Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofnosia (floofinition) – Disability that negates humans’ ability to see, recognize, or remember animals.
In use: “It seemed like every time that Marlee’s cousin came to her house, the girls would trip over Marlee’s and exclaim when she saw Thor, ‘Who is that? May I pet him?’ Every time.”
Sometimes, the muse sneaks in and takes over without a word. Hours speed by like seconds. A day of writing passes in a blizzard of words.
I’d met some people on the road. We were going in the same direction, so we traveled together. I was about my current age, it seemed. It was a dark night. We were in a car that felt and seemed like a Jeep but I was sitting the back and another person sat behind me. This was a woman. The ride was rough and we bounced around a great deal.
I seemed to know the woman behind me slightly more than the rest. She said, “You seem like you’re very stressed.”
Laughing, I replied, “That’s an optical illusion.”
Saying, “Let me give you a massage,” she began massaging my shoulders and neck.
It felt so good. After a minute, I told her that. She leaned forward, pressing herself against my back, comforting me. Warmth flowed from her into me. I leaned back into it and turned my head. I wanted to kiss her but stopped myself.
Then she and I were walking together in an airport. She said something about her flight being changed. I reminisced about how I used to travel so frequently, I was often upgraded and never bumped because my travels were a priority. She said, “I bet your travels used to be a high priority, especially the ones in the military.” I shrugged that off because I couldn’t say that was true. Priority was always a complicated matrix in those days.
I was looking at our clothes. Very tall and my age, she was dressed in a light grey suit. I was in a charcoal gray suit. It was an unusual style, almost pseudo-military, and very wrinkled. I said something about needing to upgrade my suit or at least iron it.
We reached the gates. My flight was already boarding, so we hugged and said good-bye. The agent took my ticket and waved me in.
Dream end
With Boo’s demise, the mystery of which cat struggled with the litter box was finally decisively closed.
Floofmouth (floofinition) – Human condition caused by animal fur in the mouth.
In use: “After his cat rubbed his head all over Michael’s face to wake Michael and get his attention, Michael had a bad case of floofmouth throughout the morning.”
I broke down. It was time. I knew it – I’ve known it for years. I needed new glasses.
The issues aren’t costs or worries about my eyes. I dislike taking time out of the day to go somewhere, wait for a person to see me, etc. I’m an impatient person who tries protecting my writing time and routines. I’m like a grizzly mama about those things. Writing time and routines are my cubs, to beat that simile to a final death. This is due to a lifetime of giving and serving others, what people call ‘employment’. I sacrificed my writing dream for others’ worries and concerns. This is now my time.
COVID did play a role. So did changing insurance coverage. I no longer had any vision plan. That went away when I left IBM in 2015. Putting a year to it and doing the math is a thump on the head; that much time has already passed. It is not conceivable. Seems like just yesterday that I was dragging my ass out of bed before the sunrise and logging in, calling in, and doing all the other things to ensure I was electronically tied to the company. My work for them had been remote for the final eight years. The final three, visits to company facilities were cut to nil due to slashes in travel funding.
A new optometrist was required, too, as the other one had disappeared. My wife’s friends raved about the one at Costco. I was skeptical but they said she was great. “Make sure you go to her, though, and not her father.” Okay. An appointment was made, and they were right. She was good, as far as I know. $69 for a new prescription. In and out in twenty minutes. I liked those elements.
“Well,” she said. “You have very healthy eyes and your vision has improved. You’re probably having problems with your old glasses, aren’t you?”
Yup.
“They’re way too strong for you.”
Well, that was great news. I told my wife. She seemed stunned. “Your vision is getting better?”
Yup.
She turned away, muttering something about fairness. I didn’t press. I had some idea of her comment.
I found and ordered new prescription sunglasses from Costco. Didn’t really need normal glasses, I felt. Don’t use them often. My wife muttered something else.
The glasses would cost $129, I was told after I’d gone through the process. Whoa, wait. “What about protective lenses and the reflective coating, and all that?”
“It’s all included.”
I can see so much better now with my new sunglasses, and they’re much more stylish. They’re relatively large, making my big head look a little smaller.
We all need whatever edge we can find.
I was alternatively and seamlessly at different stages in my life, from teenager to middle age. I was going through four dull brown monolithic buildings. Almost featureless, their outside corners were hard right angles. They reminded me of huge parking garages, but they teemed with people.
