CONTEST DREAM

I woke from a dream where husband I were visiting a desert country. He was invited to participate in a contest The first contest was where a grid of men seven by . He was in the second row, sixth position. The object of the contest was to toss the block of wood so that it landed on its end. The wood was about one foot tall by four inches by four inches. Husband did not progress. The second game involved catching frogs. Husband made sure his missed his frog. The third contest involved a herd of sheep. The object was to pull as much fleece off as possible with one hand. The biggest handful of fleece won. Husband grabbed fleece from the head and was surprised when the whole head of fleece came off in his hand. The fleece was a white as cotton and very fluffy. CONTEST: The need to prove value of onself. WHITE: Purity, perfection. SEVEN: Mental perfection (except for the petit mal and general forgetfull ness.

Red devil Texas, Nice name for small town in TEXAS

Red, the Devil and Texas. I was somewhere someone was offering to turn a marble column in to red marble. This I dreamed that my house was being infestd by the devil. All of my clothes were being washed and squeezed into the bathtub by way of the overspill spout. I did wonder if this would be a daily occurrence. I was then looking at a Texas shaped cookie and wondering why the devil caused so much mischief. It suddenly occurred to me with shocking clarity that the Great Secret of Satan was that he could not actually kill anyone. Certainly did not stop him from manipulating the situation to cause many deaths. I then gave the cookie to someone and asked them to put it in their mouth. Then I asked to have the cookie returned to me. The person had eaten the cookie. It was the only Texas shaped cookie. RED: Means energy, force, passion. DEVIL: Means fear, negative aspects of self. TEXAS: Think big.

FINANCIAL DREAMS

FINANCIAL DREAM: I dreamed that I was a new hire at a very large financial firm. My job was in analysis. The man next to me was in acquisitions and mergers. I was looking at a very large spread sheet and I had highlighted stocks in blue and yellow for the previous day opening value, closing value. I was about to total them when my supervisor called me. She said that the calculation was very expensive about three hundred and three dollars. I figured I would pass the cost along to the client. But that should only cost mere pennies. The man next to me was talking to his friend. He was contemplating purchasing a building. His girlfriend was the agent for the deal. He wondered if his girlfriend was playing him. His friend exclaimed, “Where did you take your training?” I wondered how gossip would effect the sales of such a deal. I them wondered just what exalty did my job consiste of and did I really want to continue? YELLOW: Intellec, wisdom, tranquility. BLUE: Truth, harmony. NUMBERS: You are watching over material gains, possessions and are keeping track of things.

NEVER HAVE I EVER

NEVER HAVE I EVER...had this dream before I woke from a dream this morning. It involved Susan Sarandon and Harrison Ford. They were a pair of contestants. They had a luxury suite with one bedroom, bath, living room, kitchen with a deck. They were in the bedroom. Susan was wearing a white silk bra and panties. She dashed into the kitchen. Harrison followed. She grabbed a bagel, cut it in half and spread cream cheese on it. She took a bite. Then Harrison grabbed the bagel and chewed and swallowed. He wiped his hand on her white bra. Then he kisser with a deep passionate kiss. Woo Woo. The first contest was a cooking contest. The ingredients were a nice thick steak, some appropriate veggies and caramel to be made into some type of dessert. Slusan warned that the best caramel to choose was the hardest. The only ones I could find were all soft. Doom, doom I tell you. All of the officers were housed on the blue ship. Every morning the dived into the ocean and swam to the various white ships. They rotated to serve on each ship every day. Who ever won the contest did not win anything but fame. CELEBRITIES: However one feels about him and her. WHITE: perfection, cleanliness, new beginnings. BLUE: Truth, wisdom, tranquility. CARAMEL: Sweet situation that could turn into a sticky situation. If something sounds to good to be true, then it is probably not true.

COOKING

COOKING: I like cooking but I absolutely love and truly appreciate is being cooked for, especially with family or at a nice restaurant for a special meal. I my attempt at cooking was at Parkview Junior High in a Home Economics class. My other option was Latin. I rather think I should have taken Latin as I have a propensity for language...who knew? The one and only thing we ever cooked was Milk Toast. Ugh. This is a food made for invalids, it consists of heating milk in a pan and adding pieces of white bread then adding sugar and taking it off the heat immediately before any one can escape the room. Ugh! I never cooked anything until I was on my own, living in a house with my first roommate. My Uncle Carl was giving me free flying lessons to me and my roommate. One day I left a pot of eggs in water boiling away on top of the stove. We got home about three hours later. There was smoke coming out of the door. The water for the eggs had boiled away and the eggs were black and had exploded. Stinky! It took a few days to air out the house. Yeesh. The next food adventure was during the time Charlie and I lived at Grandma LaVann's ranch. I decided to make a german dish using venison rather than beef. The recipe called for marinating the meat in vinegar for two days. It looked truly disgusting, all gray and falling apart. Had to throw it out and anytime I mentioned using vinegar in any recipe was met with derisive laughter. Grandma LaVann gave me a pie crust recipe that called for a tablespoon of vinegar, which makes a very sturdy pie crust that can be handled for a fairly long time. Unless you roll it out for about 30 minutes, then it makes an excellent inedible Frisbee. Careful of rocks. User name will not be mentioned. My favorite seafood is Abalone. Delish Slice it thin, pound it until thinner. Fry lightly in butter. Yeesh it is good. My first attept at pumpkin pie was when I was staying at Grandma Horn's trailer at the farm. She had taken a train to go visit Aunt Wilma in Colorado. I had access to a small pumpkin which is cleaned, cut up and boiled in a pot of water until tender. Mashed that up. I then decided to combine two recipes for pumpkin pie. I doubled the amount of spices and it was gruesomely spiced. I did not know how to make pie crust so I simply poured the pumpkin into a pie plate and baked it until done. It was powerful strong but I ate it anyway. I have followed recipes for the most part ever since Once when Charlie and I were living in Monte Vista Trailer Park, I decided to make banana bread. I did not any flour. So I rumbled through the cupboard and decided to use Cream of Wheat. There was actually a recipe for banana something. The cookies came out rather strange. The were solid but rubbery. They actually bounced when dropped on the counter. We ate them anyway. Happy accident: When we lived on the ranch, I wanted to make a sandwich for Charlie. I had no bread. So I decided to make a bacon, tomato, lettuce taco. I fried the bacon, fried the flour torilla in the bacon grease. Put Mayo on the taco, put on the sliced tomato and added the lettuce. It was delicious and I have made it several times since then. Very handy. Lastly, the year after Charlie was born, I begged my parents to let me have the girls for the summer. We had a good time, the girls watched Charlie for me when I worked. We ran around like crazy whenever I had time off. We went everywhere. My favorite place was Golden Gate Park. One time I decided to cook rice with chicken gizzards and cream. That was not well received. I should have boiled the gizzards in Coca Cola which would have softened them nicely. I was teased mercilessly from then on any time chicken gizzards were mentioned. That is about it, I don't remember any other cooking disasters, I am sure someone will remind me.

