I love pot stickers. Tender, flavorful, and apparently slightly hallucinogenic when purchased from the grocery store.

Reba got some the other day and we steamed them up last night.

Not without high drama, as is normal around our house. In her distracted state of preparation, she inadvertently let all the water boil out of the double boiler and nearly set a good Revereware saucepan on fire. She was fussing and fuming and the pot had gotten to that ominous black color that signifies the start of Something Bad, so I managed to wrestle it away from her and quench it in the sink. It took several minutes to finally cool off (it's one of those with the extra thick bottom. HEY! No jokes about me!) Just as that crisis was abated, one of the kids said something about it.

Kids. So young, so full of curiosity. So oblivious to danger.

After a good dose of verbal guiltlashing, they remained remarkably quiet for the rest of the meal. Hey, they CAN learn! If Mama ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy--learn it, live it. Anyway, the pot stickers were great even though those last few had an...odd flavor. And they were accompanied by nice crunchy spring rolls, and I ate too many of both. Which led me to my discovery of their odd power.

Sometime after going to bed last night, I started dreaming about work. I was looking at some old aerial views of Birmingham, and there were all these cool buildings that have never existed except in this particular dream. I saw one that was really neat, and it appeared to be just across the street from City Hall. In the aerial, it was huge and had two low wings on each side of a gigantic dome or something. I thought how cool it would be to go through it, and then I was no longer at my desk, but walking down the street. (As with all my dreams, part of the time I was not really walking, but drifting along while laying on something, sometimes stopping for a quick nap along the way)

Suddenly, I got to where the building in the picture was supposed to be, and HEY! It's still here! The storefront was all covered up with huge sheets of glass and wood framing, but you could look up and see the tall part which was not a dome, but a tower like the prow of a ship, sort of like the Flatiron Building, except razor sharp, with no windows or decoration. I walked around to the side and there was a large construction fence and a job trailer and some folks milling around with hard hats. Hey, lucky me, I had one on, too! (One of my obscure Rules of Architecture is that someone with a hard hat and a clipboard can get in anyplace in the world)

I asked some woman what was going on and she said they were doing a safety inspection and they all started climbing through a small hole in the fence. No one stopped me, so I tagged along and found myself inside of a dark old building with all sorts of beams and scaffolding and junk all over the place. (Think Piranesi.) We walked and climbed over stuff, and finally got to a stair lobby, which looked like something in an old Sears store--crappy panelling, mod fixtures, battleship linoleum. There was a ladder going up, and the idea was that you climbed up a bit, and then grabbed onto something like a rolling swing that took you around to another part of the building. I decided just to walk.

We were then all in a tiny little dark kitchen, which looked like it had not been cleaned in ages. I said something to some guy beside me about those cookies sure looking good, because there was this plate of cookies sitting on an old stove and I thought I was joking. I then looked, and the cookies actually DID look pretty good and then it dawned on me that someone had been cooking, as if someone was living in the place. Weird! And boy, some food sounded good right about then. We walked on through a door, and came to a bright open room with a fireplace and nice furniture. We couldn't figure out what was going on, and figured that the building must have a caretaker of some sort who lived there. And then, right there on top of the TV was a picture of my son! HEY! These people are RELATED to ME! I started trying to go through all the relatives I had sent pictures to who lived in abandoned buildings, and couldn't think of a one. Continuing our tour, the rooms were scattered all over the place, and there were these cool flat screen TVs everywhere, playing short loops of family pictures, sort of like the paintings in Harry Potter. Big ones, little picture frame sized ones, ones above the mantle, one used as a table. The place was huge and the more we walked around, the more "glamorous" it became, in that Lileksian Interior Desecrator's mode--like something out of a mid-'70s Architectural Digest.

We looked out of a window, and there was a gigantic park behind the building so I walked out on the roof. (Of course. It WAS a dream, after all). There was no trace of the city, or even of the odd tower thing--it just looked like a nice old mansion on nicely kept grounds. I went back inside, and met up with some of the other people in the group, and we came to a surprising conclusion. It seems that DONALD TRUMP owned the building, and was, in fact, LIVING IN IT! I was about to go ask him how he got one of our family pictures when I heard a strange shoooosh...

shoooosh...

shooooosh sound.

Shooooosh.


Shooosh.

I opened my eyes and heard it again...shoooosh.

I dazedly figured out it was Tiny Girl, scooting along the floor of our bedroom on her butt, trying to sneak into bed with us. Raspy whisper, "Catherine!"

No answer.

Another low, hoarse, try-not-to-wake-wife call, "CATH-ER-INE!" (Shades of Pete--"DO. NOT. SEEK. THE. TREAS-URE!")

I was hanging my head off the side of the bed, and she jumped up right in my face. Yes, it is scary when that happens. I whispered and asked her if she had wet the bed. No answer, which can be bad news. I asked again, and she shook her head "No," which is usually good news, if she is actually telling the truth. I figured I would send her right back to bed, and then...

The alarm clock went off.

Crap.

I hoisted the dense little sack of wet cement up into the bed and turned on the news, and after a minute or two, she was back out again, happily snoring and kicking me in the groin. And giggling her head off in her sleep. The pot stickers must have had a good effect on her, too.

(And I also found out this morning that the combination of spring rolls and pot stickers are not only hallucinogenic, but greatly flatulegenic, too, but I won't bore you with lurid tales of the Thunder From Down Under)

ANYway, I have work to do, so I will see you this afternoon sometime.
posted by Terry at 9:48:00 AM