Picture this...

So imagine the scene...It's like a grown up monkey bars play-structure thing. There are climbing areas and hiding coves all made out of PVC pipes and plywood. The front of it is open so people can see what is happening. And what is happening is brutal. It's a fight, like a gladiator Mad Max cross. You can have whatever weapon you want, but only one. You can enlist people to help you. If you have a gang they can fight with you. They could be injured or killed. But if you win you can share your prize pot with them. Though how much you share is really up to you.

I am one of the fighters. I'm fighting solo. The guy I'm going against has helpers. Right now he is back in one of the coves and two of his helpers are blocking the way to him by laying across the entry. I am poking at them trying to get them out of the way. I have as my weapon of choice what looks like a pocket or Bowie knife. I'm holding the handle and it's about a 3 inch blade at most. Super sharp. And I'm slashing at these guys trying to get them to move.

There is an announcer's voice that booms out over the crowd, "Remember, there will be only one winner here. And you can use whatever tools or people you need to to..." and right at that point through the two helper's bodies comes a drill bit. It's about a thick as a softball. And it's just chewing through them coming at me. My opponent has a giant drill and I am fighting him with a tiny little knife? What the hell was I thinking? But while he is drilling through his friends, what the hell were they thinking, I take it as an opportunity to try and work around the sides to get to him and slice him up.

And yeah, that was one dream from last night here is another.

I'm walking through a desert type waste land and there is a box on the ground next to what looks like a USB stick. The box says that it's a quick charge battery. The person I'm walking with wants me to use the stick, who knows when we will be near a power source again and we should take the chance to recharge. I tell him what a bad idea it is to just plug in a random USB stick, it could be infected with a virus.  As I'm arguing with him in my dream my non-dreaming part is realizing that we (we the people in the dream) are running on rechargeable batteries. Woah...I wake up and repeat that to myself a few times before I go back to sleep so I don't forget it. Rechargeable batteries! Somehow at 2 AM I thought that would be a great story idea...yeah...

Another part of the dreamscape last night was a buffet. There was something to do with family tables and inheritance and not being able to leave and come back...odd...and then it led in to the dream I started with. So I was well fed before going off to play gladiator games at least.

This is what I face when I sleep. Really realistic dreams that can be incredibly odd. And when I wake from them part of me starts in on could that be a story? Sometimes the answer is yes, that could totally be a story and sometimes no, that is not a story, that is a freak show. The fight dream could totally be a story, just not one of mine. I don't write that sort of thing, but it could be in a movie, probably Quentin Tarantino, it's a little violent you know...

The rechargeable battery people thing could as well. Maybe a story about androids taking over the world, or people have finally died off but we figured out how to download our consciousness in to android bodies and they are now running things but because they have our consciousness they are still fighting and waging war even though they aren't human. But again, not my thing. I would get bored with the world building too quickly to move through it. But I could see it being a story.

The part about the buffet? No way...too weird...

Back that up...

So I had an awful nightmare last night. Terrible. Scary, awful stuff. And as I often do in nightmares I changed it. Lucid dreaming. When you are aware that you are dreaming and change the dream. I do it a lot in nightmares. As most of you know I have extremely vivid dreams. Lots of details, very realistic. Which is great when it's a cool dream, awful when it's a nightmare. And I have some doozy nightmares. So years ago I started trying to be aware of dreams when I was in them and change them. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Depends how deeply I'm asleep, I think. The deeper the better really. If it's a lighter sleep I think I wake up before I can shift the dream, if it's deeper I can have that moment of realization that it's all a dream and start to shift the dream.

What normally happens is like last night, I took an awful dream and made it less awful. I sort of backed up the dream to the spot where it all went terribly bad and started over. It was still a nightmare and it wasn't great, but at least I shifted the worst part away and changed that outcome. I haven't quite yet figured out how to take a nightmare and just make it a good dream. It's like the bad part leaves a shadow that doesn't quite go away. But it's better.

So after I woke up from the dream I thought what a great skill that would be in real life. You are having just an awful day and you stop and think, nope, this is not how this is going to go, let's back up and start again. And then you shift a few things. The coffee doesn't spill. The shirt doesn't rip. The accident never happens. The day might still not be great, but at least it wouldn't be awful right?

