To sleep, perchance to dream (or not)

It wasn't all that long ago that all the great unknowns in my life took place during the day. There were challenges at work, unexpected interactions with unusual people, heck, even a trip to the grocery store could be fraught with angst and excitement. Of course, night time had its own unknowns. Would there be sex? Would there be great sex? Was there a new episode of Law and Order on the teevee?

That being said, when looked at objectively, most of the great adventures in my small life took place when the sun was up.

Perhaps my day time life has gotten easier or even smaller and more predictable, but in the past year or so the night time mysteries have increased. Would I actually fall asleep? Would I fall asleep before Ron began to snore like the trombones in an elementary school band? Would I walk in my sleep and find myself standing nekkid in the garage at 3 AM?

Lately, the line between waking and sleeping has blurred. For example, a few nights ago I dreamt that I was doing something physically difficult. I'm not sure exactly what it was. I vaguely remember making 20 pounds of Buffalo wings and pulling heavy pans out of the oven, but how difficult could that be when it is all happening in dreamland?

In any case, I woke suddenly to find that the effort I had made in my sleep had translated into thudding pain in my lower back. Now I have finally learned to accept the fact that things I used to do easily and with grace have become more difficult than they were when I was younger. I walk with a cane, elevators are now my friends, and when offered assistance at Safeway, I am truly grateful.

I can deal with all of that. I am not though prepared to have dreams during the night produce physical pain during the day. My brain may be full of noodles, but at night, I should still be "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" without waking up feeling like I have done all those things, for real.

I am not prepared to spend my dream life smelling flowers in imaginary gardens and watching reruns on teevee. Not yet.

Lusting like a loser

It's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) time in Las Vegas. Whilst some of my friends dream of getting married there, I find myself musing about wandering amongst the exhibits with my tongue hanging out and my disbelief in fully suspended mode.

I've followed the CES news over the years, and because I am not a total idiot, I know the following to be true:

• A fair number of the gadgets announced will never be made, much less sold;
• A second group of things that look innovative when they are announced at CES will be hopelessly out of date by the time they become real;
• The list of items that are both real and available in Canada will be small; and
  
• For the next two weeks the techie blogs I follow will be filled with fanboy comments going on and on about non-existent products from people who live in their mom's basement.

As smug as I am about all of this, I am still trying to figure out how I can watch the Nexus One (not really CES) announcement when I am supposed to be in a meeting everyone seems to believe is very important, indeed. Yes, Nexus One, which, if the rumours are to be believed, will be too expensive for me to buy, won't work with any cell provider in Red Deer, and is, after all, just another phone.

I was late to work because two strangers bought a house in Florida

I had some time off work for the holidays. I swore to have a productive vacation, and, in large part I succeeded. For example, I watched almost all five years of Corner Gas on Comedy Central. I took pictures of my cats. I even washed their nests (AKA cat beds) and I thought long and hard about cleaning my desk.

I was not ready to return to work this morning. I was up early enough. Heck, I was up in time to get to work early three time zones away. But did I get in the car at 7:45? No, I did not.

Instead I watched Property Virgins. To my great shame, I watched a repeat of a four year old episode in which a couple had only five days to buy a home in Coral Gables. I already knew the home they chose was truly ugly. I remember thinking that they paid too much for a house that needed a whole lot of work.

I have no idea why I can remember a four year old TV show, but I can't remember why I opened the refrigerator or came upstairs, but that's the way it is these days.

It wasn't until the very end of the show, 15 minutes after I should have left for work, that I finally realized what I was watching for. And as soon as I did, I also realized that this would have to be one of life's great unknowns. The folks that bought the house had four young children. They bought a house with an unfenced backyard that bordered a canal on the edge of the Everglades.

I was waiting to see if there was an update, perhaps one that talked about a kidlet getting eaten by an alligator. It was the only ending that made any sense.

Did I mention how ugly the house was?

Salty fish is not enuff

My husband is a prairie guy. At this point, about nine and a half years into our marriage, he has absorbed a fair amount of Jewish culture. He understands me when I refer to his family as the mishpucheh. He knows why I don't put butter on meatloaf sandwiches. He loves my chicken soup.

One of the truly wondrous things I discovered, shortly after moving to Canada, is that every single grocery store sells relatively reasonably priced quasi-lox. They call it things like "alder smoked salmon," but, to a girl like me, it's all Nova Lox, the unsalty version of the real deal that by the mid-80s was so expensive that using enough of it to make a difference on a bagel was living large, indeed.

His every day breakfast is now a toasted bagel, cream cheese, salmon, red onion and fribbles, I mean capers. Capers were not part of Sunday morning breakfast in the home I grew up in (we never toasted the bagels either), but when the lox is not salty...

In the meantime, I have moved on. Oh sure, I truly appreciate the fact that our only kinda sorta middle class family can afford lox every day, but sheesh, it gets boring. Yes, boring. I still love it, but it requires supplementation beyond capers. Pickled jalapenos work pretty well. A bisseleh pesto makes a nice addition. Shaved Parmesan, bring it on.

But change comes slowly to my prairie guy. He loves his lox, but is not ready to move on. He's more traditional than I am. It's the United Church in him, yanno.

Probably not a good sign

I suppose it is noodlish for me to do this, but what's up with toilet paper these days? For years and years, I bought huge packs of Scott toilet paper at our local big box store and it simply did what it was supposed to do. All the TP in all the bathrooms I happened upon outside of my own home also seemed fine.

By fine I meant that I had no sense of rubbing my bum with sandpaper and I never received a paper cut on my nether regions. Those in the know never told me that I had pieces of left over paper festooning my behind, either.

That all changed in 2009. Suddenly the big box store didn't sell plain old Scott Tissue. And the teevee started extolling the virtues of soft, softer, softest teepee. There were ads with bears examining each others' butts and finding the dreaded paper clumps, and other bears counting the number of individual sheets used per performance.

I could avoid the bears by hitting the 30 second skip on my PVR, of course, but there was no denying that toilet paper had changed, and not for the better. It seemed like any brand we brought home was suddenly so soft that it no longer functioned, urmm, effectively. Leaving clumps behind actually did become a problem. More then that, it suddenly seemed necessary to use 24 sheets of the damn stuff to be able to emerge from the bathroom dry and not noticeably smelling of poo.

I'm looking forward to 2010, but at the same time, I am feeling nostalgic for the toilet paper of 2008. I'll be eagerly monitoring the bears' adventures for a TP equivalent of Coke Classic in the months ahead.

And Happy New Year to you, too.