Corner of Bourbon & Division

I've always been a very vivid dreamer, for as long as I can remember. There are times when I don't dream as much (or, rather, I wake up without remembering my dreams), but for the most part dreaming is a huge part of my sleeping experience. I am often half-aware of dreaming, and sometimes can exercise some small control over what happens in my dreams. It's not really lucid dreaming, but it's something kind of like that. Usually it manifests as "starting over" some dream sequences because I somehow know that what just happened isn't the desired outcome, and sometimes it manifests as "changing the rules" partway through (a common theme in my dreams is that something scary will turn out to be a roleplaying game, and everyone in the dream stops the action to discuss the rules of the game and whether or not we're following them properly).

Anyway, I had a very vivid dream this weekend which left me a little unsettled. It wasn't a semi-conscious dream, just a run-of-the-mill dream, but I dreamt that a Member of my Quaker Meeting had died. It felt very real, and even right now I don't really understand why my subconscious came up with that, because I'm not particularly close to him or his wife, and indeed hadn't had any contact with them for nearly a year while I wasn't attending Meeting. The best I can come up with is that in my mind I think of him and his wife as being "the same age" as my parents, and so maybe I was projecting some fears about my parents onto him. It wasn't a distressing dream at all while it was happening--everything was all very matter of fact. I was more unsettled when I awoke and had to double check that I had truly dreamed he was dead and that it hadn't actually happened, because it felt so real. Sometimes my subconscious is weird.

I am trying to remember the dream I had last night, too, but it was less unusual and so unfortunately I lost it over the course of the day. I often have dreams about moving or changing houses, and I think it was one of those types of dream.

Apart from that, I had a nice, productive day today. It started out a little weird, because I woke up naturally around 06:00 but decided to go back to sleep (my alarm was set for 07:00) and then managed to oversleep a bit, which was not ideal. I got to work about 10 minutes late, but since I'm not replacing anyone on shift and my bosses aren't at the office to check what my hours are, it didn't really matter. Not to mention that I ended up staying nearly an hour late anyway, so I refuse to feel bad about it. I need to get better at getting out of the house AND the office on time when there is no external motivation for it.

Tardiness aside, I managed to get through two meetings this morning and then blitzed through a bunch of work in the afternoon, including finishing the draft of the PSE evaluation standards I'd wanted to do before. I am glad I got it done, but a little irked that I ended up having to do so much of it at the last minute. Part of that was unavoidable because other priorities cropped up, but there were some missed opportunities last week in which I could have done this. I procrastinated on it a bit because it felt like this huge thing, but once I started on it, it wasn't as long or complicated as I thought, so now I feel a little silly about it. Still, I got it done, and I think I did a pretty good job. It's now with the supervisors for their feedback for two weeks, and then I will work on the next draft.

I was going to bring the second draft to my boss, but I think I mentioned that he's stepping back from supervising me (or anyone else, I should specify), and my Director has neither the time nor the knowledge needed for this particular job, so I guess my own expertise will have to suffice for this. I don't see a problem with that, to be honest. It's just that my boss doesn't like to feel left out of the loop, but since he's deliberately stepping away from the loop, it should be fine.

[...]

I paused to Skype with my parents. They, like most people I know, are still appalled by last week's attempted coup d'état in the U.S., so we mostly talked about that. They were a little surprised that I'm of the opinion we're likely going to see more violence and more attempted "uprisings" before Biden's inauguration, but I stand by my prediction. Just because some of the mob looked silly doesn't mean we should dismiss these people as a joke: they are dangerous, and they have not been dissuaded. At least they are being de-platformed, slowly but surely. Twitter has banned Trump permanently, Amazon has kicked Parler off its servers, and right-wing accounts are being shut down. Not all of them, but it's a start.

