➀ Today, for the first time since my cough developed, I woke up without any coughing fits! Oh, I’ve had the occasional cough this morning, but basically I’ve been fine. This is a red-letter day!

➁ I had an odd dream this morning. I had just moved into a little house by a canal in an industrial district with a bunch of other little houses nearby. ( The dream. )

So last night at plumtreeblossom’s, I had an odd dream about sewing needles. (Or they might have been pins, but in that case they didn’t have pinheads.) They were burrowing around in somebody’s shirt collar like worms in dirt. In the dream, that wasn’t strange or disquieting; that was just what needles did, what they were supposed to do, and it showed that the ecosystem of his shirt was healthy.

(Had a lovely, lovely date, and finally got to watch Jefferson in Paris, which I’ve had out from GreenCine for ages. Also had the world’s hugest takeout order from the Midwest Grill — we were expecting two entree-sized portions; instead we got two catering platters.)

plumtreeblossom and I had many quotable lines last night that unfortunately I can't remember. What I do remember is that we sat out on the porch for a long time drinking bourbon and having lovely conversation, as is our pre-sleep tradition.

In the rain. With lots of lightning off in the distance. It was lovely.

To be truthful, when the rain started to get heavy, plumtreeblossom did go inside and get an umbrella. I think we were out there for a half hour, with her holding the umbrella over us. It was a magical time.

Then I slept well and long (and this morning I feel almost completely over whatever little ick I've had lately). I had an odd dream about plumtreeblossom and I getting back into the UN-administered camp where we'd been living (it didn't feel like a refugee camp, more like a bustling little developed-world city, but it was small and it was under UN administration; the staff were francophone, although most of them spoke good English too) after having been away. plumtreeblossom thought she couldn't find her passport, but she had an expired one, but it turned out that the one she thought was expired wasn't. She was talking all the UN staff involved in checking our passports into joining her community theater project. Nifty dream!

So I had a dream last night, in which I was having dinner at a table with a few people, and there was a big stinging insect that was bugging us. (It was the shape of a wasp, but about twice as big, and it had the yellow-and-black colouring of a bumblebee.) Anyway, it landed on a couple of our plates, and then it landed on my cheek, and I could feel it tickling. I decided that my best bet was to try to squash it really quickly, so it wouldn’t have a chance to sting me, and that’s what I did. In real life, waking myself up. And since I was wearing my CPAP mask, I smashed the hard plastic into my cheek. And either the jerk of me hitting myself or the noise I made woke plumtreeblossom up. (We both fell uneventfully right back asleep.)

It didn’t hurt that much at the time, and hasn’t hurt at all since, and I would have completely forgotten except that I just saw myself in a mirror and wondered what that little mark on my face was.

Two nights ago, I had a fascinating and rather delightful dream. In the dream, I was thinking about the things I didn't like about the world (or even just the things that weren't quite to my taste), and I decided to change them. So I thought for a little bit about all the things I'd wanted to change, came up with a list, thought hard about them, and stepped out of this universe into one where the US had a parliament instead of a congress (and architecture more appropriate to a parliament than a congress), there were nude beaches all over everywhere, and the Middle East was a peaceful, thriving, safe place where the people trusted their governments and their neighbours. Iraq, for instance, was the sort of place a couple nice Jewish newlyweds from Brooklyn would feel entirely delighted visiting on their honeymoon.

Somehow, docorion and mud_puppy ended up following me by accident. Of course, I expected all the changes, since I had planned them. While they were generally pleased with the changes, they were constantly surprised by them and I was sort of explaining things and showing them around.

(I don't know exactly what happened to the docorion and mud_puppy from that universe. Since I'd created it to my specifications, of course, it had all my friends and beloveds and community in it, even though it had significantly different history.)

I've dreamed about being a political leader in the past, but I think this is the first time I've dreamed about creating an entire universe (albeit not from scratch).

