I have three comments! And such nice ones, I feel so special :-) Now I feel obliged to put up my "About Me" info, I've done a 100 things list, which ended up being 300, I'm not that interesting really, I'm just overly verbose. One of my few real talents growing up was when the teacher would say "OK, everyone write a page on so and so" and I'd end up writing three pages. And being able to proofread pages and have spelling & grammatical errors jump off the page at me.

It has been raining all day, which I've enjoyed since I didn't have to leave the house. I love listening to the rain, though with all the lightning I'm amazed our power hasn't blinked even once. And now that we have insulated windows it's sometimes a little too quiet in the house...

One of the joys of having a weblog is having a place to get some of the extra thoughts out of my brain, especially before bedtime (which is where I should be now), when even an Ambien can't make my brain shut completely off. The only time I seem to get sleepy lately is when I shouldn't, but since I've been doing the Atkins thing and have upped my daily Prozac to 40mg I haven't been dozing off after dinner as much.

But even as a child I remember laying in bed for hours wondering why I wasn't asleep, why my brain wouldn't stop racing. My dad likes to tell stories about how in the summer, when there would be the time change and I'd have to go to bed when it was still light out, how I would moan and complain. And when I do get to sleep I'm almost always plagued by overly vivid dreams (that I usually remember the next day).

Sparky, on the other hand, seems to have inherited his mother's ability to fall asleep in less than two minutes (narcolepsy, perhaps?). It's kind of spooky sometimes, we'll be talking and suddenly he's snoring away. And he doesn't usually remember any of his dreams (though he talks in his sleep, which is kind of alarming).

Given the choice, though, I'd choose to remember my dreams. But it would be nice to be able to fall asleep without pharmaceutical assistance...

I almost did it today, I almost slept for more than five hours without waking up. And I wanted it bad, I haven't slept worth a damn the last couple of weeks, as if I ever do, but instead of my normal Lorazepam and Ambien bedtime meds last night I had Valium and Ambien. I had thought I was pretty desensitized to Valium but this time it worked really well, I was OUT, dreaming like crazy, deep down in delta wave world. Nothing particularly interesting, I remember I was walking through some sort of retail store auditing prices on shelves of towels and then... whoooosh! I hear my name and have some vague semblance of Sparky standing over me telling me about something from the Social Security office I got in the mail. What the hell?

Do you ever wake up and literally can't move because your brain still has you paralyzed from dreaming? That's where I was and suddenly I have someone talking to me, holding a letter in the dark with a flashlight and asking if he can open it and read it?? NO, GO AWAY my brain screamed but all I could manage to get out was "No, don't open my mail... don't care.. not now!". Finally after repeating that for what seemed to be about a dozen times he finally went away. Now I realize I hate to pee, what time is it, 11:30 am, crap! I went to bed at like 6 am with a projected wake up time of 3 pm, so now I have to get out of bed and use the bathroom and then make myself go back to sleep for like 3 hours. Usually after five hours in bed I've woken up several times, but I was doing so well today [sigh].

As I'm dragging myself out of bed, the cat starts crying at my closed bedroom door. Being a softie, I crack it to let her in, she likes to nap with me. I got to the bathroom, and am now half awake, and all the crap in my sinuses has shifted around just enough to make it difficult to breathe properly when I lay back down. I get comfortable back in bed, and then Sparky rattles ice cubes in the other room, which sends the cat into a frenzy and she races back out of the room and knocks the door halfway open on her way out. So I drag myself back out of bed and go close the door and manage to fall back to sleep.

For some reason the dreams I have when I've been thoroughly waken and make myself go back to sleep are always the weirdest and most vivid. And it leaves me incredibly groggy all day, like when I try and take a nap during the middle of the day, my brain doesn't do well with naps. So off I go back to dream world... This time I'm working security at a department store, but I'm not really working there, but I'm going to go in to work on Easter Sunday, but then they tell me that the store will be closed that day and I shouldn't come in, as a matter of fact I'm not needed at all. But for some reason I have all this stuff there that belongs to me and I need to take with me. But I need a lowboy to move it to my car, and there's an angry rottweiler between me and the lowboy. But I've got to get to it.

Somehow I figure out that the dog only goes ballistic when you're running away from it, and it you address her nicely and talk to her she won't bite you. I'm not sure what sort of psychological issues I'm working through here, but I manage to go out to get the lowboy and pacify the dog, who turns out to be friendly in a sort of edgy way. So I get back to the store and start loading all this stuff I have on to the cart. But it looks suspicious, because it's all clothing and beauty products, which people have given me to sell on eBay, but I realize most of it is worthless and end up trying to give as much away as possible because I don't want it.

