Nightmare: Dead dogs and talking cats

I haven't had a dream worth posting in a long time, but in the an-and-a-half more that I slept following M.'s leaving for class this morning I had a doozy.

I guess it doesn't sound like that much of a doozy but as I write it up, but it was one of the most vivid dreams I've had in a while. It involved a lot of me and M. driving around the backroads of the Kansas sand hills - a place I haven't been in almost twenty years - trying to find... I don't know what place we were trying to find now, but in the dream it seemed very important that we get there.

This road trip kept being interspersed with other elements, like different simultaneous scenes in a movie. The other subplot that stood out the most was that my friends' dog Mickey was back from the dead. Well, more like he never died in the first place and we were pet-sitting him. Although the house was less like me own and more like the place where duendegrrl and her husband live. Mickey started barking so we shut him up in a room until he calmed down, although I apparently didn't know that our cat Zephyr was sleeping in the room at the time. I go back to the room for something and open the door and Zephyr tackles me, knocking me down, (he is a very big cat.) With me pinned on the bed he starts growling and manages to growl the words "Get me out of here!" So then I am carrying Zephyr through the house trying to convince everyone I meet that our cat can talk but no one seems to want to listen.

None of that was what made this a nightmare. The nightmare part comes from at least three occasions in the dream where it would seem that I was watching something on a TV or a computer. What I saw was a frozen, static-blurred video image of what looked like a den room in a house. Seated and smiling in front of the camera was para_xylene Although the image was like a frozen video still, the camera would somehow pan to the windows behind her. Even though nothing else in the image moved, hands and leering, grinning faces would begin slowly pushing their way in through the windows. It all happens to the sound of what can only be described as Silent Hill music, only more dissonant and shrill, if that's possible. It was fucked up!

Never have I been happier to be woken up by an urgent need to use the bathroom.

Damn. Since I'm here we may as well drop trou and touch our weiners together.

Or, since I'm here, I may as well make an actual update.

These past two weeks have been stressful. Not enough time to do what I want. Writing has suffered. Progress on Seasons in the Abyss has slowed. I'm not in danger of abandoning the story as I have in the past but the pacing issues feel like they're getting worse. I am going to need to trim a hell of a lot of fat off this beast before I can turn in a final draft. Apocalypse Woman was long for an erotica novel at 350+ pages and SItA is shaping up to exceed that and I don't really want it to.

However I did manage to finally fix my registry error-riddled computer all by myself. Got Windows re-installed, got drivers updated. It took a couple of days but I am now surfing the web in a degree of luxury I have long since forgotten. Once the software problems were fixed, however, I discovered a hardware problem. Somewhere in the last few weeks my CPU fan died. I've ordered and received the new one but I'm not confidant I can replace it myself so I'm waiting for the techie kid who keeps my family's comps up and running to get some free time to come help me. It's always something. He urged me to order just the new fan from the manufacturer for $4 but... the manufacturer is in Hong Kong, their website is in Engrish, the shipping address fields they provide don't let you put your address in in the manner American addresses are usually written, and the part isn't even in stock anyway. So I bit the bullet and spent $25 I couldn't really afford to get the whole assembly off of Amazon. Better to pay a few extra dollars to make sure you actually get the thing. I just want to get the thing installed so this whole saga of computer repair will be over for a while.

This week is Lilies' War and the performance of the comedy skits we've been laboring on for the last few months. It sucks because I work every night this week except for the performance dates. My friends are already out there having fun and I'm stuck at home dealing with plumbing problems and general B.S. I'm going to try and make it out there during the daytime the next few days just so I won't feel like I'm missing out. And since I've got to pay the same heavy parking fee whether I'm there two days or ten, I may as well take advantage of it. I've got some classes lined out that I want to take over the course of the week. If I manage to make it to half of them I will be very proud of myself.

I'm planning to head out there tomorrow morning. I really could use a day away from the house. Expect lots of grumpy facebook updates from me if I don't make it :)