It's summer in Asia. Even just sitting around dong nothing I sweat. I think, so far, (touch wood and thank God simultaneously), the reason I still haven't broken out in my annual sweat rash is because I haven't had to work since early July. If it were up to me I'd take every summer off and just hang out in gotch alone. Well, I'd wear gotch and Johnson's baby powder. That's it.
I've explained this before, I'm sure, but here's how I've been sleeping for this past month off. It's the old six in one hand, half a dozen in the other, air con vs. mozzies. If I turn on the air conditioner and close the bedroom door, it gets too cold and with the humidity and poison in the air around here, I get an air con cold. If I leave the door open and keep the air conditioner on, the air is relatively fresher, but I'm wasting energy and letting in the mosquitoes. If I have no air conditioner, my gasping, wheezing and snoring are like dinner bells for the mosquitoes. The gasping and wheezing are partially sleep apnea and partially long term effects of breathing in polluted air. Nasal, chest and throat blockages begin as soon as I lay down and create a symphony of sounds lemme tell you!
So what I do is go to bed really late, like around 4 AM. I'll be fighting mosquitoes from nightfall till then. Last night I'd guess I killed about 20 or so. Then for the first phase of sleep I turn on the air and hit the hay. I'll be up in two hours or less to take a leak so I don't worry too much about breathing in too much air conditioned air. I get up, turn of the A/C, go to the bathroom and go back to bed. Now with the door open because it's light outside and light disperses the mosquitoes. This way for the second phase I get cleaner air and even a couple of times this summer it was cool air. This lasts about 2 hours until a mosquito finds me. I wake up, kill the bloodsucker, maybe go to the can again, and go back to sleep in a sweaty bed, with the door open. Another couple of hours, another mosquito, same drill. As the day heats up and gets brighter and brighter, I get my best sleep. This is the time I usually remember my dreams. They've been characteristically weird and I do believe I've been sleepwalking. Something I don't think I've done since I was a little boy although it's hard to be sure.
Two nights ago I was having a dream that I was on a TV show being interviewed by this beautiful host in a multicoloured dress made of flashy material. You know the movie poster of Tootsie?
The dress from that is similar. It was that material only it was red and burgundy and maybe a little brown in a thick stripey pattern. It's weird that I remember any clothing but this was a stand-out garment! She had a scale model of my Uncle Jim and Aunt Valerie's property in Hamilton, Ontario. I spent a summer with them, my cousins, Shawna, Chris and Kim and my brothers Andy and Rob. It was probably the summer that made the second biggest impression on me and I have had a million and a half dreams about my cousins, my Aunt and Uncle, the Stoners, (who were the neighbours), and the property. I think I was 11 at the time so it's a very impressionable period in the life of a man.
In case you're wondering, the summer of love in Penticton when I insinuated myself into my best friend, Grant Pilla's family vacation, was probably number one. Who's to say though? You can't really measure. But I was 15 and there were bikinis, waterslides, video games were coming into their own, go carts in the rain, Fast Times at the drive in, summer love and the soundtrack was the endlessly repeated Journey Escape album. What a summer!
But back to my TV show... Yeah, a model of the property I remembered from my childhood. I was me in the dream. Today. This age and everything. I'm sometimes not. Anyhoo, the gorgeous TV hostess points out the old house where everybody used to live and said they don't live there any more. I said I remembered helping to paint that house and cutting the grass and such. But the host said it's just abandoned now. Nobody lives in it. They still use the pool behind it sometimes. I said to the host that I remembered a lot of fun times in the pool. But we couldn't splash too much. They had a diving board but we hardly used it because too much water splashed out of the pool. My Uncle Jim was a truck driver and he delivered water! He had more water than anybody! That didn't bother me though. Conserve. Always a good thing. The pool was still awesome. And we slept outside in a tent sometimes right beside the pool. Wow! That was a great summer too!
Now we're on the property. Me and the gorgeous host in her flashy dress. She's still carrying a microphone. She shows me how they bought the land further up and built a huge house on it. I said, well let's go see if anybody's home! They'd kill me if I was in the neighbourhood and didn't visit! And then I inexplicably asked the hostess if she'd do me a favour and say she was my wife. NO idea why I asked that but she said she'd do it. We knocked on the basement door. This was a massive house! A young boy answered the door and invited us in. It was obvious to me that he was my cousin Chris' kid because of an uncanny resemblance, but I let on like I didn't notice. I'd say he was 12 or 13. He had a friend with him about the same age who didn't resemble anyone to me. I assumed he was just a friend. So I asked the kid if anyone was home. He was playing a game on his phone and just mumbled something. I looked around the unfinished, obviously new basement and said, "This is huge! When did they build this place?" He didn't answer. I asked again and he didn't look up from his game. A swell host he was! Then I picked up a hockey stick with a plastic superblade that was just lying on the cement floor and tapped it a few times saying, "Hey, Chris' kid, looga me!" I did the two finger point to the eyes. "When did they build this place?" That got his attention and he said, "I dunno, like ten years ago?"
