Last night I dreamed I was a teacher in Catasauqua (where I lived when I was a kid). I caught a cab because I had to be somewhere, but the cab was in very bad repair, mostly rusted with rusting metal plates nailed over holes. One tire was flat, and another was going flat. But when I told the driver, he shrugged and said he didn’t have the money to fix it.

He dropped me off at a train station. I took a ride and got off at a warehouse. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I was soon hiding from this serial “killer” who was abducting people and experimenting on them. While I was hiding, I found a huge salamander as long as my arm. The serial killer was just about to find me when some government goons busted in the front door and took him into custody. In reality, they just wanted to collect his experiments for themselves.

Since they didn’t know I was there, I stepped out through a side door into a hall where a coworker was walking. Since I knew she liked lizards, I gave her the salamander, knowing the government goons would confiscate it. She thanked me, saying now her collection was complete, she had a representative of each element (salamader=fire).

I left her and went back inside because I would have to walk past the goons either way I went, and I wanted to distract them from my coworker and the salamander. The government goons wanted to know if I had anything on my person, but let me go without too much fuss.

*

I took a nap around five because I had a headache and dreamed I was on my way home with a group of friends. We were walking through the woods and it was raining. Mud was washing down the roads, which were all of dirt. I was worried about flooding, so while they continued on a low road, I tried hiking up a hill though the mud and water was up to my thighs, and cars kept passing very close to me.

When I reached the top, it was still raining, but the mud and water was not nearly as high. I stopped at a bar to try to use the phone, but some men started chasing me. I ran around the building to the parking lot, but beyond the lot it was a shear drop back into the woods. Someone had sawed off some of the trees so as the men reached me, I jumped onto the stumps, but I was still very high up and after three jumps, I ran out of places to jump.

I was still close enough for the men to try to grab me, so I tried jumping to an unsawed tree. Well I missed and started to fall, but I turned into a dove and went flying through the trees and then down a high, undulating grassy hill. As I got to the bottom, I saw one of my friends and tried calling her name, but she couldn’t understand me as I was only making bird sounds though it sounded to me as if I were yelling her name. She turned to look behind her and I alit on the ground, changing back to my human form. I surprised her as she turned back around, and she told me she had been looking for me. I told her about the men who had chased me, but I didn’t tell her about being a bird. It was still raining, though more of a drizzle as we walked down the path.

I had an odd dream Sunday. Dunno if anyone reading this had ever read the Hellraiser comics; they go into a lot more detail about the cenobites and their leader. Would anyone have believed the cenobites are actually champions of order? Bizarre. Anyway, that’s central to my Sunday dream. I was in this big mansion. I just sort of appeared beside a table. Pinhead was standing next to it, and there was a little girl playing solitaire. She didn’t speak, she just kept playing cards. So I asked pinhead who she was. He said she was Leviathan’s little sister. Leviathan was there too, but I couldn’t look at it; I was just aware of its presence. I asked why she didn’t speak, and Pinhead said she’d speak when she was ready to remember.

Just then this light came rushing through the mansion. Pinhead told me to take care of the girl and keep her out of the hands of chaos. So I led the girl away while chaos came rushing after us. It looked kind of like a D&D Beholder crossed with the sun, and it was chewing on the Earth as it came flying through the corridors.

I’m pretty sure I forgot some parts of the dream. At some point I became the little girl, but I was all grown up. And I woke up when I fell through an open doorway into a big pool of water or a canal of some kind.

I’m not sure if I’ve just been reading too many Hellraiser comics and pining after Hellraiser 7&8 which have been semi-perminantly delayed by managerial red tape, or if this dream actually means something.

Yesterday I had no caffeine at all. I woke up feeling great. I think I might be completely off caffeine by the end of the month. What I’m doing is slowly weaning myself off caffeine. It’s called fading. I might have a soda later today, but I’ll try to hold out for as long as I can. It depends upon whether I get a headache or not. And I’m drinking lots of water. That’s another way to wash out all the gunk. Fading, lots of water, and excercise will help with just about any addiction so far as I’ve read.

And I now weigh less than I’ve ever weighed as an adult. I’m sure the excercise helps, but cutting out the caffeine and sugar is surely a contributing factor. Thirty pounds to go. I would be content to be one fifty with my height.

