My subconscious, and my husband, knows me pretty well

Slade and I have taken to sleeping in separate rooms the past two nights. And before any terrible rumors circulate among the family, the reason is that we have very incompatible ways of talking in our sleep. At least it seems that way. Other times it seems like we are just living out our regular waking hours in some sort of more accurate dream state, kind of like Salvador Dali meant to portray.

Slade's problem is that he continually harasses me in his sleep--his dreams, or whatever they are. One time I woke up with him kneeling beside me and gently sliding his hands under me like he was going to pick me up. (He woke up before he got too far with that, luckily for his back). More typical is that he will all of a sudden reach over and shake me awake, not knowing why, but INSISTING he has a perfectly good reason, until I convince him that he is still asleep and that there is nothing horrible going on at 3 a.m. that needs the attention of an insomniac that just fell asleep two hours ago (and that was a good night).

My nocturnal activities are much more complicated. (I am actually drafting a post on that subject for those who don't know). Basically I have what my neurologist calls 'complex nocturnal behavior' doing things asleep that most people don't. I do things asleep that some people couldn't do awake. I can write things like this for example, sound asleep. A good reason for hiding the password from myself, and I am thinking about it.

It sounds totally bizarre, but I think most people have heard of similar 'sleep eating' and things that people like this do, and I think they are all they same--people like me do a variety of things while their brain is technically sleeping, it is just that in my case, eating isn't really my thing and I am not going to cook hamburger in the middle of the night any more than I am going to do it in the middle of the day. There is actually something in the brain that specifically disconnects our mind and body from acting out our dreams, in in some people's case there isn't a complete disconnect. Go figure that our brains would have this. But they do.

But a few weeks ago was extra funny because I had a series of dreams that caused me to shout about them loudly enough to disturb Slade, who can't exactly afford to get disturbed, considering how he reacts to being agitated in the middle of the night.

One dream was at a public swimming pool where there were obviously huge sharks swimming around under my kids. Everyone but me seemed to be fine with this. (I can draw obvious parallels to how worked up I get about things that everyone else doesn't but that will be a different post.) I kept saying "Slade, do something, you can't just let her stay in there, it's going to get her," etc. This continued for an hour or so. At least I didn't get out of bed, that is always a nice thing.

The next night when I was in supposedly blissful slumber Slade and I had been kidnapped as some part of a criminal plot right out of Reservoir Dogs or something. (I swear the guy with a gun looked just like the owner at my local computer store who has taken nearly a grand from me and not fixed anything, but I am not sure). Anyway, we were in a van without windows along with some other unfortunate souls. The guy with the gun decided to take about four people who had complained away, obviously to me, for the purpose of killing them. My subconscious doesn't mind implied violence any more than I do, but it didn't make me watch, thank heavens.

I spoke out to the guy with a gun, in my handcuffed state, (and also I did so out loud to Slade right next to me, who had started to listen and had become increasingly alarmed about the subject matter of my dream): "Have you EVER killed FOUR PEOPLE before? Do you REALIZE how hard it is going to be to dispose of ALL THOSE CORPSES? And you are going to go ahead and just KILL them ALL just for giving you LIP?"

Slade said next to me in the van in my dream, and also next to me in bed, IN UNISON:

"Shut up, honey."