A Dream (partial)

This has not been one of my better weeks. Between the stress of the work situation, the cold I try to rationalize away, and the eczema flare-up (my neck is raw--aaarrgggh) lopped atop my already wonky sleep pattern, well, let's just say, tired, cranky, somewhat un-focused has been the order of the days.

Additionally, there have been dreams. Or rather, snippets of dreams. Or more accurately, I'm only remembering the snippets of some of the dreams. As in:

My daughter was nine or ten and apparently, my only child. We were living in a house that looked very much like the rental my family lived at one point during my own childhood.

It was a sunny day, and daughter yelled that she was going outside to play and taking her bike. I heard her struggle to pull the bike from a front closet, and then the screen door slam shut. Making my way to the front to latch the door, annoyed by the sight of her toddler bike sitting in the middle of the hall--a constant reminder that she's older and that bike should be given away, as it is taking up room we don't have--I hear noises on the porch.

Curious, but a bit alarmed, I rush to latch the screen door. The man with two small children, gender indeterminate, appear to be deciding who should knock--when they realize, as one, that knocking isn't necessary.

Addressing the man, I ask, "may I help you?" He begins to talk while at the same time, reaching for the door. Though re-latched, he begins to pull on the door. I ask them all to please leave my porch. The children sit down while the man continues to pull on the door. I know it will give soon, so I yell, "PLEASE LEAVE or I'll call the police", as I move to close the wooden door.

In the next moment, the man was inside the house pleading, "please, let's just have some fun." The children remained seated on the porch. I ask the man again to please leave. He responded to my request by beginning to dance. Well, not dancing so much as . . . performing, or rather, exercising.

Ala, Hip-Hop Abs.

Then, I'm awake with a cat (the orange one) on my chest.

Keys, Mice, and a Possum

I may have mentioned a time or two that I don't dream often. Well, it is probably more accurate to say that I don't remember my dreams often. Point is, more often than not, I sleep. I wake up. Whatever happened in-between is lost, forever.

Tuesday night / Wednesday morning was one of those rare occasions where I dreamt and I remembered.

Open scene:

Mom and I were in a library. I don't know why, my mom and I have not ever been in a library together.

Anyway...we were in a library, a very large library. We were in the children's section so identified by titles and decoration.

We seemed to be on a hunt of some sort, as mom had me going to and fro (while she sat) retrieving various items from various areas of this very large library. I found it odd that we were
1. in a library
2. none of the items being retrieved were books
3. we seemed to be the only people in the library

Whenever I questioned what we were doing she would reply, "it must be done."

Several times I had to go through a door to access a particular area. All the doors were locked and required special keys. Mom held the keys. Whenever I reached a locked door I had to return to get the keys.

Many, many trips and items later, we were done. We were leaving the children's area of the library with a wagon-load of items. (Not clear what the items were.) Mom stopped before we reached the final exit, turned and asked, "where are the keys?"

I'd left the keys...somewhere.

She implored me to go back and get them, insisting that they were too hard to replace, too expensive, too precious...I don't know what all, but back I trudged to retrieve the keys.

Once I reach an area where I thought I'd left them, I see a table I hadn't seen before and a mound of what looked like the bundle of keys. I move closer to the table and the closer I got, the more I see the mound isn't keys, but still not clear what.

I reach the table, upset that the keys are not there, but curious about this mound, which is something covered with a silvery-gray blanket. I make a move to look underneath the blanket.

Possum. Dead I think.

I don't study it too long, distracted by scurrying mice and my blood curdling scream.

3:30 a.m. awake for the duration.

End Scene.

In addition to the dream memory, the other aberration is my sleep pattern. Where before, months ago (and for years) I had trouble getting to sleep. Now, I fall asleep pretty much minutes after hitting the hay, shortly after 10 p.m. most nights. And sleep quite soundly, for about two hours, dream or no dream. I don't (usually) have too much trouble going back to sleep, but then within an hour or so, I'm awake again.

At one time, the cats were impacting my sleep. But that hasn't been the case (though, they do still start the "feed me" banging at 4ish but since they can't get in the room I'm now conditioned to largely ignore all but the most obnoxious of their noises) for a little bit now.

For a few weeks there I'd been able to get up at 5, pert and perky enough to stretch, exercise, even go out for a short ride, before work. Now, over the last week or so, what with the broken sleep, I'm lucky to lumber out of bed by six.

I'm having to get my exercise in during the course of the day and / or after work, which is fine, mostly, I guess. But I felt better when I did something before work. Plus, if I did something before work, during the day AND after, more exercise, better weight loss results.

I'm not sure if it's one thing or several roaming around my mind working to upset my pattern, whatever it is though, I have to find a way back to the previous patter as IT seemed much more agreeable to my over all well-being.

And I haven't a clue as to what that dream meant.