I often dream I have way too much stuff, or have to move quickly and have too much stuff to be able to pack it all. I'm apparently overwhelmed by life it seems, because in my dreams I can never manage my belongings. I feel like that in real life too, even though everything I own is nicely organized and for the first time in my life I pretty much know what I have and where everything is.

Nonetheless, I've been all druggy and groggy the entire day, like if I lay my head down for even a minute I'll be unable to move again. Not really sleepy, just out of it, with that humming feeling in the back of my head. It reminds me of when I had mono and I was too tired to even read or watch TV but couldn't stand to sleep anymore. All I've managed to do today is make dinner, relist some eBay auctions, exercise the kitty, surf a little bit and type this.

So no Valium tonight, though I really think the main reason I feel like is from my weird sleep patterns. I bitched and whined and begged Sparky to please stop waking me up and to stop opening my damn mail. I know he's bored (and on the lookout for any credit card offers, which I get daily anyway via email and my PO box, like I'm going to fall into that trap again...), and needs a hobby, but dammit, let me sleep and have a little bit of privacy. He also woke me up when the results of my physical arrived in the mail, yes the first thing I want to hear upon waking is my cholesterol is 300+, and for phone calls (take a message, please)... I know, I need to go to bed earlier and get up earlier, I am trying, but all the constant sleep interruptions make it incredibly difficult.

OK, got that out of my system, good... Not even 1 am, too early to sleep yet, but I'm not sure what to do the next few hours. I'd like to read but I'm not sure I have brains enough to even do that right now...

I had the weirdest dream about vampires and Angel last night. I wish I could remember more of this, it was one of those very emotional dreams where I felt both severely depressed and incredibly happy, and it seemed to go on forever. It started off with Sparky taking me out to breakfast, but the places we went to weren't serving breakfast any longer, which really upset me but didn't bother him, which made me even more upset. I think I really wanted French Toast and all of the syrup bottles were empty. At some point in the dream I also had no clothes on, which freaked me out even more.

So I set out on my own, apparently with some clothing now, and had to walk back to our hotel, which was in New Orleans but the landscape didn't look at all like New Orleans for some reason. We were staying at a big fancy Holiday Inn right by a freeway overpass. After walking for some time, I managed to get on a bus that was going that way, though I only had a handful of change with me to pay. I saw the hotel approaching and someone reached up to pull the bell for the stop, but it didn't make any noise, so I pulled it too, and again it was silent. I asked the bus driver, Mel Gibson, if we could stop there and he said 'Oh no, that would be much too expensive' and so the bus kept going and went way past the hotel before I could finally get off, in an area that actually did resemble old New Orleans.

I made it back to the hotel eventually, and was upset to find that my husband, who was now Angel, was not there. I found out he had become obsessed with playing a really involved arcade game and was spending hundreds of dollars on it, but he couldn't stop playing for some reason. At this point I realized I was a vampire also, and went back to the vampire lair to look for him, where all sorts of young people, poseurs and real vampires were hanging out (sort of ala Underworld), and one of the young poseurs kept acting like he knew Angel but he didn't have any clue who I was, and kept holding out his fist, which was covered with small cuts across the knuckles and saying 'These are Angel's rings' and I kept thinking, no, Angel's rings were silver, and finally confronted him on it. But he kept bragging and I finally blew him off as nuts. I went through Angel's desk and found a receipt for like $800 for this arcade game, which he had apparently also won a bunch of things by playing, and I tried to figure out some reason he was doing this.

Me and some others went looking for Angel, in the daytime, in an RV driven by Wilfred Brimley. Somehow we were immune enough to sunlight that we could tolerate little bits of it. He drove us all over town and through an alley way so narrow he had to fold in the mirrors on the RV, and we finally found Angel, who seemed very confused and embarrassed by what he had been doing, so I figured he'd been under some sort of spell and could not find it in my heart to be angry with him, though he didn't apologize exactly. I had to drive us back to the hotel in the RV, which I managed very well. When we arrived we were going to take the stairway up to our room, when I realized I could fly as a spirit up the stairs so we did that. For some reason I've never been good at flying in my dreams, so it felt really clunky.

Angel was very humble and loving when we got back to our room and I didn't bring up the subject of why he'd been missing or what he'd been doing, we just made up without speaking about it.

Meanwhile, back at the vampire lair, the young braggart was also going through Angel's desk and found a note about his 'great secret' which turned out to be the demonic arcade game, which was waiting for another victim to find it...

I think we then checked out of the hotel and everything was cool, though again it was daytime which concerned me, though I think we had a big black limo waiting for us just outside and could make it that far safely.

