ramblings

Catchy title, right?  Sounds like it could the basis of a cool short story collection, but nope, this is the saga of  my love/hate relationship with SLEEP.  I’m not exactly sure how or when my sleeping problems began, but I do know that as an infant and toddler I never slept.  Ever, according to my mother.  Which is pretty ironic because now all I want to do when I have a free moment is take a nap.  Really, I plan my Saturdays around naps and my winter/spring/summer break plans revolve around napping time.  Even my  vacations are interrupted by a 1pm nap.  I went to Springfield last year with a friend and I notified (warned!) her ahead of time that I would need to take a nap every day, just in case she wanted to change her mind about traveling with me. Luckily she didn’t.

When I was seven we rented an apartment that was on the top floor of an old country farmhouse.  Many, many strange things happened in this house like:

• 6 year old BooBoo (who lived in the garage with his parents) running around our yard wearing only his diaper throwing glass baby food jars at us
• the strung out son of our landlord who lived in bottom floor apartment robbed us (and hid all of our stuff in the basement) 3 weeks before we moved to Chicago
• a neighbor kid broke my cat Mellow’s back leg when he tied him to his bike wheel spokes and took him for a spin
• Albert the ghost who cohabited with us in our apartment
• the time mom walked by my door and I was sitting up in bed in the middle of the night saying “Potatoes? I like potatoes.  French fries, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes. I like them all.”

Can you believe that?  I mean really, who lives in a garage AND wears a diaper until 6 years old.

Wait, that’s not the part you found strange?

Yeah, the potato thing…I’m not sure where that came from.  It’s totally true, though, I *do* love all kinds of potatoes.

Still not it?

How about the nerve of the guy who robbed us and hid our stuff in the basement?

Side note: we were living in Louisville, Kentucky and Jason and I went to a school where you got extra credit if you wore shoes.  Yes. Shoes = Extra Credit. We were all happy when we moved to Chicago, especially my mom who was born and raised in Queens.

The point I’m trying to make is that from the time I was a wee-little girl, I’ve had sleeping problems.  I didn’t realize how bad they were until I started doing all sorts of strange things in middle of the night. Things that up until that time, I thought were dreams.  I’m a lucid dreamer, which means I tend to absorb external stimuli into my current dream state. During this process there is always a slight warping of the original stimulus (audible or tactile) which is what causes the “incident”.  I always always, always remember what happens during my “night episodes”, much to my chagrin.

I remember the “weird years” started with small incidents, like when I would sleep with the windows open and had long drapes on my windows. The wind would float the drapes near the bed and sometimes they’d brush over me when I was sleeping.  In my dream, suddenly there would be hundreds of bugs crawling all over me and eventually, I’d wake up screaming.  After I calmed down, I’d realize it was the curtains, shut the window and fall back asleep.

Once, I had a dream where I was sleeping in my own house, but next to my bed there was a window that didn’t really exist (different apartment from above) and my cat jumped on the bed next to me.  In my dream, it was a wild fox and it started attacking me.  I woke up screaming and thrashing and my poor cat went flying through the air.

Sometimes movies or books tend to influence my dreams.  I fell asleep reading Harry Potter and suddenly, I was in Hogwarts and I had to fight off a Dementor.  I picked up my bedside lamp and I was waving it around like a wand (yes, I ripped the plug out of the wall.)  After a few minutes of activity, I “woke” up and realized that I was having a “night episode” or “sleep freak out” as they were later to be called.  This was the eventual pattern.  I’d do something silly and wake up partially through it. I never hurt myself or anyone else or was a danger (other than giving myself a potential heart attack)

One winter, I decided it would be a good idea to put flannel sheets on the bed.  That lasted promptly two nights until I dreamed that someone was across the street spying on me with a heat-seeking camera.  (I know, I’m so strange. But I did just see Eraser and this very thing actually happened in that movie) I was sweating from the flannel sheets and panicked that they could see me because I was so warm.  I immediately got up, started ripping the sheets and blankets off the bed and throwing them into the middle of the hallway.  Moments later, I “woke” up and realized I had been dreaming.  These incidents were all very, very common and would happen on a weekly basis.  Always the first 60 minutes I was sleeping, which meant it was happening before I hit REM sleep.

