nekosensei

I caught up with LJ yesterday, and then ignored it for the rest of the day. I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep and I was just too tired to read. I ended up running some errands instead. When I got home, I watched tv and knitted. Then, I took some Ambien and went to bed early because I had to be up early today. I'm going to Wisconsin again this weekend and I had to get up early. They want people up in Racine by nine o'clock because they're trying to get people to vote early.

Oh...and I had a pretty weird dream last night, probably because of the Ambien. I dreamt my sister and I were young and living at my parents' house again. We were in our basement and we saw this snake slither past us. We stayed out of its way and just watched it go on its merry way (as if a snake in our basement were completely normal). Afterwards, we got up and walked around. The snake started to follow us. As it slithered, it oozed this green colored water behind it. Weird. Then, we looked across the room to the other side of the basement, and saw this green colored water on the floor. It was seeping out from behind one of the walls. We figured that there was a nest of snakes behind the wall or something. We called our parents downstairs. There was a puddle of water there, and it managed to short out the computer that was sitting on the floor by it. The computer started smoking and we were afraid to touch it, but we managed to turn it off and get it unplugged. My parents came downstairs and asked what was going on. Up until that point, we thought that the green water resulted from natural causes, but as soon as my parents showed up a white vase came sailing across the room crashed into the wall next to me, shattering into pieces. That's when I thought, hmm...I think this is a pissed off spirit or a poltergeist. My family was all for egging it on to see if they could get it to react like that again in order to prove what it was, but I discouraged them from doing it. I figured that we had enough proof already. Why piss it off some more? My reaction to it wasn't so much fear as it was, "Oh bother. Let's just go upstairs and ignore it. Maybe it will get bored and go away."

Before I went upstairs, I saw my cat, cosettemonster, walk across the basement in the green puddles. I picked her up, took her upstairs, and washed her paws off in the case that the water had something toxic in it if she licked her paws. I also saw Mittens and Baby (mine and my sister's old cats) as well as arwenmonster up there.

Later, I woke up and decided to write it down. It was a very off the wall dream.

I had yet another weird dream last night. I swear. It must be the full moon.

This time, a friend and I snuck on board a submarine and found out that the government was doing something that it shouldn't have. (The current administration seems to be doing that a lot lately, doesn't it?) Anyhow, this was something that they *really* did not want getting out. I got separated from said friend, but still managed to get off the boat.

Then, I'm nearing home when I saw a missile. It was followed by a big explosion and a mushroom shaped cloud. The real kicker was that the US military had just bombed itself. They took out Chicago, New York, and LA. The bomb was small and we were far enough away that nobody got radiation burns. On the other hand, we wer running around closing and sealing off our windows to try to avoid getting poisoned by the fallout.

Last night, I dreamt that I was at a Karaoke bar, and I ended up singing "Wick" from the musical, The Secret Garden. I haven't heard that musical in quite some time, but when I woke up, I started singing the song in question (albeit badly because my voice is still pretty hoarse). I think my unconscious mind is saying that it's sick of the cold weather and wants it to be spring already.

Last night I must have gotten eleven or twelve hours of sleep. I'm happy because, with everything I've been through these past few weeks, I really needed it. I haven't really been sleeping as much as I used to and it's nice to be able to catch up. Now...if only I could get a break from the anxiety dreams. Last night, I dreamt that I ended up in the hospital again. The weird part about that dream was, the room was pretty big and I was able to teach my classes from my hospital bed. The obnoxious thing was that I didn't have any of my handouts that I needed for class and had to get help from someone else. That was one strange dream.

Yesterday, I went to the store with doomsey to do the grocery shopping. It's sad. Since when did going to the grocery store become "exercise"? I was able to do get what we needed, but I had to have doomsey stand in line and pay at the register since I was getting tired. It's annoying that recovery is taking such a long time. I really wish I could do something fun like go for a walk while listening to music. I used to do that a lot and I would have started it back up again if it hadn't been for all the health problems I've been having since early July. Oh well...hopefully I'll be able to do that again once the weather starts warming up. I guess I've also been taking good health for granted all these years.

Oh...I also hate having to depend upon people for help. doomsey must be getting really annoyed with me.

I've also been having weird heart palpitations, usually at night on days where I've been doing a lot. I'm thinking that I'm getting them because of a combination of overexertion and anxiety. The doctor says that they're only a problem if my heart rate increases when I have them...and it doesn't so things should be okay. They used to be unnerving, but now I think they're mostly annoying. Last night after I went to bed, I hugged the cat while she was purring so I wouldn't notice them. I think this is something that's going to go away when my lungs start getting better, but I'm still going to have a talk with my doctor about it when I go in for my blood draw tomorrow...along with some issues with my back. For whatever reason, around late afternoon / early evening, I feel like I've been kicked in the kidneys. It usually goes away and stays gone until the next day once I take Tylenol.

