Jasmine Dreams, Fugu, Persimmon, Voting
"Your dreams are boring to everyone except you" - I read that on a website a few days ago and thought, shit, that's probably true. Still, it's difficult to imagine anything as boring as plain ol' TV. Every once in a while, a dream bops along that enchants me with its visual imagery and makes me think back to its landscape. Sometimes it is buildings, like in one dream many moons ago where it was a marble building at the knee of a dogleg road in a small town with bright blue letters that said QED. Even though that dream had nothing to prove, the image of that building stuck.
Sometimes the sea, though nothing has bumped the real image of the Battery in Charleston, SC. It is primal. Once you've been there, you feel a need to return. Last time I was there, I was walking with Liz on the sidewalk in the postcard. We were snapping picture of each other when a gentleman and his wife and asked if we would like for him to snap a picture of us together. He did, and by then Liz had recognized his Yorkshire accent He told us that they had visited Charleston every summer for 20 years.
It is nearly impossible to return to a dream. Have you ever woken up, completely rested, but in the middle of a dream so vivid that you hope it has a pause feature? None of them seem to. With all we know about chemistry, genetics, engineering, and all that stuff, the best we can do for dreams is to measure the physical reactions to them and debunk people who try to interpret them.
That's okay, because dreams are still important to the dreamer. I know, I went for a time with a sleep apnea and didn't have many. After jumping all the hurdles for my medical plan, they fitted me up with an overpriced proboscis and CPAP that prevented trachea collapses. Ever since Junior got one a couple of seasons back on The Sopranos, this non-kitchen appliance has become mainstream. So have the charlatans who try to sell them (you need a prescription and the sleep studies cost far more than the souped-up aquarium air pump), so sleep centers have sprung up in abandoned strip malls as outposts in an escalating battle between over-eager providers and reluctant insurance companies. Enough of that, the things do work even though the base cost has been needlessly inflated.
So, my boring dreams are back. The CPAP has a "passover humidifier" (seriously, that's what it's called, because the air "passes over" a little pan of water. That pan, fitted with an airtight lid and input/output connectors added $200 to the cost!) to prevent dehydration of the nasal passages. After a few months of cleaning and refilling it, I began to wonder if it would hurt to put a few drops of cognac in there with the tapwater. Never tried that, but one time I put in a couple drops of vanilla extract. It was pleasant. Then, like an addict, I needed a new thrill - so I started adding rosewater. It was even better.
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to The People's Pharmacy when Joe & Terry said that studies showed that aromatherapy with jasmine showed subjects had better recall and general memory function. I wrote that down so I wouldn't forget. Sunday, I bought some India Jasmine Oil for my passover humidifier. I put in way too much and had to rip the mask off in the middle of the night before my nostrils plain shut down from the overload. Not to waste the expensive oil, I emptied that cocktail into the room humidifier the next day. Don't know if that more subtle aromatherapy is what did the trick, but this morning I was having a very nice boring dream about buildings when I awoke with a start at 5am.
Must vote...must vote...yes, it is election day. Except the polls didn't open until 6:30, so I went to work early hoping to leave early and beat the after work rush. It was a better than average day at work, my mind seemed clearer and my memory was sharp as a....what you call those things?...okay, I'm making that up.
Yesterday, a friend at work who takes her whole family fishing every weekend gave me a Ziplock filled with filets of every variety, along with a small baggie of her favorite breading. She identified each filet for me, then puffed her cheeks with palms extended around them while pointing at one: "blowfish". I didn't want to act stupid, she knows her fish, but aren't blowfish poisonous? A quick web search soothed my fears, blowfish caught off the US east coast are not. Whew! So this morning I brought her a sealed bag of duck sausage. Then she opened her lunch bag, which had a pint of white milk and four large persimmons. She offered me a persimmon, saying they had more than they could ever use. My ears perked up...aha, what can I make with persimmons? They have a tree and she'll bring me a bunch of them.
Most interesting recipe I could find was for a jelly using honey and lemon. Most recipes call for a tedious extraction routine, but I am Mehu-Liisa Guy and I have a plan!
Not even a demented architect could dream up the OWASA building, but that's where I went to vote before coming home. It was raining and that was good. Reminded me of the time I walked 3 blocks in the rain in 1972 to vote for George McGovern, even though I knew he was going to get trounced. Time proved me right that time, maybe it will again.
5:44:07 PM 
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