Happy Out Of It Day!

Somedays you can just tell from the second you wake up exactly how it's going to be.

I had garbled yet interesting dreams all morning, but I was completely out. I was totally convinced I was this character in a Jane Austen novel that I hadn't read yet (which is funny, because I've read all of them). There was all the typical 1800s England countryside balls and courting and dresses and bonnets and whatnot, plus some weird creepy stuff, like my teeth mostly falling out (again- see Creepy Teeth). I was on this date with this gentleman who I was trying to impress when I ate something sweet and my teeth started falling out. We were outside and it was dark, so I was trying to sneak them into my hand and then hide them behind a bush, without looking suspicious. Apparently I was staying at his house and had a frilly-looking suitcase in the guest room and everything.

But anyway, when I did wake up it was almost ten (like an hour late for me) and I was super spaced-out. I had class at 1 and so had to rearrange my morning routine so that I could eat breakfast and be hungry for lunch, which just further confused my already only half-present self. My dog gave me trouble because he can tell when I'm in permenant zone-out mode, which just made me kind of bitchy towards him. One of the achievements of the morning happened when I was sitting in a chair and my foot fell very, very asleep and I didn't even notice for awhile even though it was kind of painful and tingling like crazy. My brain was busy wandering down all sorts of great doomsday scenarios. That also made driving to class fun- my mind's eye was full of graphic car wrecks in which I was pretty sure I was going to die. And then I had a total braindead moment when I got my blinkers mixed up- I couldn't remember which direction was up or down on the lever. Which, in all my years of driving, has never once happened to me. Usually when my brain forgets my hand still knows, but not today.

Once I got to class it wasn't so bad a day for awhile. I got to show off my totally awesome project which everyone really liked. And I got to see everyone else's cool projects, too. By the end I was barely hanging on though. I lost all ability to keep thoughts from just leaking right out of my ears, to the point where I could hardly talk coherently. Then I had to drive home, and I didn't even have the energy to sing along to my cds. It took all I had left to get home safely, and then I almost fell out of my car when I opened the door. I promise I'm not exaggerating, lol. And then I knew my dog would need to do something, so I put him on the treadmill while I took a nap. Even after a nap I was barely making it. I made instant food for dinner and spent the rest of the day on the couch, not moving.

Even now I'm not feeling particularly coherent. And I have a feeling I'm not going to remember any of this tomorrow. But that's why I have a blog, right? Actually it's a really useful thing to do if your memory sucks. And it's hilarious because I end up rereading entries a week later and being really interested because I don't remember what happened next, haha.

Okay, enough typing for now. Before I fall over and crash this thing.

High School Reunion Fairy Tale

Last night I had a lot of very strange dreams that were sort of connected together. At one point I had gone to meet up with a few high school friends at this museum. I feel like it started out a science museum or something and turned into sort of a grown-up version of a Discovery Zone, you know, one of those kid's party places with the great big play area and the games that give you tickets and stuff. Only the games were made to appeal to adults, you could win actual money, and instead of a playplace there were things like a zip line, an obstacle course and a rock climbing wall. It looked interesting but I was really tired. Fortunately we couldn't go in until everyone got there, and for awhile we were waiting. The friend I was waiting with was getting bored and annoyed, and I was trying to keep her from getting too frustrated. Meanwhile I was looking out these big glass windows into the parking lot, which started to look like a high school parking lot- all these high school kids, including cheerleaders in uniform, kept getting on or off buses, and it was really busy and parents in cars kept driving up to pick kids up. After awhile it quieted down until there were just a few kids left waiting. Suddenly they all started to droop, like they were falling asleep sitting there. It was actually kind of eerie, like they were almost melting. Then the rest of our high school friends showed up and we started exchanging news and interrogating each other on our love lives, which is pretty much what happens when we see each other in real life. I was really happy to see all of them, and seriously everyone I was close to in high school and middle school- plus an elementary school friend, even- was there. I remember one particular line when one of my friends was saying how she had no luck at all in the romance department and was pretty sure there wasn't much hope for the future, and I high-fived her and was like, me too! Woohoo! And we started laughing about it. When I eventually woke up that part really amused me. Anyway, after that it turned into this play we were apparently doing, in which I was this princess who wanted to run away and learn how to wield a sword, only before I could escape I got married off to this prince guy who was actually pretty nice even though I'd never met him before and wasn't particularly interested in him. We ended up at this dance thing, and then suddenly it morphed into this other thing in which I was pretending to be a dog (more specifically, my dog, lol) and I was crawling around on all fours chasing after balls and squeaking them. The room I was in was decorated with lots of Christmas trees for some reason, and holiday stuff. And there was another person there who was also pretending to be a dog, and it turned out we were actually fooling this king and queen and if they found out that we weren't actually dogs we would get in big trouble. And then I reached out with my hand to grab a toy instead of using my mouth, and they figured it out and I had to run and hide under furniture. It was approaching scary when I woke up.

