Last night I took some benadryl. And slept from 930 to 6am without a shred of night life.
I've been having some kind of allergic reaction to pollen? food? - whatever it is, my lips are puffier than Angelina Jolie after collagen injections. I already have an allergy to my own eyelashes so maybe I have become allergic to my whole entire face.
Despite being knocked on my ass by a half dose of children's anti-histamine, my lips are still huge and sore this morning. Which may indicate that this is not an allergy. And I am a lightweight.
Google says dehydration may be the culprit. Then again, maybe I'm harboring alien life that is preparing to burst forth and destroy me as it emerges.
I'm drinking water and hoping for the best.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Do the macarena
450am first conscious thought: I need to be more grateful that my life is so easy right now.
I could taste the dregs of some dream about hardship clashing with the reality of my soft comfortable bed, and the day of non-manual labor ahead, but couldn't remember anything specific. Also I couldn't actually access any feeling of gratitude, only the admonishment that I ought to feel some.
My cat Jack was still scratching at my bedroom door, the trigger that had pulled me from sleep. He does this so constantly that there is a groove worn into the wood of the doorframe. My irritation was too big, it was taking up all my gratitude space. I yelled, "stop it!" before closing my eyes and praying for more sleep.
I dreamt I had adopted 8 year old twin girls. They arrived with an entire entourage of doctor, social workers and lawyer. The social workers were here to evaluate my suitability, the doctor to familiarize me with their vaccination history and medications - one had asthma, the other occasional epileptic seizures.
The twins had just been orphaned by well off suburban parents and knew how to speak several languages and dance ballet. I carried them around on my back, taught them how to do the macarena, had serious conversations about what happens after death, signed a lot of legal papers and suddenly the door closed, leaving just me and my twins.
And no Jack. Where was Jack? I realized my beautiful giant fluffy fraidy cat Jack must have run out the door with the stampede of exiting professionals. He was not an outdoor cat; also he was not remotely street smart. I searched and called but eventually had to give up. I felt frustrated and scared; I didn't know where he was and I was late for work.
603am the sound of Jack scratching urgently at my bedroom door. I feel immediately, viscerally grateful. He isn't lost outside; I know exactly where he is.
I could taste the dregs of some dream about hardship clashing with the reality of my soft comfortable bed, and the day of non-manual labor ahead, but couldn't remember anything specific. Also I couldn't actually access any feeling of gratitude, only the admonishment that I ought to feel some.
My cat Jack was still scratching at my bedroom door, the trigger that had pulled me from sleep. He does this so constantly that there is a groove worn into the wood of the doorframe. My irritation was too big, it was taking up all my gratitude space. I yelled, "stop it!" before closing my eyes and praying for more sleep.
I dreamt I had adopted 8 year old twin girls. They arrived with an entire entourage of doctor, social workers and lawyer. The social workers were here to evaluate my suitability, the doctor to familiarize me with their vaccination history and medications - one had asthma, the other occasional epileptic seizures.
The twins had just been orphaned by well off suburban parents and knew how to speak several languages and dance ballet. I carried them around on my back, taught them how to do the macarena, had serious conversations about what happens after death, signed a lot of legal papers and suddenly the door closed, leaving just me and my twins.
And no Jack. Where was Jack? I realized my beautiful giant fluffy fraidy cat Jack must have run out the door with the stampede of exiting professionals. He was not an outdoor cat; also he was not remotely street smart. I searched and called but eventually had to give up. I felt frustrated and scared; I didn't know where he was and I was late for work.
603am the sound of Jack scratching urgently at my bedroom door. I feel immediately, viscerally grateful. He isn't lost outside; I know exactly where he is.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Oh the troubles I've seen... dating
For a good part of my several dreams last night I was a guy dating a string of strong-willed women.
In my first dream series, I was literally a man. I dated girls who were brown, with sleek black hair and lots of attitude - one was an ex-con, one had a fondness for throwing crockery to make a point, and another had grown up in Alaska, and learned to gut fish before she could walk.
I showed up at the doorstep of this woman, the one originally from Alaska, after inheriting her family bar in a poker game from a frequently-incarcerated brother. It was winter in North Dakota, and as I approached the snowy front steps of the two storey blue house, she opened the door and brushed past me without even asking why I was there. I had to call her back and explain my presence.
Even then, she didn't cry or fight, which would certainly have been the response of the daughter of the foreman of the Peruvian mine company where I'd spent the last six months as cook. The mine had chronic fluid leaks which is to say that periodically and without warning, a wall of the mine shaft would burst open, gushing forth foul black liquid. I eventually couldn't handle the sense that I was gambling with my life every day I went to work.