I’ve had two other night freak outs that put all others to shame.  These are the ones that my friends as me to retell over and over while they laugh hysterically.  During the Winter Olympics a few years ago, I fell asleep watching the downhill snowboarding races. I started dreaming and in my dream, the race was actually happening in the church parking lot next door.  In the middle of the parking lot was a shed (doesn’t really exist) and the snowboarders had to fly through the shed to continue on the race.  Well, in my wacky dream state, the shed was actually my bedroom, and as the snowboarders crashed into the shed door, they flew through my room.  My dream self (and real self) panicked and jumped out of bed and ran to the door and started slamming it shut  screaming “NO! You can’t come in here!  Get OUT!!) over and over.  I must have stood at that door for a full minute opening and slamming it shut, screaming.

Finally I recovered enough to climb back in bed.  As I did, I realized that my left leg was hurting pretty badly just above my knee.  As I reached down to rub it, Jose noticed that I was bleeding.  A lot.  It took a few minutes to comprehend what had happened.  As I jumped out of the bed to slam the door, I ran into the edge of the foot board, hard enough to leave a 4 inch scrape that was bleeding a good amount.  I got bandaged up (still sort of in a lucid state) and went back to sleep.

In the morning, I understood the gravity of the situation a little more.  If I had turned to the right instead of the left, I would have throw myself through the windows next to me.  I really could have hurt myself more than the lovely scrape, sub-dermal bruise and bloody mess I already had.  The bruise ended up being about 10 inches in diameter, hurt like hell and lasted for at least a month.  I had a lump there under the skin for about a year and it was tender for a long time.  Of course I had to show my lunch buddies, Karen and Stephanie what had happened.  Embarrassing?  Yeah.  Amusing…oh HELL yes.

The other really funny thing happened about a year after “The Great Snowboarding Fiasco”.  I fell asleep like normal and suddenly I “woke up” (lucid dream state here). I remembered that I was supposed to be doing some type of surveillance on a person of interest in this investigation I was working on. (Apparently in my dream  I was a police officer).  I immediately got out of bed, panicked because I had lost track of my person. I looked around the room to find a good place to hide so I could see down the hall. I slid into a spot and stood there waiting for a good while.  Then very gradually as I came out of the lucid dream state I realized I was standing fully inside my closet peeking out of the curtains.  I actually laughed out loud as I climbed back into bed.

Mostly funny, sometimes terrorizing.  The worst feeling one (besides running into the foot board) was the event that made me look into what was causing this.  This happened about eight years ago.  I was sleeping for about an hour (as usual) and I woke up very startled because I KNEW someone was in the room with me that shouldn’t be there.  I was convinced someone had climbed into the window in my bedroom or broken into the apartment.  I started hyperventilating because I could feel them standing next to my bed.  I tried to be as still as possible because if the person saw me moving, he would know I was awake.  I vividly remember trying to control my breathing and appear as if I was still sleeping. I could literally feel the person standing over me breathing and I was getting more and more scared.  Finally after about 15 minutes, I decided I couldn’t lay there waiting for someone to hurt me, so I threw off the blankets and lunged out of bed.  Of course there was no one there.  Windows and doors were shut and locked tight.  The very next day I went to the pharmacy and started looking into some of the meds I was taking.  Turns out my allergy medication has been known to exasperate lucid dreaming and night paranoia in some people.  I started taking it in the AM instead of PM and the frequency of these incidents dramatically reduced.

The other good news is that in the year I’ve been using the CPAP machine (for the sleep apnea) I have had less than 3 night freak outs (I was averaging one every two weeks before), but that is another story.

off to sleep. Hopefully.

P.S. Was it Albert you wanted to hear about?  Well, Albert the ghost is another story for another time.  You’ll just have to keep checking back to read about that one.  It’s a doozy.

1983                                                          2010

I’m belatedly finshing up Janssen’s recommendation for June, which was These is My Words and so far, I’m really enjoying it. I took a small break to hit the library and stocked up on a few books for this week.  I have about three more weeks of Summer Break before I have to start easing back into school-mode.  I’m going to read as much as I can during the next three weeks.

