6:17 p.m. | 2002-06-29 Dreams, HGTV & Cheetahs. Last night I dreamt that I moved into a home owned by my father, with the young mother I mentor (LS), across the street from a schizophrenic who was stalking me via mail. Then, I discovered that I had triplets. The babies were fabulously cute and all, but I was thinking that I wasn't really ready to care for triplets. Or to live with LS and her kids. Or to be stalked by a schizophrenic. Or to live in a home owned by my father, which invariably, would come with so many attached strings, I would eventually become a marionette. So what does all this mean? Well, I don't have too much of a tendency to be swayed by fantasy so it's all pretty much grounded in real life stuff. I have a friend who lives in a home owned by her parents and it comes with many attached strings. I've been thinking of her lately and am grateful I don't have to deal with that. Hence having to move into a home owned by my father. As part of my job, I have to review letters received from people to discern if there is anything we need to respond to. I get a lot of letters from untreated schizophrenics, and while I'm quite sympathetic to their issues, there's really not much we can do about transmitters being implanted in people's brains, aliens reading other people's minds or the unidentified, white, cannibalistic people that apparently live amongst us. (I, myself, am white and, just to let you know, I'm not a cannibal. Just in case you were wondering or worried.) Hence the stalking schizophrenic in my dream. (And, yes, I do recognize that these letters also contain hidden messages written in secret code, however, I do not have a secret decoder ring so alas, those messages remain hidden.) LS's apartment has been condemned and so she and her two children, and her "man" are now homeless or at least in transition. (FYI: her "man" is not the father of either child.) And, as sympathetic as I am with all that, I can't take them in and she still has to learn how to handle her own problems. I will tell you that my advice was to get their shit together (I encouraged both her and her "man" to get jobs, for example) and get out of that place before it collapsed around her and I was willing to help her with that. However, apparently in a fit of shortsightedness, she called city code enforcement and they promptly came over and condemned her apartment and a couple of others. (Which is what I told her they would do.) And, I'm sure that upon further investigation, the whole apartment complex will be condemned. But, don't worry, she will have assistance in relocating and, her mother and brother (both mentally ill) live down the street from the complex, so she won't actually be on the streets. Yet. I still think my plan had more potential, but she's the one in charge of her life. And, yes, I agree with her that it wasn't fair that the slumlords weren't fixing stuff they should have been fixing, but you get what you pay for. When you live in a slum complex and have a slumlord, that's what happens. And, it's not fair but it just is. If she doesn't want that, she'll need to make some changes in her life and I'm willing to work with her on that and have been helping her with that for 3 years now. (And, I do know something about all that as I was on my own at 17. But as you can tell, I do most of the work; she's a passive participant in her own life.) And, at her own hands, she just made things way more complicated. Hence, her presence my dream. I would love to be able to take her in figuratively, just not literally. However, since it was my dream, she did come with her kids but sans her leech of a "man". Even in my dreams, I have my limits. And, no, I won't be receiving any mentor medals anytime soon. Obviously. That leaves the triplets. I don't have a clue what they were doing in my dream. I imagine that, if I was looking for a topper for all that drama, triplets would be just that. And, being typically me, in my dream I thought: well, this will all work out somehow. And, went about finding the good stuff. (TRUST ME, this is a learned attitude. Learned and earned.) The good stuff was the house itself. For some reason, I always have the coolest houses in my dreams! Then later, I took a nap with the TV tuned to HGTV. And, when I nap, I always incorporate any noises I hear into my dreams. It's a weird thing. So, I had a rather interesting dream that was all about gardens and flowers and stuff. What's interesting is that my dream contains actual dialogue (be it the TV, radio, or the neighbors talking) and dialogue produced by my twisted little dream production company. I won't even try to tell you about that dream. So, after all this sloth-like behavior, I actually woke up and watched some TV. Here's what I learned from "Circle of Life" on the Animal Planet: "To the cheetah, fatherhood is something he neither knows nor cares about. His contribution to the family ends with mating. He then goes back to marking his territory and finding other females to mate with." I also learned that female cheetahs are the only cats that don't have retractable claws -- their claws are always out. Well, no wonder. And, that explains a lot of things. I guess that we have a lot of cheetahs going around in men's clothing, including all four of LS's potential babydads. And we have a lot of cheetahs going around in women's clothing with their claws perpetually out and ready to strike. And, I would bet the schizophrenics would agree with all that. It's amazing how much you can actually learn while behaving like a sloth. Maybe they're smarter than they look. And, thank goodness, I didn't take a nap while Martha Stewart was on HGTV. Imagine how twisted that dream would have been... your thoughts? seed flower