I Have the POWER!!

Mary wrote something yesterday about bad dreams, and I left her a comment about bad dreams in general, and about a really creepy dream I had a couple of days ago about waking up with ants crawling all over me. (Yes, it was a terrible dream, prompted by some ants in the real-life kitchen, makes me so sick.) Anyway, I often have a dream in which I am in a big building, a college building or hotel or dorm or office building, and I am lost in it, going up and sideways on its elevators that don't work right, and often, either the elevator or part of the building is being renovated and is a mess. So, sometime during last night, I dreamed I was on an elevator, and the doors opened onto a corridor with planks leaning against the walls, dropcloths over everything, and an bucket of paint on the floor, and Dream Me looked out at it from the elevator and said loudly and with confidence "OH NO. I AM NOT HAVING THIS DREAM NOW." And I didn't. I didn't even wake up, I just morphed into another dream. Who knew you could do that?

I just read a graphic novel version of Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, not based on the movie's animation, just like a regular comic book's illustrations. It was quite good, an interesting, since I re-read The Wizard of Oz yesterday and it's similar in that they're both written to be modern fairy tales.

I finished the little Shrinky Dink key tags today and they look very cute. I'll post a picture once I have chains or ribbons or whatever I decide on them. I almost can't believe this worked out as well as it did.

I decided to use this afternoon to record some things onto DVD that I've had on the DVR for a long time. So far, I've done two things from the History Channel on the Revolution, and now one from PBS on the conquistadores, and let me tell you, this is BORING. These are for K, of course, to use in what we hope will be the history classes she'll be teaching -- nothing on that yet -- but I was doing other things, so I didn't care. I didn't so much mind the History Channel shows, but this one is deadly. After this, I have a Twilight Zone episode she recorded in the last marathon -- July 4 -- abut a futuristic society where people have lost their rights. And then I'm done with that, at least for today. I may set things up to record when we're out tomorrow.

Where are we going tomorrow?

To meet the machatunim.

No, R is not engaged (unless we hear new tomorrow), but this is clearly it for her and the GF; they are serious and they are clearly in it for life. Tomorrow, they're having a bit of a brunch to which we are invited (the Hubs, K, and I) as well as the GF's mom and dad. (No siblings there.) So this is an occasion, I think, since these are people we are going to be somehow tied up with for the rest of our lives, no? Isn't that how it works? (If you didn't check the link, machatunim is the Yiddish word that means the parents of your own child's spouse. Either woman in the mix is the machatenesta, either man is the mahouten. There are no words in English that mean the same.) I'll report back tomorrow or Monday.

What else? Oh, the couponing thing is driving me crazy. This has got to be more trouble than it's worth. Even so, I shall persevere.

Dinner has arrived, so I'm off.




watching something awful :: ENTRY #2094
READING: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

An Uneasy Day

I had some strange dreams this morning just before I woke up, and they carried over into the day, which is strange and annoying. I won't bother you with all the details, but the dreams involved 1) me, driving on roads both familiar and unfamiliar, and not being able to see well, and hitting things and getting lost, and 2) stopping at a McDonald's where they would not give me a cheeseburger.

I always used to remember dreams, but not so much anymore; even so, I felt very ill at ease driving today (even though it was bright and sunny and my eyes were wide open), and as lunchtime approached, I realized that the only thing I could possibly eat was a McDonald's cheeseburger. So, a weird day.

Did I do anything else today? Oh, I finished a book last night, which I liked, but boy, what a weeper: My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, or whatever her last name is. I figured I'd better start my summer with it before all the ads for the movie gave away the ending, and trust me, they don't. First thing I've read of hers. I could do another.

I've made myself a nice fish dish every night for the last several, which is probably too much fish, but I'm not eating salmon (or sushi), which has the highest mercury levels, I think. I make it differently each night, or with different fish, but only in parchment paper packets in the microwave. It is absolutely the easiest healthy food I can make. And good. And good for me.

Hoping to dream about happy things tonight --



watching TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #2079
READING: ----- by -----

Easy Going Day

But first, this. Am I the only one who's read The Harrad Experiment?