Dream Sources - I was reading Charlaine Harris's Living Dead in Dallas before bed (her heroine stalked off down a dark road after a fight with her vampire boyfriend); Sparky just taped another episode of 'Angel' last night, we're like the whole season behind in watching them (very sad this may be the last season); On Conan O'Brien last night Dubya made a joke about his mom looking like Wilfred Brimley; I saw a guy on The Daily Show driving an RV; the Mel Gibson reference is easy; I've been feeling very poor lately because I had to shell out my half of $800 for a new version of Adobe Creative Suite (whoa, that's wshere the $800 amount came from also I guess); and day before yesterday was Mardi Gras and I was thinking about my friend who lives in NOLA. The ring thing might have been because of a recent episode of the Osbourne's I just watched where Ozzy lost a quarter million dollar ring.

I have been having even more weird dreams lately than usual, which is sort of scary because I'm a really vivid dreamer. I think a lot of it is the medicine I've been taking, but last night I watched the last half of 10 to Midnight right before bed, so that's an easy one to peg, especially since I've actually had an annoying (but thankfully not homicidal, naked and covered in blood) internet stalker on and off the last few months. But unlike Charles Bronson's daughter in the movie, I have at least one, usually two, large caliber firearms within reach most of the time. But not in my dreams, though, the damn things always misfire.

Last night I dreamed I came home with my parents (who I still live with in a lot of my dreams) and was the first one to notice that the house had been broken into. (This actually sort of happened before in real life, I was visiting my parents one Christmas and as we were pulling into the driveway I looked over and saw our neighbor's front door had been kicked in) My mother and I were walking around the house and we walked out into the garage, where my car looked strange and as we walked up on it, I saw two gang types working on stripping it, but for some reason they didn't see us. So we hustled back into the house. (I also went to the grocery store late last night and there were much scarier than normal thugs there buying beer at like 11:30, not their normal clientele)

A lot of the dream has faded now, but it involved me defending the house from the thugs who kept harassing us for some reason, with me actually sitting in the window of our house which was on the corner for some reason, and watching the street in both directions and calling the police whenever I saw them hanging around. And as usual, I couldn't secure the house properly, there is always a door that won't close all the way, had a broken lock, etc. I have this deep-seated vulnerability issue that comes from several areas. Mainly I think from having a bathroom door that didn't lock properly growing up, and partially from years of trying to keep two large dogs in the yard without proper fencing. I grew up with 6' wood fences and rented several houses that had short chain link fences and one that we actually had to build a temporary fence for. And both dogs got out of the yard several times, which only reinforced my phobia. But no house can ever be secured properly in my dreams, there's always a gaping hole or broken lock.

The feud between me and the thugs got really personal, one of them resembled one of the scary guys I'd seen in the store that night. For some reason, my mother had a lot of really valuable clothes and things at the house, and she pulled out a pair of Prada shoes, which were very tiny, almost like a baby would wear, and I told here those must be horribly uncomfortable, and she said they were the most confortable shoes she had. (I'm selling a Prada eye cream sample on eBay this week so that must be floating around in my subconscious).

I think my old Corvette was back to haunt me in the dream and I was driving it up and down the street looking for the guys, and worrying that they would damage my car, which for some reason could also not be safely secured.

When Sparky woke me this afternoon, it took me a good 20 minutes before I could really wake up enough to even get out of bed, I was way down in REM state. Sometimes I wake up like a shot and am wide awake, but not today.

The other night I had anther recurring dream, where I was having to stay with a group of people and use their weird community bathrooms and showers. I don't travel well to start with and hate toting my toiletries around with me, but for some reason all the showers had strange problems. No doors, a toilet in the middle of the actual shower. A lot of times the bathtubs will actually look really nice and then I'll discover it's only a display and isn't hooked up to running water. A big recurring dream is not being able to find a toilet that works or is usable, but that just means I really need to wake up and pee, so I'm guessing it's a good thing that I can't find a toilet. I've had that dream for as long as I can remember, probably because I despise getting up when I'm in bed....

Man, I had another long exhaustive dream with no proper ending again today... thereís something about the dreams you have after youíve awoken once and gone back to sleep that makes them really vivid.

It started off with me staying in my best friendís apartment, she was out of town and I was cat sitting or something. The apartment had a long steep outside staircase that led up to the front door and I was going up towards the door in and a man began climbing the staircase. It was very narrow and I kept asking him what he wanted but he just kept staring at me with sort of a glazed look so when he got close enough I just sort of kicked him in the forehead and he tumbled back down the stairs. But he got up unfazed, and started climbing again. So I kicked him down again, I think this happened three times before I could find the right key to get in the door and lock it behind me. I complained to the police about him, and apparently he was in some sort of shock because he blamed someone who lived at that apartment for his wifeís death. When my friend came home, I told her about it and she said he was talking about her mother who used to live there but that he was mistaken and the womanís death had nothing to do with her, the man was just delusional. We were in the apartment, which had grown to gigantic proportions inside, and suddenly her whole family was there and lots of cats, though not the actual family I know, it was mostly women and everyone was worried about the guy next door, but we had the place locked up and knew he couldnít get in...