I had some interesting dreams Thursday and last night.

First I dreamed that my sister somehow ruined her SUV at a gas station. It was never clear exactly what she had done to it, but she made an aside that the people had looked at her funny as she drove off. In any event, it was undrivable. She’d driven it to our home and parked it on the neighbors lawn, but she didn’t want to drive it anywhere else. Unfortunately she had an appointment for a tattoo. In reality, my sister has no tattooes, but in the dream she had them all over. So I had to drive her to the tattoo parlour. Initially she wanted to borrow my car, but I know how she drives and I flat out refused. So we got to the parlour and apparently they would brand the design on a person as an outline a few weeks in advance of the tattooing. They had all these various designs, most of them Celtic knots. But my sister took off her shirt and she had The Willow Pattern branded onto her back.

As a little aside, I should tell you that my sister’s SUV actually did break down later in the day and we’ve been scrounging money to buy her a new car all day today. I actually chipped in the fifty she gave me last Thursday for my birthday. How’s that for irony?

*

Then I dreamed I was a little kid on the lam from a bunch of mobsters. I never did figure out why, but I think I either stole something or they wanted something from my family that we weren’t willing to give up. I entered a car lot and traded for a classic VW beetle. Then I went driving along roads and traintracks, and over much bigger cars while the mobsters followed in a car they had stolen. Then I was running through a tunnel with a bunch of other people also fleeing the mobsters. When we came through the tunnel, it was surrounded by barbed wire fences with one panel opened, but guarded by soldiers. Somehow I had become a zombie, as had my companions. The soldiers told me to halt, but I was just a kid so they didn’t shoot me as I approached. We beat them unconscious and finally escaped. I went home to my mom where I could rot in peace. heh

**

Then I also took a nap later Thursday and had a creepy little dream about a preacher truck driver serial killer. I was driving along, but had to stop at a portapotty by the side of the road. While I was in the potty, the trucker pulled up and started going through my car. I could hear him out there, and hurried up to rush out and stop him. He explained that he thought the car was abandoned, and I informed him it was not. Obviously I had stopped to use the potty. But when I tried to start my car, it wouldn’t start. He offered me a ride into town, and despite being blessed with an abundance of common sense, I agreed. When we got there however, he knocked me out of the truck and proceeded to threaten all the townspeople. Basically he said that he would kill everyone of us, or we could all help him kill everyone else. Of everyone there, I was the only one who refused, so he proceeded to torture me to provide a lesson to the others. All I kept thinking was my mother and sister were one town over and would come looking for me.

I don’t think I should take naps any more.

***

Last night I dreamed there was a valley covered over by a fog that glowed with white light at night. It was rumored to be full of monsters and vampires. There were developers who wanted the land, so even though the monsters weren’t really bothering anyone and people were just paranoid because of the lights, the government went in and slaughtered everything they could find, but it was all over the news so everyone knew. After that, there were no lights in the fog even though the fog itself remained.

So I set out to investigate. I was a vampire too, but a live one, not an undead one. As I was hiking along the hiways, I met other people who were also live vampires heading toward the fog.

When we got there, we didn’t hesitate. We went right down into the fog and found a cave. Inside was an antique dinning room table and we proceeded to eat some subs we had purchased with the last of our money. There were many tunnels leading away into a catacomb and we felt it was unlikely that the army had managed to kill everyone down there, but since we couldn’t know the state of mind of the survivors, I told everyone to stay in the entry room and not go exploring alone.

A young man on a motor cycle made his entrance to the cave, and while my back was turned, two different people decided to disobey me and explore on their own. So when I turned back after offering the newcomer food, I noticed we were missing some folks. We made a quick search of the nearest tunnels, but didn’t find anyone. I was loathe to go too far since there weren’t enough of us to split up and search all the tunnels in groups.

We came back to the table and decided to get some sleep when one of the girls who was missing came crawling back into the room. She’d been attacked and was missing a lot of blood, but she was alive. We took her back and made her comfortable, then we all got some sleep.

While the others were asleep, I got up and went back over to the tunnels. I let my intuition guide me and chose a tunnel where I felt the other woman was. It was a very curvy passage, but I rounded a turn and almost fell over her. I quickly picked her up and carried her back out. By this time, the others had woken and discovered me gone. They were just beginning to panic when I returned carrying the other missing member of our party. She was in worse shape than the other girl, but she’d survive too. And well, even if she didn’t, we were all vampires, so she would have come back.

