dreams

Ping-pong

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Wednesday’s thought: I feel like a whale.  A whale who never wants to leave the house because it’s too hard.  I walked to the mailbox and back and regretted it.  It takes me an hour to get up the stairs.  I think I’ll just sit down.

Thursday’s thought: I got six hours of sleep IN A ROW.  I feel great!  Let’s go for a walk!  Oh, look, the sun is shining!  Have a chat with the neighbor!  What a cute dog!

Oh, that reminds me.  I dreamed about the dogs last night for the first time in a while.  I woke up actually still able to feel the sensation of scratching behind Roxy’s ear.  It’s sad (I miss them SO much) and not sad because I kind of got to visit them.

Friday morning: Middle ground.  Six hours of sleep probably happened, but NOT in a row.  Moving around isn’t as easy today as yesterday, but it’s possible (and easier once I’m upright).  I went for a walk and it’s a beautiful morning, but today lacks yesterday’s exclamation points.

Tomorrow is D-Day.  Supposed to be.  I’m not counting on it.

Why can’t I dream about Disney World or having superpowers or something?

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I wish my dreams were a little less realistic, maybe a little more fantastic.  I tend to dream about mundane things, often close enough to my daily life to make me unsure later if I dreamed it or if it really happened.  (Did I pick up my prescription or just dream about it?  Are we still out of milk?  Maybe I only dreamed I got some from the store.)  Other times, my dreams are too close to real life for comfort, like the other night when I dreamed about work.  I dreamed about specific tasks I had to do this week, actual real documents I have to write or review – I feel like I should charge the customer for the hours I was sleeping.  The only unrealistic thing about it was that I was in the office with my coworkers.  (Maybe that counts as a nightmare.)  I suppose last night’s dream was a little less like real life.  I dreamed I was taking a walk in the woods and I found two bear cubs, and they were adorable and playful and they followed me home even though I was trying to leave them in the woods, and then their mama bear (even though one was a panda cub and one was a red panda cub, the mama was a big brown bear) was in the room, and I was trying to edge past her to get away, hoping she’d be focused on the cubs near the opposite wall, but she saw me and she chased me, and yeah, okay, that dream was nothing like real life.

Today is going to be a weird one

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I slept with my contacts in last night.  I feel like that doesn’t bode well for the rest of the day.  I dreamed I had to make pancakes at school, and I was going to be graded both on how good they were AND what terms I was able to get for the mortgage I got for them.  I was worried because I was the last in the class during the taste test and my pancakes were going to be cold.  I was not worried about the mortgage.  While I was waiting for my turn, I found out that the entire school was out of coffee and I had to drink ice water, which I promptly spilled on my slippers – because I was wearing slippers at school – so I had to go barefoot.

To recap: I slept with my contacts in and then had a weird restless night with weird restless dreams.  Oh, and we’re basically in the path of totality for today’s eclipse.  If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because our alien overlords took me away under cover of darkness, decided I was too stupid to keep (since I can’t remember to take my contacts out at night), and left me to wander in the wilderness.

Like a 5-year-old

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We’re watching (and enjoying) Stranger Things on Netflix, but last night I startled awake out of a really freaky show-fueled nightmare.  The show is eerie, mostly not scary, and while I’m watching it, I’m okay, but apparently one part of it got in my head.  In my dream, that part of the show was standing over my side of the bed, and – yeah, okay, I’m not writing about it anymore.  It’s creeping me out again, and it’s daylight outside.

John would like to know when I’m planning to stop having nightmares like a little kid.  The shot of adrenaline he got when I practically screamed my way awake kept him up for another half-hour in the middle of the night.  He can just deal.  At least he wasn’t afraid of the dark the rest of the night.  I made him go with me when I got up to pee.  He guarded the door.  (Man, I am acting like a little kid.)

I’m okay now.  I survived.  Of course, that was only last night, and it hasn’t gotten dark again since then…

Let the sun shine

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It’s 7:15am*, I’ve been awake for an hour (I slept in today!), working for 45 minutes, and it’s bearable because the view out my window is all green trees against blue sky.

