Join Me in Snarkville

There are a few things that indicate that I’m stressed out.  Most of them involve eating, avoiding anything that looks like work, and possibly grumping at the people I love the most.

Now, I have to admit that my stress level is greatly reduced lately, so imagine my shock when in the past week, I’ve have the other great stress indicator — nightmares.

Oh yes.  Real live nightmares.  This may be a reason why sleeping through the night is an odd feeling and perhaps the reason that I am have an ongoing affair with coffee.  (total sidenote here:  I currently have THREE coffee type machines on my kitchen counter.  That is in fact two, too many.  However, I pulled out my old espresso machine a few weeks ago and we’ve been enjoying that.  Then within seconds of that machine re-emerging on my counter, I won a Senseo — which I can’t pronounce — and I’ve been playing with it.  I can not decide if I like it or what to do with the machine at this point.  Hence THREE; because I’m not giving up my normal pot of coffee.)

A few nights ago about 3am, I dreamed that we had white mice/rats coming out of a vent in our bedroom.  I woke Prince up to share this news with him to protect me and his offspring from the horrors, to which he scoffed at me, until the mouse/rat thing jumped on the bed like one of the cats.  I woke with a shake and a start that lifted my whole body off the bed.  I lay there out of breath and confused.  It was one of those real nightmares, where it doesn’t dawn on you that you are even asleep.  Fortunately the vent the dream mice/rats were emerging from does not in fact exist — or I would have been forced to move house at 3:30am.  Needless to say, going back to sleep was not possible.

Then last night, after going to bed about 11:45pm, I started to have this highly involved dream where we lived in a nice house (not at all like Frankenhouse — in fact, not like any house we have ever lived) and we were robbed.  We were broken into while we were home, by STUPID people.  No, I kid you not.  We caught them, called the police, and handcuffed them zip ties (riot style — to which I was forced to tell Prince, in the DREAM, that it was ok that he had 90 billion zip ties for just this such occasions).  As we waited for the police and I was standing there wondering why the idiots weren’t trying to run or anything, I asked “So, what were you here to steal?”  (We had caught them on the way out and they had next to nothing in their hands.)  So, robber B (a woman) tells me, “Oh, this was just ‘bonus’ because we were told that the value here is in the steel.”  Huh?  I was dream robbed for the steel in my home?  HUH?  The best was when Prince looked at the woman and said, “Steel? You do realize this is a log cabin and there isn’t any steel in this house, right?”  I told you they were stupid.  But alas, for reasons having nothing to do with her lack of construction materials, I woke up at 1:30am with another start and this time heavy breathing.  (I hate theft, even dream theft.)

So, at 2am when I still couldn’t fall back asleep (even after willing myself to finish the story lest I relive it — the cops showed up, arrested the two, we got our stuff back, marveled at how they took nothing of importance, and promptly moved house), I got to wondering about these two nightmares.  Why was I having them and why now?  To which, I have no good answer.

I’m ever hopeful that this is just the remains of the stress releasing itself, but I have no idea.  However, I’d really like the nightmares to stop please — I was just getting used to sleeping a bit more and may have finally kicked my 3 month long cold too.  So, do you think you could help me by preventing all the mice/rats and stupid robbers from coming near my dream house for about a week?