People are strange, and my celebrity twin

About a week ago I learned something in a crowded room full of (mostly) strangers. People tended to be drawn to those who looked or seemed most like themselves. The few blondes in the room always sat together. The guys in plaid with baseball caps stopped talking whenever a man wearing a tie sat near them, or a female. Leather jacket people (unfortunately not the biker kind) had their own little group, and so on. I mostly sat next to Pat since I knew him, and there wasn’t time for idle chatter so it worked out. Talking to Pat is like talking to a rock.


He just can't do it.

When we took breaks the strange behavior continued as people congregated in the hallway, lounge and outside. For the most part people were polite. No one I spoke to ever snubbed me, except for one of the blondes. It was like I was invisible. In that moment I felt… so… black. Damn cracker.

Now here is the list of brave people who initiated conversation with me:

· The only Native American woman there, who sat next to me and sought me out on breaks. I was the only one she talked to and her bff that week. I’ll just say I know more about her family than I ever will about Pat’s. I don’t think he even has one.

· A red headed woman who thought I was funny, but then again, it could’ve been gas. You never know.

· When I was a few minutes late one morning a really spiffy and happy man said, “Hi! There’s an empty seat right here. Sit.”

Damn, I didn’t get his name or number.

· Pat said, “How about Perkins?” and “Let’s go to KFC,” and so on. He was definitely the bravest.

I’m a tough one to figure out thanks to my dark hair and peachy/pasty skin. Whenever someone meets me for the first time and tries to label me or guess my ethnicity they are usually wrong. The upside is being able to blend in just about anywhere. The downside is… Well, there really is no downside. When they are wrong I find it amusing. One time I’ll never forget was back when I was married and living in my husband’s home town. I’d just started making chicken-fried steak (which is the only thing I can cook well) and we were almost out of cooking oil so my husband went to the store. He returned with an old friend he had seen walking along the road carrying a 12 pack. I hadn’t even met this guy yet but here he was, at our dining room table waiting for dinner and drowning himself in his beer. They called me out of the kitchen. Right after we were introduced he blurted out, “You look like a Jew!”

I smiled and said nothing.

He turned to my husband. “She’s not Jewish?”

My husband just smiled and shook his head. Then his friend turned back to me, “You really look like you’re from Israel or sumthin’!”

To this day I’m still not sure if he was racist, ignorant or just thought I looked like Anne Frank.


Anne


Me

She's definitely my celebrity twin. Now if anyone needs me I’ll be hiding out in a house full of white kids.

The gas station hates me

Something really strange has been going on.



Let me give you a little background info before I get into that. I drive by the gas station every day. And I’ve been noting the price I see up there on the sign as I drive by… every day. And I’ve been a slave to another certain routine for quite some time now: I get paid, go to the gas station, and fill up with just enough gas to get by until the next pay day. They’ve got me by the crotch and it’s not making me feel all hot and tingly in a good way.

This routine of mine began a few years back when the price of fuel really started hiking up the price of food and everything else that we need to survive. So it’s not like it’s the price of gasoline alone that is twisting my panties. It’s the price of every damn thing. We don’t manufacture anything - it all gets shipped here - so we watch a lot of those TV shows that explain in great detail how to live in the wild, just in case some day the trucks stop rolling through (you never know).

Back to the strangeness - here’s the really odd thing that’s been going down:
Two days before my payday, I drive by and see…



I see the new price.

Nooooooooooooooo! It can’t be. They raised it. Damn. I was SO close to making it. SO close to getting my gas for the same price I paid the LAST time I was there. Just TWO days away!!

Two days.

So I go through my routine. I get paid, go directly to the gas station, and put just enough gas in my tank to get by until my next paycheck. I frown because it costs more than it did the last time I was there. I go on about my daily business in life…

Some time passes, and it is once again TWO days before I get paid.



I see they’ve raised the price yet again. It’s a vicious cycle. I feel so… hated.

It’s just TWO days. Why can’t they wait…

Sick of Dreaming

I’m talking about dreams today, and not the kind that when achieved give you a massive ego, and the next thing you know you’re invading other countries in the name of ‘peace’ rather than fixing your own. No, I mean the other kind of dreams - the sleep kind. I wish that every night as I slept it could be a quiet, still darkness until I awoke because having dreams nearly every night is exhausting. If you go to sleep and your mind and all of your senses go to sleep with you, all I can say is you are one lucky bastard.

My dreams are so realistic I’ll think it’s real life until something so weird and over the top happens that I’ll realize it’s just a dream and either get pissed off or be relieved. How I feel about it depends on whether it was a good dream or a bad one. But lately I’m always pissed off when I wake up. I’m pissed off because I had a nightmare. I’m pissed off because I had a good dream then had to wake up. I’m pissed off because I had a good dream that morphed into a nightmare. I’m just pissed off that I keep dreaming, period.

Last night I dreamt that I started meeting up with a realtor because it seemed like as good a time as any to buy a home. The realtor and I became friends during our visits while I was house shopping. She apparently grew tired of me shooting down every suggestion with, “Can’t afford it.” So she somehow talked an old rich couple into lowering the price on a home she thought was perfect for me and the kids. When I went to check it out I was a bit skeptical because it was an old home and we all know what happened in the movie The Money Pit. But the place had wood floors so it started out on the right foot, as I’m allergic to dust mites. There were four huge bedrooms on the main floor. The bedrooms and dining room all had old faux wood paneling which made those rooms dark. The living room was a cheery room with white walls and lots of windows letting the sun in, but it was smaller than the other rooms. The kitchen was pretty basic, nothing special about it. After scoping out the main floor I climbed an old, wooden twisting staircase that creaked on every step and made me uneasy but it led to a gigantic room that had a wood floor and a huge almost wall-to-wall window that was 6 ft. high and overlooked the backyard. There was a long short seat built into the floor in front of the window so the kids and I could sit there and watch the stars at night. That was pretty cool and I was sold at that point. Then we went down to the basement. It was newly remodeled and quite the opposite of your average basement. It was all very bright - white from the floor up to the ceiling, with tons of white cupboards with violet trim and teal knobs. There was a kitchen, bathroom and a door leading outside so it was a place of its own.

The strangest thing is most of my dreams, overall, take place in houses and each house is different from the next. But this is the first time I dreamt of buying one. What could this mean? Well, it obviously means I need to get out more. And maybe I should be designing homes for a living. I know it doesn't mean I'm ready to buy a home. How absurd!

Well, back to the dream. After deciding I wanted the house my ex-husband Slick came over to see the kids and we got back together. That was the moment I realized I was just dreaming. WTF?! Now that I knew this wasn’t real life things got chaotically crazy. We got a man-maid (what the hell is that?) and a female nanny to take care of the kids, then Slick and I went on a road trip. When we drove through the Res Slick picked up a drunk Native American who just happened to be hitch-hiking. Then as we continued down the highway we kept seeing explosions as bombs were being dropped all over the mountains. Big, bad firey explosions. Great balls of fire! We could feel the ground shake every time a bomb dropped, and I swear I’m not a Vet. That shit finally scared me awake. And this was one of my milder dreams.

I guess this also means I need to take a road trip. And maybe, that they all should fear bombs on the Reservation.

Do your dreams wear you out? Ever?