But my dreams are going pretty well!

( It gets long, as they do. )

It wasn't last night's dream, but I forgot to write it out yesterday. SO.

The other night I dreamt that I was living back home post-college, still working at the movie theater. My hometown had become a crime hotspot, and murders were becoming disturbingly commonplace. It seemed to always be night there, too, though it could be that I just kept working nights. I also worked sometimes at another theater, though I don't know which one — still the same company, and still small, but neither of them looked like the real theater I work at.

One of my coworkers had been killed, in fact, shortly after graduating herself. Nicole — though everyone called her Nikki in my dream, even though we all knew she was Nicole... maybe it was a college thing — and maybe also some other people; I think Jessica, who doesn't actually work there anymore, might have been murdered as well.

Homes all over stocked up on weapons: guns, knives, crossbows. My house felt like an arsenal, and I got the feeling that that was fairly commonplace in the neighborhood, which is sort of funny, since most of my neighbors are elderly. And no one really knew how to use the stuff, or at least not the crossbows; the guns they knew how to use, and the knives, but they didn't go out and practice with them, because people just tried to stay home as much as possible.

One day I was walking along a dirt road somewhere, through some field. I have no idea where that was meant to be, since it was close to my home, and I got the impression that I was coming home from work. (Walking?!) I stopped, and saw this pile of red rubber balls in a ditch. I held out my hand and tried to will one of them to come to me, as if I had telekinetic powers, but the one I was looking at burst into flames instead.

Then this guy appeared from nowhere, a total Asian Movie Martial Arts Teacher type. He was tall and wore a green and gold robe, and had a pointed, long white beard. He told me that he was trying to find eleven people to grant eleven elemental stone powers to, and I had been the one to fit to the Fire stone. He told me what a few of the other powers were, and one was something like Speech. I guessed, somehow, that it was Cheyenne. He told me I was right. I laughed about that a little when I woke up, honestly, since Cheyenne is the one who thought I was insulting her when I called her charismatic.

I went home, and when I got there I found that my dad had hired a woman to teach me to use weaponry. Apparently, being young and pretty much a freeloader at that point, I was to be the neighborhood's designated superhero sort, and patrol the woods (which had expanded in my dreams, and were creepy and dark enough that you expected Ichabod Crane to come galloping through followed by the Headless Horseman at any moment) when I wasn't working. Possibly I was not meant to be the only one, but in any case, I had to learn to use some weapons. The crossbow I learned quick enough, which was good, because NO ONE KNEW HOW TO USE IT. I just don't get why we had so many if they were useless, man.

In the midst of a training session, a madman (we knew he was mad, and dangerous, automatically; he was bearded and wearing something like pajamas, but he didn't seem outwardly dangerous) ran into the yard and started running circles around my father. I shot at him, then ran out of bullets and picked up a crossbow; one arrow skimmed his shoulder, and then he turned to run into the neighbor's yard and I shot again. I hit him in the ass, and he ran down the street with an arrow sticking out of his left cheek.

The fire thing never came up again, even though it probably would have been PRETTY DAMN USEFUL THEN.

I've actually managed to sleep well these past few nights, and dreamt fairly vividly, but not well.

The other night I dreamt that I had come home for the weekend (which, in my dream, was October 6) and found out, after I'd already been home a night, that Kevin had leukemia. No one saw fit to tell me, except by e-mail — my dad had sent it two days before and got mad because I hadn't checked my e-mail that day. Kevin was going out with his friends even though he said the doctors told him he had only thirty hours or so left to live.

I woke up and went back to sleep, and I dreamt that I had woken up from that dream but Kevin still had leukemia. Then that happened again.

Last night I dreamt for the first time that I can remember that I was pregnant and I wasn't blissfully happy about it. I'd already been pregnant once, at seventeen or eighteen — like I usually am in the dreams where I'm pregnant and blissfully happy about it — and when I'd given birth I had realized I had no idea what I was going to do then, so my parents took the baby from me and I never saw it again. I never even knew if it was a girl or a boy. So I was pregnant again, only this time the father was at least around and not running away — and I kept thinking, "Man, and we didn't even really have sex. We were barely even touching. I should serve as a warning: I only barely had sex twice, and both times I got pregnant." It was last summer and I was twenty-one, and I was working at the movie theater and someone else was pregnant (not Christine, possibly Crystal, even though that was two summers ago) and I was horribly afraid I was going to do something that would cause a miscarriage. One day I slipped on a rug at home and freaked out, but my mother didn't even care. My hands were always on my stomach, and I didn't know how, but I knew I wanted to keep this baby, or at the very least know what it's face looked like before I gave it away of my own accord. (I hoped that was what my parents had done with my other baby — adopted it out.) Really, I wanted to keep the baby.

