Part One: the dream

So I had a wicked dream last night. I know, I know, it can be a chore listening to people talk about their dreams, much less reading about them. But I swear, it's worth it. And I'll keep it short. Hell, I'll even give you the punchline early so you'll read to the end: Bob Dylan read my blog and told me he liked it. There are also planets involved, if that pulls you in.

Ok. Here goes.

My parents, sister and I are at a hotel. It seemed like it was on the moon, or on a moon of another planet because the stars were so visible and close by. On the roof of the hotel, my parents and I are watching the plate align. Now, they were not like regular planets, more like the planets from The Little Prince*** and they were REALLY CLOSE, like in on of those Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers from grade school, only less lame.

Well, I had to get Abby to come and watch, and get my camera, but the elevator wouldn't work and I kept getting lost. By the time I got Abby, who was having a meltdown of some sort, and the camera back to the roof, the sun had set, the planets were gone and I missed the shot.

"That's ok," Dad said. "We didn't come here for that anyway. We came for the concert, which is just starting now."

So we head to the concert, which I am covering as a photojournalist. And right as Bob Dylan is about to start his first song, tens of thousands of people in the crowd, a mad galaxy of stars behind him, he spots me. He leaves the stage, puts his arm around me, and says, "Are you Molly Mullen? I read your blog. You get the blues," and walked off and did his set.

Apparently this show was for rock gods, because then Carlos Santana walked up to me and asked who I was that Bob Dylan was talking to me. Like a douche, I said, "I'm a pretty big deal."

Then the dream faded and I woke up feeling, and still feeling now, like I had an intimate moment with Bob Dylan.

Boom.

***as a side note, when I redesigned this blog for my web design class, it was supposed to look like a page from, or inspired by The Little Prince. I always forgot to mention that.

Is this going to get me killed?

I just put up a Craigslist ad looking for roommates. While I have been planning on this for weeks, I just got around to it now. I put literally no thought or consideration into it whatsoever, so I might get a bunch of serial killers posing as Aussie UN workers or something.

So there's that. Anyone want to guess a number about how many naked pics I'm going to get in my inbox in the next few hours? The person who guesses closest wins a collage of all of them!

Home

So I skyped my family today. I feel homesick a good amount of the time, especially when I get to see everyone: Abby, Mom and Dad, Martha and Leo and Maryanne. But I am growing to appreciate my homesickness in a different way. I proud to have a home-base that I can return to. I am beginning to understand that it is a luxury not everyone has.

Working for JRS, and interviewing people, I frequently hear that people can never return to their countries. In order to apply for refugee status, you have to make the case as to why you can never go home.

So I just accepted that. I wrote what they say in my notebook and type a story, almost always including a quote about never going back.

I didn't think too much about this until last night, when I was having dinner with a friend who is applying for refugee status. We were talking about the food her mom used to make and how much I miss Omaha food. She said, "I bet you're pretty homesick here." And I agreed. Then she said, "Yeah, it's a scary thought to realize that I can never go home."

At this point, I'm going to stop taking Omaha for granted. I have something pretty precious back in Nebraska, and even if I''m not ready to lay down roots there just yet, I appreciate knowing it's there waiting for me.

So, yeah, as you all know, I can sometimes make Omaha out to be some sort of Plains Shangri La, but it's not Omaha itself that I love and appreciate so much. It's dad's cinnamon toast and the way he makes hot dogs. It's Mom's Christmas breakfasts. It's Maddy taking up too much space on the couch when I'm trying to watch Twilight Zone. It's having a fire in the fireplace in the middle of summer. It's Abby saying the same joke over and over again and demanding us to tell her how funny she is. It's Dundee. It's 50th Street. It's Ginger Cove and the cockerburls in the sand dunes. It's everyone and everywhere I have a memory.

That's home. And I love it and I miss it. And I appreciate it in whole new way.

Bioluminescence

Let me tell you about bioluminescence. Supposedly, according to the experts at wikipedia, it's a chemical reaction called chemiluminescence that happens in plants and animals that cause them to secrete a glowing chemical.

Last weekend, I experienced said chemical reaction up close and personal on an island off the coast of Ranong, Thailand. Ollie and I were in the area for work and decided to check it our for the weekend. Beautiful. Amazing. Sleeping in a beach shack, swinging in the hammock for hours on end singing Harry Belafonte out loud to myself and anyone passing by.

Our first night, we went to a beach party. Rasta music. Groovy bartenders and westerners doing things the judge and Dr Harris would not approve of. On our walk down the beach to said get-together, I noticed little greenish glowing dots in Ollie's footprints. I thought it was wicked cool, but forgot about it.

After the beach party (which was actually a fundraiser for some burnt-out drunk on the island), I decided to pay tribute to Michael Stipe and go for a swim.

So we run for it, making a mad dash into the calm, black water, under some of the brightest stars I've ever seen. But I look to my right and every step Ollie takes into the water, he is surrounded by tiny lightbulbs. Like swimming fireflies. BIOLUMINESCENCE.

As it turns out, there was a school(?) of illuminated plankton in the ocean that day, and just by coming into contact with these invisibly small creatures, cause the chemical reaction that lights them up. I can't quite explain it. Just think of swimming in the warm ocean at night, unable to see where the horizon meets the sky, surrounded by a miracle of nature that you didn't even know existed.

It wasn't until the next day that I found out how bad an idea it could have been. Apparently sharks feed at night, and the glowing plankton attract them to their prey. That may be why we had the water to ourselves...

WHat?

I have been in the mood for a few weeks now to draw a really good skeleton or two in my journal. I went online to find old 1920's cartoons of dancing skeletons when I came across these old Cab Calloway videos.

(Get's pretty good around 4 min. in)

(One of the BEST songs ever written. Especially because I think the word "infirmary" is one of the scariest words in the English language)

In that same vein, I have a list of the top 5 things they should definitely bring back from the 1920s:

1. Long underwear with the button-up behinds

2. Cough syrup with cocaine in it

3. Long cigarette holders

4. Giant radios

5. Creative, adult-themed musical cartoons

Look who moved onto my soi

Giant snails moved onto my block. I want to make friends with them but I don't know how. Is it racist to assume that all snails have French accents?

We have new friends at work