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The weather outside is so scary.  I can’t help but worry about D upstate where flash flood warnings were issued.  The messages on weather.com were like “this is a life threatening situation” “don’t drown.” How intimidating are those messages? And what about the subway? I am so scared of the subway getting flooded and me being down there.  There is nowhere to go!

I guess I could always take the bus to work- it would take a long time, and I’d be waiting outside for a while.  Or I could take the outside trains too when I could reach them.   I really worry about natural disasters while in Queens.  And Manhattan. I was scared of the snow in Binghamton but that was about driving. I never had the fear of getting stuck somewhere. In fact, I didn’t really mind as long as D was nearby.

There is a new theory out to have this thing called the “go pack” and my company amongst many others uses it.  The go pack is a fanny pack given to all employees.  Inside there is anything you may need with a disaster: radio, dried food, whistle, map, and whatever else can fit inside. They even come up with new things and replace old ones.  It’s really nice. Anyway, this guy told me they were giving out booklets in Penn Station on what’s needed for your own personal go pack.  You keep them just in case, I guess, you get stuck in the subway train.  Would it be wasteful, geeky, chicken of me to get my own- one for the subway and one for my home?

And ok, personally I don’t understand why there is such serious preparation for a problem, when we are causing and have caused things that will make this happen for us. These go packs are a band-aid.  Or anti-biotic ointment to place on our wounds.   Why don’t we just stop running into rocks? Or find a way to prevent them from avalanching?  Then we won’t need to worry about ointment.

It just bugs me.

I woke up today to “that thing that snores” in the living room. One of my parents decided to sleep there. I wonder if it was to keep the other one from waking up from their snoring? So sweet of them.

So it started being summer early here. I wonder if I like it or not. I love it when I am on a vacation thats supposed to be hot. I love sweating then. How do I feel about sweating in my work clothes?

But then ironically at work, its like 60 degrees. And thats great, but I need a light jacket for sitting at my desk. And then in the winter, when I am dressed for the cold outside, its like 100 degrees in my cubicle.

When did I get so negative? Thats a bad thing. No. thats a good thing. (Haha) Maybe I am negative when I am waking up in the morning, so all my posts have a dark cynical side. But then my positve side comes out when someone dies, and I tell my friend who is in pain “At least they have lived a good life.” What?? Or I love what I do at my job. This is a terrible habbit I have to break. Sometimes I get death claim calls. When a beneficiary (the one who receives the proceeds after someone dies) calls to check on their parents, spouse, grandparent’s, etc death claim (after filling out a bunch of paperwork and mailing it in), I tell them I am sorry for their loss. But then brilliantly at the end of the conversation I say “Thank you for calling and have a great day.”

How insensitive.

Thats a habbit I have to break, amoung several others. Like this one. I have a long last name. If you know me, you know this. At my job, I answer the phones alot of the time, and follow a script (I admit it, I am a Customer Service Rep, but a glorified one). The script is like this: “Thank you for calling —, This is Rachel A—–, How can I help you? … Oh, I’d be glad to check your account balance. But, may I have your policy number, so I can pull that up for you? Thank you.”
There’s more, and its just as entertaining as the first part. You should call one time. Anyway, when I first was training for the job, they told us, because it is a recorded line and we’re governed by the major financial governing system, we have to say our full name every time we answer a call. I complained and they ‘double checked’ for me, because I was afraid my last name would confuse people. But I stuck with it, and very distinctly would say my first name at calls to not scare people.

Then last week, this guy named Pete (his team listens to our service phone calls at random and makes sure everything is going well.) comes over to me, and says “Rachel, you are going to have to stop saying your last name when your on the phone. It only confuses people.” I cheered, because he was making my life easier. I was very excited.

But get this, I can’t stop. I can’t just say “Rachel, How can I help you?” And then I kick myself EVERYTIME. No wonder I am so negative. I love my last name.

(Please note: I actually do love it.)

Bad mood. Laid in bed awake for an hour.  More annoying because I let myself sleep later today. And it’s my job’s fault.  Stupid job.

So grouchy wasn’t even going to write in here. I’ve been trying so hard, and sucking at that. Right now don’t care about anything, too pissy to even care if this is good or crap.

