Reaching Out

in which I'm at a con for Tachyon stuff, but we have to get our authors to do stuff in a bug-infested hotel room.

And our authors have turned into various kinds of bugs. So have their books.

My manager had to go do other stuff, so I had to corrall the authors for our next event, which meant picking up bug after bug to put into a small container like those tiny turtle plastic tanks with the open tops.

Did I mention the room was infested with bugs? Like a butterfly room but with other kinds of bugs? Many kinds of bugs? Not all of which were authors, by the way--some were regular bugs, and some were books? So I had to make many executive decisions on whether this bug was an author, a book, or a real bug, and if the latter, whether it was poisonous, so was it safe to pick up with my bare hands, did I need a hanky, or something else.

And thus I was late for a book launch party Tachyon was hosting (also because i got lost looking for the party floor and it was one of those hotels where lifts only went to certain floors so to get to the right floor you had to find a certain lift), and that is how my Monday morning went.

I had this dream last night that I was visiting/attending school in a place that's kinda like Oakland and their art school was also all the way across the harbor in like a San Francisco and the art studio space was also like a family home and the dad was the dean of the fine art studies program?? and my host was totally trying to get with his daughter and suddenly it was a sitcom of awkward with the dad trying to laugh it off but not really and they were showing off how changed the studio space had become with these really cute cubicles built on stilts (???).

But it got so awkward I decided to take a taxi home and shared a taxi with this other dude and we were confused about the roads because a stretch of highway going across the water had completely iced over also something in the distance EXPLODED and the taxi driver was like "is that... the CHALLENGER?" Was he referring to a spaceship? a rocket? a sky station? I DON'T KNOW and anyway it doesn't matter because a GIANT ROCK SMASHED DOWN and I somehow feel it was the university.

And of course I tweeted that shit.

So apparently even when I leave myself in a REM sleep to finish off a dream it still won't finish itself. How annoying!

( Weird dream is weird )

Could be a cool story.

I said to my friend Rubato yesterday, everything feels like it takes so long in Southern California. It's so exhausting. I wake up to do one thing and suddenly it feels like that's the only thing I can do all day. Part of it for me is the suburban sprawl. But I don't know, it feels strange, that I'm so unproductive here.

Anyway, the highlight of today! Was harvesting my worms' poop for the first time, officially! I've done it before, of course, as part of the outdoor adventure, but this is the first indoor one. Pictures of the process here. I distributed some of it in my garden, and have some leftover in a clear plastic tub. Because my bin was really damp, there were these little mites being part of the ecosystem, and they have been coming out of the dry castings, confusedly wandering along the walls of the plastic tub.

Rubato also drew me a Chinese steampunk earthworm mascot yesterday which appears to be becoming the theme of my life: blending all my hobbies together. I'll go to JoAnn's sometime to see what I can find for making a plush worm XD

My eyes are kind of sandy, and I think it's because I wore eyeliner yesterday. I've noticed this in the past where if I wear eye makeup for protracted periods of time, my eyes are super sandy the next day and it just feels like I'm sleepy although I'm probably not.

Anyway, I also did laundry, and it's exciting when I do laundry. Laundry is so great. Even better, when I got the laundry out of the dryer, I decided to pour it all on my bed and burrow under it, pulling my comforter on top to maintain the temperature. As one does, as an adult, right?

I had a very strange dream of being a butler-robot forced to accompany my mistress back in time to nurse her mother through her birth. Then giant robots attack and the baby escapes with the father, but I have to watch the mistress and mother die. And there is a causal loop occurring, and each time the deaths escalate in violence until my character tries to break the causal loop somehow. I don't know if it happened because I woke up because a crazy crab robot was trying to kill me and I noped out of the dream!

(Before that there was another dream about a sea captain who ignored this girl and her pet something on a raft, then on a boat, because she was some sort of bad omen, and then suddenly all the ships he and his crew came across were ghost ships, and his crew began mysteriously dying, until he finally decided to rescue the mystery girl, who then recruited him to go on some land-locked mission with her. I don't really know how this transitioned into the time travel giant robot explosions, sorry.)

I actually got out to the grocery store, which was fairly impressive. I actually have a whole chicken from my last trip to 99 Ranch which I'm going to put into the crock pot tomorrow, and I also bought some lasagna things... gonna try making lasagna sometime this week for the first time! The catfish nuggets I bought, though, smelled a little funky.

And I was struggling to get out of it until I got a phone call from my landlady, too.

Anyway, so there was some stuff about fabric shopping and I was living in a motel room (that looked more like a warehouse inside with gray concrete walls and bed and all). Had all my belongings there.

So people were going in and out of my room, for various reasons, making phone calls, taking naps (because I let them do that), watching TV and they were complaining about my teddy bear and Bugs Bunny. I had no idea what the hell was going on? But everyone kept mentioning it. I thought it was a TV show or something. But when I went into my room, my teddy bear (and I shall add; I do have a brown teddy bear, that I've had since childhood, who I call "Jemaplay"--pronounced juh-mah-play--because I had no idea how to pronounce the words I saw on the tag when I saw it, which read "Je m'appelle Teddy") was toddling around my bed, hugging a Bugs Bunny doll and kinda talking to itself, nonsensically.

I've never owned a Bugs Bunny plush in my life, and anyway, my teddy was talking like a toddler, so I was getting pretty freaked out watching it. Pretty sure there was a ghost inhabiting my teddy bear's body. And I couldn't do anything about it.

Anyway. Not nice. Feeling too discombobulated to go back to sewing right now so will futz around on Tumblr instead.