le break(ing point)

i'm always excited to go home for break. i talk to my mom 20 times a day on the phone already so it's not like i'm going home to strangers as a stranger. i love animals more than anything and a chance to live with them for a month is priceless. the honeymoon phase (which lasts about three days) is always enjoyable. but after those three days, what happens? chaos. worse than chaos because you know exactly what's going to happen and how it's going to happen. predictable chaos is terrifying. 

so why do i still get excited to go home? why is it something i look forward to, something i consider a much needed month of relaxation, when nothing relaxing ever takes place? catching up with old friends is amazing. sleeping with my cat by my side is precious. sunning in the yard with my dogs is calming. singing to pretty songs with my sister in the car is cool. but are all of these happenings worth the fighting that precedes them? i've made my mom cry two days in a row (not by being mean, just by getting into an argument with my sister and also by not going to church). i know for a fact that she is happier when i am not home. she talks to me when i'm in-between classes or walking home from work and is happy to know that i still need her in my life, at least as someone to converse with between responsibilities. but when i'm home i think she feels a disconnection and knows as well as i that the chaos will soon be taking over. we like it better when things are organized by time, not by emotion. 

so a holiday break for me isn't necessarily a break. it's a change of pace and a change of dramatic incidents. no longer am i annoyed by dirty roommates. i am now annoyed by lack of alone time and cigarettes and a mom thats ready to get angry at any little thing. but it's okay. i love everyone in my family regardless of their anxiety levels, and i love hanging out with friends that stuck with me through the hellish year that was 2008. 

on dreams

(Henri Rousseau's "To Dream")

i wrote my last column for The Vista about dreams and how weird mine have been ever since i went home. as an avid dream analyzer (i reference either glamour.com's dream dictionary or my own physical one that my creepy neighbor gave me), i have made an interesting and disturbing discovery. i will first begin with a description of the two dreams i've had that apply to this theory:

i had a dream that a guy i liked was taking candid pictures of me on a digital camera and that i was looking at the pictures and deleting the ones i didn't like and praising others. we were then laying in a barren field as thunder rolled all around us. we decided to wait till the thunder ended and then go to a party we apparently had planned to make an appearance at. an overall enjoyable dream.

the other dream consisted of me watching tv with my sister. we put on the news and heard screaming. it was a live shot of a mudslide happening at la conchita again. the mud knocked over a cement truck which then spilled a never-ending supply of cement. the news crew's helicopter cam zoomed in on the people being overtaken by the cement and then getting stuck and suffocating. it was absolutely terrible and resulted in me waking up terrified.

now here's the discovery. the first dream's meaning was extremely negative. dreaming of a camera is a warning dream signifying insincere friends around you and deception. to dream of thunder signifies that your suspicions of false friends are well-founded and portends great loss and disappointment. to dream of a field indicates dreary prospects for the future. as you could imagine, i was a little freaked out and mad that my cute dream had lost all levels of cuteness.

the second dream's meaning was extremely positive. to dream of mud predicts "glorious good luck" and to dream of cement signifies a rise in status/income. WTF