man with two butts
10 Apr 2025 11:50 amTwo days ago I dreamed "man with two butts" was a massive old meme that was so oversaturated that when someone started to say it it was like 🙄 "...Yeah yeah, the man with two butts was there."
Two days ago I dreamed I was watching a late 1970s/early 1980s movie starring Angela Lansbury and Al Pacino about an organized-crime connected Showgirls-esque club.
The showgirls themselves were a mixture of women and drag queens, but they all had a shared dressing room with the top half of the walls covered in wig stands and the bottom half covered in shoe stands.
Al Pacino was running this club with another guy representative of various organized crime entities and they were hiring an emergency replacement for someone who had gone to jail, and Angela Lansbury was sent, looking very prim in a tweed suit, but backed by... some other organized crime interest I guess?
At first it looks like this isn't going to work, because how can someone so prim and proper (and wearing such a long skirt and such low heels) be - whatever job she's supposed to have, doorman? Hostess? Bartender? Idk - but Angela Lansbury was told to show up and she did and she is sure she can do whatever this job is, because she's nothing if not competent. Then there's a humorous scene with playful music where the girls transform Angela Lansbury into a sexier version of the secretary look she's got going on while they're also getting themselves dressed, putting on wigs and stockings and shoes (and drag queen padding and makeup for about half of them).
Then they have one night's business (and presumably some minor conflict with the Bad Organized Crime elements, elided) and after closing they're laughing and taking off makeup in the dressing room pointing around at the wig stands and talking about the ones on the wall and whose they are and what act they're for and then someone playfully asks Angela Lansbury to guess one, but they don't know that she realizes it's a challenge and does a masterful Sherlock Holmes style deduction that it's Al Pacino's. (Correctly.)
Tragically I woke up, but Angela Lansbury was obviously going to join them and help them kick out the other guy and the 'bad' organized crime connections, leaving, obviously, only the good organized crime, while having a playful sexual tension romance without the actual romance with Al Pacino.
Tragic that this isn't a real movie.
The showgirls themselves were a mixture of women and drag queens, but they all had a shared dressing room with the top half of the walls covered in wig stands and the bottom half covered in shoe stands.
Al Pacino was running this club with another guy representative of various organized crime entities and they were hiring an emergency replacement for someone who had gone to jail, and Angela Lansbury was sent, looking very prim in a tweed suit, but backed by... some other organized crime interest I guess?
At first it looks like this isn't going to work, because how can someone so prim and proper (and wearing such a long skirt and such low heels) be - whatever job she's supposed to have, doorman? Hostess? Bartender? Idk - but Angela Lansbury was told to show up and she did and she is sure she can do whatever this job is, because she's nothing if not competent. Then there's a humorous scene with playful music where the girls transform Angela Lansbury into a sexier version of the secretary look she's got going on while they're also getting themselves dressed, putting on wigs and stockings and shoes (and drag queen padding and makeup for about half of them).
Then they have one night's business (and presumably some minor conflict with the Bad Organized Crime elements, elided) and after closing they're laughing and taking off makeup in the dressing room pointing around at the wig stands and talking about the ones on the wall and whose they are and what act they're for and then someone playfully asks Angela Lansbury to guess one, but they don't know that she realizes it's a challenge and does a masterful Sherlock Holmes style deduction that it's Al Pacino's. (Correctly.)
Tragically I woke up, but Angela Lansbury was obviously going to join them and help them kick out the other guy and the 'bad' organized crime connections, leaving, obviously, only the good organized crime, while having a playful sexual tension romance without the actual romance with Al Pacino.
Tragic that this isn't a real movie.
Forgot to mention that in the same dream where I didn't know how old I was or how old my sister or parents were, at another point right before I woke up I heard my mom say, "Remember those people who ran out of food and fed the toddler a tricycle?"
I dreamt that my parents and sister and I were impromptu participating in some kind of walking marathon event or foot race that we saw in passing from a car, and there was a guy with a clipboard taking registration and he asked me how old we all were, and I said - exact quote! -
"These are our parents and they're the same age as each other. I must be, uh, maybe about forty five? And this is my sister. She's nine years younger than me so about thirty five."
