I hate dreaming. Many people I know either don&#039t remember their dreams at all ever (e.g., my friend Nick) or they don&#039t remember them very often (e.g., the husband). I, however, for about half of every month, dream every night extensively for nights on end, all night long. The nights when I dream throughout its entirety, I don&#039t feel rested at all when I get up. I feel as though I&#039ve just spent another day running around, doing all the insane things that are in my dreams. It&#039s exhausting, and for someone who is perpetually exhuasted (especially this semester), this is just wearing my nerves that much thinner and making me that much more likely to crash and burn at any given moment. And believe me, with the history I have when I crash and burn, that&#039s really a terrible idea.

And I can&#039t seem to have normal dreams whatsoever at all either. I can&#039t just dream about showing up to class and not having done my homework or not knowing any of the answers on the test. Oh no. When I dream, I have to have flown on the back of a giant bumblebee after taking out an army that used ham sandwiches as ammunition by using nothing but my magical ability to shoot streams of water at them. Or I&#039ll dream about doing physics homework in my French prof&#039s office only to walk out the door into a medieval cathedral (Chartres, to be exact) to hear a lesson on stained glass windows before walking out into the street to find gold coins in sewer grates and barrels so I can advance to the next level. Any video game that I&#039ve been playing lately tends to appear in my dream such as last night when I was scoffing at students who were struggling to open a door while thinking &#034All they have to do is type in the TFH cheat code and it&#039ll show them that the door is locked with a level 55 spell.&#034

I almost never (as in I&#039ve had maybe 2 dreams like this in my entire existence) dream anything that could be construed as real. When I&#039m in someplace that is supposed to be Grandma and Grandpa Ringwald&#039s farm, it is altered with a five-story building with gables and towers and strange animals that don&#039t exist on this planet. If I dream about my parents&#039 basement, Voltron will be there to help me up the staircase which has suddenly grown to fifty feet long (I find I dream about stairs often as well as ladders, probably due to my phobias concerning them). When I dream that I&#039m on the campus of ISU, it&#039s peopled with wild wolves and jackals rather than people, and all the buildings become surrouned by moats and are hideously misshapen. Nothing is right. Nothing is the same. Nothing is sacred when I dream. And nothing could ever make me want to dream more because even though dreams are other people&#039s fodder for poems, short stories, and inventions, my dreams are fodder for annoyance, fear, embarrassment, depression, and anger. Most of all, my dreams are preventing me from sleeping well!

Posted: October 17, 2004 right after I woke up at !@#$%^&* 11:30 in the !@#$%^&* morning.