NUMBERS AND I

NUMBERS AND I: My first encounter with numbers was in the first grade. Kindergarten was unknown unless you lived where there was a Montesori. Nope, not in 1950 Boise, Idaho. And Mom did not teach me to write my numbers, strange she was very progressive when it came to education. I remember my first grade class being asked to write number one through ten. I turned to a next desk classmate and whispered, “How to I make a six?” The next episode was in third grade at American Falls. I was tasked to put answer the clock hands and to write down the time. I got them exactly backwards. Even when I was told the correct answers, I was not convinced that they had the correct answer. Junior High at Parkview, I failed general math and had to take it again. If I had asked mom to tutor me I think I would have run away from home. The only time I was happy with math was in Algebra I. Somehow using letters as numbers helped me to turn the whole problem into a story that I could comprehend. The next class was Geometry. The teacher was a tiny Filipina named Miss Primativa Perez. She wore very high heels. She was not impressed with the big stupid Americans in her class. She told us that we all too lazy. The only thing that saved me was that she required that we write the theorems and describe the triangles. I took a lot of pride in typing the theorems, using red for numbers. I managed to get a C in that class. My next number difficulty was my first bank account. I wrote a check for rent and it bounced. I told the land lady that I had money in my account. It bounced two more times. I went to the bank and they explained that the monthly service charge was subracted from the account before the amount of the check. I went there to add enough to my account to clear all the charges, then I closed my account and opened an account at a Savings and Loan with a much better understanding of how a checking account worked. Oy!

THE REST OF THE STORY

THE REST OF THE STORY: I called Aunt Wanda a couple of days ago. I asked her if she had any out of state visitors. Yes, Jim came one day and Ellen the next. She and the cousins , husbands, a few kids and Aunt Wanda went out to breakfast at Big Bear. Then I asked if she wanted to hear another story about barrow. She chose the Ricky The Red Headed Hitchhiker. Then I asked her if she had ever heard the story of when Dad went AWOL and how got away with it. No, I rattled that off for her. She laughed and exclaimed that dad was a scoundrel. Yup. I asked her if she knew the story of when he ran away from home at thirteen. Yes, she knew a few more details than I had ever heard. Apparently Dad ran away without a word to his parents. He peddled his bike to Ontario, sold it for enough to purchase a railroad ride to Minnesotta. The other grandfather called Grandpa Berglund to let them know that Shorty was in Minnesotta. Grandpa B asked that they buy a train ticket and send him home. No, he spent the summer there working the harvest and probably used the railroad ticket to ride to New Orleans. He was picked up there for vagrancy. The judge decided to keep him at his house for a couple of weeks. I did not ask Dad how he got home. Aunt Wanda told me that he became a stow-a-way on a freighter which went through the Panama Canal. Pretty sure he was discovered and worked his way to San Francisco or where ever the freighter came discharge the cargo. That could have gone horribly wrong at any step along the way. But Dad was very charming and could talk himself into and out of the darndest situations. We also discussed gambling. Dad liked to play poker and lose then play craps and won, which allowed him to play all night long. Aunt Wanda told me that one time Dad gambled away his whole pay check. Mom had written checks which then bounced. She was completely humiliated. Aunt Wanda told me in her own words that mom humbled herself and came to them to borrow money to cover the bounced checks. Not a good situation. I then told her that the smartest thing Dad ever did was to leave home for about six weeks. This was in the early 80's. I was visiting at the house. Dad decided to get into a poker game in a room in the back of the Cherry Blossom Cafe. Unfortunately they didn't have a craps table and Dad lost one thousand dollars. He took out a loan and told Mom. I remember Mom telling that he was taking food out of the mouths of their children. He packed up the fifth wheel to a silver something. I am sure my siblings will remind me of the year, make and model of that car. He went to work in Redmond, Oregon for six weeks. That was just long enough for Mom to cool down and decide against ripping up the sheets. I kept my mouth shut.