The Booger Wall

And a few other things

1. I’m trying to kick the habit of holding onto certain things in case I’m poor again. These shitty jeans don't fit, but what if I'm poor again and suddenly need a pair of low-rise, stonewashed bell bottoms? I once wrote an entire essay about my internal dialogue once upon a time, walking down Dundas St West to Dollarama with a baby strapped to my chest. The dialogue went something like “time to get some parchment paper.” “But; do we actually need parchment paper?” “It’s only $4 and it makes our food cook better, and taste better.” “Yeah, but do I need to spend $4 right now?” Back and forth for a long time, through the dollar store doors and down the aisle and back out again with the paper in hand, then all the way home feeling guilty. Nobody read the thing. Neurotic rants weren’t as cool back in the beforetimes of 2018, but my anxiety about being poor again has aged like fine cheese.

2. The dichotomy between the masked and the unmasked has been compelling to witness. There are those who feel totally confident unmasked in crowded indoor settings - just like the good ol’ days - and there are those who mask up immediately after exiting their vehicle on a quiet street. I fall in the middle. I’ve longed for the social acceptance of masks in busy places, ever since I noticed my childhood friend’s Japanese parents wearing surgical masks during a crowded event at our senior public school. Their unwillingness to inhale the spittle of a thousand pre-teens was never lost on me. I’m forever cool with not sneezing directly onto others. But fresh air is a gift, and I’m never going to place a barrier between my lungs and their communion with open air when no strangers are near. Comfort zones are like jigsaw pieces; some littered around us chaotically and some locked together perfectly.

3. A few walls in our house qualify as dedicated booger walls. This is a fact, in spite of my deepest desires as a confirmed germaphobe. Fortunately, boogers seem to be confined to the wall immediately adjacent to the bathroom sink, and my kid’s bed. What doth compel our children to pass through a lengthy phase of smearing boogers on walls - and, worse yet - furniture? Is it a deeply imprinted, visceral desire to live primitively again, as my husband posits? To live outside, hunting and foraging and wiping boogers on trees all willy-nilly? I’ll choose peeing on the ground over a toilet just about any day, and believe that boogers, too, belong unto the earth from whence they came. Perhaps our children are subconsciously acknowledging their disconnection from nature by wiping bodily goo on painted drywall. Perhaps booger wall discoveries are parental boot camp exercises designed prepare us for all the big kid and teenage body horror yet to come.

   

   Your moment of Zen: Jason Bateman with long hair

4. I'm a dream journalist. I don't quite know why I started, but I have around a decade's worth of journals peppered with the finer details of a hundred dreams. I want to remember them all: upsetting or enjoyable; profound or mundane. The trouble is that if I don't write them down immediately upon waking, I am shit out of luck. If I start talking to my son about video games and movie soundtracks and toys and start role-playing Gwen Stacey for his amusment? Forget it. Literally. The dream is gone. I don't want to lose them. I want to “catch the big fish,” as David Lynch might say. I don't want to let them go; it just happens sometimes. The other night I had a wonderfully layered, clearly meaningful dream in which I worked in communion with several other women on an important, world-altering project. By the time I was on my feet and downstairs, that one sentence elevator pitch was all that remained. What I do remember from that evening's dreams was the one in which I was just repeatedly running my hands through Jason Bateman’s hair. Who’s to say which dream was more significant? My first on-screen crush from childhood, Jason Bateman is a pretty big fish.