I blame the mediocre fantasy novels I've been reading lately, lol. And my high school friends because they aren't here to defend themselves. And of course the furball currently snoozing on my floor.

More Like Me

Well, it's been about three weeks since I lowered my dose down slightly. As expected it's been quite the rollercoaster, and I've had many lows the past few weeks that left me feeling really discouraged. I've had the occasional day where I was glued to the couch because I was too tired and spacey to do anything, and some days where I was anxious. Plus several strings of nights of really bad sleep- full of nightmares or just lots of tossing and turning. But the last few days I've actually been feeling pretty good, for me at least. The high dose side effects are gone- I'm not anxious and my appetite is back in full force- and I've actually had the energy required to accomplish things when I want to. But I think the best thing about how I'm feelng right now is that I feel much more like myself again. On the higher dose I was stiff, awkward, nervous. And I had more energy but had trouble relaxing or even enjoying things without being too stressed out. Then during my lows the past few weeks I've been too tired to do anything and unable to focus. The past few days have felt so good because I can relax when I want to and focus if I need to, and I feel much more in control of my life again.

It's funny because the higher dose had me more mentally grounded in reality- I spent more brain power on my senses and practical thinking and less on imagining things and making stuff up. But I really think my natural state is when I'm off on some crazy mental tangent, imagining up creatures and worlds or bending this one around for fun. I think I feel more like myself again because my mind is back at its occasional vivid wandering, and my imagination has been much more active. And I'm glad, because my imagination is by far my favorite trait- plus I think that's what is going to get me a job someday, if anything can.

But I'm not going to worry about that for now because I'm in the middle of a lot of really fun projects for classes. And I'm somehow managing to get it all done and to do a good job, and even enjoy it. So I'm definitely happy about where I am right now. Here's to hoping the feeling stays around.

Crime Boss Double-Cross

Last night was pretty fun and very random. It started off with me as this henchman (a slightly flabby young man, complete with stubble and dark curly hair lol) who was a low-ranking gangster in this plot to steal- actually I'm not sure what it was. It was in a burlap sack and was pretty heavy though. Which of course made plenty of sense at the time. Anyway, so I was supposed to pick this sack up from this other henchman guy and then deliver it to my boss, who was this high-up crime lord type. But I decided to pull a fast one and steal it from the person who I was supposed to pick it up from, and then run off with it myself. And to my surprise I managed to pull it off, at least at first. I grabbed it and ran down a dirt road with this guy in hot pursuit, but I was going fast enough to get away. But I knew better than to let my guard down. I took it into a high school to hide in the crowd of teenagers, and quickly realized I was being followed by about three different other gangsters. So I kept cutting down back hallways, always narrowly escaping.

I made it to this parking garage where I apparently had this really awesome car waiting- it was a sleek black sportscar. I met up with one or two accomplices and we hid the sack under the back seat. Then we started to drive out of the parking garage, only to find out that there were policemen searching cars at the exit. So I took a move straight out of Knight Rider and turbo-boosted my way over the concrete wall on the third level, landed on a side street, then drove off before anyone saw me.

