Have you ever noticed how the most shocking nightmares, when viewed through the I'm-awake-now-thank-God lens of Jungian-esque analysis, are the most useful? And how the message is often pretty uplifting?

It's been years since I did any particular dreaming. I had a series of terrifying seizures which always came on first thing in the morning, and always in the context of trying vainly to remember a dream, so I became highly averse to remembering dreams. But just the past couple of weeks I seem to have taken it up again.

The one I had this morning between cat-letting-out and actual waking was a humdinger involving ice and high places and someone falling to her death and me hanging on for dear life so I wouldn't do the same thing. A wake-up-screaming nightmare.

And yet as soon as I was fully awake I recognized it as an ego-death kind of dream. I've been releasing lots of things, and ideas, and goals lately. Part of me falling to her icy death is a pretty apt symbol.

Still...rainbows and non-creepy butterflies tonight, please.

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(Crossposted to bicycles)

Back in 1895 or so, my great-grandmother Gertrude Cone put on her best outdoor gear and posed with her elegant ladies' bicycle at the side of the Willamette River in Portland.

( It's nice to have roots. )

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Hello! I have nothing to say--or rather, things the intelligent articulation of which will take more time than I've currently got.

( So, cat picture. )

(I also have to admit that the last few evenings have been taken up with "Avengers" homework, which is to say, watching Ironman, Ironman 2, Thor, and Captain America. I'm ready for Joss now!)

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A very happy, and almost belated, birthday wish for kis, whose solidarity--fannish and otherwise--has been a source of strength and happiness to me for a good long while now.

I hope the year brings you much Sherlock, Joss, and other delights.

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Sold the TV yesterday, just sold the surround-sound system today. This morning the Veterans came and picked up a porchload of books, DVDs, clothes, electronics, etc., etc., etc. and I was home at the time so I had to avert my eyes and bite my lip and consciously let it all go.

I'm not sure why it's so tiring. I feel kind of headachey and discouraged. I suppose it's just a reaction to the change. This afternoon I re-read all my Project Empty posts from more than three years ago, and I realize that I had a similar reaction back then. But now decluttering lacks the thrill of novelty.

Also, it's possible that I'm getting a bit of a cold.

( The general effect )

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Here's how it is. I got the painting all done, peeled off the masking, and started to arrange the furniture. I was gonna stick the TV back in its accustomed place and damn. It was just too heavy.

So I put an ad on Craigslist (have I mentioned lately how much I love living in the 21st century?) and within a minute I had a taker.

While they drove over from Vancouver I thought I'd better rig up something to show them that the TV still worked. I plugged in the DVD player and slid Firefly disc 1 in.

The buyers came, saw, and bought as Mal and Zoe lost the Battle of Serenity Valley.

Then someone was interested in the home theater, so I plugged in a few more wires and let the disc keep going, sound only. The music! The great lines! The way I can visualize every moment of every scene, and anticipate every word.

Fandoms come and go, but Serenity? She'll be with me the rest of my life.

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*slumps*

Well, the walls are all painted. I'm too tired to take pictures, and besides, all the tape and plastic is still up. My armchair and four large bags of clutter to be donated are out on the porch and I'm sitting here in the kitchen, staring, a little too tired to go to bed.

Naturally, painting has led to more decluttering. I like the walls so much that I don't want to put anything back up on them. I'm getting rid of a ton of books, most of my DVDs, my home-theater-in-a-box (which includes the DVD player), and the stand my TV's been perched on since I bought it. I'm thisclose to getting rid of the TV itself, since I can't even remember the last time I turned it on. But car-less AND TV-less? I'm not sure I'm prepared to be that un-American.

Okay, time to go scrape some of the paint off my feet and go to bed.

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After a ridiculous two weeks at work (during which a single bad posting in the financial system resulted in...well, many hours of overtime and phone calls to Germany and hair-on-fire crisis mode, and generally a collapsing universe), I finally escaped late yesterday for four days off.

I planned to be happy and positive and all living-room-painty. But when I went to bed, I found my thoughts straying to the negative. I felt outside myself, alienated. Stress does that. It's awful. I woke up this morning in a tenuous frame of mind, rested but not chipper. Where, I wondered, are my happy, positive thoughts?

So I got dressed and made coffee and started my laundry, and pretty soon there was a knock on my door. A nice group of Jehovah's Witnesses were standing there--a man, a woman, some little children--holding out a leaflet.

( Funny how things come along. )

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My very dear niece, the one who watched all of the X-Files and most of The West Wing with me in her earlier teenage years, is leaving us soon for a summer working stint in a wonderfully adventurous location.

( Seriously, half the fun is just zooming out on this map. )

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Turns out the color-meshing technique of wall painting is amazingly fast and easy.

Prep work is demanding because paint goes everywhere, and absolutely everything--floor, ceiling, trim, furniture--has to be masked and draped and taped off.

Cleanup is like any other latex-paint cleanup, multiplied by the number of cans of paint you're using. But there's only one brush and one lambs-wool pad. No rollers, no trays.

So while there were four hours of prep and cleanup, I only spent 45 minutes applying paint, and there's no second coat. It's a one-shot deal.

( Result. )

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