Sleepy beliefs

[mrissa]

I believe the strangest things in my sleep. Last night I got out of bed at 3:30 a.m. because I firmly believed that one of you locals from the friendslist had e-mailed me with urgent news about somebody else local on the friendslist and I had to find out what was wrong and how we could help. And I had to get up, because I could see the subject line and time stamp and all just as clear as day in my head, and somehow I neglected to make the connection that I do not, in fact, have a psychic link with my computer.

I forgot most of this on the way to the computer and only dredged it up in conversation this afternoon. So I stood at the computer at 3:30 going, "Why am I here? What am I doing here?" I went back to bed and to sleep, but I'm a little tired and also bemused with my brain for that one.

This is up there with the "I must have my contacts still in, because I can see in my dreams, and I'm not supposed to be able to see when I'm sleeping" belief for weird stuff I believe when I'm sleeping. Do you believe anything odd when you're sleeping? Either in the context of dreams themselves or stuff that hangs around into your earliest waking moments?

I also believe that all high schools are St. Paul's Highland Park High School, when I'm sleeping. Don't ask me why. Other high schools with strong distinguishing features -- my own, for example -- transmute into Highland Park whenever my dreams require a high school to appear. I have never been inside the building, never done more than drive past it. It was extremely confusing to discover that I was dreaming Highland Park and not some Platonic or amalgamated mental high school.

We have a pulmonologist to call for timprov in the morning. Progress. My back is not entirely happy about the shoveling I did this morning, but they can just deal; I'm working on Chapter twenty-nine-and-a-half, and as long as my brain will let me, I'm going to keep doing it, molten metal and gossip and all. And then when the brain is done letting me work on this, I'll read City of Bones some more, so it can go back to porphyrin when we see her next.

Comments

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I've awakened in the middle of the night saying things that I insisted were absolutely true, no one could convince me otherwise, and I would've bet the house on them. By sunrise I can't even remember what I said.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do other people record them for you, so you can see in the morning?

[dannys-album.livejournal.com]

From time to time, but they made even less sense in the light of day than they had at 3 am.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

I've done that.
Lately, with the conviction that we'd adopted special needs twins from Kazakhstan who were four and eight (but still twins!) and couldn't speak English and...

Right.

I find it easier, when I'm sitting upright on the edge of the bed, hyperventilating, and the noise wakes up Mike, to tell him that it's just that I need to go do the midnight pee thing. :P

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Mostly I don't think we're such good friends because we're so much alike, but sometimes you come out with something like this and I think, yep, that's very us, I'd totally do that, too.

What I muttered at markgritter was, "Be right back," which covers midnight peeing, jotting down story notes, and random late-night psychoses about the location and condition of various people and items. "Where is the dishwasher?" Oh, yes, sleeping brain, it's wandered off. The dishwasher has. I mean, doesn't it always?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I do that. It's how I can tell that I'm falling asleep: I feel perfectly lucid but I'm believing the strangest things...

This used to bite me in the ass a bit, because I'd oversleep firmly convinced that I'd already had breakfast and dressed and gone to school.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You can tell I'm a morning person because I have the opposite: I believe I've already overslept for things like airline flights, and I hit the deck running only to discover that it's 4:00 a.m. and my flight doesn't leave until 10:30.

[deva-fagan.livejournal.com]

I (also a morning person) do something similar - I have many times been absolutely convinced I looked at the clock and saw the glowing numbers telling me it's after 5, summoned up my energy to wake up fully and get out of bed, only to discover it is actually 2. And then lay there for an hour or so cursing myself as I try to convince my brain to quiet down again. Ack. At least I don't wake up (as my husband does on occasion) convinced there are spiders in the bed, insisting that we both get out and turn on the light and search the bed to be sure.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I do something between the two: dream that I get up, get dressed and so on, then wake up and find it's a couple of hours too early. Or, worse, that the alarm is due to go off in two minutes and I'll have to get up and do it all over again.

I also occasionally wake up laughing at something irresistibly funny, that either turns out to be not terribly amusing or unrememberable when fully awake. ANd then there are the useles-precog dreams...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'll dream about having arguments with people, and then be afraid to ask them if I dreamed it or not the next day, in case they're still mad.

So, um. Yeah.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I dreamed that one of my cousins had done something truly horrible once, like "do not stick out a hand to keep this man from falling off the planet" horrible, and when I woke up, I knew it had been a dream, but I also knew that if someone came to me and said, "X did Y," I would believe them without hesitation. That was bad.

[markgritter.livejournal.com]

That's horrific.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on, Mark, that's no worse than some of the jokes he tells fully awake!

[heck.livejournal.com]

One time, someone sent me a nasty email, and I stewed about it for about a day until I realized that she hadn't actually sent me the email (though it would've been entirely in character for this girl to do so) but that I'd dreamed the whole thing. Clearly, I am the best person I know at pushing my own buttons.

[jamesgilmer.livejournal.com]

I once suprised my wife by getting out of bed and pulling on some clothes. When she asked me what I was doing I replied that I had to go to the hospital because our fried Darrin was in the ER.

When she questioned me that she hadn't heard the phone ring I waved her off and kept pulling on socks. When she asked why he was in the hospital and how I knew I told her that our friend Josh had called and that Darrin was in the ER because he had bitten his own ear off. When she asked how he could have done that I said that he had stood on a chair.

It's about this time that I actually realized what I was saying.