Let's see...what else have I been up to? Last night, doomsey and I watched the last two episodes of Doctor Who: Season Two. That was really sad. This morning, I talked with a friend that I haven't heard from for awhile. We used to be neighbors when I was living in my old apartment. This afternoon, doomsey and I plan to meet up with Sam and Gracie to get sushi. Mmmm...sushi.

Last night, I dreamt that I almost started global thermonuclear war. That was a fun dream. I was playing around with a website thinking it was a computer game. I took about five or six nukes and aimed them all at Chicago. Pretty much everything from the Wisconsin border to Kankakee would have been toast. Yes...I must be at the end of my rope to dream about blowing the town where I live and everyone I know sky high. And then, I realized that it wasn't a game. I had managed "to push the button" and that the Chicago area really was about to go up in smoke. Fortunately, there was a drop down menu, and I was able to back out of it before the missiles went flying. Still, the government knew what happened, and they were hunting my sorry ass down. They seemed to think I was terrorist and not a frustrated woman playing a computer game...

I've always known that you can have a monkey on your back, but in my dream last night, I discovered it was also possible to have a lion on your back. I dreamt that I was in my car running some errands when I saw a man in his early twenties bicycling with a lion riding behind him. The bicycle looked like it was built for two people and the lion was on the second seat holding on to the guy with his paws. Later, I went to the guy's house and discovered that he lived with his grandparents. They had a bunch of male and female lions on their property, just lazing around as if they were giant housecats. I was afraid to approach the house, but I did. I was about to ask the grandparents what the guy's story was and why he was bicycling around town with a lion when the alarm clock went off and I heard Click and Clack on "Car Talk" guffawing about somebody's amusing car problems.

I guess that was better than what I was dreaming about earlier. In that dream, Chicago area was being bombed by some unknown country and some bombs fell not far from North Avenue. I was also trying to hide a sacred object. That particular part of the dream came from the book I was reading, The Bone People.

Some of my other dreams seem to be influenced by fandom. Several nights ago, I was woken up by a large thunderstorm with lots of wind. I was hopped up on Ambien, but I remember that my husband had to get up and move the cars away from our tree out in front so they wouldn't get dented by falling limbs. I had finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows either that evening or the evening before and at some point, I seemed to get the impression that the thunderstorm was caused by two wizards dueling it out up in the sky. After I was awake, I thought that it would be a good story to tell small children that were frightened by storms and didn't understand weather phenomenon. When I was a small kid, my parents used to tell me that thunderstorms were caused by God bowling in heaven. While it may help soothe a frightened kid, it doesn't do anything to describe the science of what's going on during a storm. What you should really tell them is that thunderstorms are caused by two wizards dueling in the sky. One controls hot air and the other controls cold air. The wizard of cold air always wins and that's why it always cools off after a thunderstorm. Yes...I know...shut up, nekosensei.

Let's see...in my dream from two nights ago, I dreamt I got thrown in jail. We were in a full blown depression because the economy had really tanked. I was thrown in the slammer for stealing food so that I could eat. The sad thing was that I was actually happy to be in prison because at least I was getting fed. Also, there were many other women there who were locked up for either stealing food or for political reasons. We had a lot more autonomy than you would normally find in prison, and we could wander around a couple of rooms without being monitored. I made friends with my cell-mate and she found a tardis (from Doctor Who). She figured out how it worked and we often used it to have adventures. You think we would have escaped to a different place and time and I remember suggesting to her at some point that we should, but we didn't. We often ended up back in jail after we came back from joy-riding.

Anyhow...long story short... I attribute these strange dreams to a mixture of Ambien, an overactive imagination, and too many movies and books.

How do I explain this one? Last night, I listened to two songs by Loreena McKennit and ended up with a book idea. I thought a really interesting source that might give me some more ideas was the Koran and the history of Islamic civilizations. (Knowing me, even if I do come up with a good plot and characters, it probably won't get written anyway...but what the hey). Out of curiosity, I googled an online translation of the Koran in English and ended up reading the first two chapters of it. Do you even call them chapters? Or are they called books like in the Bible? I have no idea. I figured that, at any rate, I wouldn't be wasting my time since I've been interested in world religions and biblical history for quite some time now. (And particularly in today's day and age, it wouldn't hurt to have some knowledge of the what the Koran is all about anyway).

Back to the story. As I was reading it, I found it difficult to understand, but I was able to pick out the gist of it. (I was more interested in reading it for the stories it had to tell anyway). I imagine it must have been difficult to translate in the first place since the Koran is written as poetry. Am I right? And poems don't always translate well from one language to the other.

