To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

My mom quit smoking when I was really little. Years and years and years later, I remember her saying that sometimes she still dreamt about having a cigarette and could still taste it.

I'm a big snooze-alarm person, letting the buzzer go off every eight minutes for damn near an hour (I can only snooze for an hour before the alam shuts itself off; I know this from experience). While I appreciate the extra sleep time, one of the other things I appreciate is the mini dreams I have during these eight-minute segments.

During the actual course of the night, I'm sure I dream, but I'm so damn tired and so very deeply asleep, that I rarely remember anything about them. In the morning, however, I'm not so deeply under and I can have wild, vivid, fun, scary mini-movies. Sometimes I have three or four of them; sometimes they bleed into each other with barely visible threads.

This morning, I had an incredibly vivid dream about a beehive-shaped pastry. It was crunchy on the outside, like an overdone croissant, and it had a chocolate icing drizzled over the top. When I started eating it, bottom to top, I discovered it had a cinnamon swirl in it. I can still, 25 hours later, taste every single bite of it, feel it on my tongue, the weight of it in my stomach. It was buttery, and cinnamony and chocolately and just the right texture of melt-in-my-mouth and there's-enough-to-chew to satisfy every pastry desire I could ever have.

Yes, I indulge in the actual thing, but not as often as I used to pre-diabetes. Perhaps this dream was a gift from my subconscious, allowing me to have this delicious, carb-free ambrosia. Perhaps the universe is looking out for me. Maybe a dreamweaver living on another plane sent me this dream gift.

Then again... I should probably also mention that the dream included a slam contest with Keanu Reeves ("Well, you're like a bad toaster: burned out, smoky and way too crispy."), a girl covered in snot who was sleeping next to my husband on an old couch, and a transparent piece of paper I had to sign with my room number, which I could only remember ended in a "b."

As always, more to come (but no more Keanu; I really have no idea why he's in here)...