Then I dreamt that I was part of a movie like Dodgeball, with Ben Stiller as the antagonist and someone else famous (possibly Jim Carrey, possibly someone else) as a man who had recently returned to his hometown, a small mining town that was being crushed by corporate fists and general economic collapse. There was some strange competition involving something that looked like a giant blue-and-white roulette table, and the winner would get some ridiculously large sum of money, and of course Ben Stiller's character wanted it not only for himself but to see the mining town fall apart, and the other man vowed to start a new town for the miners if he got the money. He won, and then there was an Earthquake that swallowed the whole gaming field and Ben Stiller's character willfully stayed behind while everyone else got out, except his servant sort of guy, who said he had nothing else to live for anyway. By this point it wasn't a movie anymore, it was real (in my dream, of course).

So he built a new town where no one had to mine anymore, and strange complexes of buildings. The space between the buildings seemed more like halls than roads, except they weren't covered. Everyone lived connected to someone else. I started a restaurant with a few other girls who could cook and bake, and we tried to convince an elderly woman to make pies for us but she just wanted to boil salt and yell at people through her window.

Then I started to hear screaming one night from a farther-out building, and ran to that place. In one room a little girl was screaming that her hands were burning, but several other people, including the guy who'd won the competition (and was more or less the mayor), were already there and told me not to worry. They said it happened a couple of nights a week — the girl would fall asleep and wake up screaming that her hands were burning, and it had only started happening since she got this new plush toy (it was pretty much a fuschia face with a big grin, with tiny horns, arms, and legs sticking out) and it only happened when she slept with it and touched it. Any place she touched him would burn. And it wasn't just the little girl being strange, like kids can be, or dreaming; they'd touched her hands and felt them burn, and felt strange heat come from the toy. They called it Mr. Evil. The girl didn't want to let go of Mr. Evil, though, even though she knew he burned her hands. I was really unsettled, and believed, like everyone else did except the girl, that the toy was possessed. One night I took it from the room while she screamed and her mother tended to her hands, and I passed the mayor. He looked tired, but he didn't get up; he just asked me what I was doing.

"I'm going to burn it," I said, and I told him it was what he should have done a long time ago. But when I got outside, in the desert-like place we lived in, I was afraid. It was dark, and the toy was demonic and I was pretty much alone there. I thought I'd wait until day to burn it, and then bury the ashes far away so that if they were still possessed nothing evil would grow too close to town.

Then I had to talk to a woman who had been something of an outlaw and who was in love with the mayor. She had wanted to be with him, but he got the girl and all after the competition and the girl wasn't her. She wanted to kill the woman he was with, but I told her I couldn't let her do that, but that she could change things and be happy anyway. Basically, we — one other woman and I — gave her a goth makeover. She was happier then.

Then I woke up.

So last night I had trouble sleeping once again. I did manage to sleep easily this afternoon for a bit, but I couldn't sleep long.

Anyway, last night I was at least asleep once long enough to dream and remember it... aaand I dreamt that I'd run out of Brita filters and cans of Coke, so I was telling Eunho we'd have to drink all the bottled water I bought instead.

So crazy!

Last night I dream that I was visiting a small hospital sort of place that was both a psych ward and a long-term care unit. Leonard Nimoy was there, as he'd been sick for a while, but was eventually released. I was free to move around and easily hid from nurses, which allowed me to plan for a guerilla documentary on the place. (I do not know why I would think such a thing was a good idea, because I don't think at that point I suspected them of doing anything wrong.) I went back with Nimoy (WE WERE APPARENTLY BUDDIES <3), but we realized something was amiss; it was suddenly harder to navigate and to escape from the prying eyes of the nurses. I was caught with my camera, and they "diagnosed" me as having something wrong... though I wasn't sure whether it was physical or mental. I ended up strapped to a bed and tormented.

