Dream report: goth boots, renovations, and a terrarium.

Dream report, from my nap just now. (TLDR) Never mind me; I do this.

I was so tired and was like “why am I staying awake; it’s Saturday?” I lay down for a nap and was out fast. I went into a deep sleep for an hour and a half. Weird dream.

I was at my condo in Sarasota. I parked in the carport and the person next door got home and put like 5 pairs of big gothic boots down at her door on the way in. I asked her if they were her shoes. She seemed young for a 55+ community; she was maybe my age, or a little younger. She said yeah, but I could have them. I walked over to her door and saw inside along the wall were racks of videos and cassette tapes along the wall. I thought that was a good idea; I had so many video tapes and cassette tapes. I saw that she had a Skinny Puppy VHS. It was the 1996 video collection.

Her daughter came home. She was super tan, like too tan really, with dark hair and side braids, wearing a bikini top and jeans, I think. Looked like a crusty bartender from a beach bar. She passed by me and went inside. They started talking amongst themselves. I moved on, looked for my car and realized I had parked it at the wrong condo. Went to find it. (It wasn’t my actual car in the dream.)

As I headed towards where I thought I had parked it, a big construction excavator scoop was throwing dirt everywhere. I got to my car, and it looked like a tractor had driven over it. It was dirty and covered with tracks, but was unharmed, so I got in to move it to the right place. Some old man was walking around the circle, so when I was trying to move it down the road and across, I backed in between 2 other cars on the side of the road first, to get out of his way. He shook his head at me, because that wasn’t a parking spot, and kept walking while scowling at me disapprovingly. I drove off, around the circle, did a donut in the road and headed back to my condo. I had apparently inherited this condo from some older lady who I didn’t know. There was some stuff in there.

The lights were dim. I couldn’t get them to turn on fully. My friend Garrett was there, and he was going to do some work on the condo for me. He was asking me what I wanted done. I started telling him some things. As I was telling him, I walked into the next room. In the center of that room was a large rectangular thing, about 7′ long x 5′ wide x 8′ tall. It had vertical sections about 2-3 feet tall, in which there were various pets.

I told my friend, “oh my, there are bunnies in here, and a bunch of fish” They probably need fed; I don’t know how long this lady has been gone. I don’t know how to feed fish. Can you help me? And what about these bunnies? There are so many of them.

My friend came in the room, climbed in the top section of the thing, all sideways-like. There was some sort of jungle environment with a parrot (a Red Lored Amazon parrot) perched on a rope in there. There was also a chicken (a hen) in there, and some other animals I couldn’t see in that top jungle section. He had his whole body in there, lying inside the top of the terrarium, and he grabbed the parrot by the body. I warned him that the bird was probably going to bite him. The bird bit him. He let it go. Then the hen grabbed the parrot and stuffed it in her mouth, like a magic trick, and the parrot popped it’s head out of her mouth. They had done this trick before, it seemed.

I told Garrett that I definitely needed the electrical worked on soon, because it was way too dark in there, and that I would probably need a cat door to go from the living room into the screened area, which I wanted made into an enclosed sunroom. He was out of the terrarium by then.

Then I woke up, with a headache.

If you read all of that, you really need to find something else to do with your Saturday. And so do I, now that I brain dumped that here and my headache went away in doing so.

every single year on 321

This is such a difficult day. Your day, Tommy. I wish I could undo all the hurt.

I read things, from that time of life, and really just can’t believe what I’m reading.

I don’t need or want anything from you. I am so, so sorry for how things went.

I just want to undo all the hurt. I hope that you don’t hurt. I’m ok, for the most part, these days.

But every single year, on this day, forever, I honor you and the things that you taught me about myself.

I wish you well. I hope that you don’t ever think of me if doing so causes you to hurt at all. Be well.

Namaste.

2024 Little Rock Marathon

On March 3, 2024, I completed full Marathon and U.S. State at Little Rock Marathon. I encountered a couple Atlanta friends at the airport when I was headed over there. It was cool seeing them and it also worked out nicely since I had a ride to the hotel. (I didn’t rent a car since I was staying within walking distance of the start line.)

The Residence Inn was a reasonable rate for a full studio with kitchen and it was very near the start and finish.

I forgot to bring my SpiBelt race bib toggles with me, and I had a mild panic when I realized this, because I didn’t want to wear a shirt, just a sports bra, for the race, since it was going to be hot. I ended up solving the problem by using hair ties in the same manner. It worked! Now I know.

My pre-race meal was some grilled Red Snapper with veggies, black beans, and rice, and some fried pickles, at The Flying Fish. It was delicious.

