed to spend about a quarter of that on stuff from the area including a set of loudspeakers I intend to mount on the garage to play circus music all day and night.  Now that that’s over, we’re doing the most logical thing…  We’re planning to have the yard sale again at our own house this weekend.  I’ll try to take pictures.

Do you have any good yard sale stories?

Sale at the Church

Mrs and I are financially retarded.  We accrued a bunch of debt when I was out of work in 2008 and it hangs around like a disgusting houseguest that just won’t leave. You know the kind I’m talking about…  They leave soda cans around your house and eat up all your Doritos.  Why I never.  There oughta be a law.

Well, anyway…  We’ve been trying to get out of that debt since and it’s really not easy.  I know that comes as a surprise, since you’re usually hearing about how easy it is to become debt-free today.  I mean, all I have to do is file Chapter ## Bankruptcy and I’m all set, right?  Except that we’re under 5 digits in debt, and I’d rather just dig back out on my own.  Still, just because it’s the right way, doesn’t mean it’s the easy way.  Also, I think it means that daytime TV lawyers are lying to me.

What do you do when you need more money than you have?  Start selling shit you don’t like anymore  (and eventually organs you don’t really need to live).  There is an event this weekend known as the Highway 38 Rummage Sale, near where Mrs grew up, and we were invited to use a church in her hometown in an attempt to draw people in to buy food and snacks from the church.  Obviously this is the right thing to do.  You could even say it’s God’s work.  You might be way wrong and totally out of line, but you gotta be you and I support that.

We commenced gathering junk for a yard sale and piling up boxes by the doors.  Once all that was done, I, being the house pack-mule, started getting everything to the sun room where I could load it into the truck.  Handling box after box of stuff we weren’t sure about anymore, I realized something…

This stuff is all crap.

Why the hell do we even have most of this shit?  We have lofty hopes of making $400 in this endeavor, but I can’t imagine paying that for this pile of crap.  Jeez.  I love garage sales, rummage sales, sidewalk sales and pretty much any other sort of outdoor sale where you can buy stuff by saying “Hmmm…  I’ve only got X dollars…  Would you take [considerably less] for this [piece of shit I don't need]?”  When I think of cool stuff to sell at the yard sale, I think of cool stuff I’ve bought at yard sales that I won’t part with now.

So the truck is loaded and now I start wondering…  Should I have gone through movies to sell?  maybe old video games I don’t play anymore?  Should I have included children’s books we don’t like that we bought with a box of ones we did like?  Should I have gone through the barn looking for bottles and little bits that people would find endearing?

Am I still holding out on the good stuff?  Ugh.  We’ll see how it goes, but it looks like my weekend is going to be spent sitting outside of a church, pawning my junk on helpless citizens.

Do you have any suggestions or ideas on making the most of your garage sale?

I Don’t Care if you Watch TV

If you don’t know this yet, Mrs and I live way out of the city.  What you may not realize is that not everyone can get the same standard services that we all grow accustomed to in the city.  These are things you don’t take for granted…

We aren’t connected to city water, but instead have a well.  We pump our own water from the earth.  Cool, huh?  Yes, except that it’s not pretty clean filtered water.  On the upside, I’m not subjected to the mind-control chemicals that they put in city water (you know it’s true).  On the downside, the water is a bit sulferous in odor (stinks like eggs) and rusty as well…  Don’t get picky…  If you’re going to drink water from the tap, would you want it fresh from the earth, or fresh from a large building that largely is there to remove poop from it?

We can get phone service, but no DSL so Internet has to come either through a satellite dish, or Wireless broadband.  I’ve used the satellite internet before and it sucks ass so wireless broadband or dial up…

No city trash service…  This is a pain in the ass, but nobody comes to pick up our trash.  I have to drive it to the recycling plant.  I could pay a service, but screw that.  I’ll just drive it there…  Later.

Finally, we can’t get cable.  We can get satellite, of course, but no cable TV or Internet.  We talked about satellite for a few minutes once, but decided we just didn’t watch enough TV.  We can pick up maybe 6 channels without an antenna, and we’ve made do with that for as long as we’ve lived there now, relying mostly on DVDs and only watching the channels we get.  It’s free and it works for us.