But my success was short-lived, because as soon as me and my accomplices got to an office building and ran inside to hide with the loot, we were followed by none other than my crime lord boss himself, plus henchmen. We ran up to the top floor and had to hide really fast- I dove under a table. And then they tore the room apart and found us. Seriously, the furniture was totally destroyed. It should have been scary, but instead I was just amused that I'd managed to hold them off for the whole dream.

Today was really good actually. I got a lot done on my project, way more than I had expected to, and it was great because I did it without caffeine or any more energy than usual. I'm just getting good enough at using Flash that I can actually do a lot in an hour or two. This is really encouraging and makes me feel better about life. I think I will actually get this project finished on time, and with most of the things I wanted to put in it, despite feeling like crap. Take that, Life!

Crazy Night

Last night was intense. Wow. I remember several dreams pretty clearly, but I don't remember what order they came in and I'm pretty sure there was other stuff in between them.

In one dream I was playing a video game that was set up kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure. My character was a soldier who was going through this big camp of tents looking for evidence of a crime. There was this whole mystery going on with missing people. I had to click on stuff to search it in these really messy rooms where I figured the culprit was hiding evidence. At one point I was in this bedroom and I kept finding bodies. There was a dead woman under laundry in a laundry basket, wrapped in a thin sheet with blood on it. It was really creepy and I had to remind myself it was just a video game I was playing. After searching that room I went to talk to the suspects to see if I could figure out what was really going on. It turned out to be at a teen summer camp, and I was having trouble figuring out who to even suspect. At that point I was actually at the camp as myself and it wasn't a video game anymore. Eventually I started to realize that it was the small group of people I had befriended that was responsible for the crimes.

In another dream I was on a boat sailing down a wide river- I think it must have been a cruise or something, because I was supposed to be there just enjoying the ride. There were a lot of other people on the boat too, but they were kind of annoying so I ended up staying by myself in my room a lot. It looked a lot like my real, current bedroom, and it even had the same carpet and looked like it should be in a house, not a boat, which I thought was kind of weird at the time.

Soon it got dark and it was time to go to bed, but I was having trouble going to sleep. I started hearing people talking, and seeing people walking around my room. I realized the boat was haunted. I started to get pretty scared as one ghost came over and started yelling at me. He was this heavy-set teenage boy who had another ghost that was somehow attached to him, only I couldn't see any details on her- she was just a silhouetted shadow, which was really creepy. The boy ghost was mad at me because he could read my mind and tell that I didn't believe in ghosts. He started shaking me and I was so afraid I couldn't move at all to get away. I kept trying to wake up because in my dream I figured I had fallen asleep and was hallucinating and needed to move so that I would stop seeing things. More ghosts came and had body parts falling off of them, or they were so thin they looked like skeletons. They were everywhere and I started to wonder if they were actually real. I tried to scream but nothing came out, even though my mouth gaped unnaturally wide. And then suddenly I jerked awake, heart pounding. I was back in my real room. I'm still not sure if I was hallucinating in my real room or inside my dream, because when I woke up I wasn't flat on my back and during the hallucination the room looked different, but on the other hand I really felt like I couldn't move and was fighting to wake up.

As you might imagine, I left my light on after that. I wanted to read a little to make sure that the dream didn't start again, but holding my eyelids open was a losing battle. At that point I was back on the boat, but this time it was all happy and colorful and I was looking at the dock we were headed for. Several of my characters were there with me, and instead of a boat it morphed into this really cool old house. It was kind of Victorian in its historical-looking wallpaper and furniture and so forth. It turned into me and one of my characters exploring and looking at all the furniture and shiny things. I don't remember much of that dream except that it was really fun.

Despite all the elaborate dreaming, I slept late and feel more refreshed than usual this morning. It might have to do with how exhausting yesterday was. I did a lot of socializing and even worked on my homework a little. I'm going to try to take it easy today.

The Downhill Slide

Lately there's been so much going through my head that it's been difficult to sort out. The basic summary is that, at the moment, I'm feeling really overwhelmed by life. For one thing, the quarter is really gearing up right now and I have three difficult projects on my mind. I have several weeks of classes left, but I'm still really worried about getting it all done. Knowing me I'll manage it despite everything and even get really good grades. But this quarter has been harder than any before it even though I'm taking three classes instead of four.

