Vivid Nightmare Tale

Didn’t fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning last night, and I’m not sure if it was something that I saw the day before or something that I had subconsciously heard on the TV while I was sleeping, but I ended up having some awful (but amazing) vivid nightmares. 😯 At least they were situation based, rather than having anything to do with a specific friend or family member.

I’ve always had a knack for returning to the same fictional locations in my dreams, even over decades of time, as well as being able to “pick up where I left off” if I happen to wake up in the middle of a particularly interesting or intense dream. 🤷🏻‍♂️🧙🏻‍♂️ There are even a couple of fictional “characters” that have persisted over the years, albeit only on rare occasions. 😕🙂 It’s no “lucid dreaming” but I’ll definitely take it, compared to nothing but random, fleeting dreams which can never be returned to.

Last night’s dream, split by about ten minutes of waking up and settling back in, featured two different plane crashes. 😳 (And like I’ve acknowledged before, I know that hearing about other folks’ dreams isn’t always the most entertaining thing, but alas…) The first plane crash was one that I witnessed in the evening from our old house on Shepherd Hill. 😌 I actually had my phone set up in my bedroom window, to record a time-lapse video of the setting sun, but accidentally captured a small aircraft making some abrupt movements a couple of miles away – before crashing into the hills and trees. 😧 … 🛩️🌲🌳🌳🌲🌳🔥

There was distinct black smoke coming from the crash site, but the sun had set by this point, and a layer of fog had moved in, so rescue / recovery vehicles and aircraft seemed to be having a hard time locating the wreckage. 🤨🔭 I not only knew where it went down, but also had a recording of the event, so after a while of watching them struggle from a distance I decided that I needed to get into my car and go help out.

That’s when I woke up, but with the first part of that dream being so vivid (I’m leaving out many of the detailed details) I was hoping that I’d get back to sleep quickly and be able to pick up where I left off. 🥱🤞🏻

Back in the dream, I was already in my car (which was my 1979 Olds Delta 88) and driving up an increasingly narrow road on an increasingly steep mountain. 😬😣 But before I had even driven that far, I heard the sound of spooling jet engines above me – and I looked up to see a rescue oriented 747-200 about 2000 feet above, struggling to climb and avoid a similarly marked rescue blimp that was directly in its path. 😯✈️

The jet didn’t have the power to execute the climb and turn, so while it was able to avoid the blimp – it went into a stall and began to fall from the sky. 😬 I immediately stopped in my tracks, since it looked like the plane might graze the face of the mountain but wouldn’t necessarily hit me. Of course that didn’t end up being the case, and as the 747 fell parallel to the vertical face of the mountain, the belly of the plane banged into my car – knocking it off of the road and sending it falling thousands of feet towards a big lake below.

My car, along with many others from the road above, somehow fell relatively softly into the lake… while the plane crashed hard into the mountain on its way down, which meant there was a constant “rain” of debris endangering all of the surviving people in their cars. 😳☂️ Most of the cars ended up floating, and many people were getting out and trying to swim to shore, but they were inevitably hit by falling wings, engines, landing gear, etc. 😣🤕 The lake was also partially on fire due to the jet fuel, so saying that it was a chaotic scene would be a huge understatement.

But in the chaos, my car and several others floated together, so we used a bunch of bungee cables to connect them all and “fling” them with enough momentum to reach land. 🏝️ The dream fizzled out there, once we were all safe, but it was such a vivid dream that I can still remember the detail of everyone’s faces, the vertigo from the heights, the smell of burning kerosene and plastic plane seats, the shortness of breath while trying to not drown, the pinch of my hand under the tightening bungees, the way it went from unbearably noisy to silent except for the sound of the water… just all of it. 😃😌

Not what most people would consider a fun dream by any stretch of the imagination, but it was one that I was still glad to have had. Almost like the way that you can’t wait to see the weekend’s popular blockbuster action movie. 😎🤷🏻‍♂️😏 Because that’s what it felt like… like an extended scene from some awesome movie. Unfortunately, as it often happens (especially once things really go off the rails), it never really went back to the original “small plane crash” plot, nor did it provide any resolution to any of the rest… but hey, teamwork helped me and quite a few others survive quite the adventure. 🤓🤜🏻🤛🏻😄

(I know… I should save this shit for the dream blog. I mean that’s the whole point of it being there… 🙄🤦🏻‍♂️😏 )

Rough Night, Rough Day

Not a great day today. Was only able to get about three or four hours of sleep, and during those few hours I had two distinctly awful nightmares. First one had me inside a somewhat empty mall that was having its grand opening during the middle of the night. Everything was high tech, including the bathrooms – which for some reason, had circular, computerized urinals that all the guys had to share in the middle of the room.

