Lucidity and Fuck Ass Crazy

Ok, it’s summer vacation, one of the major perks I enjoy as a public school employee. The pay may be crap, and the job is beyond stressful, but the summers? Oh, the summers rock! ROCK! \o/ (that’s web emoticon for, um, rock and roll. It’s supposed to look like someone with their arms in the air…)

Anyway, despite it being summer, it hasn’t been stress free, so one sleepless night I took what Tam and I refer to as “Stinky Ogre Feet” pills. They’re a mix of melatonin and valerian. Valerian smells REALLY bad. It’s so bad, I gag when I take it, but it helps me sleep really well. In fact, I sleep really, REALLY well, and the only problem with that is such a deep sleep makes my brain get all stupid so it shuts off the safety feature, and the lucid dreams begin.

I believe it was while in a melatonin/valerian sleep that I dreamed of Star Trek TNG’s very own Jean Luc Picard as a flamboyantly gay Locutus of Borg wearing a quilted pink Nehru jacket with matching pants and booties (one of which he stomped in frustration).

Very lucid. Very bizarre.

Enter my most recent bout of lucid dreaming.

In my dream, someone decided to put on a concert in the street in front of my house. I don’t recall hearing the music, so I figured the venue was somewhere else, but the instruments (primarily the drums) found their way to my neighborhood. One of the roadies was busy showing off for some groupies by playing an irritating rhythm over and over: ba-dum-bum, ba-dum-bum, ba-dum-bum, really fast and really loud. It sounded like a diesel engine.

I found it to be extremely irritating and wished like hell it would stop, but it didn’t. I got up, went outside and began yelling at the idiot to pack it up and get the hell out of there, then I came back inside, mad as hell, and told Tam all about it. Things get a bit tangled at that point and the dream shifted when the lead singer strolled through the thick of things. I don’t recall much of my dreams after that.

Later that morning, I mentioned my dream to Tam and she gave me a funny look.
“Um,” she said, “there were emergency vehicles across the street really early this morning.”
“No, it was a concert in my dream.”
“No, there really were emergency vehicles across the street. One of them was a huge tow truck with its engine idling for ages and you got up, stomped around, went outside, came back in and slammed the door.”
“I went outside?”
“Yes, then you ranted about something, said you had to go pee and stomped down the hall again.”
“Oh, god. Please tell me I was dressed when I went outside.”
“Yes, actually you remembered to put on your house dress before leaving the bedroom to yell at the two police officers, the tow truck driver, and anyone else who happened to be out there at five this morning.”

Not even two days later, the emergency vehicles again paid our neck of the woods a visit. We were more than a little alarmed to look out the window to see a fire truck (a BIG one) on the side street. Being the nosy old gal that I am, I headed out to see what the hell was going on. No one seemed to know, but I was nearly run over by a police officer charging his way (on foot) through my yard.

“Is everything ok?” I asked.
“Evidently your neighbor’s house is on fire, so we’re here to check it out,” he said as he stepped around my son napping on the front lawn (uh, the back yard is fully shaded in the late afternoon making it too chilly to nap in the grass). I watched the ladder truck back up and relocate to the correct residence. Tam and I scooted over to the driveway and watched the excitement. Pretty soon the neighbor’s son’s girlfriend wandered over and, BOY WAS SHE PISSED! She’d been searing chicken for dinner when the backyard was overrun by police and fire personnel.

It seems the bat-shit crazy “neighbor” that lives behind us (and adjacent to my other neighbor’s backyard) called the fire department saying the place was on fire. I don’t know about you, but to me, burning houses rarely smell like barbequed chicken. Also, if my house was on fire, I sure as hell wouldn’t be standing around talking and laughing and waving cooking utensils or grilling my dinner, all of which were being done in clear view of the crazy neighbor (the same neighbor who sent the city after me for an untidy yard last summer).

Wanna come live in my neighborhood? We be whacko here!