They put on a great race in Little Rock; I’ve got to hand it to the race director. He made an excellent call in moving the start time to 6am from 8am this year, a decision that was made during race week when the weather predicted unseasonably hot and humid weather. There was great communication about this change, everyone is very friendly, they offered real post-race food and good drinks, and it was nice to be able to hang out inside before and after, real bathrooms, cool medal, fun theme. They do it right!

The theme was dinosaurs this year. That was a fun theme! I enjoyed it. Who doesn’t love dinosaurs?

We also got very lucky in that it was overcast. It was still humid and about 5-10 degrees hotter than I would have liked, but it ended up being fine. I’m glad I went with just the sports bra and hydration vest and didn’t also wear a tank top. That would’ve been too much. By the first mile I was already so thankful I opted for less clothing.

It’s a hilly marathon; that’s for sure! Lots of hills but there is one that goes up for 3 miles, between miles 14-17. That was tough! It also finishes with some hills that are pretty tough, but by then I was able to get the finish excitement to push me, and I was trying really hard to get sub 4, so that helped me with the hills at the end as well.

I made a friend who is also running a marathon in all 50 states. He was actually on my same flight over and then we kept running into each other so ended up talking after the race and decided to remain in contact, so that’s cool. I love that part of this journey, meeting fellow 50 states runners all over the country is fun! I also made another friend after the race, a fellow member of the 50 States Marathon Club and Marathon Maniacs who had done over 200 marathons. I need to look him up on the maniac website so we can also keep in touch!

Also, the medal is amazing! It weighs like 5 lbs or something. It’s huge and really cool!

After I finished the race, a reporter interviewed me and it ended up in the paper. Never mind that the reporter referred to Peachtree Road Race runners as “marathoners” (which I obviously didn’t say), but they interviewed me after the race and it’s in the paper. Here is the link (I’m not sure how long it will work but here it is): https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/mar/04/little-rock-marathon-finish-lines/ and here is the screenshot I took of the bit about me.

I made a race video to put on my Facebook profile and on my YouTube Channel.
Here is the video:

Go ahead and follow my FB and please Like, Subscribe, and Comment on my YouTube.
I’d love to hear from you!!! Thanks!

2024 Mesa Marathon

I ran my 27th full marathon in my 14th U.S. State on February 10, 2024 at the Mesa Marathon in Mesa, Arizona. My official finish time was 3:47:20, an 8:40 pace. It was 25 seconds slower than my marathon personal record, which I had achieved in 2017 at the Marine Corps Marathon.

The start of the race was weird. It started late. I never heard the national anthem. I didn’t even hear a countdown or a horn or gun to begin. People started moving and it was like “oh, we’re going now?”

I really enjoyed myself for about the first 10 miles, but then the rain picked back up. I got cold, my feet were soggy, and my legs tightened up. The crowd thinned out. I started to lose my focus mentally as I began to worry, and I fell out of the game emotionally. Fast people were passing me, and, without the crowd support, this was pulling me further and further out of my confidence zone, which I really needed to get myself through it. I stopped filming to conserve what energy I could. I turned the camera back on at the end.

My goal had been 3:45, which would have given me a 10-minute buffer on the qualifying standard (3:55) for what my age group (F 50-54) will be at the 2025 Boston Marathon. I have a 7:40 buffer with this time, which is still most likely adequate to secure my entry. Only once in recent history was a greater buffer needed, and that was in 2021 when they had reduced the field size by 10,000 participants due to the pandemic. So, in all probability, I will be able to celebrate my 50th Birthday at the Boston Marathon. My birthday is the week prior, and I really want to have a huge 50th birthday celebration with 30,000 runners on the streets of Boston. This is meant to be. It will almost make it ok that I missed out on my other BQ (because it got cancelled in 2020) if I can celebrate my 50th with my first run of the Boston Marathon.

This is my GoPro footage from the first half race and the finish.

Please like and subscribe to My YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/@pinarosana! Are you also a member of the 50 States Marathon Club, Marathon Maniacs, or the Atlanta Track Club? Do you run? Are thinking about running marathons? Maybe you stumbled upon this post some other way and just want to say hello? I’d love to hear from you; leave a comment.

(You can also subscribe to this blog if you like, while you’re at it.)

Here are all my posts in the category of running.
Here are all my posts that are tagged marathon.

Thanks!

chimera – PRP mixtape 11 – February 2024

Since the Lunar New Year is tomorrow, I wanted to get this mixtape out first, as it represents the songs of my past couple months, and I will want to start a new one in the new lunar year. As always, this isn’t necessarily new music, although some of it may be. It’s just what I’ve been listening to recently. Let me know what you think. Subscribe to my page for more mixtapes, along with running and marathon stuff, cave diving, writing, quotes, and just bits of my personal journal. I can’t really have a proper blog because the stuff I share is all so unrelated to each other, so I just publish a window into my life, for anyone who wants to be a part of it. Welcome to my world. Stay a while.