Except, of course, there are those times where you are having a spectacular day and you run in to someone who is having a terrible day. If they restarted their day would it screw up yours? Would you be in the middle of an excellent day and have it start again and have things subtly shift so it wasn't nearly as great? Still a good day, but the ripple of change would make it less than excellent.

And would we ever get out of a day? I mean there is always someone who would want to shift and restart just to make it better, or perfect, or just to fuck with someone else. What would the rules be? Or would it be like lucid dreaming? Some people can do it and some people can't. And some people are like me and can change certain things but not others while other people could create something entirely new out of whole cloth?

How many times in one day could you back up and start again? And would you need permission from everyone involved? Like in my dream I just backed up the dream. The people in the dream had no say because they weren't real. But if you could actually do it? The people would have their own days going as well and might not take too kindly to you backing it up while they were trying to move forward. And if you had to have everyone in the area agree to back up and start again how long would it take to reach the agreement?

And as I thought about all of these things I realized...this is why I have insomnia.

When you dream...what do you dream about?

When I was growing up I shared a room with my sister. For quite a few years we shared a double bed as well. It wasn't until I was in middle school that we switched out to bunk beds. I think it was me sleeping on the floor that finally got my parents to realize that maybe my own bed would be a nice thing.

So anyway last night I had a dream that I was back in New Mexico clearing furniture and junk out of my old bedroom. The double bed was back, not the bunk beds. And it was the trailer, not the house my family lives in now. Which that makes sense (as much as anything in a dream makes sense) the trailer was my home, the place they live now never was. So anyway, the double bed gets picked up and moved out and there is a ton of junk under the bed. There is a picture somewhere from when Susan and I were younger, we were in the apartment on Eubank still, I think, and it's like a sitcom. The dividing line down the middle of the room. One side covered in layers and layers of junk and the other neat and tidy. You can guess which was my side. (hint, as soon as I am done writing this I'll be cleaning house)

So anyway, the bed is lifted out and there is junk and dust and obviously years of stuff that have been lost under the bed. And in among all of that is the desiccated remains of the biggest spider I have ever seen. Think Australia big. And it was orange. And had an extra section to its body. And I thought, "I knew it! This is what I heard before!" And I flashed back to trying to sleep and hearing a giant something or other scrambling under the bed. And I would catch fleeting shadows of it climbing the walls. This is obviously what that was. I wasn't crazy.

Or at least in the dream. Because I really had heard the thing scrambling and keeping me from sleep, not just last night. I had a nightmare around two weeks ago where I was back in New Mexico trying to get to sleep and couldn't because there was a thing in the room. As my eyes would close I would just get a glimpse of it running along the wall. I could hear it under the bed. Click clacking as it walked. In the dream I knew it was a giant spider but I could never see it directly. And I was not going to go looking for it under the bed.

But there it was last night. Making a special guest starring appearance in another dream. This time dead, dried out and starting to split in two. I knew I needed to pick it up and clean the area but didn't want to touch the body. Because just as much as I knew it was a spider in the first dream, just as much as the second dream was tied to the first, I knew that if I moved that body there were eggs under it that would hatch.

I'm not looking forward to the third dream....

In Defense of...

Too many TV shows about serial killers. Too many books about the post apocalyptic world. Too many nights in a row with interrupted sleep. Late in the season of one of the worst casts of Big Brother ever. Giant storm. These are the things I am pinning last night's weird dream and middle of the night mind zoom on.

What would you do if you had to defend your life every year? If you had to stand in front of a judge, who by the way had video tape evidence, and take the blame or credit for all of your actions? And if you didn't pass, if you couldn't justify your existence then you stopped. Stopped existing. Someone else got your shot.

The dream was very much like the movie Defending Your Life, but instead of an afterlife courtroom where you had to show you were courageous in your time on Earth, it was a yearly review where you had to show that you were worthy of the resources you are taking up.

Now we all know I am prone to more than my fair share of navel gazing. But this dream was even beyond for me. Can you imagine having to justify yourself every year? Not just what you did but that you did enough to keep going. And years go by quickly. I'm looking at September right now and my list of "Things to Do This Summer" got tossed out because I realized that I wasn't To Doing any of them and had no urge to start! (not entirely fair, some of the things got done, some got shifted as the debate on To Move or Not to Move was re-opened). I have things that I talked about at Christmastime that I wanted to start that I haven't done anything towards doing. Hell, I have things I have talked about for years, literally years, that I haven't done anything towards. And it blows my mind each time how fast the time goes by and I still haven't done them.

