More Than a Feeling

Okay, enough with the Boston jokes, because this is kind of serious to me...

There's a time when a thought becomes more than just a thought. A thought is defined as "a single act or product of thinking; idea or notion." Sure, you can use your imagination when thinking and have images play out in motion, but you don't feel thinking. Your body doesn't get warm, or get cold, and your eyes don't get goo in them. And as far as I know, real life events don't speed through your mind's eyes as if they're really happening, and then several hours later, truly happen.

Same with dreaming, right? Dreams may seem real to you when you're dreaming them; sometimes you even have lucid dreams (dreaming but knowing you are during the process). But I don't think it's normal to feel pain or texture when dreaming, or to dream things and have them happen later that day or month.

Or is it?

Yesterday morning, I woke up and hopped in the shower to get ready for church. I brought my Venus razor in with me to shave my legs. Afterwards, I decided it was high-time to change the razor head. I pushed the cute little eject button and the head popped off and into our open-ended waste bin. I clarify this because we have two waste bins in the bathroom: one for general things, like empty shampoo bottles or tooth paste tubes, nail clippings, etc. Then there is a second bin for things like Q-tips, tissues, personal items that need to be tossed - basically anything that our beloved dog Max could (and would love to) chew. That bin has a lid on it so that he can't stick his little hose nose in and pull anything out. We realized all too fast that he enjoys chewing things like that and would stick his head into the trash at night and pull things out, leaving a trail of trash for us to pick up in the morning. So, back to the razor: when I popped it off into the open trash bin, I seriously had what I'm guessing to be some kind of day-mare: Max sticking sniffing around for food, smelling something tasty, grabbing it with his mouth, but catching the razor up with it...chewing it, cutting himself, bleeding everywhere on our black and white tiled floor...

I blinked and it was over, but I was sweating. I grabbed the razor out of the bin and threw it in the other one.

Fast-forward to 6:30 that night. I had gone upstairs to get a flosser out of the upstairs bathroom's medicine cabinet - my dad had treated me to dinner for helping him on a job a couple weeks ago, and I'd had chicken (which ALWAYS gets stuck in my back teeth). When I got the the doorway, I saw a combination of paper and (what the heck?) a Subway paper wrap (you know - how they wrap the sub in that waxy paper with their logo on it?). Max had been sniffing around in the waste bin again. It was actually half-way tipped over, leaning precariously against the side of the sink, and the wrapper was torn to shreds. The sandwich must have been my brother's since there were remnants of sauce stained into our bathmat that the dog must have trampled into the threads. And then it hit me - that day-mare - Max eating out of the trash. He totally would have grabbed the razor.

Fast-forward to last night/this morning.

A woman gets into her car after loading the trunk with groceries. She pulls away slowly, she and her three children - a boy and two girls. Within seconds, there's a man - lanky, African-American, short braids sticking up like thick strands of hair - grabbing at the passenger door, trying to open it. She screams, setting off an echoing wave of terror in the back seat of her small compact vehicle. The man succeeds in opening the door, but the woman picks up speed, swerving through the parking lot in an attempt to throw him from her car door. He does, and she slams on the brakes, lurching to a stop. "HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP!" she screams, and two men - one tall African-American and one shorter Caucasian man - come jogging over to see what is the matter. The assaulter is limp on the ground. The shaken woman leans toward her still-opened passenger door to see if her attacker is injured or dead while the men get out their cell phones to call 911. She pulls her door shut, hits the "all lock" button on her door, and starts to cry. While trying to calm down her kids, the man is suddenly back at her door and trying to open it. She throws the car into drive to make her second effort to escape the man as he begins to run around the front of the car, probably trying to get to her door or window. She rams him, he falls to the ground, and the police cars arrive. She buries her face in her hands, rests her head against the wheel, and sobs uncontrollably while her kids do the same in the back seat.

Then I wake up, sweating, breathing fast, sitting bolt upright. I don't know what made me dream that...but I did. And it's not like every dream I have comes true, but I've been keeping a journal of the weird ones like this; and it turns out that a heck of a lot of them do. So now, something's making me want to watch the news late tonight...

Deep Conversations

Before starting this post, let me just say that I've honestly had a drafted post in my "Edit" file for weeks now on the making over of our upstairs bathroom. However, I've held off posting it since I still don't have the pictures to upload (for the extra flavoring).

Now, on to the post.

