Doppelganger Dream Theater

My husband might literally be the nicest person in the world.  Yes.  Literally.  He is so nice to everyone all the time. He’s even nice when I’m being annoying.  And I am annoying a lot.  I haven’t met everyone in the world yet, so I could be wrong… and he’s no saint, but when it comes to being nice, he’s at the top of the nice list.

Which makes it odd when I have dreams like the one I had two nights ago.

Dreams where my Mike is mean to me. 

I’ve had them at least once every six months since we’ve been together – so going on 8 years now.  And, because Mike is so nice, he actually feels guilty about the actions of Mean Dream Mike and desperately tries to find some way to make it up to me for his evil dream twin. When I tell real life Mike about my dreams, he seriously feels bad about it and apologizes! 

The subject varies, but it’s always ridiculous.  This most recent dream was one where Mean Dream Mike bought a house and paid cash because he wanted to live in a house separate from me and not pay for the mortgage.  I sobbed hysterically and he tried to calm me by saying “I don’t want a divorce; I just don’t want to live with you.”   SO MEAN! RIGHT!?

Another time I had a dream that we were at a party and he kept making fun of the stories I was telling, so I threw my punch in his face and ran and cried in another room.  Another one I remember was that he went on vacation… WITHOUT TELLING ME!

SO MEAN!!!! 

(And also, I cry a lot in my dreams. Wah wah wah)

Why do I do this?  Why do I dream that he’s mean to me?  I never dream that he cheats on me, or that he physically abuses me, but I totally dream up scenarios where he’s such a mean guy!  In the morning, I’m so relieved to discover that nice Mike is real life Mike that I’m overcome with joy and want to hug and kiss him to death and make sure he never leaves my side.    Is it because his real life persona is so nice that my subconscious has to make up for it by making him evil in my dreams? 

Why can’t I dream that he’s a superhero and then be able to tell him about that in the morning? He would be so pumped instead of depressed!  Usually when I dream about superheroes, it’s just me with the awesome skills.  Come on sub-conscious, cut the husband a break… how about cranking out an awesome superhero dream for Mike sometime?

Ack

This does not bode well for me.  Day two of NaBloPoMo and I've already got writer's block. 

You'd think I'd maybe write about voting or the election or something... but no.  As part of my civic duty, I voted, but I'm only barely interested.  Apathy? Maybe.  I don't care. Same as it ever was, I suppose the Talking Heads would say.

Work is still too busy and I don't like thinking about it when I'm not being paid to do so. I'm happy and grateful to be working, but I'm really looking forward to the end of November when my stressful work season will pause briefly and I can take a breath before it goes crazy again. 

Sometimes I think about going back to school and getting my Masters... everyone seems to be doing that or having babies... or both... which should make me feel like an underachiever, but really? Meh.  What graduate program? Uh. Probably napping.  I'd make an excellent Professional Napper... I just haven't found a program that really addresses my ideal field of study and I've never heard of anyone getting a decent salary for professional napping services. (And before you suggest it, medical studies are temp work - and they wouldn't pay well enough for someone with a Masters in Naptime.)

I'm really good at it so I'd have to ask for a ridiculously high salary for my napping skills. I could be the clincher of a professional nap-time endurance team. I often wonder if maybe my ideal cycle would be 24 hours awake, 24 hours asleep.  I'm pretty good at staying awake late and once I'm asleep, I've got no problems staying asleep.  Waking up and falling asleep are not as fun...obviously.

Sunday through Thursday I normally dread waking up the next morning so much that I fight to stay awake for as long as possible the night before.  I'll crawl into bed, burney eyed and yawning, alternating keeping one eye open at a time. Watching TV, browsing the internet, reading shampoo labels - anything so that I can enjoy my time after work for the longest period possible.  Irrationally I've convinced myself that the longer I stay awake, the longer it will be until I have to be back at my desk.  If I fall asleep at a decent hour, not only do I miss all the fun TV (this is my inner child talking, she doesn't know about DVR) but I will also be jolted awake by the sound of my alarm after what feels like 2 minutes of sleep.  I know this ends up coming back to bite me in the morning... when I've hit the snooze 7 times and am rationalizing 10 more minutes of sleep when I have to be at work in 15 (I've done it.)  Once I've stepped into the realm of REM, there's nothing I can do better.  10-12 hours of sleep is a comfortable Friday night/Saturday morning if I've got the time.  15 hours makes me feel like I've discovered the fountain of youth. 

Mike used to get annoyed when he'd wake up and be bored on Saturday morning and I'd still be sleeping, blissfully uninterrupted.  No alarms, no gardeners, no loud noises can wake me prematurely on a morning I don't have to be up before noon.  "How could I sleep away a precious day off?!" He would ask.