Moving on. It was just, as the title says, an easy going day. I woke up about six -- horrors -- but managed to fall back to sleep, where I had an amusing dream. I dreamed I was Yvonne (whose link I can't get to at the moment). I mean, I was me, but I was somehow in Yvonne's body and life, and I assumed she was in mine, but I couldn't figure out what to do next. But I knew that I had two boys somewhere in the house, and I had a whole gang of friends waiting downstairs for me to get dressed and go out. I had fabulous clothes, and I couldn't decide what to wear, and I had -- let's be frank -- a great pair of bazooms on me. Anyway, one of the friends came up to see what was taking me so long, and to my surprise, it was my my-life friend The Other Chai, but when she looked at me, she saw Yvonne, who was apparently also her friend in dream-world. I kept asking her is she was really her, her name, her parents' names, and so on, and just as I was about to ask her to look up the real me and find out if it was actually Yvonne, I woke up.

I went out and got coffee, and then went out again to get wrapping paper for the FIL's gift for tomorrow as well as the Sibs', which is in two weeks, but the DVDs came in already, so I might as well wrap 'em up. Then K and I went for an 11.00 appointment at the Apple Store. They not only took us early, the guy said the computer was out of warranty (because no one told us I had to register the warranty when I bought it), but he replaced the power supply at no charge anyway because the cord was frayed and it was a fire hazard. Sweet. And I looked at the iPod Touches, and I think I will have to get that when my Palm dies. Right now, it doesn't do everything I need, like read and write Office documents or have an ebook reader, but I think it will soon. And it's very pretty and thin and looks like magic.

Then R and K and I went out for lunch, and afterwards, they went to a movie. So here's what I did all afternoon: I listened to Harry and the Hallows on the computer while I moved everything over from my Palm calendar and contacts programs into the Mac equivalents, and then I figured out how to sync the Palm with the Mac apps instead. It took two or three hours, but I was happy as a little clam, listening to Harry and doing mindless computer work. The addresses were easy; I just had to delete ones I don't really need anymore, add some categories, and make a few minor corrections. The calendar was the big deal, because the transfer created a lot of duplicate items, and I had to assign everything to a new category. I had to go back through the end of 2005, since I figure one of the reason to have a computer-based calendar is to keep a record of when you did things, or when things happened to you. (August 5, 2005: Appendectomy.) But it's all nice and tidy now, and even though I read warnings on the Palm website that the sync might not work, it went smoothly, not a single glitch.

And that's my day in not so small a nutshell. Tomorrow it's down the shore for the bitg gala. (Just kidding; it's the regular ten of us -- the ILs, the SIL, her hubs and two kids, and the four of us -- plus the FIL's sister and her husband.) Nothing fancy, just at the ILs' house.

Okay. All I still need to do is get the Sibs on the phone and get her kids' spouses' birthdays for my obsessive calendar.

WATCHING VH1 :: ENTRY #1745

How Tired Am I?

I am so tired that I can't even think of a clever answer to the question.

I had one of those night-sweaty/bad dream kind of nights. I've been having bad dreams a lot lately; not nightmares, but unpleasant and almost-scary dreams. The good news is that I rarely remember them after I've been awake for a few minutes, but the bad feeling stays with me.

I do remember the very weird one I had just before waking up Saturday morning. It was in real time, sort of, in that I dreamed that I was in bed Saturday morning at it was 7.00, which it was when I was having the dream. I dreamed that the Hubs came into the room and woke me up and said "My father's dead; I have to go," and then he started bustling around the room, very business-like, gathering what he would need to spend a couple of days at his mother's. I sat up in bed and said "Am I awake? Is this real?" I held out my hand and he slapped it and said "It's real."

I got out of bed and saw that K was in the house, not dressed yet, which meant that she would be late for her 8.00 class. The Hubs told her that her grandfather was dead and she started to cry. Shortly after that, he broke down completely, sobbing. At some point, I was facing my mother-in-law, who was dry-eyed. I asked her what she would do now, and she said she would do what she was raised to do: she would go on.

I woke up and looked at the clock. It was 7.05. The house was very quiet; I got out of bed and looked out the window. Both the Hubs' car and K's car were gone. So she had gotten off to class on time, and it really was a dream. I have a history of dreaming in real time and demanding to know if I am asleep or awake and always being reassured that I'm awake. I do not so much like these dreams.

I didn't have real time dreams last night, but I did wake up fully at least three times, each time my face soaked in sweat, and each time pushing myself to wake up so that I could shake what I had just been dreaming.

So my day was just a lot of yawning and eye-rubbing. Hoping to finish the damn 9th grade cards tomorrow. I did a bit of shopping with the Sibs after school today, which was most enjoyable, although I could hardly keep my eyes open. Nails after school tomorrow, with a new manicurist. Not a big deal, I know.

Heroes tonight!