Then the dream shifted and I was driving to work downtown in a white convertible (I donít like convertibles so that was kind of alarming). My husband was also going to work at the same place, the old main offices of Foleyís Department Stores and he arrived in a separate car. We both parked in the garage and I was worried that I had parked in a reserved spot because they were numbered and that my car would be towed. The top had been closed to the convertible, but it wasnít closed correctly, I kept checking it and couldnít figure out how to latch it securely.

I was dressed in my blue & navy security uniform I used to wear for another company, even though I never worked uniformed security for Foleyís and only worked in office jobs at the downtown location. I wondered why I was dressed that way, but I didnít have any of my ìbrassî on, just the top and pants and a Sam Browne belt with an old fashioned big, heavy Motorola police radio, that I somehow had kept from the previous job. The uniformed security people that actually worked at the store (there are none actually, theyíre all plainclothes) were walking around, disturbed that they were picking up a radio signal. I took the radio and put it in my car, because I knew I wasnít supposed to have it, but eventually they tracked it back to my car with some sort of homing device and the woman that was in charge found it beneath a jacket on the floor in my back seat. I acted surprised, but she picked it up and there was some sort of cell phone display on the front and she showed it to me and said ìyup, this is what we were looking forî.

My husband had already gone into the store to work, so, deciding my car was safe, I walked out of the garage but realized as soon as I did that I had walked out the wrong direction, away from the store. (The downtown Foleyís garage actually does have three exits in different directions) I began to panic and started walking faster and realized I was soon lost and very far away from the store. The neighborhoods became more and more dangerous, and here I was in basically a Houston Police uniform walking around with a bunch of really poor people and gang members. I was walking through dark alleyways between buildings, but I just kept on walking and no one really messed with me, I guess they thought I was insane or something being there by myself. I started seeing things as I was walking that I didnít know existed and I tried to make mental notes to tell my husband. I walked past an old above ground cemetery with ancient tombstones and angels made of a bronze colored metal that were really beautiful. I came upon a beautiful water wall that was a city block long. We have one here in town but itís in a different part of the city. I wandered into museums with ancient statues and dinosaur relics.

Finally I realized I was way too far away from my car and needed to find it so I could drive back. Somehow I did find it, in an outdoor parking lot, and now I suddenly had a teenaged girl with me, who was my daughter, and a dog, a Golden Retriever. I remember thinking I had to protect the girl and keep her behind me, and we started trying to drive back to the department store. Downtown Houston had taken on immense proportions, and I was completely disoriented. I was driving and trying to pick out a street sign that sounded familiar, but none of them did and I feared I was actually driving away from the center of town. I finally happened upon a street that seemed familiar, but I didnít know which way to turn. I kept scanning the buildings, trying to find one I recognized to orient myself, but every time I thought I saw Foleyís, Iíd get closer and the building would have a different name on the side.

Then me , the girl, the dog and a young man, he reminded me of the son on Angel, were on foot again. Walking inside big office buildings, trying to find our way, with me somehow concerned only for the girlís safety now. We would be walking at what we thought was street level and suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a huge building, far above the ground, with red neon lights illuminating everything. Iíd stop and ask people who seemed to work there how to get back to the street, that I was terribly lost, but no one answered my questions. Then we were at some sort of opening in a wall, not a window, but some sort of mechanical thing, and the girl had leaned over to look inside and fallen in. She was so thin that she fell between the cracks and deep inside of the contraption. The boy helped me move things out of the way until we finally found her, she had become very tiny and flattened like in a cartoon, but somehow we knew she was still alive and would be all right. The boy said she had peed on herself from the trauma and fright and that she was in shock and I would need to carry her the rest of the way, which I somehow did. The dream dissolved with no resolution at about that point, with our little group still wandering lost downtown, with me carrying the girl on my back and no real end to our journey insight. I remember wishing I had the radio with me to call for help, but I just had the empty holster for it on my belt.

Feeling particularly non talkative the last few days, though I canít sleep at night from all the thoughts spinning in my brain. I've had a raging sinus infection that's alternately making me hot and giving me chills. Right now I'm freezing for no reason though I've been sweating all night up till about an hour ago. So I'll grace you with the weird dream I had this morning, if for no other reason than to expel it from my brain...

It was a really long, drawn out dream that my husband had to wake me from, I didnít think it was ever going to end. I used to work for a large department store chain here in Houston and the last position I had was in one of the buying offices. When I started I had a huge work area with a big desk and didnít really have to share close quarters with anyone. A year or so after I started there, they decided to move all of the buying areas to one floor and we all got nice small little cubicles where we had to share a central desk island. Luckily our department was big enough to be given two cubicles and most of the time I had one side to myself still. But being claustrophobic when I did have to share it was hard to get anything done. Especially when my cubicle mate wanted to make small talk when I was typing million dollar spreadsheets... I can't type and carry on a conversation, my brain doesn't work that way.