I am actually forty two. My birthday was in December.
Tristana woke me up after that. I never even tried to tell the guy how old my parents are aside from this Alice-in-Wonderland-ass answer.
"These are our parents and they're the same age as each other. I must be, uh, maybe about forty five? And this is my sister. She's nine years younger than me so about thirty five."
I am actually forty two. My birthday was in December.
Tristana woke me up after that. I never even tried to tell the guy how old my parents are aside from this Alice-in-Wonderland-ass answer.
Earlier this week I dreamed that Turku had a second, cooler castle near downtown. In the dream I suddenly remembered that I would like to go there again. There was a big courtyard café with a radiotelemetry dish above it, and an indoor playground for children with miniaturized versions of bits of the castle, and a large gift shop practically overflowing with stacked displays of plushy castles.
Seeing them, I immediately remembered that I had been seeing them everywhere around town recently, and said "Oh, this is where people are getting them!"
They didn't look like the castle we were in - which was rectangular, made of yellow stone or brick - and they didn't look like the real Turku Castle, which is plastered white on the outside and sprawling. Instead they were dark gray cylindrical towers with crenellated tops and little windows embroidered around them, about the size of a small cat.
I was thinking that I wanted one when I woke up, even though I didn't know what I'd do with it. And then as I did wake up, I thought excitedly that we should go there and was very sad to remember that it wasn't real.
Turku doesn't have any other castles, but the art museum is a national romantic art nouveau granite palace on a hill, built 1904. It isn't golden, it's pink; but parts of the dream setting were borrowed from it.
Seeing them, I immediately remembered that I had been seeing them everywhere around town recently, and said "Oh, this is where people are getting them!"
They didn't look like the castle we were in - which was rectangular, made of yellow stone or brick - and they didn't look like the real Turku Castle, which is plastered white on the outside and sprawling. Instead they were dark gray cylindrical towers with crenellated tops and little windows embroidered around them, about the size of a small cat.
I was thinking that I wanted one when I woke up, even though I didn't know what I'd do with it. And then as I did wake up, I thought excitedly that we should go there and was very sad to remember that it wasn't real.
Turku doesn't have any other castles, but the art museum is a national romantic art nouveau granite palace on a hill, built 1904. It isn't golden, it's pink; but parts of the dream setting were borrowed from it.
Last night I dreamed that Wax's mom had rented a share of a summer cottage in Hawaii because that was where everyone was getting them now because they were cheap there, for her summer vacation, and she took us there, but it turned out to be inside a mall and then she said to me, "They have your daughter here, you know."
I was like, "But I don't have a child! Wait, you mean they cloned me?"
Then she nodded really solemnly and said "Count Chocula does."
"The breakfast cereal?!" I was so confused for a second and then I realized it must be because of that spelling bee I won. (In reality, I've never entered a spelling bee. ) "Is Count Chocula just out in Hawaii cloning all the winners of that spelling bee?!"
and she was like "I guess so! They've got plenty of space!"
I was like, "But I don't have a child! Wait, you mean they cloned me?"
Then she nodded really solemnly and said "Count Chocula does."
"The breakfast cereal?!" I was so confused for a second and then I realized it must be because of that spelling bee I won. (In reality, I've never entered a spelling bee. ) "Is Count Chocula just out in Hawaii cloning all the winners of that spelling bee?!"
and she was like "I guess so! They've got plenty of space!"
First time I cried laughing the first time I tried to describe a dream to Wax the next day?
Last night I dreamed it had become really trendy to purchase burial plots in Alaska because climate change was going to make it so that was possibly the only 'safe' burial place by the time you die and people were buying them as like a vacation thing so my parents and sister and I and favorite aunt and uncle and their two daughters were taking a joint vacation (as we used to do once or twice per year when we were kids) for them to buy burial plots. ( Read more... )
Last night I dreamed it had become really trendy to purchase burial plots in Alaska because climate change was going to make it so that was possibly the only 'safe' burial place by the time you die and people were buying them as like a vacation thing so my parents and sister and I and favorite aunt and uncle and their two daughters were taking a joint vacation (as we used to do once or twice per year when we were kids) for them to buy burial plots. ( Read more... )
three great things
19 Apr 2022 10:54 pm- Good news! I had been checking the city's health portal for updates and the last one was in early March (something like, "we've received a small amount of this third vaccine..."), but today I decided to just check anyway by trying to book a time and there were some open slots for Moderna! So we'll both finally get our third shots on Friday (the first ones were all Pfizer).
