Trying to get away into the night

2004-09-05 - 9:37 p.m.

Last night I had dreams of things coming to get me in my sleep. Not spiders for once, but I'm not sure this was any better. Once it was something like a giant rake with razor-sharp tines dropping out of my ceiling to rake across my bed with me in it. I jumped out of bed just in the nick of time and grabbed my flashlight to survey the damage left in its wake. There was none, of course, but it took me an extraordinarily long time to figure out it was just a dream and crawl back into bed. I don't remember what was after me the second time, but again, it took me a while to come back to reality. And those are just the two times I remember. Is it possible there were more?

I've hated my bedroom door since the first time I layed eyes on it in my pre-teen years. When my parents suggested taking down my normal bedroom door and installing a sliding door in its stead, I only agreed because my idea of what a sliding door is didn't match my parents' idea. I thought they were going to put on a normal-looking wooden door that disappears inside the wall as it slides open. "Isn't that going to be a lot of work?" I asked, imagining the carpentry involved in creating such a thing. "No," they told me, "it'll be really easy." So I agreed. Until I saw my new door in a box. It was the height one might expect a box containing a door to be, but it was only about six inches wide by six inches deep. That was my first clue something was amiss. The door turned out to be a white plastic accordion-type door that opens and shuts on a little runner on the top of the doorframe and stays shut with the help of a little magnet. It's paper-thin and creates enough racket that it can be heard throughout the entire house whenever anyone so much as touches it, let alone actually opens or shuts it. The privacy it creates is minimal and the way it doesn't allow me to enter or leave my room without the whole household knowing about it drives me nuts.

When my mom put her hand on the handle of my closed door this morning as I slept, it made its usual clatter. This noise, I believe, combined with the dreams I'd been having all night, had me out of bed and on my feet before I was even awake. My mom yanked the door open to see me in the process of springing from the bed. As I saw her and realized that this wasn't a dream, but nor was I under attack, I changed my frightened fleeing motion into a cheerful "Tadaa!" gesture. She smiled at me and said, "That's the way I'd like to get out of bed. Get dressed now, we're going to Apple Hill for breakfast."

I was incredibly unrested. I really must not've gotten much sleep last night. When I'm tired, I tend to be a little grouchy.

There's only one thing my parents like to eat for breakfast at Apple Hill and that's apple fritters. And the little shop where they like to buy their fritters doesn't have any options besides fritters and donuts. After getting ready to go I said non-grumpily to my mom, "So much for a low-calorie weekend." This was my way of asking if we could go somewhere else for breakfast. It didn't work. "Hey, I didn't make you eat all that spaghetti last night." Ergh. So instead of making a scene, I ate the fritter.

By the time we got home my head was killing me and I could hardly keep my eyes open. I felt really rotten all day long. I skipped lunch but also did no exercise. Today was an entirely ambitiousless day in which I spent most of it waiting for it to be over. I did finish reading Life of Pi, though. And I started reading a little hardback book I bought at a yard sale up the street for twenty-five cents that looks like it's never even been opened called Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. I'm mostly reading it because this author has gotten quite a bit of praise and I've never read anything by her, plus it looks like a quick read and I'm expecting several bookring books in the mail very soon. I've read the first hundred pages and so far I'm bored stiff with it. Is that just a reflection of my disconsolate mood?

Please, no dreams tonight. Just sleep.