Dead people keep showing up in my dreams. The literally dead and the figuratively dead. My father, for example, who died eight years ago. My best friend from childhood who has fallen off the edge of the earth in New Mexico somewhere. My ex boyfriend(s).

Speaking of dreams, I had one not long ago where I cut my own heart out of my body and carried it around all day in a paper bag. Later I put it back in—badly—but well enough. As I carried my beating little heart around in it’s flimsy paper bag, I alternated between matter-of-factness: “Oh, no prob, I’ll just put it back in later,” to horror: “How am I surviving without a heart? What if I lose it? What if it gets infected somehow and I die when I put it back in?”

My father had a heart attack when he was 33and a heart transplant when he was 44.

I haven’t had a heart attack yet, thank God. But I do tear my heart out of my body and hand it out in a paper bag to to every damn cutie pie who walks by. HERE HAVE IT.

Then when it all ends, I stuff it back inside my chest, somewhat the worse for wear but still beating. Miraculously. There’s a new scar, a few years off my life, and one more ghost to haunt my dreams.

How's that for a cheerful start to your day?

Let's see, I am still only drinking half a cup of coffee a day and the trowel is still locked up in a cabinet somewhere.

I am an uptight bundle of nerves and miss old General Celexa. C'est la vie. I'm in a funk and this, too, shall pass.

xo
BB