- Even better news: in my desperation for something to read I recently reread that Avengers university AU where Tony Stark is an engineer and architect and Steve Rogers is a younger architect who wants to date him, and for some reason the story embedded an image of a sandwich that one of the characters texted to another one and the sandwich was a "caprese" of fresh mozzarella, tomato, basil, arugula and pesto on... it was probably ciabatta actually. Well, I instantly texted Wax that I needed to eat this sandwich so we bought a single beefsteak tomato and a single ball of lactose-free fresh mozz last night, along with a bag of breadrolls and some little potted basil and arugula. And we had them for dinner tonight, and oh wow, SOOOOO GOOD. Amazing that it's been so long since I've eaten this - why? I'm an adult, I can buy these things when I want!
- Not news, but it was funny: Saturday night before Easter I actually dreamt that my parents, sister, favorite aunt and uncle+cousins, and maternal (Catholic) grandma were visiting us in Turku for Easter (for some reason). We took them to a street fair (that doesn't exist) that was like an American county fair, except the parking lot was one GIANT ballpit full of cars, and somebody had hidden corpses wrapped up in sheets in among the balls, which I discovered like... by accident halfway through the dream, only then it ended up not being scary. I guess my subconscious changed its mind about switching genre to a murder mystery; instead my uncle came out to the parking lot to look for me, I said I was looking for a jacket, and we went back to ride a ferris wheel and buy cotton candy.
Then we all left to go to the Catholic church for Easter for the benefit of my grandma and favorite aunt, and since I don't actually know where the Catholic church is in Turku, we got lost a lot while my brain kept changing its mind about where it might be. But eventually it decided on a totally fictional Byzantine-looking basilica, having an Easter service even though it was nighttime by then, and the Easter service was in the form of a "traditional Easter pageant", but in the dream the traditional Easter pageant wasn't the story of Jesus's death and resurrection; it was a parade of children dressed as different animals carrying various types of plants and flowers, interspersed with children dressed as Jesus, the virgin Mary, the prophet Elijah (a character in Pesach who appears when the children leave the room to search for the afikomen, if you leave the door unlocked for him, and drinks the glass of wine left out for him), and various saints I didn't know. Each of the human characters had a couple of random lines to read. Everyone was satisfied with this Easter service. Then I woke up. This totally sounds like something a UU church would do, by the way, although it's not one ours (my childhood one) specifically has done.
SSRI-caused sleep talking
29 Jan 2022 11:06 pmI posted once before about the sleep effects of my curent high dose of Venlafaxin (name brand Effexor). In short, it initially caused me to wake up incredibly frequently and then I guess I got more used to the waking up and I now far more frequently
The latter thing happens to me frequently - in the post linked above I mention a time I dreamed that my mom told me it was called a "curly dream", although of course it's more like a nested dream or recursive dream (as opposed to recurring, but maybe this one is too confusing).
My theory is that I'm still sort of waking up for a microsecond, but going back to the dream I was dreaming and not remembering waking up; but the brief waking moment causes me to be aware I'm dreaming each time it happens. As I go further into whatever stage of sleep, though, I can forget again, and hence lose whatever control of the dream I might have had. None of that explains the sleep talk and the arms and legs though.
Wax often tells me something I said in my sleep. It's pretty hit or miss whether I remember what I was dreaming about - usually I don't remember the context of saying that, even if I do. Apparently last night I whispershouted "Fuck you! How dare you come into my house!" and I was dreaming a sort of Mike Flanagan type show where some newcomers to a cute little town found out everyone else in it, or everyone but their landlord actually, were cultists trying to open a hellmouth to get the whole town sucked into hell. (Understandable reaction, therefore.)
Anyway, it occurred to me this has been happening for quite a while and we should start saving them. So I made a tag. She says she can't remember any others right now, and neither can I.