So in the dream, all of our offices had been moved again, as a matter of fact most of the store had been moved to a new building and all of the offices were in disarray. The building had tons of existing furniture, most of it old, like they had taken over an old apartment building. So some of the offices had bathrooms in the same space as desks, bath tubs and toilets. I started the dream with being given a good sized desk and work area, with old vintage furniture, but each time I would get back to my future office area something had changed. First I lost my chair, it had been replaced by a couch, then another desk had been jammed in right behind mine to where it was really cramped and awkward...

I spent most of the dream wandering lost in the new building, once I even went down to the big lobby area, and seeing a line of people dressed as vampires waiting outside the plate glass window, I went outside to see what they were doing. They turned out to be waiting for a play to start. But then I realized I couldnít get back in the building the same way I came out, and ended up wandering in to the selling area of the store and trying to figure out how to get back into the offices upstairs. I asked one well dressed woman to help me and she directed me to a huge, fast moving sidewalk (like an escalator with no steps) that I had to jump onto and it took me up to the next level and spit me out. I have a secret terror of escalators because my mother was afraid of elevators and when I was a child weíd go visit my dad, in the same store on the tenth floor and we had to take escalators the entire way up. The escalators at the store always moved a little faster than standard escalators, and they still do. I saw some offices and went into them, only to realize I was lost in a maze and stumbling into peopleís private offices. I ended startling an executive secretary finally and pleading with her to help me find my way back to the buying offices. When I finally managed to find my way back, my office had changed again for the worse, but I couldnít find anyone other than disoriented co-workers to complain to. I kept wandering in circles, though rooms that looked like abandoned furniture showrooms, except for the occasional strange plumbing fixture until my husband came in and woke me up.

Well, it's been almost two weeks since I bought my Lottie doll from a guy on eBay and I emailed him last night to ask what gives? He sent me my Paypal payment back with apologies, apparently he didn't have any more :-( Damn, and it was such a good deal. So I jumped back on eBay today and searched and compared and ended up sniping another for a more expensive price, but hopefully I'll actually get this one. I'm eyeing a few others too, but I'm not sure it I can afford to buy anymore... plus they're big and my shelves are overflowing.

Update 5:45 pm - OK, I got carried away and got Tragedy too. Seems like $36 bucks is about the going price for these two dolls since they're OOP. Still kicking myself I never got Sadie and Lizzie Borden when they were new...

I'm really not a doll collector, per se, but I do have some character dolls from Bewitched, the Addams Family, the Munsters, Jeannie and Buffy. Lottie appealed to me as a lonely little Goth girl, when I showed her pic to my husband he said "She looks like you".

I went to bed really early last night, I was so tired I only managed to read about a chapter of my book and I had to crash. I slept on and off till about noon when the doorbell woke me up. My hubby went to lunch for his monthly get-together with his wacky friend (they go to Pancho's every month, just to be silly and re-live their youth) so I was alone in the house. Just the post office delivering a package. They're sitting in my husband's room watching home videos and dissecting errors on old movies now. It's nice to hear my husband being silly and giggling again :-)

I had really long, complex dreams last night, they started fading pretty quickly once I got out of bed, but here's the gist. For some warped reason my brain cast Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in the lead roles... The majority of the dream was myself and Audrey, a sillier even skinnier Audrey, being chased all over while dressed as harem girls with veils on our faces. I think Cary was doing the chasing as some sort of government agent. We were on ships, out in the country in some backwoods restaurant. Part of the dream it was storming and raining, which it really did do this morning here so that's logical. I remember running around with this really charming and sneaky woman, thinking "Why don't they recognize us? Our veils are sheer..." And "she's so skinny, why don't they realize who she is?". I wish I could remember more, it wasn't an unpleasant dream like a lot of chase dreams are, it was more silly, like something out of an old Doris Day movie.

Speaking of eBay, I also got a replacement battery for my Sony Cybershot (wow, it's like half the price I paid for it a year ago!) in the mail today and the damned thing is dead. It's a Sony brand, open box, so I emailed the guy so he'd send me another, he guarantees "no DOA's". I had a Lenmar backup battery and it stopped taking a charge, so I thought I'd go with the real thing this time. I wish I'd spent another $10 bucks and bought one new in the package, still less than the retail price but the guy had good feedback so we'll see how he handles it...

I'm lighting a reversal candle tonight, we're going into the dark cycle of the moon and I'm hoping to deflect some of the crap that the universe has been hurling at me the last few days before it can hit the fan. I knew something weird was coming, I went to burn the other half of a protection candle I hadn't finished last week and the wick burned straight though the candle, right down one side. I've never seen a candle do that, gave me the creeps.

