Strangely, I still found a way for the Dream Mother to get distracted away from this particular email. I'm afraid it's hopeless.

I'm not sure why I'm choosing to post this right now, but this is from an email I sent to the Dream Mother last week...



Husband slept in the bedroom Thursday night. I was fine with it, but I had nightmares Friday morning. I dreamed that I lived with my mother (not you, it was fully her). I went to my closet and there were strange, ugly insects in there. There were many of them and they were all over the shelves. I don't like things like insects indoors. I went to tell my mother and I was wondering what I should do. She said it was fine. She was in a rather jovial mood (it was fake) and she wanted me to come and keep company with a man who had come to the house. I got the idea that she was trying to set me up to marry me off or something by the way she was acting. The man was a dream-morph man. He was my brother and my uncle. He looked like my oldest brother, but my mother said he was 'uncle so-and-so'. I made nice for a moment and turned my attention back to the problem of the insects. Again, my mother insisted it was fine and she was getting impatient because I was bothering her about some bugs and ignoring my suitor/ brother/ uncle. I insisted that it was not okay to have insects in the house. Then I found out that she had gotten rid of them. There were little trap doors in the walls and she had put the insects in there. I somehow knew that wasn't good, but I went back to the closet thinking it might be okay. I could see they were coming back by finding ways to crawl through tiny cracks in the walls. Then I woke up.

When I went back to sleep, I dreamed of my cat that I had when I was very little. His name was (let's just call him Billy Joe). My parents gave him away right before we left my hometown when I was five... I was an adult in my dream, and I dreamed that Billy Joe was lost somewhere outside in a town that seemed similar to my hometown. I went looking for him, but I was afraid and did not really want to find him. When I did not find him right away, I felt relieved and was ready to give up the search. Then a woman (the tenant in my old home across town) told me that she had seen him. She pointed the way and I went around the corner near a church and there he was prowling around outside of the building. I was very scared. I woke up.

1. Two of my uncles are named Billy and Joe. I named that cat. I guess I didn't like the third uncle as much. He was the youngest of the three and would have been about 13 or 14 when I was born. Though he turned into a decent adult, I think I had reason not to like him much as a child. He was (still kind of is) a terrible tease and I can imagine him picking on younger children. One of my aunts (not Aunt P) told me that he beat her terribly one day when she was around ten years old. He is a few years older than she is. He is also the uncle that I reported to my grandmother for trying to scare me by coming into the bedroom and pretending to be a vampire while I was taking a nap (I think now that it was only a night terror. I had them even when I was little.)
2. My grandparents' house is less than a half-block away from the family's church (where I found Billy Joe in the dream). What does that part mean to me? That's easy. If you want anything resembling reality - it will be OUTSIDE of that building. There is only bullshit inside. I don't think I have ever dreamed of Billy Joe before. And I don't remember ever being afraid of him. Not even when he scratched me. The only fear I remember around Billy Joe, was the day I accidentally rocked my father's rocking chair on his tail. He yowled and I thought he had been killed or mortally wounded, and I cried as if he had been. That scared me, but he didn't.

Again, I was going to save this in draft. I don't want it to get deleted, so I am sending it for you to save. I want to make sure you know about this. It might suddenly be deemed irrelevant at any moment, you know? I get the possible implications here. I do. But I have no feelings about them. It's like none of this is real anyway, so it can't really matter. I am thinking of young Bobby from (novel #1). I'm thinking about how he fell asleep in the basement in 'my hometown' only to wake up on the beach here in Florida twenty years in the future. I'm thinking about the flashback last year where I tried to get inside the closet. That happened after those pictures I took that told the impossible story of Bobby's travel. I'm thinking of my Aunt P and her flashbacks about the grandparents' hallway that contains a closet I remember hiding in. I'm thinking of the amnestic character in one of my unfinished works. A boy named Bobby grows into a man named Bob who cannot remember? A man who doesn't even know where he came from and thinks he was made instead of born? Hmmm... I am thinking of the character I fell in love with in (novel #2). He's Paul. You read about him on my blog. Why is this character's name Paul if I disliked my Uncle Paul so much that I would name my cat for his brothers and leave him the odd man out? Could that just be a coincidence? You see? It's all irrelevant and crazy and makes no sense at all. None at all. I am not to be believed about anything. No wonder I feel nothing. None of it matters anyway. It just doesn't. I see Husband has left the closet door open again. He must have done it on his way out to the couch. He knows I don't like that. I guess I will close it and then finish wiping the counters and such before I go take a shower. I am assuming I will be okay. I hope I will. Goodnight, (Dream Mother). I'm keeping you with me again tonight.