By the end of it I was nearly crazy, but Jessi came along and got herself caught up in it too. Before anything could happen to her, she told me that if I sold myself as a wife to any visitor, he could release me from the hospital. I did, to someone surprisingly young, handsome, and kind. (Because that's surely the kind of guy that would buy a wife from a mental hospital.) Jessi was bought by his brother, but he didn't make her marry him.

I wound up returning with a girl who had also been made aware of something awful going on at the hospital, presumably through a relative who was there. She looked like Dichen Lachman, and when we wound up huddling beneath a table in one of the curtained-off rooms and I started sobbing, afraid I'd be caught all over again, she yelled at me for being weak. I woke up shortly after that.

As if I gave normal dreams ever! (All right, I do.)

( Cut for FREEDOM! )

I took a nap that lasted nearly three hours today (my medication is fucking me up), and dreamt in a few of the five-minute to half-hour times I slept. I only remember one, though.

I met with cleolinda, who looked quite a bit like Galadriel, surprise surprise. Long blond hair and very pretty. She told me she was taking me somewhere, and it turned out to be a meeting of Twilight fans. I didn't know if they were the kind of fans who could make fun of it and laugh but still liked it, or the kind of fans that hated anyone who didn't praise Edward's heavenly skin and tortured soul immediately, so I kept my trap shut. First we ate — chicken, bread, potatoes, some other meat — and the host (whose home we were at) apologized because it was only modeled after the second best meal in the book, but she couldn't get the makings to replicate the best meal in it. I just dug in, 'cause hey, chicken! And then came the time to read.

Many of the girls couldn't stay for that, but there were four or five people sitting in a circle then, passing around the textbook-sized novel. Each girl would read a sizable chunk out loud, then pass it on to the next person. When it came to be Cleo's turn, there was... apparently a song about Bella and Edward. She sang very well.

Still, I hated the books and was sure it would somehow come out when it came my turn to read, which was after her. She handed the book to me and I nervously laughed and said, "I'm glad that part wasn't mine, because my voice is awful!" Then I looked down at the pages.

It was the end of the chapter, on page nine, but there was a note saying "go to page 6" and a huge section of notes on the chapter. The next chapter started on page eleven, but I wasn't sure whether I should go back to page six for something, read the notes, or start the next chapter.

Then we had to go, I guess. Except then I was really angry and decided one of the girls there had been a total bitch, and Cleo was gone, so I started punching her and spit on her before leaving. Then I woke up.

There is something wrong with my brain, guys.

I am thinking of friendslocking my journal. A year ago I would have said something like, "No! I could never do that!" but now it seems... logical. I'm not sure! It all seems fruitless.

IN ANY CASE, last night I had a complex and winding dream that involved the Jonas Brothers. Well, I mean, they were there at the end.

( Slip inside a giant condom and drink orange beer. )

I have now watched more Britain's Got Talent than I ever watched American Idol, I think (given that my American Idol experience was when that one girl in the audience cried and a clip show of especially bad auditions that my cousin wanted to watch), and I desperately want Susan Boyle, Shaun Smith, and Gregg Pritchard to be in a musical together as the lead roles.

I MEAN. OH MY GOD I ALREADY HAVE A STORY FOR THEM, KIND OF?

I don't know if I ever wrote about it, but a few years ago I had a dream that I was a boy in high school who'd been kicked out of his home for his sexuality and who was living with his boyfriend in his mother's little shack-like house. The kicker is that the boyfriend's mother was an extremely religious Christian, but she was unwilling to hate her son for being gay — whereas my non-religious family couldn't even stand my being in the house.

Also, the boyfriend's home had two bedrooms but three bathrooms, and then like a tiny kitchen and a living room. It was strangely built.

For a while I've wanted to work on this as a sort of larger story, and— COULD IT BE A MUSICAL?

Probably not. But I'm probably going to fantasize about this for weeks. I just don't know if it should be Gregg or Shaun as the Christian lady's son (and obviously she would be Susan).

No one would ever like an idea like this but me!

I had a dream last night that th_esaurus and rionaleonhart were visiting, possibly because th_esaurus was SUPER RICH and could jet ski to America on a moment's notice for a weekend vacation!

...although that part might not have been entirely true? It is possible that she just had a little extra money, and that there was a misunderstanding about pheasants. My parents kept demanding last names so they could find out if she was Trump-level rich, but I was all, "I can't tell you! ...because I don't know! She just showed up and we started writing fic together in one of my classrooms."