The hot debates around "free speech" and whether or not Twitter, Facebook, etc. should ban this kind of account have me uneasy. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of de-platforming, but there are other implications here too. Most of us already knew or suspected, but this has pulled back the curtain and shone a big, bright spotlight on the fact that these giant mega-corporations are basically in control of almost all the media content we consume. They can shut down anyone they like at any time with no repercussions. It's fine for a private company to do what it likes with its own content, I have no beef with that. My problem is that there is literally no alternative out there other than private mega-corporations, and this really should give us pause. I don't have it fully articulated in my mind, but doubtless others out there have already written about it more eloquently. Maybe I will see if I can find any of those articles or blog posts. 

That's it for today, folks. I will be back tomorrow with more fascinating life updates. :P

I am a little surprised at how many dreams I'm managing to remember of late.

In this one I had arrived at work and was just starting my shift. In my dream, starting my shift meant going outside the RCMP building and making sure the weeds didn't take over the place. I was still a dispatcher, but apparently weeding was part of the deal. I'm guessing that yesterday's yard work was lodged somewhere in my subsconsious. Anyway, the weeds were plentiful, and I was very worried that I hadn't already done a better job of keeping them at bay. I thought it might have something to do with the arrival of spring, since they were springing up all over the place, but I kept thinking that I should have done a better job during my last shift, even though there hadn't really been enough time to get all the weeds in the short time I was allotted before I began my shift (about half an hour in the dream, if memory serves), since the grounds at work are quite vast.

I wasn't able to get it all done then, either, but it was time to head back in, so I hurried into the building and, for some reason I now don't recall, went into a small conference room. Perhaps I was fetching something, or had to do something in the room prior to my shift, I don't remember. Anyway, the next thing I knew people were pouring into the room. I recognised them all as being from the drug enforcement section, and realised that I was inadvertently crashing an important meeting. There was a beautiful young woman there with very long brown hair and big blue eyes, and I recognised her immediately as the girlfriend (or maybe daughter?) of an important mafia boss, and that's when I knew that she must be there to give testimony. It explained why there were so many officers and why everything was being kept hush-hush. She was being kept in witsec in return for her to turn state's evidence, as they say in the U.S.

For some reason I couldn't figure out, she took a shine to me and insisted I sit next to her. I knew her life was in grave danger just by being there, and sure enough when I turned around I caught sight of a sniper on the roof of a building farther down the street. Amusingly enough, it was Eliot from the TV show Leverage. In the dream I apparently knew him well enough that we were friends of a sort, or at least had been. I remember being very upset at the thought that he'd apparently gone back to being a thug-for-hire. I didn't want the girl I was with to die, so I waved and smiled at him and sat directly beside her, so that he wouldn't have a shot unless he went through me first, and I was convinced that our relationship was strong enough that he wouldn't take that shot. (I'm not 100% sure, but I think briefly in the dream I either thought I was Parker, also from Leverage, and I might have transformed into her for a little while, to capitalise on their bond in the show).

In the end, we got through the interview with no bloodshed, and the officers were able to take the girl back into witsec without incident. There was a strange little interlude in my dream, then, in which I shifted into spectator mode. This actually happens a lot to me in dreams, when I seem to step outside what's happening and just watch what's going on. Sometimes I'm watching myself, but more often than not it's like watching a very surreal movie. It felt like an extra scene from Leverage, but it was taking place right after what had just happened in my dream. Parker was there (perhaps I had been her after all, and was now myself again?), and she'd gone to find Eliot, and gave him a very impassioned speech about coming back to the side of the good. She reminded him of everything they'd done, all the progress they'd made, all the lives they'd improved, and I am pretty sure that by the end of the scene they had reconciled and Eliot had given up his thug-for-hire ways for good. So it was a happy ending for them.

By then, though, I was nearly five hours late for my own work shift. I sprinted down the hall and arrived at my office, where I couldn't see anyone. There were beautiful green plants hanging everywhere, though, as well as lined up on trolleys in the hallway just outside. My office was apparently in the midst of a big campaign to improve employees' lives through plants and flowers. The whole office smelled fragrant and green, and I couldn't help but feel my spirits lift when I walked in. I knew that not only would I be allowed to have plants at my desk, but that I'd be encouraged to take more plants home, which was great. I kept thinking that this would never have happened at my old posting, and was such a vast improvement over my previous job, and that I was very lucky to have such a great job now.