I feel like driving a truck right now.  To be aggressive and more powerful than anyone. And yell uninhibited on the radio to other ones like me.  And then I can race little cars down the road.

Ok I don’t really feel like doing that.  But I would like to be somewhere else. Like the Adirondacks.  I’d like to have hiked up a mountain last night and sitting at my campsite right now, dealing with the bugs sticking to my head and me wondering if I lost weight from the hike up. And Dave to be cooking up boiling water for oatmeal and tea.  I wish I was sitting on an uncomfortable log, only wondering if it’d be warm enough to go swimming today.

And we’d eat and it’d taste better than anything I’ve ever had, because everything tastes better when your camping.  Then I’d groan about cleaning up, but we would. I’d avoid peeing because I would be terrified about going to the bathroom in the forest and a bug stinging me in mean places.  I would think, I wish I was a guy.

And then we’d go sit on a rock and bring the fishing pole and pretend that were catching fish since I usually have bad luck. I would take a break, while Dave would continue. Stretching out on the boulder.  Reading, sunning and being scared of bugs.  Eating perpetually too, from the trail mix.

Oh, I want to be wearing a lot of bug spray and suntan lotion.  And a silly baseball hat that I would never wear in public.

From the rock I want to see the mirrory water with mountains sitting across from me.  And trees.  Trees with bugs on them but far away, so it’s ok.

And to have energy-less conversations about what happens to bugs after they sting you, and memory lengths of fish and birds. About where to hike this afternoon. Or just silence.

And no other thoughts in my head except the book I’m reading and fresh air and my darling boyfriend who brings us a blanket to lie on.

And I’d be happy.

My dad doesn’t like change.  He will talk about doing things that are different - not say so, but discuss them. But he will never do it. I feel bad for my mom because she is stuck in his rut.They like to travel. Before they had the kids, they traveled all over Europe. Which sadly for us kids meant “We’ve been there already” and forced us to go back to the same country that they liked every year. I have been yelled at many times by friends when I complained that I was going to Zurich “again.” Yes, I know millions of people would love go in my place. But think about it. I hate flying, and I would be forced each year to go to places I had already been many many times.  Many many.  Zurich, Toronto and London.  My brother stopped wanting to go, and when he was old enough, they let him not.  I felt the same, but I had to have a babysitter.  Aunt Marilyn stayed with me (because I am a girl and it is different).

So now that my dad has retired, we expected him to do other things; with his time off, we expected him to travel elsewhere. Mostly because he said he would.

I suckered him into a bet a few months ago, with the prize was that he would go somewhere else next vacation (something about who acted in a movie). I won but since he is so stubborn, he refused to claim we bet.  But impressively a month ago, he spoke about going to London AND Scotland, or Munich (another place he’s been many times) and Prague but this week he was like “eh” about Scotland. So why not Prague?  “You can’t spend a week there.” “What happened to going to Munich?” “Well, we’ve been there already.” (Please note: I researched the countries around Prague for him and he said the same thing.) (Please note: the irony.)

Last night, the dream I had was set in a small town.  And I have a vague recollection that there were houses that I rushed around. I knew it was a weird one, only because I woke up and thought, “that was a wierd dream” and but now the thoughts are slowly drifting out of my mind.  Yet too fast to even explain why I started this post in particular.

How come we’re made to have these dreams, but we’re also made to forget them?   Why does our mind work to design images that are like our experiences, or worries? I’ve heard that sometimes they predict or story tell. Where does this come from?
And if we’re so creative in slumber, why do we get to forget so easily in wake?

Why should dreams scare you?   Or at least scare me?  Why would a mind do that?  So crafty and coniving, forces one to suffer or wake up unhappy.  I have dreams that scare the crap out of me, and they ruin the day that I wake up in, as if I really went through it and I am still feeling sorry for myself.

Recently I have been having a “reoccuring” dream. Although the dreams themselves were different. But the underlying themes were the same.  Maybe even the same characters.  All from the same character pallete of my life past and present.