Simple enough, right?  You’d think so.

When I’m talking to someone new, sometimes a TV show will get mentioned.  “Have you seen this?” or “Do you watch that?”  At this point in the conversation, the person is generally excited about the show they’re talking about and wants to share that with me.  I listen and smile and tell them it sounds really great but I haven’t seen it because I don’t have cable, but I’d totally watch it on DVD sometime.

*blank stare*

They ask why not, I explain we can’t get it and don’t really want it anyway because we don’t watch much TV.  That’s when it starts.

The person will immediately defend that they don’t watch much TV either and that it’s completely optional and they don’t depend on any shows or anything, they just watch it if it’s on and besides everyone watches TV and I’m the real freak here because I don’t but really, they only watch like one or two shows that they really care about anyway.  I mean, after all, they don’t have all that much free time either and they’re very busy so they just try to fit it in.

I don’t care.  You can go home every night and add another rubber band to the ball you’ve been creating for years, or sit on your front porch and write down new names for cheese spreads that have not yet been invented.  I think, if anything, that would make you a more interesting individual.  If you want to go home and veg out with the TV, that’s cool with me.  There are nights when we watch Law and Order for 3 hours because we can get it on one of our free channels and sometimes that’s nice.

Many of you may be in the same boat as me on this one, where you simply don’t watch TV.  Maybe you’ve got it for the kids or the significant other or the dog who likes the bright colors, but you don’t really find the time yourself.  If that’s you and you don’t already know this – do not suggest to the people who defend that they don’t “need” TV that they get it disconnected to save money.  They’ll likely take that as a threat, puff up their feathers and come at you with a machete or something.

Are you BFF with the boob tube?

Procrastination Services

I’m very easily distracted.

If I’m in the middle of a conversation, my mind often wanders the subject changes mid topic frequently and it’s like playing the 6-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon game to figure out what the fuck we were talking about.  If Mrs and I are having “creative differences”, during the “stop to reflect” times when it’s quiet I’ll look away and become entranced, wondering how the molding on the floor was actually made.  Like, what does that machine look like.  What does it do?  How long have they had it and what did they use beforehand?  What kind of money would the guy who made these make?  Would I enjoy that job?  And what’s up with that wallpaper?

Yeah.  She’s going to read this and be 50% pissed and 50% not-surprised.

When I’m trying to get work done it goes one of two ways.  If I’m online to get the work done, I start talking on Twitter, IM and email.  I get tied up in junk websites like buzzfeed.com or thereifixedit.com for an hour at a time.  I keep going back to the task, but then get confused because I’ve lost my place and then go back to talking.

If I’m not online, I will start cleaning.  Whether it’s cleaning the house, or cleaning up the files on my computer, I’ll do this to fidget.  Either way, I keep from doing what I’m supposed to be doing.  It’s terrible.

I’m not a typical time-waster though.  I won’t spend hours in front of the TV.  It kills me to sit that long.  I love to watch movies, but can only do one at a time without losing interest.  I’d love to just sit and draw for hours, but I never find 5 minutes for that and with all this time being used up, I can’t find something I’m accomplishing.

So here’s my offer to you:

I can’t seem to fix this problem, so I’m going to market it.  If there’s something that you don’t want to do, just assign it to me!  I’ll continue to not do it, just like you were doing, except I’ll give you a scapegoat (For $50, you can also get an actual goat, inquire by email.)

But wait, there’s more!

I’ll accomplish *other* tasks for you that you didn’t expect.  Hire me to put off your term paper, and I’ll not do your term paper, but research something similar and give you 30 links to that instead.  I’ll pull some weeds in your yard, play with your dog and reorganize your kitchen.  What a value, right?

I know it sounds too good to be true.  you might even say to yourself; “Hey, how can I trust that you’ll put off my task?  You’ve started blogging again!  Are you going to be a slacker or not?!?!?”  This is a valid question.

I’ve decided to put off different things in my own schedule to continue blogging, cracking wise on the Twitter and  getting the job not-done for you.  For example, I now only poop every other day if I can help it.  I’ve been reading all my email and watching interesting videos while I drive, putting MY LIFE at risk so that I can screw around for YOU later.

Squirrel!