Where am I again?

Oh yes--here. Right.

The strange dreams keep coming. Last night's featured an ex-girlfriend, some cockatiel eggs, and a lot of black leather. There was also a bowling ball and a tea party involved. And a large boat.

Saturday night, into Sunday morning, I dreamed about Alaska. I dreamed I was trekking across a field of snow at night, under cold, bright stars. Everything around me was a hard navy blue--a blue so hard it had form and substance, and the snow under my feet *was* the blue, blue brought to empirical life, lodged in my throat while I tried to breathe as I walked. At the end of the trek, which lasted for hundreds of miles, I had to climb a large, steep hill that came up at a 45-degree angle from the snow. From the top of the hill I could see out over lakes and snow reflecting the stars. And then I turned over in bed in my sleep and somehow I was locked in a room in this landscape. A woman had locked me there, a small room with a ceiling so low I couldn't even sit up. A string of Christmas lights was the only light source, and all but two of the bulbs were unscrewed so that it was very dark. I crawled around in the room screwing the bulbs in.

It is taking a good-sized chunk of morning to get out of the images and sensations and emotions of these strange dreams and back into the flow of day-to-day.

Sometime Friday night, around two in the morning, Nathan sent a text message to my phone that said "Can you call me as soon as you can talk? It's an emergency." I sent a message back Saturday morning asking if it was still an emergency. I didn't want to call and wake him if he'd just gotten to sleep. He wrote back and said "I will live if you don't call," so I called him and listened to him lock himself in his car and cry and talk for a while. Then I felt really sad.

M got his bike Saturday morning. I'll post a picture of it soon. It's purdy. It's a big, shiny black 1979 Honda something-or-other. The seat is kind of high and in addition to being short, I have short legs proportionally, so he had me sit on it to see if I could reach the ground, to see if it would even be possible for me to ride it. Of course I could only reach the ground with the tips of my toes, so the only riding I'll be doing on that bike is on the back of it while he drives. C'est, la vie.

I've finished purchasing prints and frames for the holiday bazaar. Almost everything came out beautifully when I framed it, with the exception of a couple of the 8x10s that just printed badly (they're not in the Flickr photoset--everything there printed well). I felt...I felt pretty good looking at all my work presented nicely like that. I have many framed prints lining my little cube at work here waiting for Thursday. Now I just have to work out some sort of pricing scheme.

It's weird putting my pictures up and putting a price on them. Feels weird. Like a chunk of my heart is attached to the back of each one.

My parents and M's mom came over for dinner last night. I made a big pot of veggie chili. Here's how:

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
A red bell pepper
An orange bell pepper
A zucchini
A couple small onions or one big one
A brick of tofu (optional)
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon oregano
1 tablespoon basil
Cayenne pepper to taste
2 cans of black beans
A can of red beans
A can of pinto beans
2 cans of chili starter (preferably spicy)
2 cans diced tomatoes (preferably with garlic, oregano, some juicy flavorness)
3 or 4 green onions
shredded cheese (Colby jack = yum)
sour cream

Directions:
1. Chop up the bell peppers and onion and zucchini to whatever size you want and put them in a bowl. Crumble the tofu in. (It's fun to squeeze it and make it goosh between your fingers.)

2. Heat the oil in a big ol' chili pot. Dump in the vegetables and tofu. Fry for about 20 minutes until the onions are translucent and everything is good and soft.

3. Dump in all the spices. Fry five more minutes.

4. Dump in all the beans, tomatoes, and the chili starter. Cook for about an hour over low heat--just enough to make it bubbly. Stir it now and then. Taste it a lot because it smells good.

5. Chop up the green onions.

6. Serve the chili in bowls with some green onions, shredded cheese, and sour cream on top.