I need some sleep, I can't go on like this...

I've been having troubles staying asleep past five or six hours for the past few weeks, and the past couple of days it's been really catching up to me; I've been falling asleep at friends' houses, while using my computer, and even while eating. It hasn't been a whole lot of fun, so I decided when I got home last night, that I would try to catch up on all that "lost" (I went through most of the past school years on five to six hours of sleep a night without any problems, so I don't know why I can't now) sleep. I went to bed at 10:00ish and promised myself not to get out of bed until at least 9:00.

That failed. I woke up at 1:00 just long enough to look at the clock and roll my eyes. Then I woke up again at 5:30. If I had gotten up then, I would have gotten almost exactly 7 hours of sleep, and my body definitely wanted to get up then. My mind started churning about stuff I had to do today, expecting me to get up and start doing it. But I refused, and eventually, though it took a while, I got back to sleep.

Mistake. I had the worst dream of my entire life between 5:30 and 7:30 this morning.

In the dream, my mom and I went to a movie together. My mom had suggested we see it because she'd heard it was revolutionary film with a lot of really poignant social commentary, etc etc. (In real life, my mom would not recommend that kind of movie: if a movie is depressing, she doesn't want to see it. More and more, I'm finding that that is my view too. Revolutionize me with real life, don't make my escapism tragic) Anyway, so we went. But while we were watching the movie, we were in the movie. It was weird, and no one questioned it; dreams are like that.

In the movie, the US was going to war with Egypt for what ever reason, and the president had decided to fire a nuke at them. So, we fired one, and then everyone started preparations for someone to fire one back at us. The president went into his bunker and a bunch of people kind of stowed away with him (not the Vice President, oddly. He decided to stay above ground). My mom and I got into the bunker, somehow, and the First Lady showed us around, since she had been in charge of the décor.

For what ever reason, there were windows facing DC (which suddenly had rolling hills of open fields and camels...?) and holes in the ground to, as the First Lady said, "Let the smell out," whatever that meant. We were all milling about in the giant bunker, just kind of chilling. This part was funny; it felt like Dr. Strangelove a little bit; when dealing with the end of the world, all these people could do was fuss about the stylish curtains in the fallout shelters. While dreaming, I was thinking, yeah, this is quite the social commentary. Good movie, I thought. People should see how ignorant we all look.

Then the first bomb hit. We watched it out the window. For a dream full of surrealism and an American President of a different color, it got everything about nuclear warfare spot on. At least, the bomb that exploded maybe three miles away from the windows in our bunker acted exactly like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did, according to all the reports I've read. We watched from safety as the camels and random people who didn't have an in with the President were instantly incinerated, and the shockwaves tore at the landscape. Then the ground beneath us started to heat up, and (this part I'm not sure is realistic) the molten crust of the earth below the bunker started to boil and pop into the holes in the floor that the First Lady had been so proud of. There was a little boy there, I'm not sure who he was, but I grabbed him and he and I lay on the floor, my back to the lava pits that we were all too close to, me screaming in pain and promising him I would protect him. My mom got too close to one as it bubbled and popped and the skin on her arms...well it was gross. Then Ben's roommate, Luke Breems jumped into one of the holes. I'm...not sure why. Breems is probably one of the most sane people in that house he lives in...but it was a dream after all.

It was very gruesome, very vivid, and for a while, I forgot it was a movie. The President was scheming with his staffers on some way to escape the lava, and they recommended he lock himself away in the sub-bunker (that looked suspiciously like the fallout shelter from Blast From the Past) and he agreed to do so. Meanwhile, all the people who's started to burn alive were turning rapid, including the little boy in my arms, the First Lady, Breems, and my mother. I started yelling at my mom that I'd had enough, that I wanted to leave the theater, that I didn't care how revolutionary the rest of the movie was, I didn't want to see it or live through it. her eyes went wild and she bared her teeth at me and I started hitting her with pillows and trying to escape.

When I woke up, I started crying immediately and groggily made my way downstairs to my mom on the couch and started the slow process of forgetting the dream. But it's still as vivid to me now as it was when I was in it.

...

Aaaanyway...

After that whole fiasco, and while I battled the inevitable exhaustion that comes from waking up mid-REM-cycle, today was a full, fun day. I went out shopping with my mom, my aunt, and my niece: three generations of Rittenhouse women. We went to Meijer (yup...that's the fourth time this week) and then to the mall to visit the Apple store, f.y.e., Sam Goodie (or whatever...I wasn't there for that), and to let Annabelle play in their little play area.

Then we went home, put Annabelle down for a nap, and began watching the movie, Where the Heart Is, with Natalie Portman, among others. We didn't finish before my mom had to go to a party of a friend of hers who moved to Texas a while back, but is in town for a little while.

While she was gone, my aunt and I went to Barnes&Noble's, where I had an old gift card, and I bought far too many books...but they were all worth it. ... Hopefully. I really hate spending money, especially on books. It's all very counter intuitive, I know, because I love having books, and I love earning money so I can spend it. I struggle with the whole have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too thing. But boy, being around all those books, and holding them, carrying them around the store with me, smelling them, talking to them and about them to myself...it just put me in the best mood. And it smelled like fall outside; I love fall. I'm excited for when it decides to come and stay.

Then she and I went to Starbuck's, checked the air in my tires to discover that I may need to fill one of them up tomorrow, and came home. I played with Annabelle a bit, then put her down to bed, and my mom eventually got home in time for us to finish watching the movie. Very good movie; definitely recommend it. It's a chick-flick, but by no means a shallow, two-bit one.

Now I'm going to bed, with a full mind and sagging eyelids.

<3 spadeALLcross