The theme is people are trying to get me - I had to hide from people either trying to kill or to capture me.  The worst one I can remember, actually vividly recall is one I had a month ago. People were trying to kill me.  I hid from them for the first part of the dream (I wonder how long it took). And then I was carried by a strange monstrosity, ressembling a large broken wooden chair, across a third world land naked, bringing me to safety. There, I enjoyed a quieter life in a semi-tropical setting, where I ended up watching some musical performance.

And then I saw them.  Somehow they had found me.  So I hid. Like an action movie they kept finding me, and avoided traps I set.   And then they captured me. I don’t know how they did, but they did.  I guess I gave up, or there was no way out for me.  So then, I ended up in my room (which was like my room when I was little) and there was this weird wiry little guy that attempted to convince to eat cereal or drink water. I refused so he convinced me to pour the cold water on his back, as if to prove it was ok for me to have it.  And they tried to get me to eat because I needed my strength. He knew its poison, and I think I knew too. But by that time, I am so warn out from running that I took a bite. And then I knew. I knew it was poisoned. t The guy said eat one more bite. And I didn’t want to have anymore. And I pathetically whimpered, “why did u do this? Why did u do that to me?” Whinned, like I wouldn’t do in real life.  The dream ended with me yelling “I don’t want to die! Save me. I don’t want to die.”

And me waking up crying, saying the same thing.

Why would I dream that kind of thing?   Why would I do that to myself?

When I was younger and I had these nightmares that would wake me up upset and I would call my mom, yelling her name for comfort.   She would come in, give me a glass of orange juice and tell me the next time I had a bad dream, I should pass it to my brother.

Bad dreams were so frequent that I worked out a method.  I would wake up from one and wind the imaginary dream handle next to my head in the direction of my brother’s room, to ‘pass’ the thoughts onto him. And that would let me sleep for the rest of the night.  I got so good at giving them away that I could yell in bad dreams - “This is a dream and I am not going to let this happen.”
I am going to have to start yelling that in my dreams again.

I have a fond memory of a water bug. A big whopper of a crawly thing. It ventured into my memory forever when it scuttled across my floor last summer.

It was a nice summer day. I was living at home for the first time in 6 years, so I could find a new job and be where there are lots of them. My mom and neighbor Elaine were sitting in the living room rejoicing over an unkempt neighbor’s removal from her apartment. Elaine was a little tanked, as she said while gleefully stumbling into our apartment. I came out to chat, because who doesn’t love a drunken person in the afternoon?

They were telling stories about rude Amy, the dirty, crazy, thieving neighbor and her equally delightful boyfriend who visited. Stories of the many times when she stole packages left in the hallway, or the screaming matches between the couple, also in the hallway. And if you ever peaked into the apartment, you would have nightmares about the piles of garbage and junk and THINGS everywhere. The management finally evicted them and someone chose not to clean up. A joke was made about how they needed to burn the studio to remove all the rodents and cockroaches before they invade the surrounding apartments. And then out of the corner of my eye…

“Mom, kill it!”

I hear two simultaneous mini shrieks and they got to their feet and backed away.

“I’m not going to kill it, you kill it!”

“But your the mother… fine Elaine, you do it!”

“No no no! Get it with a shoe. No, trap it with a glass.”

“Squash it!”

“Rachel, your the youngest, do it.”

I don’t like bugs. This was a monstrous thing, running around scared because we were making such a nervous ruckus. A brown water bug about the size of a pig in a blanket. No, it reminded me a date.  And it was up to me (against my will) to get rid of it.

I was going in. Suited up. Placed two plastic bags on my hands (Elaine’s suggestion), put on sneakers (can’t kill a bug barefoot), took my dad’s shoe (mom’s suggestion) and ran after the water bug.

Closed my eyes, with a warrior cry I slapped that shoe down with such force, I would have clobbered the thing.

If I hadn’t missed.

“Here, try this,” my mom brought over an emptied garbage pail, “trap the sucker.” I turn around terrified, “And then do what with it???”

The stood behind me (very close) and I snuck up behind this bug that was hanging out by the dining room table. “Aha!” I covered him.

“Now what?”

“You go get a broom, so when you pull off the cover, you wack the thing. That’s what I would do,” Elaine declared expertly. I didn’t understand why I was stuck with this job. “You do it, because you already have the plastic bags on your hands.”

