The View from Up Here

So it's just dawning on some of my coworkers, as we are walking towards their bus stops after work, just how close I live to the new building. Especially when I point and say, "See that one? That's where I live."

But all flowers and gravy it never is. And where did that idiom come from? Or is it to early for me to think straight?

Did I ever recount (okay, too early if I'm using that word) the tale of us looking at the apartment back in May/June of '09? You know, last decade? When we may have seen a rocker and a baseball player in the hallways? Both being this place's claim to fame? (Both most likely having moved out as people like us vs. people like them start renting space here...another story all together.)

Anyhow, so as we were given the grand tour I noticed that the HUGE neon-looking sign out the windows that face both bedrooms. "Does that thing light up?" I asked.

"Oh, no, no no. It's just a sign."

I was a wee bit disappointed, simply because it was REALLY BIG and I thought that there had to be a catch and/or maybe a way to get the rent reduced if, say, we had to live with a huge neon sign burning our retinas every night. But the rent was super reduced anyway and we decided to take it.

Sometime around November I noticed that there was great movement on and around the hotel with regards to refurbishing. Especially the lights and lamps that give it it's particular...um, whatchucallit...personality. They are either fuchsia or purple you see. Outside lamps. Shining on huge pots of flowers. (If I've mentioned this hotel or you've stayed there, you don't have to let everyone know where I live, but now you know....although I may have blabbed this somewhere along the line anyway...I do that...)

Where was I? Right...lights...refurbishing...cuz you know, winter is DARK and maybe they need to let more people know where they are? Was it around xmas time that they finished? I want to say so...And January is traditionally the darkest time of the year in Seattle...and I mean, you have to bring in the customers somehow...after all, the name side of the sign points out to the world...but the "HOTEL" side? Right towards our building...and it's pink:There isn't even an alleyway between us from this view...seriously must have been there back when my building was a parking lot or something. It's about as high as the 8th floor...i.e. they are the ones whose retinas are probably all burnt out by now. Or maybe they are even more sleep deprived than I am with the fuchsia glow coming in THROUGH THE CLOSED BLINDS and reflecting vividly across the walls of the bedroom.

This morning? While over-thinking my latest dream in the shower***? I realized maybe why I'm having so many god-awful dreams with pain and death and chasings and knives and mean parents and a constant flashing pink hotel sign somewhere in the middle of it all...

Back in May/June, I remember joking that it would be the bomb if it was a flashing hotel sign where the neon was giving up the ghost like in all those creepy killer movies from the 80s...And in my dreams? It flashes.

~

***On a semi-drifting off topic...I want to note this here for me more than anything...dreams about parents...I've been having a lot of them lately. Not memory dreams...not always my parents, just parents, interacting with their kids, all pretty much in the same way. No, this is not me wanting children, possibly the exact opposite.

The conclusion I came to as I was rinsing the conditioner out of my hair is that my folks, who wanted me to be more learned and accomplished and successful than they were, kept fighting against my teen-aged self when I did become at least more learned and accomplished than them...because it's one thing to fill a person's head with all this "stuff"...and quite another for them to grow into it. (And oh my gods how I thought I knew EVERYTHING when I was sixteen and why are these people holding me back!)

I don't dwell on the "what would have beens," it just gives me indigestion. Besides, I knew then, even if they refused to see it, that it was completely against their mexican natures to let me be the american teenager I wanted to be. What I wouldn't have given to have them come to this conclusion sooner. See, raising two kids and seeing how they came out before my baby brother even hit puberty? Oh how they've changed...old fashioned they might still think themselves (and ACKNOWLEDGE), and too strict and mean my BB may think them...but man, he has NO IDEA how easy he has it.