In a couple of hours when my husband gets home from work we're hitting the road for San Diego to see my son's homecoming on the USS Nimitz Tuesday morning. Naturally I couldn't sleep much last night. Even the dog seemed to know something was up. (He's at my mother-in-law's house for the duration. I took him over this morning and he seemed pleased with his new digs.) I had to go buy new makeup, the waterproof kind that won't slide off my face because I get quite emotional in this kind situation. Even parades make me tear up. I'm so excited that I'm working in my office, blogging this, got laundry going, irrigating the citrus trees out back, and picking up the house all at the same time. You'd think I downed a pot of the thickest black coffee to ever be brewed. But it keeps me busy because I'm not what you'd call a patient person. I want to go now! And I know when J gets home I'll get frustrated with him because I just want to throw the ice chest in the truck and go but he'll want to change his clothes and get a thermos of juice and check all the doors and windows and call his mom...at the pace of a turtle. He's ex-military himself so he's rather anal retentive about checking and rechecking and making sure nothing is left behind or in the wrong place or unlocked...which is good, because I'm definitely not that sort. Well, I've got to boil some eggs and wash the truck windows so it's off the computer with me!

This morning I had a dream that is still so clear in my mind that I think I should write it down. Apparently I'd been gone for some time and a friend was supposed to be taking care of my birds. I walked into a room full of cages and all the birds were dead. They were these little brown things, like finches, and I went from cage to cage but they were all dead. There were no water or food cups in the cages. No perches. Just the dead birds.

"What happened to all my birds?" I ask my friend. In the dream I think of her as my friend, but in reality I don't recognize this person at all. She doesn't look like anyone I know in real life.

"They didn't want to eat anymore so I took out their food." She says this very matter-of-factly, no emotion whatsoever.

I woke up feeling uncomfortable because I believe I know what this dream represents to me. It represents my own long-standing struggle with weight issues. Last year my doctor told me he believes I have what is called Syndrome X, or metabolic syndrome, which is a condition that makes losing weight virtually impossible. I won't go into the details because it's too complicated. Briefly, it means that for many different reasons my body chemistry doesn't work normally due to factors like diabetes and the medications I'm on and being right at the edge of menopause.

My husband thinks knowing this should be a relief to me, and maybe it should be, but there's little comfort in knowing that no matter what I do (and I've tried it all) the weight just won't come off. My doctor says he hopes that once I'm fully menopausal that the condition may subside as he has had a few female patients who were able to once they entered menopause.

I think this dream was triggered by a conversation I had with a male friend last night who also has weight problems. He loses 50 pounds in a few weeks, then gains it all back in a few days. I said to him, "I can't stand it anymore. Sometimes I wish I were dead. That's the only way I'm ever going to lose weight."

Then I came home, went to bed, and woke up early this morning with this dream that I know is going to bounce around in my head for days because it's like a light went on. An "A-ha!" moment, you might call it.

Now if I could just go back to sleep and dream the solution.

I abhor Jerry Springer. I detest Howard Stern. I despise Ricki Lake and believe she should have stuck to acting and not hosting. I don't watch sitcoms or soap operas. And, except for The Biggest Loser, I consider reality shows a turn for the worst. These things I rate as trash television. But I have a strange fascination with a program called The Bounty Hunter which is a hodgepodge of reality, documentary, and suspense. Every week I tune in to see if Dog Chapman and his gang will get their man, if Beth's fingernails will be flamingo pink or sea green, if the youngest Chapman, little Gary, will have another tantrum, if Leland will have yet another new gadget strapped on to his already jangling display of bounty hunting tools on his belt, or if Dog's boots will have an extra inch on the heel. (Dog, here's a helpful hint that my West Point Army husband gave my Navy son--rub your boots with ice and they will polish up like mirror.)