Also, a horse fly flew up my nose.

I swear I'll take a break from posting after this.

Only tangentially related to the rest of the post: Lee directed me to a video of Clint doing that mousetrap improv game (you're blindfolded, given a task, and then have to play the alphabet game... all while moving over a field of set mousetraps) and I found out that—

—I still take pleasure in seeing him suffer. (What can I say? I resented having the crush on him, and I resented it even more after admitting it to him. Also, I am a cruel bitch.)

—he still looks exactly the same. I mean, I really haven't changed much physically these past three years, aside from doing my hair a bit differently and probably weight a few pounds more, but he really looks like he hasn't aged a day.

—oh God I'm still in love with his voice. Damn it.

—bastard can't follow rules worth a damn! The other person playing was saying most of the lines. Of course, she was walking around a lot instead of on her hands and knees like they ought to have been, given that their task was "scrubbing the floor." Not that he was scrubbing much, mind, though it might have alerted him to traps if he'd moved his hands around on the floor. Maybe that's against the rules? Pah.

Anyway, moving on...

A few nights ago I had a high school dream, like many nightmares I've had in the past, but it was... not nearly as bad as most of them. For one, I wasn't alone. Kris was there, and Kevin, and Jessi showed up. For two, I wasn't just eternally stuck in high school, failing forever; instead I'd found out, in a sitcom-like twist, that I'd "graduated" short enough credits to make up three classes, and so had Kris and Kevin. Jessi hadn't, but was kind enough to visit anyway. For three, although I was confused about my schedule and missing classes as a result, on the second day of the dream I managed to get a copy of my schedule and start keeping up, and I only wound up missing three days total. Bah-zing! I actually kept in classes at least until the end of the semester — which was a summer semester, but not summer school? I dunno. Anyway. I was working at the same time, and planning on doing my very last semester the next summer, after I graduated from college, because my dreams are ridiculous but that allowed me to continue in college, which is pretty awesome.

My schedule was reasonable and realistic, too. I had to take at least five credits, as you do at my old high school, to stay enrolled; that left me still with four free periods a day, which actually reflects my real senior year schedule very well. They were mixed up — one at the beginning of the day, one in the middle (for lunch), two at the end — but that's even pretty realistic. The only weird thing was the second period was "Mass," which actually was a religion class... and my school would not only not offer that (given that it's a public school), I wouldn't take it if I had the option not to. Still!

We made it to the end of the semester, and to celebrate the school had a dance (this was supposed to be Shen, but it looked different and, more importantly, Shen would never do that) that was actually a concert on a combination theater and Burger King. I had this weird desert derived from soda that was chocolate in flavor and had the consistency of soft-serve ice cream, but which was not ice cream. There was a relatively attractive employee at the BK who kept hitting on Jessi and me.

Then I played an awesome 3D PacMan game that was actually kind of realistic!

I wasn't panicky. I wasn't worried. I wasn't failing. Time wasn't speeding by faster than I could handle. I didn't wake up depressed.

If only real life could imitate such dreams!

A dream affected by my parents birthday, my advisement appointment, and watching the never-aired Babylon Fields pilot*—

( Long. )

*I wish it would have aired! It was completely awesome.

I had a dream that was like three or for puzzles with their pieces all cut the same way; one piece would slide in or out at any given moment and I would go from being a human child slave to a half-wild dog to an adult human looking for his friend. Occasionally, very occasionally, I was myself.

The things that remained the same were these: there was always a young woman from the country who had known me and who had interacted with an unkind king and wound up in the city; I went with her, but I escaped or by some other person's actions I ended up far away again and had to travel back.

( This is pretty long. )

NYU does not really have dirt floors crawling with parasites and other bugs.

Lice are not really spider-shaped and, if they were and did, in fact, live in the mysterious abandoned lower levels of NYU's non-Bobst library that doesn't exist, they would not be deterred just by sandals. Also, Maggie would have no particular reason to go to that place to organize its dusty mess.

Getting knocked in the face by animals launched into the air does not cause gigantic boil/blister-like swelling on the left side of the face and normal bruising on the right. If it did, NYU would probably not go, "Oh, what the hell, just deal with it."

NYU is not full of open-air classrooms and cafeterias.

NYU is not a campus with a quad. Or grass, really, Washington Square Park notwithstanding.

You don't even take those classes.

