In my dreams, there are hockey players, musicians and actors...

I can only blame this craziness on the Benadryl I took to combat the impending itch from sunburn. I mean, what is going on in my brain? As happens many times when I dream there are multiple snippets that flow together but make absolutely no sense on the waking side of it. Here we go...

In the first part of my dream I was friends with numerous San Jose Sharks hockey players and their wives; in fact, I think I was babysitting some of their babies. Trust me...even if I knew these people the likelihood of me taking care of their children is almost nil. Anyway...I was definitely in good with Joe Thornton and his wife and their baby, even holding the baby when Joe was passing out bouquets of roses to his wife and other Sharks wives. That's right. Roses. Sure. Why not?

At some point in this dream the scene shifted to a large bathroom where George Costanza was headed to take a shower, but the shower was really dirty; like someone had taken a mud bath in it. And he was all embarrassed standing in the bathroom in shorts and a creepy white tank top. Thankfully, that part of the dream ended quickly. He was my least favorite part of Seinfeld.

Next I encountered Richard Castle (hello Nathan Fillion) and Becket (from the show Castle, in case you were confused). Yes, they were in character as were the other Castle actors and I was involved in whatever case they were investigating, but somewhere in the middle of the scene Becket told Castle she was pregnant, and it wasn't clear if it was his baby or someone else's, and I never got my answer because I woke up. Really? What am I supposed to do with that information now?

I fell back asleep and my dreams shifted from hockey players and actors to musicians. I remember talking to someone about a Green Day concert at Shoreline (a show I actually did see in real life last year) but it seemed that in the dream I had tickets but didn't actually go, and it was like I forgot to go. Yeah. Like THAT would ever happen in real life! 

From there I was transported to a Hootie & The Blowfish concert and my sole mission in seeing them was to get a picture with Mark Bryan who I actually have met in real life. I had this big plan to walk up to him and say, "Hey, remember me? We met at Robert Hicks' guitar pull outside of Franklin a few years ago." And then of course he would be like, "Of course!", because why wouldn't he remember me? (that's him on the right in the photo below)

But I never got to see him and then the band shifted to Third Day and I was talking to Mark Lee who plays guitar for them. What's with these guys named Mark who have last names that could easily be first names? Interesting. I wandered away while they were playing then came back and leaned back in a chair and closed my eyes and harmonized with the awesomeness of Mac Powell's voice. 

And then I woke up for good. Yep. That's it. My own personal crazy dreams strike again. 

Until I dream again...

In my dreams, I plot evil's overthrow with the cast of Sports Night...

So it's 2:43 in the morning and I just woke up from another dream straight out of crazy land. I don't remember a lot, but here's the gist of it. I was embroiled (gotta admit, I love that I just typed the word embroiled at this hour)...yes, embroiled in some sort of good vs. evil game where the evil was some sort of cult and the good was me and the cast of Sports Night. Yeah. Sports Night.

We were in groups of three and in different colored t-shirts. I was in red. Casey (played by the ever-so-awesome Peter Krause) was in blue and was on the evil team but had apparently realized it wasn't a good idea and we had some sort of secret signals going on between us that ensured I would win the battles against him, thus pushing us forward to winning the overall war. And it appeared that if the good side won we'd all be released. Dana was also there (the please-could-she-be-any-better Felicity Huffman) and she was in orange, which was the known good side. Jeremy (the wow-where-did-this-guy-come-from-greatness known as Joshua Malina) was there, but didn't appear to be on either team, but was somehow helping the good side in his perfectly quirky Jeremy way. His girlfriend Natalie (the wonder-what-she's-doing-now Sabrina Lloyd) was on the good team, and I think she was wearing red like me. She was her typical neurotic self. Those are the only characters I remember seeing, and I couldn't tell you who the other evil players were. They didn't seem significant.

