Last night I had several dreams. This is not unusual. What was unusual was that there was a theme: men.

One of them I met at the library. He was very nice. What either of us was doing at the library still isn't quite clear.

confuzzlement

Monty Python's 'Flying Circus' is on PBS ... in German with English subtitles. Curious.

Before that, I caught the tail end of 'All the President's Men.' It's a movie about the Watergate scandal that Washington Post reporters uncovered in the '70s. I've probably watched it almost a half-dozen times and still don't have the whole story straight. All reporters watch this movie.

Today was a bridal shower for a friend -- the kind of friend you like very much but haven't really ever spent one-on-one time with. You only hang out in groups. You met through mutual friends and just haven't ever come to the point where you just call each other up. We're also half-fourth cousins once removed.

The shower was very beautiful and it was a gorgeous afternoon for it, though a bit breezy. It was one of those moments you feel would be recorded if your life was a documentary -- a coming-of-age moment where you feel again how you're no longer a little girl. You're still all daughters to all the mothers also at the party, but you're daughters nearing having daughters of your own.

Milestone would be just the right word for it -- an event by which you mark the passage of time.

Then Megan and I came home and argued about what to do for the evening. We knew a film and mozarella sticks would be involved, but there were still those nit-picky details.

Well

All is well when watching Andrew Foyle on TV...

Just kidding. Sort of.
At work we all have our lists of celebrity crushes. Mine is still a bit short, having only Julian Ovenden on it. Most lists are allowed three.

Anyway.

It appears we won't be moving to the lovely house. We are having trouble getting out of our lousy leases.

The weather is not lousy. Monday at work we took a group "walk" in the afternoon; granted, we walked to Caribou and spent half the 20 minutes there. Sunday afternoon, the whole family was out back on my parents' little mostly-done deck in the sunshine. However many thousand square feet, but we're all in the same 20... What else is new.

My sister and I have agreed to schedule our Chicago train trip for July. We might go see 'Wicked'!

Sunday during church, I got up and left after the opening songs. It was not due to the slow, foreign, high-pitched songs or poor sound, which apparently my family attributed my departure to.

Instead, it was because of the background noise. Background noise can often frustrate me more than warranted. A baby cries, someone turns a page, someone jingles some keys; and I've already forgotten we're singing. At school, any whispering or such makes me so tense I nearly explode. Such was the case last night at tour guide class. I'm recognizing as I get older that this aversion is a little unusual.

I know my little cousin has been diagnosed with a sensory disorder related to autism; I also know one of my siblings has the same noise thing I do, though possibly more severe.

So, in the coming weeks, I'm hoping to learn a little more about sensory integration dysfunction, particularly how the occupational therapy used to treat it may or may not be able to help me. Though it's nowhere near severe, I'd say it's enough to make me avoid certain social situations, and that's just not necessary.

moving?

Maybe! To a house!
Just renting, though.
My sister and I went and took a tour of it on a whim last night. Since the house is also for sale, I wasn't sure it'd even be a viable option.

Pros:

• No smoke seeping through walls
• Our noise only around us
• Two-car garage, plus option of a pole shed
• Four bedrooms; kitchen, dining room, living room with hardwood floors; some sort of sunroom
• Really awesome gigantic deck out back
• Firepit
• Fireplace
• Property backs up to a creek
• Property is just outside of town, about 1/5 mile from our parents
• Property is also nearby the end of a major walking/biking trail that connects to town
• I could get newspaper subscriptions because we'd have a dropbox on the road

Cons:

• Space is not as 'divided' as we intended to find -- i.e. no possibility of unofficial subletting, sharing pretty much everything
• Only one bathroom, really; a second is in the scary basement
• Basement gets a little water sometimes, but, we would probably never go down there
• No dishwasher, but we also don't have dishwashers right now
• Really ... bold paint colors. But, we are allowed to repaint. One of the three of us is a licensed contractor with a painting business.

withdrawal

No. Really. Medical withdrawal. 70 percent sure.

Why withdrawal sucks:

• You get dizzy
• You get cranky because you're dizzy
• You get cranky because you can't stop the dizziness
• You get cranky about being cranky
• You're also sleepy
• You're cranky about biology
• The world keeps going even though you're tired
• The alternative to withdrawal is not withdrawing.
• 'The cure is worse than the disease.'

I had decided for a number of reasons to stop using my anti-depressant. One of the reasons being that the reasons I was depressed in the first place were more or less gone. I stopped taking a full week before I started feeling like crap. There's still a chance I'm actually just sick. But basically I'm darn irritable and not happy about it. And it feels like someone is blowing a fan through my brain waves to ward them off.

Also, I don't want to be forever using this stuff. It's maddening that what I am naturally is this. If I choose to add chemicals, I can be something else. But it's not natural.

out driving

One of my goals for the spring is to take lots of pictures. This is my first spring back in this area, and it seems it's only now that I've lived elsewhere (similar as it is) that I see the beauty of this region. Especially the history.

Part of seeing that beauty is getting to it. Like I did in Iowa, I enjoy driving. It's just too bad it wears on a car, eats gas, harms the environment, etc. But the last two Saturdays I've been able to take short trips.

Above and below are scenes from an old church I'd heard existed about 10 miles away. Saw last week that it's on the cover of a book we have at the office. A dear friend is getting married there this summer -- hope I'm invited.

A few notes about the region:

• As soon as you head east from here, you head into one of the hilliest regions of the state -- reminiscent of the river bluffs along the Mississippi.
• A fun thing about driving here -- even though I've lived here most of my life -- is that the roads are not predictable, not even close to the straight Iowa grid systems. It's a bit like the goofiness of Sioux City... but not so aggravating. Highway X goes south out of town ... for a mile. Then it goes straight east. For instance this church photographed. I knew it was out east toward a small village, but I wasn't sure which road off Highway X went to that village. It took four whimsical turns off the road I chose to very luckily arrive there.
• Because this area is somewhat more populated, you get the fun historical spots of Iowa, only more of them and not so far apart, and they're a few years older.
• Yay for hills, and trees, and a state park nearby.
• Yay for old barn and abandoned houses that haven't been torn down.
• Yay for creeks and bridges and villages.
• Yay for Car Talk, which is on the radio at a good driving hour.
• Boo for roads without shoulders, so that you can't pull over and take a photo very easily.
• Boo for poor transportation funding statewide, which means the roads are full of bumps and potholes.
• Yay for all the historic churches and schoolhouses still standing.
• Boo for a cloudy, cold April so far, even though we need the rain.