constance | Apr. 20th, 2007

I had a dream last night that featured cows with no heads; instead of heads, there were capped-off nozzles, kind of like the way a capped gas line in an old house looks. That is really all I remember about the dream, and I do not know what to make of it.

A Conversation:
J: Cammy, are you wearing white hose? With sandals?
Me: What? No, of course not.
J: *peers closely* No, I guess not. Jesus, your legs are pale.
Me: Don't I know it.

My dog is trying to kill my daisies. He needn't bother, because I will kill them myself, given time, and I keep trying to tell him this, but he keeps knocking the pots over anyway, displaying, perhaps, an unbecoming tendency to alpha-dog it over me.

I bet you did not know that alpha-dog was a verb. But it is.

I have finally broken down and bought new underwear. I am a little embarrassed to say how long it has been since the buying of the last underwear to enter the house under my aegis, but at least now if I am in an accident, I will be able to hold my head high on the gurney as they wheel me into the hospital.

This particular manifestation of our company's twice-yearly (semi-annual, as we say in The Business) barbecue is no barbecue at all. It is instead a chicken-fry. We will be having fried chicken (with a little baked for the no-fried-foods people), beans and corn and slaw and potato salad and brownies and pecan pies. (quick question : pe-CAHN or PEE-can?) We will be giving out door prizes and cash awards and talking about job safety and health insurance, and of course you are invited. You will be coming, right? Because really, who does not want to listen to tales of other people's PPOs while eating?

I am currently having a ridiculous mock flamewar in which one of our superintendents has questioned everything I hold most sacred: the TOTAL UNQUESTIONABLE OMNISCIENCE of snopes.com. Here's what happened: he sent me an email of an enormous dog; the attached text claims that it's the world's biggest dog. I sent him a snopes link saying that the dog may or may not be as big as he is in the photo he sent, but the text about the world's biggest dog refers to a different dog altogether. And HE DOES NOT BELIEVE THE WORD OF SNOPES.COM. I cannot believe this. Never in my life has anyone questioned the word of snopes, which I wield the way some Christians wield the Bible to prove that homosexuality and the eating of pork are WRONG (what, has no one ever lectured you on the profanity of pork consumption?). My faith in the universe has been shaken, and as I respond to his emails in which he accuses snopes of being an enormous hoax perpetrated by our company's compulsive liar, I am thinking, God, what if he's right? What if snopes has been lying to me all along?

I think I will need some time to recover from this. And also, remind me to tell you someday the story of the Internet Porn, which involves this same superintendent but is not a part of the current bullet-point narrative.

Have I told you about the way I cope with stress? I draw house plans. Big houses, little ones. I copy them out of historic plan books and modify them for modern life. I make up my own. I look at them and imagine fitting my life into them, where the furniture would go, where I'd hide the litterbox, what they'd be made out of. Where I would put the electrical outlets.

I guess I've mentioned that I do this, but not why, exactly -- mostly because I've never really connected stress with this habit before now (I always connected it with a desire for a house of my own, but now I've got not only a house of my own but also the house of my dreams, and I'm still doing it, which has forced me to reassess my motives, because I know you were interested in hearing about that particular process) -- but anyway, I have been drawing a lot of houses lately.

Sorry for being gone. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to do better. I've got posts planned. Reading schedules. Bookmarks. Et cetera.

constance blackwood