Road Effects

Driving this morning provided a new visual experience for me. Thin snow layers drifted across the road the way sand shifts on sand dunes in epic movies where people must make long journeys across the desert.

I dreamed last night that my dad was blow-drying a mannequin with a round brush. Mind you, he was catching hair underneath, but I could tell he had done it before and had just never told me about it. He was in my classroom, working on Shelby the mannequin head, like it was his closet passion, like my new education choice had awakened in him this desire to learn the same things.

Like, instead of going to gun club meetings, he was really going to sit in on night classes at pulse beauty school.

I didn't know whether to be impressed, or jealous, or horrified that the father I thought I knew was a lie.

I also dreamed about the TV show "being human"
And taking a walk through strawberry fields
But you couldn't see the strawberries because they were covered with bouncy, sticky, awesome-to-play-on marshmallow fluff that was browned on top.
And there were fields of mushrooms too.
And there was some sort of dissonance in fairy land where all the blond people were going gray and turning into greedy monsters inside who could lash out at any moment, and some of my traveling companions had been blonde, and as they turned gray, I began to distrust them.
One of them was my younger sister.
I don't have a younger sister in real life.
Apparently the blondes were not having more fun.
At the end of this long journey
Where I kept deviating to roll through the marshmallow fluff
We sat on picnic tables with our feet on the benches
And our parents came in trailers with peanut butter and jelly to ask how it was and take us home
And there was no epic monster fear
Or fairyland
Or vampire stealing blood and catching a skin-pitting disease from a cancerous patient he killed in a "coup de grace" which was really just hunger and fear of being caught stealing from the blood bank in a hospital
Or werewolf catching the skin-destroying disease from his vampire roommate
Or dark, soaked scene in the rain where the two confront some Gandalf-figure and he tells them he won't help them because they brought the trouble on themselves
Or tribal leader dressed in animal skins wading through the strawberry fields to warn of the blonde uprising.

Even if Dad is a closet hairdresser, it's much better sitting next to him on a bench than going through all that.

It's like finally getting through Candy Land and getting to knock your piece onto the carpet!