Nope. No Desire to Build My Dream House

Posted on April 12, 2013 by borysSNORC

I have reoccurring dreams of this house, and by reoccurring I mean I have been dreaming of this place since I was maybe in my late teens? I am pretty sure the house doesn’t exist, and thank fuck for that!

My ‘dream house’ and I use the term ironically, is a place filled with a sense of latent menace, potential danger and lurking evil… think the basement from Silence of the Lambs or the training camp/armoury in the more contemporary TV show, The Following. The walls are solid brick or cement, once white but now filthy with age and neglect. The rooms range from huge with makeshift fires in the corner that people can huddle around to tiny narrow hallways with lowered ceilings that make me duck as I walk along. The whole place is rather dark and somewhat dank, but I can see clearly thanks to old bunker lights high on the walls in a variety of amber and deep red colours colours… which reminds me of untold hours spent in the B&W darkrooms at Uni many years ago. The most disquieting aspect of the house is its inhabitants. There are a multitude of hairy unwashed miscreants, who appear to be hiding around corners and loitering around leeringly down the long and dreary, windowless hallways.

The people are often congregating furtively in corners, engaged in unknown but definitely nefarious deeds… I can feel their ill intentions washing over me when I come across them and it takes considerable willpower not to scream and run. They seem to be constantly scheming, but will stop and stare at me when I come into a room. They watch me as I inch past them warily with my back against a wall, until I leave ‘their’ space, and then they resume their evil confabulations once I have departed. Moving through the house is always quite disconcerting, because even though I know the place is populated with plenty of these undesirable individuals, they inevitably and invariably scare the crap out of me when I walk around the corner and discover a group of them congregating somewhere.

Occasionally, I can hear cries of anguish or distress in the echoing hallways… no, it’s definitely not a ‘dream house’ in the traditional sense of the term.

I could try to map the place out, I’ve been there so often in my dreams that I can visualise the rooms and hallways and how they interconnect, but I doubt the effort would result in anything remotely practical, as I know the house doubles back on itself and rooms connect to other rooms in such a way that defies architecture and physics – the place is a veritable maze and I can never find my way out, I’m stuck there until I wake up feeling slightly alarmed and insecure. I’m not sure what causes these dreams… but when I find myself wandering these hallways I always feel alone, unprotected and extremely nervous that something bad is going to happen. I’ve had these dreams many times and again last night… but have never bothered to try and find out what they might mean.

So I decided to look up a bit of dream interpretation on the Internet – reliable sources that they are. And this is what the Internets in its infinite wisdom spat out:

A house represents your life. The rooms are aspects of your life. Being or living in a foreign or unfamiliar house means you’re in an unfamiliar part of your life. It’s not dangerous but it can be scary, as new things often are. Something wrong about the house means something in your life isn’t working.

Small rooms may mean you’re feeling confined or limited. Having a lot of rooms could be a lot of choices or just confusion in your life. Hallways are transitions, such as when you’re deciding something or in between parts of your life. The more winding they are, the more trouble you are having transitioning or accepting changes in your life.

Not having windows also would be very confining, very stifling. Getting lost means being confused, unsure where to go with your life.

Going into the basement represents your subconscious, your deeper thoughts and feelings. Finding a new door would be you’ve expanded your life somehow and a wall with a secret room would be thoughts, ideas, memories that you’ve hidden even from yourself. These dreams really are a collection of very easy to understand symbols!

It’s good that you go in the secret room, you’re exploring those hidden thoughts, and that does lead to other levels, but each level is harder to understand, maybe you’re reaching a more basic you without the superficial, which is a good thing but can be scary.

Things being under construction and dirt floors simply represent that you’re still under construction, you’re still figuring out who you are and so on. Having an old feeling probably comes from these feelings being rooted in the past. Lack of lighting would mean you’re having trouble understanding, things are not “illuminated” for you.

Feeling you’re being watched or followed could deal with others you feel are observing you, or a sense of your own behaviours as others see them.