I'm not sure exactly what's up, but it scares me a little. I'm more tired than I've been in a long time. I keep cutting back- doing less, being really careful about how much energy I use up. It has helped a lot, especially my new strategy for walking my dog. But no matter what I do I still seem to end up struggling with what I have left. I'm staying home so much more, taking more naps, but I'm still not sleeping well. It's gotten difficult to sit through my three hour classes. It wears me out so bad that I worry about driving home. I've been leaning more on caffeine than I would like, but it's the only thing that gets me through some days.

I'm also stressed out about possibly needing surgery on my sinuses. The prospect of having something else to deal with is not appealing. I'm also not sure if it's necessary, and at this point I'm kind of wishing I had picked my own ENT instead of letting my mom set me up with a surgeon. On the other hand, surgery may actually fix my problem instead of just postponing it like all of those horsepill antibiotics I've been taking for years. But I also wonder if it's not my inner-nose anatomy so much as my screwed up immune system to blame. I'm not going back to consult with the ENT until two weeks from Monday, but I'm taking both parents because I want actual brains there asking the relevant questions. I figure between the three of us there'll at least be about a brain and a half actually present.

And along with the stress and the classes and the driving and the doctors, I've been thinking a lot about my future. Saying that I'm worried would be a pretty big understatement. If I can barely do what I'm doing right now, and it's a fight that I have to fight every day tooth and nail to not outright lose, I'm really not sure how I'm going to handle employment. I'm being forced to digest options that do not appeal to me, like being financially dependent on other people for the rest of my life. Like not moving out of my parent's house for multiple more years. As I'm feeling worse right now it's difficult to say whether or not a part-time job is realistic, but even in slightly better times it has been more than I could handle.

Intellectually I know that it's not my fault. I know that I'm doing my best and that's all I can do even when it isn't quite enough. But part of me is ashamed that I had to drop down to three classes instead of four, and it hurts my pride that I need to look realistically at the idea I may not be able to work enough to support myself. I think in our culture these things are really important- the difference between success and failure, and if you aren't making it it means you just aren't working hard enough. But I know that I don't want my life to be the rat race, and that even if I did there's no way I could sustain it. So I'm trying not to let it upset me. Good luck with that, girl.

Car Drama

Last night I had moved back to Minnesota to live near my college again. I feel like it had something to do with getting a job. I had found a new apartment to live in and I had my (real-life) car with me. I was living with a couple of people who I didn't know very well and I was a little worried about some things. For one, our bathroom wasn't working at all- the plumbing was all screwed up. So me and my new housemates had to go to this other apartment that was across town if we wanted to shower or use the bathroom. That apartment had a lot of people- seriously, like ten of them- living in it already, so it was really hard to move around and get into the bathroom in the first place. Another hassle was that I kept having issues driving back and forth. Mostly I was just having trouble judging distances between my car and others, which is a problem I have sometimes in real life. At one point I was trying to back out around this car that had pulled into the apartment's small driveway behind me, and I kept almost bumping into it even when I thought I had room. And then I kept getting detoured around construction sites and getting lost and running into traffic. It was very frustrating and I kept having to figure out where to park places.

It's not surprising that I would dream about driving issues since it's something I worry about every day. I've hated driving since the first day of driver's ed, and for good reason. For one thing, as I mentioned before, my depth perception is off- I rarely get a really 3D sense of what's where in the world around me. This makes driving pretty frightening because I can't tell exactly how much space is between my car and anything else. That said, I'm pretty good at guessing because I've had so much practice, but in the early learning days it was terrifying. It also made parking hard to master.

It doesn't help that I live in a traffic and comstruction-ridden city that's filled with crazy, cell phone-talking drivers who cut you off and almost hit you at every possible opportunity. I've had days where I've almost gotten hit three times in the space of three blocks. The construction goes on year-round and major roads can be closed for multiple years at a time. It's awful and dangerous even for the drivers who aren't constantly fighting the urge to sleep.

