Dreams (The Sleeping Kind)

I've always fancied myself somewhat of a psychic... Haha, OK not really. But I have lots of dreams that are always a little more coherent than dreams should be. 

Often they are about very deep, spiritual subject matter, like finding that sock I've been looking for since last week, or that one where you get up and shower and do your ponytail and get all ready for work and wake up and realize you didn't do any of those things. But sometimes, my dreams are ADVENTURES!

The latest dream that I had involved a complicated treasure hunt...

I was part of a team of adventurers, seeking treasure based on an old map, some complicated clues, and a number of challenging physical obstacles. 

We solved riddles, climbed mountains, dug holes, and talked to creepy native shopkeepers.

I was leading this team of explorers, because in this dream I was back to the Jackie that used to be super brilliant and also fit enough to climb rocks and run from bad guys.

Our journey finally led us to a tiny cavern, hidden deeeeep in a complicated system of caves that only I could navigate. The final treasure lay hidden inside a little hole in the rock. All my associates were like six feet tall and therefore way too giant to fit in the little treasure-tunnel. 

Being the brave and tiny adventuress that I am, I courageously volunteered to climb into the spooky hole.

Once inside, it took a little while for my eyes to adjust to the absence of light. There were all sorts of spooky cave noises and probably scorpions and stuff, but it was too dark to see and I was too courageous to care.

And there, in the darkness, lay a tiny scrap of paper containing the last clue to finding the wondrous hidden treasure...

Of course! The treasure had been all around me the whole time, and I had been too focused on my objective to notice! I thought those rocks looked strange... No naturally occurring mineral says "Kit-Kat" on it, at least not in any caves I've been in lately.

Having discovered the true nature of the treasure, I wasn't about to let my loser teammates mooch off all my glory. 

I retraced my steps out of the cave, shoveling candy-pebbles into my mouth, my pockets, my socks... 

And then, all of a sudden, my hard-earned prize was so cruelly snatched from me by the deceitful mistress that is Morning.

And thus -- abruptly -- ends the tale of Jackie the Great Adventurer, Solver of Mysteries and Devourer  of Candy Rocks.

But, being the insightful dream decoder that I am, I came up with these two interpretations for my nighttime adventure story: 

FIRST

Clearly, the team in my dream represents the people that surround me and support me, such as friends and family, etc. 

My renewed intelligence represents my unlocked potential, that I can obviously still access with the help of my team of supporters. 

The treasure map represents my education, or the foundation for intelligence that I have laid out for me already. See Fig. 1

Fig. 1, y'all

Thus it follows that the various riddles and challenges I faced during my journey represent the ongoing struggle for understanding and enlightenment, as well as the inevitable toil of living in general.

The tiny hole in the wall represents my personal destiny, that only I can achieve or understand, and that end goal which I alone can focus on and strive toward.

And the final treasure, the candy pebbles, represents the understanding that the greatest reward in life often goes unnoticed because in our single-minded race for some unknown prize, we often miss the seemingly insignificant little joys that sprinkle the path on the journey that is our lives. 

SECOND

I really like candy. And adventures. But mostly candy.

I'll leave it up to you guys to decide which is the more accurate meaning.

The Cupboard Ghost

Guys.

Our apartment is haunted.

No joke, we have a ghost. A cupboard ghost. 

Have you ever seen Paranormal Activity? In particular, Paranormal Activity 2? More specifically, this scene right here?

That's a cupboard ghost, and we have one. 

For some reason, this mysterious specter goes around our kitchen and opens all the cupboards all the time. And the weird thing is, it always seems to happen when I'm cooking or putting groceries away...

This is really freaking me out. It's just like the movie. A spooky poltergeist is terrorizing us. 

There is absolutely no other explaination. 

None whatsoever.

A Day in the Life

The Creative Process

IRS: It's Really Scary

Once upon a time the other day, I had to go to the IRS to get a tax form for Daniel's financial aid. 

I went down on my lunch break during the middle of the day, and boy was I ever glad for an excuse to get out of my boring cubicle. 

Lately dollars have been tight, what with being newlyweds and with Daniel going to school and all, so my first thought when walking up to the federal building was "Whoa... I bet whoever works here makes lots of money." The whole grounds were so neat and fancy, and the building itself was much shinier than any of the surrounding landscape. 

I felt so cool and official going through security. I had to put my keys and stuff in one of those little buckets and walk through the beepy freestanding door. Then they x-rayed my phone and keys. Just to be sure. 

At this point, I should add, I was an experienced professional at visiting government offices, as I had been to this very federal building a few weeks before to change my name with the Social Security peeps. 

The nice security men gave me a name tag and directed me to Floor 6, for the IRS.

As the elevator arrived and I jumped on, I noticed another woman already in the elevator.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, I was glad to escape the presence of the zombie woman with the dead eyes. 

However, the awkward elevator encounter would in no way prepare me for the horror that greeted me on Floor 6.

Loooong, white halls. White walls, white ceiling, white lights, white tile floors. There were no people, just white signs with gold lettering. Waaaaaay down at the end of one of the terrifying halls, I saw a sign that said "IRS" with an arrow. 

I hurried to my destination, not wishing to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary in the creepy labyrinth that was Floor 6. 

As soon as I entered the door, I was greeted with a fancy touch-screen device that asked me why I was there. Then it spit out a little scrap of paper with a number on it indicating when it would be my turn.