You’re figuring out what’s wrong with the house, so that’s introspection, looking at your life and how you can improve it. Being stuck and can’t get out would simply mean you feel stuck, unable to progress, unable to break beyond limits, unable to change your life.

Well that all sounds like pretty typical psychobabbly really. Most of it readily applies back to dealing with chronic pain and/or the complete inertia my life seems to have taken on since the last car accident. Damn, thought maybe there’d be something new or useful there.

Oh, well… maybe one of these days there will be unicorns and rainbows in my dreams, but to be honest, if there ever was, I’d probably be checking the labels on my drugs quick smart!

Broken Teeth; Broken Dreams

Posted on March 27, 2013 by borysSNORC

I had a horrid dream last night.

I dreamed that I was at an SCA event, it was supposed to be a small event, but there were people everywhere and I got the impression it was way bigger than anyone thought it was going to be. Anyway, I bit into something and I heard a noise and thought I had cracked a tooth. I went to check the tooth hurt and realized that I had broken ALL my teeth. They had broken horizontally about half way down each tooth and when I reached into my mouth to touch them I pulled out all my half broken teeth stuck together in a what looked sort of like dentures without the top/gum bit… just a semi-circle of broken teeth all held together by who knows what. As I pulled them out of my mouth, I could feel the ‘roots’ of the my teeth running very deep and being pulled out from behind my upper jaw bone and cheekbones and face. The pain ran up to my eyes and radiated out to my ears. I stood there looking at the mouthguard shaped teeth (no roots on them though?) and quickly tried to put them back into place so I could go find a dentist – but we were in bum fuck no where at an SCA event on a weekend and knew I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of finding a dentist. It hurt like hell trying to put them back, trying to line up the long roots of each teeth to go up into the cavities behind my cheeks and face. I couldn’t talk and I couldn’t open my mouth without them starting to fall out again so I had extreme difficulty trying to tell anyone that all my teeth were broken.

I’ve had dreams about teeth falling out before, just one here or there but never anything this disturbing! I woke up in the middle of it, thanks to an inconveniently early (0530… who does that btw!?!) text from a friend leaving me feeling excessively anxious and then terribly relieved to discover that my teeth were still in situ and not in fact broken.

Time to let the Internets do the talking…

Broken teeth in a dream are a representation of disruptive challenges and stress. Dreaming of a tooth or teeth breaking can be a warning about a costly compromise you are about to make and the difficulties and misfortune that may result from it. Read more dream interpretations to decipher the meaning of your dream.

Primary dream meaning of broken teeth: Instability and search for balance

Dreaming that your teeth are breaking isn’t generally associated with positive feelings. When you want to find out the meaning of your dream, take it as a useful clue: Because your dream contains imagery and symbols that stimulate negative emotions, it may refer to something disruptive that is undermining your balance in your waking life. How to interpret broken teeth or teeth breaking? A good starting place is to think about what is or could disrupt balance, pleasure, well-being in your life. Seeing broken teeth indicates that your foundations or stability is being challenged. Check how this could refer to a situation or feelings in your waking life to get a key on how to interpret your dream of broken teeth.

Dream interpretation of broken teeth: Questioning reliability & trustworthiness

A broken tooth or breaking teeth in dreams denote that something is unreliable in your life. The dream could point to you or other people. Broken teeth could represent doubts or concerns over the reliability of your health, aging of your body, or physical appearance. This dream symbol could also point to things you have said that may or may not be really trustworthy. A broken tooth or teeth would symbolize guilt you feel about a broken promise or concerns over promises you or others cannot depend on.

Broken tooth, dream symbol for pain and loss

Broken teeth symbolize pain over losing something that is important to you. You may be currently experiencing changes in your life, transitioning from one place or job to another, ending a relationship or working on modifying your habits. Dreaming about teeth breaking is a common symbol for concerns over change and loss. Your dream could point to the fear of getting hurt emotionally and perhaps physically as well by an upcoming situation or by someone.

