Where Do You Go When You Sleep?

When I drift off to sleep at night, I often find myself mentally traveling to the past. Usually I time travel to visit people and places I haven't thought of in years. I don't mean this literally. Well, kind of. I can distinctly see the (my?) surroundings I saw then, but, sometimes there are holes in the picture. I am aware that these thoughts came seemingly out of nowhere, and that they are not reality anymore. It's a half dream-like state, only it was once reality.

When my brain latches onto these images, I wake up and start thinking about the things that came unbidden into my mind. Sometimes I like to relive a memory in as much detail as I possibly can. I mentally walk myself through the scene once again, twelve or more years later. Often one image turns into many related images that have slept hidden for years. These are not horrible, evil moments, but simply moments. Sometimes I can see clearly now what I missed then, more often I just see how pathetically clueless I was (and may still be).

Usually when I have a particularly strong image emerge, I write about it. Due to logistics, and a half hearted hope that if I stay in bed I will actually sleep, I haven't been writing them out lately. But I want to. Oh, how my fingers itch to release the hazy, half formed thoughts, but clear images in my mind.

Spastic and Convoluted

I assure you the title is not just dramatization. So, I have this three city weekend planned in two weeks. My two friends and I are going to follow a band we've known forever. Mostly the other two have known them. I knew two guys, but never well, and never followed the band. One of my friends is flying in from CA to do this.

Here's where it starts to get convoluted. I'll attempt to simplify.

The girl from CA and I have known each other since Jr. High School. We've been friends, but never especially close. When we started to become closer, I stole her date to our third friend's wedding. We've gotten over this.

I have a crush on one of the guys in the band. He apparently has a crush on the girl from CA, and they made out at the last shows we saw. I'm going to pretend that I don't think the fact that she realized I had a crush on him and mentioned her date that I stole (and still talk to occasionally) right before that had anything to do with her approaching him. So, that is going to be rather awkward for me, but I can deal. I have already tried to squash my crush, blah, blah, blah.

Well, the crush guy invited us three girls to crash at another girl's house about an hour away from the farthest city from home. Yeah, I can see that going over well. We're not accepting, thank god. What is going to end up happening I can't say, as we will be staying in a hotel within walking distance of the bar. I have a feeling that at least some of the guys in the band will end up staying with us, rather than driving in the wrong direction for an hour. That will create weirdness too, but we'll ignore that now.

While discussing the plans regarding sleeping situations, my friend mentioned that our friend in CA asked to have someone else added to the guest list for the first show that weekend.

Of course it's someone from high school who emailed me out of nowhere the other month. He's single and apparently liked my myspace profile picture with it's good angles and freshly cut/highlighted hair. The picture is probably six months old. I've gained weight since then and haven't had another hair cut. I stopped emailing him back, (cuz I suck like that. Seriously, I found an email from a different friend that I have been meaning to respond to and realized the date is about a year old. O0pps.) and apparently he started emailing this other girl. Why the hell she invited him to the show, I don't know. Dear God, I thought this incestuous dating bullshit was well behind me. Make it go away. Please.

Maybe I'll just stay home for the weekend.

Positive Thinking

For awhile I was having a really rough time even getting up in the mornings. I spent a lot of time wishing I would just go to sleep and never wake up again. Then, fate threw a few little crumbs my way. I reached for them with both hands, desperately trying to pull myself back towards hope, towards life. I latched on to these crumbs, hoping they would turn into a whole meal. I decided that if I used the power of positive thinking, they could become whole meals, a whole new life.

So, they're still crumbs, and I'm still starving. (not literally, of course)

These crumbs lasted damn near three months.

Now family issues have turned this possible meal back into something to be swept away and discarded. I find myself feeling foolish for believing I could make something out of nothing. I feel the lack of support and warmth throughout me. I feel stupid for even thinking I could make it better.

I have to stop caring about these people who have proved time and time again, well, it doesn't really matter what they've proved. Or maybe it "shouldn't" matter. I have to stop being angry and I have to stop giving them the power to take away my hope. I just need to figure out how to do it soon.

Really?

I had a stupid weekend. Yes, my weekend was mentally challenged. I swear. OK, maybe it was just me.

