Sleep, Glorious Sleep!

I went to bed at 6:30 PM last night, ostensibly for a nap, and got up at 8:30 this morning. I really, really, needed this, having pulled several near all-nighters in a row, mostly in connection with the English Faire.

Wednesday night I was up most of the night doing homework for my last accounting class. I didn't get it done, but I made progress.

Thursday night I was up really late emptying the drawers of my mom's furniture so I could donate selected items, including the furniture. (More on this later.) Then I designed directional signs, on request, that ultimately weren't used.

Friday night I wrote a couple of journal entries so I wouldn't get behind, and wasted a ridiculous amount of time looking at Quizilla quizzes related to Buffy, Tolkien and other interest areas. I'd never been to the web site other that to take one or two silly personality quizzes recommended by others, and I wanted to get more of a sense of what's there in connection with a piece I want to write about the inaccuracies of personality tests, both serious and silly ones. A large number of Quizilla's quizzes were obvious teen and preteen efforts, badly-spelled trivia tests and Mary Sue stories about Your Date With Rupert Grint/Dan Radcliffe/Orlando Bloom, Part 26.  At the other end of the scale was an erudite test of the reader's attitude toward Tolkien canonicity, contrasting the every-word-is-sacred school of thought with people willing to twist the heck out of the story to accomodate slash and satire.  I came out as a "Tolkien moderate," and quite right, too (for a change).

Saturday night I formatted a bunch of the fifty-or-so decent pictures I got of the English Faire. I honestly don't remember what else I did.

Sunday night, after a nap, I updated the St. Michael's schedule page, taking out all the outdated English Faire stuff. I posted to the St. Michael's blog, and spent several hours reworking the SMAA music page, based on what the choir director sent. I got to bed at something like 4:50 AM, and lay awake.

Last night I slept. I was terribly tired.

I don't remember much about the dreams, but I enjoyed them, almost as much as I enjoyed waking up and thinking, I can go back to sleep! I do remember turning to John in one dream and saying, "Let's get married some more." (John said today, "If I were any more married, I don't know what I'd do.")

Perhaps not too surprisingly, my dreams are usually populated by my mom, sometimes by John, by friends and tv characters and fictional strangers.

And by Dan Cheney (1957?-1978).

As in dreams of my mom, I'm usually embarrassed to ask whether he's dead. I know he's dead, and he knows that I know. But that doesn't stop him from showing up from time to time and telling me things, or just being a friend. I'm always glad to see him. Now, please understand: I make no claims that the occasional presence of Daniel Cheney in my dreams proves anything about anything. But Dan in my dreams is more real to me than a guest appearance by Xander Harris or Sam Beckett, just as Mom is more real to me in dreams than she is as I trim the grass that tries to grow over her grave marker. Dreams keep important old memories alive, casting beloved people from the past in new scenes, usually to do the same old stuff. Mom used to tell me that she always dreamed her mother and sister were still alive. I thought this rather sad, a symptom of her depression and inability to get on with her life, but maybe she needed these dreams to cope with her feelings. Maybe I still need my mom, and sometimes Dan. So my brain provides them, through the medium of dreams.

As I went through boxes of photos recently looking for stuff to post here, I came across an envelope I didn't know I had, containing a photo I don't remember posing for. It's of Dan and me, obviously from the night of the junior prom. The envelope credits a photography studio in Chittenango, NY. I'll post the credit later, but I'm calling this fair use. If Dan has any surviving friends or relatives who would want this, I refer you to the photographer for a non-digital copy. The last I heard, he had a surviving sister, and an uncle in Texas. I sincerely hope the uncle isn't related to the vice president of the U.S. I doubt it. Dan's name was pronounced Chee-nee, not Chay-nee. There are also at least two other surviving friends I've heard from in the past several years.

I wrote a page in memorial to Dan some years ago. If you're curious, click on the photo to get to it. Dan had a short, strange life - and I'm glad to have been part of it.

Karen

Photo credit: S. C. Parker, 604 Forbes Ave., Chittenango, NY 12037