bloodygranuaile

I had the bestest set of dreams last night and I'm already forgetting them, noooooo.

The first one was not so much a fun dream as one with a really awesome story (I think?) and I wish I could remember enough of it to hammer it out of weird dream-structure and into some sort of story, and also see if it's actually as awesome as I thought it was. It took place in some sort of oddly overdeveloped dystopian future (Brave New World style); the main features that I remember were that the only available foods were dessert foods because all food was only owned by one company, which from their name, which I don't quite remember anymore, used to be Cold Stone Creamery until they bought out every other food production company ever. Oddly enough I don't think this had anything to do with national public health issues or the obesity crisis or whatever; I think it was all marketing--you could get all the nutrients and stuff from any other kind of food from only eating dessert, because the marketers found out that Americans really like dessert, so they marketed EVERYTHING into dessert. At some point I was upset about this (I actually do not want to eat dessert foods all day!) and I was also cranky about something else that I can' remember what it was but was apparently very taboo to complain about, or something, I've totally lost that part of the dream by now, but it ended up with my family and myself basically pissing off everybody and having to run away and hide. We were additionally disliked because we were immigrants; you could tell because we had three children. (I think my subconscious has been reading too many development economics textbooks at work.) (I think I was even whiter in my dream than I am IRL, because I distinctly remember being blonde, but the Americans in my head were really xenophobic.) Also there were no noncommercial spaces--there were basically just malls and hotels. People didn't have homes, they just stayed in hotels that were in the malls, all the time.

My second dream was less story-ish but was fun, since it involved going to a lot of Blind Guardian concerts. I was part of the press and for some reason this meant that I had to change my clothes for every single concert, because there were always specific t-shirts and stuff that the people in charge wanted me to wear. Most of them were uncomfortable and looked terrible on me, but mostly I was just concerned that endlessly changing my clothes was distracting me from preparing for the interviews I was supposed to be taking. Make of that what you will.

I also swear to God I had dreams about the short story I am trying to rewrite. We will see if that affects my actual rewriting of it in any way. Maybe next week, I can have some freaking dreams about Tess and what the hell is supposed to happen between getting out of Faerie and getting to the capitol.



This be my motto self right now.

Taking a short break from movie reviews and dithering about YA fantasy to get out some IRL stuff. Sometimes real life manages to be heavy enough that I'd feel bad posting reviews for Mamma Mia or Breaking Dawn (that one might never get done, btw; it's seven pages already and I'm just not sure I can finish it). Often, I review things, sometimes at unnecessarily great length, because I have other things on my mind, and writing something long and opinionated has the cathartic effect of making me feel like I'm expressing myself, combined with the escapist effect of reading the book in the first place by focusing on something else, and also I don't feel like a whiny emo bitch since most of the shit I get upset about is the same stuff I'd been upset about the day/week/month before.

And then some days, your mother comes home from work and tells you that one of her co-workers, who she was supposed to hang out with that evening, is unavailable because her house burned down, her husband was killed, and she and her daughter are in the hospital for smoke inhalation, and in critical condition. And then you feel very guilty that the most important thing on your mind for that day was whether or not you'd have a big enough block of free time to watch Godfather II.

Oh, and if you're me, you also feel a little worried because the Ocho doesn't have working smoke detectors. Which I think is illegal. AND THIS WOULD BE WHY.

My little brother is off to UConn on Friday, and since he'd been kind of avoiding dealing with it, it is now crunch time. Today was go-out-and-buy-bedsheets-and-shit-day, which, being the day you finally have all sorts of tangible, concrete signs you're actually leaving for college that aren't paperwork, tends to be one of those times when it really hits you that you're actually leaving. I was mostly impatient to get the hell out when it was my turn, but I still remember getting very nervous when it was time to go buy all my shit, and I did it several weeks in advance. Tim has had a much better time in high school than I did, likes Madison a lot more than I do, and most importantly, has a much more fulfilling social life here than I ever did. He's very upset about leaving his friends. He's even more upset about leaving the kids he works with at Kirby. Mom is very upset about him leaving, and about him being upset. I feel kind of out-of-place for mostly just being impatient to get my ass back to Worcester and have the school year start again.

In the neverending battle between me and my brain (you knew this section would be coming), we have the following recent developments: 1. I have been running around like crazy lately and yesterday crashed, sleeping 13 hours last night and taking a really long nap this afternoon, 2. I skipped my dried frog pills yesterday and woke up this morning in a lovely bout of emo, 3. sometime in the past couple months I seem to have turned into a complete sap and music can now sometimes make me cry, which I'm rather embarrassed about, and 4. I've been having increasingly frequent problems with lucid dreams/sleep paralysis/general epic failure in the waking up department. Tuesday morning I woke up, went back into dreaming without falling into a normal sleep first, and spent what felt like hours in a series of very stressful attempts to will myself awake. I kept putting my dream-self through all sorts of tests to check if I was awake or asleep, and when I realized I was asleep, I kept making my dream-self do all sorts of things that ought to wake me up (like splashing cold water on myself, &c). I thought I was managing to do them in real life, because moving my dream-self was almost as difficult as moving when you're not completely out of muscle atonia, so I thought I'd managed to physically get out of bed and just hadn't shaken the hallucinations yet. I got very scared when I couldn't wake myself up even with the cold water, and despairing when I realized I was dreaming the cold water too and was actually still in bed. Then I tried to wake my real self up with sheer force of will, which took a bit of doing--first I managed to dispell most of the dreams and wake my consciousness up, but I still couldn't move and I felt like I kept starting to fall into the dreams again (actual falling sensation, btw). Then I managed to get one eye half open, but it was several minutes (or perhaps it felt like several minutes because I was panicking) before I could get it to *stay* half open, or move any other part of my body. I woke up literally gasping and shaking; feeling stressed, exhausted, and my muscles were stiff and sore like I'd really been straining them. I spent most of the day feeling similar to having tried an overambitious bout of weightlifting, except without feeling like it was good for me.

I should probably stop burying myself in Discworld books and craptacular vampire novels and just give my bloody doctor a call. I'm going to need more dried frog pills soon, anyway.

To end on a higher note (laaaaaa!) (sorry...), I got switched into the seminar I wanted (British Romanticism instead of Chaucer), and I'm writing, probably not as much as I should be, but there is definitely (non-LJ) writery activity going on. My car needs a new transmission, which will be expensive, but I still get to take it up on Saturday (!). Car is probably being named Rincewind until transmission is replaced, at which point there may be reconsideration. (Suggestions are welcome.) Also, this weekend I got to see my Jersey lovelies, and bought shiny things at Ren Faire. And tomorrow, I get to do nothing all day, which is very much needed.

And now to bed, and hoping I will wake up normally, and hoping everyone else will feel better by then.