- know I'm asleep;
- can control (or more like partially control) my dreams;
- talk in my sleep;
- wave my arms or legs around in my sleep; and
- dream I've woken up and then realize I'm still dreaming one or more times.
The latter thing happens to me frequently - in the post linked above I mention a time I dreamed that my mom told me it was called a "curly dream", although of course it's more like a nested dream or recursive dream (as opposed to recurring, but maybe this one is too confusing).
My theory is that I'm still sort of waking up for a microsecond, but going back to the dream I was dreaming and not remembering waking up; but the brief waking moment causes me to be aware I'm dreaming each time it happens. As I go further into whatever stage of sleep, though, I can forget again, and hence lose whatever control of the dream I might have had. None of that explains the sleep talk and the arms and legs though.
Wax often tells me something I said in my sleep. It's pretty hit or miss whether I remember what I was dreaming about - usually I don't remember the context of saying that, even if I do. Apparently last night I whispershouted "Fuck you! How dare you come into my house!" and I was dreaming a sort of Mike Flanagan type show where some newcomers to a cute little town found out everyone else in it, or everyone but their landlord actually, were cultists trying to open a hellmouth to get the whole town sucked into hell. (Understandable reaction, therefore.)
Anyway, it occurred to me this has been happening for quite a while and we should start saving them. So I made a tag. She says she can't remember any others right now, and neither can I.
I read about half of R. Austin Freeman's early Golden Age detective series about Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke, so that's ten or so, and as reviewers indicated, they get slightly less interesting and original with time so I saved the rest for later (I posted previously about this here with some favorite quotes and details about the setup). However, I've been reading some of the British Library Crime Classics series [complete list at Goodreads] (as mentioned here in my review of #1-10), and it includes several anthologies of short stories grouped by theme, so I've encountered several further short stories about Dr Thorndyke in the past few days.
Just to briefly sketch the setup for readers uninterested in the detailed run-down above, Freeman's sleuth is a gas-age precursor to CSI in Edwardian London, a distinguished gentleman who is a medical doctor and lawyer and spends his time doing consultant investigations for the courts using all kinds of (for the time) advanced scientific methods and knowledge. This Edwardian-CSI angle renders the mechanics/plot points of the books fairly fascinating, and a couple of the best known novels are truly worthy classics of the genre (most highly recommended: #1 The Red Thumb Mark and #3 The Eye of Osiris. - Both are in the public domain and easily available from, for example, Project Gutenberg Australia).
He's a kind and handsome paragon of a detective who is smarter than everybody in the story, a nerdy workaholic who delights in puzzles and conundrums, and an eternal bachelor with no interest in women. Possibly he was intended to be cerebrally ace, but when one looks at his cozy cohabitation with his polymath genius artificer lab assistant-manservant Polton, the impression is rather of a happily married courtly old queen who shares his calling with his partner. Polton is like the uncredited wife of the scientist or writer of this era (although in this case class and lack of formal qualifications and not gender account for his lack of credit - although since the books are written contemporaneously, of course the writer sees nothing wrong in this situation and neither do the characters).
In the stories, Polton is typically more of a background character, with the narrator of each story acting as a temporary sidekick to Thorndyke and visiting the crime scene and meeting the suspects with him and so on, plus providing a sounding board for Thorndyke's smug mysterious hints about how he secretly knows what happened already but he won't tell them because they could figure it out themselves if they had been paying attention. Polton does most of his work in the lab and hence offscreen: he appears only when the narrator visits it or sees Thorndyke at home. As a result, in spite of the appearance of their relationship, it never looks particularly romantic or slashy on the page (too est rel, no UST, etc).
However, last night I dreamt I was reading several pieces of fanfic in this pairing, and my reaction was like, "Of course, obviously." Then later in the dream I decided to write some, and I clearly remember Thorndyke and Polton sitting down to eat together up in the lab and Thorndyke broaching the subject - which in the dream I thought made perfect sense! - by saying "Correct me if I'm wrong, Polton, but I deduce that you, too, are an invert." Absolutely stellar beginning there. Very sad that I woke up before I got to find out what else dream me was going to write.