I remember a vague journey through a lunchroom of sorts that looked more like the eating area from a ski lodge, and I remember us making serious eye contact as we lay on the floor of another room, somehow plotting our overthrow. I don't even know what the game was that we were playing, but it was three on three, and when I beat Casey, we shook hands and it was clear that he and I were leading this effort. We held hands for a few seconds too long and exchanged some sort of little rocks. I just remember he smiled a little and so did I and that's how we knew. When the good had won more than the evil in this little room we were released and were all breathing very slowly and deeply as we walked outside and Casey just kept saying, "Three more wins. Three more wins." Because apparently if we won three more times we'd win the whole thing and the good would be released from the evil.

I'm just assuming we won since I woke up at that point and am now sitting here typing this. But really? I haven't watched Sports Night in ages, but it is without a doubt one of my all-time favorite shows. And you can never go wrong with Peter Krause gracing the screens of anything, especially your own mind, right?

Anyway, that's it. Yet another installment of, my own personal crazy.

In my dreams, I get nothing signed by Matt Nathanson...

It's been a long time since Matt Nathanson graced the corners of my dreams, but I just woke up from a short snippet that was entertaining enough to share.

I was at some sort of event...no idea what...and remember standing in line to get my parking validated. When I got to the front I turned my parking ticket over and stuck a validation sticker on the back then handed it to the checkout lady. She looks it over and tells me it's going to be $2.50. I hand her a five-dollar bill and she hands me back $11.50. I'm like, "you gave me too much," and hand her back one of the five-dollar bills thinking at first that she'd given me a five and two ones. She giggles and thanks me, then I realize the other bill is a five and hand it back and ask her for a one. She's clearly confused and takes the five then hands me a ten, and this goes on for another few seconds until I get the right change. Crazy.

The dream then shifts and I'm standing in line waiting for Matt to sign something, but it's not like I was at a concert; it's more like he's at a street fair and people are getting things signed. Very strange. So there are two people in front of me - and really they were more to the side of me - and I'm totally eavesdropping on their conversations with Matt. He's sitting at a desk like you'd see in grade school, where it's connected to the chair, and he's got a large poster board in front of him that he's writing on. And it's almost like he's drawing a caricature and not really signing things at all. The woman he's talking to at first is leaning in and he draws a cartoon bubble like he's going to write dialogue in it. And he's saying something about President Bush and they laugh, but he doesn't actually write anything and then she leaves. Then a man starts talking to him, and he's just prattling on and on about nothing and it's very clear that Matt wants to leave and be free of him, but he's listening and trying to be nice and then I start to doodle on a corner of the paper and draw my own cartoon bubbles that look more like fuzzy circles, and this guy can't finish his thoughts and Matt is going crazy. Eventually, Matt says he has to go and that he'll be back the next day, and then he just packs it up and leaves.

What?

In my dreams, I hang with Craig T. Nelson, Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake

So I just woke up from a dream where I was fly fishing with Craig T. Nelson. Yes. That's right. The dream wasn't terribly long, but basically, I was standing on the edge of very wide river, and I cast my line. And it appeared that I was almost doing it out of spite because CTN was going to go regular fishing, but then he pulled out a fly rod and joined me. On my second cast though, my line got caught in a tree and I had to cut it down, and it lost the fly so I had to think about how to get a new one on there. During the time I was cutting it down, CTN sent some kid to his trailer to get a new fly. No idea who the kid was, but then I went to the trailer and let myself in and started looking around for his tackle box so I could fix my line. He joined me a minute later and we opened a large tackle box that actually had live bait in it and we each took a small paper cup and plunged it into this box to get some new bait. Not sure why we needed bait since we were fly fishing, but then again, I'm not sure why I was doing any sort of fishing in my dream. After I had my cup full of bait, tiny little minnows, I woke up. If I had been watching A River Runs Through It before I went to bed, or maybe even Parenthood, I might understand why I dreamed this, but I have no freaking idea. However, it's not quite as bizarre as the dream I had just before it.

