Sidetracked Charley

Brighter Day I sat down last night, sung and warm in my house with my fur kids, to watch some old DVD's of favorite movies and to work on my New Year Affirmations. I began doing affirmations some years back when resolutions just seemed beyond me. I knew I was keeping none of them because of the dark cloud of the mechanics lien. The affirmations were all about keeping my spirits up and keeping on, keeping on against all odds. The dark cloud is gone so the resolutions seem appropriate this year. As does an ambitious list of improvements I want to make on my house beginning with the cheapest because at the moment the rental unit does not have tenants and ergo no rental income. And since it is currently empty the first improvements are on the apartment. First project after cleaning is to tile the entry way with some stone tile I have saved for the project I was going to do five years ago. The list for my part of the house is longer, but includes a deck at last outside the stud...

When I was a kid I called them nightmares. Today I relegate them to the realm of disturbing. They do not contain monsters borrowed from a late night show my parents told me not to watch but from a odd arrangement of reality. They dwell in the area of the possible from which there seems to be no escape. Per Wiki: A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear and/or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time. These days I can no longer connect my disturbing dreams to bad food or bad movie or bad news. I more often see them as heralds of a bumpy road ahead or a signal that I have overlooked something important I need to attend to. I can describe them more by the terms despair, and anxiety and sadne...

I am an active dreamer. I dream in color and I quite often remember my dreams in vivid detail. But some nights my dreams are just more over the top. Last night was such a night. I woke up feeling as if I had participated in some Olympic event. The last dream before waking was of skiing. I have not skied in eight years but I was on a familiar run - one that is a combination of places I have skied and all the horrid fears skiers can have when they drop over the top into unfamiliar terrain. Getting up seemed wise. It certainly was going to be more relaxing. I have often wondered if my more vivid dreams, and nights like this last with seemingly endless dreams, have a root cause. I know I am apt to get a round of nightmares when I am coming down with something. And dreams that repeat like the airport bathroom dream (a version of the empty box dream women often suffer) occur when I am quite frustrated. I dream more on the three days of full moon influence (day before through day after). ...

I had Halloween dreams last night. Grave yards and haunted houses and masquerade parties. It is what I have termed a "seeker's" dream. It does not matter if it is an airport or a multi-storied house I am seeking something throughout the twisted course of the dream. We are told by sleep researchers that dreams can last no more than a minute or two and yet this one seemed to go on all night. As as kid I used to tell my mother I dreamed in Soap Operas, because it seemed that each new dream was an additional episode of an on-going story where the same cast of characters came and went not unlike As the World Turns . I also obviously reuse stage sets. I have a memory of my parents helping my paternal grandmother move out of the huge house in the Prospect area of Kansas City. It was a mansion to my way of thinking with a huge entry area that opened up to the ceiling three floors above us. The room where we stood was ringed with a staircase and balustrade. Grandmother, dressed in...