Night Terrors and Other News

I know why I am so tired all the time. I get a reminder once in a while. It's because of nightmares and night terrors. I had another one this morning (Thursday morning). I can't get any real rest, even when I'm sleeping. No wonder I'm a useless sack of shit. I fell asleep around 7 am and the shit started shortly after 8:00. I dreamed that I was in my bed and happened to sit up just in time to see a snake come slithering in to my bedroom and head straight for the bed. The snake was the color of Caucasian human flesh (yes, I'm sure it represented a penis). More strangely, it had lots of very short legs with tiny suction-cup feet on the ends (a penis attached to legs = it's no snake, it represents a man-person). In my dream, I had my laptop in bed with me and I was reading an email from Kahless warning me about the snake just as I was ready to email her and ask her what I should do about it. This was weird, because the snake was moving too fast for me to email someone for help! The snake came for me and I started screaming for my husband. Of course, I could not really scream real words because of the sleep paralysis of REM sleep. The snake was in my bed and I was sure it was poisonous. It had disappeared behind me and I knew it was going to bite me on the head. I kept screaming for my husband. This is the weird part - I halfway snatched myself out of REM sleep because of the terror. I could think consciously, but I was still paralyzed. I knew I was 'sleeping', but I thought the snake was real and was in bed with me. I thought that if I could try really hard to get my husband's attention, that he would hear and come into the bedroom to help me. I kept screaming, "Help me! Help me!" I could 'hear' (not real) my husband trying to open the bedroom door, but he couldn't get in because I had locked it (not real). Finally, I realized he was not going to be able to open the door (he wasn't home, but I didn't 'get' that). I knew I had to wake myself before the snake bit me. I knew it was behind me, above the pillows, and wanted to bite my head and send poison to my brain to kill or maim me. I was finally able to get up and open the door so my husband (still not home) could help me. I was confused when he was not on the other side of the door. I looked at the clock. 8:20. That is when I knew he was not home and had taken the children to school. I knew I had not really heard him trying to open the bedroom door. I did NOT yet realize that there was no penis-snake in my bed. I stumbled out into the living room and closed the bedroom door behind me. I flopped my tired ass down on the couch and snoozed a little, but I was afraid to really fall asleep and I was waiting for my husband. I was also thinking I should tell Kahless to email my husband if any snakes got me. Then it started to slowly dawn on me that the snake was part of the dream and that I had been having a night terror - was actually STILL somewhat in the grip of its foggy aftermath. I got up and went back to bed. This is the third such incident I am aware of having had in just a two week time period. I'm tired.

In other news, there could be another dip in some of the financials between now and next Tuesday when reports about the credit swaps come to light. Those are not going to be happy reports. The blow could be offset by certain companies announcing proposals being drawn up and sent to the Fed offering to sell them some of the mortgage backed securities. We'll see. I'm armed with cash and ready. Ones to watch: Ambac (ABK), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), American International Group (AIG), Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS).

My computer problems seemed to have resolved themselves. I got rid of FireFox and took back Internet Explorer. My computer stopped seizing up a few days later. FireFox wasn't causing it, it did it with IE first. I was very unhappy with FireFox, though, because it wasn't very compatible with my sucky operating system (Vista). I could not download add-ons and the whole damn thing was just frustrating. Is my computer well now because I started shutting it down when I'm not using it? Maybe. I don't know. I'm just glad it's not fouling up all the time now. Anyway, I have Favorite Places again, and now it's all nice and smartly organized. I wonder if I could do the same to my kitchen. I suppose I could if I could get some real sleep. I won't hold my breath.