In the prior dream, I was in a huge department store. And I mean HUGE! Like 20 or 30 floors. It was insane. And I'm not exactly clear why I was there, but it was became apparent at some point that I was there to do something for Lady Gaga. Like I was filling in for someone. And so as I was sitting somewhere in the store one of her people said I should come down, and I told them I'd be there when I was finished, and I seemed bothered by it. And so I was sitting on a bench talking to some other people and one of those people just happened to be Justin Timberlake. And we were talking about some other musician and I was irritated that the other musician was becoming an actor and said to Justin something like, "Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice if these musicians who start acting actually made music again." And he thinks it's funny and we all laugh, and then Gaga joins us, and she's dressed like a regular person, not like her normal Gaga self, and we're all talking for a while and then I leave to go with her to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do. And that's all there was to that. But I at least get how Gaga and JT were in my brain after last week's SNL. Not sure about the department store part, but whatever.

And I didn't even take any medicine to get me into this crazy dream state today! Nope. I'm just CRAZY!!

In my dreams, there are lycans, phones, windows, doors and gloves...

Yeah, so it's a little after a midnight and I'm awake after some bizarre little dream snippets. I blame this completely on the Claritin, Advil and Pseudophed that I took to try to get rid of the headache that I still have. In addition, I blame part of it on falling asleep watching Bones.

Snippet #1:

I was in Bones, or working with the Bones team, or whatever. And there was a woman that looked like a mannequin Hodgens had seen, and we all thought he was crazy, but then somehow we knew he wasn't and we knew that this wasn't a woman but a woman who turned into some sort of creature like a lycan/werewolf. Yeah. I know. But it was a dream, what do you want? Anyway...at some point, this woman turns into this creature, and it's scary but fascinating, and there some sort of time limit involved where after she's gone we all have hair everywhere and have to get it off before something bad will happen, though I'm not clear what. There were also window shades involved, one of which I tried to close, and it was for a tiny window and it was maroon and vertical and way up high, and it seemed like my effort in closing it was rather large.

Snippet #2:

I'm in my house, though not my actual house, some random dream house, and the phone rings and the caller id says it's Jon somebody, and so I answer. Not because I know Jon somebody but because it seems like I should. And the guy says something like, "This is Jon calling for Carrie." And I answer that this is Carrie, and he starts talking about some sort of service that would be for an office, not a home, and so I stop him and say that he's reached a residence not a place of business, and he's shocked by this. Like he simply can't believe I'm not a business. And then he asks me something and it starts to freak me out, like maybe he knew I wasn't a business and was trying to find something out. And somehow in the middle of a sentence I pull the cord and disconnect him. And then the front door blows open, and the screen is open on the outside, and for that split second it IS my actual house. I kick the door closed, but it won't stay, so I examine it more closely and try to figure out how to close it. And then I decide to go outside and get the mail.

Snippet #3:

I'm at some sort of event, and both of my parents are there and it almost seems like they're still married, but I'm grown and it's confusing even in the dream. And there's a stage, and it's like it's at the front of a church, and suddenly I'm supposed to go up on it and dance with my dad, and we both think it's ridiculous and I trip going up the stairs because I'm laughing so much and for some reason we both have on gloves. My mom's sitting at a round table on the stage pushing us to the dance and so we both take off the gloves and start to dance, like some sort of waltz, which is foreign to both of us, and my mom's talking to us from the table as we try to make this happen despite the laughter, and it's all very hard. And then we make a turn and across the stage is my grandfather, also wearing gloves, and then there's some sort of scene, like he's going to do something on the stage, but no one's quite sure what. And then, Praise God, I woke up. 

I mean, what in the world??? My brain is seriously cracked. It's not like I took all that medicine at once today. It was spread out from 8am to 8pm. Can you say crazy? Yes. I thought you could.


UPDATE: And the fun continues! I fell back asleep only to wake up nearly two hours later from this little gem of a dream...