Just to briefly sketch the setup for readers uninterested in the detailed run-down above, Freeman's sleuth is a gas-age precursor to CSI in Edwardian London, a distinguished gentleman who is a medical doctor and lawyer and spends his time doing consultant investigations for the courts using all kinds of (for the time) advanced scientific methods and knowledge. This Edwardian-CSI angle renders the mechanics/plot points of the books fairly fascinating, and a couple of the best known novels are truly worthy classics of the genre (most highly recommended: #1 The Red Thumb Mark and #3 The Eye of Osiris. - Both are in the public domain and easily available from, for example, Project Gutenberg Australia).
He's a kind and handsome paragon of a detective who is smarter than everybody in the story, a nerdy workaholic who delights in puzzles and conundrums, and an eternal bachelor with no interest in women. Possibly he was intended to be cerebrally ace, but when one looks at his cozy cohabitation with his polymath genius artificer lab assistant-manservant Polton, the impression is rather of a happily married courtly old queen who shares his calling with his partner. Polton is like the uncredited wife of the scientist or writer of this era (although in this case class and lack of formal qualifications and not gender account for his lack of credit - although since the books are written contemporaneously, of course the writer sees nothing wrong in this situation and neither do the characters).
In the stories, Polton is typically more of a background character, with the narrator of each story acting as a temporary sidekick to Thorndyke and visiting the crime scene and meeting the suspects with him and so on, plus providing a sounding board for Thorndyke's smug mysterious hints about how he secretly knows what happened already but he won't tell them because they could figure it out themselves if they had been paying attention. Polton does most of his work in the lab and hence offscreen: he appears only when the narrator visits it or sees Thorndyke at home. As a result, in spite of the appearance of their relationship, it never looks particularly romantic or slashy on the page (too est rel, no UST, etc).
However, last night I dreamt I was reading several pieces of fanfic in this pairing, and my reaction was like, "Of course, obviously." Then later in the dream I decided to write some, and I clearly remember Thorndyke and Polton sitting down to eat together up in the lab and Thorndyke broaching the subject - which in the dream I thought made perfect sense! - by saying "Correct me if I'm wrong, Polton, but I deduce that you, too, are an invert." Absolutely stellar beginning there. Very sad that I woke up before I got to find out what else dream me was going to write.
Last night I had a dream that finally the BBC were making a new complete Sherlock Holmes adaptation set in the Victorian era and attempting to be loyal to the text - the first such since Granada! - and with modern budget and filming techniques...
...and I was SO EXCITED, and then I started watching them and the one change they had made was that they inexplicably added an extra sidekick character in some of the episodes (like a quarter) named Jimmy Carr and played by British comedian Jimmy Carr and essentially doing his normal comedian stuff but just... as if he'd been there in the Victorian era.
I was sort of like "Huh. Weird, but... okay. It's kind of fun." Except then it got to one episode which in my dream was a canon Holmes story I remembered (it wasn't really one though) and in that one they had taken out Watson, who was usually there, and replaced him with Jimmy Carr, and I was just thinking, "I have to look this up after I watch this, because something must have happened, like maybe the Watson actor was suddenly unavailable," only then my alarm went off to give the cat his insulin and I woke up.
*Because it makes canon more like itself to have it be more gay really, let's be honest, so you barely notice
...and I was SO EXCITED, and then I started watching them and the one change they had made was that they inexplicably added an extra sidekick character in some of the episodes (like a quarter) named Jimmy Carr and played by British comedian Jimmy Carr and essentially doing his normal comedian stuff but just... as if he'd been there in the Victorian era.
I was sort of like "Huh. Weird, but... okay. It's kind of fun." Except then it got to one episode which in my dream was a canon Holmes story I remembered (it wasn't really one though) and in that one they had taken out Watson, who was usually there, and replaced him with Jimmy Carr, and I was just thinking, "I have to look this up after I watch this, because something must have happened, like maybe the Watson actor was suddenly unavailable," only then my alarm went off to give the cat his insulin and I woke up.