Still, I had to account for my tardiness. I ran directly to my supervisor's office to explain what had happened. He seemed pleased to see me, and had wondered why I was late. I explained that I'd actually arrived at work early for my shift, but that I'd been delayed by circumstances outside of my control. He seemed pretty sympathetic overall, since he apparently knew about the witness meant to give testimony, but I lost him when I told him that Eliot had been the sniper on the roof. I recall saying: "But wait—it gets better!" because I was legitimately excited about Eliot being there, but I could tell my boss couldn't quite bring himself to believe me. Nonetheless, he decided that I didn't deserve to be sanctioned, and sent me back to my desk to get to work.

And that's all I remember of that.

Today there is rain in the forecast, which means yard work will not be happening, alas. I should have gotten up at 6:00, but I was lazy and slept until 7:30, so that means I couldn't get an early start on the yard work at all. Since there's mostly rain forecast all week it's not the end of the world, as my main goal was to get the yard in good enough shape for Bean to play in it. If it's raining he won't be able to play outside anyway.

Instead I shall try to organise some of my stuff today. The back and forth from Ottawa means I rarely stop and go through my things, and so my "packing" has become increasingly haphazard over the months. So today I'm going to cull my things and try to get everything back down to manageable levels of bags.

I slept in until 7:30 today, which was really nice. Woke up at 4am with cramps, which did not impress me, but after about half an hour I was able to go back to sleep, so it wasn't a total loss.

I had a very unpleasant dream toward the end of the night. We were having a barbecue or a party of some kind in the back yard. This was one of those dreams in which your house and back yard look nothing like reality but you know they're yours anyway. So all our friends were there, the kids were all running around having a great time chasing each other. It was the height of summer, the sky was piercingly blue, the sun hot, the grass bright green and healthy, and we were all having a great time, right up until I noticed people walking by on the street, holding up picketing signs. When I looked more closely, I could see that the signs all had terrible homophobic and transpohobic slogans written on them in garish red and black paint.

It turned out that the people weren't coming by, they were specifically coming to picket our party. They all lined up around the garden fence and chanted and yelled and catcalled, and I was really worried that Bean, who was there and dressed up in his favourite skirt and jewellery, would realise what they were saying and be terribly hurt by it. Two of the picketers nearest me had a really awful sign about taking Cher's children away and throwing them into a fire (it made more sense in the dream, but I think the intent was pretty clear. Oddly, the message of hate seemed to be more about Cher than her dream-children? IDk.).

I was very distraught, and I knew I couldn't have them around where Bean and pdaughter might see. So I ran up to the fence and started yelling at them. I was yelling in French, I remember this clearly. I was hoping to shame them into leaving. "Homophobes!" I yelled as loudly as I could (same word in both languages). When I got their attention and they were all looking at me, I continued. "Vous n'êtes pas bienvenus ici!"

They sneered at me, and we had a bit of a Mexican stand-off after that. I don't recall how the dream ended, but I have a feeling that I essentially won the stand-off, because I could feel my friends and family rallying behind me and also calling for the picketers to leave.


Unrelatedly, I remembered a dream I had a few weeks ago in which I accidentally kidnapped Albert Einstein's dog. I was walking my own dog with my parents, who were also walking their dog (they don't have one IRL), and we crossed paths with Einstein, who was walking his dog off-leash with a friend. To my utmost embarrassment my father was all over Einstein, trying to get him to remember that one time they'd met at a friend's dinner party, and Einstein had no clue who my father was. It's kind of ironic, because with my father it's usually the reverse that happens, as he's actually quite famous in his field.

We moved on while Einstein continued to chat with his friend, but to my dismay a few minutes later I realised that his dog had followed us rather than his master. I wanted to go back right away, but both my parents laughed it off and said that the dog would get all the exercise it needed, and that it wasn't like Einstein didn't know where to find us if he wanted to get his dog back.