This girl simply fixed me with a long stare, told me it wouldn't be the first time, and, "anyway it's OK; you won't last a week." My already-number fingers and cheeks tended to agree with her but I was feeling stubborn. Anyway she was wrong. I lasted three months before getting on a plane to Hawaii and swearing off frostbite and women altogether. It turns out sarcastic, hard-working, tough girls, while initially a nice change from fiery, Latin, plate-throwing daddy's girls, can also be emotionally unavailable, callous and, in their own way, entirely self-centered.
My resolve lasted all of fifteen days but that might have been due to the fact that I had found a job working at a halfway house for women.
Recently a good friend said she had not realized how masculine I could be. This came as a shock to both of us, as my personality is pretty mild and while not uber girly, my dress and demeanor is certainly not even androgynous. I have never been mistaken for a man, which is definitely not the case for many of the queer women I have been close to.
I fell back to sleep at around 630 and woke up in my dream, as my female self, in bed with my wife and my best friend, a man I'd known since high school.
My wife and I lived in a gigantic condemned building at the side of a crumbling ravine at the edge of a desert in Somewhere, Arizona. It was winter, which is to say, the temperature was not the scorch-you-to-death-without-air-conditioning typical of AZ summers. Days were pleasant, nights chilly.
I had a diary hidden in the house in which I wrote many private things; I was consumed with paranoia that someone would find it so I kept moving it to new locations and then forgetting where it was.
I went for a long walk outside on a Saturday and ran into a middle school class on a field trip. They were crossing the raised boardwalk next to the only water source on the property - a huge sinkhole wide enough to resemble a small lake.
Several kids on mopeds - our neighbours' sons - were out riding the dunes. They waved and shouted to the class. While everyone's attention was diverted, the only male chaperone, a tall thin man dressed in khakis and sporting a whistle on a neck chain, got too close to the fenceless edge of the boardwalk and fell ~50 feet. He entered the water with a huge splash and was not seen for several breathless, tense minutes. I wanted to help but couldn't swim.
When he emerged, dripping and exhausted but essentially OK, I set about herding our cats, who had escaped from the house in the morning, back home.
It is morning. I am female, I am in my bed in my house which is a modest 3 bedroom rambler and not in the least bit condemned.
The sun has been up for hours, trying to work its way into my eyes, while I stubbornly resisted, but it is the trash being collected at the strip mall behind our house - the sound of glass bottles clinking as the whirring mechanized arms of the garbage truck lifted the recycling bin into its mouth - which has finally severed my remaining connection to the many plots unfolding all night.
I feel like I have left several novels only half read. But, it is time to work.
In my first dream series, I was literally a man. I dated girls who were brown, with sleek black hair and lots of attitude - one was an ex-con, one had a fondness for throwing crockery to make a point, and another had grown up in Alaska, and learned to gut fish before she could walk.
I showed up at the doorstep of this woman, the one originally from Alaska, after inheriting her family bar in a poker game from a frequently-incarcerated brother. It was winter in North Dakota, and as I approached the snowy front steps of the two storey blue house, she opened the door and brushed past me without even asking why I was there. I had to call her back and explain my presence.
Even then, she didn't cry or fight, which would certainly have been the response of the daughter of the foreman of the Peruvian mine company where I'd spent the last six months as cook. The mine had chronic fluid leaks which is to say that periodically and without warning, a wall of the mine shaft would burst open, gushing forth foul black liquid. I eventually couldn't handle the sense that I was gambling with my life every day I went to work.
This girl simply fixed me with a long stare, told me it wouldn't be the first time, and, "anyway it's OK; you won't last a week." My already-number fingers and cheeks tended to agree with her but I was feeling stubborn. Anyway she was wrong. I lasted three months before getting on a plane to Hawaii and swearing off frostbite and women altogether. It turns out sarcastic, hard-working, tough girls, while initially a nice change from fiery, Latin, plate-throwing daddy's girls, can also be emotionally unavailable, callous and, in their own way, entirely self-centered.
My resolve lasted all of fifteen days but that might have been due to the fact that I had found a job working at a halfway house for women.
Recently a good friend said she had not realized how masculine I could be. This came as a shock to both of us, as my personality is pretty mild and while not uber girly, my dress and demeanor is certainly not even androgynous. I have never been mistaken for a man, which is definitely not the case for many of the queer women I have been close to.
I fell back to sleep at around 630 and woke up in my dream, as my female self, in bed with my wife and my best friend, a man I'd known since high school.
My wife and I lived in a gigantic condemned building at the side of a crumbling ravine at the edge of a desert in Somewhere, Arizona. It was winter, which is to say, the temperature was not the scorch-you-to-death-without-air-conditioning typical of AZ summers. Days were pleasant, nights chilly.