So again, I approached the scene, giving myself confidence, or at least pushing out the lack of it. Mom and Elaine stuck right behind me, terrified that the bug would go somewhere worse in the apartment. I closed my eyes, and pulled away the can. Wacked the broom down on the bug.

But it ran!

It ran into the closet. But now I just wanted to get the damn thing out and dead. I was laughing so hard and close to crying. Its hard not to laugh when your wearing two “Thank you, come again” smiley face shopping bags up to your elbows, untied sneakers with determined sidekicks over your shoulder.

Opened the closet door, and there it was. “Ahhhhhhhh”, I brought the broom over my head and just started smashing. Hitting wherever. But he was lost in the closet. But already determined, through my laughing tears, I started to yell “come out you damn bug, come out, I want to squash you.” Simultaneously hitting the broom against the metal chairs in the closet. Maybe I thought I was scaring the bug out of there?

But the bug lost for now, I turned to my cronies, who were laughing so hard. And mom said, “He’ll come back out later, and dad will kill it, like it was nothing.”

So we sat down again and laughed about it. Laughed hard and good.

The bug was forgotten.

And it was dinnertime. Mom and I were sitting down, quietly and dad walked into the room, clean and shiny from washing up. “How are you I hope!”

I turn around and, “Oh, Dad, there’s a bug.”

He took a half step, and then it was under his shoe. Scraped off the bottom and into the toilet. Washed his hands, and sat at the table.
My mom and I looked at each other and laughed. Just laughed.

I had one of those days today. The kind where everything little that could go wrong, went wrong. Running perpetually late all day long, harrassed and harangled by bosses, and bosses’ bosses, and rain rain rain. Crap crap crap.
The old saying says “When it rains, its pours.” Which explains the reoccurance of soaking pants today.  Each time I left the dry indoors, I managed to re-live the soggy feeling.

I left the subway tonight, put up my umbrella, so glad that I was going home.  And then one of the spokes in my umbrella collapsed.  And bopped me on the head. And got stuck on my hair. As the rain picked up and found my dried clothes one more time, I whimpered.

Finally in my building, relieved of the damp, I walk down the hallway to the lobby and “Wooop!” I slipped on the wet floor, the wall ‘cushioning’ me on my way down.
I get to the elevator, and there is an old man neighbor waiting for the elevator. His baseball cap soggy and heavy, drooping over his eyes.  His cordoroy jacket might have weighed 30 lbs.  And his umbrella, a comedic memory, strap dangling on his pinky. He looks at me.  Looks like he is going to say something.

“Sucks, doesn’t it.”

And I just felt better.

The fight I have to fight to wake myself up in the mornings is impressive. I lay there thinking, I am not ready to get up. I am not going to get up. It’s 6:45; I can sleep for another hour. At least 10 more minutes. Yes I am going to, I don’t care. But I am so tired. And my throat is dry, I must be sick; I have to go back to sleep, otherwise I am going to miss a very important day of work.

The fight to go to sleep is also pretty extensive. It starts when I am tired around 9pm. I think, “I am going to sleep by 11 tonight.” I even make a schedule. But then 11pm comes, and I think of something else to do. And I just don’t feel like it.

I just don’t feel like it. Still fighting with myself. I don’t think I am special or anything, but I think myself brilliant for knowing both sides of the story - how great I feel when I have to get up early after not going to sleep early the night before. And yet, I still think at midnight, I am going to have a cookie. I really want one (even though I don’t), so I am going to have one. Yes.

Sleep is a good thing. I love the feeling of waking up after a full nights sleep, feeling a little cold, and having to warm self up. The feeling of having to warm your toes up by sticking it into the cool cozy folds on the blankets, and you shrink down on the bed because it feels too good to go anywhere else but there. Open your mouth a few times, to make sure it works, and realize it’s dryer than the grey weaved carpet on the floor. And it’s ok to close your eyes again. And then it comes. “Rachel.” She shouts my name. Not an exclamation with a happy intonation attached. The sound is more like a rude parrot, squawking in quick duo syllables above your head. “Rachel.” Not an exclamation, but noise like a hand slapping you once, just hard enough on the side of your forehead. Just annoying enough to ignore on purpose.

“Please don’t wake me up again. I think my alarm clock is good enough.”