*Because it makes canon more like itself to have it be more gay really, let's be honest, so you barely notice
A couple of weeks ago my parents mentioned some hometown gossip about people I knew growing up and since then I've had a few dreams where my childhood best friend showed up:
When my brain starts chewing over someone I've lost contact with (usually in a series of dreams), I start to wonder if I should make an effort to reach out to them, but I usually wind up at no since I'm the one who chose to delete Facebook in the first place and it's probably kind of weird, and not like I'm likely to succeed at keeping up the contact anyway (and in the case of my cousins, or my Japanese exchange student, they were even worse at email than I was). I'm pretty bad at these social contacts where you have to try to maintain a relationship with someone who isn't on the social media I use; even before I deleted Facebook I had too much aversion to it to make use of it properly (and also it's designed to prevent you from actually using it to keep up with people since it algorithmically censors out their posts), and I have too much email anxiety to keep up email exchanges consistently.
But maybe I should try with my childhood best friend again. I'm slightly better with inboxes now, if nothing else.
And also related to that last dream, I should rewatch The Brittas Empire. I've never seen another show handle that type of caper/farce so successfully in every episode.
- Discovering, along with my childhood best friend, that her parents had been immortal fae undercover from the future all along and had another, secret basement beyond their basement with a portal to the future office building where their past-spying agency was based, and then being forced to break the secrecy to get my favorite aunt and uncle's help to remove the time-travel artifacts when they were stranded in the future and someone was coming to demolish their house.
- A caper plot involving my (deceased) paternal grandfather the park ranger and nature/wildlife specialist, a bunch of lesbians on the way back from a pride parade, one of them coming out as trans and needing help dyeing her hair, my childhood best friend looking for a place to study for a quiz bowl competition but being harassed by a Straight White Boy, my two bunnies, and a giant Invisible Crab, a fictional and really annoying species of aggressive crustacean who are only occasionally visible from the corner of your eye, for an instant, and from certain angles, which makes them really hard to catch. (It's good that invisible crabs aren't a real thing, but they're also pretty cool: like ghost crabs if the transparent bits were actually invisible, only more the size of a rabbit.)
When my brain starts chewing over someone I've lost contact with (usually in a series of dreams), I start to wonder if I should make an effort to reach out to them, but I usually wind up at no since I'm the one who chose to delete Facebook in the first place and it's probably kind of weird, and not like I'm likely to succeed at keeping up the contact anyway (and in the case of my cousins, or my Japanese exchange student, they were even worse at email than I was). I'm pretty bad at these social contacts where you have to try to maintain a relationship with someone who isn't on the social media I use; even before I deleted Facebook I had too much aversion to it to make use of it properly (and also it's designed to prevent you from actually using it to keep up with people since it algorithmically censors out their posts), and I have too much email anxiety to keep up email exchanges consistently.
But maybe I should try with my childhood best friend again. I'm slightly better with inboxes now, if nothing else.
And also related to that last dream, I should rewatch The Brittas Empire. I've never seen another show handle that type of caper/farce so successfully in every episode.
Last night I dreamed that my wife left some kind of anxiety-ridden magical fandom convention turned team-building talent contest before me and I tried to follow her but I didn't know what bus to take and then realized I didn't know where we live, and then I realized I didn't have my phone so I couldn't call her and ask, so I just went to downtown Turku, where I met her brother, and he wanted to help but he didn't know where we live either. He wanted to call her, but couldn't because I couldn't remember her phone number. So I ended up walking, for some reason, which turned into rollerskating through the snow, and just tried to follow a route that looked familiar, and when I finally got home and my key worked, my wife wasn't sure she recognized me but was about halfway convinced in a nonsensical nightmarish argument, only then we both realized that according to genre rules the next logical thing to happen would definitely be that a sinister doppelganger of me would enter at any moment. I woke up while we were trying to figure out how one repels a sinister doppelganger attack.
*for a long time after the 2006 summer Vacation from Hell, it was vacation with my parents and my dad being imperiled thereby
*for a long time after the 2006 summer Vacation from Hell, it was vacation with my parents and my dad being imperiled thereby
that I was reading Dreamwidth and saw the username electricshoon and said to myself, Whose new username is that? And it was ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
torachan's wife's. I thought "Huh, I didn't know she liked medieval shoes, and why electric?" and then the cat poked me in the face and I woke up.
torachan's wife's. I thought "Huh, I didn't know she liked medieval shoes, and why electric?" and then the cat poked me in the face and I woke up.skeeball dream
11 Jan 2020 03:05 pmLast night I dreamed my wife and I were on a commuter train back to the city except it was one of those little amusement park trains such as on roller coasters, that have open-topped cars (but it still had like a hundred people on it), and on the way it went by an open-sided arcade space where Chris Evans was eagerly playing skeeball.
