I love larium

the last few mornings have been pretty wild, but nothing like this morning.

you see, i've been going to sleep without turning my alarm clock on because, well, I just finished vacation and I'm not quite ready to start the whole waking-up-early-and-going-to-work-on-time thing, not just yet.

so now the sleep-lab geek in me comes out. as all in the sleep-profession know, most people get lots of deep, restful sleep in the early and middle parts of the night, while mornings are dominated by increasingly long bursts of REM sleep, the stage of sleep that produces dreams, interspersed with periods of lighter sleep. this REM sleep, based on my personal sleep history (which I know in WAY too much detail), typically comes for me in 30-60 minute intervals that start around midnight and increase in frequency up until waking time. well, let me tell you - with my alarm clock off i have gotten some pretty wicked-serious REM sleep, and when you combine that with my anti-malarial medications (most-common side effect = incredibly vivid dreams, bordering on nightmares), needless to say the results are freakin entertaining.

this morning's example (or the little I remember of it - i'd say I typically only comprehend about 20% of what I dream...):

it was the day of my wedding. so for those of you who know me, you know that this is a nightmare, not a dream. HA! i tried to get a look at the bride, but I didn't recognize her face. people were calling her Natalie, and people were calling me Chad (NO clue why, but still pretty sure it was me). she had buns in her hair though, a very unusual style for a bride on her wedding day, and thus I bring your attention to

REASON #1 - why I am convinced that I will marry Natalie Portman (aka Queen Amidala)

anyways, I can't be sure it was her though, since I spent most of the time staring at her body. no, this is not because i'm a pig, it's because her wedding dress was very unique. it was a standard white-flowy-fluffy-lacy-frilly-girly-yadayadayada dress, except for one unique feature - it had a HUGE red maple leaf plastered across her stomach. now, this really would make no sense, if it weren't for the fact that at my neighbor's house a few nights ago, we watched a bad imitation of WWE professional wrestling, and one of the wrestlers was a very proud Canadian who had the maple leaf on his coat, his speedoshorts, his shoes, and spraypainted in his hair. the wrestling was really bad, nowhere near the quality of Smackdown or Raw, but my neighbors loved it none-the-less.

so as i was staring and pondering the mystery of this national-pride wedding garment, it suddenly morphed from a bright red maple leaf into a bright blue star of david.

REASON #2 - I will marry Natalie Portman!! (she's Israeli)

------
ok, so i was staring at the morphing designs on my bride-to-be's stomach, and I guess somewhere in there we actually got married, exchanged vows, etc etc. I don't remember any of that stuff, probably a defense mechanism where I block out all the really scary stuff (VOWS!!). i should be glad, because if I had heard myself say 'I do' I probably would've woken up screaming and sweating, and the rest of the dream was pretty entertaining, I would've missed out.

so yeah, cut to reception. I, along with my still faceless bride, are now for some reason or other wearing standard PeaceCorps issue bicycle helmets.

REASON #3 - anyone see Garden State?!?!!!!! Natalie wears a helmet!!!! DONE DEAL.

and we are presiding over a buffet line that includes, again for some unknown reason, a ton of crappy Tanzanian food. one interesting selection - does anyone remember those little 'troll' dolls, with the really bright and fluffy hair?! Yeah, so those were in one of the hotpots, and I observed guests grabbing them by the hair and eating the bodies. Now, I was racking my brain for an explanation of where the hell this came up in my recent life, and decided it must have been when I was in Dar-es-Salaam and went out for pork with some friends from the University. Any PCV in Tanzania can tell you that the pork here is VERY tasty....and occasionally still a bit hairy.

I myself made a beeline for the porky-trolls, when I bumped over the large serving tray holding them with my incredibly large gut. I then saw my extremely fat landlord (wearing his Steve Urkel pants) pointing and laughing at me. Now, I assume this little mind-game is a result of the fact that everyone I saw in Morogoro (host family) told me I was getting fat and growing a belly. At that point, I began to rememer how once in Morogoro I knocked the sliding door off of a minivan bus I was riding when I tried to get off and hit it with my ass. Thus, in my dream, I managed to destroy my own wedding-buffet line with my enormous mid-section.

After cleaning myself up, we began chatting with the guests. There were many - other PCVs, college friends, people from high school I haven't seen in 6 years, family, and I assume Natalie's famous Hollywood friends (though I didn't see any of them with my own eyes, except for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie but I assumed they were there to celebrate my fantastic development work in Africa, and not just because of celebrity connections). They were all pretty shit-faced drunk though, so most were passed out sprawled across their tables, it kind of looked like some sort of mass carbon-monoxide poisoning or something. This I have since interpreted as my brain being starved of oxygen, because....

At this point, sadly, I woke up. Out of breath, face down in my pillow. After regaining my breath, I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out what the hell I had just imagined.



How's that for a glimpse into my crazy, but still malaria-free for 1 year and 3 months, mind?!!