This is gross, but it’s all just dream fodder, so yeah… for whatever reason, I ended up pissing blood, freaking out everyone else in the bathroom, to the point where alarms started going off as if I had done something wrong and someone was coming to get me. I left the restrooms and went into the main area of the mall, which was still mostly empty, so I could look for a doctor’s office or urgent care center. While I was doing this, I noticed that mall employees were following me – and sometimes actually running ahead of me, like they were making sure that I didn’t touch or contaminate any of the new things in the new stores in their new mall. One guy even said so. He said he was supposed to make sure that I just left the property, but that he wasn’t going to force me.

Woke up around that point for about a half hour, but when I fell back to sleep it basically picked back up with the same general plot and activities. Instead of a mall, it was now a fancy “state park” type lodge, the alarms were still going off, and every elevator that I tried to get onto was already filled with people who were fleeing the building. I was able to find a service elevator though, despite it only being big enough for one person to stand in, so I was at least able to make it to the ground floor and out into the park.

It was still the middle of the night, so the parking lots were the only areas that were dimly lit by creepy, flickering, florescent lightning. But all of the cars had been towed away for some reason. As I stood in the empty parking lot, the distance between me and the lodge began to expand… and before I knew it I was alone in the middle of the woods and the only thing I could make of the lodge was a few lights far off in the distance. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear people shouting for their kids, wondering where everyone went… and then I woke up from that one as well.

And yeah, I know there’s no way to ever describe your dreams in a way that can make other people “see” or feel what you were experiencing… but they were shitty dreams, just take my word for it. So I woke up early, my mood was shit, my energy was shot, but I could see that the beast was visibly annoyed by some itchin’ on her butt – so I used my little bit of energy to brush her out, comb out a few fleas, and then start grooming her with the shaver – this time, sans guard.

I had already made a nekkid spot on her neck to put the flea treatment, but to give them as little area to hide as possible I decided to go ahead and start trimming her shorter than I ever have before. She still loves the attention, and I think she knows and appreciates what I’m trying to do for her. (It’ll still be a couple day process though.) And even knowing that, I still had to take an unwanted nap in the afternoon.

But since she does have some fleas, and flea dirt – each time she lets me spend a few minutes erasing big sections of fur, I then have to sweep it all up with the broom, and then vacuum the rest up with the vacuum (which is working again, yay) so I can eliminate as many of the little buggers as I can. It sounds like nothing, but it’s using up every drop of energy that I’ve had today. And of course getting her back, chest, and neck is pretty easy – so that’s what I’ve hit first – but I’ve still got belly, legs, and butt yet to go… and I just don’t think I’ve got the oomph to finish it all tonight.

Hopefully sleep will come easier, and she’s already happier with what I’ve gotten done so far, so she’ll be fine waiting for tomorrow for the rest of it… if tomorrow is even enough time. Depends on what kind of mood she’s in and what kind of night I have tonight. But if that’s the worst of my complaints for today, I guess that’s not too bad. Meh. Unrelated question, as I watch the end of the Bristol truck race tonight… did they even sell tickets to this thing? Just noticed as they were taking the checkered flag that the place looked literally absolutely empty in the areas of the stands I was seeing.