There are so many ironies involved in this show. Here is a family who works together, plays together, and prays together, yet one of the daughters, Baby Lisa, is introduced to the program after a six or seven year absence with an approximately 3-year-old granddaughter that Dog has never seen. What's the real story here? How can Dog get all teary-eyed over this daughter and granddaughter when it appears he's not visited them in years? And last season nephew Justin, an obviously troubled young man, was being trained as a bounty hunter, yet this season he is gone without an explanation. I suspect this is due to his run-ins with Beth and his sometime inability to bow to the authority of his aunt and uncle who took him in. (There was something about him burning down his mother's house before he joined the Chapman's in Hawaii.) Tim (Youngblood), Dog's brother, is married to a Samoan woman and this is sometimes helpful for the bounty hunters as much of their prey is Samoan and she has an inside track on their culture. He defers to Dog in all matters and credits his brother with all his bounty hunting skills. But sometimes if the camera angle is just right you get a peek at an expression on Tim's face that just says it all, especially his frustrations with Beth as occasionally they clash. But Leland, one of Dog's sons, is my favorite bounty hunter. Well, maybe not the all-time favorite, as I find Beth spices up the show in such a way that if she weren't there clicking her nails and making snide comments on the side to the camera and blowing kisses at the Dog, the show would lose a lot of interest. But Leland has an infectious smile. He is tattooed, wears a braid down his back, and is somewhat akin to Inspecter Gadget with all the geegaws and bells and whistles he carries about his person in the pursuit of criminals. I like to see his interaction with his son, which seems a genuinely loving relationship...two boys out having fun in the sun and surf.

I wouldn't call them ruthless, but they pounce on their prey like it's there ticket to heaven. They wrestle and wrangle and hollar and finally restrain their criminal of the day. They do a little victory dance, high-fives all around, blissful in their ultimate success, and then all of the sudden, once the adrenaline slows down, Dog or Beth and sometimes another of the gang gets into counselor mode and beseeches their captive to get off the ice and be a man, a father, a mother, a better son or daughter, before they die of their sins. They offer cigarettes and bottled water and the occasional sandwich. In one episode Beth even took her own shoes off and gave them to a lady captive so the woman wouldn't have to walk into the jail barefoot. And sometimes they give small amounts of money to people on the street who have helped them in some way, urging them to get something to eat. When a young teenaged boy's mother was arrested, Dog wanted to take him in, but Beth wisely vetoed that as their house is quite full, but they liked the boy so Dog gave him a job doing yard work at the Chapman house while his mother was doing time in order to keep him out of trouble and make sure he had a little money in his pocket.

I can't explain my fascination with this show other than it just proves that nothing is as it seems...or maybe no one is as he/she seems, because if you saw these people on the street you'd probably gawk, your blood pressure would climb, sweat would bead on your forehead, and then you'd start desperately looking around for protection. The odd thing is, they ARE the protection. They're bringing in the people the police can't find, the ones who steal your car and break into your house and grab your purse. Then Beth makes arrangements to post their bond yet again and most of them get right back out of jail. Now that's ironic!

So next Tuesday night you'll know where I'll be...in front of the television taking a gander at Beth's nails, checking out Dog's boots, watching Tim's face for that unguarded moment, and trying to figure out what Leland's tattoos represent.

I'm happy to report that the yard sale is over and I came home with just about nothing...except some extra cash which will contribute to the Thanksgiving feast I'm going to be putting together later this month. My son's ship came in to Hawaii and he called home and said, "Mom, can we fit a few more people at the table?" Because he has shipmates with no where to go. I said, "Of course. When have I ever refused a plate at my table or a bed, even if it's on the floor?" The bed on the floor, that is, and the plate on the table, because I am not nor ever will be Suzie Homemaker and no one except maybe the dog will want to eat off my floors. Justice is not too picky. Even a drip of ice cream fallen from a spoon is heaven to him. So now I think we're up to 16 for Thanksgiving. My son said, "Aren't you just like Grandma!?!?" Because my mom was always the one to host the holidays and she was good at it. That's why she did it almost every year for every holiday. She'd put out a welcome you couldn't pay money for. Now I guess it's my turn. Only now the family is more scattered so they're flying or driving in from out of state. Some are staying in hotels and some are flopping in our house. My husband, who has no family except for his mother and sister, as his mother and father were both only children and so there were no uncles, aunts, or cousins, is a little uncertain about the whole thing, but I think it's going to be great. I'm used to hordes of people coming in and out during the holidays so I'm looking forward to it.

Also, he lost his youngest daughter at age 7 to carbon monoxide poisoning about 10 years ago. He found her on Thanksgiving morning dead on the floor with all her stuffed animals around her. Everyone else survived because they stayed in their beds and this kind of gas lies low on the floor so when she crawled out of bed to lay on her blankies with her stuffed animals, she breathed in too much toxic air and died in her sleep. I'm hoping that having so many people around and so much to do in preparation for the day will keep him distracted and better able to handle it.

