More dreams

As I mentioned the other day, I continue to have dreams each night, dreams that I remember. From what I know about dream science, you only remember a dream if you wake up during it. Most people wake up several times during the night and have several dreams each night, so the likelihood that you will remember a dream is actually pretty good.

I may be remembering my dreams because I'm getting more sleep now - a lot more. Eight to ten hours each night, compared to four to five hours back when I was working. So now the amount of time I'm asleep - and the number of opportunities I have both to dream and to wake up - is about twice what it used to be. Also, since I'm getting so much more sleep I'm probably sleeping much more lightly than I used to, so I'm probably waking up more easily.

Monday morning's dream involved bills. It wasn't so much a dream as an anxiety premonition, as if some pre-programmed post-hypnotic suggestion was telling me that I had forgotten something. I woke up and pulled out my records. The bill that the dream had focused on - the credit card bill which pays for my Internet service - had actually been paid two weeks ago. But I had several more bills that were not due right away but could be paid, so I took care of them while I had my checkbook and my bill-paying checklist out.

This morning I had either one dream, or two, or three, depending on the weird rules that define the structure of dreams.

In one of them I was at work, and there was a big storm coming. Now, in real life the area where I worked had no windows, so we relied on security monitors and reports from smokers and sites like Weather Underground to let us know what was going on outside. Often I would be the first to learn of an approaching storm that might have equipment-damaging lightning associated with it, or could at least create momentary power interruptions that could disrupt or destroy any projects being worked on, and I would be the one who would spread the word for everyone to save their work and get out of any open projects - and make sure nobody was wearing headphones.

Getting back to the dream: The interesting thing is that my work looked exactly like my house - well, my mom's house. But it was work, and all of my co-workers were there, and my real house was 33 miles to the southwest, just like in real life. We all gathered on the front porch and looked at the walls of black clouds to the west and the north, clouds that were closing in on us. And I kept wondering if I would be able to make it home before the storm hit.

Mutation 1: I was at the same house, and the storm was still coming, but now instead of co-workers the other people at the the house were my family members, particularly my nephews, and the house was really my mom's house. And they had left the front door open and all of our animals had gotten loose. We ran around the yard and managed to collect them all, coralling the last few in the garage - all except one. One of the cats was missing. The missing cat was Ashes, who died last April 11.

Mutation 2: I was at work again, only it wasn't so much work as it was, well, a Bennigan's. And work, too. And there was a big audit going on, the audit that in real life is scheduled to take place later this month, which was something I was preparing for when the axe fell - I was in charge of coordinating the audit-related stuff in our area. But apparently the audit was already going on, and we were being ripped apart by the auditors, even though we thought we were very prepared, much more so than last time. And it wasn't just my department, but it was the entire plant, and a bunch of us- including a few auditors! - were gathered at a table, eating, drinking, and discussing strategy. This was the last dream I had, and I kept on fading in and out of sleep, desperately trying to hold onto the thread of this one, trying to see how it would come out.

So. Anxiety + more sleep than normal = weird dreams.