So when you're short on sleep and have these dreams, just forget them and go back to sleep instead of jumping out of bed in a panic and patting yourself down.

I blame the dead lady bugs inside the HMIs. CREEPY.

So I fell asleep for a short while today, doing one of this "I'm not going to sleep, I'm just resting my eyes, I'll get up in a moment" things. I slept for about two hours.

I dreamt one of those dreams that keeps changing directions and I don't remember most of it. I know I was angry at my parents, and I was in a Boston that was nothing like Boston, and I was trying to get away from them and hiding out somewhere.

Then I ended up in this class where high schoolers and college students were making music without musical instruments. Someone sat me down at a table and gave me two knives and a block of wood. I played drums that way and it actually sounded like music. There were two other people at my table, a guy also playing "drums" and a girl playing... something else and singing. She had dark makeup and dyed red hair (red like a tomato, not red like Annie); she sang well, but eventually she got up and left. Then Zac Efron sat down.

WHAT.

Yeah, so apparently I'm having Zac Efron dreams now? Not that I'm ashamed or anything, but it's not as though I spend a large amount of time thinking about him or anything. Oh, well. He's pretty, even if he is sometimes a strange shade of orange.

We played for a little while, and then another guy came over and picked up some other stuff, and we sounded pretty good. Somehow each table only really heard their own music instead of all the tables turning the room into a horrible stew of mismatched music. We were having a good time, and then we were all told to stop. Extra instruments were set before us — I had charcoal pencils and stencils — and a time was set for forty seconds, whereupon it was announced there was a competition. We had to create some sort of music to pass the class, but the best music would win. I don't know what they'd win, but they'd win, you see, and I sometimes have a very competitive spirit. But forty seconds? I looked up, and the three guys at my table looked lost. Zac Efron looked like someone had squashed his favorite toy pony, man. Like he was going to cry. Apparently in my dreams Zac Efron is a wimpy little boy, when in reality that'd more likely be me.

"Come on," I said.

"We can't do it," he said.

A few second passed. How could we write anything in forty seconds, much less write it, perfect it, and perform it?

But we had to do it! I picked up the knives, put a stencil on the block of wood, and started beating. No one responded, so I played harder, then faster. Then the guy next to me picked up his stuff, an we played together, but still — essentially we were two drummers. Kind of. We didn't sound much like drums then. Zac went all wide-eyed and shoved the guy next to him out of his seat, telling him to go find the red-haired girl. In a second he came back with her, and then he and Zac started to play and we started to sing, and—

We were awesome.

I wish I could have recorded the music my brain produced. I have never dreamt of music like that before. I don't know that I've even dreamt music before, especially not original music.

And then Zac Efron smiled at me like I'd made his dream come true.

It was weird, but cool. IF ONLY IT HAD STARTED SO NICE. But still, hey. Music.

I am home for Thanksgiving! Actually, I got here before seven yesterday, but I ate and then fell asleep. I skipped Sociology to get on a better train (earlier, costing less, and less crowded). And then good food and sleeeep. I slept until seven! Life is good.

EXCEPT.

Except my subconscious has once again betrayed me.

Every time it seems I have wiped my mind clean of any trace of my Clint crush, it brings it all crashing back down. Though this time I didn't wake up still feeling it, at least...

The dream was kinda whacky, and I think Obama might have been involved? I know one of my professors was, because he was teaching my film production course... even though I'm not in one, and even though that specific professor is actually a writing professor. And I guess my film was kind of done digitally, because I created a "daughter" on a computer and then she was possibly real? She was in my film, at least. She was this kind of white, red-eyed (but not quite albino) fox-alien thing, and the daughter also of a silver fox-alien thing that Clint had created. Everyone wanted his babies, I guess. SIGH.

I finished filming, maybe, and then it was summer all of a sudden, or it might have been all along, and Clint was spending four fifths of his vacation singing to the elderly. On cruises. While that may not sound glamorous, apparently it was very glamorous, because it put him among the top four most popular students at NYU (he doesn't even go to NYU! Stop it, brain!) at the end of summer when he came back. All of NYU crowded into this little plaza area not even in New York City on the edge of the water, and he hopped directly off the last cruise and into the crowd. The elderly had loved him, apparently. There were all these celebration things and something about the white fox-alien daughter I had, but I don't remember much until some faculty member of NYU annoucned that Clint, James Franco, Gavin, and this kid who doesn't actually exist named Steve were going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. This huge screen on the side of one building showed a flag, instead of us having a real one. Ha. But it was a silent version of the Pledge, I guess? No one said anything. I think Clint, James, Gavin, and Steve just were standing up real tall or something (which is funny to me, seeing as how Clint is short and the other three are tall -- although I don't think James is actually quite so tall in real life) and looking all regal and stuff. Or something. And still I could not get close.

