ramblings

I’m in Little Rock, AR visiting my college roommate and while it’s been fairly uneventful, there was one incident on my first night in town that must be documented here for the world to read (or at least my 5 er 4 loyal, faithful readers)

Jennifer and I were sitting in her living room discussing her apartment.  It’s a good space, has a great footprint and sturdy bones, but let’s face it, it desperately needs a face lift and some TLC.  Apparently there was an earthquake a while ago that jarred loose some ceiling tiles in most of the rooms, but her bedroom suffered the most damage.

So I casually ask if  there have been any documented cases of ceiling tiles falling down and she laughingly says “Oh don’t be SILLY! I’ve lived here for 4 years and it’s never happened.”   She actually had the nerve to LAUGH at me, like I was a lunatic for even suggesting the idea.

Um did you see that photo? Take a sec and look at it again.  Do you think it’s such a crazy idea?

So that night, I crawl into bed and drift to sleep.  Barely two hours later (mind you, I’d just driven 600 miles to get here) I feel something hard slam onto my leg and make the loudest bang possible.  Meanwhile, Jennifer sleeps RIGHT through this even though she is less than 12 inches away from me.  Not surprising considering this is the SAME woman who climbed down out of her top bunk bed and walked across a dorm room every nine minutes to hit the snooze alarm for two plus hours, every single day for the three years we were roommates.

The Clock!!

Anyway, to make a really short story even longer, the ceiling tile that was never supposed to fall down, came crashing down on me in the middle of the night, mere hours after being assured it would never, ever in a million years happen.  It actually landed on my leg.

This photo is a reenactment of the actual event.

No lie. Luckily, I’m used to strange and weird things happening in the night, so I kicked it across the room and fell back to sleep.

Needless to say, I’ve been sleeping in a Kevlar body suit for the past three nights.

Last Sunday I volunteered at the Chicago Triathlon. It was incredible.  I have a few pictures to post, but since I was actually working the event, I couldn’t take too many.  I had to be there at 6am when the first of the Sprint Distance athletes were just jumping into the water. I was assigned a spot on the running leg, which meant I had to shoo spectators and clueless people off the running path as the runners came by.

Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, there are a lot of people who do not pay attention to the world around them.  I know that’s a shocker.

I was right across from where the athletes left the swimming leg and transitioned to the biking leg. I didn’t get to see any of the biking or even the transition area.  I did get some tips from a fellow volunteer who did the Tri last year.  He made some great suggestions on how to make sure I can find my bike easily.

Here are some photos from my volunteer spot. I had a great location. It was less than half a mile into the run. I spent 4 hours cheering total strangers on. I got hi-fived by a few people. One lady hugged me as she ran by, a guy puked about 3 feet from me, lots of people smiled and said “thanks!” as they ran by.

This is where I stood for four hours, yelling and cheering. It was a great location.

See, a person crossing the path.  At least there were no runners coming!

Right here is where the swimmers came out of the lake.  Then they ran to the bike transition area. I would have liked to seen the start of the swimming leg, which was just south of Buckingham Fountain about half a mile down the road.

This is the start of the swim to bike transition.  You have to run barefoot on this path for quite a ways until you get to the bike area.   Some people left flip flops and sandals there so they didn’t have to run barefoot, but most people didn’t.  Everyone was peeling their wet suits off as they ran.

I am SO glad that I did it this year. I feel like I know exactly where our friends and family should stand next year to get the best view of us possible. I also have a better idea of what to expect.  I will say that it was so inspiring to see all the different levels of athletes (the Pros started after the Sprint distance and boy you could tell they are IN SHAPE.  That was double the distance which was a 1 mile swim, 25 mile bike and a 10k run)

Even more determined to get here next year. I have seven or eight people coming along for the ride, too.  Awesome!

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?