What Exactly DO You Do With a Drunken Sailor?

On Sunday night, the Pirate dreamed that my father had given him a credit card and told him to buy us a house with it. The Pirate was so overwhelmed that he cried. And at the same time, somebody gave me an ancient 78 of "Tubby the Tuba."
Last night, without having heard about the Pirate's dream, I dreamed that I was visiting my parents in the house that I grew up in (which our family hasn't owned for more than 20 years). And the girl who lived across the street from me when I was a kid was still there and she was coming over to spend the night. I don't know how I knew that she was coming, because nobody had talked to her. I didn't even know what she would look like as an adult. My parents went to bed before it even started to go dark out, and I was wandering around the house waiting for this woman to show up. I kept looking out the kitchen window to the house across the street, but I didn't see her. I thought "I'll just call information" so I picked up the phone and dialed 4-1-1, and without my having to say anything at all, a voice said "Chapman, Fletcher. Floorgen obble wardin neeble hik bippus. Phone numbers for Tubby the Tuba are not formatted like regular phone numbers, so please write it down." And then the line went dead and I had no idea what to do. I didn't have the faintest idea how to dial "floorgen" on a regular telephone.
In the cold light of day, I think that I could have just walked across the street and knocked on the door, but it just didn't occur to me at the time.

The Most Anal-Retentive Editor on Earth

I just sent back a 19-page short story that my friend and editing partner JeebusGeek sent me. This is a story that he and I had discussed several weeks ago and I encouraged him to "write it, for cryin' out loud!" So, he handed it off to me for my once-over. Two weeks and four pages of single-spaced notes later, it's done. Nothing has been overlooked from the tiniest grammatical or punctuation error to the largest plot hole. It's all been noted, suggestions have been made. I'm tired, but I know that when all is said and done, his story will be very publishable.

Any Minute Now, I'll Be Awake

Okay, so yesterday I was at work at five-ish. Today, a slightly more sane 7-ish.
I left work yesterday with the Pirate, who came to pick me up. We went to go see League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was one vast, unrelieved landscape of puerile plot, horribly bad cinematography and characters that, despite the fact that they are all previously-realized literary characters, were barely more than innacurate stereotypes. It's disappointing that the writers had Captain Nemo, Alan Quartermain, Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll and the invisible man, and they couldn't scrape together a better story than they did. Ah well. Ours is not to question why. Ours is but to get revenge by writing something WAY better and then selling it for fat wodges of cash.
I have signed on to write both a gardening column and an ongoing children's story for a local guy. That'll be good. The children's story is one that I had been writing for my daughter a long time ago about an adventurous woman who loved to explore the world via food. The woman's name is Philomena Hogg-Wahfles, and at the end of every story is a recipe for little kids. The garden column is going to be pretty much how to garden with children. That should be easy. Children should be planted early in summer (pretty much the second school's out) head-down in well-aerated soil. Keep moist, not wet. Fertilize no more than once weekly (any more and they grow too quickly and you end up replacing their entire wardrobe several times during the course of the summer). Planting head-down is vital as it keeps the whining to tolerable levels. Plant them wrong-side-up and you're in for a summer of whining.
Having said that, I miss my girls. They're still at my folks' house having the time for their baby lives and I'm unable to go for more than about twenty minutes at a time without thinking about them. I have that feeling that people have about their favorite relationships, where everything you see you want to share with that other person, every thought you have you want to give to that person, and even if you have nothing new to share, you'd just like to be able to look across the room and see that person's face. The little one will be back Sunday, the older one not until the end of August. I just keep reminding myself that they're having a great time.

What the Hell?

The clock just turned around to 6. The moon falls from horizon to horizon and I've been at work for nearly an hour.
My sister was in town for the weekend going to her transsexual former roommate's wedding. The outstanding comment was that out of the 10 people in the bridal party (bride, groom, 4 attendants each), a total of 1,000 pounds could easily be shucked. My sister's escort was one of a minority of man-born men at the wedding. She said that it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I'm sure it was.
So, my sister hung out at my house yesterday. I made corn, chile and hominy-stuffed red peppers and we watched "Waking Life," which, the more that I think about it, the more I like. Before bedtime, we were all sitting in the hammocks out in the garden and my sister was telling me about having an amazing meal at Burger King. I'm dubious. Then she asked the Pirate and I what our top 5 candies are (mine are Almond Roca, dark chocolate-covered bridge mix, Baby Ruth, peanut M&Ms and Mike&Ikes). My sister is a very strict vegetarian, but will be the first to remind you that Milk Duds are vegetarian, as is chocolate.
We all had to go to bed, but the Pirate and I stayed up late talking about the process of becoming the people that we are and talking about parts of "Waking Life" that were relevant to that. But then I didn't sleep. I never do anymore. I'm going to be one of those old people who never sleeps, and I will never die again. I'll just become paler and paler and fainter and fainter until I'm 92 and fade away entirely.

I Wanna Be Them

I just read an amazing short story by Haruki Murakami called A Poor Aunt Story. I love Japanese stories, but I can't always get a grip on why. I'm surrounded by Japanese culture all the time. The sect of Buddhism to which I subscribe is Japanese, so many of my friends are Japanese, and I never tire of hearing them. The way they talk gives a tiny hint to me of a culture that is entirely different than the one in which I was raised. One of my best friends from high school went on to move to Japan and has written a wonderfully funny book called "White Gold" where he talks about being a gaijin in search of medicine.
This particular story, though, takes as its central point the concept of the "poor aunt," which sounds like a thing that any Japanese person would be able to recognize as a type, but not necessarily anyone here. He is evoking a very specific set of traits that tease the outside edges of my understanding. There is enough in the story to make it tantalizing, and yet I feel that I am left without the facility to grasp its essence. I don't have any internal concept of "poor aunt," so I can only extrapolate from the clues given in the story.
I wish I could write that poetically. I can't think, off the top of my head, of any American writers that do. It's a layering of surreality on top of the mundane. Anyone who has a chance to should check the story out. It's brilliant.