And then I woke up!

I've been having nightmares, except not.

See, these past three days I've woken up without the prompting of my alarm; the past two I couldn't get back to sleep after. Also these past two I've woken up incredibly sweaty from an intensely negatively emotional dream and also from the CRAZY HEAT that is my dorm baking without air conditioning. I could feel the sweat in my fucking hair. That's just gross.

The first was a relatively simple dream that escalated unexpectedly; I was preparing for something like a bake sale, except not, because it was really food for the poor (and of course they didn't have to pay). It was rather haphazardly set up on a lawn with fold-out tables, but sort of like a soup house. With, you know, non-soup stuff. There may have been soup, but I think there was also pie and the like. I don't remember for sure.

I was setting up, and someone proposed the idea, suddenly, that I had the power of premonition. I may have said something about newspaper horoscopes to prompt this. I rolled my eyes and rattled off the first thing that came to mind as a prediction for the next day. I don't remember what it was, but it came true. I pretended not to notice, and went about feeding the poor and scolding those who just wanted a free meal, even though they could very well afford their own.

The future-telling apparently upset my mother, who saw me say something off-hand to another volunteer at the soup-kitchen-but-not. He was, I guess, a bad influence, because he was all dark and tall and mysterious. Or something. Although I'd said nothing of importance to him, my mother demanded to know why I was asking him what I should do all day. I was confused, and said I hadn't asked any such thing, and asked why she thought that. She didn't tell me, and then I had worked to do.

Then she asked me again, and then again, and I was irritated.

That last time, the fourth one, I got very angry and began screaming at her, loud and hard enough for it to hurt my throat. And she acted indignant, first because she had a right to know, I guess, and then because I couldn't possibly expect her to remember asking me before, even though I hadn't so much as looked up at the guy or done anything but bat hands and hand out food since the first time she'd asked. I started yelling about what was so wrong with him anyway, and that I had the full right to speak to anyone I wanted, and she'd asked me four times so there was no way she'd forgotten.

I woke up confused and angry. I nearly started yelling when I woke up, but I realized my mother wasn't there... so I actually considered calling her to yell at her before realizing that it was just a dream. My throat felt dry and sore, but I'm sure that's unrelated... because Brianna didn't mention anything about me screaming in my sleep. I'd hope she'd wake me if I did, anyway.

The second was mostly full of shame. I was at school, taking part in something halfway between a play and a film; it was shown on a screen, and I only performed once, but it didn't stay exactly the same every time. My part was something like a purple Eeyore... I don't know. The point is, I was preparing for this play-film when I was, so to speak, seduced.

Not in a sexy way. Damn, how I wish it had been in a sexy way. No, I was seduced platonically; charmed, really. Charmed by a man who looked like a cold-eyed Justin Long in glasses, only taller, thinner, and more snakelike. But in a hot way, you know? Like evil-is-sexy and all that. He work dark jeans and a black t-shirt and spoke like a true propagandist leader.

He was a terrorist, as embarrassing as that is to admit. YES I DREAMT ABOUT TERRORISM. Fuck you, Dubya. But he was an American, so at least there's that. He told me, with no worry of betrayal, that he had planted a trigger so that a certain part in my performance would trip it, leading to an explosion that would break... something, resulting in the flood of some sort of very important system and the death of at least a few people.

I knew, I knew, but I thought I was in love, and I said nothing. I fucking said nothing. I let people die because I liked the guy. I couldn't tell anyone I'd known.

And then, to continue the theme of hating my parents in my dreams, my dad revealed that he was fully in support of this snake charmer's terrorism, and that we were moving so as to be safe from future attacks and also to support them. And that, it seemed, was what pushed me to actually act, but I had to do so quietly; I was afraid of my father, of course. I thought he would hurt me. But his crazy vehemence and the cold eyes of the charmer and the realization that I didn't love him and he didn't care about me at all, even though I still held some sort of affection for him, let me start to figure out how to get mine back, how to make up for what I'd done in some small fraction. I don't know exactly what I was doing, but I think I was planting a bomb to destroy whatever it was they were constructing for their next act of terrorism.