I woke up just before 4am, to a train I might not have heard if I weren’t waking up from a disconcertingly realistic dream about having to sing the national anthem by myself, with a sore throat, as part of a class.  (Even in my dream, I didn’t start it in a low enough key.  The national anthem is hard.)  I went last, and when I was done, the classroom was empty.  I decided not to be insulted.  When I checked other classrooms for people, doors were slammed in my face because the people inside were all Navy people doing highly classified work.

I’m pretty sure the Navy part is what jolted me awake.  If the Navy shows up, I’m in for anxiety dreams.  Usually, though, I find myself back in the Navy after years away, with no idea what I’m supposed to do or how to do it.  Glad I woke up before it got rolling.

Maybe I should have been anxious about singing “The Star Spangled Banner” by myself.

*Well, it was 7:15.  Now it’s 9:20, work has happened, a meeting was scheduled, and I don’t get to have lunch with Christina.  BOO WORK.  We were going to have Indian.  Or Thai.  Something spicy, anyway.

Weird dreams and overwhelming smells

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I’ve been having a lot of strange dreams since we moved into the apartment.  Don’t worry – I’m not going to subject you to ANY details.  Nobody cares about anyone else’s dreams.  I barely care about my own.  Just…they’ve been weird.  I don’t think it’s the apartment’s fault.  I suppose it could be, in a blameless kind of way.  Lots of things are different.

  1. John and I switched sides of the bed.  Not for any particular reason.  I mean, we had a reason.  When we moved in, we put my dresser on one side of the bed and his on the other.  His is much taller, and I like to be able to reach the top of mine, so we switched so I could be next to my dresser.  Also, I’m on the side next to the bathroom (important).
  2. Our bedroom window faces southwest instead of north, so the light is different, even with the blinds closed.
  3. Our window faces out onto a parking lot (fancy!) instead of a street, so it’s lit completely differently (and so the light coming in is different, even with the blinds closed).
  4. We live in an apartment complex, not a neighborhood with houses, so the nighttime noises are different.  Nothing is particularly loud.  In fact, it might even be quieter since we don’t have teenagers across the street anymore.

On top of the weird dreams (and possibly not unrelated, now that I think about it), our apartment seems to hold on to kitchen smells for a very long time.  We’ve been cooking a lot lately (yay for being grown-ups!), but not everything stinks up the apartment.  We noticed it with roast beef a couple of weeks ago (and with something else I can’t remember).  The whole place smelled like roast beef (STRONGLY of roast beef) for at least two days.  I’m afraid yesterday’s brisket is going to linger the same way.  It’s been warm enough to leave windows open, so I hope that’ll help.  We left the windows open all day yesterday while it was cooking, and we opened them again when we left for work, but we were practically assaulted by it when we came back in from boxing this morning.  John’s towel smells like brisket.  I did laundry yesterday – do the clean clothes smell like brisket?  I’ve been in the apartment for most of the last 24 hours – do I smell like brisket?  Oh, god.  (My officemate says I don’t smell like brisket.  At least, not from a normal distance away.  I didn’t make her get up close and smell me.)

At least we’re not being subjected to BAD smells, no trash or raw fish or anything like that.  But why can’t the apartment hold on to lighter, more pleasant smells, like the cookies I made weekend before last?  I like brisket and roast beef (and whatever the third thing was) very much, but once dinner is over, I don’t want to smell them anymore.  I think I’d rather enjoy smelling cookies all the time.  Or toast.  I love the smell of toast.

