Catching up with The Sopranos and Laura's Psyche

I had a dream that I was in some fabulous city with some fabulous people, but that's about all I remember. In the last part, I had to walk through a parking lot, and was supposed to tip this woman, and kept giving her quarters, but she started crying and would not accept them. It was like the quarters were not real money. Even after I'd given her 2 dollars in quarters. I finally gave up. And a guy was asking me why I had so much money in my purse - I had wads of cash, along with all of those quarters in my bag. Then Harrison woke me up.

I think all the cash was from watching The Sopranos last night. Woohoo! So great to see that show again! The last time it was on was June 2004, the month Harrison was born. In fact, my water broke during a contraction while watching the show! Fortunately it was at the end, and it was TiVoed so I didn't need to miss anything. But then I wonder if Harrison is going to be a violent boy because of the influence right before his birth. Haha.

But then the show also reminds me of my father, and that brings back to me that he was still alive to watch the last season of The Sopranos, and now he isn't. He won't get to see the final episodes. I don't know why I think of my father, as he wasn't in the mafia, and wasn't a violent guy. He was sort of like a kinder, gentler, slimmer version of Tony, though. He was a little stocky, had Tony's partial baldness, loved cigars...I remember watching The Sopranos earlier seasons on DVD with Dad and my stepmother, Barbara, in Florida when Hutton and I went down for a vacation after Christmas, in January 2004. After Hutton went to bed, we all sat on the couch together watching Tony and family.

That was the trip right after Dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer. A few weeks later, when he was back in California, he had surgery to remove his bladder and prostate, but it had already spread to his lymph nodes.

That was also the trip when I was finally accepting that something was a bit off with Hutton. He was 2 1/2, and I had bought some toys for him on ebay and mailed them to Dad and Barbara's house so he'd have things to play with while we were there. One toy was a little firestation. Hutton was only interested in the flagpole from the firestation; not the firetruck, not the firefighters, just the flagpole. The flagpole snapped into place, but Hutton kept wanting it out, and he would walk around with the flagpole, still not really talking at 2 1/2. All of us knew something was wrong, but he didn't have a diagnosis for few more months, and even then, it was a wishy-washy, "Let's say he has Autism so he can start getting therapy," from the neurologist I took him to.

My, have things changed for all families in the past 2 years, both ours and The Sopranos!


With Dad and Hutton on the beach in Naples (Florida, not Italy!) waiting for the New Year's Eve fireworks.