I checked out Soulless by Gail Carriger and it was really good.  It’s a genre called steampunk, which I’ve heard of but was not familiar with. Apparently that’s a sub-genre of sci-fi with fantasy elements usually set in 19th century/Victorian era (thank you, wikipedia). It’s not at all the type of book I’d normally pick up (not necessarily the genre, but that era is not one I’m particularly in to – shame on me, I know), but I’m glad I did.  It was fascinating and I couldn’t put it down.  I don’t know how to explain the story but it’s about a woman who has no soul and it involves vampires and werewolves. Hmm, that really isn’t helping, is it?   Ok, I’m going to let Publisher’s Weekly explain it better:

Starred Review. Carriger debuts brilliantly with a blend of Victorian romance, screwball comedy of manners and alternate history. Prickly, stubborn 25-year-old bluestocking Alexia Tarabotti is patently unmarriageable, and not just because she’s large-nosed and swarthy. She’s also soulless, an oddity and a secret even in a 19th-century London that mostly accepts and integrates werewolf packs, vampire hives and ghosts. The only man who notices her is brash Lord Conall Maccon, a Scottish Alpha werewolf and government official, and (of course) they dislike each other intensely. After Alexia kills a vampire with her parasol at a party—how vulgar!—she and Conall must work together to solve a supernatural mystery that grows quite steampunkishly gruesome. Well-drawn secondary characters round out the story, most notably Lord Akeldama, Alexia’s outrageous, italic-wielding gay best vampire friend. This intoxicatingly witty parody will appeal to a wide cross-section of romance, fantasy and steampunk fans. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Seriously, how can you pass up a review like that?  (even as I admit that half of the review didn’t make a lick of sense to me) I thought the characters were interesting and likable, and the fantasy elements involving supernatural creatures didn’t seem so implausible.  It’s the first book in a series and there are romance elements as well as the mystery, sci-fi and fantasy components.  Overall, it was a really entertaining story and I’m looking forward to reading the next installments.  I know what you’re thinking;  the vampire/werewolf thing is really overdone right now, but I’m just going to say that if the Twilight werewolves were more like Lord Maccon …well… Team Edward would cease to exist.

I also picked up Stephen King’s latest short story collection called Just After Sunset.  I adore his novels and his novellas even more.  I’m always pushing his story collections on to people who say they don’t like his books.  Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption?  How can you NOT love that story (and movie…it’s on my top 10 list).  I haven’t been happy with his novels since “the accident” but I have high hopes for these short stories.

Let’s see, I also have Stardust by Neil Gaiman.  I admit I only got this up because my library didn’t have American Gods.  No, I don’t mean it was checked out, they don’t have a copy at all.  I find this very strange.  Every Neil Gaiman fan I know raves about this book, more than his others, but my library doesn’t have a copy.  *sigh*  I don’t understand this particular library (even though it’s where I got my start as a 16 year old page, so I will forever be thankful for the humble beginnings of my librarianship). OK so my real beef with Gaiman is that I don’t “get” him.  Yes, Coraline was terrific, odd and weird, but terrific, but The Graveyard Book?  I just….didn’t understand it.  Sometimes I think that whole British thing is lost on me.  Anyway, I have high hopes for Stardust and that I’ll be reading American Gods as soon as my library can get me a copy.  I used to follow NeilHimself on twitter, but Heavens to Betsy, that man tweets a little too much.

Another book I got today is PostMortem the first Kay Scarpetta – Patricia Cornwell book.  My friend, JenTastic recommended them and I’m going to give this here mystery genre a looksee.

I have some good reads ahead of me…hope you do too.  I know I have another five weeks to wait, but I’m anxiously awaiting Mockingjay, the final book in the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  It will be like Harry Potter release day all over. I will not answer my phone, facebook, blog, or tweet (ok, maybe I’ll still  tweet) while I’m devouring that book.  But more on that later.  If you have not started reading Hunger Games yet, what are you waiting for?

Yes, this has been delayed a bit, but hey, at least it’s done now.

JenTastic and I set out on the long drive from Chicago to North Carolina on a Tuesday morning.  It was a bright, happy morning and we were armed with coffee, grapes, potato chips and french onion dip (safely ensconced in an iced baggie) as well as other random car snacks.  We had plans to drive about halfway and then stop for the night.  No specific plans about where to stop, just whenever we felt tired enough.

As you will soon find out, that is not always the smartest strategy!

Our first cool sighting was the wind turbine farm we saw along I65.  These things are HUGE.  They don’t look that big, but when you get up close and personal, they are gigantic.  I hear there’s lots of controversy about strobe light effects on the people who live nearby, as well as the dangers to the birds flying through the area.

Still cool to look at, though!

Ooh hey look we’re in Kentucky!  Drive faster!  I can say this, as someone who lived in Kentucky for a few years.  I went to a grade school where you got extra credit for wearing shoes.

This was in 1980.

True story.

Need I say more?  Hunk-a-pizza?

At one point, the car started making a really loud grinding noise every time Jen hit the brakes.  Since we were at least 8 hours from our destination, this was cause for concern.    In the end, it turned out to be something easily fixable (though not until we arrived in NC.)

