Any good dream interpreters out there?

I had that dream again last night...the recurring dream that inevitably ends the same.

The setting is always different, but the constant is that there are a lot of people to feed. I'm desperately scrounging around trying to find food to prepare and get the table set. Sometimes I'm washing up dishes or searching cupboards for dishes. Even though the background crowd is oblivious of me, I'm frantic over getting things organized in the church basement or the school lunch room or the stranger's house.

Last night's version was especially frustrating: a group of elderly relatives are assembled (all of whom are actually deceased) and it's dinner time at this unfamiliar house. I can't find enough food in the fridge to make a meal and I can't find any dishes in the cupboards. The obligation is weighing heavily on me and I don't know what to do, but I keep scrambling around.

We decide to go to a restaurant. The relatives all get in one car and leave while I get in another car with my granddaughter driving. Several anonymous people are in the backseat.

When we get to the intersection, the old folks turn left to go into town but my granddaughter goes straight ahead. I keep telling her she has to go back so she makes a u-turn in the middle of the road. But we are stopped short by a camel directly in front of the car. It won't move and a farmer tells us that the camel is just curious about us.

Finis.

It's the same every time. Not the camel, but my unfulfilled need to feed the people (or sometimes, clean up after them) is thwarted, leaving me feeling incompetent and frustrated.

This has been going on for years. Of course, I still occasionally have that nasty old school dream where you have a test you're unprepared for and can't find your locker etc.

What brings me down is that the dreams are so defeating. Why can't I have a fun dream sometimes? Why can't I have an enlightened or uplifting dream that empowers me?

And, what kind of putz am I if I can't even dream well?

A lot of apple thoughts

Minnesota has a bumper crop of apples this year. Apparently the erratic weather was precisely what the apple trees needed to do their optimum best. As a result, there's going to be a lot of apple pies and apple crisp in our future.

(I debated whether that previous sentence should read "There's going to be a lot..." or "There are going to be a lot...". I decided that one could say, "That lot of apples is spoiled", therefore the sentence would be correct.)

But, I digress.

All three of my daughters are great cooks and bakers. When I assembled my family cookbook several years ago, I got a lot of great recipes from them. Many of them are family favorites: apple sauce; apple butter; Waldorf salad; kugel; apple-sweet potato casserole; apple enchiladas; apple bars and caramel apples!

Now, I ask you, how in the world can you lose weight during apple season?

(I guess I should go out to an apple farm and pick some apples!)

Life is difficult for us Ditzes

I had a frustrating day yesterday greatly compounded by my own ditz-iness. This was no doubt due to the allergy pill I took the night before.

I had a doctor appointment at 10:00 but didn't wake up until 9:10 so I had to rush. When I was done at the clinic, I went over to Target to get a few things.

As I pushed the big red shopping cart to my car, I used the automatic door-opener gadget on my key chain to pop the trunk. I loaded the bags in the trunk, reached up and slammed the trunk closed. In that brief split second, a mental Boing! made me realize that I had laid the car keys down in the trunk! I desperately dug through my purse to make sure I hadn't absent-mindedly put them inside. No such luck--the keys were inside the trunk, all right.

Well, OK, I have road insurance through AARP just for such occasions. I went back inside the store to the service desk to use the phone. After several minutes I got a service rep on the phone and told her my problem.

"I'm in the parking lot at Target and I can't get into my car."

After an "interview" in which I had to verify every single detail of my personal information, I again explained that I locked my keys in the trunk. When I told her again I was in the parking lot at Target, I needed to explain that Target was a store.

I finally asked, "Are you in the United States?"

"No, I'm in India."

It took a while to narrow down the details of my location so she could figure out where my car was in the middle of a foreign country. She eventually told me the service truck would arrive in 30 minutes and I should wait by the car.

By that time, it was a hot, humid 80 degrees and I wasn't about to spend a half hour standing in the full sun. I waited inside the store for a while, fuming the entire time about Allstate (the provider of roadside insurance for AARP) outsourcing jobs to India.

After 20 minutes, I went back outside to stand next to the car. After a while, I went over and pulled on the door handle and the door opened. Duh! I had absent-mindedly opened the door at the same I opened the trunk.

So, I pushed the trunk-opener button under the dashboard, popped the trunk and retrieved my keys. Feeling sheepish, I went back in the store and called the Allstate 800-number to cancel the service call.

(I wonder if all those Allstate employees in India have health insurance?!)

Here--Hear!