I went out Saturday night even though we had 70mph winds, no electricity and thunderstorms. For whatever reason, everything seemed off. Someone I've been infatuated with for a very long time gave me some bs, and it just didn't help. In fact, when I invited him to join us, he said that he'd like to come along to see the show, but he's read my blogs and didn't want to damper my good time. Nice. Thanks.

So, of course, he was on my mind. Then I saw a guy who looked a lot like him (only bald and shorter) in the bar. I wondered if it was his brother. Then I thought about him some more. *sigh*

I found out that someone who had specifically said he didn't have a girlfriend a few months ago actually has been living with his girlfriend for the past two years. Also nice.

While I was bored I started telling people that I had gone out in the area where we were so often that people still come up to me to this day. Well, either come up to me or run away. I could tell they didn't quite believe me.

My "friend" from college showed up to see me. He keeps telling me how he's obsessed with me and wants me to indulge his sexual fantasies. Um, yeah, sure. There's a whole lot of back story there on exactly why that's ridiculous. Just trust me on this one. While I was trying to avoid being rude to my "friend" while also not encouraging him, someone came up to me. It was my "friend's" ex-girlfriend's good friend, who recognized me from ten years ago. That whole situation was a little weird, but the guy I hadn't seen in ten years was always nice to me. (From what I remember anyway.)

After filling me in on how the people I knew back then are doing, we chatted for awhile. He thought it was pretty weird seeing me out and about and kept mentioning it. He also mentioned that he wasn't quite sure it was me a few times. When he was getting ready to leave, he asked for my phone number. I felt safe giving it to him, only partly because he's gay. He called the number immediately, and I stopped him before he left a message. I explained that I don't know the code to access voice mail because the phone was a gift. Of course since I was pretty drunk by this point, I gave him the whole story.

The number is a NYC number that was purchased by a guy from Norway when he was visiting NYC and sent to me by a girl in Reno. Ed looked at me and said, "So you have a NY number via Norway via Reno?" I agreed. Then he said, "You really are Megan, aren't you?"

Good in Bed?

She leaned over, covered her mouth with her hand, and yelled into my ear, "Out of curiosity, do you think he's good in bed?". I looked in the direction she was looking, narrowed it down to one of two people, and guessed which one. I looked at my friend, hesitated, and wondered how much she knew about my thoughts. I had tried to keep my crush on the down low for several reasons, only one of which was the fact that she wanted me to fuck him a year ago so she could live vicariously through me.

I realized I hadn't really considered whether or not he would be good in bed. So I took another look, and decided. I formulated an elaborate hypothesis as I spoke. (Well, it was elaborate in a beer soaked way.) I told her I thought maybe at first he'd be awkward and perhaps not so good, but if you got him in the right mood, or if he felt comfortable, he'd probably be really good. She looked at me kind of strangely, and said, "You think?".

I elaborated more. Then I thought for a second.

"You did mean Jimmy, right?"

"No, I meant Matt."

"Oh him, yeah, he'd be fucking awesome."

Candy and Pretzels

Yeah, so apparently when you decide to go vegan it helps to have a plan. The only plan I had was that I am allowed to cheat on Friday night for awhile and have a slice of pizza. I found that eating little more than candy and pretzels makes you gain weight and feel like shit. I think I probably knew that already.

I tried two recipes from Veganomicon, Fresh Rosemary Focaccia and Coconut Lemon Bundt cake. The Rosemary Focaccia was excellent. Yummy. The Coconut Cake was OK. It took a lot longer than the recipe said and when I took it out of the oven the first time, it collapsed. So I smushed it back in the pan and recooked. It looked like hell, but it tasted good. A little heavy, but maybe that was because I had to use a Magic Bullet (no, not the good kind) to make my huge coconut flakes smaller, and they became almost flour like.

I tried hummus for the first time. I found a can of garlic free stuff, and I'm glad I didn't expend the effort looking for blender pieces to make the stuff. It's OK on pita chips, but not great. I"ve never been a big dip fan anyway though.

I thought it tasted like sour cream so I decided to play around with it and make twice baked potatoes. I added hummus, onion powder, broccoli and nutritional yeast in varying combinations to the potatoes and reheated it. The edition involving all ingredients was my favorite. It tasted cheesy, but not heavy or greasy, which is a welcome change from my usual twice baked potatoes.

I think maybe I'm getting the hang of this vegan thing.