Book Clubs and Dreams

I went to two book clubs this week!

First, on Wednesday night I went to "Classics and Cocktails" at a local wine bar. The meeting was relatively small, but the company was good and the wine was wonderful. The founder of the book club did an excellent job picking some Spanish wines to pair with The Sun Also Rises. We did not talk as much about the book as I expected to, perhaps next time I will bring or suggest discussion questions to spark conversation.

Then, last night (Thursday), I went to the ordinary book club that I have been in for a very long time. The location was sort of a strange coincidence- a part of Columbus I did not even know existed until I helped a friend move into the vicinity a week or two ago. As I have mentioned, this book club was about David Sedaris' Engulfed in Flames. I found myself being much more amused when remembering certain stories than I was when I first read it, a sign perhaps that the reason I did not fully enjoy it was because unreasonable expectations. Anyways, the food was delicious and the conversation was a lot of fun.

Very strangely, and somewhat amusingly, last nights book club lead to a very strange dream. Very strange indeed. I dreamt that my family (parents, siblings, and I) were moving, and when we got to the new house it was in the same neighborhood as bookclub was held last night, in fact the property we were buying touched the property of the girl who had book club. However, the house was very strangely situated, it was very close to another house and the property did not touch the street - you had to cross other peoples property to get to it! Also, the lot seemed very very tiny, much smaller than we expected. It did not take us long to figure out that the neighbors were using our property - one neighbor had lawn chairs and a TV set up on what was supposed to be our lawn, others had their deck built on it. My Dad took care of that while we went to meet the neighbors. After my dad figured out our exact property lines he started building a privacy fence at random around the property - across the other persons deck, etc. At one neighbor's house we realized that we had left a lot of belongings in their house (as if we had lived their before, though I don't remember living their before!!). We went in to remove our things - mostly random relics from my own history- giant stuffed bunnies, boxes of school work from when we were little, etc etc etc. As we removed these things the people who owned the house, who had never seemed nice, seemed to get more and more aggravated, but we could not figure out why - they did not want this crap in their house, they just seemed really pissed at us for existing. We had a lot of trouble moving stuff out of the house as well - it was very difficult at times either for completely logical (things were heavy and awkward) or completely illogical (the house was tilting so much it was hard to walk into) reasons. There were cats their watching us move things - both our cat Gandalf and these neighbor cats. Gandalf seemed to really like their house. Anyways, we kept thinking we were done moving things and then finding another stash. Eventually we were down to just one closet of stuff, and it was my stuff. We went to enter, and they blocked our way and said enough was enough and they were not letting us back in to get the last bit of stuff. I was so frustrated and furious. We seriously needed like 10 more minutes to get everything out, but they would not listen to reason. Then I rememberd that the book club host had said she hd some crazy neighbors and that we must be living next to them! Eventually we had to give in, it was technically already their house after all, and just made them promise that if they were going to throw the stuff out they would give it to us instead. Thats the last bit I remember.

Yeah. Long, drawn out. Messed up dream! It clearly was seizing on a number of themes from book club - the neighborhood, crazy neighbors, people using other peoples yard for inappropriate activities, people threatening to throw other people's belongings out, cats, strange privacy fences. Book Club - Get out of my head! LOL

So yeah, thats my update. I have some stuff today I am really nervous about, but I can't say much more than that right now. Eventually...

Bis Spaeter!