In high school, freshmen and sophomores had to go to school by noon. Juniors and seniors had to get there earlier. This is called split session. It had to happen because if we all went to school at the same time, some classes would have to be held in the bathrooms. In between bells, the halls would be a mosh pit of pushes and shoves and fights. And volume. Just too many people.

So when I was a senior, I followed the earliest schedule. I had to be at school by 6:45. Which is excessively early. I probably could have woken up at 6, if I was me now. But then, I had to share the bathroom with 2 others. So I had to get up.

Back then I didn’t know anything about the snooze alarm. I got up when my alarm went off. This was mostly because I didn’t want to hear the “Rachel.” and have to start my day with that as my first sound. I never knew I could hit the snooze just “one more time…” So instead, I got up as soon as I heard the sound, and started doing the things I had to do. Never had a consideration that I could stay in bed.

So in 12th grade, I had a television that featured an alarm clock. This, I would find out when I graduated, was a curse. The television woke me up at 5:30 in the morning. I would get up and watch Saved by the Bell while I got ready.

But it wasn’t the sound of the TV show or commercial that woke me up though. It is the initial sound of vague indescribable noise, only heard for a second. Like a candy wrapper being opened, the ruffling processed condensed into a millisecond. Quick and sharp.

I know it is that sound that woke me up, but not because I am a detective. But because I have this curse on me. The minute a TV is turned on anywhere, that condensed candy wrapper of a sound wakes me up. Sharp jolts at 8am on Saturday and Sunday, when I went to sleep 3 hours earlier. Rude awakening.

Luckily, I have learned about the snooze button.

I am a zombie right now. Luckily I don’t have to leave my bed on my first day of my new job. I don’t even have to open my eyes all the way. I guess I am lucky. My legs are cozy under warm covers. My body has it easy, propped against 16 pillows.

The only problem is my shoulders, and maybe my arms. My fingers. They are having difficulty typing. I think you need some form of arm strength in order to type. And man, is it an effort as a result. Too bad I can’t type with my mind. They (those technologists) should create something that if you plug yourself into your machine (wirelessly, of course), it will type whatever you think. Not say, because my mouth is even more tired than my arms. I might slur. And there’d be a lot more errors than now with my lazy arms and my closed eyes.

Maybe I am worse than a zombie; I feel like a lump. I could just sit here and not move. And silently let my eyes close. Maybe a lazy lump, because I am trying to think of all these reasons to let my eyes close back up.

My dad might call me a lump. He calls a lot of people lumps- if they act the correct way. A choice lot of public figures who don’t do what he wants them to - they’re lumps.

He has a bunch of other titles for individuals. There’s the typical dad naming of “Schmendrick.” I guess its Yiddish for an idiot or a jerk. But see, my dad is creative. He gave Mr. Schmendrick a last name. Schmendrick Pascoonyak. Those are people we know in the neighborhood, that either have gone wrong in the past or kind of just walk Queens Boulevard daily with a shopping bag all alone. And take up space. Sometimes it can refer to just anybody.

Then there are the “old biddies,” the ones who sit at the bagel place to hang out. Old biddies are females in the age range of mid-70s to 80s. They visit there daily to compete with my dad for a seat; one of the group goes in ahead to sit and save spots. Not necessarily get a bagel, or even coffee, but sit. They sit there, they take up space, so my dad (”A paying customer!”) cannot sit. They especially like to put a bag of who knows what on each of the swivel seats. Then the ladies come into the store. They may not even talk to each other, I honestly don’t even know if they exist. But in my mind they all have fluffy thin hair in wild formations around their wrinkly little faces attached to fragile little bodies, attached to their canes and walkers. And there is a token biddie named Sadie who is all biddied up in a navy terry cloth jumpsuit that her granddaughter picked out for her. She thinks she is the leader of their group. But everyone else talks behind her back whenever she leaves the table - about whether or not her grandson really did go to Yale and marry a [whisper:] Shikza (non-Jew).

These old biddies are kind of zombies too. Or lumps. They kind of just sit there, waiting for something else to happen. Lean against the pillows, against the wall of life and let everyone else walk around them. At least they’re not in homes.

I think I’ve written enough. I deserve to go back to being a closed eyed zombie.