Can't sleep....again.

I recognize this restless feeling while trying to fall asleep, it means I have to get up for awhile and figure out what's bugging me.

My birthday is coming up - which I think is the real sleep-stealing culprit here - and I've been thinking a lot lately about dreams. I, like every other kid everywhere, had many fantastical dreams. Very action-oriented, specific, with location, costuming, set-design, colors, people, etc. For instance...

I wanted to be a Solid Gold dancer. Not just a Solid Gold dancer, but THE dancer, Darcel. It didn't matter that I was the wrong color, I wanted that hair and that strength, that arch in my back, those "lines" as their called. I liked the idea of arriving at a studio in comfy yet trendy clothes and warming up in a cold room.

I also wanted to be a pianist...in New York. Not just so I could play piano, but so that I could whisk between a cab and a theater door as if it's just a few minutes before the time I'm scheduled to be there, never late though.

I then wanted to be a chemist because of all the pretty crystal-like structures I saw while watching "Superman" in the school library from a top-loading VCR player. I went home and pretended that my electric curlers were little vials of stuff. This dream later morphed into becoming a chemical engineer after I read an article in 1989 about the highest paying positions (chemical engineer was at the top).

The Cat is restless too. He usually doesn't meow at me this much or try to kill my foot that's hidden under the blankets. He usually tries that in the morning when I'm tyring to oversleep.

That reminds me, I used to dream of having a pet tiger. Not a Bengal tiger, although they're the prettiest; I wanted the biggest - a Siberian. It would jump around the living room on the unrealistic sectional sofa while I wore this super cute thermal underwear set that was black with thin colored lines that I saw in a Yougn Miss layout when I was in 7th grade (I told you, set- design, etc.)

Sometimes I would get a little vague about a main idea but really nail the details, like the dream about being AN ADULT with a job during daylight hours where I wore my favorite pink sweater to work and had my hair braided down my back and lived in my house (my parents, of course, had long moved out) that was filled with bean bags and really large floor pillows. I don't know where the tiger was at this point.

Fast-forward to today; I have Darcel's hair and have received a "very strong" comment on my dancing, I'm not an official pianist but I can make my computer keyboard sing and while I never "whisk", I am never late; I don't own that super cute thermal set but I have about 5 different other super cute thermal sets (sometimes it's as if Victoria Secret reads my mind!) and I often jump around my living room with my orange tabby cat. Please refrain from calling me a crazy cat lady because I only have one and he's way better at catching mice than I am. I guess, in a way, my dreams did come true.

I better think up some new ones so when I can't flall asleep when I'm 80, I"ll have something to ponder.