("I bet he's good at skeeball," sayswaxjism.)
It looked like so much fun that she insisted on getting off the train to play and I lost track of her and then we both had to walk back into town.
("I bet he's good at skeeball," says
waxjism.)It looked like so much fun that she insisted on getting off the train to play and I lost track of her and then we both had to walk back into town.
dreams: recurring characters
12 Apr 2019 12:28 pmI almost always remember my dreams when I wake up, ever since I started taking Venlafaxine really, but even more so in the last year or so since the dose went up.
And people I knew from childhood show up really frequently in my dreams - my extended family, most of whom I haven't seen in person for years, family friends and neighbors, and also my middle school friends and girl scout troop members (age ~12-18, which I guess also makes them middle school friends). Not only do I see comparatively little of my high school friends in dreams, whom I mostly didn't have contact with after age 20 or so - I very rarely see more recent acquaintances from my adult life.
My wife's extended family, who have pretty much functioned as my extended family for 15 years now, and her mother, are often referenced but they're usually offscreen. I've made plenty of friends and long-term acquaintances in my adult life... who have mostly not shown up in Dreamland. It's like my long-term memory filled up the cast a long time ago and lost the ability to create new characters????
I'll even dream about things obviously related to my daily life, like about one of the schools where I studied Finnish or one of the schools where I worked, but when I get to the workplace it will be a made-up place that doesn't exist in the real world and the people there will be equally fictional.
But any dream, no matter how unlikely, has decent odds of my parents and sister or my aunts, uncles, and cousins showing up. I guess it's a credit to my parents that all that extended family played such a significant role in my mental life even though they all lived 8, 11, or 14+ hours' drive away...
And people I knew from childhood show up really frequently in my dreams - my extended family, most of whom I haven't seen in person for years, family friends and neighbors, and also my middle school friends and girl scout troop members (age ~12-18, which I guess also makes them middle school friends). Not only do I see comparatively little of my high school friends in dreams, whom I mostly didn't have contact with after age 20 or so - I very rarely see more recent acquaintances from my adult life.
My wife's extended family, who have pretty much functioned as my extended family for 15 years now, and her mother, are often referenced but they're usually offscreen. I've made plenty of friends and long-term acquaintances in my adult life... who have mostly not shown up in Dreamland. It's like my long-term memory filled up the cast a long time ago and lost the ability to create new characters????
I'll even dream about things obviously related to my daily life, like about one of the schools where I studied Finnish or one of the schools where I worked, but when I get to the workplace it will be a made-up place that doesn't exist in the real world and the people there will be equally fictional.
But any dream, no matter how unlikely, has decent odds of my parents and sister or my aunts, uncles, and cousins showing up. I guess it's a credit to my parents that all that extended family played such a significant role in my mental life even though they all lived 8, 11, or 14+ hours' drive away...
I was dreaming I was with my parents in their kitchen and my favorite uncle had just said,
"What if he's wearing an uncooked egg breakfast toga?"
I replied, "What if we wait till he comes back in a COOKED egg breakfast toga?" and then Wax's alarm went off.
"What if he's wearing an uncooked egg breakfast toga?"
I replied, "What if we wait till he comes back in a COOKED egg breakfast toga?" and then Wax's alarm went off.
A lot of SSRIs affect sleep and dreams. The one I'm taking now is known for increasing waking time and time in sleep stage 1, suppressing REM (? though this was a sleep laboratory and they only tested for a short period, whereas in RL you tend to get used to a new dose after 6 weeks or so), and sometimes producing that involuntary leg movement thing.
