Ever since i was a kid, i've thought
it would be really fun to work at a paint company and be the one in
charge of naming the paint colors. "Bunny nose" pink, "Alpine moss"
green, "summer sunrise" orange, etc, etc. I like color, and i REALLY
like making stuff up.

But I bet you already knew that, nyeh.



So recently, while I was fiddling with my google homepage, i discovered this little gadget and its accompanying website.
Basically it's a color picker, and you can choose colors from an
uploaded image, random color swatches, or from a linked website,
thereby composing or discovering new color schemes. It's handy dandy
for me, since as a designer I can easily develop tunnel-vision towards
the same old-hat combinations. (For instance, my agency's logo colors
are this weird blue and an odd leafy green). I practically
dream in blue & green nowadays, so it's fun to see something called
"Love" which includes hyacinth orange and vermillion, or a nice ocean-y
combo the color of green atlantic water and violet-brown beach sand.



Some of my favorites:

LOVE:

COLD SPRING:

SPICY SAGE:

CARIBOU:

ATLANTIC:

Charles, aka "Chester", is the doggie-lovechild of two of my favorite webcomics: Toothpaste For Dinner and Natalie Dee. They just started making videos, too. Here's my favorite so far.

Guess which kid is the one in trouble:

By the way, back when I was teaching full time, the troublemakers were
my favorite. Pain in the ass, yeah, but oh man, the funny makes it so worthwhile.

Ok, i need advice.

For about 6mos I've been working at the main offices for the Home for Little Wanderers,  as one of their in-house graphic & web designers. I like it okay, at least the creative designy bit, but i also work in a little cubicle that i hate with PR & marketing people who irritate me. To put it nicely.  I never get fresh air or sunshine, and I've been uncharacteristically surly for the past five months, verging on depression. I certainly don't get to hang out with kids or teach, which is what i love about The Home, and which is what i was doing at my old program before i got promoted to the central offices. I'm unhappy to the point where, despite my loyalty to the agency as a whole and its mission, I really want to bail. I also don't make a whole lot of moola, anyway.

So I've been looking around casually for other jobs, and an afterschool teaching position has opened up at the YMCA up the street from me. Literally, two blocks away. I went and met some of the staff there for an interview to see what it was all about, and it rocks. Well, it would rock if we could somehow meet each other's needs. They basically want to hire an experienced teacher- like me- to work afternoons, school vacations, and summers, plus whatever other flexible roles and shifts I was interested in picking up. It's kind of fun, and they have a culture similar to my old program, where you can be creative and come up with new activities, ideas, curriculums, and innovations as you go along. I'd basically be making the same kind of hourly pay I do now, but only part time, and no benefits like health & dental. That totally blows. I'd have to pick up some freelance gigs or schlep coffee in the mornings for less money, and find my own health care. Sucky suck suck, because teaching art to a bunch of crazy kids at the Y sounds like a really fun and challenging job I could really sink my teeth into.

There's also the thought of going back to school to get my teaching certs in the fall, if i can finagle my way into a program. Mass College of Art offers health insurance for full time students, but i'd still have to figure out what the hell to do with myself for the next 6 mos.

My mom would say, "Ann, you will never have a factory job," or something along those lines. Working in a cube and staring at a computer all day feels just like that. I'm not cut out for monotony, but monotony is what pays the bills, i guess. So what should i do? Should i suck it up and stay in my cube while my soul slowly rots away, or do i just say, AH, Fuck It! and make a break for it? How frigging irresponsible! especially since i should be preparing for some tumultuous times over the next few months. But oh, man. how liberating it would be to fingerpaint again!

I have about a week before i have to tell the YMCA one way or another. Any advice, kids?

oh, and ps, I'm writing this from home today, because i told my cubicle job i was gonna come in late. Being home in the middle of the day? just having tea and chilling out? yeah, that totally rules.

Sometimes I dream I'm not myself, like some kind of psychic Scott
Bakula quantum-leaping into other lives that have no association with
my
own. This morning I woke up around 2:30, having snapped out of a dream
where i was screaming as loud as i could. My boyfriend- not my
boyfriend, or any person i could even recognize- had me cornered in a
small space. I was mostly screaming because i didn't know this man, and
also screaming because he was threatening me and the child i was trying
to keep away from him. A child?? I remember my throat starting to hurt,
and hoping that someone else in the building might hear me, even though
in my dream i realized the building was usually empty in the middle of
the day. When I coudn't scream any more, an older gentleman (i remember
he was a lawyer, wearing a dark grey suit) came running from the stairs
to my aid. And that's when i woke up.

After lying awake for a few moments, more startled than terrified, i drifted off to sleep again.

In the metro this morning I read this article.
The man had a bomb; he pulled her into the elevator and trapped her
there, screaming, and then blew them both up. Philip Lamonica, a
50-year old lawyer whose office was in the same building, said: 
“I went back after I heard the explosion to see what happened, and the
elevator door had been blown off its hinges,” he said, “and inside it
was consumed with flames. There was no more screaming.”

jesus.

---

Nah, I don't think I'm psychic. Couldn't be.

Well, not in the sense that I have any control over when & how it
happens, otherwise i'd be all over the lottery, yo. It does occur more
than I would prefer, though, to the point where I'm not even surprised
anymore when my dreams end up playing themselves out in reality. It 's
really.... uncomfortable..... when it does happen. I try to tell myself
that what i'm doing is simply responding to jarring situations in
reality by connecting them logically back to my dream, rather than vice
versa- except that the details in these types of dreams are usually
very very specific. I'm some kind of receptor for mental frequencies, I
guess.

For example, another thing that happens to me often is that I'll be
thinking something- even something utterly random- and then not a
moment later the person beside me will say the same exact thing. Like
an echo. This happens to me daily.

Not to mention the dream I woke up from at 8:30 am, nearly six years
ago, about evacuating people from fire and darkness, only to find 
out later in the day that an airplane had smashed into a building in
New York.... I don't want to get into that one though.

I was a little shook up this morning after i read the paper. I
tried to find photos of the lawyer and the bomber boyfriend to see if i
would recognize them from my dream, but no dice. Until then, yeah, i
get a little comfort knowing i was somehow with her in that experience.
Poor girl. It's not everyday you get to be vicariously blown up in an
elevator. Greeeat.

Meanwhile, I've also been dreaming about lions roaming the city
streets, nearly every single night for the past two weeks. More than
once I've stepped outside my dream-doorstep to see tawny eyes watching
me in the lamplight. What the hell is THAT supposed to mean??