My Arm Opened Like a Giant Banana Peel....

I had one of my really strange and vivid dreams this morning.  I don't know where I was, but I had glanced down, and noticed what I thought were movements under the skin of my right wrist, on the side where the thumb joins the hand.  I kept watching my wrist, and saw more movement under the skin.  I started poking at the movement, and trying to stretch the skin around, not really expecting anything to happen.  A teeny, tiny slit appeared in my skin, and a small greenish head with two dark brown eyes looked out at me, blinked, and then disappeared back into my arm.  The slit disappeared and the movement I thought I had seen ceased.  Wow, I thought...  there's an alien living inside of me.  A few days passed, in the dream, and then I saw more movement under the skin of my wrist.  I visited my sister, and told her what I had observed the other day - she told me I was full of manure, but using a much shorter word for manure.  I insisted  that I wasn't lying to her, and she refused to look at my arm to see the movements under the skin.
  I began poking and pulling at the skin on my wrist as I had done before.  I had to show my sister I wasn't insane.  After a few minutes, things started to move under the skin of my forearm - and my sister say it.  She was dumbfounded.  I kept pushing and poking at the area where the slit had appeared the last time, and it finally began to open up...   At first it was only a couple of inches long, and my sister said, "Oh my God..." as a pale greenish shield-shaped head slid out of my arm.  The nose was the bottom point of the battle-shield shaped head, and the eyes were dark and shiney and placed about two-thirds of the way up the sides of the shield.  Between the eyes and running in a thick mane down the long thin neck were tubular tentacles in bright scarlet and neon blue that pulsated and waved about as if they were separate entities from the lizard itself.  What was even more frightening, to me, was that with exposure to the atmosphere, the lizard was suddenly doubling, then quadrupling, then exploding into a huge size.  As this became apparent, my arm opened like a giant banana peel and five of the creatures appeared.  I remember being surprised that my arm didn't hurt at all - that it just felt as if some kind of pressure had been released.  I could look inside, and my ulna and radius looked like small steel bars with a few veins wrapped around them...  I kept wondering how I was going to make my arm close back up and look "normal" again.
   In the meantime, my sister was screaming as the five lizards crawled out of my arm and all five expanded to the size of a six-foot-long alligator.  They all had grey-green skin, with a pale underbelly, clawed and toed feet, and that weird mane of moving tentacles.  I somehow knew that the manes were poisonous, and I warned my sister not to let them touch her.  She finally ran like mad for the front door of her house.  I was trying to figure out how to wrap the skin back around my arm, when I heard a big hiss - just like gators make.  I slowly turned and looked at the first lizard to emerge, and... Lyra, the cat walked across me and I awoke.   Weird.  Really weird.

"Who Am I?" Dreams

I had a wild night of extremely frightening and chaotic dreams Sunday into Monday.  I was awake for more than five hours yesterday before I felt comfortable with myself.  When I awoke yesterday morning to get up and do my daily chores, I was convinced that I needed to have a tattoo placed on my body (where I could read it) stating my name, date of birth and Social Security number...  That's how strong and vivid my dreams had been.
   Now, if I look at what I ate, and what I watched, looked at and read from supper until lights out, I might be able to find a culprit; if you believe that what you eat and see makes an impression on your dreams.  For Sunday night supper, I was watching James Spader and Kurt Russell in Star Gate, and I ate a couple of beef hot dogs with baked beans.  A couple hours later, while looking at photos of the Earp brothers and Bat Masterson, I had a piece of lime pound cake.  Then I looked at historical photos from Dodge City, Kansas - including a photo of a trader who had been shot and scalped by Native Americans.  I read a few chapters in Donna Andrews' Lord of the Wings, had a handful of regular gummy bears and went to bed.  (An awful diet, I know....)
   I had multiple dreams from midnight until 6 a.m., and when I awoke from a nasty dream, and went back to sleep, I always had another dream that had the same features.  I was lost.  I didn't know my name or my history.  I knew that if other people discovered this information, I'd be "locked up."  At one point in a dream, I had taken my Mom somewhere, we had gotten separated, and I lost her - I was searching for her like mad, but I couldn't tell anyone her name, or my name, because I didn't know them.  In another dream, I had taken my granddaughter out to exchange a pair of shoes that were too large for her.  In the dream, the shoes were hot pink, and were a size 6, when they should have been a size 3.  My granddaughter wanted to carry the white plastic bag that the shoes had arrived in, and I let.  Then she disappeared and I didn't know which little girl  was my granddaughter, and I knew that if I stopped every girl with a white bag and asked to look inside it, I'd draw attention.  Since I didn't know my own name, or the name of my granddaughter, or even where either of us lived, I didn't want to get noticed.  So I wandered aimlessly.   At one point in time, in another dream, I was inside a huge hospital complex, and was eating left-over food from hospital trays, and sleeping in waiting rooms - because I knew I'd be "locked up" if anyone found out that I didn't know who I was.  These dreams were vivid and extremely disturbing....
    I don't know what caused them, but I really don't want them to return.  Nightmares.  Blech.

Football and Dreams

In regards to football:  a win is a win, and a loss is a loss, period.  Yesterday was a wild ride in the college games.  I am looking forward to today's Broncos game, and I hope the orange and blue players win.  Who will catch Peyton Manning's 500th touchdown pass?  Tamme? Welker? Julius or Demaryius Thomas? Someone else?  We'll see.....
   I had another extremely real-seeming dream this morning...  Earlier this week, when I awoke I thought I was laying on my usual cot in the landing at Grandpa's house on Peterson Street - it took me a while to realize I was in bed in Boulder.  This morning, I dreamed I was in a convoy of yellow- painted trucks; we came under artillery fire, and my vehicle slewed across the roadway;  then this kelly green "thing" approached, and I knew it was a machine that had "the enemy" inside it.   This huge three-fingered claw reached out towards me, and I slammed my right hand up to try to push it away...  (So stupid, I know...) The claw was larger than a VW bug - and I remember thinking that the surface of the claw was very hard and very cold.  That's when I woke up - with my right hand fingers jammed against the concrete block of the wall next to my bed.  I had struck the wall so hard that I broke off four fingernails, one in the quick.  Apparently I'm "acting out" my dreams in my sleep again...  And I am fully cognizant that one of the medications I take daily makes dreams hugely vivid.
   There was a large contingent of Oregon State Beaver fans here yesterday, but even though they won, they were relatively quiet.  When the Buffs win, the town goes wild.  Maybe the visitors are better mannered...
   And here's a photo that a friend took of the bull moose that was wandering around the neighborhood near Chautauqua Park, here in Boulder, the other day: