Working out and Dreams

Working Out:  I've been to the gym, but I've been behind logging:   Saturday:  25 minutes and 280 calories on the elliptical; 3X12X60 lbs on the pec fly; 3X12X80 lbs on the pec fly; 3X12 hanging curls; um...  2X20 scissor kicks (or whatever they're called); 3X8 diagonal side-crunchs;  3x8X10lb shoulder shrugs; 3X12X10lbs overhead triceps curls; 3X12X30lbs triceps pull-downs; 3X12X30 lbs barbell curls, plus assorted free-weights.  

MONDAY:  200 minutes and 200 calories on the elliptical; 10 minutes for about 103 calories on the rowing machine. 3X12X60 lbs on the pec fly; 3X12X80 lbs on the pec fly; 3X12 hanging curls;  3x8X10lb shoulder shrugs; 3X12X30lbs triceps pull-downs; 3X8 diagonal side-crunchs (which I think is good for straightening my lower lumbar area); 3X12X30 lbs barbell curls, plus assorted free-weights. 

Writing:  Bad news: the iMac hard drive has crashed and might be dead.  This means no MacOS Scrivener, which means no syncing stories with SimpleNote.  At least my projects were backed up and I can use Scrivener for Windows.  Good news: I picked up an abandoned manuscript from May and it's not quite as hopeless as I thought.  Also, I managed to find a place to have my writing retreat in late August.

Dreams:  I'm pretty sure the cat must have been grooming my head as I slept because in the middle of running around a large government building, which was light and airy, with lots of lightly stained hardwood paneling, wooden banisters, and an open atrium.  The dream had been about standing in lines to receive some kind thousand-dollar refund, when I was suddenly seeing my doctor (not The Doctor nor my regular care-provider) who recommended installing a small metal box on the top of my head.  He had two casually dressed twenty-something interns do the installation, which was an out-patient procedure.  I sat on a kitchen chair while the long-haired woman fiddled around with the back of my head.  Every so often I'd feel a pinch, and then I'd feel and hear a vibration on my head.  I think they had to drill into my skull to set the box (the details weren't very clear)  It was supposed to be relaxing and the vibrations were supposed to enhance your senses (especially vision).  But it was mostly like having a vibrating back messager stuck to the back of your head.

The doctor came back (we might have been outside along a rocky river shore at this point) and asked how I felt.  I wasn't feeling much benifit, was a little miffed that my hair had been cut as part of the procedure (and I hadn't been warned), and had a case of sticker-shock when he told me making the device permanent would cost $2000.  

I think I woke up at this point, and thought, "Great, I'm dreaming doctors are putting metal boxes in my head."  At least it wasn't a box that recorded and controlled my thoughts.  

Switching to a different dream... I had another one of those hypnopompic visions the other day.  I opened my eyes and saw a man-sized shadow standing in our bedroom doorway.  It grew less substantial, turned and walked away down the short hallway and toward the kitchen. 

There was no menace, but no sense of beneficial protection, either.  In those moments between dreaming and wakefulness, I always wonder if there really is someone in the house.  Maybe the house is haunted.  Maybe my robe, or a towel, hanging off of the door is tricking my sight.  Maybe the pollen is affecting my sleep cycles.  Maybe some shadow of the night, curious about sleepers, had walked into the house to see how people dreamed, and once I was awake, I was no longer of interest.

Music Box Dreams

I dreamed Mark, The Child and I were staying at a Bed and Breakfast, possibly owned by Christine Lavin.  I don't recall how we got there, but I was mostly lying in bed watching cartoons and educational TV.  I was being very lazy, and was wearing my PJ's.

