Dreamland

Lately I haven’t been sleeping when I want to, and no amount of wearing myself out or getting up early and then wearing myself out seems to help me fall asleep earlier than twelve in the morning. (One day, I went for a ten mile run, a four mile walk, two of it carrying groceries, and come bedtime, I was wide awake.) So I broke down and bought valerian at Whole Foods last night. Man, that stuff is effective. 

While I was sleeping, I was reminded that I’ve been having really weird and vivid dreams lately. When I wake up they are still fresh in my head for the most part, so I’ll go ahead and tell you about my dream last night because I think it’s good for entertainment value.

Last night I dreamt that my high school Spanish and American Literature teacher invited me over to have dinner with her. She served two overflowing plates of some sort of rice and pasta with tons of sauce and suggested we eat it on her unmade bed. I don’t know why I agreed to this given that I couldn’t seem to keep my food on my plate. The food was piled so high, that sauce and rice kept running over the edges onto the sheets. I managed to scoop it back on my plate for the first little while, but then the task became impossible and there was just too much food on her sheets. (Also, where was her husband at this point? If it was dinnertime, shouldn’t he have been there scooping food back on his plate too?) The food on the sheets became too much to sleep in, and Jenn went and got another sheet that she laid aside for after we were done eating, chastising me for the mess I created. I never finished. As soon as she got out the extra sheet, I was whisked away by some unknown force that only inhabits dreamland, and landed back at home, wishing I could finish my meal and help Jenn clean up, but knowing that I was desperately needed at home. I walked down a dirt path leading to our side door. (We don’t have a side door and according to my dream, we’re missing more exterior wall than I remember.)  Anyway as I walked towards home, a neighbor who I’ve never seen before shot out of her kitchen to tell me all about how my mother had been at her house and threatened to turn our neighbor into the Arapahoe county inspectors if she found one more painted tile in her house. I really didn’t know what she wanted me to do with this information, and she said it with such venom that I tried to respectfully get out of the conversation. With the neighbor continuing to berade me,  I simply said that I had no knowledge of this ploy. She then replied, “Oh I know you’re involved, you tiller!” By which I think she meant tallyer, as in I was involved in this plan to turn her into inspections by tallying the number of painted tiles she had in her house. I thought that if my mother was planning on turning someone into inspections for the structure of their house, it had to be for a really good, well-deserved reason, and shook off the neighbor’s words that she had spewed in such a venomous manner.

Anyway, someone met me at a trashcan who knows where to give me a hug because she hadn’t seen me in a while, although I’m pretty sure this person is no longer my friend in real life, and then somehow I was walking down the street with a little girl talking. I’m pretty sure there was more in between those two events as transition material, but that’s all I can remember from that period of the dream. As I was walking down the street with this little girl, a bug, footlong, hot pink, and with tubular antenna began flying behind me (inexpicably of course, because it didn’t have wings). When I sped up, it sped up, and when I slowed down it slowed down, but it was all I could do to keep it from running into my legs. So I picked it up. Lo and behold, it was a puppy! With glowing, hot-pink antenna! (What is with all the puppies in my dreams?) Walking along with the girl and the puppy for a while longer, I heard a blood-curdling shriek and looked ahead to find the little girl screaming her head off. “Did you get bit?” I asked her. She calmed down immediately and said, “No, stung,” rubbing the intersection between thigh and bottom.

Then my alarm went off to issue in a new day so I rolled out of