When dreaming about broken teeth means costly compromises

A dream about teeth breaking can be interpreted as a warning about the cost of a decision or action. You may have or are about to make a choice that compromises with your real needs or desires. Broken teeth may represent the emotional pain that comes with such a choice. A costly compromise is like losing a part of you or denying important needs. Through an image related to the body, a broken tooth or teeth, your dream is most likely pointing to the emotional pain that your decision triggered.

Broken teeth in dreams: An invitation to look at your life direction

A meaning of a dream about teeth breaking could be that you are “breaking” yourself and your sense of balance in order to satisfy others or goals that do not serve you well in the end. Dreaming about broken teeth could be a warning about a course of action you have chosen and its potential drawbacks. A broken teeth dream is an invitation to look at the path you have chosen. Check if you are losing sight of yourself and your true needs by going after some ideals that may not align with who you truly are or by compromising too much to fit with other people’s expectations.

Ahuh, between daily chronic pain, continued infertility and not having more children, prescription drug dependencies and lack of sleep, marital and relationship dysfunction and disharmony, a looming third party injury case and indecisiveness about completing my PhD and well, the direction for my entire life… yeah, none of that shit sounds familiar at all. 🙁

Apprehensive much?

Posted on March 14, 2013 by borysSNORC

Another restless night. Waking, with yet another travel nightmare, leaving me with a ball of knots in the pit of my stomach. I don’t usually remember my dreams, so this is getting rather weird.

I was in Austria, for reasons unknown, and checking into an airport, again for reasons that were unclear to me. Mr K had gone to return a rental car, and myself and the Small Child were in the queue to check-in and go through customs, which for purposes that likewise evade me, were at one and the same checkpoint/counter.

We did that thing you do when you inch forward in a queue and desperately hope that you don’t get to the front of the line just yet. It’s counterintuitive queue behavior as the entire point of queuing for something is to get to the front and get your business stated and done… but we all find ourselves doing it from time to time. Like when you’ve got all your groceries on the counter and find yourself wishing the check out chick would slow down a bit, because your partner hasn’t come back from their mad dash to grab the muesli that you forgot to pick up. Or you’re lining up for entrance to a movie and one of your party decides to dash off to the bathroom because you’ve got plenty of time, but now you’re standing there with all the tickets and said person with the weak bladder is no where to be seen. Counterintuitive queue behavior. We’ve all done it, and it leaves you with a slightly agitated, slightly worried, slightly annoyed feeling as you inch inexorably towards the front of the queue for your turn, but you’re not actually ready to be there yet.

Well, we were in the queue and Mr K was no where to be seen. The place felt a bit like the equipment hire/canteen building at Smiggins Holes down near Threadbo… busy and bustling with people all dressed for an alpine environment, in what is supposed to look like a giant log cabin but actually feels more like a giant tin shed with filthy floors and harried faces trying to be a giant log cabin. Maybe it was supposed to be a rural airport in Austria? I don’t know. But we are waiting for Mr K. I’m doing that swivel head thing that you do, when you’re desperately looking for someone in a crowd. Travel documents for all us in hand, and I can’t see him anywhere. I grab my phone and try to call him… another weird modern phenomena, calling someone you know to be across the room somewhere, or in another part of the same shopping centre. I’m desperately trying to figure out how to dial out of Austria to dial the Australian mobile phone he is carrying, as we inch further forward in the queue. We are next, and no Mr K. His phone rings, but he doesn’t answer it. But somehow the facetime function turns on, and I can see him sitting outside in the sunshine with the snowy mountains in the background having a cup of coffee, reading a newspaper and a waitress bringing him breakfast!

I’m staring at the phone with incredulity realizing he’s not going to make the flight, we’ve got 8 minutes before check-in closes (yes exactly 8, I don’t know why), so I can’t go find him or we’ll all miss the flight! I’m torn between sending the Small Child to go hunt for him, knowing that if I get to the front of the queue without either of them I’ll end up going through customs and the Small Child might not find him and then I’d be through to no man’s land with no Mr K, and no Small Child – leaving Mr K enjoying his breakfast and the Small Child stuck in an airport! Answer your fucking phone!

