Dreamed:

large house. sis on phone to her boyfriend. me online. sis smokes? one of her nieces threw up on Sis's last pack, and she had her bf visit to replace it, he had spares. having technical problems with downloading, there were a lot of computer geeks from devry in the house. they took the machine apart and consulted the talking modem. the modem was all melty and told them that brad and the guys would not be back for a while, and in any case there was nothing brad and the guys could do about melty. one of the geeks was Dennis K, but looked more like someone else. Dennis and I both crashed on one of the couches, and ended up clasping hands. sis was panicking about no online access (the reason we knew things went bad was 'cause the download had timed out sometime Monday night, at least 18 hours ago) and she knew her bf was online. I gave her the phone and told her call him. she did. much about numerology on the cigarette cases, which were showing a rise in my bank account of somewhere over 66.66 percent. then sis started sniffing around. do you smell that? she said. get out of the house. get out of the house. we all went different ways, the shortest way out from where i was was the bathroom window. i grabbed shorts on my way out. after i was out of the house i started worrying about my journals, the paper ones, the "current" one (the lost grey one) and went back to the front door of the house, grabbed the fire extinguisher (the mondo huge one from my parents' house) and began looking for the fire to apply it to.

the fire was proved to be from a dead old guy in the same apartment complex (the train?) catching fire. no way to know how long he'd been dead, was the comment -- the guess was a long time.


Woke up in a bit of a panic but near-immediately realized that there was no fire. waited in bed a bit for my body to calm down.
I guess I know one of the things I'm locating on my next Shopping Trip. (caps here because they're epic adventures...)
wish darkside had been in range to hold on to me and calm me down. something about the touch of a friend's hand, his light side voice telling me it was a dream, now calm down, write it down, and figure out what the subconscious has to say.

Morning.

After breakfast, as soon as the labs opened, Darkside and I were in and looking up massive RPG silliness. I mistyped my password before I turned on the monitor; the resident sleepy genius offered to change my password for me. I declined; it was my fumblefingered typing that did it. Darkside looked up the message boards for his favorite RPG's and we had fun with that. I eventually shut down my computer and just sat next to him.

I rested my arm on the back of his chair. He didn't comment until my hand started shaking; then he told me to cut that out, as it was shaking the chair and distracting him ... "that" of course being the shaking of the hand.

We played around online until it was time for him to go to class. We didn't end up finding the West End Games website, if it's even still out there. It would be nice to add that to our list of morning visit links.

I walked him to his class and we stood around talking about Pinky and the Brain. Since I'm the insane one, he is naturally the genius. My Malkavian may return.

Yeargh: Scheduling

I come up with a brilliant plan for making our RPG work for everyone: I swap Sunday shifts at work, having me work from 3pm to closing rather than 8:00-2:30. Darkside doesn't have to work until 2; Neighbor's gaming session with his other friends starts sometime in the afternoon, so his ride picks him up around 1:00 or so. This leaves the entire morning for play.

I run it past Neighbor: perfect. I run it past Darkside: "So when in the morning do you want to start?"

Enthused, I come bouncing to Sis with the brilliant plan.

"You what?"

Babysitting. Somebody's got to watch Nephew in the afternoons, and it's been me. Dude is leaving in two weeks. That, if I get my schedule organized right now, gives us two weeks of gaming. Just that.

I went back to Neighbor with the bad news. Now I have to call Darkside and tell him. He's not going to be thrilled, but he'll understand.

Left a *&^%$# message.

Called Darkside. Left a message in a very unhappy tone of voice explaining that my brilliant plan wasn't so brilliant after all; details if he called me back before I left for work, or if not, then in the morning tomorrow.

Dammit.

I'm feeling plenty miffed that this isn't going to work out, and it doesn't make sense to get a babysitter for Sunday afternoons if it's possible for Sis and me to watch him without help. Unless one of the guys who we are OK with having stay here to watch him will agree to babysit afternoons for free so that the gaming sessions can go on in the mornings, and will be there without fail, then it won't work. Darkside can't/wouldn't babysit -- he's got to work, and he's not particularly comfortable around kids Nephew's age in any case. Neighbor's got other obligations.

Dammit.

I was looking forward to being able to start up gaming. Yes, I'm sulking. Let me sulk. I need to sulk about this one for a while. I haven't had a good sulk in a long time.

Yeargh: "There Is No Spoon" and "Cat Shit"

So I return home to find that there are no bowls in the usual cupboard, and there is no spoon. I'd been planning on having the last of the leftover stew for lunch.

...I'd said as much to Shrimpy at school. "Oh! Bring me some!" he said.
"You are not worthy of my leftover stew," I told him. "Hey! Neighbor! Is Shrimpy worthy of my leftover stew?"
"Nope. I'm not even worthy of your leftover stew."
"Naah, you're worthy of it. Shrimpy, on the other hand..."
"Fine, be mean to me. I'm going to class."

...so I got home and there were no bowls and no spoons. Undaunted, I snagged some Tupperware and a measuring spoon and prepared to reheat the remains of the stew. As I was throwing out the bones, I noticed that Dude had not shoveled out the cat box. So I went to do that. I got it all nice and clean. I put the dishes in the dishwasher and started the dishwasher. I noticed that the cat was wandering around in the hall, but gave no further thought to it. I was heading for my room and the checking of my e-mail when, through my sock, I felt something on the floor squish.

"DAMMIT!" I said. "Dude, bring the cat here NOW."

The accepted method for dealing with kitty potty inappropriateness is to take the fastidious cat to the mess and introduce his nose to it, and then the rest of his face, to get him the idea that this is Not The Thing To Do. I dumped the cat in the litter box, peeled off the stinking and filthy sock, and marched to the laundry basket.

"What about the cat?" Dude asked.

I detailed Dude for the cat face-washing while I cleaned up the floor. I told Nephew to stay out of the hallway while I cleaned up, because Shamash had gone potty on the floor and I needed to clean it up. So of course you know as soon as I'm digging under the sink for the 409 (someone had thrown out the spray bottle, so all we've got left is the giant refill bottle, with no spray attachment) Nephew runs into the hallway, narrowly missing getting cat shit on his feet.

My stern response to this provoked tears, which got no sympathy from Mommy, who had missed the drama of my stepping in the cat shit by about a minute and a half, and got there just in time to almost step in it herself. Nephew learned that when we say an area of the house is off-limits, it remains off-limits until we say it's not, rather than just until we turn our backs.

Oh yeah. When's Bitchy Witchy Week, anyway?

In summary

...what with the way the day's been going, and the fact that in two weeks we will be utterly without a babysitter, which is why we can both go to work and go to school, and the fact that Sis's art appreciation teacher has made Sis never want to see another painting again, TODAY REALLY SUCKS ASS!!!

work-related injuries

Do pounding headaches count?

...Today was an interesting day. Got to work, and the entry hall was crowded. Packed. Stress was in the air. I learned that the computer system was down. Sat around for an hour and a quarter. They sent us on a half-hour break. I chatted with one of the local witches and a slightly more mundane friend of ours. We went back on for another half hour, and they finally sent us home.

My paycheck will not be happy. This, plus Labor Day, is not going to look good come Friday after this one.