My mom and I were in an airport waiting area...no idea what airport and no idea where we'd been or where we were going, but there we were, in the airport waiting to leave. And while we were waiting I was on my laptop trying to book another ticket, though again, I have no idea where I was going. However, I booked a ticket from Dallas to somewhere on Alaska Airlines. And then I got really frustrated because I'd booked it from Dallas instead of San Jose, but it was non-refundable so then I was trying to find a flight from San Jose to Dallas on Southwest but they were routing me through Chicago and it wasn't going to get me to Dallas on time so I just gave up and said I'd try again later. And then a gate attendant person gave us our boarding passes and we'd been upgraded to First Class, so that was nice, but there was something strange about it and my mom and I weren't really sure what, but we just went with it. Then I decided I needed to go to the bathroom, so I gathered my things together and had somehow left my shoes in the middle of the aisle, spread out with tons and tons of stuff. My mom and I had bags everywhere! Anyway, my shoes were in the middle of the aisle and a very tall man using two canes and making jokes about how he couldn't walk well nearly tripped on one, and I felt horrible, but he just laughed and his wife just shook her head. I slipped my feet into my shoes and started my search for the bathroom. We'd seen one earlier, so I left the lounge area and went looking for it, but passed it somehow and ended up walking a little further to the next bathroom where a camera crew was filming some sort of news clip and I couldn't get in, so I had to go back and I never did find the bathroom and then I woke, because you know, I had to go to the bathroom!!


ANOTHER UPDATE: When I finally woke up for good I woke up from a horrible dream where I was running from some sort of mechanical spider that was going up and down a tree making this terrible clicking noise. There were several people with me, and it's almost like this was sort of alien being or something because we were scared. We gathered some things from the house and got in the car and drove to what appeared to be my great grandparents farm in Texas, and for a second, the house looked like it, but then we turned the corner and it was HUGE! And looked nothing like their real house did. And inside it was like a museum with stuff everywhere, and I was touring people around showing them where I played as a kid, including a playroom under a staircase. 


Seriously, I don't think I've ever had so many crazy dreams in one night. I'm almost afraid to close my eyes later tonight!

In my dreams I ride in a school bus, hear Todd Carey and want Chick-fil-A...

I vaguely remember the first part of this dream...I was at a movie theatre, but then got picked up by a friend and proceeded to get into the school bus/winnebago thing he was driving. Inside said vehicle were his kids and a whole bunch of their friends. Meanwhile, his kids and their friends are all grown, one of them is even married in real life, but there they were, inside this vehicle...let's just go ahead and call it a bus.

So he's driving, and his daughter is in the passenger seat, but there's a seat between, so I slip in and we start to go. I attempt to sleep, but it's futile. I chat with his daughter for a while then move to the first bench of seating and pull out some crazy notebook that's long and skinny and has various activities/tasks on it...like games you'd play when you're on a cross country road trip or something. I'm just sitting there flipping through it and then I hear a Todd Carey song coming from the boys behind me, and they're asking who sings it, and I'm telling them It's Todd Carey and am stunned that they're listening to it and more stunned that they like it. Because these are boys who like hip hop and r & b. But I go with it as the song plays.

Then as it plays, my friend's son starts talking about the lyrics to another Todd Carey song, asking if they are, in fact, from a Todd Carey song, and again I'm stunned and I'm like, "Yeah. And how do you even know that song?" And he just smiles and laughs and I have a new appreciation for him and his friends. 

At some point, my friend leaves the driver's seat and goes to the back of the bus to talk with the girls sitting back there, and no one's actually driving but we seem to be staying on the road. I reach into my bag and pull out my laptop and open it like I'm about to do something sneaky, which of course I'm not, but I open it and the boys are asking me all kinds of questions about it, but I'm sort of ignoring them, then end up closing it and putting it back in the bag.

Meanwhile, my friend's daughter decides she better take control of the bus because, in fact, we are about to go off the road, so she moves into the driver's seat and I sit in the passenger seat and neither of us are clear why her dad hasn't come back up front yet. 