We were never in danger of crashing into a ravine.

No, Jen really, we were safe the whole time.  Promise!

Then there was the time we stopped at a doozy of a place to fill the tank.  I had to use the bathroom (remember I have major public bathroom issues).  One, teeny tiny problem. This wasn’t a gas station. It was a service shop with a few gas pumps, a garage and a greasy spoon dinette/shop/place.  The bathroom was inside the restaurant (and believe me when I say I’m being polite calling it that). Throwing caution to the wind, I left all my stuff in the car and ran into the building. I had to ask the short order cook, who was flipping over eggs and hash browns to direct me to the bathroom.

It was about 1 1/2 feet from a table where people were eating.  Ew, that’s a little gross, but beggars can’t be choosers.  I went in and closed the door quickly realizing the light was not working.  It was literally pitch black in this tiny room.  I panicked.  I opened the door to let enough light in about three times so I could see where everything was. Let me be clear here, I’m not scared of the dark, but I have an irrational fear of tiny, public bathrooms with no lights.  I was so mad that I didn’t even have my phone to use as a light source.  Needless to say, it was the quickest bathroom trip ever.

Back to happier things…along the way, there were sightings of beautiful scenery

and, um, some not so beautiful scenery. As if Piggy Bank Pawn isn’t bad enough, they are in a town called Locust.  I’m sure that’s a lovely place, but I prefer not to stop anywhere named after bugs.

At the end of Day 1, we stopped in a little town in Tennesse.  This was the bad part of the “no planned route” trip.  This hotel, while it was clean, safe and full of friendly people on motorcycles, was out in the middle of NO WHERE.  We asked about a restaurant and we were told that the mini-mart at the gas station had a great food selection.  For real.

Someone also had a fascination with statues because the property, outside and inside, was filled with them.  Here is a sample of the greatest.

Zeus

Then Genghis Khan

I’m not sure why the eagle is eating JenTastic’s foot, but it looks painful to me.

No idea what’s happening here. When she gets this like, I just nod and smile.  That happened a lot on this trip.

I thought this was creepy until we saw what was next to him….

A strange hungover, sleep deprived Mr. Lincoln.  He looks like he could use some coffee.  And shampoo.

Here’s the lovely eagle again, without Jen’s foot in it’s mouth.

I don’t know what’s weirder here…you decide.

After we had a good night’s sleep, a decent breakfast and stocked up on coffee, we were ready to hit the road for day 2.  JenTastic commandeered the camera and took these shots.

A few hours into our drive, I did a spot check with Roberta (the navigator) to see what interesting things were around us.  Hey, we were 2.9 miles away from Gran Nanny’s Goat Milk.  Too bad it was in the opposite direction, that just might have been fascinating.

Ok, this is not scary or dangerous at all.

Really, Mr. Truck, you’re doing a great job with that dental floss holding back the tree trunks from flying into our car and crushing us like ants, and those tiny orange flags, yeah, those are really obvious.

Finally, we arrived at our destination, lugged our stuff into the house and quickly collapsed for the night.

I did get acquainted with Chick-fil-A on this trip. Boy, they have delicious lemonade.

I also discovered the Food Lion grocery store chain, where I saw this very exciting ad, especially for someone like me with an eyeball fascination.

Another Food Lion gem (reminiscent of the potted meat product Kim gave me for my 20th birthday, along with a hot pink toilet plunger)

We went to a local place for lunch and the food was absolutely terrific.  We shared a cheesy seafood dip with pita chips (delish!)

as well as a burger with brie, carmelized onions and arugala and the best sweet potato fries I’ve ever had. They tasted like candy, so sweet.

Look at that burger!

The only weird thing…look at the ads on the glasses?  Strange, no?

You’ve already seen the tour of the house and our trips to PikNPig but I’m strictly forbidden to discuss anything else that happened on this trip.

Not even the batch of raw cookie dough that was never baked, but mysteriously disappeared from the fridge

or the entire morning we spent laughing hysterically over Photo Bombs and Passive Aggressive Notes and didn’t get anything productive done

or the mysterious techniques we resorted to when building Rick’s desk

or the gem of a movie Jen dragged me to starring her movie star boyfriend that left us both stunned and in shock

or the “giving of the eyeball” at WalMart and the slippery shoes that almost caused my death or at the very least, serious maiming

or how I was tortured with Ke$ha for ten days and Jen was tortured with Celtics/Lakers games

or the countless times Roberta yelled “RECALCULATING” at us while we drove around

or when I had to restrain JenTastic from taking out a neglectful grandma in Barnes and Noble

or how many cups of coffee we actually drank

or the way JenTastic’s van kept giving me a concussion

or the number of times JenTastic called someone an assclown

or “The Great Eating Dessert in the Car” caper

My lips are zipped.

