trying to keep everybody's crappity crap out of my emotional garage

Yesterday afternoon a close friend invited us out to his house “out in the woods,” which we are very lucky to live in a glacier-honed area of Wisconsin, the Southern sections of the Kettle Moraine forested zone, so “the woods” really are everywhere including in and around our subdivided housing area, but our friend Dave lives in the real woods, along a lake front (less than one-half hour from our house ... yes, lucky!).

Dave lives in an A-frame, has outbuildings, raises hunting dogs, and has a taxidermy shop (and the animals he has preserved are pieces of art, I am telling you, but then I’ll also tell you that I can point out the art in almost all my friends’ lives, even if they can’t see it).

On Dave’s property, there are fire pits, tree houses, outdoor grills of every combination, burning barrels, trampolines, swing sets and targets for practice. There’s a camper, an icehouse, a boat, motorcycles, mini bikes, mowers, etc., everything of the outdoor life, but I digress … let’s get back to the fire pit, the reason for the invite.


The original invite was to come out for the day, stand and jaw by the fire, catch some sun, fight off the wind, and just relax and wait for the meat to be ready. Yesterday’s fare was chicken and pork loin. The sides were beer, wine, sauerkraut, condiments and spicy potato chips.

Though there are picnic tables, benches and plenty of lawn chairs available around the fire pit, we all stood, stomping our feet to stay warm, and moving our jaws to keep the laughter going. The sun was out all day, but the wind was pretty wicked, so none of us really left the fire for very long.

As we all stood their drooling, we did remark that maybe our host had over-estimated the amount of meat he was grilling, and that it was likely too much, but we ate practically all of it, the five adults and two kids of us who were there.

It was super yum. It was everything I personally needed after weeks and weeks of stress (the catch-all word, for all that and more) and, admittedly, not cleaning my plate and further, admittedly, sometimes not even building a plate to begin with.

Prior to leaving we threw some “extras” on the fire, some scrap wood and junk from our garage, which Mark had loaded onto the truck before we left the house, things that we’re not “allowed” to burn within our “village limits." Dave also threw on “extras” from his own vast property, fallen branches, etc.

We continued our gab, picked at the bones of what was left of the chicken, decided if we had room for just one more piece of pork, “the other white meat,” kicked at the dirt, looked at the sky, noted the location of the sun and how bad it sucked that it was either a "school night" or "work night" for the best of us.

As the fire died down, the goodbyes began. As we headed out, I said to Dave, “Thanks for feeding me yummy meat,” and he remarked, “Okay, how come your camera isn’t on video for that remark,” teasing me because I was snapping pictures earlier and cajoling everyone into crazy acts, to no avail. While the day was full of laughs, I caught nothing on video.

I remarked further as Mark and I walked off that I’d likely sleep deep that night, and so of course with that deep sleep, another dream:

In this dream, shortly before the alarm this morning, I’m totally freaked out because a woman I used to do work for while I was employed at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital very, very early in my transcription career (age 25-ish), a psychologist, Gay Rosenthal, PhD, (odd that I’d remember her name, and odd that she’d arrive in my dream) had shown up at the house and she wanted to dump some “junk” off in our garage.

I kept telling her no, that would be stupid seeing how Mark and I had just been to this fabulous cookout the day prior, and while at the cookout we had also thrown some scrap wood and cardboard and stuff onto the fire, getting rid of some clutter in our garage, and so, “No, Gay, that’s not a good idea," plus in the dream of course I remembered her pysch notes were often times very, long and rambling and she wanted the testing sections in table form and they were a GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS, so likely whatever junk she had was going to be quite messy and out of sorts. I so did not want to deal with it.

Either way, she backed her truck up to our garage and was pressing the buttons on the outside key code box trying to open the garage door, even though I ran down into the garage to dry to stop her. Either way she kept making her attempts from the outside and each time the door would rise a bit and then stop, because Dr. Rosenthal also had several ratty feral cats on her truck, and they were trying to run into the garage as well, which would trip the safety on the garage door and it would stop partway up. My attempts to close the door from the inside switch were also causing the door to freeze partway up/down. Very frustrating.

Finally, I got the garage door to close, and then went back through the house and out to the front steps to talk to her. I realize then that I am in my bathrobe, which is weird because this is the first time I could see myself in my dream why the F! I am in my bathrobe for crying out loud! I continue to explain that she is not to bring any ratty-ass shit into our garage and ultimately, she leaves.

End of dream.

And then I woke up and it was Monday, whew, and so far (and it’s well past dark now) nobody has come over in a ratty old truck with feral cats to try and put crappity crap into our garage, so I guess I would call that a good day.

And I need these good days because, for every inch of crap I pull out, decide what I need, get rid of what I don't, I really, really don't need someone filling up all my clean edges with their crap! Only just sayin'.

I also stand on what someone once told me about dreams. It's not so much the symbols in the dream. It's "how you feel" when you wake up, and after this dream, I felt ... well, I felt very, "Well, then, I certainly washed my hands of that matter now, didn't I?" And that felt fantastic!

P.S. Of course no offense to Dr. Rosenthal who had no idea she'd appear in my dream, or this post. While I hated putting the educational testing materials into table format in her very lengthy reports, that's because all transcriptionists hate tables and graphics of any kind especially back in the day of word processors that had no graphics capabilities!

However, the work being done in the Learning and Behavioral Problems Department at Minneapolis Children's Medical Center was fascinating and I loved my job there, and in the other ancillary departments of the hospital, the non-medical work that I was transcribing.

Also, since Dr. Rosenthal appeared in my dream I had to Google her and see what she's up to these days. Yeah, I know if any of you can figure out a way to shut the human brain of for ten seconds so it can take a deep breath, I'd like to hear about this.

--And if you can further imagine, she's the cutest little Jewish American woman you'd ever like to meet, so picture her at barely 5 feet tall, coming to my house (dream or not) in a rickety pickup truck with feral cats, and me standing on my front steps (five feet off the ground above the drive and then also at 5 ft, 11 inches) yelling at her wearing my flowing black Ralph Lauren bathrobe sporting what's left of my black eye and bed hair.

Yes, quite a picture!