This is NOT sleep ....

What is it about my psyche that wants me to wake up spitting mad? Really?

Years ago, I spent countless nights chasing up and down strange houses with bizarre floor plans looking desperately for my crying children. I could hear them, I would yell “Mommy’s coming!” but I could NEVER find them - not once.

When I woke from these dreams – ALWAYS was SO RELIEVED because of the level of desperation and the frantic feeling were very real. Apparently so was the running, because I never awoke refreshed – I was always exhausted and drained. I would then, breathe a sigh of relief and drop back into the same troubled sleep.

Thing is?

The floor plan? That I was getting a hang of, and where I had cleared say floor one through three and only had the fourth floor and the spooky attic to go – WOULD TOTALLY CHANGE to an entirely different floor plan. But my children were still crying for me and I was still going to find them … but – not before shaking my fists in the air and screaming “It’s not fair! You CANNOT change the floor plan!” apparently at the “Sleep gods” and apparently I knew I was dreaming or at least remember the previous dream so that the sense of injustice made me mad enough to scream at my “Sleep gods”.

It always seemed as if I searched for hours and hours and I would roll over after awaking yet again – shaking and exhausted and only twenty minutes had elapsed.

Sometimes this went on all night.

UNTIL …

I wised up and decided that NO SLEEP was TOTALLY better than this, and I would get up and stay up the rest of the night. WAY LESS EXHAUSTING.

Who said sleep was supposed to be restful?

They never had the dreams I have!

Apparently, I have grown out of the ‘Searching-For-My-Crying-Child’ dreams – or at least I cannot remember the last time I had one – but now that I mention it, I will be totally prepared for that evil mansion and a crying young’un tonight …

NOW – my psyche apparently misses tormenting me so it has come up with a NEW “Lets-Keep-Lori-Running-All-Night-Just-For-Fun” dream. It’s called:

“Going to the mall with my extended family – and Gary … who does not want to go ….”

Oh, yeah. Fun times.

The first thing I remember is that when we arrived home – to a home I TOTALLY did not recognize, there was a RV in the driveway full of strangers – complete with two very ratty, tatty children. They hung around the rest of the dream – so I brought it up.

Went into the ratty, tatty house that apparently was … someone’s. I don’t feel as if it were mine – maybe we were just visiting – maybe another planet since nothing looked familiar. Someone made the monumentally stupid suggestion that we go eat dinner at the mall.

My sister had come in wearing the softest sweater and told me she would show me where she got it. Problem was, my other sister or someone was also speaking to me at the same time and I didn’t really hear everything she said since neither stopped speaking since the other was. I felt it would be rude to interrupt the one who continued to speak to tell my oldest sister that I would love to get a sweater like the one she had – but somehow indicated this to her. Apparently, as I think back on it – since we never really got round to that – maybe she didn’t get my hand signals at all …

Eeeek! Went to a Chinese type restaurant but they were out of most everything and I won’t bore you with all the trouble that abounded while in there.

But really, now … what is it about my subconscious that insists that I wander aimlessly, worried about something for hours on end all night? What does this say about me?

After the restaurant, I was leaving, oddly with a high school friend who had taken me out for ice cream on my birthday (in a previous dream episode – not in real life). She looked just as she did in High School, but I was the age I am now I believe. She is active on my Facebook – thus incorporated into my dream. Another lady that is active on my Facebook from my old ward down here where we lived before we moved to Norway was apparently the executive from the ice cream place and had told Allison, my friend, that if I took her out for ice cream on her birthday – she would get film and it would be a sweet news item.

I don’t like my photo taken – let me tell you – being ‘Film at Eleven’ was 100 times worse and I told Allison that this just clinched the fact that I would NEVER take her for ice cream on her birthday – sorry.

As I had turned my head and said this to her as we were leaving the Chinese restaurant (apparently my family had already abandoned me) – two other girls from High School – one that I was close to but have not really ‘spoken to’ and one that I barely knew (how your brain picks and chooses fascinates me … the thing is – I never know the answer – but still fascinating none the less …) walked by.