She's never let me live that one down. I had just slipped right out of the dream of the phone call and into the reality of getting dressed without really waking all the way up.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We discovered that my dad can change sheets and carry on an entire conversation in his sleep. The dog got sick on Mom's side of their bed one night, so Mom had to get Dad up and change the sheets so she could go back to sleep. In the morning, Dad had no recollection of it, and he probably wouldn't have believed her if the dirty sheets hadn't been sitting in the washing machine ready to be washed.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

There are the things I remember, and then there are the things I don't.

Example of a thing I remember: the ceiling fan is a giant hornet.

Example of a thing I don't remember: When I was a tween, I accosted my brother when he came in late. "Were you the last person to use the piano?" I demanded repeatedly. Finally I said, "As long as you put it away when you were done with it."

I frequently wake up from dreams feeling wildly elated or deeply bereft, and the feeling sticks with me for an hour or so, even though I know right away that the things in the dream weren't factual.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I dream of playing with my dog and having brunch with my Gran fairly frequently. Then I wake up and am sad.

A few weeks ago, I dreamed I had a starred review in Publisher's Weekly. Then I woke up and was both sad and frustrated.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

My sad-upon-waking dreams usually have to do with highschool not-really-friends being good friends, or exes turning out non-ex, or my father being alive and grandfatherly. My bereft dreams usually have to do with Laura or Reid being taken away.

I saw a review for scalzi's Old Man's War in, I believe, Entertainment Weekly. I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn't.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Oh, the list is huge. Where to begin?

There is the talking in my sleep. Subjects of interest: Earwax, "Stop calling me!" (when an ex boyfriend was calling me several times a day shortly after I got married), and a few other things I'd have to ask Jeff about when he gets home.

Um, and then there's the waking up thinking I'm late for school, getting dressed and ready to run out the door after waking my sister up... and she looks at the clock and says it's only midnight.

And of course there's my mom coming in to wake me up, and I sit up in bed, smile at her, say "oh, I'm up already!" and move the covers away... but as soon as the door closes I'm laying down again and I don't remember any of it. :D

And dreams, oh dear. Um, just last night I thought I inadvertently killed my best friend's husband (and my husband's best friend), but then I was relieved to find out he was still alive... and then someone else killed him. :\

In the same dream, Sprint or some long distance provider called and asked to talk to my husband and I said he wasn't there. Then they asked if I wanted to switch, and even when I said no they kept pushing, and so I said "I'm not going to say "Yes I will switch."" and then they said thank you and hung up, and I got a bill for switching like two seconds later. I felt bad this morning. :D

Um, there are more, but I shouldn't spam your lj. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Just to make sure: someone else in your dream killed your husband's best friend/best friend's husband? I mean, you sound awfully casual, but I just wanted to make sure.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Er, yeah, it was in my dream. Very few things that terrible actually happen to me in real life. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Whew.

I had dybbuks in my dream last night.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Ooo, creepy! What happened?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Bauxite mining. Soul sucking. The purchase of Hallmark cards. The overthrow of the Russian government.

You know, the usual.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

Ohh. *nodnod* That sounds exciting. Too bad this stuff doesn't make sense when you try to write a story out of it. :|

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Some images from my dreams make it to the page, but for the most part, yah, it would take a lot more work to impose sense on it all than it would to just start a new story.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

The only dream I've ever had that made it into a semi logical story ended up as SoV, and there are still dream bits I have to purge out of there because it's too dream like. :D

But yeah, usually much easier to just start a new story. :D

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I do math in my sleep. It started with the quadratic equation, but generally sticks with matrices and geometric proofs--sometimes trig. All high school level stuff, nothing to dance about. And I've never verified if any of this math is correct (sometimes I used to wake up and scribble it down, but not anymore), but even if it's not, I think it proves that my math phobia is entirely due to inhibition in my conscious mind.

A variation of this is that there's a mathematical formula that will let me fully wake up and get out of bed in the morning. For example, the alarm has to go off in a number divisible by three--then I can get out of bed. (When you hit the snooze as often as I do, this can be a bit of a challenge.) Occasionally my husband shakes me awake and asks if I'm actually planning to go to work, and when I'm half-awake, I can explain what was keeping me in bed, but later, I just wonder what the hell was going on... I haven't done this since November, and I think it's very, very strange.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One of the very, very few times I remember hitting the snooze button (I HATE the snooze button for it is EVIL), I was dreaming that all the spirals in the universe had come undone while I was sleeping, and I needed to give them the extra ten minutes to get themselves curled back up. Spiral galaxies, DNA, the staircase at Chambord...all of it, straightened out and non-spiral. It would have been very scary, so I'm glad I hit the snooze.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

You are good and mighty for keeping the world together. Thank you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hey, one does what one can.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I do translations in my sleep. Far better than when I'm awake. When I wake from those dreams, I always wonder: Was I actually doing brilliant translating, or was that just the dream-reality of it? Very "man dreaming he was a butterfly, or butterfly dreaming he was a man."

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Just this morning, I dreamed that the alarm had gone off already, and I had hit snooze several times, turned the alarm off, and fell back to sleep. So I woke up, cursing and rushing around, at 6:07 (the alarm doesn't actually go off until 6:20). And yet, in my not-yet-fully-awake mind, it was worth it to try to go back to sleep for 13 minutes (plus ten for an extra actual snooze-button-pressing).

My fiancee had a dream where we got in a fight, and she woke up mad at me. She had to keep reminding herself all day that there was no actual fight.