Bring on the caffeine

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I’ll be drinking all the coffee my stomach can handle today.  I’m SO tired, and it’s all Riley’s fault.  He woke up at 3:30 this morning and wouldn’t settle back down, so John kicked him out (it was his turn).  The damage was already done, though –  both of us had checked the time.  It’s hard to go back to sleep when your brain is chanting, “The alarm will go off in an hour and fifteen minutes.  The alarm will go off in an hour and ten minutes.  The alarm will go off in an hour.”  (It’s Tuesday – John has a boxing class at 5:30, so we wake up at 4:45.)  I did manage to go back to sleep (and to start snoring, judging by the oh-so-gentle nudging I got from John), but I dreamed of waking up the whole time.  I kept dreaming that the alarm was going off and I was getting up.  In one dream, I got up at 4:15 and started getting ready, then realized it was 4:15 and went back to bed.  That didn’t actually happen (I think).  Then when the alarm finally did go off, my eyes were cemented shut.  It was horrible, and all I wanted to do was go back to sleep.  I’m going to a Moulin Rouge sing-along at a local movie theater with some friends tonight – I’ve been looking forward to it, but I was seriously considering backing out this morning so I wouldn’t have as many hours between right then and my next chance to sleep.  We already rearrange our lives with our sleep schedule in mind (early mornings mean early bedtimes mean early dinners and son on) – I shouldn’t be canceling social plans, too.  I’m the idiot for agreeing to go out on a school night, but come on – it’s a Moulin Rouge sing-along!  So I’m going.  But I’m about to have a third cup of coffee (or, as my coworkers like to call it, cream and sugar with coffee).

Good morning

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I’m off to DC for work this morning, and I didn’t want to get up early enough to go to the gym for a real workout, so I decided to make it a yoga day.  I don’t feel like what I did counts as working out since I didn’t do it for long,  but it felt nice.  It was quiet and peaceful and full of stretching.  And I think I needed it to balance out the very stressful dream about traveling to Peru.  We were packing to get ready for the big vacation, but I couldn’t remember the name of the town or area in Peru we were going to, so I couldn’t look up the weather forecast, and I didn’t know what to pack.  I was scanning my email for the details, but all I could find were pictures of goats, and none of them were captioned with the name of the town.  Very stressful.  Then John’s alarm went off, and I bolted upright, arms flailing, totally startled awake.  I hate alarms.  I needed yoga.

Now I’m eating my breakfast of granola and yogurt, listening to the yoga station on Pandora (which is great until the ad breaks – jarring), and glancing at the clock to see how much more time I have before I have to get in the shower and get moving (not much).  But that way leads to rushing and stress, and who needs that?

Who needs it?

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THIS is a really good idea.  I think I’m going to do it (on my personal cell, anyway), and I think Mom shoulddefinitely do it.  Anyone who never listens to their voicemail (which is everyone*) should do it.  It’s not as rude as never listening and never calling anyone back because you never listened to the message.  So go, change your message, and come back.  Go on.  I’ll wait.

…

Welcome back!

I could live here (link goes to more pictures):

Or here:

I forget about this blog for months at a time, but that means I have lots of content to drool over when I remember.  Our house could look something like this if we threw out 75% of what we have.  And painted everything white.  And had better taste.  And more money.

*Exception: if you’re job-hunting, DON’T DO THIS.  But then, if you’re job-hunting, you don’t belong to this group.  You’re probably listening to your voicemail messages.

Anxiety dreams

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The classic (or cliche) anxiety dream seems to be the one where you’re at school or at work or wherever (the place doesn’t seem to matter too much as long as it’s public and filled with people) and all of a sudden you realize you’re naked.  I have never had that dream (not that I’m complaining).  No, my anxiety dreams are about the Navy.  I’m on a ship, the ship’s at the pier (it’s very rarely at sea – I’m not sure why), and everyone is rushing around preparing to go to sea (maybe in a couple of hours, maybe the next day – soon) or preparing for something big, and I have no idea what’s going on.  It’s always me as I am now, years out of active duty, having forgotten more than I ever knew.  I don’t know where to go, how to get around, what to do, what to say, or even what to wear.  Sometimes people are nice to me and sometimes they’re not, but everyone has a job to do and understands what that is except me.  That would be bad enough if in the dream I thought I was supposed to know all those things, but I always know I don’t belong there.  I’m not supposed to be on the ship – I got out!  I was free.  How did I end up back there?  I hate that dream.  Had it last night.  Much as I hate the 6:00 alarm (who’s singing now?), I was a teensy bit happy to wake up to it this morning.