Driving is also one of the most exhausting activities for me. I'm afraid of getting in an accident, and the fear makes me concentrate much harder on driving than I do on, say, walking my dog, because I know that I can be zoned out while walking my dog and not die. But concentrating hard enough to be able to respond to sudden events when you're going 35 miles per hour is very difficult and tiring. My brain is constantly trying to pull me into sleep mode, or at least zoned out mode, and it takes so much effort to stay focused on my surroundings instead. Because it wears me out so fast I can't do it for very long, especially on the highway where I have to be doubly alert. And it really isn't fun being afraid of losing focus when the stakes are so high.

Ironically, because I'm forced to be careful and concentrate so hard I'm probably one of the safest drivers out there. I've been driving for about seven years now and have never had an accident, not even a minor bump. I never talk on my phone or text while driving because I know that I couldn't get away with it, unlike most people. I'm actually glad that I'm forced to be so cautious because it keeps me safe. And as much as I hate driving, it's too convenient to risk losing the privilege.

It's a Mystery

Today I only really had one thing to do, which was to work as much as possible on my project for Friday. I ended up spending about two hours on it, split up throughout the day. Even though I'm impressed with how much I managed to get done on it in that short a time, I wish I'd been able to do more. I have a lot of really great ideas for it but I'm just so rediculously tired today.

I'm trying to figure out what's going on exactly. I haven't eaten anything new or adventurous lately. I've been really careful not to overextend myself with my homework this week. I did have caffeine yesterday, which helped a lot then but might be part of my crashing today. And my sinuses have been getting suspiciously gunky, which never bodes well. I really, really hope that it's not another sinus infection. I've made it to week seven of this 11 week quarter and I'm going to get really mad if I can't get all the way through it without getting sick and falling behind in my classes again.

It might also be the earrings. I'm not quite used to them and it actually might be effecting my sleep more than I want to admit. I definitely haven't been sleeping well this week, but it might also just be the lowered dose settling in.

Basically I don't know what did this to me today, but I spent most of it too tired to do anything but watch tv. And then my dad came home with his not-exactly-accidental comments about how watching tv is a waste of time. Well, if I had the energy to do something else I would. Especially since there's nothing I actually want to watch on most of the time, and I have a great project that I'm really excited about to work on. If, you know, I could work on it for more than 30 minutes at a time without getting so exhausted that I find myself staring blankly at the screen, trying not to dose off.

Yeah. Class tomorrow is not going to go well.

Needle Scare

Tonight I feel like I've been run over by a freight train. So we'll see how coherent this turns out.

Looking back on it, it wasn't that busy a day. Stressful maybe, but not busy. I didn't do all that much really. But it does go to show how easily I can get screwed by a not so great night's sleep.

The dream started out pretty cool, actually. I was in Japan with my mom, and we went to this shrine where there was a festival going on. We had fun looking at all the nice crafty stuff people were selling, and it looked pretty authentically shrine festival-y except for the absence of lots of sketchy food. I can't really blame my brain for leaving that bit out. We were looking at the jewelry, especially the earrings, and a Japanese woman came up and started talking to me in Japanese, which I managed to keep up with pretty well. She was asking all the typical questions, like how long were we there for, did we come for business or sightseeing, etc etc. The woman talked to my mom in English a little bit though it was difficult for her. Then we parted ways, but apparently we kept seeing the same woman every time we went to the festival (which was three times at least, during the week or two we were there). We did other things around Tokyo but always came back. Then it was our last day there and we talked to the woman for awhile again. And when she left I was sad because she had been really nice and I knew we were about to leave. Then I turned and started looking at books, and ended up picking one up and starting to read it. At that point my dream took a nosedive into extreme creepiness as I read this super-disturbing book that I will spare you the details of, and then I was in the main character's head and things got so scary that I ended up waking up paralyzed, nauseated, staring at my bookshelf and thinking it was someone coming to get me. I slowly realized where I was and it took so much effort to drag my mind away from that horrible dream. I spent awhile fighting to keep my eyelids open. Eventually I gave up and just turned my light on and went back to sleep.