I woke up feeling afraid my dad would catch me, in a hurry to finish what I was working on, and, most of all, completely ashamed about what I'd done. What I'd dreamt I'd done. I was even sweatier than the morning before.

It's a good thing I woke up, though; it turned out I'd set my alarms for 8:50AM instead of 7:50AM, so I had to run to the subway to get to work on time. I only really made it because everyone else was a few minutes late.

SO IN OTHER NEWS, I have fic to get back to now.

So last night I dreamt that I was a shapeshifter.

AWESOME.

( More about shapeshifting here. )

When I actually managed to sleep last night (it was really, really hot, and my nice, soft, pretty blue sheets wound up with a hole in them after going through a wash cycle to get some blood out, so I'm stuck with sheets that feel almost like plastic), I dreamt about cats.

They weren't good dreams. They weren't flat-out nightmares, though; I would never have woken from those dreams in a panic, unable to get back to sleep, or stressed out. But they weren't good.

In the first one, Melissa was in my room at night as I sat at my computer, only its light (bright than in real life, and somewhat reddish) to see by. Lissy went off by the door, and then Mookie came to me, floating a speaking in a woman's voice, and told me that she was still in pain, even after death. It was cliche in execution and quite sad.

The second one involved us getting two more cats (which we plan to do) — a grey tabby with a white belly and a dark grey and white longhaired kitty, both male. Unfortunately all the cats hated each other, and when we tried to get them to eat they attacked each other so consistently it was impossible to get any food to any of them. Benny ended up sneaking into it and eating all their food, which seemed to be shredded beef or tuna and rice.

There were more dreams, something with pink and a cliff. I don't remember more than that, though.

'Nother dream tale.

( Cut for the folks who are sick of me babbling about my subconscious. )

I had a dream about Scrubs. It was about something else before that, but... all I remember is trying to act like Stitch (of Lilo and Stitch, of course) and Beyonce.

In my dream, JD lived (with someone? possibly Elliot? possibly alone? couldn't tell) in this little white stucco house next to a parking lot for an open-air theater. And Dr. Cox was dying. He came to JD's home and asked the practicing musical group there if they could play... something. I don't know, I think it was supposed to be JD's favorite song. Then, when JD came out and saw him, he offered to give him his car (which was not a Porsche, but a nondescript white van with a door missing and a few seats gone...). JD was all, "No, no, I can't just take it" and Cox was like, "What the fuck. I can't take money with me." but eventually conceded, since it was only a little money that JD had anyway and it would go to his family.

It was all very sad and lead to some half-dreams about miracles and only having one at your disposal. Of course, JD used his for Dr. Cox... after he'd already been declared dead and was in his coffin at his funeral. BUT ANYWAY.

It was all actually very intense and sad. I guess that's the good thing about being as tired as I've been — I quickly fall into a deep sleep and get these pretty sweet dreams.

So, after my school-related dreams last night, between the first time I woke up and the second (sometime around nine, I think), I had a kind of awesome dream.

There was a colony of pixies, almost-androgynous little glittering creatures living in nature and dining on sap and dew. The children were gold, glittering, and small. As they got older, they took on their true color — which was usually gold, but normally shades of green and light blue (kind of like my mother's cichlids, but not dependent on gender). It wasn't really getting "older," actually — it was maturing and growing stronger, but they could grow older without moving past their child state. It was a choice, a concious effort to excell in the ways of the pixies and their magic, until their wings could take them up the stalks of the plants.

One in particular was mischievous and Peter Pan-like, staying as a child even as his friends and siblings grew up. The adults were annoyed by him, but found a way to trick him: they insulted him, saying that his lack of growth wasn't a choice (though they knew it was) and that he didn't mature because he couldn't; he couldn't learn to be polite and courteous and pixie-like. He was offended, of course, and took their challenge, growing extremely rapidly into a powerful, dark blue pixie — by serving the others. (It was freaking adorable, actually; they drank dew in little tea cups made of flower petals, and he served them from what sort of looked like gravy boats made of leaves. All this while they sat back on the leaves of the plants and just relaxed; he buzzed higher and higher.)