Who? What? Why? Who Cares?

I don't usually notice any colors in my dreams unless they mean something. Colors seem to be used to get my attention. I get that. But now I have had a second dream where a person had color.

In waking life, I'm not very good at noticing what people look like. Someone has to have something very different going on to get me to 'see' them. They have to have a wild shock of red hair, or be seven feet tall, or weigh four hundred pounds... you get the idea, right? I'm bad with faces. I'm better about it now than I used to be, though. I once witnessed a crime from a distance but could not even tell the cop whether the suspects were white, Asian, or Hispanic. I did remember dark hair, though. Tall, thin, young men with dark hair. I thought that was pretty good, actually. You see, I could only have told whether they were white or black. That's all. Anything more would rely on facial features and I just don't generally 'see' that, I guess. Not unless I am consciously telling myself that I must SEE and REMEMBER (short-term only) in order to DESCRIBE. I guess I was too stunned just then.

My husband picks on me about this because I say that 'everyone' looks like this one 'average looking' friend of his. What? That is how people look to me! Wanna hear how drastic it can be? A few times I did not even realize color. Color seems obvious, right? Black, white, or somewhere in-between would overly simplify it, but that is what it seems like to me, only... I see in-between a lot where other people might see black or white. I guess I'm just a disaster when it comes to remembering what someone's actual face looks like, so I must unconsciously rely on sizes and colors to the best of my limited ability in order to 'memorize' someone. Even in my dreams.

A while back I wrote about dreaming that my therapist was a black woman. I've dreamed him as a woman before, but until that dream, people just WERE. There were no colors to differentiate anyone. Now I have had another dream where I noticed that someone was black. It took me a while to notice, and I had to have a close up view of his hairline to do it. It was an old man in my dream and when I saw the white hair meet the black skin, I noticed the difference. He was black. Obviously, this has some kind of significance. I know what it is now. For those who don't know, I am very white. Think mayonnaise. Think spontaneous combustion when exposed to sunlight. Think Casper the Friendly Ghost. I have had MANY dreams where all the players were ME. Now I know that if someone is black in my dream, my unconscious is trying to tell me that that particular dream character is not a self-representation; not Casper-like. Make sense? Now, who was this man? I don't remember the dream very well (because I tried like hell to forget it), but unlike the other black dream character, this person was... he was a very bad man. He plotted against the rest in the dream and was trying to arrange for their demise. He wanted them to die. He was crafty and deceitful and was trying to trick them into having 'accidents'. He killed off the older lady in the dream. She was a little ditzy, but she was nice enough. She might have been a mother figure? Somehow, there was a 'do-over' and the woman was alive again and the rest of us (my husband and I) had to clue her in and we plotted to turn the tables on him, but I don't remember whether or not the plan came to fruition. Maybe it did. Don't really know. There were toys around the house in this dream, but no children. I think the evil old man had already done away with them. I think that because of the dream that came right before this one. My father was in it and was pretending to be a stand-up guy while he subtly accused me of the crime of hurting or killing a little girl. At first, though I could not remember committing any crime, I agreed that I must have done it, but then I was proven wrong. I had not done it after all.

I probably shouldn't be thinking about these things right now, because I need to go to bed, but I found myself so hesitant and I have been pacing around drinking Diet Pepsi again, so I figured it might be better to spill it. Who was the black man? Father? Therapist? Who? Was the older woman me? The therapist? I'm angry with him, you know? Back and forth. Angry, then empty. One day he exists and then for the next several days he doesn't. Sometimes I don't think I like him anymore and don't want to talk to him when he comes back from vacation.

Dream Mother? Interior Design Consultant? Nice man? Faker? Big jerk?

Maybe the voice of the teenage girl was right.

Creepy.

Little.

Troll?

Jesus... I'm going to bed.