***Warning to all gentlemen who may think I am dateable – this may very well change your mind***
I don’t know about anyone else out there, but if I don’t dream, I don’t have a good night’s sleep. When things are going even marginally well, I dream nearly every night. (And it doesn’t matter how long I sleep, as long as I dream. 12 hours with no dreams is worse than 6 hours with dreams.) My dreams are exceptionally vivid, and about 3/4 of the time I remember the details. (Mainly if I happen to wake up near the end of the dream and make a mental note of it.) Otherwise, I do at least remember the fact that I had some kind of whacked out dream.
I’ll admit it – my subconscious mind is much smarter than my conscious mind. I lost count of how many seriously screwed up help desk tickets I figured out because my subconscious mind took over and when I woke up, I had the answer. Or, when my subconscious mind told me it was time to move on from a job that I kept hanging on to.
Such as the dream I had about physically putting out fires around the office in one job I had. Mind you, I did have practical experience with it when my boss set his trash can on fire, but still – it was a sign that things simply were not right.
There was the dream about picking up a neighbor’s key after the electrician had come and calling said neighbor to let him know I had the key. I actually had to call my neighbor the next day and ask if I’d called him in the middle of the night about the key. (This is also compounded by the fact that I have had people call me in the middle of the night and I was in such a deep sleep that I didn’t remember the conversation.) Like I said, exceptionally vivid dreams.
So dreams = good sleep. Unless they’re nightmares of some sort. And for the last 6 months or so, I’ve either not dreamed at all (which is bad) or had nightmares (not ‘getting shot and killed’ nightmares but just as disturbing in their own way and resulting in no real sleep.) They have been one of two: Either I can’t get the damn phone to stop ringing (my grandmother calling every freaking 5 minutes) or, my Mom, Dad, and/or my Grandfather showing up (all deceased) and getting into LARGE arguments about why they aren’t here to take my grandmother onto wherever ones goes when they shuffle off this mortal coil. Neither one is conducive to a decent night’s sleep, whether it’s 3 hours or 12. (I stopped asking my brother if I had ignored an early phone calls after a while – I realized he’d ask why I didn’t answer if she’d actually been calling – but that’s how stupidly real they were.)
After this last trip to Phoenix, I knew I’d be seriously wound up for a while (which I was) and adding Mother’s Day and then my parent’s birthdays into the mix (yes, same day, same year, and yes, May is slightly rough, why do you ask?) my poor little brain apparently couldn’t even begin to come up with some good action-adventure stories for me. So I haven’t even been dreaming at all. Which sucks.
It sucks on levels beyond just the fact that no dreams = crappy sleep. When my mind is allowed to really wander, I have some seriously whacked out dreams. Not scary, just off the wall and entertaining as hell. Some folks do dinner and a movie – I do sleep and a movie. I love my whacked out dreams – especially because I also tend to have lucid dreams, which makes it even more fun. You *know* you’re dreaming, so you’re ten feet tall and bulletproof and can fly and breathe underwater and any number of cool-assed things can happen.
And as I said, it’s been a good 6 months plus since I had that kind of fun at night all by myself. (And drinks/no drinks doesn’t matter. I do know if I take anything stronger than Advil before bed to kill a sleep-preventing headache/backache/whatever, I will not dream. So, I don’t self-medicate to sleep. I will just stay awake until I think I can sleep.)
When I went to Phoenix, Sharyn* assured me many times over that things weren’t as bad as I thought (I only get the bitchy negative calls from my grandmother, so I know I don’t get the whole picture) and I did get to see how my grandmother instantaneously became calmer (and nicer!) when Sharyn was around. It just didn’t really sink into the recesses of my mind until the past few days – and I *know* it has sunk in. Not only am I dreaming again, they are the really fun, cool, whacked out dreams that have nothing to do with family. (Unless someone randomly enters stage left for no reason – and if they get killed by a ninja, it’s their own damn fault for showing up.)
A quick sample from the past couple nights where it’s back to “sleep and a movie” rather than “sleep at your own risk”:
– I’m in Miami and protecting a 5 year old from a hail of gunfire and explosions. Sounds like a nightmare, but no – I had kickass ninja skills and we both emerged unscathed. (I probably should stop watching CSI: Miami, but hey, we escaped the bad guys! That and a lot of my dreams key off what I’ve seen on TV. 3 seasons of The West Wing in 4 days – I had dreams about working in the White House for 3 weeks.)
– I’m working at my old help desk job and they are cutting people left and right. Suddenly, Gabriel Byrne shows up as the employee advocate! (Oh if we’d only had a union and him as our rep back when I actually did tha for a living.) Telling management that if they force us to stay as pitifully understaffed as we were, we still needed more support and that we needed to have at LEAST one “wizard” on staff for us to all consult. (Not like a Harry Potter wizard, more like Apple’s “geniuses” – I’m not *that* much of a geek.) Of course, also a sad note on how my mind works, when I should have been seriously hitting on Mr. Byrne, I was back at the tech manager’s desk offering him a dollar for the soda machine in exchange for my being allowed to punch him. (Which we actually did when I worked there.) But, damn, GABRIEL BYRNE advocating for us help desk punks!! If that’s not a dream, I’m not sure what is.
– I’m sitting in front of a stack of papers, not sure if it’s work or classwork, but get a call from someone I am quite interested in.
“Hey, would you like to do something tonight?”
*Looking at random papers in front of me*
“I’d love to, but I have all this work I need to take care of.”
“Oh, OK.”
Hang up the phone, pause a moment. I DID NOT JUST DO THAT, DID I???? (I actually double checked my phone in the morning. I have had phone conversations that I did not remember because they were in the middle of a deep sleep. Apparently I did NOT turn anyone down by accident at 3AM.)
– I am the stunt double or some close extra for Emily Deschanel in Bones. I spent the whole time running around shooting things with David Borneaz, and he wanted to go for drinks after the shoot. Not so bad! If I can figure out how to get a repeat on that one – I may never wake up again.
So, haven taken a few minutes to analyze my subconscious for the past couple days, I see why I’m far and away more relaxed and less strung out than I was even this time last week.
Let’s all go have some fun and whacked out dreams.
*The freaking angel sent from heaven or Minnesota who looks in on my grandmother every day and keeps her on an even keel. Something I could never manage in my entire life.