When I was easing up to the current dose, I had trouble falling asleep and was annoyed by waking up frequently at the slightest disturbance, which accords with studies. I no longer am aware of waking up frequently, but since then I have frequently had
When I was easing up to the current dose, I had trouble falling asleep and was annoyed by waking up frequently at the slightest disturbance, which accords with studies. I no longer am aware of waking up frequently, but since then I have frequently had
- lucid dreams
- dreams where I can control things in the dream to some extent, not always remembering that I'm dreaming but frequently
- a lot of the time I'm repeatedly struggling to remember that I'm dreaming, and repeatedly remembering but forgetting in between and consequently losing some of my ability to influence the dream
- it's never effortless to control the dream, though. There's a lot of trying different things and seeing if they work.
( Read more... )
lol subconscoius
28 Apr 2018 05:33 pmI've had two different nightmares recently about having to move back to America where in the dream I was panicking, like, breaking down hysterically sobbing.
(Would be reasonable response, but there is zero risk of this actually happening. I assume my subconscious is exploring my belated application for Finnish citizenship.)
(Would be reasonable response, but there is zero risk of this actually happening. I assume my subconscious is exploring my belated application for Finnish citizenship.)
The night before last I had THREE different anxiety nightmares featuring waxjism!
Last night I had a different anxiety nightmare, of the "trying to take care of my sister" genre (based on memories from childhood when she was a smaller child and needed it) combined with the "trying to wrangle my parents in a new environment" genre (based on the Vacation from Hell). We were in the magical city where every city I've ever lived in is the same city and my sister & I and my friend Chi were meeting my parents for dinner at an outdoor café on Vappu, the Finnish Walpurgis eve celebration, only it was so crowded no vehicles could move downtown, the streets were thronged with raucous people, sort of a mix of Mardi Gras and a Venetian Carnivale scene from a sinister medieval fantasy movie, and after dinner my parents forgot they were supposed to give us a ride in their wheelchair van and disappeared, the rest of us got separated in the crowd, and I spent the rest of the dream walking back to my parents' house alone, narrowly escaping death multiple times, and for some reason freezing, wet, and barefoot, and the walk took all night.
waxjism!- I dreamed that Wax was having a Timothée Chalamet movie-watching party without me and didn't even ask if I would want to come (this isn't REALLY realistic but she did go to Jumanji a month ago without asking if I wanted to come with)
- I dreamed that she had started bleaching and dyeing her hair with the aid of some rando stranger without asking me to help (the stranger part not realistic, but she has frequently cut her own hair, resulting in weird hacked bits, because she was too lazy to ask for my help when I was just out in the next room. I usually ask her help in the finishing stage of trimming MY hair to make sure the bottom of the back is even)
- Least realistic of all, I woke up in an alternate universe where it was 2040. I stumbled blearily out into a strange kitchen to find out it was 20 years in the future, we didn't have any pets, but we had a CHILD (I was like "We - what?? Why??? - okay I'll deal with that later but first can we just get a cat? Two cats. And preferably like a couple of rabbits, or one rabbit, or it doesn't need to be a rabbit, a goat or a sheep or even a bird would be okay...") and worst of all, we were living in the US. In GEORGIA! ("America is bad enough, but WHY GEORGIA?" I said.) I was horrified and a little panicked. I put aside every other issue and said "CAN WE MOVE TO FINLAND RIGHT NOW? IS THERE ANY REASON WE CAN'T LIVE IN FINLAND? WE'LL WORRY ABOUT THE PETS LATER!"
Last night I had a different anxiety nightmare, of the "trying to take care of my sister" genre (based on memories from childhood when she was a smaller child and needed it) combined with the "trying to wrangle my parents in a new environment" genre (based on the Vacation from Hell). We were in the magical city where every city I've ever lived in is the same city and my sister & I and my friend Chi were meeting my parents for dinner at an outdoor café on Vappu, the Finnish Walpurgis eve celebration, only it was so crowded no vehicles could move downtown, the streets were thronged with raucous people, sort of a mix of Mardi Gras and a Venetian Carnivale scene from a sinister medieval fantasy movie, and after dinner my parents forgot they were supposed to give us a ride in their wheelchair van and disappeared, the rest of us got separated in the crowd, and I spent the rest of the dream walking back to my parents' house alone, narrowly escaping death multiple times, and for some reason freezing, wet, and barefoot, and the walk took all night.
