Emotional pancake

2002-11-03 - 9:20 p.m.

Hello, hello! Did you miss me? I know I haven't been writing in this in the last few days, but recently I've been an emotional...pancake? Ha ha ha, I have no idea why that word popped into my head. An emotional pancake. That doesn't even make sense. Somebody help me. Or even worse, maybe it does make sense. Maybe my mind knows what its talking about. I come off as an emotional pancake all the time, I bet. I mean, flat affect and all. Even if I don't feel like I have a flat affect. I wonder...do people with flat affects feel flat? I think they do. I think that's not me.

But anyway, today was a pretty good day. I slept in until 9. And then, inspired by a nightmarish dream I had last night, I took a shower and shaved my legs. Geez, want to hear the dream?

I dreamt that I was at my friend Tae's house. I've never really been inside her house or met her family, so this is all just dreamstuff, but in my dream, she had a really cool house. It had this giant waterslide park attached to it. She and I were at the park just before opening. There was a guy there too, but I don't remember who he was. Tae and I climbed up to the top and the guy yelled up at us encouraging us to slide down. I wanted to because I thought it would be fun, but at the same time, I didn't want to take my pants off (I had them on over my swimsuit) because I hadn't shaved my legs (in the dream) for quite a long time and I was getting pretty hairy. I would be embarrassed for Tae to see me hairy, but it wouldn't be that bad. What I was worried about was that the park was about to open and then lots of people would come in and I'd be down at the bottom of the slide all hairy while my pants were up at the top of the slide and everyone would see me. I finally got on the slide. When I got on it, time shifted. A thousand years went by and I was still on the slide. It was really fun, but I was starting to get pretty old. And everything was so slow. I was barely moving and the water droplets from the splashing of the slide were going in slow motion and my voice was all deep from being slowed down, and yet my hair was going gray and my skin was getting wrinkly. Then I got to the end of the slide and I was young again. Only a few minutes had gone by. I could barely remember where I was because for me it seemed like a thousand years had gone by since I started on the slide. After recovering from my disorientation and realizing that I was still in Tae's house, I also remembered that Tae's family had a restaurant attached to the other side of their house. So I walked through the house to the restaurant. But I ended up coming in through the kitchen of the restaurant. There were Tae's mom and brother working like mad cooking in the kitchen. The food they had cooked was piling up and Tae's sister, who was waitressing, was having difficulty keeping up with carrying the food to the patrons' tables. I was starving. I went over to the piled food and started to sample something that was on top. Tae's mom saw me and started screaming Korean invectives and waving her spatula at me. I ran. Her house was huge and maze-like. I couldn't find my way out. And then I realized I had to find the bathroom. I didn't need to use it, I just felt that I would be safe there. Like the bathroom was the one room in the house I would have an excuse to be in. I ran around the house searching desperately for the bathroom and only ended up getting myself hopelessly lost. I found a room that I thought was the bathroom and I ran inside and shut the door. Panting, I slowly looked around. It wasn't the bathroom. It scared the hell out of me. I screamed like I've never screamed before and ran out of the room and continued my futile but increasingly desperate search for the bathroom.

Phew! What a crazy dream. Anyway, after the shower I went out to breakfast with my parents and then we stopped by the hardware store. After that we went down to the Nimbus fish hatchery to see the salmon. The river is packed with those things. It looks like you could walk across the river on the backs of the fish and never get wet. I spent a nickel to buy fish food and fed the little baby fish up in the hatchery and then we went home because it was getting to be time for volleyball.

I was the first one there again, but this time I didn't worry so much about it. Soon, Doug, the host, showed up and unlocked the door. He and I had set up the net before anyone else showed up. Doug and I were peppering when Don came in. Then Kelly came and we started playing two on two. Next to show up was a woman I hadn't met before, I think her name is Janette. Later Kevin came and then the last one to show was Kim. We played three on four until Janette went home and then we played three on three. It was fun, but the level of play wasn't nearly as high as last time. I think last time I said there were two people there that were better than me, well this time those two people didn't show up. Janette was competing with Don for least talented. But that's ok, we still had fun. Kevin asked me if I would like to play on his league team. I wanted to say hell yes, but you know I'm not exactly Ms. Free Time here. He said they play on Wednesday at 8. I ended up saying yes, I'd love to play, and we exchanged phone numbers. For those of you who are curious, I'm the youngest person at these volleyball things by an easy ten years and I think also the only unmarried one. After it was over, while we were putting the net away, Kim asked me if I'd like to coach for the Orangevale Volleyball Club. Can you imagine that? Me? A coach? Not assistant coach, she wants me to pick up a team, be head coach. First of all, I have no coaching experience whatsoever. Second of all, I have no time. So I guess that's out. But the thing is, I think it would be fun. I don't think I'd want to be head coach, but I wouldn't mind being an assistant coach. But I can't. Not this year. Not with all that's already on my plate. But seriously, I was flattered. Maybe someday I could give it a go.

I don't think I'm going to be nearly as sore this time as I was after I played volleyball last time. I've got a few petechiae but that is the extent of my injuries. Except my neck. It really hurts. I can't even figure out where it hurts exactly, which means that its a nerve thing, probably. It hurts starting somewhere in my neck and then radiates out to my left shoulder and then all the way down my left arm to my pinky, ring, and middle fingers. Ouch. Pop quiz, which nerve is that? Hopefully I'll wake up tomorrow morning and that'll be gone. The pain, not my neck.

Speaking of sleeping. I'm such a dork. I like to stay up and complain to people about how sleepy I am instead of actually sleeping. I don't know what my problem is. You're sleepy, sleep. It seems so simple.