Looking Back

One thing I love about blogging is the archives. Having always been one to keep some sort of diary or journal, being able to word search your archives or go back to a certain date in time appeals to the archivalist in me.

The first week of December in 'O5 I was

being abducted by aliens

and in '06 I was

channeling my middle age rage

Well, I haven't had any visits from aliens lately but I'm still channeling my middle age rage: Chest Pains with

Gun Metal Black

and

Tooth

tonight in Durham...

Otherwordly Visitors

 

So we had visitors from various dimensions come to our house last night for Halloween.

I had this grand idea to plunk down some money for dry ice to add to the evening's vibe.

Only it turned into one big debacle.

You ever try to use dry ice?

Well in order to get the ice to "smoke" you need to put hot water on it and - depending upon the size of the chunk of dry ice ( was using pint glass size pieces)- you may get a good 5 minutes out of it.

So there I was running back and forth from the sink with hot water for my dry ice like every ten minutes or so. I felt like I was running food at an all-you-can-eat buffet. I stopped after about 45 minutes because you really take the thunder out of the scariness by popping out of your door with a pitcher full of hot water to pour on the ice; it surely doesn't set the mood.

It also occurred to me that I just might tap out the hot water and I really wanted to save that for my shower later in the evening. Not to mention, we're still pretty much in a drought here and pouring hot water on your dry ice seemed a bit gratuitous so I opted to end the whole thing pretty much before the trick or treaters arrived.

One neighbor joked that I'd be better off with a fog machine.

"You could get the band to pay for that right?" he said with a wry smile.

So I came to the conclusion that dry ice used as a spooky device (for longer than five minutes) is a useless propostion.

I also came to the conclusion that waiting for trick or treaters to come to your house is like waiting for a date - both never seem to come soon enough.

Alien Abduction

So I had another alien abduction dream the other night.

I think I've had about a dozen or so over the last few years.

This one was sorta generic and par for the course in that it featured the basic big, bright light outside which needs to be investigated, that feeling of lost time and not being able to account for your whereabouts, and that feeling like you've been drugged.

The kicker was that during my "return" I sort came to walking down a dark hallway in my house only to find a stranger sleeping on my couch.

I walked over and pulled the covers off the stranger to find that I was looking at myself sleeping on the couch.

Chills rolled down my spine.

I shuddered off the chills and *poof* the dream went away.

The weird thing was that I actually slept on the couch because my 6-yr.-old came into our bed and 2am complaining of an ear ache.

The next day while channeling surfing I stumble upon a show about Roswell on the National Geographic channel.

Now I wasn't totally blown away by the coincidence because one can always find a show on aliens or Hitler on cable television.

But then today, I took said sick 6-yr.-old to the doctor to see if he had an ear infection (he does) and during our stay in the waiting room (not the mass populace waiting room, but the second tier room they put you in after the initial nurse consultation), the boys and I had this odd conversation about dreams and nightmares.

My 3- yr.-old's reoccurring "nightmare" is when I'm the tickle monster. I've actually heard him laugh in his sleep before and had him tell me the next day that I wouldn't stop tickling him on his dream.

But then my oldest son went into this elaborate dream about finding me in a room stuck with needles, lotsa of needles, all over my body and that the image totally freaked him out.

I think I've been listening to The Doors too much or something...