We all also know that the past few years I have been adrift. I don't have to work right now. Brent makes enough that we are fine. Yes, extra money is always good but we are at that tipping point where taking a job could hurt as much as help. Taxes, extra car and all of those related expenses, grown up wardrobe, convenience items. All of that stuff that you add up to see if the money really ends up being extra or not. As Brent put it last spring, "If you go to work again you just need to make sure it's a cash neutral position at the worst." But the bigger issue is I have no idea what I would want to do if I did go back to work.

The smaller part time jobs that are out there I've done before. I've done fast food, slow food, retail. Shopping this weekend I saw Macy's was hiring and I thought about it. A discount on clothes, hmm...not bad at all. But what are the odds that they will take me on when I say I only want to work during the day during the week. And honestly Christmas in retail is one of the circles of hell, do I want to do that again? I also clawed my way off the sales floor and in to the back office when I was doing retail. How would it feel to go back and do it again? How about food? The person in front of me in line who doesn't know that a Venti isn't a medium and wants to have a lengthy discussion about caramel drizzle drives me nuts, can I make the brain shift to helping them instead of being bothered by them? Didn't I view retail as the escape hatch from food services?

I don't want to do advertising anymore, and honestly I've been out of it for so long that I would have a hard time getting hired again anyway. But my second go round showed me that it wasn't just the agency but the whole job I was really over. Why would I want to go back? Bookkeeping is the same way. It's easy for me. It's something I can do without breaking a sweat. Handling someone's a/r and a/p accounts. But do I want to? And since I am in a position where I don't have to....

And that brings me back to the dream last night. I was sitting at my desk waiting for the judge to come in reviewing past years' files. The years I was growing up were all stamped with "POTENTIAL" and passed. The years I was home raising C were very thin, not a lot of back up documents, just a few pictures of me and the baby, stamped with "IMPORTANT" and passed. The years following that were thicker, but basically the same sorts of things. I was raising C. I was working to keep the family solvent. Almost automatic passes, from what I would see. Then the files got thicker. More pro and con statements mistakes highlighted with notes for corrective actions, but still passed. And as I sat there with my current year in front of me the best I could come up with for my defense was "I didn't mess it up." Yep, basically all I could come up with for the defense of my year was I could have done worse. Then the thunder boomed and the storm woke me up. Thank goodness, because I'm not sure that dream was going to end well!

But of course as the storm kicked in to high gear and there was no real going back to sleep I started thinking, how would I defend my year? What would I say made what I was doing worth justifying? I'm still a good mom, but what C needs from his dad and me now isn't really a lot. We did our jobs. At this point we are advisers and a hotel. The framework is all there and now he's building his own house. So I can't really say, well my last year was worth it because I was a good mom.

How about good wife? Good homemaker? Brent and I have this discussion probably more than he cares to. I keep the house running so he doesn't have to worry about it and he views that as a worthwhile use of my time. But I view it as something I did when I worked as well. Yes, he was expected to pitch in more when we were both working but at the times he was working more hours I did more house stuff. In Colorado we both worked but he worked insane hours and went to school while I worked limited hours. So the house was mine. I've done both. And is it fair that the entire financial burden of our family rests on his shoulders? And does that matter? Would he work less if I worked more? Knowing his personality I can't say that he would. So would it just be that both of us working would not really be a good thing? Because what would we be working for at that point? Less time together but at least we have more money in the bank. Does that even make sense?

So maybe I just need to do more around the house. Instead of keeping it clean(ish) and keeping us fed (restaurants totally count), maybe if the house is Aunt Jeanie clean and the meals are scratch masterpieces I would feel like I was DOING something. Or I wouldn't.  Haven't we been here before? I want to cook more...I just hate to plan meals. So what would make this different? I'm sure that was in my file in the dream. Probably a faded xerox copy they just kept pulling and putting in the new year file. "Cook More, Write More, Find Life's Purpose"

It's odd for me. I watch friends send their kids off to college and I see a lot of moms go through the panic of Now what?? They have spent their lives defining themselves by being "The Mom." So now that the kids are gone what are they? I don't have that problem because I didn't define myself by being "The Mom" or by being "The Wife".  But I don't have any definition at all. I am me. I do a little of this, I do a little of that. But is it enough? If I had to justify myself would it be enough? I've always faced the Now what?? Just the past few years I haven't had an answer.