This is (nearly word for word) a conversation had by my mother and I in front of our local Family Video tonight, arguing over who would take back the movie:

The time - 10:30 p.m.

We're on our way to pick up my brother and need to return a rental by midnight. We're sitting in front of the movie shack - I in the driver's seat, my mom in the passenger's seat, closest to the building. There are no other cars in the parking lot, save for one silver pick-up truck. My mom is in her "pj's," a pair of pastel capris coupled with a robin's egg blue t-shirt. I'm wearing a pair of Nike shorts and a Pitt Zoo t-shirt. These are important facts, so pay attention. Now, on to the dialogue.

me: "You've got the DVD?"

Mom: "Yeah. Here."

"Well no, you go - just stick it in the return slot."

"No?!"

"Yes?!"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Look at me! I'm in my pj's!"

"So? I go INTO the store in my pj's all the time."

(look of horror) "Well I'm not getting out the car looking like this."

"C'mon, I'm in the driver's seat."

"So?"

"So?...I don't want to put the car in park."

"Uuuuugh..."

(two seconds of silence)

(unison) "You gonna go? NO!"

me: "Why'd you wanna come?"

Mom: "To keep you company?"

"Wha?...okay, come on. Just go stick it in the slot. You don't even have to go inside."

"But there's a guy in there!"

"Since when do you care?? You're married!"

"I'm in my pj's!"

"Those're barely pj's. I'm in shorts and a t-shirt, and I'll probably wear those to bed, so I'm in my pj's too!"

"I'm not going!"

"C'mon, please? I'll give you a quarter?"

(cocks head) "Uh, no."

"No really, a quarter. (silence) Okay, two quarters, both my own, too."

"What?! No!"

"Okay, three quarters....a dollar."

(silence) "No! Just do it yourself, you dork."

(gasp) "Are you serious? You wouldn't take a dollar to walk, oh, thirty steps to drop a movie in a slot? Are you crazy? You can pick the type of money, change or paper..."

"No."

(long pause)

"...would you pay ME a dollar?" (grins)

I ended up doing it. *sigh*

These Sleepless Nights

Last night and early this morning, I couldn't sleep. What little sleep I did get involved dreams such as hunting down a Grigori and saving a small child from a marsh-dwelling crocodile. Red flags should have been shooting into the sky when I (a.) couldn't sleep and (b.) kept dreaming about topics involving water since around 3:30 a.m. the whole family was sounded for by my dad into the upstairs hallway. I jumped off the bed and ran to the door. As soon as I opened it, it sounded like someone was taking a shower with the bathroom door open...no, like someone was taking a shower in the hallway. When I ran to the bathroom, I saw the problem: the cold water hose under the sink had burst and water was literally shooting straight out, hitting the back wall and toilet tank. My dad tried to tighten the valve to shut off the water running through the hose, but the knob had rusted itself open. So we all took shifts I stood there in the waterlogged bathroom keeping watch over a bucket I had rigged beneath the sink, careful to empty it when it got too full, while Dad worked his way through each room in the basement searching for the big-mama shut-off for the cold water. About 30 minutes later, the water slowed to a stop. He'd found the lever that shut off not just the cold water, but all the water. I emptied the bucket and made quick use of the mop that was propped in the hallway. After mopping up the bathroom, and went downstairs to investigate.

Now, that part about us all rushing to Dad's aid when he hollered for us? Yeah, let me back up and clarify that a bit: when I got downstairs, I looked over the railing into the livingroom to find my brother, Rob, snoozing away. He'd been sawing logs through this entire ordeal. I saw a bucket in the middle of the floor and (knowing the answer already) yelled, "ROB! IS THIS BUCKET BEING USED?!" His whole body shot up straight and his eyes flew open. He looked around, looking slightly frightened. His eyes lazily met mine and he answered with a: "Uuggghhh, uh." And with that, he keeled right back over onto the couch. Incredible.

So while Rob slept away, I continued to assess the damage. Here, the water had flooded the upstairs bathroom, forcing it to flow through the upstairs hallway, down the stairs, and into the entryway, causing the now river of water to fork off towards both the livingroom and the kitchen, and from the kitchen down the hidden stairs and into the basement. It was a royal mess. Mom swept the water near the front door out onto the porch while all the mayhem of Dad in the basement and me upstairs with the bucket was going on. Finally, around 4:30, we all fell back into bed.

And yet I still couldn't sleep.