After I finish reading the first two chapters, I went to bed since it was pretty late. I ended up having a dream in which a man, who I never really see in the dream, was explaining the parts to me that I didn't understand. I was actually kind of annoyed that doomsey woke me up in the morning because he interrupted it and it would have been interesting to see where it would have went. I didn't remember anything he said when I woke up, but in the dream itself it made perfect sense and, from my reaction, I was interested in what the guy had to say.

And no...don't try to read anything more into it. It was just a dream and I'm not going Muslim. Thank you.

Oh...and I'm probably not going to read the Koran before I go to bed anymore either. That was just too weird.

Okay...so my blog is becoming a dream analysis journal...so bite me.

Last night, I had a dream that reminded me of a combination between Stephen King's The Cell and José Saramago's Blindness. You can throw The Stand and Night of the Living Dead in there too just for kicks. doomsey later remarked that it reminded him of bad science fiction, but whatever. Oh...and for the record. No, I had not taken any Ambien last night, forestdruid, so I doubt the medication is not giving me nightmares.

I dreamt that a bizarre sickness that drove the people it had infected bonkers had started in a small town and had quickly spread throughout the central part of the country. It was passed by touch and it didn't have an incubation period at all. Once you were attacked by someone showing signs of it, you got it right away. In my dream, my first reaction was to run away and for a while I managed to keep ahead of it. There was still a lot of chaos and mayhem though, especially in border areas were people were starting to get infected. I remember an owner of a pizza shop shot a bunch of people in the head for not buying his pizza. And those that did get bullied into buying it got sick. That part of the dream was pretty gory, and it the places where I was uncomfortably close to the sick people, it got downright surreal.

In the dream, there were two kids who got infected, but managed to shake it off. They were the only ones. When I was in a car and still running, a couple that had health problems decided they just couldn't run anymore. They asked me to take their young daughter and care for her. She must have been about five or six, and she looked oddly like Shirley Temple with curly, blonde hair.

At another point in the dream, I was on foot and running with a group of about six or seven healthy people. The sick people were pretty obvious since they were eerily similar to Stephen King's description of the nutjobs in The Cell and the Reevers in Firefly...and they traveled in packs. Somehow, we managed to avoid them, but we lost a person in the process. We were by a church and got ambushed. We ended up hiding out in the attic of an abandoned house...and eating pizza. I wonder what was up with the pizza theme. Was I hungry last night and didn't realize it? (I'm sure Freud would have a field day with that one). When I went into the bottom half of the house to retreive something, I remember crawling on the floor and avoiding windows so as not to be seen by the crazies outside. And there were some ambling around still. That part reminded me of Night of the Living Dead for whatever reason. Soon after that, the disease had run its course. The people who were infected were apparently too bonkers to feed themselves and died. The rest of us (and there weren't very many) were talking about re-grouping and starting society back up again.

So...the moral of the story...stop reading Stephen King novels...and horror novels in general...

Lately, it seems like the only dreams I tend to remember are nightmares, but last night I had a really good dream. I dreamt that I was at a concert and sang a song with a world reknowned singer. I don't remember what we sang, but it was a really awesome song. And I don't know if anybody out there likes to sing, or if I'm the only weird one, but it felt like what I sometimes do when I'm at home alone playing with my Karaoke machine and really getting into it. It felt good. At any rate, we brought down the house. Later, I got a phone call saying I was offered a record deal on my own merits. I remember telling one of my friends at the concert that, "I have to remember that this isn't Karaoke anymore" or something like that.

Yeah...I know...keep dreaming.

But any rate, the vibes I got from that good dream motivated me to go downstairs and play with the Karaoke machine today. I managed to nail a Melissa Etheridge song I've been playing around with for months...one that I previously thought I would always suck at.

That reminds me...one of these days I need to visit Sidekicks again.

Last night I kept waking up to nightmares. For whatever reason, I had two in a row. In Nightmare #1, doomsey had said or done something to piss the government off, which unfortunately landed him in jail. Thinking the government was full of crap, I busted him out of jail and spent the rest of the dream running from the Department of Homeland Insecurity Security with hubby in tow. Yeah...like doomsey is a menace to National Security...

In Nightmare #2, there was a grizzly bear wandering around the 'burbs that attacking and killing random people. Animal control was having a hard time tracking it down. Fortunately, I didn't run into the bear. I only heard about it on the news. I was, however, walking to a friend's house, it was dark, and I was very afraid. Ah...suspense.

So...I'm thinking either I'm going to spend the rest of the evening knitting or reading a book. I'm leaning towards reading a book because I'm tired and I'm afraid I'll mess up the blanket I'm working on...which will cause me to spend the rest of the evening cussing at it.