WATCHING LAW & ORDER :: ENTRY #1589

So This Is What Hot Feels Like

[copied from dland]

It's a quarter past three -- there's no one in the place .... okay, okay, but it really is just about quarter past three in the early hours, and I just had a dream so I had to get up and write this down. I don't remember the dream now, except in it, everyone was reading my online diary, it was the thing to do in America, man, it was popular and getting attention, press, etc., and just before I woke up I knew I had to write about what it felt like to have this diary that was all the rage, and the title of the entry had to be

So this is what hot feels like

cause I was on fire. But now I don't remember why, exactly; that was the early part of the dream and I've lost it. But the really cool thing here is, I get to dream again now, and although I don't actually remember the details, mostly, I am aware of dreaming all through the night, and that my dreams are generally amusing and entertaining and full of activity, plot, and, appearing in cameo roles, just about everyone I ever knew or read about or saw on film.

I'd about had it with the insomnia just about six months ago. After bouts of it -- cycles, really -- since the age of 12, I was mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore. But the thing that really got me were the creepy dreams.

Typical creepy dream:

Exhausted, I get into bed around 9 pm and fall asleep almost at once. (Really, not in the dream.) Then (in the dream) I become aware of something frightening. Perhaps there is a prowler in the house, or some awful animal in my room. And -- in the dream now -- it is about 9 pm and I am lying in my bed, asleep, but now awake and frightened. (Still dreaming.) I try to get away from the danger by waking up, but I am paralyzed and cannot move or speak or call out. I am terrified. I know that [the Hubs] is just in the next room and will come as soon as I call, but I cannot move. At last, in my terror, I realize that I am asleep and I wake up.

At last, awake. The danger is past. Needing to reassure myself that all is well, I attempt to get up and look around the house, or get a drink of water. But I am still paralyzed. I struggle to move or to speak. I know now that the Hubs is sleeping right next to me, I can see him, I want to wake him up, to pound him into alertness so that he can help me. But still I cannot move. At last I realize that I am still really sleeping, and I urge myself to wake up.

I wake up. It is about 9:15 pm. I do pound one hand against the empty part of the bed where only a moment before I was certain he was sleeping. Awake now, truly, I can hear a TV in an another room. I open the bedroom door and see the lights on in the house and step out blinking into the light. Someone is there somewhere, watching TV in the evening hours, the Hubs or one of the girls. "Are you okay?" they would ask. "Did you have another one of those dreams?" I would nod.

I looked it up in a book, as is my wont to do. It's a condition called Sleep State Misperception. Your body-mind can't tell if you're asleep or not, and doesn't know whether to paralyze your muscles (which keeps you from dancing around the house all night, or killing your spouse, or generally acting out the activities of your real dreams) or how much to let you know about it.

The creepy dreams scared the living shit out of me, and made me afraid to go to sleep at all ever. That and the insomnia, and so I was getting about 20 minutes of sleep a night. That's when I started taking the sleeping pills. I could fall asleep at 10 pm, wake up to go to work, and sleep a solid night in between. Of course there was the time I got up to go to work and took what I thought was an allergy pill, but it was a sleeping pill, and when I did get to work I fell asleep for the day in the nurse's office, but that's another story.

Thanks to the sleeping pill there were no more creepy dreams. In fact, there were no dreams at all. If I did dream, I didn't know it. I've not been aware of dreaming at all for the last six months. I didn't even know I missed it. Then just about two weeks ago, after the Hubs saw me sleep-walking in my drug-induced deep sleep (and sleep-falling on the floor, just managing to avoid cracking my head open) I stopped taking the magic pill. I was afraid of the creepy dreams, but more afraid that I would fall down the steps or try to leave the house while I was drug sleeping. So it was a question -- sanity or safety? As the Reverend Jim would say, tough choice. I went with safety.

Haven't had a creepy dream yet, and I am so enjoying the amusing dreams. Although I am definitely sleeping much lighter and not as much (remember, it's a quarter -- now half -- past three in the morning), I'm really awake when I'm awake and never groggy or feeling all druggy, so in general it seems to have been a good choice.

Even though the diary dream is no more than a shadow now, I do know what hot feels like. Because like nearly every other time I wake up in the middle of the night now, I wake up with -- and maybe because of -- a nice little hot flash, you know, that lovely little experience women of a certain age get to have. So when I woke up just before with those words in my head "So this is what hot feels like" I was actually also mopping off my face with a towel and feeling the sweat on my back.

I love irony. Irony is one of my truly favorite things in the whole world and all of life.


ENTRY #10