I don't remember dreaming after that, but I woke up earlier than usual and feeling like total crap. I didn't accomplish much this morning. One reason was that I spent most of breakfast having a panic attack, my first one in a long time. I had a pretty good reason though. I had my CT scan today, and was dreading them injecting me with the contrast.

I've mentioned before that I have a pretty bad needle phobia. If you come near me with one, I will cry histerically for awhile. And I was already overloaded from yesterday, when I was at the mall and decided I was going to take the plunge and get my ears pierced. I had decided recently that that would be the first step in any attempt to conquer my needle phobia, since I really like earrings and being able to wear them would be a good reward for being brave and putting up with that same sharp pain that I'm pretty sure is the root of my fear.

Overall I'm glad I did it. It hurt like hell and was really scary, and if my mom hadn't been there I seriously would have fled at the last minute. I'm still not over it though. Besides the pain association, I hate the feeling of having the needle under my skin. And I'm discovering that that same feeling, minus the pain, is what it feels like to have earrings going through my ears. I think feeling that continuously for at least six weeks will be good for me in the long run, because once I'm used to it I may not mind needles as much. But this morning it just added to my growing panic about the scan.

Once the panic attack had run its course I was too exhausted to do much. I talked to friends and then ate lunch, and then it was time to head out.

I got there really early, and then was super nervous and anxious about the needles for the half hour plus that I was sitting in the waiting room. I just wanted to get up and leave. I realized later I really should have brought someone with me. Finally I got called in.

And found out that because I had alerted them to my propensity to be allergic to stuff, they didn't need to inject me with anything. I was actually kind of annoyed, lol, because I had gone through so much. But it was a relief. And it was pretty cool. The machine was massive, and there was stuff inside it spinning around and making wooshing noises. The lady who did my scan was very nice. So it worked out.

Now I have films with cool and creepy pictures of stuff inside my head. You can see bits of my skull and stuff. Awesome!

I spent the rest of my day on the couch, completely worn out. My dad came home and took me to dinner and then grocery shopping. I took a nap as soon as we got back, and I've been on my way out since. I exercised my dog on the treadmill while trying really hard not to nod off while sitting up in a chair. It's not even my bedtime yet and I'm ready to crash.

Dreamscape Roommate Roadtrip

Last night I apparently knew I was in a dream. I used to do that a lot before medication, but it's been awhile. I decided to take my two college roommates with me into a really cool world that I used to go to a lot. It's a beautiful, mostly wild hilly place, with a river running through it with steep banks, lots of forest and even some prairie. There are houses tucked away in places and a road that winds around through it, with smaller dirt roads that go into the woods. It has magnificent sunsets and you can see a ton of stars at night. I've been there many times, and even though there have been several different incarnations of it in specific dreams the map (which I always have with me) stays mostly the same. I've had a lot of fun exploring there in the past, and figured it was the kind of place my roommates would like (which they would, lol). So we started driving around, trying to find the little dirt roads that led to the more scenic views where we could sit and look or hike around. It was a beautiful, sunny, cool and dry day.

Of course Narcolepsy had other ideas for the dream, and it wasn't long before it started trying to take back control. So the map ended up wrong, and we got lost. I got annoyed because I knew my brain was trying to turn it creepy on us. We saw a couple of houses tucked back in the woods and decided to go ask for directions. As we got out of the car, a couple of older men approached us and started talking to us. Even though they were being a little bit creepy we weren't worried- I knew I was still in control of the dream, and besides that, one of my roommates knows karate so I figured we were safe. I went into the trees to look around while my roommates got directions, but suddenly it got dark fast. It turned into night unnaturally quickly and I knew the dream was trying even harder to revolt. Even though I was now alone in the woods with one of the creepy men (who turned out to have followed me), I still had enough control to prevent it from getting scary. I walked back to the car and we drove off.

One of my roommates was driving, so as she drove us back toward the river I concentrated really hard on changing it back into daytime. It was difficult but suddenly the sun began to rise, and we pulled over to get out and watch it.

If the dream went on after that, I don't remember. I think it probably turned into something light and mixed up and silly. It was cool that I could control it for awhile though.