He finally came to understand that outside of social obligations, sleeping is my past-time of choice.  Where he might like to play video games or even be productive on a crisp sunny Saturday morning, I would like to continue my dream cycle well into the afternoon.   And if you had some of my dreams, I'm sure you would too. 

In  97% of  my dreams I am awesome.  Like I'm flying-ninja-pirate-sexy-Iron-Woman- and-Mother-Theresa-combined-into-one-mecha-warrior awesome.  2% of the time, I have work-related dreams that serve to annoy then amuse and 1% of the time I have nightmares.  Even the nightmares are kind of badass because I always wake up happy that it was a dream and then think, dude... I'm practically Stephen King... except I've never written any of my nightmares down.

I do feel guilty about sleeping in so much sometimes... mostly when Mike is hungry and bored and I wake up at noon to find the kitchen cleaned and laundry being done out of boredom.  Oops.  Eventually I'll make up for it with my nocturnal cleaning  though.  I have been known to suddenly have the urge to clean the ENTIRE house top to bottom at 11:45 in the evening... make the whole place spotless while Mike sleeps blissfully unaware... and then sleep in until 3pm the next day.  So.  It works out.  Mike can fall asleep in 10 seconds flat, but can't stay asleep more than 9 hours even if he tries.  I can take hours to really fall asleep, but when I get there, I make it count.

Ok, it's 11:50PM... I have to post this before I fail at NaBloPoMo on the second day of writing.  Leave it to me to procrastinate this early in the blog game and then write a weird blog.  

Old Fogie

Sometimes I'm happy that no one has the superpowers to read my mind yet because my mind tends to ramble off on it's own about ridiculous things.

Like today.

When I decided that I wanted a pet crow.

Because they're very smart birds, of course.

But not until I was like 75.

That way the neighborhood kids would think I was a witch.

Because I'd have dyed my hair blue. Or green. Or hot pink.

And I'd have a pack of attack dachshunds.

And because Mike (being a retired engineer of course) would have set up a number of contraptions around our home that the kids would mistake for boobie traps.

And of course, some of them would be boobie traps.

For those meddling kids.

And maybe we'd catch a pudgy one as he was trying to fulfill his childhood obligations of a double-dog-dare to ring the doorbell and run.

And we'd call his parents. And bring him inside to wait for them.

But in the meantime, his friends watching would think we were turning him to stone with one of our contraptions.

But we'd win him over with all the amazing tricks our pet crow and pack of attack dachshunds can do and he wouldn't want to leave.

But to maintain our fearsome status, we'll make him swear an oath of secrecy.

So when he gets out and sees his friends, he won't say anything, but he'll know we're cool and his friend will think we wiped his memory.

Or that he's a pod person.

Because when I'm 75, I'll be living in a 1980's adventure movie.

See.

Could you imagine the embarrassment of someone being able to listen to that entire thought process on the elevator down to the first floor? You'd think I was insane.

Offspring From The Future

Procreation is pretty trendy lately - everyone seems to be having babies. Mike and I are not planning on jumping on the baby bandwagon for a couple more years, but our friend Jessica (Swaaaaaan) recently posted an awesome link on my brother's Facebook page called 1,001 Rules for My Unborn Son which, over the course of the last few days has had me thinking of all the "rules" I've got in my head for my still unconceived children.

Many of my ideas actually don't really involve actual parenting - which should give you some insight into where I am mentally as far as the mothering-spectrum is concerned. For example, the one I decided today is this: When I eventually do have an infant, I think I would like to strap it to my body in some way while I go about my business. I'm talking full on papoose-field-worker-baby-attached-to-your-back-like action. It makes sense to me. You know where the baby is. It's not eating anything it's not supposed to be eating. It's got tons of crap to look at while you're doing your own thing. It's floating around like it did in your belly. I have no problem falling asleep in a hammock - and it's pretty much the same thing, so baby nap time seems like a no brainer. Plus, it seemed to work for the hardest working women all over the world. They've got their hands free to do all the stuff they needed to do and freedom to bend over to pick stuff up and junk. Brilliant.

Of course, I'm sure I'll read something as I get closer to having children that might change my opinion, but for now all I need is to look at awesome pictures and stay pretty convinced that this is totally what I will do.

Most people that have had the "will-you-have-kids" conversation with me already know that Mike and I are dead set in rearing some awesome nerd-children. If you review this venn-diagram that Marci shared the other day, I'd say we're aiming for the bluish-purple hemisphere with some yellow overlap for fun. Obviously the "Genius" is our kid, but I'm sure we'd be happy anywhere in the realm of "Brain", "Geek" or the classic "Nerd." We don't want to venture too far into the "Dweeb" category or the emotional dysfunction and social ineptitude hemispheres, but let's be honest, your stereotypical "cool" kid is nowhere on our radar.