Eventually, myself and the Small Child go through the check-in/customs and Mr K is still no where to be seen. We end up on the flight and no doubt, Mr K was enjoying his breakfast as we were flying off to… actually I have no idea where we were going. And that’s where I woke up. Me and kidlet on the plane headed to… question mark?!? And Mr K was relaxing over breakfast somewhere without us, while I had firm possession of his travel documents and there was no way in hell that he was going to find us. :S

Hmmm, travel nightmares. Tripit says we depart in 86 days, so that is potentially 86 more opportunities for my anxieties about long haul travel to bubble to the surface in my subconscious! Yay!

Retail Rage Red

Posted on December 2, 2012 by borysSNORC

Weird dreams ahoy!

Just woke up from one strange arse dream. I was on a mission, a stupid and inane misson to buy (wait for it…) a large orange plastic hippopotamus called Fix Me Hippo that was designed for budding little doctors and nurses to diagnose and cure. Fix Me Hippo came with a veritable plethora of accessories with which to ‘treat’ Fix Me Hippo’ including stethescopes, dental tools, little pretend scalpels for surgery etc. The exact sort of toy I always hated for the Small Child when he was smaller as the bits would inevitably go missing or end up underfoot in the dark.

Well, Fix Me Hippo had just gone on sale so I called around to every toyshop in the vicinity trying to locate one for my son… I have no idea why because he’s way too old for a toy like that anyway, but we had to have one. Everywhere I phoned I got told they were sold out or they hadn’t received their stock yet. After a dozen frustrating phone call I hit the internet and found a little known toy wholesaler that sold to the public, so I jumped in the car and went to see them. For reasons beyond my understanding, their toy shop was hidden behind a Flight Centre shop front but I went in anyway, because that is where they were supposed to be.

Inside, I was met by a ‘greeter’ (hateful horrible waste of time job that is) who pressed her clicker to count me in, and then I went looking for the Fix Me Hippos. There were large stands of Fix Me Hippo accessories, big cutout displays designed to attract kids attention, a large banner declaring it was the ‘Must Have Toy This Christmas’, and all the staff were calling each other ‘Dr. Melanie’ and ‘Dr. Mitch’ etc, as part of the promotion. I went up to a counter and asked what looked like one of the more senior personnel, where I could find the Fix Me Hippos. I was promptly told they had heaps of other items in the range, by no actual Fix Me Hippos left and that they weren’t getting any more. Naturally, I asked if they were expecting any more in before Christmas and the Sales Chickie typed something into the computer and said ‘That’s odd, the system says we have plenty of them, but we definitely don’t have any.’

Now, I don’t know if it’s because I lived through the Buzz LightYear fiasco of the late ’90s at the Disney Store, and therefore dealt with more irate parents than you could count, as we had to keep telling them the delivery date was being pushed back and back because the stores down south kept gobbling up the stock… or if it’s because I’ve had an absolute gutful of things not quite going to plan this year and had more than my fill of dealing with ineptitude and bureaucratic fucktardary… but suddenly this Sales Chickie was squarely in my sights.

I asked her, politely, to please check their stocks and see if they have any, especially given their stock system seems to think they are on site. She replied that there was no point because she knows they don’t have any but that I’m welcome to look around the store.

Bzzzzt. Wrong answer.

It was like a red flag to a bull. I quietly and calmly reiterated my request to this woman to please have a look for the stock. Not only did she repeat that she was convinced they had none, but she suggested I try a competitors store in a neighbouring suburb, which gained her the following response ‘Your job is to assist me, the customer. I am fulfilling my end of the social contract by clearly communicating to you what my requirements are, and you are refusing to look the matter on my behalf… Where. Is. Your Manager?’

