Dreamland

Of all the magical things I have had the (questionable) delight of partaking in during my time as an invalid, best of all  has to be the cracked out nightmares that codeine is giving me.  Mind you, I got off taking it during the day as soon as possible because it made me loopier than Mel Gibson, though thankfully not nearly as violent.  Unfortunately by the time night rolls around my ankle starts throbbing and I end up caving and taking the drugs so I can sleep and stop counting every single throb.  Apparently, counting throbs doesn’t work like counting sheep… shocking, I know.

Day one was by far the worst.  I couldn’t actually fall asleep, I have no idea why, since the awesome nurse promised me that codeine would knock me out faster than Rocky Balboa.  This was not the case.  Instead, I eventually fell into that half sleep where you are almost conscious, but you cant move, and you feel all weird.  So there I was, laying on the couch with my leg in the air, when the dogs started to move.  Now, normally, I would think to myself ‘SOMEONE IS BREAKING IN,’ and then spend 5 minutes convincing myself its just the stupid dogs.  Not this time, oh no.

Somehow I managed to convince myself that the dogs were giant centipedes clicking around the house  looking for me.  To eat me, I assumed, though they could have been there because of all the centipedes I murdered while doing archaeology.  I couldn’t even run away because my ankle was destroyed, so I just laid there, panicking, wondering when the centipedes were going to find me and devour me.  I was helpless as helpless as a baby sea turtle, but less charming.  I did this until one of the centipedes licked my face at 3 am and I stayed awake watching infomercials and writing about how I wanted to be an octopus.

The next dream was much nicer.  I had this long, drawn out, epic odyssey of a dream where I was Robin Hood.  But I was still a lady; so I suppose it’s a good thing that Robin isn’t a gender specific name.  It was a awesome dream!  I had a bow and arrow, and I was riding a horse everywhere and laughing at all the inept henchmen and being a Hero.  With a capital H.  It was great.  I literally lived out the Robin Hood story like Kevin Costner, but with lady parts.  I highly recommend the experience to anyone who needs a self esteem boost, or a good adventure to break-up the boredom of every day life.

My brain and/or the codeine obviously did some planning during the next day.  I don’t know if my subconscious worried I would develop a soft spot for this drug or what, but it made damn sure I was good and scared, too scared to sleep ever again. 

Dream 3 was me, running through the forest from the fucking Huns.  Yes, those Huns, with Attila and genocide and mountains of terror slogging through the countryside like the blob.  Only, I couldn’t just run and hide, because I had my three-year-old nephew with me.  Our entire family had been killed (probably brutally) by the HUNS and I was running through the woods trying to hide but I had to carry Nephew and he wouldn’t stop screaming and they were going to find us and it would not end well at all.  The trees were like the ones in Snow White and were nearly impossible to get through and the ground was a foot of mud, so every step was a Herculean task.  The only problem was, I was not Hercules, I wasn't even Robin Hood.  I was a baby sea turtle.

Dream four was obviously going for the same message.  I found myself sitting on a dock that went out over a swamp in the bayou of Louisiana.  I was looking at the water thinking to myself “Urgh, I cant believe anyone would swim here.”  It looked remarkably like the swamp next to Mordor, but with less dead elves and more gooey stuff.  That’s when the bad guy from the Swan Princess kidnapped me with the help of giant spiders who had claws instead of legs and an entire tsunami of clicking water beetles. 

At first I thought I was going to drown in the swamp he was dragging me through, but I started watching the timer at the bottom of the screen (yes, there was a screen) and realized that hours were going by and I had yet to suffocate.  This was both a blessing and a curse, because if I died the spiders would stop digging their claws into me and I would no longer be kidnapped, but I would be dead which would suck almost as much.  Then he put me into a dripping moldy stone room.  Since it was a decrepit stone ruin I escaped out of it by jumping over a rock.  Unfortunately, this was all in vain because I ended up back on the dock and had to do the whole thing over again.  And again.  AND AGAIN.