Recent Odditites

THE ODDITIES
The two nights I was home alone, I had the weirdest dreams . . . if you know me, you know my dreams are usually more morbid than odd . . . one was trying desperately to communicate with a person on the other side of a tunnel to get a message across before a bomb on my side went off.
The other was me waiting in this world that was all green & beautiful. green trees, green grass, everything was beautiful & lush. Between tree roots, I could see a swirl of orange. And if I kneeled down & dove headfirst into the orange swirl, I dove into an orange world. Dead grass, orange leaves hanging loosely onto the branches of trees & between the tree roots was the green world. It was the strangest feeling to dive headfirst - positioning myself upside down - & finding myself right side up in the other world.
And then I swam through very VERY cold water to collect shrimp next to an iceberg. But they were endangered or something, so it was illegal . . . so even though I was freezing, I had to rush before I got caught.

Here's an odd state of mind that I discover every now & then. You know when you think about a word too much, it loses meaning? Do that with your name. When you lose the meaning, you lose your identity to other humans for a minute & it gives sort of a primal feeling - like you're still an animal . . . new . . . unidentified. It's very interesting . . . if you hit it right, if you reach that state of mind, man oh man, you'll know it.

THE ANIMALS OF THE HOUSE
Simon (the creature somewhere between a rat & a raccoon that was living in our floor/ceiling that we decided to name Simon) has either died or left us. I haven't heard him scraping about & he hasn't woken me up with his constant chewing for quite some time. Dusty proved useless in the whole ordeal. He never even became curious about the scratching (of course, he remains frightened of the hamster & the bird). And we never could coax Simon out with the bait in our humane trap with the brand name "Havahart" . . . isn't that cute?
Niles often slicks his crest back & moves to bite at my mouth when I sing & we thought that was pretty funny . . . it was this running joke that he hated the sound of my voice. He'd sit on my shoulder & refuse to leave me - as long as I shut the hell up. But we discovered as I turned my head & smiled in his direction that he likes my teeth. For a minute, we thought it was a grooming thing & my mother realized it before I did. She roared with laughter in her realization & said, "Oh my God, he wants one!!" And that's what we decided. Because he tries everything to get it. He's gentle when he grooms, like with my hair, but he's definitely trying to snatch one of my teeth. I stopped smiling at him when he really hurt my gums with his sharp little beak.
Paul is as timid as ever. And I must admit - as cruel as it sounds - I get such a kick out of when I reach in to take him out for some exercise, he backs onto his hind legs & holds his front legs up in front of his face recoiling in utter horror & I can just hear him saying, "Oh God NO! Spare me!!" He hasn't learned yet that hamsters aren't on the South Beach Diet . . .