Oh yep. It was on. For reasons beyond my understanding I needed the bright orange Fix Me Hippo and no silly little Sales Chickie calling herself ‘Dr. Katy’ was going to get in my way and piss me off by being unhelpful. She prevaricated and danced about a bit saying she couldn’t (I heard wouldn’t) help me and told me she was the Stock and Supply Supervisor and that she knew there was no stock in the store. But I didn’t care. I was convinced that their system was right (as if!) and was demanding she help me locate the toy. I distinctly remember asking her, ‘Are you going to help me here? Or am I going to have to write another letter to people ten rungs above your head? Because you don’t want me writing complaint letters about you ‘Dr. Katy’. My complaint letters get people fired. My complaint letters get people evicted. My complaint letters get members of parliament sending me apologies! So where are the goddamn Fix Me Hippos?’ Yep. Borys was on the retail rampage.

‘Dr. Katy’ by this time getting tearful and backing into her boss’ office saying there was nothing she could do and I was stalking after her in noisy high heels (wtf? I never wear heels). She gets to her manager or whomever and called me a ‘Customer’ – at Disney, all our shoppers were ‘Guests’… unless they were being watching as potential shoplifters, or being a right pain in the arse at which point, we referred to them as ‘Customers’ so everyone knew to keep an eye on them or call for back up to deal with them! Again I just saw what I like to think of as ‘Retail Red’. It’s a special type of rage and indignation that we spare for those whose job it is to assist us in our retail nightmares, but who are particularly ambivalent or obstructionist in their so called ‘assistance’. So I told her that as a customer service representative she made a damn good bricklayer, now could someone please find me the damn Fix Me Hippos!

Her pimple faced (?) teenage supervisor went to a large compactus in the room next door and said ‘Here you go, how many do you need?’ and handed me the much coveted Fix Me Hippo… whereupon I woke up simultaneously thinking “Oh my God!” and “What the fuck?” and “Sigh…I need a holiday.”

MIght come back and attempt to analyze a bit of this later, but am unsure I will gain anything from the endeavour that I care to know anyway! Farkenell. :S

Sleep Deprivation Sucks

Posted on June 26, 2012 by borysSNORC

It’s been at least four and a half years since I’ve had an unmedicated nights sleep. And even with the copious Valium prescription repeats, I only manage somewhere between 5-6 hours… on a good night. Which means I’m racking up somewhere between a 2-3 hr sleep debt every night. :S

Without the Valium, it’s a complete waste of time. I go to bed, I toss and turn for hours trying to get into a position of relative comfort, read: one whereby my back shuts the fuck up long enough to allow me to fall asleep. Should this elusive position actually be found and I do manage to fall asleep unassisted, I will inevitably wake up within 2-3 hours with my jaw clamped shut so tight I feel like I can’t talk, my fists in little ineffectual balls of fury and even my little feet feel like they’ve been tensing up against the pain. Not good.

Needless to say, the famed Roche Mother’s Little Helper and I, have become good friends… I would have bought shares in the company five years ago if I’d known how much of their product I was going to end up consuming. In the beginning (hehehe) there was a mere 2.5mg of diazepam a night to help me get to sleep which seemed to assist with the tense jaw thing and for a while did help with the getting to sleep thing. But as I’ve scaled back the traditional analgesics which seem to do fuck all to make a dent in neuropathic pain, and have cut back the so called neuropathic pain blockers which are completely ineffective and leave me hideously dopey (hey, don’t laugh)… the daily Valium quotient has slowly crept up and up to the point where I routinely take 10mg a night as a minimum and work up from there depending on how crap I feel. :S

The end result of which is that I haven’t had a decent night sleep for nigh on five years and have no doubt accumulated a considerable sleep debt which is probably irrecoverable at this stage! And according to the Scientific American, studies into short term sleep deprivation can cause foggy brain, impaired vision, driving deficiency and drum roll please… memory lapses! Oh, I could have told them that last one. Long term sleep deprivation can cause/exacerbate insulin resistance, heart disease, diabetes and obesity! Yay!! All that good stuff to look forward to! :S

So how do you try and crib back a five year sleep debt… I imagine it’s damn near impossible at this point, though it has been suggested that perhaps a month of medically induced coma could bring me back into balance!