As I went through them, I realized the buildings were familiar. Navigating them, getting lost, finding my way again, I realized that two were schools and one was retail stores, like a giant mall. Traversing the steps to different levels, finding my way through the buildings, I’d get lost and take wrong turns and circle back, searching for the right way to go. Doing this, I became more familiar with the layouts. Some was new information being learned or realized, while more came from dredging up memories. I realized that the fourth building were floors and rows of offices and cubicles, the corporate world.
Deciding I had a semblance of understanding about the arrangements, I began searching for familiar places and faces. I sometimes glimpsed people in the crowds who I thought I knew. The buildings were always so crowded and busy, and everyone was rushed and harried. Becoming firmer about my commitment and more convinced about where I wanted to go, I entered a long and tall but quiet and empty room.
A tall flight of black metal stairs was available in the room’s middle. I went up the stairs. Inside were three women. As I walked around, they asked, “Who are you?” Without letting me answer, one said, “Maybe you can help.”
As she said this, another said, “I’m not getting anywhere. Maybe he can try.”
I recognized the three women as RL blogging friends. I’d never met them but knew them online. They were at a workbench. Some electronic device was in pieces on it. “Here, come here,” one ordered. “You try. We’re supposed to use this to analyze but it’s not working. You try.”
I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I asked, “Analyze what?” I had an impression it was to locate guns being fired but then changed that idea to the device being something about interpreting people’s moods.
The one woman was talking fast about their efforts to use the device and putting it back together while she spoke. When she finished putting it together, she stopped talking and shoved it at me.
I protested and scoffed. “I have no idea what this is. What makes you think I can fix it?”
They urged me, “Just try.”
I bent down, figured out how to turn the thing on, and began messing with switches, dials, and buttons. A male voice was immediately heard.
“You did it,” the women said. “You fixed it.”
I was shaking my head, answering them, “I didn’t fix it, I didn’t do anything. I think you might have fixed it when you put it back together.”
They hugged and thanked me. I kept protesting that I hadn’t done anything and then left going back down the stairs.
Knowing where I was in relation to the buildings, I decided to visit my elementary and high schools. Taking different stairs, I left one building and entered another.
No, that wasn’t right. I reversed course and tried again. Coming down stairs, I entered a place I knew as my high school. I immediately spotted a number of people who’d worked for me during my life. “There you are,” one said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this book. You said it was a good read. This is turgid, dull, and flat. I wanted to kill myself reading it.”
I laughed, pleased to see him, shaking his hand. “It is a good book but it might not be the book for you.” I began going on about different tastes and expectations. While I talked, another person came up. This was Howard, from “The Big Bang Theory”. He said, “I thought it was a good book. I enjoyed it, although I thought there were places where it needed help.”
We spoke for minutes more about the book and then I said, “I need to go,” and told them I’d see them later. I left that room and entered a fourth-grade room which I remembered. It was full of young students at desks. Several began asking, “Who’s he,” as I walked around the room and remembered it. Others began saying, “I know him.” A teacher who I didn’t know came up. “I know you,” she said, then shook my hand. She began telling me about all these things that I supposedly did. She insisted I was famous. I clapped back, “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”
I left the room. The dream ended.
A friend who is a grandmother related a story about her latest granddaughter, Vera. As soon as she found the words, Vera announced that her name was Peaches and she would not answer to any other name.
That was two years ago. She’s now five. A young cat found his way to her side. Cat and human are with one another like snow and white. She calls him Butters. He’s nine months old.
The adventures of Peaches and Butters are just beginning.
As I explored it in dawn’s rising light, I realized that the dream was about dealing with others’ opinion.
I was a young writer in a cafe, very busy with computer, notebook, and coffee at my round wooden table. Small and crowded, the cafe was noisy. I left briefly and zip, in dream fashion, was at another business. It appeared to be another cafe or restaurant but featured naked women. I learned the business was closing, which was why I’d gone to the establishment. I’d been talking and visiting several of the women who worked there, doing research and interviewing them. Their information was essential to what I was writing. I worried about losing their input, so I was staying in touch with them, trying to help them get jobs, etc.
I felt good about helping them and hopeful. I noticed as an aside that the place where they worked and the place where I wrote were decorated the same way and were the same size, an aspect of the two places which amused me.
Returning to the cafe where I was writing, another woman confronted me. Hostile and noisy, she made snide remarks about where I’d been, because “She’d seen me.” I acknowledged that was where I’d been and attempted to explain why without going into much of what I was writing, but she kept dismissing me. Each time I began speaking, she rudely spoke over me, denying the chance to tell the truth, insisting that I only went and helped those women because they were naked. I grew angry and frustrated, and then dismissive of her.
Dream end.
