At Poo Park...AGAIN!To begin, I am completely aware of Freud's theory that dreams regarding orthodontia indicate sexual frustration. Freud is full of crap. Last night I had one of my recurring dreams that consist of my teeth crumbling into tiny bits, so that I spit up handfuls of teeth and teeth parts and spend a great deal of time trying to shove the teeth back into my head. Why? Because I know if anyone notices that my teeth are falling out, they will take me to a DENTIST!!!!! Even in my dreams I'm deathly afraid of DENTISTS. I debate whether or not I should just jerk the teeth out so that they'll stop crumbling into tiny pieces and I'm always looking over my shoulder to see if any dentists are approaching. I really hate these dreams and they seems to attack during periods of my life that are stressful. (Why I got one last night is beyond me since my life is soooooo unstressed for the last, oh, 4 months. Har har.)
At any rate, I've been ill the past few days, including massive body pains, and I've been doping myself with ibuprofen and trying to sleep...trying but failing. If I try and nap during the day, Olive pesters me with questions of "Are you okay?" and "Is this normal?" (Yes and yes.) So I hide upstairs to sleep. This means I actually GET sleep, but eventually she realizes where I am and calls up, "Are you okay?" Sleeping at night is almost impossible because everything hurts so badly, so I'm quite dependent on a nap in the afternoon. Anyways, this is the third time Aunt Phlo has visited while I've been in California, but each time Olive is surprised by it all and all but flips out. I spend 90% of the day assuring her I don't need a doctor, that cramps and fatigue and body aches are normal, and that I just need some time to rest. Showing concern for someone and offering help is great and much appreciated. Showing so much concern that you never leave them alone and they have no time to get better and instead constantly have to reassure you that this is not anything dramatic and you aren't coming down with cancer or something is not. Praise the heavens, she went to lunch with neighbors today and didn't get back until almost 2pm. She had been home no more than ten minutes than she wanted to get out and go somewhere. This is a common conversation. She asks me what I want to do. I say I'm content with reading my book and enjoying the weather. She says I must be so bored/depressed/anxious and want to get out and go somewhere. I say no, but if SHE wants to go somewhere, I will take her wherever she wants to go. "No, you're the one feeling depressed, so let's go wherever YOU want to go." (It seems whenever I try and read a book, she thinks I'm depressed. I have absolutely no idea why. It's very strange.) So I try and insist that I am perfectly fine and that if SHE is depressed and eager for a drive, then SHE needs to say so. I'm not going to fake depression just because she's too proud to admit it in herself. Anyways, today she fell asleep before the conversation could finish and so I tiptoed outside to let her sleep. About four o' clock I assumed (ha!) that she'd abandoned the idea of some kind of trip and went upstairs to lay down for an hour. No sooner had I gotten upstairs than she called up saying "Let's go for a walk!" And so we drove to the Poo Park yet again.
Now, every time we go there, we walk half way around the park and sit on a bench until she gathers enough energy to walk back. On weekends the park is usually full of people playing with their dogs and talking with other dog owners. The cops will come around when it's full and drive (yes drive) along the sidewalk to make sure people are obeying the posted leash law. First of all, I think it's kind of retarded to have the dogs on a leash in a park that was designated as a dog park and that they are endangering lives by driving along a sidewalk frequented by children and animals. Secondly, I find it funny to watch everyone scrambling for their dogs and then stand silently and watch the cop car drive by, pretending as if their dogs had been on a leash the whole time. It's really funny to watch the dogs that know they're about to be leashed and stay out of reach of their masters, who are getting more and more panicky the closer the cops get. As soon as the cops leave, the leashes come off and everyone discusses the "BS" of the law and the cops. Today, as we were sitting on a bench watching the dogs play, a cute little scruffy dog comes running up with a frisbee in his mouth, wanting me to throw it. I'm playing tug o' war with him and notice the cops getting closer, so his owner says, "Keep him there! Keep him there!" And comes walking over to pick up his dog until the cops pass. We feign innocence by chatting and I find out the dog is a chihuahua/poodle and only two years old, his name is Buddy and his owner is Dan, who is originally from Maryland. By this time, the cops are gone and a nice older couple have come to the bench and the two men begin talking while I play with the dogs. Soon they leave and Olive and I are left alone. Here's where the funny part comes in. No sooner had the people left than Olive says, "He liked you. He had his eye on you." This is funny for two reasons. One, she can't see, had sunglasses on, as did he, so how on earth could she see that he 'had his eye on me'? Secondly, every male human under the age of 40 that I talk to or about, she automatically assumes there is some sort of romantic attachment. First, my friend Seth becomes, in her mind, my "fiance". Then my friend Brad becomes by "boyfriend". The more I spend time with him the more she starts discussing marriage. Then some random stranger in a dog park has the hots for me. It's as if there are no other possible relationships between males and females. Generally her harping on my single status evolves into one of two possibilities. Either she begins talking about all the people she has dated (this consists of a lot of name dropping) or she goes off on how exciting my life is going to be, how quickly I'm going to get married and how my children are going to grow up to hate each other and fight. Not joking. You want to talk about birth control, just let Olive tell you how horrible it is to be a mother and how your children will grow up to be disappointments. How helpful. But being a mother isn't acceptable anyways, you know. You're supposed to have a very successful and high status career instead. Not just any career mind you, one that makes you rich and famous and pretentious and irritating and endows you with the right to look down your nose at everyone else. Anything short of this is a grave disappointment. Sigh.
Her negativity is almost cancerous at times. I've noticed it has rubbed off on me and is pretty much sucking the life out of me, like the Deatheaters in Harry Potter. I decided that every time she tries to talk about something depressing or negative, I'd change the subject to something good or happy or at least neutral. Today, as we were driving to the dog park, she starts in on Islamic treatment of women, again. So as soon as she reaches the end of a sentence, I jump in with an interesting tidbit I'd read about Christ in the book Jesus the Christ, thinking the Savior is a good uplifting topic. Does she comment on the interesting and happy tidbit? No, she starts in on all of the horribly depressing things that happened to the Savior. So I interrupt with something like, it's not good to always focus on the bad things that happened, but the wonderful things that He did. Honestly. Tonight, after reading two chapters in the book aloud to her, she once again starts in on how sad it is that "the commandments are so simple and yet people argue about it and make it so complicated". I try and explain that Satan wants it that way because if it's complicated, people will stop doing what's right. I also mention that although the commandments are fairly simple, people still have a hard time following them. In my head I was thinking, "Hint! Hint! Hint!" and was about to say something about how simple it is NOT to take the Lord's name in vain and how often people do it (hint hint hint) but I kept my mouth shut. I swear this place is a black hole for anything mentioned in the 13th Article of Faith. I've been saying arrgghh so much I sound like a pirate.
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