So, my subconscious is creative. ( Here’s the nightmare plumtreeblossom woke me up out of last night. ) It would make a good scene in a movie, wouldn’t it?

(I started writing this as a comment on somebody else’s old journal post about a final-exam dream that I stumbled across, and then realized that I could bore more people with it here.)

I have weird, non-nightmare variants of the standard nightmares. In grade school, I had a dream where I forgot to wear anything but underwear to school, and my third-grade teacher called me into her office and started chewing me out for it, and I got incensed at the unfairness of it, since none of the other kids were dressed either, and a few of them weren’t even wearing underwear, so how dare she pick on me? And I yelled right back at her and made her back down.

Then much more recently (and this is a dream I’d had a few times over the years) I had a dream where I realized it was the day of finals in college for a class that I hadn’t even realized I’d been registered for, so I’d never gone to class. But I had the textbook anyway for some reason, and I started skimming through it, and realized, hey, this stuff is easy; I already know all this, and went off to the exam feeling confident.

The dreams about falling are sometimes nightmares, but sometimes I discover halfway down that I can fly, and in one falling dream I knew I was going to die, but in the dream I was thinking, wow, what an amazing way do die! If I have to die, I’m glad it’s this way!

(Note: None of these dreams is recent. I haven’t been getting enough sleep to remember my dreams lately, alas.)

Lovely weekend, slightly marred by heavy falling things.

Saturday I went over to help buxom_bey and woodwardiocom a bit with their awesome new apartment. Congratulations on your new place! (What’s going on — I move away from Malden and all of a sudden all the cool stuff is there. Dancing, and now woodwardiocom and buxom_bey. Did property values shoot up when I left or something?) Anyway, it’s a great place, and I was happy to get to see it (and see deadwinter and supercheesegirl).

Saturday evening I went to a really wonderful party with lots of eye-, brain-, and soul-candy. Also candy candy. :-) I had a great time, although I ended up taking a brief nap around 2:00am. I left around 4:00, and got home close to 5. It was a really good time.

Sunday I thought I had plans to go to an event at a friend’s house, and I was bumming that I probably wasn’t going to be conscious enough for it. Turned out I had put it on the wrong date in my calendar; it was actually on Saturday, so I’d already missed it.

So I slept late (ish, anyway; not as late as I should have), and today (Sunday) went to brunch with docorion at the Bickford’s near home. My scrambled eggs were perfectly fine. His Big Apple Pancake (really more like a soufflé) was to die for.

Then I came home and did some stuff around the house, with limited success. The clutter and messiness of my (very small) bedroom has been driving me crazy lately. I have shelving from Ikea to fix that, but I haven't had a sufficient stretch of time to clear out the space in the bedroom, put the shelves together, and put all the stuff back on the shelves. That was what I tried to do today.

My first setback was when the top shelf fell on me while I was kneeling to put the bottom shelf on. It hit the side of my head, from just above my eye to just behind my ear. Almost no blood, but some swelling. And I thought it had destroyed my glasses (my last pair of old glasses that I’d switched to a few weeks before the move when my newest pair broke), but I was able to bend them back into shape. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they snap unexpectedly, though, so I’m going to be wearing (or at least carrying) my contacts a lot. Fortunately, I have an eye appointment scheduled for tomorrow, so I will be able to get new glasses (and contact lenses) soon.

My second setback was when I discovered that the cross-braces which theoretically prevent the completed shelves from flopping over like the clothes of the righteous at the moment of the Rapture and spilling all my expensive consumer electronics onto the floor do not in fact fit. Given that, I'm not sure how the shelves are supposed to work. It’s possible that they come in multiple sizes and I bought the wrong size, or that there's something basic that I’m missing. Worst-case, I can use L-brackets. Anyway, now I have some precariously-balanced shelving in my bedroom that I can't actually put stuff on, and my bed is covered with stuff that needs to go on the shelves. I’ll survive, but I’ll see if I can spin it into some epic tale first. :-)

So I resigned myself to the state of my shelves (which really will be excellent when they are done and will make my bedroom much more functional), and docorion and I went to meet cathijosephine and her dad for dinner near the T station, with a beer at her place afterwards. Her dad is in town helping her deal with getting her bathroom repaired and redone. It was nice to see him again, and nice to see cathijosephine and her fabulously clean condo and her very cute kitty.