The cartoon I was watching was about a mutant otter or some other furry mammal humanoid.  It a kind of Thundercats twist, the young mutant rushed an old Chevy car retrofitted with blasters that popped out of the hood, the sides, and the back of the car (it's the sort of car The Child would like, and in the dream I remember a parental frown at all the guns and the violence in the cartoon).   Actually, now that I'm remembering.. the Chevy was backup for the big boss character, who was tall, dressed in dark leather armor, and had Wolverine-esque hair that was parted down the middle but perked up on either side to look like pointy ears.  I think the big boss was supposed to be a middle-aged, ninja panther or something.  In any case ninja-cat batted aside otter-boy effortlessly.  Otter-boy tried a few more passes, and was nonchalantly batted aside some more.  Otter-boy ran back to the advancing phalanx of other otter-boys rushing up a slop, turned around and tried a mass-attack, which ninja-cat mostly ignored, only pausing to block and smack otter-boys behind his back as he walked toward the aforementioned gun-Chevy.

There was another show, I think, but I'm not recalling it.   My parents' German Shepherd may have put in an appearance.  In any case, The Child was suddenly in the room; he had crept in through a kind of back fire escape.  A moment later, Mark walked in through the apartment's front door with a sack of groceries.  

We had a discussion of sorts, with some walking from room to room, and what I remember be was that in one sort of back bedroom there was a wooden, 1880's Victorian style vanity or writing desk.

"Oh!" I said, "I love old jewelry cases!"  (This is what I get for looking at furniture and laser-cut patterns on Pinterest before going to bed).  The box changed shape a little during the dream, but it was mostly about three feet wide, two feet deep, and two feet tall.    A dark stain made the wood dark brown.  The chest had a shallow compartment with a pull-up lid on the top, a wide middle section that I think at first had a roll-up front, but later the front was top-hinged and opened that way.  A third drawer, shallow like the first, was on the bottom.  I opened the top compartment, which was empty; I was a little disappointed, because it's always fun to see what's inside (especially if it's shiny), but I wasn't too surprised.  I opened up the middle, and I heard a small chime.  It was also empty.  I opened up the bottom compartment, and there might have been a very plain letter opener or something in it.  I remember I was able to lift up an inner, flexible bottom.  

Somehow, I want to say by opening and closing drawers, I wound up an inner mechanism and a music box started playing music.  I don't recall the tune, and I don't remember recognizing it in the dream.  The middle section held machinery (which poofed into place with a puff of dream-logic).  It was about the size of an old mechanical type-writer or pull-crank calculating machine.   There were a lot of rusty gears, the same dark brown color of the wood.  The machine's frame stood on button-sized metal wheels which ran along a metal track set on either sides of the box.  There was a lot of metallic tinking going on in addition to the music, and the machinery slowly rolled forward out of the box, and then rolled back in.  

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing the more the dream progressed, the more the jewelry box took on the configuration of my mobile army writing desk.  In the back of the box, behind the machinery, there was a little flame; the machine had sparked it into place as part of its function.  There was now a side compartment, which was a kind of water reservoir.  I perceived now that the top of the box had a kind of metallic seat in it, which was warmed by hot water.  

There was a break of some sort, and the dream took on an Agatha Christie turn. A young English woman, the owner of the box, was having a diamond letter opener appraised.  During, or shortly after the appraisal, the diamond letter opener was stolen.  The woman and her older, slightly bumbling but well-meaning cousin were discussing the theft in an old stone lighthouse, set near craggy cliffs over a slate-colored and turbulent sea.  Somehow, the woman went down to the base of the lighthouse.  The cousin decided to burn some papers, and one flew out of the lighthouse window and the woman noticed.  

"Reginald!" (I'm giving him a name in waking) she shouted,  "What on earth are you doing?"  She snatched the papers near her and ran up the lighthouse stair where Reginald stood sheepishly with a match and the remains of the letters he was burning.  

"I wanted to put this whole horrible business behind us," he said sheepishly.   I don't recall much else, except that Hercule Poirot appeared in the dream and deduced that the woman had stolen her own diamonds for the insurance, and needed the papers her cousin had tried to destroy.  (No, we haven't watched any Poirot in about a week and a half).

Somehow the dream continued ... there's a continuity break.

The Child and I were walking to watch turned out to be my folks' church, except that it was surrounded by a grassy park on all sides (in real life it's on the corner of two busy streets).  We had an interaction with two men who were walking in our direction toward the church... it was mildly unpleasant; I think I invited them to join us in what was rapidly turning into a NeoPagan gathering, and they rudely turned me down.