Eventually he left behind the other pixies, relaxing on the leaves and some serving those relaxing on the leaves like he had, and flew over the plants — and saw, in a clearing in the forest, a young man with blond hair on a white horse, stopping because he had some sort of trouble. He was struck by the man's beauty and wanted to follow him, but knew that, even at his large size for a pixie, he couldn't, and so he decided to exceed the strength of the greatest pixie until he grew to the size of the man he'd seen, so he could go find him and talk to him and love him.

It was so adorable. <3

So last night I went to sleep around one or two in the morning. I just woke up.

As a result, I had some truly epic dreams... or at least two, since I only remember one from before I woke up and realized all my clothes were still on (around seven in the morning) and one from after I decided to just turn off my alarms and wake up whenever (which was around two in the afternoon).

I'm still tired, actually.*

( The pink goo means you're... )

( A more pleasant end. )

The feel of the dreams was strong, and empowering. (Obviously, because I pretty much had superpowers in both...) And pleasant. I wish they could have gone to their ends.

*Yeah, yeah, I know — "IF YOU SLEEP TOO MUCH YOU STILL FEEL TIRED AND OMG IT'S SOOO BAD FOR YOU!" Shut up, I feel better than I have pretty much all this week, so I don't really care.

These past few nights I've been feeling kind of icky at the end of the day and then suddenly, overwhelmingly tired, such that I have very nearly fallen asleep while slumped down in my chair here at my desk. So I've been getting to bed, as a result, at a somewhat reasonable time, which gives me more than enough time to sleep while still waking up at a reasonable hour, which should mean I can sleep long enough that this extreme tiredness will just go away.

But no, of course it can't work that way. I can't sleep through the night. This night was a little better — at least it was a good five or six hours before I woke up — but still damn annoying. I'm alternately cold and sweating under one flimsy sheet, which would worry me if there were any other symptoms of something not being on, but there aren't. The only good thing to come of that is that I have no trouble getting up in the morning, but that's usually because I haven't properly fallen asleep since the last time I woke up.

And there has been lots of intense dreaming. This time it was the end of the world, in three or four different ways. First a space station crashed into Earth, killing most of the inhabitants of both, melding them together, and sending them hurtling into space (with no difference in the sunniness at all because my brain doesn't follow science). Most of the aliens were pretty humanoid, but one was a pink cat-evolved creature kind of like Starfire who, when anxious, took off all her (not very there, anyway) clothes and asked someone to pet her back.

Then it was the end of the world with only three people alive. It was a boy, his father, and someone else. The father went about pretending like things were normal — as best you can when you're one of only three people left alive, that is — and the boy got frustrated about it. It ended up with the dad taking the boy out to get ice cream, but he wouldn't let him get all the kinds he wanted because they needed to "save" it so that in fifty years they wouldn't need to make more, they could just go get what was left, and the boy got pissed off and said there was no way the three of them would be able to live that long on their own. The other guy didn't say anything. (He may have been a butler.)

Then it was my family and I at the end of the world. We didn't know if there were other people left, but we were kind of nervous about even straying too far from our house, so Hallelujah when one day we saw a car full of twenty-somethings pull around the bend. That meant that there were other people — not just them, but all over the world. They were all a bunch of young people living together in one house not far from us, and some of them were Ken's friends, so he started spending a lot of time there. I eventually went, too, but found myself bored, and then, as I was leaving, Ken collapsed and nearly stopped breathing. No one would help me, so I had to gather him (I don't know how, because I certianly wouldn't have been able to lift him like that) and run home. I saw Dad outside and told him Ken had collapsed, and he just asked what I wanted him to do about it. Um, take him, since you're stronger? Tell me where to bring him? Thanks, dream!Dad. You made Ken DIE IN MY ARMS.

Then there was possibly a continuation of that dream and possibly a new dream, with the same sort of situation but many more people; it was like the world's population had been depleted big-time, but everyone found each other and started concentrated communities across the world. My family and I, as well as some of my friends, were trying to run a hospital that was also a shelter for both people and animals. There were lots of cats and ferrets — that I had to feed, anyway. Every other floor was an animal floor. There were women around doing strange things, and my friend and I realized they were gods, but we weren't sure which. I began to suspect they were from many religions, and that one in particular was Kali, probably the one who'd caused it all.

Interesting dreams, but I WOULD HAVE RATHER SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT, THANKS.