I had a diary hidden in the house in which I wrote many private things; I was consumed with paranoia that someone would find it so I kept moving it to new locations and then forgetting where it was.
I went for a long walk outside on a Saturday and ran into a middle school class on a field trip. They were crossing the raised boardwalk next to the only water source on the property - a huge sinkhole wide enough to resemble a small lake.
Several kids on mopeds - our neighbours' sons - were out riding the dunes. They waved and shouted to the class. While everyone's attention was diverted, the only male chaperone, a tall thin man dressed in khakis and sporting a whistle on a neck chain, got too close to the fenceless edge of the boardwalk and fell ~50 feet. He entered the water with a huge splash and was not seen for several breathless, tense minutes. I wanted to help but couldn't swim.
When he emerged, dripping and exhausted but essentially OK, I set about herding our cats, who had escaped from the house in the morning, back home.
It is morning. I am female, I am in my bed in my house which is a modest 3 bedroom rambler and not in the least bit condemned.
The sun has been up for hours, trying to work its way into my eyes, while I stubbornly resisted, but it is the trash being collected at the strip mall behind our house - the sound of glass bottles clinking as the whirring mechanized arms of the garbage truck lifted the recycling bin into its mouth - which has finally severed my remaining connection to the many plots unfolding all night.
I feel like I have left several novels only half read. But, it is time to work.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Going to pieces
I had a plan in three parts to kidnap myself. I split into three people to accomplish this, each of me delegated one of the tasks so that no one of us could be successfully interrogated by police.
The rest of my dream was elaborate and consuming, interrupted on occasion by the progression of the kidnapping, much the way commercials punctuate conventional television.
I remember none of the main narrative now, the long plot unfolding in between commercial breaks. I know I was on part three when I woke.
The rest of my dream was elaborate and consuming, interrupted on occasion by the progression of the kidnapping, much the way commercials punctuate conventional television.
I remember none of the main narrative now, the long plot unfolding in between commercial breaks. I know I was on part three when I woke.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
The superstitious scientist
A new family moved into my neighbourhood and my department at work - my dream neighbourhood that is. They were Pagans of some sort and although the husband/father was a new member of the science faculty, he was incredibly superstitious. Also he wore a cape. A black satin cape embroidered with metallic, colorful stars.
At their housewarming party I met his wife Carol, in a long flowing grey gown and a pointy hat. Their their only child, Rosabella, was 14. She sat at the kitchen table in a short black velvet dress passing her hand through a candle flame. She told me that contrary to conventional medical thinking, the organs inside the body floated in air, shriveled and preserved inside the body, each attached to the skeleton by a single fibrous stalk.
I asked the father what he would do if he were a surgeon; would he abandon his beliefs if, as he was cutting into a body, things were not as he preconceived them to be. He said no. I asked why. He said it simply wouldn't happen, because he was right.
I returned to my house where I had taken to sleeping in a large drawer at the bottom of a chest. Several of my friends were bedded down in the closets and one was curled up inside a kitchen cupboard. At about 1130 my wife got up to prepare for an evening lesbian dance. My friends were going too and tried valiantly to convince me to join them. I pleaded exhaustion and returned to my drawer.
In my dream, I slept. I woke up this morning in a real bed, organs apparently intact, other than mild heartburn from eating far too late last night.
At their housewarming party I met his wife Carol, in a long flowing grey gown and a pointy hat. Their their only child, Rosabella, was 14. She sat at the kitchen table in a short black velvet dress passing her hand through a candle flame. She told me that contrary to conventional medical thinking, the organs inside the body floated in air, shriveled and preserved inside the body, each attached to the skeleton by a single fibrous stalk.
I asked the father what he would do if he were a surgeon; would he abandon his beliefs if, as he was cutting into a body, things were not as he preconceived them to be. He said no. I asked why. He said it simply wouldn't happen, because he was right.
I returned to my house where I had taken to sleeping in a large drawer at the bottom of a chest. Several of my friends were bedded down in the closets and one was curled up inside a kitchen cupboard. At about 1130 my wife got up to prepare for an evening lesbian dance. My friends were going too and tried valiantly to convince me to join them. I pleaded exhaustion and returned to my drawer.
In my dream, I slept. I woke up this morning in a real bed, organs apparently intact, other than mild heartburn from eating far too late last night.
Friday, May 3, 2013
The cop who couldn't die
This dream has cross-sexuality law enforcement infidelity followed by near-death hallucinations and a cliff hanger of an ending. A warning to our listeners that it may not be suitable for younger children or people with any physics background.
