digsite

Ok, before I start this one I want to preface it by saying that I almost didn’t post it at all. I don’t want people out there to think I’m some crazy person for having had a dream about another blogger.

But anyway, normally I wake up from a dream feeling all sorts of interesting emotions similar to when you walk out of the theatre after seeing a great movie. It could be lust, exuberance, nostalgia, etc, but this time all I felt was embarrassment. But goddammit, as I layed there in horror of the dream I realized that if I can’t post about a damned dream, then I might as well stop blogging. It’s not like this is going to get back to dooce anyway, eh? oh boy…

Ok, so here it is.

I’ve arrived at Heather’s home in Utah to spend the day with her. Why? I don’t know. I wasn’t there to interview her, photograph her or her family, or even clean her house for her. It was just her and me spending the day together even though we’d never met before. Weird, huh?

She and I are sitting around the house chatting it up about some nonsense or other and all I can think of is that I need to impress this woman somehow. I don’t know if she knows I have a blog, and I don’t even know that she knows I know about hers. LOL! But miraculously a laptop shows up from nowhere - my laptop - with a website on it full screen - guess whose. That’s right mine. and I try to hide it from her view because if she finds out I have a blog or even know about hers, then she might think all I’m there for is to impress her.

sigh.. I act this way the whole dream. It’s like I’m back in grade school.

I’ve spent a couple hours with her already when I realize that I haven’t seen her daughter anywhere. I was going to ask about her but then decided against it. If she hadn’t brought her out, then she must feel very private about her. Of course I realize now how rediculous a notion that is when she writes about her daughter publicly all the time.

Next she goes off to make us some coffee when her phone rings. She was too far from the phone to answer it but it was right next to me. I’ve always hated it when people answer phones for me at home so I didn’t touch it. After a couple rings she comes back into the living room and answers it.

Her side of the call went something like this
“uh Huh? from the chigaco tribune?”
“sure”
“my password? of course you can have it”
“here it is” and she proceeds to give her blog password to the person on the other end of the line.

I’m just shocked beyond words. Give someone your password? a reporter? I won’t even give my husband my password for christ sake. I’m so horrified I feel like I need to save this woman from damnation.

me: “you gave that person your blog password?”
her: “yes.”
me: “WHY?!”
her: “because he needs to go through my blog”
me: completely ignoring the fact you don’t need a password to read a public blog , “but aren’t you afraid he’ll completely screw up your blog?”
her: “no. this is normal don’t worry about it”
me: unable to speak from the shock.

Suddenly we’re outdoors walking though some part of a city. Some nonexistent city because it was Boca but it was Salt Lake too but this one had?extremely tall buildings. I decide that it must be New York. We’re walking two or three blocks away from the area where the twin towers stood and she starts talking about where she was when it happened. In order to impress her some more I decide to tell her where I was when they fell. I’m not a very good listener in this one.

Me: Completely believing I was telling the truth at the time “I was working in that building right there!”
Her: Looks up to the general direction I’m pointing at.
Me: “It’s the 5th, no 6th one from the corner”

Realizing at this point that I had the wrong street corner, I decide to continue on with the farce and despite the pure insanity in the streets - the wind blowing hard in our faces, the crowds of people bumping us while trying to make their way around us, I make her stand there and count back from the corner until we get to the building I want her to think I was at.

Me: “it’s that one.. no.. that one!”

Of course, in reality I was no where near New York.

After seeing how much trouble it took me to find the fabled building she turned to me and said.
“Wow. If you worked there you should have been able to point out the building a lot quicker, don’t you think?” She gave me that “nice try” kind of look and started walking again.

Oy. Smart woman.

We continue towards somewhere yet unkown to me when I decide to revisit the subject of the dreaded password. I just had to try to talk some sense into this woman.

Me: “You know, I’m a systems administrator at a webhosting company and we’d never dream of giving out our passwords to someone outside the group. A password is gold. It takes three of us 4,5 hours to change all passwords across all our platforms.” This is true. “And one time we had to change them twice in one day because some moron sent the password out to the group in plain text.” Also true. “You really should reconsider giving out your password so freely. They could wipe out your entire site.”

I’m going on and on with this when we enter a doctor’s office. There are people sitting in chairs in the waiting room from one wall to another. Must be a popular doctor. There are three steps to go up on and at the highlight of my embarrassment my legs give out on me. As i’m going up that third step my knees buckle under me and I’m left in a squatting position. I pull and pull on that damn rail and can’t get up. I spittled something out about having weak legs like my grandmother. Finally I pull myself up and start wobbling myself to a seat next to Heather. Of course by this time everybody in the room is staring and she’s doing no different. She looked as if she would have loved nothing more than to run as far from me as she could. sigh… this is grade school all over again.

This is where my day with dooce ends finally and the weird Mad-Scientist part starts.

I wander off and walk into a room at this wonderful establishment where a doctor is performing exploratory surgery on a man without anesthesia. This is Mormon country, after all, and folks don’t use that stuff here.

Well, I know this isn’t true but it is in my dream! I’ve been to Utah on business before and know about their weirdnesses with alcohol and getting into bars but never heard such atrocities happening at doctor’s offices.

The doctor is almost done but before he starts to close he grabs this huge fan shaped spatula thing and shoves it into the man’s gutt. The man yells out in pain and the nurse says “It’s OK Mr. soandso, the doctor is almost done. The doctor agrees “yes, Mr. soandso, I only need to close you up now.” By now I’m at the head of his bed getting a closer view.

I’m the only one in my house who can watch surgery on tv without going into convulsions.

The doctor starts to close but instead of using a surgical needle and sutures, he uses something resembling a dinosaur claw and twine. Hell, nobody there is wearing masks and they let strangers off the streets in to watch so, why not?

This is where the dream ends.

I can’t explain where the surgery part of the dream came from but the dooce part came from the video of her daughter singing the ABC’s I saw yesterday. I wonder if she’s concerned with the weirdos out there that might get obsessed and maybe try to “find” her. It wouldn’t be so hard if they did. This scares me too because for years I’ve put private info of my own on the net. Thankfully I don’t get the kind of traffic she does. But even so, I changed domains this year because I know my ex, who’s a wackjob, knew what it was. Even though I haven’t spoken to him in 4 years, I’ve heard stories and, well, he’s still a wackjob.

Anyway, it took me about 6 tries to finally watch that damn thing when my daughter heard the abc song and came closer to watch. Jada is 6 months older than Leta but sounds more like an infant when she sings it. Her speech is still “not there yet”. I felt sad that I haven’t recorded her singing her version of the ABCs. She learned it on starfall.com. Sigh… Maybe that’s where this dream stems from. Guilt.

But why all the embarassment? I could have done without all of that. Oh well, dreams will be dreams.