We still weren’t inclined to leave though. Everyone settled back to sleep, but I felt an urge to go exploring despite the fact that I had told the others not to go off alone. I went back into the tunnels, and walked without seeing anyone for what seemed like hours. Finally the passage opened up into a cave and there was the elder vampire who had actually been calling me to come talk, one leader to another.

For some reason he told me about his granddaughter who was ignorant of being a vampire and was currently in college. I think we talked about a bunch of other stuff too, but that was the important part of the conversation though it made little sense at the time. He also told me that we should leave as soon as possible because most of the other people in the tunnels weren’t friendly.

I went back out to where everyone was sleeping and told them about the elder vampire. We agreed that we’d leave as soon as it was dark. Being live vampires, the sun wouldn’t do us any harm, but we didn’t particularly like it. So we all went back to sleep.

Later I was woken up by a toy car that kept bumping me in the leg. It had a cord that led back into the tunnel which led to the elder vampire. I thought maybe he wanted to talk to me again, so I followed the cord back to the cave. But when I got there, he was sitting in his chair but his head was missing. They’d killed him even though he was their leader and then they’d lured me back because they didn’t have the power to call me like he did. So I went haring back down the tunnel and woke everyone up. It was still light out but the undead vampires were hot on my heels, and we couldn’t wait for dark.

I figure that the elder vampire knew his followers were planning on killing him and that they would probably go after his granddaughter too, so he told me about her in the hope that I would seek her out and protect her.

I think my attempt to give up caffeine is catching up with me. Who would have thought that a side effect of caffeine withdrawal might be insomnia? That just doesn’t sound right, does it? lol

Lots of interesting facts about caffeine I found online…  Did you know twelve grams or so taken orally would kill someone of my weight. They even suggest that caffeine might cause birth defects and low birth weight.

All this time, I thought the worst I would have to deal with was a headache when I got rid of caffeine. I’ve dealt with headaches before, no prob. Apparently caffeine withdrawal can be very flu-like -aches, headache, stuffiness…

DETOXIFICATION/WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS

• Anxiety
  
• Constipation
  
• Cramps
  
• Cravings
  
• Depression
  
• Fatigue or drowsiness
  
• Inability to concentrate
  
• Inability to sleep
  
• Irritability
  
• Lack of interest or concern
  
• Nausea or vomiting
  
• Nervousness, shakiness, dizziness
  
• Runny nose
  
• Headache
  
• Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)

I don’t have all the symptoms, but I have enough to be irritating. Stupid legal drugs. Oh well, in the process of giving up caffeine, I’ll also be giving up all that extra sugar in the soda as well. Actually I think I’ve been jonesing more for sugar than caffeine. I was just thinking about making cookies yesterday. Maybe tomorrow when I have off from work. Mmmmmm, peanut butter cookies. I make the best, if I do say so myself. I have secret ingredients. Muahahahaha! I’ll never talk! And my cookies actually taste like peanut butter.

The most annoying side effect of my caffeine withdrawal is not even the insomnia. I mean, I do fall asleep eventually. I’m just tired for a long time before hand, and when I wake up. The most annoying thing is how muddy my dreams are if I remember them at all. I don’t think the caffeine was making them unusually vivid or bizarre, but I’m sure getting the caffeine out of my system is affecting them. I did dream some in the last week and a half, and though there were some interesting parts, they were something of a let down in comparison to other dreams I’ve had. Frankly I think you all would find the majority boring.

While I have managed to hold onto the key images (which is how I usually bring a dream back up to my consciousness when I wake), most of them don’t make much sense. About the most interesting dream featured me searching for an HR Block in the rain with two umbrellas which still failed to keep the water off my head. (Much anxiety over taxes, doyathink? heh) Then the Block people brainwashed me, clothed me as a villain, and next I knew I was robbing a bank in an iron mask and hard leather clothes. They shot me when they realized I’d regained consciousness and left me to be captured by the authorities. Now you know… HR Block is evil! lol

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been around much. Too tired… no dreams or boring ones… and anxiety over the taxes I haven’t done yet. heh