to fulfill desires

friends for-- now, a photo by Digital Heather on Flickr.

I'm going to miss PHX comicon as well as E3 in LA. Tickets for both are very paid for and non-transferable or refundable. Comicon starts tomorrow and I don't think I'll fare well in a wheelchair with crowds. E3 begins the same day as my surgery. I'm pretty bummed out. Sure, I wanna find out what potentially is or is not wrong with my guts, but I was really looking forward to both of those events (first time at both). On a similar and side note, I may need to rethink my career. My current job (the one through which I have awesome insurance and is paying for my disability and my leave) may also contribute to said disability due to stress. It's an upsetting relief if that makes sense.

Two more weeks (at least). Surgery scares me but for different reasons. This is my second procedure, and although very different in nature, I don't feel like it is. I worry about waking up when I'm not supposed to and not waking up when I am supposed to. I could care less about the slicing and dicing. If you've never been put to sleep, the Dr./hospital staff may joke with you that you'll wake up at the end and ask when it's going to start. I shrugged this off, but it was probably the most truthful information anyone has given me during these two months. However, they told Jason to wait in the wrong room for me and when I woke up no one could find him and I was very confused. It was like a bad recurring dream, but from a movie instead. I dunno.

When I was a kid, I had two recurring dreams that lasted until I was about 12. Actually, I guess they were nightmares. Well anyway, one was about my mom and I grocery shopping. As a child, my mom reminded me every time we went somewhere to stay with her or hold her hand or I would get kidnapped or lost. She was being perfectly reasonable-- Adam Walsh was murdered two years before I was born and it changed how parents shopped with their children.

Anyway. At night I had these terrible dreams of being chased by a tall long-legged shadow man through a military base shopping commissary that was the size of a warehouse. The entire place was empty except for me and my dreaded shadow man. The building was silent-- no music, intercom announcements, register beeps, or aircraft outside flying overhead. Light bulbs flickered. I ran through an endless maze where every turn took me down an aisle filled with nothing but boxes and boxes of cheeseburger-flavored Hamburger Helper. Every shelf, top to bottom. He chased me as I ran and ran, looking down each aisle for my mom's familiar and distinguishable Afro or butt. In the dream, I left my mom without her permission or knowledge to get a box of Tuna Helper to fulfill desires of being both helpful (haha Tuna Helper and helpful, I never made that connection) and well a "big girl." Perhaps it's for this reason, I have always loved Tuna Helper and disliked it's hamburger counterpart-- most especially the cheeseburger kind. I'll eat it, but it takes me right back to my bad place.

Speaking of my mom, the snapshot is from one of her gardenia bushes planted even before me. My photography these days is limited to the interior of my house or if I can make the walk, my front- and backyards.