This dream actually happened on 12/7, when my MT login problems began, so I'm setting the date back to when I originally entered it for accuracy's sake.

OK, had a real doozy of a dream this afternoon, gotta write it down before it slips away. Another variation on a house dream (gothic staple, I guess, couple moves into an old house in an unfamiliar area). It started off sort of odd with my husband me that part of the bumper on my car had been ìsort of damagedî. For some reasons, our cars were being stored in someone elseís garage several blocks away, and when I got there it wasnít my current car, it was the green ë73 Corvette I had in my 20ís (my baby!). The entire rear end was missing, leaving a bunch of metal framework sticking out (which isnít the way theyíre actually built, but itís a dream). I freaked completely out, telling my husband that this wasnít minor damage, that someone had stolen the entire rear end and the car wouldnít be driveable now because the gas tank assembly is in the rear and if the car was rear-ended it would explode. (Source of this knowledge is a real-life incident with said car where an idiot at a Jiffy Lube backed the car into a cross pole, cracking the fiberglass rear bumper and damaging the gas tank mount) This part of the dream went on for a few minutes longer, with me trying to figure out how anyone got to the car in a locked garage, then came to the realization that someone else had keys to the garage. Then we walked back home, and looked at my own garage, which had one of those old-fashioned garage doors that opens all as one piece (and is not lockable I suppose, I saw one on HGTV's House Hunters the other day and remember thinking that I donít like those type of doors) and I pulled the door open and the Corvette was backed into the garage seemingly intact now...

I think at this point in the dream I realized that the house we were living in was a pink stucco house (part of the same episode of House Hunters), which alarmed me a bit. I thought that we had moved into some small town or something, then I began looking around and realized that we were really close to downtown Houston, I could see the skyline all around us, and were in an older neighborhood but still in the same city. We went into the house, walking through sort of a big enclosed porch area where our black & white kitty (who passed away a few years ago) was playing and then wandered into a large home office area and I thought this is a nice house after all...

Then my parents were there at the house and we walked a few blocks to a little home-style neighborhood restaurant where we were sat at an outdoor table (we never do that in Houston, the weatherís too bad). Then it was me and my parents and brother and my dad is telling me to eat more of the food and I looked and saw that they were serving all of the vegetables first, and they had brought like 20 different types and four or five different dishes were sort of crammed together on top of each other in the same bowl, which was a little frustrating. I ate a bit, and then I wandered upstairs where there seemed to be a radio stationís offices. People were assembling boxes of things to take to a promo event (tee shirts, passes, etc.) and a DJ was broadcasting live from a fishtank-like glass room on the second floor. I went back downstairs and realized my family had finished dinner and left.

This is where the dream starts to get weird. I begin to walk back to the house, I have the keys so I figure no problem. On the way back I see two young black men leap off the second story of a house, landing on concrete and then they run away, unhurt. (Possibly triggered by the story I read last night of a German girl who jumped out of a window to commit suicide and lay on the pavement as people passed her by, thinking she was doing performance art) Only I end up at the wrong house, the keys donít work. And then it dawns on me Iím lost, I donít even know the address or street Iím looking for, only that the house is pink and on a corner. I wander in circles for blocks trying the keys on different houses and finally find what I believe is the right house. I go up to one of the many doors and try the keys and they work, but then I see that the opening for the door is only about four inches wide and I canít enter. I go to other doors, many of which appear to have been painted shut and now have furniture butted up against them. I walk around the outside, finding an open-air neighborhood store on one side of the house with lots of christmas lights hanging all around. I keep walking around the block and find that the house is actually half of a duplex, the other half is painted a greenish color. There is also some sort of childrenís private school on the back of the second floor. I keep wandering around the house, trying my keys and finding doors that go nowhere or only open into other outdoor areas. I run into a girl who says she had lived in the house before us and also thought the floor plan was sort of weird, had bad Feng Shui. I ask her how to get into the house, but she disappears. There are lights on inside, but now most of the doors in the front of the house are several feet off the ground, with only one or two small stairs that end too low to reach the doorway.

I go back upstairs where the school is, and unlock a series of doors that just lead me onto the roof of the duplex next door. So I climb around the edge of the roof trying to find a way in. I step out onto an area that turns out to be a metal carport and it falls to the ground. I go back the other way and an skirting the edge of the roof and find myself just barely clinging on to a narrow ledge. I think at this point I decide to give up and jump down, which I somehow also survive without getting hurt. (Iím terrified of heights and falling, BTW).

I go back through the store area and find some more stairs that go up to the house. Someone else is with me now, and Iím trying doors again to no avail, when I open one and there is a very large naked woman standing inside of one (though itís till not inside the house). I slam the door shut and exclaim ìOops, naked person!î but the girl Iím with tells me itís OK to go in, but I donít go in.