Since I had the stick anyway I asked if he was any good at street hockey. He immediately predicted that he could score on me about 20 percent of his shots if I were in goal and that I could score on him on only 50% of MY shots. I conceded the 20% prediction because I suck in net. Always have. But I said, "Oh yeah? Get in net." So I got the tennis ball that was on the floor and started doing some stick handling with it and scored on some dekes and some shots. Then the blade changed into a sort of spoon blade with a concave indentation just large enough for a tennis ball. Like this pic only it obviously was not a teaspoon. It was not at the very end of the blade either.
Anyway, when I woke up that day for the last time, I noticed something on the floor of my bathroom. It was a lugi. I know it was me who hocked it because there hasn't been anyone else in my house for weeks. I must have spat on my bathroom floor the night before. Then I remembered that while I was taking shots on my nephew in my dream, he spit on the basement floor. You need to spit when you play floor hockey, street hockey, ice hockey and, apparently, lacrockey, so I spat too. Was I wandering around my apartment the night before taking imaginary shots and spitting? I'll never know.
Although that wasn't the terrifying dream, you can read through what I've written so far and imagine for yourself why I was terrified. Okay, I'll end the suspense because I know you're all BURSTING to know! I was in an unfamiliar house. I think it was mine because I was looking for something nice to wear to a wedding and telling my Mom, who was sitting on the couch behind me, that I didn't even own a suit. I don't own a suit. In real life. In my dream I said, "Mom, I don't even own a jacket!" Then I sat down on the couch beside her and asked, "I don't suppose anyone has rented a tux for me, have they?" Mom said, "Yes, Andy's bringing one." Andy is my oldest brother. I said, "But the wedding is in an hour and Andy's not here yet." Mom said, "Don't worry. He will be here. If not you can wear what makes you feel comfortable. As long as you are in love, it doesn't matter." I thought about my future wife. She was Asian. A bit plump with a cute round face. In my dream I definitely DID love her. My Mom said, "If Andy doesn't show up till tomorrow, he doesn't show up till tomorrow." And I said, "When I'll see him as a MARRIED man!" That brought a feeling WAY beyond cold feet!
You already know some of my sleeping habits. Can you imagine putting any woman through THAT torture? Who wants a noisy, smelly, sweaty, sleepwalking, possibly spitting partner to sleep with? Many other habits I have that a lifetime of bachelorhood has entrenched in me would be thrust upon this poor girl as well. I can't even have a roommate, why the hell am I getting married? And my days of freedom - gone! If I want, I can sleep till noon, get up, eat spaghetti and binge watch 15 episodes of Get Smart if I want. Or I could pour myself a rye and Coke. I'm not working tomorrow. The dirty dishes in the sink can wait. The laundry isn't too backed up and the bedding won't get much funkier if I wash it later. Hell, I can just go to the airport, roll a die and go to a random country for a week if I want. If it's the Philippines I can go kayaking into a mountain in El Nido. If it's Vietnam I can see Halong Bay and visit some friends there I haven't seen in ages. If it's Thailand I can go golfing with my old buddies I also haven't seen in ages. Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Indonesia, I could have a blast! And in all but Korea, I would surely meet some cute girls who really like old, fat, bald guys, "No shit, I love you!" NOT if I have a wife!
What kind of wife, and I'm sorry but even more so, what kind of Asian wife would allow her husband to take an entire month off in the summer? Even though I have a good reason to do so? What kind of wife would let me eat the foods I eat, the amounts I eat, and at the times I eat them? What kind of wife would allow me to spend as much time, or maybe more accurately, WASTE as much time as I do in front of my computer? There are little habits I wouldn't get away with too, like using a plate I used yesterday that didn't get too, too dirty. Never making my bed. Stinky cheese spaghetti... I'm no bargain to live with, believe me! I'm getting a bit of a panic sweat on right now as I type this!
The dream ended abruptly. She seemed like a nice girl, this nameless, pudgy Asian I've never seen before, but I am pretty sure I would have left her at the altar. If I were snorkelling and saw a great white shark swimming toward me, I don't know if I'd feel fear as strong as that dream invoked in me.
Crazy, isn't it?
Well, I've been told that I will be getting my passport back this week sometime so the sleeping schedule will need to change. That's if I get some little bits of work here and there, which I plan to do. If, for some reason, I can't find any work, I'll just continue batchin' it and doing what I do in my downtime. Aside from the freaky sleeping, it hasn't been totally bad. In fact it hasn't be UNproductive either. I'm on a rough regimen of either exercising, (and sweating even MORE), or studying China and Chinese every second day. I've cheated a couple of days but it hasn't been too bad. I'm learning to make sentences in Chinese, something I never did in Korean. I have lots of Korean vocabulary but can't make sentences. In Chinese I can already make a few useful sentences. I just need vocabulary to fill in the blanks. I think this is the better way to go about learning a language.
And speaking of that, it's time to do one or the other.
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