Until our children can beat me away from their closets with their tiny fists, they will be dressed primarily in clothing of awesome. This includes daily animal costumes (they aren't just for Halloween friends) hats, sunglasses, and crazy shoes. There's also a good probability that on any given day my kids could walk out of the house looking like they stepped out of a vintage photograph. Why? Because I can. And because kids look cuter in knickers and bloomers. And because you don't remember much of what you wear before you're 4 anyway - you just remember what it looked like in pictures. I promise to be kind and avoid itchy fabrics... but yah. Get ready to be jealous of how awesome our future children will be. Someday.

I'm glad I'm writing this down so that in 7 or so years when I'm actually trying to get a 4 year old to wear a pea coat, knickers and a cap and he is screaming bloody murder and I'm crying because his 2 year old sister prefers to run around naked after ripping off her hippo costume that I tried to make her wear for the family trip to the zoo in February (because seriously, most appropriate time for animal costumes) you can all print this out to remind me how sure I was about how easily this would all work out.

With My Feet In The Air & My Head On The Ground...

In the last year, my company, like many others, has had to lay off a few people to cope with the economic downturn. Most recently they laid off the receptionist so a few of us have had to step in to fill in for reception duties when needed. I end up sitting at the front desk for a little while during morning meetings so when clients come in and out there's someone there to give them their parking validation. Believe it or not, I'm not a front-desk type of person. I've been doing this for about a week now and it still stresses me out.

This stress manifested itself last night when I had a dream about parking validation.

Really, some might consider it a nightmare. In my dream, there were 4 people needing validation all at once and I couldn't read the timestamps on their parking tickets. So I just started guessing. I arbitrarily put stickers on their stupid tickets as they made comments about how poorly I was doing my job because I was moving so slowly. As I handed the tickets back their timestamps became clear and I realized I had given them the wrong validation amounts... so I had to get the tickets back and add more stickers... to the point where the backside of the ticket was covered in incremental validation stickers. I was like a crazy person mumbling as I handed their tickets back and trying to explain that the reason I was so terrible at parking validation was because it wasn't my normal job.

So. Yes. I had a dream about parking validation. AND it prevented me from having a lovely night's sleep too.

I think we all have work related dreams. I haven't had many since I've been working in an office (maybe because daily work life is usually so predictable) but when I used to work at Disneyland I'd have them all the time. Really really weird work dreams when I worked at Disneyland. Maybe it was the costumes? (Marci - you do stage costuming... do you have weird work related dreams too?)

If you didn't already know, I worked as Snow White at Disneyland in college. When you're "on set" it means you're out in the park interacting with the guests in character. When I was working there, Snow White didn't have a fixed location like the princesses do now. I generally did my sets out by the Wishing Well or around the castle and more often than not, did my sets without a host to help with the lines and crowds so you got really good at reading people's watches and working a crowd so you could get backstage for a break on time. In that area by castle there are a lot of birds - ducks, sparrows and two swans - which I would point out to the kids acting like I could talk to the birds like Snow White would in the movie... even though the birds would fly away as soon as they were done eating the popcorn on the floor.

Anyway. I had one dream where I was on set like any other day out by the Wishing Well in front of the castle when it suddenly hit me. I HAD THE POWER TO CONTROL THE BIRDS!!! I was like freaking Aquaman of the air. So, I spread my arms out and did my little bird call (which of course, in my dream was the high note that Snow White sings in the dancing scene with the 7 dwarves and the animals in the cottage... even though I couldn't sing that if my life depended on it) and the sparrows came and landed on my arms and the swans crawled out of the moat and the ducks waddled toward my feet and gazed at me in all my bird control glory. Even the killer hawk that was known to take out the ducklings around the castle stopped his murderous spree and landed on top of the wishing well to do my bidding.

The crowd around me gasped, whispering things like "oh my gosh, she's the real Snow White" (because apparently in my version of the Snow White movie, she was a superhero with the ability to manipulate birds) and I spent the rest of my set showing the crowd how awesome my bird control skills were. No one needed me to sign autographs or pose for pictures with them (which should have been evidence enough that this was a dream) they were all content to watch me make the birds lift my cape or bring me a rose or whatever crap I made them do. Within minutes, management got wind of my ability and wanted to take advantage of it sending me off to do shows and special events involving birds.

Of course my dreams are never that cohesive for long and if I recall correctly, I think this one ended up where somehow I was also approved for character work as Peter Pan because I had the ability to fly. Or that might have been another dream altogether. Seriously. I had the super ability to control birds and fly in my dream and I used it for a job at a theme park. What is wrong with me?

I do have a lot of weird and crazy dreams. If I remember them when I wake up I try to tell someone right away so they become more permanent memories. Maybe I should blog them here too. I've had a few that upon waking make me think "holy balls, that would be an awesome movie" so maybe if I blogged about them, I'd retain the inspiration to write another screenplay. Like Stephen King. Except probably not as scary. And it would probably involve me. And superpowers. Or something like that.