And I Quote: Blargh...

Oof. So tired... Thursday and Friday providing some excellent gaming, and the accompanying bouts of mini-insomnia that always follow. Saturday was beautiful, despite the neighborhood cacaphony of power tools and chain saws that started before 8 AM. Later, though, Will started to feel a bit unwell, and that devolved quickly into "violently ill." I'm not sure whether it was a particularly potent stomach flu or food poisoning, but neither of us got much rest the last few days. He does seem to be doing much better, now, though.

I already told my boss I'm leaving if I start to feel ill. She didn't argue the point, even with all the deadlines.

One of my friends at work mentioned that hospitals are now required to treat uninsured patients and may alleviate some of the cost if you ask for a social worker or patient advocate when you go in. She thought this was a federal action, but I haven't been able to find any information on it, yet. I'll have to keep digging on that to see whether it's true.

Also in the realm of unpleasantness, I came to work today and nearly ran over some abortion protestors gathering on a street corner near campus. Happily, there are restraining orders in place so they'll be arrested if the trespass on campus property, but that doesn't mean they won't get as close as they possibly can. This group's members were carting around strollers and huge, garishly colored photo posters of aborted fetuses. If I were a child, those would probably give me nightmares ...

I wonder, if I were to stand on a street corner waving huge color posters of dead adults -- say, torture victims, or abuse victims, or victims of war -- at innocent bystanders, would the police be required to wave that off as a form of free speech, too?

In other news: Cher Mere posted on nightmares yesterday, and it occurs to me that those are the only dreams I ever remember. Hm. Maybe I should watch my blood sugar better, too? Except I don't mind these dreams, honestly. Even the most "normal" of my dreams have some mild creepiness to them, but for the most part, it's like participating in a surreal filming process, recording a nonstop movie as it's being made. There's always a slight sense of detachment to the proceedings so that even if I wake in the middle of pure awfulness, I may wake up crying if the dream was particularly sad, but I almost never wake up with any real sense of panic or fear or paranoia. Instead, I wake up thinking, "Damn, I have to figure out how to use that scene in a story..."

There was one notable exception to the rule that I can remember, though. June of '08 must have been a vivid month for dreams, judging by the number I wrote down. But this is the one that broke the rules for me:

The usual weirdness that plays out like a game of some kind -- trying to escape from someone, factions, gunfights, monsters, etc., but then there was a scene where I drove my car to a park at night, and took a space in a dimly lit parking lot. I had just turned my car off; this guy over in the next row in front of me was backing up his car, and he just glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw me sitting there in my space, getting ready to get out of the car. Everything stopped and shifted slightly, and he smiled this weird, sickly smile and stepped on the gas -- his car slammed into mine, and he just kept speeding up, pushing my car back toward the trees. He twisted around to look at me, growled "Get the fuck out!" -- which I could hear, even though he was in the other car -- and stomped on the gas. Just as I thought my car was going to slam into the trees, there was this weird jarring sensation and that jerk you do just before you hit the ground in a free-fall dream, and I was awake. My heart was pounding, I was close to hyperventilating, and I felt sick to my stomach. And I could smell gasoline and exhaust and that musty vinyl smell of the old car I'd been driving so strongly I gagged.

I laid there for a few minutes, totally freaked out and wide awake. It was around 3:30, and I could hear Will moving around upstairs -- I think I might've made some kind of noise that woke him up briefly. When I finally started to calm down, I realized I was incredibly pissed that that asshat had pushed me out of my own dream.

Oddly, I don't remember my black dog guardian being in that one, or if he was, I didn't write it down. Must've been his night off. ;)

Anyway. I'm itchy to write (must be the weather?) and have some good things going with game emails and such, but I want to get back to my stories, too. I hate being stuck like this, but I know this means I'm on the wrong track somehow, and just haven't figured out precisely what's wrong, yet. Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether the being stuck relates to getting bogged down in the current chapter, or my questioning whether I'm even tackling the story with the right main character. If it's the former, re-working some discovery elements in the story might fix the issue; if it's the latter ... I'll have to rewrite four chapters and my entire approach. And damn it, I like the semi-surreal narrative of the first chapter too much for that. Grr.