About the time Iím ready to give up, a wise older man with a beard appears and tells me that thereís a reason I canít find the entrance to the house. That the part of the house I see is only a facade to conceal our familyís true ìlairî beneath. He says that our family has descended from a long line of zombies and we are very powerful and the house canít be entered by normal methods like keys. We go up to one of the doorways Iíve tried again and again and a girl that is now with us flips a small box (like a doorbell) near the door and it slides up and the door springs open and we walk through into another area that is still open to the sky. We come to another door and it also has a hidden switch. Then we come to another doorway and the man tells me to open it. I donít see any switches so I try to open it and it opens partially then slams shut again. I look at him and he reminds me that we are descended from zombies and tells me to try again. I swing my hand against it with purpose this time, concentrating on my power and the door flies open and we go through to a dark area lit by torches. We begin approaching another door, which seems to lead into an underground area and... my husband walks into the bedroom and wakes me up! Dammit!!

My email has been down all night, but I didn't really mind. I've been playing with Style Sheets and Rollover scripts in GoLive instead. (I admit it, I'm an HTML wuss, I've always worked with Pagemill and GoLive, though I can go in and fix my own code when it's screwed up). The CSS thing makes a lot more sense now, but I think I screwed up my pretty little Java rollover by redoing some images. I've always worked strictly in HTML, and I feel like a bit of an amateur now that I've seen all the tricks I can do with CSS. I've given up for the night, too much code gives me a headache after awhile.

Todayís dream starts off with my hanging out in a New Age/Witchy shop, sort of like the cool one in ìThe Craftî, another recurring theme. Iím wandering around admiring at all the pretty things, lots of silver jewelry and crystals. Itís sort of a New Orleans or antique warehouse style store, with the front completely open. I know the people that work there. One of them is a large black man who comes up to tell me that the people have arrived to talk to me about the Batgirl game idea. Cool, I walk up a concrete ramp (like in a parking garage) to go up and see them...

Upstairs there is a table and some chairs set up and there are several rather devious looking, almost mafioso types that are there to speak with me. I start explaining my idea for a new game, Batgirl vs. Catwoman. About halfway through they interrupt me, though and someone says ìHey, she canít be a part of this, sheís a Mooreî, and my mom is suddenly there explaining that sheís the Moore, Iím adopted and she pulls out some sort of brochure that has a picture of me as a child, which is apparently what they are complaining about. I ask why they wonít tell me who they represent, and they say Iíll never find that out, to forget about it, theyíll never tell.

Iím trying to remember the rest of the dream that follows... Suddenly Iím on the run being chased because of something I know (recurring theme). Iím one step ahead of them, sometimes hiding out on the same elevator as them, but they donít see me. I end up in a restaurant, pretending to work there, though I canít figure out the difference between a microwave and a toaster oven and the workers start to become suspicious that I donít belong there. There are two other girls with me who realize we need to get the hell out of there right away, so we run and jump onto a moving train only to see our pursuers running behind us, but unable to catch the train.

Then Iím on the train with my husband, who for some reason looks like a young Dick Van Dyke. We are working as some sort of strange, highly skilled pickpockets, justifying taking other peopleís money out of desperation for our cause. We are fleeing by car, motorcycle, on foot, and eventually out running through a strange landscape with lots of sudden dropoffs into huge gorges, that I jump over fearlessly and easily, though my husband is afraid (Iím very afraid of heights and falling, so this is very empowering!). I think I wake up when I realize that weíve finally managed to escape because there is no way the people chasing us could ever manage to cross the gorges, so we are safe for now and can stop running.

Normally I really hate having the ìbeing chasedî dreams, I always wake up panicked and exhausted from them, but this one wasnít bad. It somehow made me feel smart and clever, and incredibly athletic. All in all a pretty good dream as dreams go.

Now I'm off to bed for the 10am vet appointment, I should manage to get at least 5 hours of sleep.

The full moon tonight is the "Mourning Moon", appropriately named with all the weird things happening today. I jinxed myself by saying I was looking forward to another day of tossing and turning, I got what I asked for. After about 4-5 hours of sleep my husband wakes me up to tell me he's going out to run errands and to "watch the dog". We have an elderly Lab mix who's finally showing her age now at 16, trouble walking, some cognitive problems. Very sweet dog, though.

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I spend every night watching her (he gets the day shift), and of course as soon as he left the house, she got up and started wandering around so out of bed I came to follow the dog around. Watched a bit of MSNBC with the sound off ("oil spill in Spain is predicted to be worse than the Valdez spill", that's nice), and after the dog settled down again and I crawled back in bed and am finally dozing off, the phone rings, then they person hangs up, and calls right back. That'll guilt you into getting back up, what if it's my husband, what if his car broke down, what if....

