I dropped the Catalan course because it was not only too easy being so similar to Spanish and Italian but also because the audio files were HORRIBLE! It seems only the major languages have decent audio files. So I tried Russian, but it was way too hard because I would first have to take the time to learn their lettering system and didn’t want to bother. So after getting just a 63% on the first lesson, I enrolled in Mandarin as goofy as it sounds being a tonal language and got a 93%! That’s because they at least spell things out phonetically. I’m learning about what seems to be 3 basic tones. I still have to finish up with my German first, though, and always review my other languages. I’ll probably always be best with Spanish and Italian. Well, besides English and ASL, of course.

I think the reason I’m such a language junkie is that it’s like a fun game to me. Like a memory word game. I could not imagine life without 4 things – Tom, my MP3 collection, my journal, and languages. Anything else after that that’s good is just a bonus!

Dreamland was good to me for a change. No hanky panky with Marie, but other interesting things happened. For some reason, I don’t always know Tom in some of my dreams, but Andy was in one of the ones he wasn’t in. I like it when I dream of Andy. It’s like visiting each other without the hassles of really visiting.

I don’t know what state we were supposed to be in, but I was with Laurie M, the Valleyhead staffer I had a crush on. In the first part of the dream, we were in a car. She was driving of course, and even though she was coming up on 70, she still looked like she was in her early 40s like she was when I last knew her. She was worried about her dying soon and leaving me alone.

“Come on, Laurie,” I said. “The average woman dies at 85. We’ve got a good 15 years or so together to look forward to.”

She laughed at that point.

In the next scene which was part of the same dream, we were in our living room and Andy was visiting. He and I were sitting on a couch and Laurie was in a plush rocking chair. Talk of the age difference came up again (though I assure you that in real life I would never get with someone pushing 70 if I were single no matter how young they looked) and one of them asked what I planned to do after Laurie was gone.

“I’ll have to get a small apartment somewhere,” I said.

“Why would you do that?” asked Andy. “You hate living attached to others.”

“Yeah, but I won’t have a choice with her gone because the money will be limited and I couldn’t stand to be here and know she wasn’t coming home,” I said, and then Laurie came out and told me she had a lot of money and I wouldn’t have to settle for an apartment.

I said something like, “Oh, ok,” and Andy told Laurie that at least I didn’t marry her for her money.

So after being married to Laurie M for a few minutes in my dreams, it was off to dream about waking up from a nap in what I knew was mine and Tom’s two-story house. I was in the master bedroom and could hear him rustling around in another bedroom doing a computer project or something. I got out of bed. My hair was longer than it really is.

Tom asked me why good dreams can’t be a sign of good things to come and not just bad dreams being a sign of bad things to come. I don’t know why I have more premonitions warning me of bad things ahead as opposed to good things ahead, but that dream made no sense premonition-wise. Even if we do manage to get a place of our own, why would it have two floors? My parents have two floors, but that’s because it’s a condo. We would never buy a condo so that much made no sense, even though not everything that happens to me happens just the way it did in my dreams. Like the dream, I had in Oregon where I fell from a shower stall that was 20’ high and stood in the middle of a warehouse. I knew trouble was ahead when I had that dream, though I certainly never fell 20’. Not since I was 17 anyway.

Another thing that makes no sense is that my hair seemed to be down to my waist. In reality, it’s to the middle of my back right now, but in two years when he gets the pension, it will be just to the crack of my ass.