Here Comes The Rain Again

It was interesting, yesterday at the pharmacy, as I tried to get all of my medications processed through the proper insurer, etc. When the lady told me that one of my WC meds had been denied again, I sort of jokingly apologized for my situation being such a pain in the ass for them each month – and said that I could pay cash for it and hope to be able to get a refund once it does get approved, but that I was sure there are probably dozens of other customers just like me and that I didn’t want to be even more hassle than I already had to be. 😏 The interesting part, and this isn’t the first time that someone there has at least hinted this towards me… but she said that in general, they don’t have many problems with workers comp customers, and was surprised (looking at my records in their system) how I seem to have the same trouble almost every month. 🤨😒 So it’s nice to feel like the complaints in my head are justified, but it doesn’t help when I want to reassure myself that it’s “nothing personal” against me. 🙄 Yeah, the appointment coming up this week, the requirement that my WC adjuster be contacted personally to approve the same meds I’ve been taking for years and years… it’s hard to pretend like it’s all a coincidence. 😞

But in the evening I managed to fall asleep relatively early, and then woke up in a cold sweat about an hour later after another awful nightmare. 😥 Dad and I were out on Shepherd Hill, it was late in the evening, a storm was blowing in, and we were walking along the fence-line of the property… where everything was all overgrown, as if our houses there had been abandoned. 🤨 My cousin Jim was at our house, and was helping to pack up all of our valuable things before the storm hit… but Dad and I were still out in the cold and wind, looking for Mom. 😟 As it turned out, she was actually out in the garage, making a safe space for all the kittens to hide and safely ride out the storm.

By this point Jim, Uncle Jay, and some others had already taken their carloads of things and left, and Dad and I were trying to get Mom to come inside the house so we could get the last of our things and then leave as well. But having grown up in that house, she didn’t want to leave… and as the storm hit, it turned into a tornado. Pieces of the walls started giving way, window were breaking, parts of the floor were being pried up from the beams and thrown into the air, and the three of us took shelter in the doorway between the foyer and the kitchen – and could only watch as the house was being torn down around us. 😢

It was then that I woke up… so I didn’t actually “go through” the worst of what would have happened if I had stayed in that dream, but it was close enough. And it was one of those dreams that felt so real that the noise and wind blowing from the fan in my room… it took me a few seconds to realize / remember that it was just my fan, and not that storm blowing things around still. Luckily I’m still exhausted… not only from the past few days, but also from that nightmare… so I think I’m gonna be able to go back to sleep fairly easily. I just hope I don’t drop right back into that dream.

That’s one of my “talents” that I usually appreciate… being able to “resume” interrupted dreams, or having dreams that take place in certain fictional locations, but locations that are always the same in my dreams, making them seem as real as if I was sitting on my porch and looking out at my back yard. It’s usually a comforting feeling to have these made up, but specific dream “destinations” over multiple decades… but that’s not even how it was this time. This was our old house, it was the house that Mom grew up in, and it was too fucking real. 😣 I have “good” Mom and Dad dreams too, but I’m really learning to hate these bad ones.

Used to be I could be screwed up during the day for whatever reason, but at least I could count on “sleep” as a time where no matter how stressed, depressed, or screwed up I was feeling during the day – it would all go away at night. But these past couple of months, more often than not, the “twitchy” of the day just follows me into my dreams. A lot of days when I wake up, my first thought is “I can’t wait until this day is over so I can go back to sleep.” but, at least right now, I can’t even say that and mean it. 😞

I’m tired, boss…

Buncha Nothin’

While I’m technically ready to start doing all of the adulting that I’ve got planned for the first couple of weeks of the new year, I am glad that today was essentially a “paused” day… where even if I wanted to, nothing significant could really be accomplished. 🤷🏻‍♂️🙂 I didn’t go out last night, nor did I have any company over, but I still didn’t fall asleep until around 3am. And of course I woke up too damn early, so my brain is thankful that the only real work that I’ll be doing today will be the stuff that I can address by mail. Which leaves all of the phone calls for tomorrow. 😳 Yay. 😟

Last night wasn’t totally lonely though. Brianna also stayed at home, although she was also babysitting for her sisters, so we ended up keeping each other company via messages up until the ball dropped at midnight and then a while after. ☺🎉 I think my adulting may be rubbing off on her, because a lot of what we talked about was both of our growing lists of “Shit We Gotta Do” in the next week or two. 😏 I mean, nobody is really a fan of responsibility, but I think it made her feel good (the same way it does me) to spend some of her evening coming up with a game plan of her own. 📒🖊👧🏻

