Two dreams

I haven't been sleeping as well as I should be. I've had some soreness in my left shoulder that seems to be exacerbated by non-use - which is to say, it hurts more on my days off than on my working days. But this soreness makes itself known when I try to go to sleep, a presence always just on the edge of my consciousness. At least, until I turn the wrong way and it hurts like hell.

Not sleeping well often translates into more remembered dreams. I remember two from yesterday. Oddly, they have some common themes.

In the first one I was helping my brother and some other people move some bleachers. Why we were moving bleachers is lost in the dream's internal logic. But there we were on the Sans Souci Parkway, a four-lane road near my house that connects Nanticoke with Wilkes-Barre by way of Hanover Township. The bleachers were being towed sideways by a medium-duty truck, part of a small fleet of about five or six other trucks surrounding us. My brother and I were in the bleachers, and he kept walking around in them, despite my insistence that he sit down. And eventually he fell out, and got run over - by the bleachers, and maybe one of the trucks, too. He was badly hurt, with one of his forearms obviously broken and possibly a lot more damage, but he was conscious. I tried to call 911 but had a hard time getting through. Eventually I got through, but after some time on the line with the operator she fell silent, and I had to hang up and try again.* I then moved around from phone to phone, trying different phones in various houses, but never able to complete the call. (How this got resolved, I do not know.)

In another dream I had been visiting someone somewhere for the weekend. I don't know who, but I think it was down around Philadelphia. As Sunday night rolled around I knew that I had to be back to work for 6:00 Monday night, so I decided to spend the night with some friends in the Poconos. The plan was that I would sleep there and in the morning head home and either get ready for work or get more sleep. But I slept in late, and my friends had some interesting company, and we all got to talking, and before I knew it it was after 6:00on Monday night. I tried to grab a phone to call in and let the people at work know I wouldn't be in, but I found the phone impossible to use - the buttons for the numbers were arranged in a strange way, horizontally in two rows I think, and some of the buttons were odd shapes and sizes, and besides, my hands were numb and felt swollen. I tried another phone, and that one was worse than the first, but at least now I saw that the time was really just 5:58, so I had plenty of time. But a third phone was still unusable.

Around this time I opened my eyes and looked at my clock radio and saw that the time was just after noon, and realized I was at home and in my own bed. I went back to sleep and did not have any more dreams.



*A friend had this happen in real life, but it was with an internet service provider customer service line in India.