In today's morning newspaper, there is a feature story on football fanatics who are into extreme decorating. This picture was shown on the front page of the Variety Section to illustrate the story.

I have no problem with going overboard for the home team--I'm sure it's loads of fun. However,I have a big problem with misspelled words or incorrect grammar on signs etc. So, when I saw the poster bordering the room with the Vikings fight song (Skol Vikings), the line, "you'll here us yell" leapt right out at me.

How embarrassing for those folks! The error has been publicized and distributed all over the state of Minnesota. They will surely take a lot of ribbing over that.

OK, but it doesn't rank with a legislator publicly yelling "You lie!" at the President.

It doesn't rank with a tennis player yelling obscenities and threats at an official.

And it doesn't rank with an entertainer rushing the winner of an award, grabbing the microphone from her and yelling that someone else should have won.

(And how about all the town hall meetings where elected officials have been verbally assaulted by hordes of yelling protesters and nothing was accomplished?)

Every one of these incidents have been in the news recently. Where has common decency gone? It seems to me that "If you have to yell it, you probably shouldn't say it!"

My real, dead crunchy frog!

With apologies to Kermit the frog, I'm going to post about my Monty Pythonesque treasure.

We were cleaning out the spare bedroom where my little "office" sits huddled in the corner. I have a small bookcase next to my desk where I keep my Thesaurus, Garfield Dictionary and an assortment of grammar books. Next to that is a chunky 70's-style bedside table that I use as a filing cabinet. When we pulled out the table, there was something that looked like a big hairball stuck in the corner next to the bookcase. I picked it up and discovered it was the dessicated body of a long-dead frog.

I held it up and declared, "I have a crunchy frog! A real dead crunchy frog."

For those who were deprived of the glory days when PBS ran the British comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus, this line comes from a sketch where a health inspector comes to the Whizzo Chocolate Factory to complain about the selections in their Quality Assortment-- Ram's Bladder Cup, Anthrax Ripple and Crunchy Frog. Hilarity ensues. (You can find it easily by googling "Crunchy Frog".)

OK, now that I've got it, what do I do with it? Hmmm, I wonder what it would sell for on ebay?

Gophers are interesting--really!

This is the thirteen-striped gopher that the University of Minnesota athletic teams have been named after for over a hundred years.

When I was a kid, they were so plentiful we saw them everywhere. I remember when we traveled, we would count them by the dozens as they scampered along the roadsides. In parks, they would become little beggars entertaining the picnickers. Now, I haven't seen a striped gopher for years and years.

They were the bane of farmers and road-construction crews because their mounds and holes caused erosion problems. As a result, the state has been offering a bounty for their destruction for the last hundred years. They still aren't endangered and most folks wouldn't care if they were. Recently however, some Minnesota town clerks have rebelled against counting the severed feet to determine how many $2 bounties to pay out. (This begs the question, why not cut off the one tail instead of the four feet?) It's still gross but more practical.

UM-Duluth researchers have been studying the hibernation habits of the gophers. The little animals, only slightly bigger than a chipmunk, have remarkable ability to survive on 2% of their waking oxygen while their heart rate goes from 300 to 3 beats a minute. This research has resulted in a new lifesaving product called Tamiasyn. It will extend the "golden hour" for survival after strokes or blood loss emergencies. In addition, it will extend the viable period for transplanting organs.

(If you're interested in the research project, just google "Matt Andrews hibernation".)

Another lazy Sunday

It's been a hot day without much going on in the Twin Cities. This morning I read the Sunday paper and talked with my sister in Madison WI for an hour. I went on the patio and "deadheaded" the hanging petunia plant to keep it blooming.

I made myself some pancakes and covered them with some raspberry "freezer" jam my cousin gave me. I watched Gracie for a while as she crouched down in front of the patio door "stalking" a tiny little mouse wandering around the tomato plants. Then I took a nap.

Am I boring or what! It really bothers me when I am so incredibly lazy.

Then I got to thinking about making an apple pie. Nothing swings me into action like making something tasty. I have a bunch of apples in the fridge that should be used up--especially now that the new crop is coming in. However, I'm debating whether it's too hot to bake.

But then, it cools off quickly when the sun starts to set and it will take a while to peel the apples and make the pie crust (from mix, but still...). Of course the pie will take an hour to bake and an hour to cool so by then it will be 9:00. This wouldn't be a problem except that cinnamon gives me heartburn if I eat it before bedtime.

Sigh... Life is so difficult for lazy, indecisive people like me.