So that's how I inadvertently kidnapped Albert Einstein's dog. :P

I'm going back to Ottawa tomorrow. It feels like my days off just fly by. I spend more full days in Ottawa than I do at home, thanks to my schedule and the commute, and it's wearying. I would much rather be home than be in a place I don't fully belong with people I don't really know.

In the meantime, today I'm taking it easy. Ish. I'm actually still in my pyjamas, though I'm going to change that in a bit. I am going to do some writing (I would like to hit 2k today) and maybe even some reading while laundry gets done. I have about three, maybe four hours left to myself, and I plan to make the most of them. Even when pdaughter is home I'll still be able to do quiet things, as we usually just hang out in the same room and do our thing, which is one of my favourite activities in the world. I don't know, I think it's an introvert thing, wherein I like being with my loved ones without necessarily interacting with them. I spend my childhood in the same room as my parents while we were all reading different books, each on our own chairs or sofas. Those are some of my best memories.

Had a lovely gaming night last night, but as a result was up until 1am, when my usual bedtime on an off night is usual more like 10pm. Got home and slept on the sofa so as not to wake pdaughter, but she ended up sleeping badly anyway, which sucks. I didn't sleep especially well either, as I'm always subconsciously worried about falling off the sofa when I'm asleep and tend to wake up every 30 minutes to an hour when I do that.

I am feeling the effects of yesterday's shovelling, too, probably unaided by the time spent on the sofa. Had weird dreams about my family and my godparents visiting at or around Christmas and each wanting to avoid the others because they'd had a falling out which no one would explain to me. It was a bit distressing.

I didn't end up making a proper plan for today, so I'm feeling useless and stupid. I still have a list of things to do while I'm home, so I will try to get myself set up to do more tidying in the bedroom, take the dog for a walk, and maybe go to Costco today instead of tomorrow the way I'd originally planned. I'll discuss it with pdaughter and see what she thinks.

Yesterday I cleaned the coffee pot as it's been leaking and doing other worrisome things. It's very clean now but it appears to still be leaking somewhat. I am at a loss as to what I can do differently so as not to have small puddles of coffee at the base of the pot. :/ The bathroom and kitchen are clean, at least, and I did get most of the shovelling done. I should try to get out on the balcony again, but I think I missed my window of slightly warmer weather in which shovelling would be easier. I'm just praying for not as much snow for the next week so that we'll have time to breathe in-between snowfalls. I also got salt/de-icing stuff from Canadian Tire which will hopefully help keep the front stoop clear.

I was listening to the iProcrastinate podcast yesterday, and apparently there's an Excel spreadsheet made by someone in the North of England to help with the "un-schedule." I'm going to try to find it and see if it works for me. Thus far I've been jotting it down on paper in list form, but I find that system a little inflexible for the inevitable moment in which I remember three things I've forgotten to put into the schedule. I seem to end up with a lot of arrows and asterisks.

Okay. I've done the cat litter and made coffee, so my morning isn't a total failure, but I'm not really doing as much as I should (mostly because I've tried to squeeze in this LJ update). I need to take the dog out and maybe get in a shower before getting dressed, and then try to be more productive. I feel like I'm being lazy.

Bean is getting help putting all his new Playmobile (or "Playmobimol" as he calls it) together. He sounds very excited. :)

Woke up with a migraine due to some seriously fucked-up nightmares. At least this time the nightmares were back to my usual fare: I was kidnapped by some serial killer-type guy, along with my husband (don't ask), and kept at the top of a ridiculously tall high-rise. The serial killer guy (or whatever) decided he needed to move us, and tried to hustle us into the elevator, only I managed to escape and thought I'd be able to go down the emergency fire stairs. Of course, they turned out to be like the stairs in ALL of my dreams: scary fucked-up and straight out of Escher and STEEP, HOLY SHIT. I couldn't even start to go down them because I had to climb up over a ledge of some kind first and then I was too afraid to go careening down to the ground if I missed my footing. Vertigo. Bleh.

