I’m having one of those days in which it gives me grim, wallowing satisfaction to gripe about my first world problems. Yesterday was a mixed bag of a day, beginning with a dentist visit and ending with a broken iPod screen. When I got home in the evening I found no one had emailed me for five hours, which is so unusual it made me feel eerie.
I collapsed into bed exhausted, but rest was not forthcoming; dream after dream brought bad thoughts or happy scenarios gone wrong. It was one of those nights where my sleeping mind hops from one dream to the next in quick succession (or so it feels):
- I was on a plane that went down in an isolated area, and since no one would contact the airline or our families, I suspected some kind of plot. I tried to use my own cell phone to text my loved ones, but of course there was no signal.
- Friends threw a surprise dinner party, but miscommunication resulted in my favorite guests not getting seats — and they were the ones who’d RSVP-ed earliest, and gone through the most trouble to get there.
- Erik and I had to learn how to prepare turtles and frogs for food, by cutting out their sex organs and then tossing them into boiling soup (all while they were still alive). I wanted to refuse, but he said I would offend his mom if I didn’t.
- I was terribly hungry, but all I had to eat was a small bowl of rice with paint (I recognized cadmium yellow, among other colors); it wouldn’t hurt me, but I knew it would taste like grit and chalk and the smell of paint; I tried to scrape out as much clean rice as I could from under the mound of globs.
Not nice, eh? When I got up today I was tempted to just give up and spend the day reading self-indulgent novels (L.M. Montgomery, Agatha Christie) or playing computer games. But tea (with honey) and hot cereal and morning pages convinced me I would benefit more from a structured day of work and some strategic cooking, cleaning, and exercise. So that’s the game plan.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
It would be very tempting to be self indulgent on such a morning. Good for you for resisting and creating a game plan to lead you through the day. Hope you are feeling more grounded. Nothing like a cup of tea soothe the savage beast!
Thank you, Sherry! I’ve been feeling a bit dull about the tea lately (especially after discovering all those fantastic words for describing tea…) because I’m so sensitive to caffeine that I can’t really drink anything but herbal teas on most mornings, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep. I really really want to spend more time with my black and green teas but it doesn’t seem prudent. 😦
I’m sensitive to caffeine also. What works for me though is to make a good cup of tea when I get up in the morning, and then continue to use the same tea leaves for several more infusions. By the third cup in the middle of the afternoon there can’t be much/any caffeine left. Caffeine after 12 noon is pretty much a deal breaker if I want to sleep at night.
P.S. I mostly drink green tea, which supposedly has less caffeine than black.
It seems like I can’t even have caffeine in the mornings… but it could just be that on most days I don’t get out or do much exercise, so I’m not tiring myself out anyway. On days when I go out it does seem possible to have a bit of green tea in the AM and still sleep at night!
Woh, heads are funny places. Sometimes they have a mind of their own,don’t they ? I trust you are better now.
Haha, yes, my head definitely does have a mind of its own! I love it — hard to ever feel truly lonely or bored when I know there are such worlds lurking in my own brain-box. Thanks for the good thoughts. I do feel better.
Bleh, I hate days like that. I hope today is off to a much better start! Your rice-paint dream made my stomach turn, and it reminded me of a disgusting dream I once had in which I was enjoying a bowl of cereal until I looked down and saw that it was a bowl of hair with milk–ugh! 😦
Uchhhh, that’s even more repulsive than rice with paint! *shudder* How horrible!
I had a whole lot of dreams last night, but I can’t remember any of them, which is just fine with me for now. 🙂 I don’t think any of them were bad, though!
I hope your day got much better after the tea and cereal, etc. After I hurt my knees and had to stay in bed last Friday and a lot of Saturday, I found myself more optimistic about the future the longer I slept and dreamt, and watched the Science channel and lectures on C-Span. For me, lately it’s the getting up that brings unpleasantness.
I wish you better dreams involving food, or a pleasant resolve to whatever was disguising itself in your dreams.
Ahh, I’m sorry to hear about your knees, Ré! Glad you got some rest though. Thank you for the good dream-thoughts. ❤