February 8–12, 2002 — To scratch a man to death

It has been an odd few days.

I’ve been remembering my dreams again: at least one a night over the last few nights. I spent a long time not remembering my dreams at all, but that changed in the fall when I started to get more sleep. This is the first time I’ve remembered them as consistently and as vividly as this, though.

In one dream, I was watching a space shuttle launch, and I could tell that something was wrong, but no one else seemed to notice. The shuttle launched and then somehow turned around in midair and slammed into the launch pad. I immediately woke up, heart racing. Then I saw that it was 4:00 am, realized that there hadn’t really been a shuttle accident, and tried to go back to sleep. The last time I can remember a dream waking me up, I was still in elementary school, and a demon of some sort was about to lop my head off with an ax. I’m not sure that I want to make a habit of letting them jolt me into consciousness, but I’m definitely glad to be having less forgettable dreams again.

Going off on a bit of a tangent, I remember the day that the space shuttle Challenger exploded fairly vividly, but not because of the accident itself. The day that it happened, I was four years old, and I still lived fairly close to downtown Ottawa. (My family moved to Richmond, a small town outside of Ottawa, less than a year later.) I was in my first year of kindergarten, and the day that the space shuttle exploded was the only day that I missed my stop on the school bus. I had fallen asleep and none of the other kids from my stop had thought to wake me up. I was terrified when I woke up well after my stop and further from home than I’d ever been without my parents.

I think it was worse on my mom, though. She was upset by the shuttle accident, while I was too young to really understand, and I picked a bad day not to come home from school.

The bus driver eventually drove me home. The entire incident was a huge deal to me at the time, but it seems fairly insignificant in retrospect. My mom still talks about it sometimes, though, and I still remember waking up on the bus and thinking that I might never see my parents again; I was melodramatic even at the age of four.

Speaking of memories and melodrama and all that fun stuff, I spent most of Monday trying to write about things that I hadn’t thought about since they’d happened. I only managed to write a few hundred words and I ended up in an awful mood for the rest of the day, most of which was spent lying in bed and staring at the walls after a couple of hours of writing. (This would almost be worth it if the writing had been somewhat decent, but, reading it now, not much of it is all that useable. Maybe I’ll try again in a week or two. I can’t decide is this is therapeutic or just masochistic, but, either way, it’s too late to turn back now.)

Anyway. A quick summary of the last few days, then:

I’ve been working a fair amount. I think Monday was the only that I’ve had off since I last wrote a journal entry, but I might not be remembering things properly. I got my first paycheque from work on Saturday, and it’s almost a month’s worth of rent in itself. And then there was work, which is becoming more and more routine with each shift. Jeff and Amy visit a fair bit and Nathan still hasn’t been successful in locking me in the freezer, so there’s little to complain about, even if I do get teased a fair bit when male customers begin to flirt with me.

I worked up the nerve to call the person that Matt had recommended for t-shirt printing in Toronto, and I’m going to drop by the store that Matt said has good price on blank shirts so that I can figure out what the total price will be and whether or not I can afford it. There are a couple more people who seem to want me to make pins for them, so, along with the $150 I made from a freelance scripting job last week, I might not have to dig into my savings at all to have shirts made. My fingers remain crossed.

I’m starting to be a bit more enthused by Internet work again, in other news. Shawn Scallen has contacted me about doing some work on punkottawa.com, and I’m working on fixing up the Cuff The Duke site in time for Canadian Music Week. I’m working on getting caught up on all of my email, too, which is a much bigger job than it sounds...

Speaking of things worthy of enthusiasm, my mom sent me a Monsters, Inc. sheet set in the mail today. I’ve already put them on my bed. Best Valentine’s Day package ever.

I can’t think of many other exciting things that have happened over the last few days, though. I’m still waiting for the belt buckle I won on Ebay to arrive in the mail, I’m still aiming to finish the first issue of the antigreg print edition before the end of the month, and I’m still trying to make it through winter without buying a winter coat. So not much has changed.

And with the sound of my landlord’s lungs trying to escape her body encouraging me to get out of the house, I think it’s time to leave for work...