Fortunately, I had warned my boss ahead of time that I might be taking an extra-long lunch.

I took a seat next to a kindly old gentleman who seemed to have been there for a long time. He wasn't very talkative. 

There was a sign on the wall asking visitors to be respectful of others. It said something along the lines of:

NO CELL PHONES

NO VIDEO GAMES

NO TALKING

NO JOY

NO HOPE

Eventually, people's numbers started to get called, and a man sitting behind me got his turn to go into one of the unsettling little booths.

*true story, that really happened in real life.

I just needed a copy of my tax return transcript, so about an hour later when I finally got my turn, it took like thirty seconds for the dead-eyed gentleman in the booth to click "Print" and then stamp the thing with the other thing. 

As soon as he handed it to me, I shouted "Thank you very much, sir!" and ran out of there as fast as my stubby little legs could carry me.

Down the long white halls I ran, and dove into the nearest elevator, frantically mashing the Floor 1 button until the elevator started to move. I did NOT want to become a federal zombie, no sir. No matter what they paid me. 

In my mad dash for freedom, I neglected to realize that the elevator had only gone down one floor when the doors opened, and I stumbled out onto Floor 5, which probably housed another department of government services. I wouldn't know, I was only there for a couple of seconds. 

I wasn't about to wait for another elevator, so I stumbled through a crowd of confused and slightly worried bystanders and booked it down the stairs.

I slapped my name tag on the giant wad that the security guards were collecting by the door, wished them a hysterical good day, sirs, and dove into my car.

As I drove back to work, I checked my pulse a couple more times to make sure I was still alive and vowed that if I ever needed something government-y in the future, I would find a way to get it online, or at the very least over the phone.

And never would I ever get a job working in a place like that.

Never.

Who Am I?

Hey internet friends! Today's insightful thoughts of the day has to do with... the overwhelming number of existential crises I've undergone in my lifetime.

Mostly my problem has to do with the fact that I was a huge reader as a child, and at a very young age I exposed myself to quite a bit of thought provoking literature. Which, in turn, provoked quite a few thoughts. Thoughts which, over time, evolved into deep-seated paranoia.

For our first example of a crisis that has haunted me for years, we will turn to the "What is me?" dilemma. This particular crisis focuses on what constitutes my character. Were I being introduced in a book, how would the author portray me? And more importantly, who is the author? Is it a first-person narrative? Third-person? Objective observer? Does the narrator feel negatively or positively about me? 

Logic dictates that of the ways different observers describe me must overlap at some point, so the words that they have in common must be the truth. Right?

Right?

Next, my poor youthful brain was exposed to science fiction, which introduced to me the concept of "Artificial Intelligence." These were characters which, consciously or otherwise, were actually synthetic humans that were constructed by real life people to imitate human life, but never quite achieve humanity themselves. 

For a brief point in my life, while I was struggling with the emotionless void that was my freshman year of college, I convinced myself that the reason I was unable to experience feelings was because something had gone wrong in my programming, or I had downloaded a virus of sorts.  

But the most recent and most pervasive crisis was the "Imaginary Friend" dilemma. I don't know if it was from a book I read, or maybe an episode of Star Trek I watched, or perhaps a weird dream I had, but there came a time when I had quite thoroughly convinced myself that I did not, in fact, possess a corporeal form. 

I was pretty sure that, instead of being a real person that existed in a normal state of being like all my other friends, I was some form of... um... sprite or spirit or perhaps even an alien that only existed in the minds of others. And the most terrifying bit was that my existence depended on people thinking about me. If, at any point, everyone in the world stopped thinking of me at once, I would simply cease to exist.

I thought that maybe getting married would solve that problem for good, but even your husband can't think about you all the time. He's got better things to think about, like Power Rangers and car bits and stuff. Someone once suggested to me that having a baby would ensure my survival, since a baby would depend on me for its existence, but in my mind that's about half a step above having a cat. Babies don't really do what I would consider thinking... Also, ain't nobody got time for that. No sir.

So I started a blog! If my friends and family can't be constantly thinking about me, at least some Russian spam-bot will be reading my posts and artificially jacking up my stats to make me feel better about my life. And to all of you real live people out there that are reading this right now and pondering my reality, thanks for providing me with enough mind-energy to live another day. 

An Old Classic

Word of warning:

Before you read this, be aware that this joke was crafted long ago on a marching band trip that involved hours on a bus and sleeping on the floor of a gym. It may not be suitable for children or more delicate audiences. Or those that don't get jokes concocted in the minds of sleep-deprived college kids.

For the non-musician:

A gock block, also known as a "tempo block" or "jam block" is a plastic version of the good old fashioned wood block. A gock block or set of pitched blocks is used by percussionists in salsa or Latin music. It is also used by many drum majors to keep time on the marching band field due to its durability and volume. 

Now I'm not going to explain the rest of the joke. If you don't get it... don't worry about it.

Without further ado, I present to you a comic strip that started out scribbled on the back of an itinerary, but has lived on in the hearts and minds of band students for years.

Our story begins with a friendly trombonist speaking to a nearby flute player as they stand at attention and wait for the drum major to instruct the clarinet section.

"Hey baby, why don't you and I go find a practice room after rehearsal and work on our embouchure exerci--"

Members of the 2011 Weber State Marching Band, holla back if you remember this.