We went to get the little car the other day and now it started and ran, but it was overheating on even a short trip - which it had done once before long ago, but it was not just the coolant being empty or the radiator cap breaking now. It was something else, which I haven't asked the mechanic what that was yet - but he says it is ready and he has run it around town some and it is no longer doing that.
I've been really watching our budget this month because of the extra vehicle and insurance costs. I've had to ask everyone to tighten up and make sure we are on the right path and I haven't underestimated anything going forward. I'll know in another week or so what that really looks like - I hate that bills don't give you some sort of lookahead so you can estimate. I have a pretty tight little spreadsheet of all the actual income and expenses over the past few months and I think I've got it on the nose, but I still want to see it work out in real life. The insurance bill seems to be different every other month and I overestimate so that I can be sure to keep us in range. And with all the vehicle expenses, rental car, the downpayment for this vehicle and the mechanic bill on the other one - it's been an expensive month.
I don't know why I'm doing Italian now on one profile, and French on the other. I did that Duolingo levels things for about fifteen of the languages I have practiced over the past eight years - and Italian came out at a 38, even higher than Czech and Romanian. And I haven't put that much time into it. And the Spanish level being so low, 11, compared to the others - and I have put time and effort and frustration into that. I know that means I should not be taking these as accurate data points because they contradict the actual working level I feel I have in each. Anyway. We watched the DaVinci Code the other day and I understood a lot more this time around of the French especially, but some of the Latin also even with the subtitles off than I have in the past - but I was listening, and trying to understand the 'mumble mouth' that a lot of the actors have. I backed it up a few times to make sure that I had caught what I thought I had - didn't get every word. I also understood the Italian in another movie that was just a few simple sentences.
Did the postal route, ready to go send and receive more trucks at work this week. Then resolve the budget for next month and see where we are on track etc. Pushing Esme to focus more on her difficult online portion of her math class so she can pass this semester (unlike last year). I need to get her working on her driver's license harder as well and next month she will apply for college.
I've been having more of those dreams that I often get. Two big themes that show up so often, I tend to recognize them in the dreams themselves as 'oh this again'. The first one is that I am registered for a class (usually Math or English) and I don't know where it is, or when it is, and I don't know how long I haven't been attending it but I'm sure I am going to fail because I haven't been keeping up and didn't even remember I was supposed to be going to it. The second one is the 'I am carrying my car around with me like a toy/cardboard box' where I get out and pick up the car, put it in my pocket, etc.. because I can't get it to go where it is supposed to go, blocked in traffic, not working etc. I have read somewhere that is actually a power move - that in your dream you are realizing you are in control and that you can take charge of the situation. Ok, I'll take that - it's nicer than the other interpretation that I feel like I can't get where I am supposed to go so I just break the limits of reality for a little while instead of waking up.
In one of those college dreams a third often theme also came up, I am me -but not this Universe's version of me. I was brushing my hair in the mirror. (what I've read of that people aren't supposed to do that as often as I do, it used to mean death or something, but I've always been able to see myself in mirrors in dreams, and only sometimes is it worrisome like that one time I was in 'not Fargo apartment that I didn't rent' and was looking in the mirror and it seemed like my face was not quite right, and then I turned around and 'me not me' was coming in the door, setting their keys down on the counter and stopping to stare at me in the hallway across from them before dropping their bag to the floor)
Anyway, brushing my hair in the mirror and trying to get it to lay right - but it wasn't exactly like my hair is now, and I was talking to 'Mark not Mark' in the other room - people in my dreams are alt-Universe versions of themselves, as well, sometimes, and we were talking about having to go somewhere later today - there was someone else there that was one of his friends, someone I haven't met, but they were discussing cars. From his attitude in the dream I knew it wasn't the Mark I would normally interact with, there were things that were off, and I became even more aware in the dream that this was not a 'million miles' but some sort of -alt.universe metaphor. It was not our house or one I've been in although I could draw it now and tell you exactly where the furniture was and the colors of things were etc., and I was telling Mark that I needed to get to class and he asked me if I was still taking that? and I wasn't sure, have I missed it, have I been going? I was supposed to walk there - and in the dream I could see exactly the path I needed to take all the way to a building and then I couldn't remember what floor/room I needed to be at or what time. And I began to be quite worried, but Mark said that when I got there, I could probably just ask.
I've had a few slight wonderings about whether I should take a GPS class or something else online, like I did the comparative linguistics class. But then I remember I should be doing my WaniKani and I haven't done that in a few weeks.
*million-miles, dreams that take place elsewhere, with me really not being me, that extend for days or weeks within the dream with tasks, people and a life that is not my own, and several times in those dreams I wonder how I am ever going to get 'back home' Dorothy-like? and finally I wake up and it feels like it is all still almost there - bits and pieces, an apartment, a fleeting memory of a person, a place, language etc... and then it slips through my fingers and most of it is gone - although sometimes I do return to that same place later in a dream, like the apartment in Barcelona, that I must have seen in some magazine or Google images map, because it is quite detailed - it's my brain playing 'doll house' with things that it liked in the visual-spatial 3D.
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