Oh, I also wanted to mention a dream I had on Friday morning. This is largely for my own reference, so I’ll cut it and you can ignore it unless you’re following the minutiae of my subconscious. ( The weird, bittersweet dream. )

So, a very weird dream, with happy bits, sad bits, and strange bits. I can’t think of anything in my real life that might have prompted such an odd dream. (I am, by the way, doing fine — I’m sure this dream is just part of my subconscious processing stuff; it doesn’t feel problematic or worrisome.) I have to say, I’m impressed with how imaginative my subconscious is.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, people should remind me to post a little mini-review at some point of my new Nokia 770 “internet tablet”, which I’m really happy with. Also, at some point I have to post photos of the new facial-hair arrangement. (Beard, no mustache, no sideburns, no more C. Everett Koop look.) Wow, shaving takes a long time! Why do you people do it?

But for now I need to clear off my bed, take out my contacts, and sleep the sleep of the just, or at least the just really sleepy.

PS — I have recently become addicted to Questionable Content. I’m working my way through them from the beginning. I’ve gotten up to late 2004.

So last night I made an offer on a condo. I don’t particularly expect it to be accepted, but we’ll see. In retrospect, it probably makes sense to get the sale of the house moved further along before I make any more offers, but this place would be perfect, so I wanted to at least try.

Are any of you familiar with the breakfast cereal Puffins? I introduced cathijosephine to them, and she later found peanut-butter flavoured Puffins, which I’d never had. So the other day when I went over to her place, she told me we could have peanut-butter Puffins in the morning if we didn’t have pancakes.

The next morning, I woke up, hopped in the shower (where I noticed that she’d put a trimmed piece of shower curtain over the window, but it didn’t quite go all the way down the window), and as I came out of the shower, cathijosephine handed me a red bowl of peanut-butter Puffins. Happy that I was going to get to find out what they tasted like, I set them down on her laundry machine (a combination washer and dryer in the same unit, which is really nifty because she can just use it as a hamper and push the button when it’s full) while I got ready to leave. But unfortunately we were in a bit of a hurry, and I forgot it until we were on the road. A few times since then I’ve thought of that uneaten bowl of Puffins, feeling mildly guilty over leaving something for cathijosephine to clean up, and mildly disappointed about not getting to taste the new cereal yet.

Except it never happened. cathijosephine had told me we might have peanut-butter Puffins the next morning, but we were in too much of a hurry. I didn’t take a shower. The shower-curtain over the window is as I remember it, but the fixtures in the shower are different (as I discovered when I really took a shower there recently). Zeph doesn’t own a bowl like the one she handed me in my memory. Peanut-butter Puffins are more or less rectangular, like regular ones, rather than spherical the way I remember them.

So, this must have been a dream. I even have a pretty good notion of when I might have dreamt it. But the weird thing is that it blended so perfectly and smoothly into the rest of my memory. I thought about it several times over the week, sure that it was real. This makes me wonder what other completely solid memories I have that actually aren’t real — if I’d never thought to mention that forgotten bowl on her counter to Zeph, I’d never have found out this one wasn’t.

(I mentioned it to cathijosephine in the car the last time I went over to her place, and we had quite an entertaining conversation about whether it was real or not. I more or less accepted her assurance that it had never happened, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to smell the sour milk and see the bowl when we opened the door.)

Later, in bed, as we were laughing over this, she told me “You’re a special kind of crazy.” I’m so lucky that she enjoys that kind of crazy.