A reminder that Spotify introduced a new feature in 2023 that allows listeners to exclude a playlist from their taste profile. It’s a great option for when you are listening to someone else’s stuff from their profile, or you have guests visiting, and you aren’t sure you want Spotify crafting playlists for you based upon their taste. If you want to explore my playlists and not have it affect your listening profile and song suggestions on Spotify, here’s how to use the handy “exclude from my taste profile” feature.

1 – Wisborg – Fall From Grace
2 – Love Ghost, Skold – Payback
3 – Rotersand – Silence
4 – Varials – Romance
5 – Necessary Response – Vapor
6 – Nostalghia, Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard – Plastic Heart
7 – Cyberaktif – Nothing Stays
8 – Emilie Autumn – Swallow
9 – Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows – The HA! Squares
10 – Oceans of Slumber – Poem of Fire
11 – The Cure – Push
12 – Solitary Experiments – Stars
13 – Mindy Jackson, Colt Crevar, Josh Hagee – Desire
14 – Moonspell – Vampiria
15 – Lights Of Euphoria – True Life
16 – Kirlian Camera – Nightglory
17 – Living Things – Oxygen
18 – Ruined Conflict, Lady Wicked Goth – The Silent Ones
19 – Seabound – Scorch the Ground
20 – Rotersand, Evendorff – Grey – Light Grey
21 – Icon Of Coil – Shelter – Single Edit
22 – De/Vision – Who Am I
23 – Beborn Beton – Another World

Here are the other mixtapes: https://pinarosana.wordpress.com/category/mixtape/

Here is my profile on Spotify.

four to transform

I woke up at 4:44 and knew that I wasn’t going to get back to sleep, and so this day began.

The newlywed minister, wearing a bright green shirt, returned, with his new wife, and my Mom, to my condo in Sarasota, at 7am. The three of them had all been out dancing all night. I had been waiting up. The woman introduced herself to me. Her name was November. That was the dream right before I awoke.

I prepared the table, shuffled the deck, and drew a tarot card. It had been over a year since I had done so. I use the Salvador Dali deck. I pulled the 4 of swords.

There was certainly a theme emerging today in the number four. The four of swords represents stress, the need for recovery, and contemplation. The first things I saw in the card were the writing and the serpent. What that meant to me was that writing may allow me to transform myself and emerge from the state I have found myself in of late. It was also cautionary, that I should give great care to my words.

So be it. This was already the plan, but the card confirmed it.

There were a few other things:

  • The recurrence of the 4. This number represents foundation and grounding, as in the four seasons of the year or the four suits in the deck. It also has an association, for me, to death, although not in the literal sense. Tetraphobia is common among Asian cultures due to the similar sound of the word for four to the word for death. I am not afraid of the number, anymore, although I once was, as I have evolved to understand it as the transformation that death implies, rather than a literal end.
  • The green shirt on the minister in my dream. Green symbolizes life, healing, and renewal to me.
  • The idea that the minister was newlywed and had his new wife with him. A wedding symbolizes a literal death, generally, in my dreams. But this was after the wedding; there was no wedding in my dream. This was the rebirth. The new life, together.
  • The woman’s name, November, and the fact that my Mom, who was also born in November, was present. This one is a little harder for me to be sure of, but with November I associate primarily Scorpio, and secondarily Sagittarius. Scorpio’s symbol is the scorpion, which to me is representative of self-protection, the ability to thrive in a harsh environment, passion, and power. I don’t have any particular individual association with the centaur, but Sagittarius represents to me many good people I’ve known throughout my life, who played key roles during pivotal times for me. November is the 11th month, an angel number, and I have associated with that month the conquering of fear because of what I chose to do on November 11, 1998 (make my first skydive, to honor the Navy SEALs who my emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend had dishonored by lying and claiming to have been a SEAL.)

Those various symbols and associations may be irrelevant, but I can tie the theme together through the concept of transformation and regeneration, so I think that unification makes them relevant. Today is groundhog day. The groundhog did not see his shadow; they say this implies an early Spring. Spring would be associated with the color green, as in the color of the minister’s shirt, and also with rebirth.

Four to transform, so mote it be.

February 2024

I’m going to try to do a thing. It is a thing that I’ve never tried to do before. If I told you what it was, you would think that it’s nothing, but it’s definitely not nothing for me. I won’t tell you what it is until later because 1.) it sounds stupid and 2.) I might not succeed. I might tell you even if I don’t succeed, or I might not. Not sure yet.

This is just a placeholder of my intent, because that might help me.

Carry on.