Nope.

Not saying a word.

One of the other things we did with The Canadians this visit was take the kids to the Chicago Children’s Museum at Navy Pier.  A few months ago, I purchased a Groupon that gave me 10 passes for $40. This is a deal because it normally costs $10 per person to get in the museum. Saving all that dough allowed us to park at Navy Pier for $20/week day – UGH!

Mom, Zoe and I met The Canadians there when the museum opened.  Zoe hasn’t seen her buddies since Christmas, so she was plenty excited. She was also itching to give Kenzie back her toys that have been hanging out in the back of my car since December.  It was really important to Zoe that they toys got back where they belonged.

I hadn’t been to the Children’s Museum before and I was really impressed. There is a lot of hands on stuff for the kids to do. We were there for about 3 hours or so and we only saw about half of the exhibits.  The kids were a getting a little shell shocked.  This is definitely a membership I’ll consider getting.  If you live in Chicago, it might be a better deal because you wouldn’t have to pay for parking, you could take the CTA or possibly a taxi.

Here are the rugrats! Aby, Zak, Kenzie and Zoe.

3 Kids and a Horse

I love Zak’s expression here, he was obviously highly amused by the horse made of “stuff”. I think it was the hair dyer that put him over the edge.

There was a fireman exhibit, with a fire truck and hoses.  The kids played here for quite a bit.  We tried to get Zoe and Kenzie to pose for a few pictures, but after one or two, Kenzie had had enough.

There was this two story climbing net that took you to the upper levels.  The kids had to climb all the way.  Aby and Zak flew up there, and Rob helped Kenzie.  That kid is like a monkey!

Here’s Zoe scooting across the netting.

Next up was the Block Party exhibit.  There was a stage and instruments set up for a band, all sorts of grilling stations as well as a make your own pizza spot.  They had a cool brick oven that the kids could slide their pizzas on.  We almost had a pizza-catastrophe when a boy put his pizza on top of some other pizzas, but luckily Zoe handled the situation by telling the boy “You have to share the oven, that means, wait your turn!”

Apparently my niece doesn’t have the pizza topping issues that I do

Our next stop was at the sculpting station.  Here kids are supposed to make a sculpture of their face using lumpy clay things.  It was hard.

According to Zoe, her face resembles a jack-o-lantern.

We moved onto the large games section and we bowled for a bit.  Look at that form!

Soon, Zoe was buzzing around like a bee pollinating all the plants.

After that, she and GeGe got into a Parks vehicle to water some plants.  Crazy driver!

We finally met back up with our Canadian friends and soon they were all digging for dinosaur bones. This was a very cool exhibit.  They had large bones covered in rubber mulch and the kids were given paleontology tools to uncover them.

Zak and Zoe inside the T-Rex mouth!

Good alternative use for rolling pins.

Rob and Kenzie!

At this exhibit, you had to create your own flying machine and then see how long it stayed in the air.  The one with the red dot is mine. I went with the propeller theory and it managed to stay in the air for a good amount of time.

Finally I have a picture with Kenzie  This kid is too cute for words.

She’s quite fearless for two and a half.

Big sister Aby is scooping up fish.

During lunch, Aby turned to Zoe and said, “Get your passport, so you can come and visit me in Canada.”

Kids = hilarious.

My lunch item of choice was the Atlanta Dog - chili, mustard and coleslaw – hold the ketchup and raw onions.  (I love ketchup, but it doesn’t belong anywhere near a hot dog.  Ever.)

We ended our day with a ride on the Navy Pier ferris wheel.  It was a hot, humid day, but with a beautiful sky.

I can’t get over how big both these girls look.

My new favorite picture of Zoe and Gege, with the Rob photo bomb in the background.

Dueling photographers

Wrapping up our day Rob and Zoe hug it out.

Finally, Rob likes to pretend that pink princess bag belongs to one of his children, but he’s around it a lot.  He once took it on a trip (without children) to York, England where it made quite the impression on the desk clerk.

The older kids had one last treat, a ride on the carousal.

I will be taking Zoe back to the Children’s Museum at Navy Pier.  There are a lot of things we didn’t see, but we had a terrific time seeing the exhibits we did squeeze in.

Thanks so much to our friends for spending the day with us!