Numbers

(importantly: Happy Birthday to my 4 year old nephew James Austin! I hope you enjoy the Darth Vader Tater Head we got for you!)
As our time to move to Richmond draws nearer, my sleep is fitful and my dreams are unpleasant. Yesterday morning I was en route to work, battling I-285 for hopefully the twelfth to the last time (yes I'm counting it down...we live at Exit 18 and my work is off Exit 26, right where Georgia 400 Northbound or Southbound cars line up for regular morning bumper to bumper chaos...anyone who has ever driven a car in Atlanta can quickly do the math and attest, Ohh, that sucks...I drive what quite possibly may be the most vile 8-mile commute in the greater metro area. Trust me. It's never been driven in under 25 minutes, not by my vehicle and I lean into the gas pedal with quite a bit of lead weight, thank you very much). In my car I listen to 99x (Craig introduced me to Toucher, Jimmy and Leslie, the alternative station's morning show, way back when we first settled into our respective commutes). T, J & L is sometimes scandalous, sometimes offensive, sometimes confusing and always hilarious and accompanies my Commute of Inexplicable Unrest daily. So anyway, yesterday they were showcasing some lunatic who has been fired from his job after drawing himself the conclusion that he's a prophet and messenger and he's weird and the deejays are poking absolute fun of him, declaring they believe him to the point of leaving town because he announced that Atlanta was going to blow up on 11/11 and so forth. That said, the number 11 is a significant element of his prophetic endeavors. I listened only half-interestedly, laughing when their mockery of him became outrageous and ridiculous enough. However then I pulled into work, sat at my desk and without really meaning to, began to calculate the sum of the digits of our new address: 2+4+1+1 plus apartment number 1+1+1 equals 11! In addition to the fact there are already pairs of eleven making multiple appearances throughout. Craig assured me it is unreasonable to worry. So I blew that off pretty quickly, but now then all of the joking I've been doing about ghosts in our new apartment, which was previously a confederate hospital for Alabama soldiers circa the 1850's and 1860's, has now become a more serious thought festering in my little overreactive imagination. I've never seen one, never believed I'd ever see one. Then again, when was the last time I slept in a place where someone has perished? Not only that, but someone unsettled by military allegiances?? And possibly never identified and buried in his home state? Nevertheless, I do still look forward to moving to Richmond. Ghosts or no ghosts. I'm just overwhelmed enough, just enough, that my dreams have turned Craig into a bad guy. Sunday night I dreamed that we were the last people on the planet, literally. He was wearing a purple pro basketball jersey. He wanted to break up with me. I was the only other person on the planet and he wanted to break up with me. Last night I dreamed there were other girls. Nothing lucid, I just knew there were other girls. That one, while vague and foggy, actually had me angry at him this morning while he was in the shower. Poor guy.*Speaking of Craig, good Craig, that is, not fictional dream Craig who evidently is not treating me very well recently, last night we fell asleep in respective parts of the apartment while respective TV's were on. When we both woke to do the Get Ready for Bed Thing, he informed me that I again won fantasy football for the week. I told him through thick sleep that "I'm a powerhouse." He laughed from a very nice deep place and told me that that was one of the cutest things I've ever said (ever Craig? Come on!) Then he proceeded to call me a "dynasty." Then the two of us proceeded to discuss Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven," "The Telltale Heart," and the fact that possibly Edgar Allan Poe lived to see our apartment building (the latter which I disproved this morning when I learned he died in 1849, before our building was erected). It was all very precious, Craig and I transitioning so smoothly between professional sports and literary classics discussions.*Another thing is that I do genuinely want to discuss James Frey's memoir, but I want to get deeper in, first. And another thing is how cute it is for Craig and I, while contemplating the packing project, to debate whether to throw certain things out such as bottles of perfectly good unopened cocktail sauce (which I've since designated to escort cocktail shrimp to AB and MB's Thanksgiving extravaganza next weekend...) and half-pint sized collectors' cups from the batters' club at old Busch Stadium. Granted, I did have 6 of them. We agreed to keep 2.