I'm pulling out all the stops with turkey AND ham (because I don't like turkey that much except for the skin which is the worst part of the bird with the most fat, of course, and the wing tips, which don't fill you up.) Mashed potatoes, candied yams, roasted asparagus, cranberry relish, homemade rolls, and pumpkin coconut cheesecake just to make sure no one pulls their chair away from the table with even a millimeter of empty space in their bellies. My husband will make his famous (or infamous, depending on how many jalapenos he uses) salsa for chip dipping and probably an icy platter of shrimp with cocktail sauce just to warm everyone up while the game is on and the turkey is still roasting in the oven.

Now, if someone will just come clean my house, I'd be set. My mother is the type that when company was coming she'd wear herself into a frazzle sweeping and dusting and mopping and vacuuming and polishing. She would get down on her hands and knees to pick up off the carpet the tiniest specks of lint that no one would see if they got down and rolled on the carpet. Maybe that's why I'm not so inclined to play Maid of the Year. It's not that my house is dirty, per se, it's just obviously well lived in. It's not so important to me that there's a stack of mail teetering on the coffee table or old newspapers gaining height in a pile on a kitchen chair or dust in every nook and cranny on the entertainment center or a pile of laundry needing to be folded or hung and put out of sight. What is important to me is that my husband gets a good hot meal when he comes home from work and that we take time to talk every day and the dog has had his walk down to the park and some intermittent ball fetching in the backyard, that the bills are paid and the citrus trees are irrigated and I can at least find one pair of shoes that my dog hasn't hidden somewhere, possibly with the dust bunnies under the dry bar.

My mother-in-law said, "We're going to have a yard sale." Emphasis on the 'we'. I don't mind so much except that Saturday is not my day off and that means I have to switch days around. I work at home but I work for a transcription service. They pay me. I have a schedule. I get a regular paycheck. But people get it into their heads that because I work at home, I can take them to pick up their cars from the garage and ferry their kids to school or feed them tea and toast at my house when they're sick, or run packages to the post office. Through the years I've learned that saying no isn't enough. No one hears it. So now I say, "Sure I'll pick up little Johnnie and take him to the soccer field. And afterward I'll come by YOUR office and use the copy machine." This usually works.

But back to the yard sale. I'm not good at it. I'm not good at choosing what to put out on the tables or what price to put on them. I'm not even good at going to other people's yard sales. I never find anything worth carting home that isn't going straight to the deep, dark corner of one of our sheds where it will be home to spiders and apt to ripen with rust. I can't bargain very well, either. Someone offers me $1 for a set of crystal goblets that's worth $100, and I pretty much nod and pack 'em up because I figure they aren't doing anyone any good in bubble wrap...someone ought to enjoy them, and it's $1 I didn't have.

Two years ago when my husband and I were first married, we had enough Christmas items to fill a small shop. Me because I have a tendency to decorate like an elf on a drunk and my husband because he had once collected things for a bed and breakfast he had his heart set on opening. We had a huge yard sale at his sister's house on a busy thoroughfare and between us, his sister and his mom, we drew the crowds in. We sold dozens of strings of lights and artificial trees and glass ornaments, stuffed Santas, neon reindeer, garlands, wreaths, and snow globes. We had boxes of wooden figurines like angels and elves and polar bears. I kept a small box of kiddie ornaments and let each child who got dragged along in the wake of their mom's buying frenzy to choose one item for free. We overheard the secretary at a school for homeless kids make a call on her cell phone to someone, asking how much she could spend of the Christmas budget, and my husband and I made her a deal. We would give her a tree made of white stuffed polar bears and a box of glass ornaments, a collection of nutcrackers, and about 60 feet of hot pink tinsel garland, and she would promise to have the kids send homemade Christmas cards to the sailors where my son was stationed. She made that promise and she kept it, too.

This yard sale I've got a nice white couch, some glassware and dinnerware, books, videos, and the usual generic stuff you're likely to see in most driveways. Nothing to make you want to get up at 6AM and load the truck, drive to your destination, unload the truck, and then sit all day making smalltalk with the natives while they paw through your stuff that all of the sudden you think you've made a mistake putting up for sale because some day that brass camel incense burner could look stunning in the den or your mother might find out you sold the lime green flip-flops with the purple sequins she sent you for your birthday that you wouldn't even wear to water the lawn.

So tomorrow I've got to call my office and switch my schedule around, scrounge through the house for enough items to sell to make it all worthwhile, decide on prices, and pack it all up. I think I'd rather take little Johnnie to his soccer practice.