August 26, 2008

  • Wrong Place, Little Foxes

    Ever have one of those waking dreams where you "wake up" and something wrong about where you wake up? It might be subtle enough that you only realize it upon waking ("Oh wait... my dresser's on the right side of my room and there's no closet on the left side") or it might be obvious and/or part of the dream ("I don't remember there being a portal to Middle Earth on my wall. And what's that balrog doing looming over me?"). Occasionally, it manages to straddle both lines like the time when I dreamt I was in a room entirely unlike my own and didn't realize this until after waking. My dreams last night has elements of all of the above. I "woke up" at least three times. One time, I remember I had to walk out to the kitchen for something (probably my laptop, which is currently on my dining room table) and upon waking, I realized that the lighting was all wrong in that I hadn't turned on any lights and yet, my way was lit by a pale glow that all of the objects gave off. The second time, I woke up to the sounds of someone in my bathroom (I live alone). I lay there, eyes partly cracked open, trying to appear asleep so that I could observe who it was, but as the voice exited the room, all there was was a pale nimbus of light, not even in humanoid form. The last incident I remember, there were two other people in my house. One was a co-worker and the other... I don't remember. I remember that in the dream, I was perfectly fine with the co-worker being there — something had come up at home, so I let her sack out on my couch — but waking up to the other person, a friend of hers in the dream, lying on the other side of the bed was sort of jarring. But still, I didn't realize it was a dream until I actually woke up.

    Some of this odd dreaming may have been the result of diet. While at the Dollar Tree last night, I grabbed a stew I hadn't seen before, largely on account of it being a very large can of stew (24 oz if I recall correctly, with about a pound and a quarter of food inside of the sizeable can. Well, I nuked a can of it last night, and added salt liberally as I customarily do these days (I came to realize that much of my diet is actually very low in sodium, meaning I'm not getting my FDA-suggested daily amount) and I quickly found that either I had added far too much salt, or there was just a lot of it to start with. Even with liberal amounts of water to drink, I still could only eat about 2/3 of the stew before I got too nauseated to continue. As a result, I did get to bed early, but I was still in a state of nausea. Another possible factor, especially for the non-existent bathroom intruder, is that I had my bedroom window open to take advantage of the coolness of the night, and I know I was awoken a few times earlier in the night by people coming into the complex. Quite possibly, I was hearing someone outside and, since the sounds were coming from behind me and therefore were hard to locate, I automatically moved them to where I would be looking, the bathroom.

    Oh, and incidentally, this morning I finished up the remains of the stew from the night before, and I had another bowl this afternoon, this time with no added salt. No problems with nausea (although the morning stew was still far too salty) but I got around to reading the nutritiional facts and apparently that can of stew is worth 1060 calories (about 500 of which are directly from fat), 180% of my daily recommended amount of saturated fat, and about 150% of my recommended sodium and non-saturated fat intake. So yeah, between the already high amounts of sodium being exacerbated by my addition of salt, and the sheer mass of food, it's quite possible that the food caused some of the odd dreams.

    Lastly, I did attend the second night of auditions for The Little Foxes. *wrinkles nose* Sunday, they had me read for one person, a bitter 40-to-50-year-old. They called me up once. I asked if I'd be able to read more on the next night, in particularly asking about Leo, the 20-year-old in the cast. Last night, I read Leo. Once. In a scene where he has all of four lines of which one is "Huh?". On one hand, maybe I've just so over-awed them with my ability that they need hear no more. Or maybe I've been disregarded entirely. I really can't tell. I guess I just sit and wait to see what I hear.