Now here is where the depressing blog takes a little bit of a turn. Maybe it's not up to me to decide if it's enough. Maybe that was really the point of the dream. The judge position. I was waiting for the judge to come in. Who was it? My early files were all marked with POTENTIAL and passed.  Who stressed my potential so much that it is as much part of me as my name? My parents. The files where I was a stay at home mom were marked IMPORTANT who judged that? Brent and I did. We both felt that since we could afford it when he was a baby it was IMPORTANT to do it. And so I did. The thicker files from working and raising C and being the wife and the rest, those were fuller because it was harder during those years. We struggled with finances, with parental patience, with having enough hours in the day to get it all done but it was all worth it. Who is the judge on if I did a good job during those years keeping it all together? Well I would say that it's C and Brent. And since C seems to be doing fine and Brent is still sticking around voluntarily I'm taking that as a good sign.

So if I had stayed asleep longer who would have been the judge? Would it have been C? Or my mother? Or Brent? Or would it have been me? And what would the questions have been? What is the measure that I should be taking to see if I can justify myself?

And do we really need to justify ourselves at all?

Or do I just need to get some more sleep?

In the cold light of day...

Laying in bed early this morning I came up with just the best idea for a book. It was seriously genius. I was so pleased with myself over it I almost jumped up and started writing right then. But I waited. I tried to go back to sleep, then finally it was time to get up. I brushed my teeth, threw on some clothes, had some breakfast, got Brent to work and me back home, and sat down to start writing up my notes on this fabulous story idea. And....

...well....

...ummm....

It's really kind of weird. And maybe not all that great. And possibly unreadable.

Don't you hate when that happens? When you get what is absolutely the best freaking idea in the world at 2 AM but then in the bright light of day you realize it was only good because you were sleep deprived? I cannot tell you how many best selling novel ideas I have had at 2 AM that when looked at again at 8 AM turned out to be..."And then the fish says what?" How many times I have thought up a PLAN a PERFECT PLAN for life only to be reminded the next day that I can neither fly nor have access to millions of dollars.

Being a chronic insomniac I do spend a lot of time thinking in the middle of the night. And often I really do come up with good ideas and plans for the next day. But these are always just the good ideas the really brilliant ones are the ones that you wake up with in your head. The ones that are coming to you fully formed because you were dreaming about them as you woke up. And because you were dreaming about them they make perfect sense to you. That is until you fully wake up. Then you realized that maybe your idea to market eggs with the bacon inside the shell so you could get a hard boiled bacon egg (though genius for sure) was probably not exactly well...possible.

That's not to say that I haven't had good story ideas come from dreams, I have. But those I always know were a dream when I am thinking about them the next day. I think to myself what a weird dream...that would make an excellent story. But the ones where I think I am fully awake, the ones where I am just coming out from under....those are the ones that I am sure are brilliant but are really whack-a-doodle. It's an odd time that twilight sleep. When you are awake(ish) and asleep(ish) and both parts of your mind are talking to each other. And they think they understand each other but they don't, not really.

It's like two drunks having a conversation. Have you ever been the sober one listening to that? They think they are making perfect sense, they are pretty sure they are communicating and understanding each other, but really it's a lot of:
"Hey, hey, hey, do you remember....."
"Oh yeah....that was....hey, did I ever tell you about that time when...."
"Hey, hey, hey, do you remember....."
"You just asked me that.....we are talking about that other time now...you know with that guy..."
"Oh yeah....that guy."
and both together..."Good times"

That's what that twilight sleep is like for me. When I am just falling asleep and the ideas are coming fast and furious and they get pulled down in to the dreams where my brain then twists and turns them into weird fantastic scenes and schemes. Or when I am just coming out from under and the dream is still clinging to me coming up to the surface of my brain where the awake side takes over and tries to make sense of the hard boiled bacon egg (the more I say it the more you see how brilliant it is right?) and you end up with a really rational plan for a really irrational idea.

Though the more I think about my brilliant story idea from last night the more I think there might just be something to it. There might really be a fabulous story in there...or I might just need more coffee....