Stupid Stretchy Packets

Last night I couldn't fall asleep right away, which does not happen very often. Kane was sawing logs next to me while I tossed and turned. As I contemplated the merits of salamanders versus lizards, Kane suddenly started chuckling. He laughed and started to roll over toward me. I asked him what he was laughing about, knowing he was asleep. His response, between light laughter, was "Stupid, stretchy packets".

If I needed confirmation that he was asleep, that was it. Oh yes, the packets. And their stupid stretchiness. Clearly unconscious. I asked him, "What about them?" and he mumbled something about an item in his video game, then laughed some more. His laughing made me laugh. Then he apparently woke up more because he told me to shut up and stop making fun of him. Indeed.

The effort I had to expend to remember the phrase "stupid stretchy packets" in the morning was tremendous. Word associations, visual images, and just plain repeating the words over and over and over. But it worked and it lived in my brain to be blogged about in the morning. I know you're thankful.

Waitress

I often wake up with songs stuck in my head. They weren't in my dream, and I find that I have not necessarily heard them recently. This morning's tune? "What's Love Got to do with It?" by Tina Turner.

In my dream last night I was a waitress. I was being trained by another server, but they gave me a table to wait before even having shown me around the kitchen. I took the table's order (three people) and delivered them their pasta or whatever they ordered. I gave them their complementary bread and they asked for margarine.

The kitchen was a separate facility behind the restaurant. It was actually more like a huge concrete warehouse with an immense amount of stuff that appeared to have nothing to do with the restaurant. There were many staff in this area and one of them told me that this building experiences a great many earthquakes per day. I looked up to see if there was tons of cracking in the concrete (indicating that it's been fatiguing due to the quakes), but there were none so I felt ok in the building.

I asked one woman if she knew where the margarine was. She said she did, but then didn't. I asked another couple people and they didn't know. Then someone saw a huge spider hanging from the high ceiling and one woman freaked out. There was a sack of babies hanging under the spider, it was gross but it was like 15 feet over our heads so there was no immediate danger. My friend Damian had bought a new lens for his fancy camera and proceeded to start to photograph the spider. The lens was about 6" in diameter.

I finally decided that I needed to go tell my customers that I am new and cannot find their margarine. As I approached their table they were just finishing up eating and I felt really bad. I told them that this was my first day and that no one would tell me where the margarine was, and that I was sorry. I offered them something else instead - a drink or dessert - as an apology, but they said it was ok and handed me a big bag.

Inside the bag were their left overs; I didn't understand why they weren't taking them home. There was a whole chicken that was half eaten. Attached to the side of the bag was the bill that they had paid. They used a credit card and the receipts were there. There was a bunch of other paperwork with the receipts and one of the items was a survey. I could not read it. I wanted to because I'm sure they gave me a bad review, but couldn't. Another waiter came up to me and sort of scoffed at the review. I still wasn't sure what it said, and think that I figured out that they didn't tip me.

Escaping the Zombies

Maybe I talk about zombies too much. Maybe I think about them too much too. And maybe I did see a commercial yesterday for yet another zombie movie. Regardless, they're in my head, apparently.

There was a longer sequence of this dream, but my memory of it starts in a room of a house were I have never been before. Another girl and I locked ourselves in there to escape the zombies chasing us. Just before we were attacked by more zombies, Dr. Cuddy from House rushed in, gave us each a shot in the tricep of our arm, and ran out. This shot was a cure for zombie-ism. Not sure why she gave it to us; maybe they were just being careful, or maybe it was an actual vaccine, I'm not sure.

The zombies in this dream weren't the slow, thoughtless, funny kind from Shaun of the Dead. Thankfully they weren't the super human ones from 28 Days Later either; but they were more like the ones from the book version of I Am Legend. They still had working brains, and they could move like normal people.

Dr. Elliot Reid, from Scrubs, was the first to attack via the room's front door. She was pounding on it and shouting verbal abuse at us. I picked up a small, silver revolver in each hand and I'm not sure what weapon the other girl had, but she had something.

I was standing toward the back of the room on top of a floor heating grate. I started to hear noises beneath the grate, and realized that another zombie was somehow trying to get in from the ducting under the house. Smart buggers.

As she emerged from the duct, I cocked one of my guns and had a really hard time pointing it at her and firing, the trigger was very hard to pull. I hit her, but I had to shoot her a couple more times ("...removing the head, or destroying the brains...", Shaun of the Dead, anyone?) before she backed off. Then I moved to the next floor heating grate (why there was more than one grate, I'm not really sure) that I thought one might pop through.

Another girl did, and I unloaded on her too until she backed away. These zombies had the ability to regenerate, but if they got hurt too badly they would just die, so they'd leave to go regen before I killed them entirely. This was when Dr. Reid apparently got through the door and the other human woman started fighting her.

Then a 3rd zombie started poking up through the same grate, and I realized it was Kane. I could not shoot Kane, even if he were a zombie. Especially since there was a cure now and we just needed to hold out until everyone got it. So I yelled to the other girl to run.

She was confused, but there was no time to argue, so we kicked out one of windows (it was the shuttered kind like they have in Hawaii) and started to run. My companion was suddenly a man instead of a woman, and we were running wildly down a dirt hill.

The man I was running with started sliding on his butt down the hill instead of just running; it was faster and we needed to hide somewhere before the zombies could see where we went. I slid behind him and we headed for a nearby house to run behind it. In real life, my breathing started to speed up. I heard my faster breaths and I thought it was because I was huffing and puffing running away so fast, but it was probably because I was very tense. Either that or I was humoring my dream.

We reached the house and somehow got up onto the flat part of the mansard-type roof. This area was totally visible from the ground; it wasn't a very good hiding spot. The zombies could climb to get us easily. Four zombies climbed up to get us, my sister to our right, a small woman to our left, and two guys in front of us (neither of them were Kane). I started by running at the small girl and shoving her off the roof. But I knew that pushing my sister and the two guys would be harder since they were bigger than I am.

Fortunately, my brain decided this was quite enough stress for sleeping, and woke up.

Hayward Hills Bar

Last night I had a plethora of dreams, 3 of which I remembered clearly upon waking. I checked to see if it was a full moon or something (yes, I really did check), but it wasn't. Guess I was just busy-brained.

This was the first of the dreams so I don't remember it as clearly. Miki Harris and I were at a bar that was only a couple blocks from our houses. It was down by Tribune near the pizza place, where there is currently just a field on a hill. The room was small and dark (as bars tend to be) with tables and not many people.

I remember the bartender being very friendly and giving us a couple free drinks. He wanted us to stay for a while, probably because having young women in your bar helps tremendously with business. I didn't want to stay, but was stoked at the free drinks. I decided to walk home, but I think I was on the cell phone or distracted in some other way and lost track of Miki.

I went started to walk back to look for her, but she called to say she had already made it home. She didn't seem mad about it.