endo blast

Woke up from a dreamful sleep last night. Somebody handed me an elaborate, brightly wrapped box. Inside was a present: a calendar. It represented the gift of a year.

After my careful reading of Orland T. Outland's thought-provoking fiction, I've had protease-inhibitors on my mind. I can't imagine what it must have been like for the author, who is living positive and had given up on everything. Suddenly, his life was handed back to him by the new drugs and his mother nursed him back to health.

I just finished Outland's book "Different Lives," due out this fall. (I love preview copies. I feel so in the loop whenever I get a sneak preview.)

So my dream was about Outland's wonderful prose. And it was also about going to bed with a full stomach. Well, not exactly a full stomach. I went to bed with the warm, glowing, golden feeling of satisfaction that always follows pleasant conversation. (Belly laughs and silly jokes always make for a high level of endorphine production.)

And it's been a while since I've had a good shot of the ol' endos. (Excepting, of course, my thrice-weekly runs, I haven't gotten them since my heady getting-to-know-you conversations with Steven last summer.)

So the endorphine rush was a thankful addition to my evening. It was brought on by fond recollections of Tonka trucks, nostalgia for J-land and the sparkling conversation that is engendered by new acquaintanceship. There's something so fascinating about the mysterious voice of a stranger on the phone.

The image in the dream might have been (partially) from Mira Kirshenbaum's women's empowerment book, "Gift of a year," where she admonishes women to take a year out of their busy lives to do EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT TO DO. Reading this fluffy little women's lib book was comforting. It filled in my quiet morning desk hours not that long ago.