Limp

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Words.  Interesting thoughts.  Other words.  Yoga was especially nice tonight, but all that breathing and relaxation at the end drove any semblance of coherence away.  I’m barely upright (it was a long and tiring day), but very loose, so I’m heading to bed and hoping I don’t have any cop drama dreams tonight.  The alarm went off this morning as I was throwing a small bomb out the window so it wouldn’t blow up in the house.  It might have been a grenade.  Grenades are basically just small bombs, right?  But I could do without that kind of tension in my dreams.  Wish me luck.

Let’s be shallow for a while. Try it. It’s fun.

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In a perfect world – and by a perfect world, I mean my perfect world, of course – I would be an inch or two taller (5’6″ is so boring), 25 to 30 pounds lighter, I would live in one of the places showcased by Desire to Inspire, and my wardrobe would be chosen by someone with great taste and plenty of money (’cause they’d be buying it for me – it’d be okay, since this is my perfect world, if that money were my own).  That would be the best part.  Someone else to do my clothes shopping, someone to put my outfits together.  Comfortable, good-looking, classic, good quality.  The clothes, too.  🙂  Tom and Lorenzo could live next door so they could send me right back inside when my personal shopper/wardrobe consultant failed and/or my lack of fashion sense reared its ugly head.  And I’d have a personal chef, preferably one who is capable of making deliciously wonderful meals that look like they have too many calories (lots of cheese, cream sauces, chocolate, etc) but really hardly have any.  A magic chef.

I wouldn’t need to be a princess if I had all of that.  I may have just admitted that I still wish I could be a princess.  (I still wear pink and purple, too.  Quite often.  Not usually at the same time.  At least I recognize my need for wardrobe help.)  The Princess Diaries speaks to me, partly because, really, how cool would it be if you woke up one morning and found out you’re a princess?  And partly because DUDE.  Julie Andrews is your grandmother.  We would sing ALL the time.

I can think of plenty of other things that would make my world perfect, both shallow and not, but the real world is beckoning and I kinda have to pay attention to it.  Damn reality.

Dreaming big or maybe dreaming cozy. Or dreaming austere. But I’d probably decorate towards cozy.

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I don’t know what made me think of it today, but I found myself googling converted barns and I found this site.  Oh my god.  Converted barns all over Europe.  Like, for instance, this one.  How cool would that be?  In a similar vein, I think living in a converted church (like friends of Mom’s who I couldn’t name if you put a gun to my head), would be awesomesauce.  (I saw one the other day at Desire to Inspire.)  (That site makes me happy and sad and wistful and jealous all at the same time.)

Why can’t we be crazy rich?  I’d do good things with my money, I promise!  With all my free time and much of my money, I’d pay extra taxes and volunteer at hospitals and give blood all the time and start foundations to help the homeless  and the starving and the dyslexic and the diseased.  And on the side, I’d live in really cool houses and travel a lot.  Angelina Jolie does it.  I totally would.

That was not my point when I started.  I’d like to live in a converted barn.  And I’d raise my hypothetical, non-existent kids in a barn.  Because that would be awesome.

It was a cool idea for a race, actually

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Roxy had a very strange episode last night.  It definitely goes into the seizure category, but it wasn’t like anything she’s ever done before.  She skipped the convulsion part and jumped straight to her recovery zone, where she wanders around the house and bumps into things for a while.  This time, though, she was skittish with us and she was halfway crouched down as she hurried from room to room.  It was weird.  She’s fine now.

In some strange way, I’m sure it led to the somewhat off-the-wall dream I had after finally going back to bed, involving an obstacle course/marathon through a city, in and out of houses and hotels and malls, through windows instead of doors, across bridges and boats and parks.  I was determined to beat my pal Jess, even though I knew she was better and faster than me in this event.  She was always just ahead of me, almost in arm’s reach.  The rest of the people running in the race were way behind us.  Because we’re awesome.