We pull into a town and it is now clear that we're in Wyoming. Well sure. And there's a Chick-fil-A, but we don't stop, and I'm instantly bitter that there are no Chick-fil-A's where we live, but it's a short-lived bitterness as we keep driving.

Finally her dad comes back up, and takes over the wheel, and something's up, but we're not sure what, then we learn that someone has spent $80,000 and there's no money left and now we have to find out what happened.

And then...I woke up...And that my friends, is my own personal crazy.

In my dreams I...well, you'll just have to read this one...

In the beginning of my dream I was on a train - is it just me, or do I dream a lot about trains? - and I was taking up two whole rows of seats with my stuff. The train wasn't full so it didn't seem to be a problem, but I had a LOT of stuff, including an egg carton filled with donut holes that someone had given me. Yeah. You read that right. Pretty sure I'm gonna need a donut in a minute after eating them in my dream. Anyway...the train pulls into the station, and I think we were in Denver, but I can't be sure. I got off the train and left all my stuff on it, because apparently I was going to be getting back on after the layover. The problem was, that once I was upstairs, I got lost. And I couldn't find my way back to the train or all my stuff. There were three different sets of trains, but I couldn't figure out which one was the right one. I asked a lady coming up one of the ramps if she could help and she started talking to me in sign language so I couldn't understand anything. I was crying very hard in my dream, trying to figure out where I was going, and no one would help me. 

I then found myself on a street and was going to cross back to the train station. The street corner was decorated like some crazy Christmas town, with a Christmasy mailbox and fake snow, and I don't even think I was supposed to be standing where I was, but I pushed the button to cross the street then just ran across after a group of teenagers. 

I followed them into what appeared to be a train station - there was a ticketing machine and everything - but it turned out to be nothing of the sort. Every door was narrow and I had to squeeze through, and literally every person stared at me like I didn't belong there, which clearly I didn't. I went down an incredibly steep and winding set of blue stairs and ended up in an eatery of sorts where again, everyone stared at me. I left there and was in a laundry room, and then ended up in some sort of gaming room where, apparently, a giant gaming event was about to happen. I rushed around the room looking for the train and realized I was in the wrong place, and as people stared again, I went back through everything I'd just come through and got back to the top to look for my train again, which I never found and then woke up.

When I got back to sleep, my dreaming continued, but was a little more disjointed. At one point I was in a room about to watch a movie, and I was with a guy and his daughter, and I was telling him that a friend of mine had seen the premiere of the movie in LA and that all the characters were there. It seemed important and interesting at the time. Now it seems lame. We weren't in a theatre, which was weird, but in small room with regular chairs and some tall tables.

And then I saw an old friend from high school, and some other friends from other times in my life, and they were all leaving the room and doing something outside, but it's like they didn't see me. I was just watching them, and it made me sad. Then I leaned back in the room to see if they were ready to start and some random guy tells me they got Whitney Houston, so I go back in and sure enough, there she sits, in a shiny green dress. And this is young Whitney, Whitney that could sing the lights out of a room, Whitney before she went crazy...but she seems kinda bothered to be there, or maybe she was confused, but we chat for a minute and then the scene morphs. 

Next thing I know I'm talking with the guy again, who I guess I was dating, but things weren't going well. We sat down on a bench, and he picked up his daughter so she was between us, and then he proceeds to get mad because I didn't put my arm around him, and then I was mad because he didn't put his arm around me, and he got all defensive saying he had his daughter and he couldn't do everything, so I put my arm around him and leaned on his shoulder, but it was quite clear that wasn't going to last very long. The scene then morphed and we were back in the room and there were a number of elderly folks there and they were watching video tapes and laughing and dancing and it was actually quite awesome.

I'm sort of thankful I woke up after all of that because wow. That was a whole lot of crazy for one night! And I didn't even take any Benadryl!!