I wish that I didn’t have to take Cassi back home earlier last night, but she did end up staying later than we originally planned. It was a rough, dark, rainy, stressful drive up to Columbus in that horrible weather – with 80% of the traffic still breaking the speed limit, and the other 20% either scared, creeping slowly, or completely stopped along side of the highway as they waited for the rain to stop. ☁🌧😯😣😧🙈⛈🌧 While she was here though, we started watching a new Korean rom/com/dram called Strong Girl Bong-soon. It’s strange how easily I take to Korean songs and shows now that I’ve been doing it for a bit. 😁🇰🇷

But yeah… this is kind of a rambling post since it’s been a leisurely kind of day for the most part. All of my upcoming doctor appointments are still heavy in my mind though… I’m just trying to not let them bother me today. 😟 I will say this though. I haven’t been feeling great for the past couple of weeks. 😐 Not awful, but not how I normally feel either. So while I’m not gonna try to predict anything when it comes to my upcoming tests, I think I’m subconsciously getting myself ready for some potentially bad news. 🤷🏻‍♂️

It doesn’t help that I’ve been having a lot of anxiety filled dreams lately as well. 😳 Not exactly nightmares, but dreams that definitely had a negative feel. And twice now I’ve had dreams where I died. 😕 One was strange… I had already passed away, but I was still around to console people and to help with all of the arrangements needed in that sort of circumstance. 😬 But the bad dreams, the specific “not feeling well” things… right now I am choosing to attribute it all to the Wellbutrin that one of my docs put me on. 🤒

I haven’t felt this mentally and physically shitty in a long while. 😔 And it’s so much so that I’m going to stop taking that new med until my next appointment with that doctor, so I can let him know the side effects that I’ve been experiencing. Over the years I’ve probably tried half-a-dozen different meds to help with depression or anxiety, and never have I made it past a month or two before the side effects outweighed the potential benefits – and I’m pretty sure this one will be the same way. 🤨 I’ve also got something more immediate for anxiety, but I haven’t noticed any bad side effects from that one, so perhaps I’ll be able to keep one-out-of-two in my rotation this time.

Alrighty then… time for some football. 🙂🏈 Ready to push the scary thoughts to the back again for now.

Prior Authorization

It’s crazy to think that I’m going to be 45 years old tomorrow. 😐 It just doesn’t seem possible… that I’m… old. 😏 Thankfully, I very rarely feel my age… and even when I do, it’s usually because of my old work injury and the effects that I still feel each day because of it and the surgery. And as the fates would have it, right now it’s particularly bad – because I haven’t been able to get my medication refilled for three days now (due to mysterious insurance processing delays) and the withdrawal symptoms from Lyrica and Skelaxin are no joke. 😟

They aren’t even new prescriptions. I just need refills. Refills for meds that I’ve taken regularly for the better part of a decade. And while I won’t say that the two are related, it is curious to me that when I’ve got a court case pending and settlement talks ongoing… that’s when I’m suddenly forced to go “cold turkey” and suffer due to delays in processing the payment by the insurer. 😒 I’ll probably have to go in tomorrow and pay out of pocket (and hope for a refund eventually) in order to not feel like I’m dying. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Trying to conceal my anger has been challenging. I just keep telling myself that it’ll get taken care of, because eventually it always does.

Bear with me… just a bit more complaining…

It’s just a helpless feeling to know that due to delays, clerical errors, product shortages, tactical fuckery, or whatever it is… to know that each time that my medication is due to be refilled, that it simply might not happen… and then while suffering from the understandable withdrawals, having to gather the motivation and energy to fight and figure out what to do to get those meds… ugh… it’s a fucking nightmare.

It doesn’t help that I’m slowly but consistently getting worse. Like I told my doctor, the pain and disability that I have right now… several years ago I would have been complaining loudly about it at each visit, but I’ve learned to live with it – that it’s just going to be there, and that’s that. But it shouldn’t be like that. 😠 So at my most recent appointment we decided that I should go in for another MRI to find out why I’m getting random pops and seizing of my neck when I’m less active now than I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t stop fighting to feel better, as frustrating as the workers comp process is. 😓

I should find out soon if they’ll allow me the test or if I’ll have to fight for that too…