i pushed the button-it's for REAL! now i'll probably have strange dreams about that as well!

well. i did it. boys and girls, it's done!

not gonna' lie, it was a little nerve-racking (i looked it up, and it is interchangeable with nerve-wracking...but the first spelling was without the /w/, so i thought it would be most correct to use the /r/...not that anyone really cares)... but i pushed enter, and there's no going back! NOT THAT I'D WANT TO! but the truth is when it comes to booking flights or making decisions that far out, once you push the button, it's final!

i'm going home this summer!

it won't feel real until the plane lands.

 so, it's been over 20 years since i've been back, and i'm excited to see all of the changes.but even more than that, i'm excited to see some dear friends in person. talk about priceless...it's one thing to send letters, and to see peoples' status updates on facebook, but it's something completely different to laugh with friends or sit and chat over coffee. i feel as though i've been somewhat neglectful of the one place that i spent the most years of my life-those formative years; i am hoping to change that. i'm pretty sure i'm going to smile from now until june 30, then i'll just be ecstatica!

so that's exciting!

i may or may not have mentioned that i bought a mini digital recorder so that i wouldn't forget things-well, i keep it by my bed so i can record important information (and not-so-important information)...i've been able to capture a few dreams.

 so i thought i'd share a couple of them with you because they were comical in my mind-hopefully it will translate that way when i type it out.

the first one had to do with my brother driving the maroon car (my car-which wasn't even the same color of my real car) too quickly around the exit loop and we went into the ditch-a ditch that was steep and shaped like a 'v' just big enough for the car to fit in wedged with the nose down, trunk up...fortunately i willed it to go in slow motion so that there were no scratches and dents (i guess i didn't want to have to deal with the insurance agents in my dream)...so my dad and i got out and pushed it out-i mean we actually lifted it out; and it was really quite light-fiberglass i'm sure. "lift with your knees!" anyhoo, we got it out, then realized that it took so long that we were not going to be able to stop in branson for lunch. devastating. and i woke up about then and the first thing i said into the recorder was that i didn't need crossfit because i could lift a freakin' car out of a ditch! (so i guess that confirms it, i will not be getting a crossfit membership in my dreams).

then there was the dream where a bunch of colleagues were sitting around in a room-some kind of meeting. the lady leading this meeting was a dynamic leader (she reminded me a little of my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. VanHorn), and i secretly wanted to be her best friend because there was some kind of 'coolness factor' about her. even after i got called out for not knowing when we were supposed to pick up our giant hair bows for the dance. (what dance, you ask..i'm not really sure...all i know is that i DIDN'T know when to pick up the hair bows-and they weren't a joke, the hair bows were a big deal-apparently). so upon not being able to answer, this lady jumped up and said, "let me help you out with that!" and she burst into a song and dance set to the original wonder woman theme song (i'm not even making this up) the only thing is that she had changed the wording, and from the song, i got that we were supposed to pick them up at horizon....which in my book wasn't a time, so i pieced it all together (we call that inferring) anyhoo, i used my knowledge from fiddler on the roof- sunrise/sunset- to determine that surely she meant we were to pick up the bows at sunset.

and last but not least, last night i was out at an estate in the country hills. when i walked in, i was confronted by the director of the special event. he gave me a paper with 3 words on it and the treble and bass clefs, but no notes. he said-you'll be harmonizing with the duet. (i think this disheveled man may have been drunk...harmonizing with a duet would make it a trio...) anyhoo, i looked at the paper and i had no idea what he wanted me to do because there were no notes on the paper, so for the remainder of the dream, i had this anxiety about this event. before the singing was to take place, a bunch of people went outside, including myself. when i got out there, i don't know exactly what everyone was doing, there was a tense feeling, and right about the time i decided to hang out, someone yelled, "CANNONBALLS!" and there was no swimming pool, so i looked up and there were actually softball sized iron cannonballs flying through the air toward us! everyone started running and scattering, so i grabbed my brother's arm (he was in this dream as well), so we dodged cannonballs, heading toward the house, when i saw some sort of aircraft dive bomb/ kamikaze into the estate, so i pulled him in the opposite direction and we jumped down a rock embankment because another aircraft was coming toward us. i was sure that we were safe between these boulders, but no. the aircraft found us and crashed within feet of us. then out of no where, a man with a mustache showed up and gave a demonstration of how these "amazing aircraft" work...they were made of plastic tubes similar to oversized tennis tubes...and thank goodness, that's about when i woke up and i never had to sing in the duo-trio that i didn't even know the notes to.

weird, huh? the dreams actually started when i started sleeping well again-when i got the noise machine. as strange as they are, i LOVE having interesting dreams-it's almost like reading a book in my sleep. (only not really).

ok. enough strangeness for one day-i'm going home this summer!!
julie