Wait. What was the question?

I was about to watch a movie and pass out after drinking what actually turns out to be a small quantity of booze (for Atlanta), but instead decided to reread Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic. I realized two things while reading:

1. This poetry is so bad that it's insulting, even to children. In fact, I remember being a child and reading this to myself and expecting one day that I would understand it. That day has come.
2. I should start drawing again. And showing you. Or someone.

I then remembered two things:

1. Shel Silverstein is actually some crazy jazzbo pervert who likes to talk about double penetration or something. And that's OK by me.
2. I wish "we" (my mother and I, or my dad, or my dogs Timmy and Big Shot, or whoever) still lived in my childhood home.

• It was a smallish cookie-cutter house in what I like to call the OG Suburbs of Atlanta (which means it was closer to downtown than Dunwoody and farther away than Lenox Mall). I had no friends in the neighborhood and ran away frequently to the playground of the Korean Baptist Church, which was so close, it was practically in our backyard. The carpet was longish corn-blue and I always thought there were monsters (or hot guys) floating outside my giant window. This window is where I first began my casual exhibitionism. Which I'm sure you didn't know about until now.
• I miss that home and that life deeply. As with so many children with typically boring divorced/separated families, I associate the exit from this house with the beginning of the end for me (OK? Deal with it.) and also, more specifically, the beginning of the end of my trust in reliable housing. More on this later.
• I still dream about this house. A recurring dream is that my father (To whom I am almost identical, except for, duh, I'm not. He's my dad.) and I are trying to destroy a giant mud dauber to no avail, of course. In this dream, his impotency as my protector cripples me and I always wake up crying. More on this later (much later).

I believe that Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the best criers ever.



Maybe that's why I woke up this morning from a terrible nightmare during which my son (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) had been quite obviously fatally wounded by what I assume to be a nuclear explosion. Half of the skin from his torso had been melted off, exposing his ribs and intestines. He was screaming, "Why does it have to hurt so bad? Why does it hurt so bad?" I held him while a doctor poured isopropyl alcohol onto his insides.

When I woke up from the dream, I felt like I'd had an inappropriate sex dream, not that I'd dreamed that a close family member had become a victim of war. Looking back now, I'm pleased to have experienced an enjoyable sensation, but disturbed by how little I was affected by the gore my unconscious so graphically depicted.

Anyways, since this dream had an erotic rather than a fearful/sorrowful effect, I stood a fair chance to have felt pleasantly introspective, enjoying my thoughts and the lovely weather, seeing brighter colors than usual... That is, if I hadn't also woken up with a huge and painful infection in my mouth.

I'll be visiting the Urgent Care area of SFGH tonight or tomorrow, as this infection seems worse than others and no one seems to think it's funny when I say, "Haha! I'm thinking of going septic." Which I guess makes sense once I think about it. I'm terrified that I'll wake up with a an abscess in my brain tomorrow.