The event seemed to be run by a twenty-to-thirty-something woman with long straight dark hair (who was doing the administrative stuff) and a similarly aged, man, who seemed one part shaman, one part social worker, one part environmental activist, and one part hipster (wrong word, maybe I mean social-butterfly-hippie).  There was a complicated process for entering the church (at it's single-wide south door, next to the kitchen), and somehow The Child and I found ourselves one of the few people admitted in.

We went upstairs to a lofty, but stuffy, room that doesn't exist in real life.  (The educational wing of the church is single story.)  The dream turned into a kind of encounter session, and I said something about being in a situation like when a Capricorn and an Aries butt heads.  And then the room became so stuffy and hot that we all had to leave.  I was suffering from a slight bit of heat prostration, and hippie-guy gave me his card and asked me to call him tomorrow so he could be sure that I'd be OK.  It was one part real concern, one part condescending, and one part pick-up line.  

Then I was wandering around in the Social Hall.  I had to pee, and so I walked up to a garbage bin standing in the middle of of the hall, unzipped my fly, and suddenly noticed there were people in the hall.  A sort of goofy, plump, twenty-something woman appeared at my elbow and was peering at me. There was a conversation of sorts, that went "Excuse me, I'm trying to pee and you're in my personal space," and concluded with me saying, "Oh, never mind; I'll just use the men's room."  

I think I woke up here to an alarming vision of a pudgy toddler in a bright red jump-suit, sort of like a Telly-Tubby--only without the deely-bopper on the top of his head--grinning maniacally at me and levitating (his legs were crossed and he was sitting "Indian-style") at the foot of the bed, near the corner.  As I watched, I was startled, I had a sense that the maniacal grinning levitating toddler was insubstantial, and the image slowly faded away, revealing the books on the shelf behind it.  

I heard a noise in the kitchen, (the cat, the fridge and the computer all make sounds that sometimes wake me) and the thought went through my head that maybe someone really was in the house and that someone had been staring at Mark and me as we slept.  Or it could have been a shape suggested by the books.  I realized that the books were fuzzy and out of focus (since I wasn't wearing my glasses) but that the toddler's maniacal face had been sharp in my vision (and now that I think about it, bright red insetad of dark brown in the dark); so it must have been one of those hypnopompic images I sometimes wake to about once a year or so.  

And I went back to sleep (as much as the cat would let me).

Dreams and Writing

Crazy dreams lately.  Two nights ago I had a matchmaking dream for one of our friends... before that there was the hypnogogic mesh image that floated behind my eyelids before I fell asleep.  The other night I must have come out to at least two dream people.  I'm guessing that explaining to someone that some stories I write have gay characters because I'm gay might have something to do with that.

Last night I dreamed I was walking somewhere very icy and I had to watch out for cars sliding over an embankment and into me.  Then I was in a magic dream garden someone had decorated with lights and cut-out dioramas -- I think it was winter and spring in the garden at the same time, because I have a strong recollection of twiggy branches in the snow (lit up with small strings of lights) and verdant leaves and spring flowers (also lit up with lights).   I'm going to blame recent paper cutout art  projects for last night.

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On the writing front, during a recent writing excersice, I managed to crank out about 600 words in about 30 minutes.  I'm reminding myself about that when I notice that I "only have a half hour to write."    

Writing in the mornings this week hasn't worked out so well... except for the morning when I woke up sore, decided to take a bath, and floated with my ears underwater and the fawcet dribbling and the bathroom fan on and asked myself what the characters were going to do and worked out story problems.  (Yes, it's true, my joints are officially barometers, and if I wake up with my feet hurting then it probably rained over night.)

And, in my mind, Chris Hadfield is standing over my bed as I squint at the clock to see if I can sleep for just five more minutes, and he says, "...don't let life kick you into becoming the adult you don't want to be."  Ug.  I think becoming a Morning Lark would be easier in microgravity.  

And now, to the Day Jobbe.