the Dalaverse

My great-uncle Jim died today. I'm sad, but he had a long and eventful life - he was eighty-nine, and though he'd been sick for awhile, he was still voted Volunteer of the Year at their local hospital two years ago. I think my Aunt Christel has been preparing for everything for awhile, and Mom seemed okay over the phone. I'm very grateful we went out to San Diego last summer to see them, now.

The apartment's very quiet as Quinn is out of town. I spent all weekend lying in and doing nothing productive except writing and laundry - I actually slept straight through till noon yesterday, which is amazing because I have a very tightly wound internal clock that doesn't let me sleep in no matter how late I go to bed, usually. I think I needed it because I'd suffered extremely vivid dreams all last week. Some of them were okay, but several were distinctly unpleasant. I dreamed about Dr. Marc's dogs, which made me wake up sad; I had a dream where I was trapped in a facsimile of the FLDS and couldn't get any other women to escape with me (I swear I haven't read any polygamy-related literature or watched "Big Love" in weeks!). Okay, so this one wasn't disturbing, but it was unusual for being coherent with actual life: I dreamed that I was watching "American Idol" and Casey was performing last (which he did), and he started singing Bob Dylan and I was all excited (I know it was a real song in the dream but can't name it now), and then a producer came onstage and cut him off because they were out of time. And then I watched an episode of that MTV show "16 And Pregnant" where this girl had twins, and dreamed that I had twins, which set off all these feelings surrounding what I've taken to calling my baby psychosis that I do not want to talk about right now. All of these dreams filtered through my sleep cycle just before I woke up, which is why I remembered them so clearly and why I spent an entire week feeling poorly rested. Nothing last night, though, so that's good.

And now I am going to watch the McVeigh tapes on Rachel Maddow. Did I ever mention how Mom and I happened to be with my Aunt Nancy in New Jersey the day he was executed? I remember because it was the second-to-last time I saw Uncle Jim and Aunt Christel, the last time they flew to New York. That was...interesting (my mother is from Oklahoma City). Rachel was on TDS last week and talked briefly about how she thinks we're going to see an uptick in this kind of domestic terrorism, which strikes me as utterly plausible. And terrifying. This was the first time I remember really watching the news for hours at a time; I've heard people a few years older than me say that it was the Gulf War for them. Of course that's partially due to my family being so close to the events, but still.

I have never seen my dad more upset than at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. He actually had to leave the museum at one point - he said later it was the pair of pink sneakers that were identical to a pair I had when I was little. The fuck is it with shoes? That's the worst part of the Holocaust Museum, too. I remember when we read Night in tenth grade and the teacher had us each write one word we associated with the Holocast on the blackboard. I wrote "shoes" and the few kids who'd been to the museum knew exactly what I was talking about.

...Five minutes in and I am really looking forward to turning to "The Big Bang Theory" on commercials.