First/also the main characters come straight out of Continuum which I watched a few too many episodes of last night. This yet-another cops and robbers drama series features a female lead who has been dragged from her job as a Protector (read: cop) in 2077 into present day Vancouver by a giant time travel fusion reaction set off by seven convicted terrorists eager to escape their executions and start a revolution in the past. To achieve her personal goal of hunting down the terrorists and finding a way home to her husband and son, she poses as an American special agent and gets paired with Carlos, a hunky Vancouver cop.
IN my dream the Continuum girl cop is a lesbian. I'll call her Cameron because her first name, Kiera, makes that premise entirely implausible. Cameron is at a Chinese buffet with the beautiful but married Carlos, in a seedy part of town. They are discussing an accidental kiss the previous night. As they enumerate all the reasons why it will never happen again, their bodies come closer and closer, till the upholstery seems ready to catch on fire. Finally they give in and start kissing passionately in the cheap vinyl booth of the restaurant.
The transgressive make out session serves to dull their cop senses; as they exit the restaurant, they are confronted by seven gaunt, wiry, desperados easily identified as TV criminals by their disheveled clothing, distinctive creepy features, and piercing eyes.
The male cop attempts to reason with them - he explains the two of them are police officers and it will bring trouble down upon them if they "do anything crazy" but the ruffians seem unmoved. The girl cop palms her futuristic weapon and a firefight ensues. In the chaos Carlos and Cameron are separated. Carlos is shot through the chest and begins to bleed out. He is on the verge of consciousness when Cameron finds him and begins applying pressure.
As he lies dying, Carlos re-experiences the night's events in a vivid, hallucinatory and benign series. First he is inside of a nest made of turquoise and royal blue yarn interwoven with twigs. Cameron is there. The criminals are the hatching eggs, their siblings.
My dream ends after Cameron has requested an ambulance, called in "officer down" and continued to do her level best to keep Carlos from dying, but before help can arrive.
On TV he'd live, most likely. Unless it was the sort of show where the main characters are allowed to die and get replaced by more unrealistically beautiful actors. In real life he'd certainly die. By getting shot in my dream and failing to die before I woke up, Carlos gets to exist in that between place, an ever-unresolved purgatory. Dreams have rarely if ever a real sequel. I doubt I'll be seeing him again.
First/also the main characters come straight out of Continuum which I watched a few too many episodes of last night. This yet-another cops and robbers drama series features a female lead who has been dragged from her job as a Protector (read: cop) in 2077 into present day Vancouver by a giant time travel fusion reaction set off by seven convicted terrorists eager to escape their executions and start a revolution in the past. To achieve her personal goal of hunting down the terrorists and finding a way home to her husband and son, she poses as an American special agent and gets paired with Carlos, a hunky Vancouver cop.
IN my dream the Continuum girl cop is a lesbian. I'll call her Cameron because her first name, Kiera, makes that premise entirely implausible. Cameron is at a Chinese buffet with the beautiful but married Carlos, in a seedy part of town. They are discussing an accidental kiss the previous night. As they enumerate all the reasons why it will never happen again, their bodies come closer and closer, till the upholstery seems ready to catch on fire. Finally they give in and start kissing passionately in the cheap vinyl booth of the restaurant.
The transgressive make out session serves to dull their cop senses; as they exit the restaurant, they are confronted by seven gaunt, wiry, desperados easily identified as TV criminals by their disheveled clothing, distinctive creepy features, and piercing eyes.
The male cop attempts to reason with them - he explains the two of them are police officers and it will bring trouble down upon them if they "do anything crazy" but the ruffians seem unmoved. The girl cop palms her futuristic weapon and a firefight ensues. In the chaos Carlos and Cameron are separated. Carlos is shot through the chest and begins to bleed out. He is on the verge of consciousness when Cameron finds him and begins applying pressure.
As he lies dying, Carlos re-experiences the night's events in a vivid, hallucinatory and benign series. First he is inside of a nest made of turquoise and royal blue yarn interwoven with twigs. Cameron is there. The criminals are the hatching eggs, their siblings.
My dream ends after Cameron has requested an ambulance, called in "officer down" and continued to do her level best to keep Carlos from dying, but before help can arrive.
On TV he'd live, most likely. Unless it was the sort of show where the main characters are allowed to die and get replaced by more unrealistically beautiful actors. In real life he'd certainly die. By getting shot in my dream and failing to die before I woke up, Carlos gets to exist in that between place, an ever-unresolved purgatory. Dreams have rarely if ever a real sequel. I doubt I'll be seeing him again.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Cops without the robbers
You know you've been watching too much late night TV when you wake up at 3m in a panic, to solve a friend's murder, become convinced after self-interrogation of your own guilt, and only give yourself the benefit of the doubt when your alibi is that you were home sleeping in your own bed at the time. I mean, hypothetically speaking.
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