Aaron and I had a much-needed vacation day yesterday. The house is still a mess from the whirlwind of making Sushi Cupcakes-- it is sooooooo easy to mess up a studio apartment in a very short amount of time with almost no effort! Not so easy to restore it to neutral!

We decided though, instead of spending the day cooped up and cleaning, that we would have a day to ourselves with an excursion. I love him and I love our life. It reminds me of that Sunny & Cher song so often: They say our love won't pay the rent\ before it's earned our money's all been spent...

So yes. We may not have a pot but I got him... babe.

We went to.......................... THE ZOO!

At first I thought it would be awkward to go to the zoo without having children, but when we arrived at Southwick on "Multiples get in half-price" day, on the second-to-last sunday before school starts back up, we were actually quite relieved and grateful not to have any children in tow! Those little tag-a-longs would've just slowed us down!

We had a great time. Neither of us had been to this particular zoo and it was quite a decent little zoo and pretty affordable too. I think my favorite part was toward the end of our adventure when we finally took advantage of the "combo bracelets" we'd purchased upon admission and we rode the "skyfari"; a sort of ski-lift cruise above the park. We had such a fun, relaxing time we asked to ride it again immediately! It was about the only time during the day that we got to be alone and more than 10 feet away from clusters of loud, sweaty, grumpy, whiney, other people!

After the Zoo we went to TGIFridays because Aaron had never ever been to one and decided that was UnAmerican. Turns out Aaron is pretty UnAmerican because TGIFridays did not have a single, not one single entree that did not contain meat of some variety. He ended up ordering the 5 cheese macaroni and cheese which is designed to come with bacon and a grilled chicken breast on top- but he ordered it sans meat. It came with the warning that the plate was super hot (which it was), but guess what? The macaroni was chilly! I mean just-got-it-out-of-the-fridge-cold. Yuck. They took it back, microwaved it a while longer and gave it back at an acceptable temp. pretty unimpressive.

My Mojitos were great though!

We'd planned on catching a film after Friday's but decided to go home where we could stretch out and be naked LOL, and we downloaded a few horror film from blockbuster online instead.

Layaing in bed later I revisited a topic that had been on my mind that morning before the zoo. I'd spent a good half-hour looking up online dream decphering websites to try and figure out the symbolism behind a very vivid dream I'd had the night before. It isn't often I remember any details of my dreams and this one seemed to mean SOMETHING so I started delving into it. Two parts stood out (though I knew the dream was longer and more intricate the only residue that was still remaining were just two measly parts, like the small stain after you wipe up a big spill...).

First: Aaron and I were touring an old, very typical new-england basement. The only thing a-typical about the basement was that it was completely empty of stuff. just the bare-bones basement. It had low ceilings, exposed pipes, a hard-packed dirt floor and stone walls that had been whitewashed at some point but were now peeling paint. I remember Aaron and I were having a tiff about something and I was vaguely annoyed and bitchy.

The other thing was very realistic in that I was in my own apartment, waking up and climbing out of my loft bed as I do on any typical morning and heading to the bathroom to pee. When I got there there were two or three large rat dropping on the toilet lid and one or two in the sink. The rat was nowhere in sight but the evidence was undeniable: we had a rat problem.

What did this all mean? Well I got a lot of stuff about basements meaning intuition and rats being symbols for blahblahblah, ut nothing seemed to fit. I puzzled over what intuition really means anyway and tried to figure out if my feminine intuition was trying to tell me something.

Aaron finally said: How did you feel about it? In the dream? How did it make you feel?

I was so wrapped up in the visual imagery, the symbolism of the actual things, that I hadn't given this aspect a single thought. None of the dream interpretation sites on the web had mentioned this perspective either.

Laying there in bed with my husband I tried to recall how I felt in the moment of the dream.

"Well, the rat poop made me feel annoyed, I guess..."
"Just annoyed?"
"Well... I sort of felt like I felt when we heard that second mouse scraping at the wall in the bathroom after we'd already found Wally and two dead ones... like:Here we go again! what else could go wrong... kind of like I was half expecting it somehow..."

He was quiet for just a fraction of a minute, making sure I was done before he said: "I think that has a lot to do with all the unpleasant surprises life's been throwing you lately, and your anxiety about what else might be coming around the corner that you'll have to deal with: like the alternator, my van's check engine light, hidden costs that keep cropping up everywhere..."

As he spoke to me I got irrationally tense and anxious. I'd never thought of that stuff as being related to the rat poop but it made sense. It wasn't a nightmare in that we were swarmed with rats or that a big scary rat with red eyes and fangs was after me, but it was much more like life: here's the evidence of something not good and now we have to expend time. money and effort to root out the problem and restore our home to neutral.

Then he asked me about the basement.

"I was annoyed at you" I said.
"But what else- how did you feel about the peeling paint?"
Now up to this point I'd been trying to think of the symbolism behind the peeling paint in the basement and not examining how I FELT about it...
"Um, like it was messy but expected."
"How did the mess make you feel?"
"Tired." this answer surprised me even as I said it.
"What do you mean?"
"Sort of resigned to it."
"Resigned?"
"Yeah like: this is a mess and I'm going to have to clean it up. I didn't make the mess obviously, and it made me tired to look at it, but it was inevitable, It needs to get done and I am going to have to do it."
There was just a breath of a quiet moment before he said: "I think that one has to do with how you feel about your parents."

Before a breath could even go by I said "Ohhhhh Nooooo" and began to sob uncontrollably.

It was really wild. I want to get this all down because as an actor I'm in the business of emotion and tapping into all this stuff and I'd spent a day trying to puzzle out some imaged and symbols and with one word Aaron managed to tap into this well of emotion I didn't even know I was carrying inside me.

I consider myself very in touch with my emotions- they are always ready and available for me to tap. Its a great help as an actor!

But this? It was WILD! It was like he hit a button. Simple as that. Flipped a switch. The :Sob Uncontrollably for five-ten minutes button.

Of course he cuddled me and calmed me down and I kept apologizing and saying: "I don't know where this came from.." and he murmured all kinds of wisdom and I felt such relief.

I tell you. He should go into business. He laughed at this suggestion and chalked it up to another non-existant career that he'd be great at!

But I think it was amazing.

Eerie, but amazing.

Now That's intuition!