The one I barely knew saw me and started laughing and apologized to me.

I was confused.

She explained as she was walking past that they had ‘pranked’ me and had hidden film of me at the ice cream store – which I don’t remember doing anything embarrassing or anything, but she also mentioned they had footage of me asleep on the couch in the ratty, tatty house and them sitting on me? That seemed a titch more embarrassing, but I realized that I really couldn’t do much about it. I was at the emotional maturity I am now, not while in High School and while they might post it on You Tube – it was not the end of the world and decided that I would worry about it later.

Why?

Because I had somehow misplaced my family and I knew that Gary had not wanted to come – don’t remember him in the funky grey van that I rode to the mall in, and that he was antsy to go back … home or at least to the ratty, tatty house.

So I started looking.

I wandered and wandered.

At one point (and I only share since I want to know what the hell my psyche was thinking) I was in a ‘Ladies Room’ and as I walked in, realized that there were no stalls – just lovely toilets and bidets inserted in cushioned couch like things. I decided that ‘communal peeing and bideting’ was not my style so I left. Won’t share the conversation a mother and her tween daughter were having about the bidets – but again – psyche? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

I found my family in a store watching a movie. I was THRILLED. I had not accomplished anything but look for them so my ‘mall experience’ was rather lacking. The movie had just ended and so I was asking if we were leaving – but they told me that it was the first of three movies and so I left again – Gary seemed happy to watch the movie. Strangely enough – he had been shopping and had changed into his new duds. He had on the ugliest argyle sweater I have ever seen, some ugly mustard cord pants and some weird boots on, but hey, he was a happy guy so I let it go.

Saw a door marked “Women’s” and went through – it was just a hallway to another part of the mall. I did a bit of window shopping and was not really enjoying myself until, as I was standing in a large hallway wondering what to do next, a family walked by. Someone shouted and started speaking to them and I heard the father say it was their youngest first birthday.

At this point I realize that they are dressed in the most beautiful costumes. The one year old was a little prince – which his king of a father was carrying. Mother was queen and the two walking children were dressed as playing cards – I don’t remember what card. I wanted a photo and my camera was with my family – I needed to quickly go fetch it.

I turned to two people standing next to me handing out stuff and realized they were in costume also – as gold statues wearing white togas (psyche?) and I asked if they would be there for a bit (maybe if I couldn’t get the walking family I felt to recoup my losses I could take photos of them?) One nodded his head and off I went to where the movies where showing (in an electronics store, of course). I got there and everyone was gone.

I wandered for a bit – a little frantic that they were probably wanting to leave and couldn’t find me. I seemed to wander for hours in this hideous mall until my sister shows up and tells me to come on. I followed her to an escalator and told her that we had gone neither up nor down during the entire time we had been in the mall – so what were we doing? She muttered something about the mall being on a slope and we needed to go up.

I stepped on the escalator, but she was already to the top. As I reached the top, I realized that she had continued on to parts unknown and I was standing in a mix of that photo of the stairs that go to nowhere and the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. In the (massively ugly) airport – there was an area (it was being remodeled when I was there so maybe it looks better now) that was just a TON of escalators that seemed to be going off in different directions and very confusing.

Here - a photo I found of the escalators in the airport:

I had no idea where I was supposed to go and here the frantic wandering intensified.

I did it for hours and hours. I was annoyed, they were probably annoyed. I was SO READY when I found someone to shake some sense in them and give them a piece of my mind about how to help someone find the ugly grey van …


… when I woke up – totally mad at my sibs and mad as hell. And tired and frustrated.



Guys … this is not rest …





Why does my psyche do this to me?


What in my mind decides that even though I got only two hours of sleep the night before that THIS night I was going to wander a mall – a place that I shun at every opportunity?

I won’t even go into the discussion I had with an ex-boyfriend out in the parking lot when I THOUGHT I was close to the van. It was rather weird and again? Psyche? What drugs are you on?

All in all – I’m exhausted, tired but oh, so very happy to be awake!