It's the vet, calling to leave a vague message about the dog's bloodwork, she needs more tests, OK, no problem. Poor dog's on as more medicine than I am.

Just dozing off again, husband comes home, overreacts to the fact that the vet called, back on the phone (I'm the official medical/legal/etc. translator around our house, even when I'm half asleep), bring her back Thursday (morning! ugghh) for the tests. TV blasting in the other room, talking heads on one of the news stations (doesn't he get tired of non-stop news, I have to watch something just for fun occasionally, my favorite mindless choice is the Home & Garden Channel), fall back asleep...

I have the recurring dream again, I've been having it almost nightly in one form or another for months. My husband and I are moving into a huge old house where the other people are still there and I'm trying to get their tons of junk packed up and get them out of the house while moving our stuff in and trying to find a clean restroom to take a shower in. There's trash in the shower drains. There's so much stuff in the house it's overwhelming, but it's a really cool house so I keep on. Sometimes the dream is that we're buying or have inherited an old house that still has the former owners belonging in it and I'm having to try and sort out what we can keep, what's worth keeping, sometimes it's really neat stuff and the dream is really kind of a treasure hunt.

Other parts of the dream that are recurring are: for some reason the house or rooms can't be properly secured or locked, there are windows missing, broken locks, etc. I think that can be traced to my childhood where I shared a connecting bathroom with my little brother and one of the dooors never locked correctly, always made me feel insecure. Another element is that I'm always searching for a proper bathroom, that's clean, has doors on the stalls, has a private shower, etc. And sometimes the dilemma isn't moving in, it's that we have to move out of a huge crowded house and I'm trying to get as much packed as possible while having to decide what's really worth taking and what I have to leave behind.

Psychology-wise, I'd say the dreams interpret as: I'm overwhelmed, insecure, and have too much stuff. And have a deep need for privacy. All true, especially the last year or two. I left my fulltime job for a medical leave a few years ago and have been trying to make a living on the internet and Ebay, and did quite well at first but the last year has been very slow, but then that's true for every business.

At the end of the dream, I have a "dream within a dream" that I can't wake up and I've overslept and it's like 7 pm. So when I do wake up, I'm in a slight panic, thinking this is true (years of shift work will do that to you also). I wake up exhausted, but relieved to find I have another hour to sleep, though I'm not certain I want to go back to the "house". Start dozing off again, and in comes husband, he's been depressed all day because of the dog (she's really doing quite well, honestly), he's going to take his afternoon shower early, so I have to get up again. Oh well, the end of sleep for today.

After he finishes, I decide to shower and try and wake up too, we're actually going to get to go out to eat dinner tonight. Our first thought is to go to our favorite Chinese restaurant, but then we decide on the Black-Eyed Pea (nice filling American comfort food). With Thanksgiving approaching, I've been craving turkey and dressing and theirs ain't half bad. We're both still in rather somber moods, go to the used bookstore afterwards but I'm just not in the mood for it. Normally you can't get me to leave once I'm there, but today the aisles of books just seem to make me dizzy and disoriented.

I get home, check my email and I have three unhappy Ebay customers (I have 6000+ positive feedbacks so this bothers me). One person has an expensive damaged item (in the Netherlands of course, no cheap shipping refunds for me), one person hasn't received their necklace (OK, look through the shipping records, I don't see it on my postage receipts, no problem, send another, fortunately it's something I have extras of), and the third person bought a movie collectible item apparently expecting a retail item and is being wants a refund. OK, that's not my problem. I spend a lot of time taking photos and writing descriptions and this one is exactly as described.

Yikes, I just want to go back to bed. I'm sipping a really nice 10 year old Port trying to get rid of the "crawling skin" feeling as I type this. I don't feel very productive or imaginative from lack of sleep. I feel like I have a bad case of PMS, though it's not time for that yet.

While I'm getting things out of my head, had an even more interesting dream the night before last. (I drive my husband nuts when I try and explain these dreams to him, he rarely remembers his, and he thinks I'm nuts!) We're in a huge old house that was some kind of student dorm and it was Halloween. I was trying to go upstairs but every stairwell had some kind of haunted house monster on it blocking the way, ready to jump out at me. So I try a different way, but it's a moving stairwell, you had to jump on it, like and elevator and I can't do it. Then I find another stairway, and there's a monster on it, but it turns out to be my husband in a mask, so we both go upstairs. We get up there and there's a little girl in a room with big open spaces where there should be windows and no door, just an opening in the wall. There's a big black panther stalking the halls and we realize that we have to get to a room that we can close before it catches us. We're running from room to room, sort of a live video game, avoiding the panther, trying to warn people. I think I woke up then.

Still with me? Thanks, my entries aren't usually this long, but as I mentioned, it's a full moon... I think I'll go to bed early tonight.