There were other, non-nightmare dreams. In one of them I dreamed that some stupid schmuck who was fixing the lights at the office accidentally-on-purpose dropped a really heavy light fixture right near me and it glanced off my head. If it had been a direct hit it would have caved in my skull (who thinks the headache was bleeding into my dream? Let's see a show of hands!), and I got really really mad at him. Douchebag. There was yelling.

Anyway, all this to say that I awoke and had to take a lot of painkillers. I'm okay now, though, which is odd.


In other news, SUPERNATURAL MARATHON THIS WEEKEND! Featuring me, guruwench, le_maistre_e and silly_imp. It is going to be awesome!

lassiterfics just summed up my relationship with the show perfectly:

"SPN is like that guy everyone tells me to stay away from because he's a total douchetard and I used to be like, "Yeah, I know, did you hear what he did to some girl?" BUT THEN, last month I was drunk at a party and kind of bereft because Merlin just dumped me, and then SPN was like, "Hey cutie, I've got some folklore and incest back at my place, you wanna come over?" and I was like, "Sure why not," 'cos SPN's kind of cute and I guess I could do with a one-night stand. But then SPN whipped out his apocalypse shit, and now suddenly I'm skipping classes and blowing off my friends to snort subtext and smoke religious mythos with him. AND HERE I AM, a broken woman. Sigh."

The St. John's Wort is really kicking in. Not in terms of my mood and energy levels, which are about where they were late last week (and I think this is about as good as I can expect it to get on a purely chemical level), but in terms of the really whacked-out dreams I've been having.

It's cool, actually. I don't usually remember my dreams. When I'm not on meds and not suffering from insomnia, I sleep pretty deeply, and my dreams fade quickly after I've awoken. On SSRIs, though, I have beautiful, brilliant technicolour dreams. I think that all my dreams are like that, but I usually don't remember them.

One thing I've always loved about my dreams are the landscapes. I dream in sweeping, epic vistas: giant mountain ranges, sweeping deserts, buildings that stretch up into the sky beyond where the eye can see them. Weird, non-euclidian shapes, staircases that go on forever, great rushing rivers that sweep past the horizon. Everything is brighter in my dreams, the contrasts sharper, everything outlined in black pen.

I still don't remember exactly what I dreamed about. If I think about it hard enough, I might be able to remember some of them. Last night involved a long, involved chase on the banks of a huge river like the Amazon, trying to make my way from one tiny island to the next amidst the sluggish brown water. There were huge alligators, too (and it's weird that I seem to dream recurringly about alligators), that lurked in the shallows, half-hidden in the rushes, waiting for unsuspecting prey. It was a pretty anxious dream, which isn't typical, but I'll take what I can get: it really was breathtakingly beautiful, so much so that I can't do it justice in words.

...is that they make one veeeeery reluctant to get anything done. Really, I could sit here all day with Smudge in my lap, purring, and do nothing else at all.

Also, reading Naomi Novik's novels in quick succession results in very vivid dreams about dragons.

Okay. Gotta go set up beds.

The morning is chugging along. Everyone seems glad to have me back, even the guy at Tim Horton's when I stopped for my morning cup of coffee. "How long has it been?" he cried, at my approach.

Things are busy but not overly so, and it's been mostly operational stuff and few calls from the public thus far. All to the good, really. This afternoon I'm going to the gym, then I'm going to go home and wash my dishes, which are threatening a bloodless coup in the kitchen.

Had weird and intense dreams about travelling in a hot air balloon. Don't remember most of them now, sadly.

A quick glance at my bank balance has convinced me that I should wait until tomorrow to do my grocery shopping. Anytime that tax refund wants to come would be fine by me. :P

I am discovering that my world is smaller than I thought. Turns out luvenditti also knows Aaron, my trainer, from when the MSTC comes to her school every year. Very small world.

I went to the dentist this morning, and am still partially frozen. This is not helping my mood.

What I really want this morning is to go back to bed. In fact, I may have a nap before going to work. My trip to the dentists interrupted some very nice dreams about exploring ancient ruins and picnics with friends. I remember driving in a big pick-up truck with bodhifox, among other things. Turns out he's a pretty reckless driver. ;)