12 hours of sleep

Does a body good. I no longer feel like smashing expensive things to bits, anyway.

I had a very extended dream last night that I was having an asthma attack and couldn't convince anyone to take me to a hospital. It was horrible. In the dream, I was lying in bed, in the dark, and realized my breath was coming in suffocated chunks instead of an even flow, and I tried to wake up M but he had to go to work or something--not sure, he just suddenly wasn't there. And I got out of bed in the dream and went to find my inhaler, and I used it twice and could breathe again. But I knew it was a temporary fix and so I started trying to find someone to take me to a hospital because I could feel my lungs getting tighter. Somehow my mother was there and agreed to take me, but instead she took me to a school, and I kept having to use the inhaler just to breathe. I walked around pleading with various people to take me to the hospital for a breathing treatment but no one was concerned. Someone handed me a camera and told me to take pictures of kids jumping off a diving board into a pool behind the school. When I got back there, I couldn't stand up because I couldn't breathe, and the camera wouldn't work when I tried to use it. I opened the memory card cover to see a strange-looking SD card jammed into the CF slot. I kept using my inhaler and spitting because I'd used it so much that my mouth was full of the medicinal, bitter taste of it, but I still couldn't breathe. I could inhale somewhat but it was even harder to exhale. I somehow wound up being shoved up the trunk of a tree by someone and looking down into a backyard where squirrels with horns were attacking my dogs...

Yeesh. And y'all wonder why I don't sleep much. Look what happens!

So of course when I finally woke up to the sound of the cockatiel going nuts in the kitchen, my throat felt awfully strange and it was hard to breathe. I wonder if I twisted in the bed somehow and was breathing pillow instead of air, to make me have that dream. Ugh. My throat still feels whacked.

I have Ani DiFranco's cover of Woodie Guthrie's Do Re Mi in my head. That is an excellent song.
It's about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Not cheery though.

It's sunny and warm outside today. This is a nice surprise, after the frigidity of the air this week. It also means the ground is thawing, so the backyard has been re-converted into a mud pit, and every time I let the dogs out, I have to give them a bath when I let them back in. Needless to say, they're going to be spending extended periods of time outside today.

And I think I will too.

After numerous bad experiences with Meijer and their sucky photo uploader and their rude tech guy at the photo counter and the 1-hour photo really being 2 1/2-hour photo and them charging me twice for one purchase and me having to jump though hoops to get my money back (fuck you, Meijer!) I've decided to see what other local options I have for printing 8x10s that look decent, are priced decently, and that can be framed and sold. So I decided to try Walgreens. They're priced a little higher than Meijer (heh that rhymes), but their photo uploader works a hell of a lot better and they're closer to my house. I uploaded photos (in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep) with no problem. I went to the store and they were actually there and ready. I picked them up and drove to work and opened the envelope. LET THIS BE A LESSON IN OPENING THE ENVELOPE WHILE STILL AT THE STORE. The photos looked great, except for a three-inch long gouge in the paper where I'm guessing the wheel that feeds paper into the printer dug into the paper. RRRRRRRRRgh. Now I have to go back and ask them to reprint them.

Is it such a crazy thing to expect that somewhere in town, this town, which is more or less capitalism on steroids, I'd be able to get a dag-nabbed good-quality 8x10 for a decent price in a reasonable amount of time? I'm beginning to think the answer to that question is a resounding YES, it's crazy to expect that. Hmph.

Anyway, these two geranium pictures are the ones I had printed. They look pretty good except for that big ol' gouge in the paper.

I really ought to clean my dirty house today. But I think I'll go outside and skate in the sunshine instead. Or rake leaves. Or play with the dogs. Or go take pictures somewhere.

Saturdays. Yesssssssss.