Lightning crashes

The great thing about not being able to sleep soundly is that you have a shit ton of dreams in one night. Or, well, I do.

So on my second round of trying to sleep in the wee hours this morning, I dreamed that my family and I were at Wal-Mart, outside in the parking lot. A storm rolls in and rains so heavily that Wal-Mart has decided to close. These huge chainlink fences slide closed around the store, locking everyone out. I pull out my Blackberry and try to photograph the action and send it to Twitpic and Flickr. (Yes, I know.) We get inside our vehicle to wait out the storm and lightning flashes around us. I realize that the lightning is actually hitting vehicles in the parking lot when I see these creepy trails of smoke leading from the ground to the sky, which is seemingly churning with anger now.

I see lightning strike a truck a few rows over, and then another vehicle closer to us. There's a slight flash of light near the ground right before the lightning bolt hits its target. I assume that at any moment, our car is going to be smote. I decide we've got to get out of there.

And get out of there we do. We're driving through a corn field, the storm still raging around us. We're following my dad, I think, and I keep wondering where mom is. My sister tells me she's behind us, and I can tell by the tone in her voice that she's doing something my sister disapproves of. The corn field, I notice, is faded and withered, which means it must be October.

Choose your own adventure

There was a scene in Mad Men last night that I was sure was going to play out like so: Man falls asleep on couch, man opens his eyes and is suddenly dreaming, man stands up and things happen that the audience understands are dream things, etc., man wakes up. Except it didn't pan out that way; man woke up. But it's a common scenario in movies and television — the falling asleep and dreaming that one is in that sleep position, "waking", and then doing dream stuff. I thought to myself, that doesn't really ever happen to me, self. I never really fall asleep in my bed and then start dreaming that I am in my bed as a starting point for a dream.

Which means, of course, that that kind of happened in my dream last night. Kind of.

Last night in real life, I left my friends D and A's apartment and drove home, like, half a block away.

Last night in dream life, I had a few false starts from D and A's apartment, trying to get home.

During the first one, I was in my car and completely, completely drunk. I couldn't find my way out of the parking lot so I turned around and took some convoluted alternate route and ended up driving over a median and puttering out into the street, unsure if traffic was coming or not. I think I made it home.

Scenario No. 2 had me stumbling out into the parking lot with friends Ay and B, and B lagging behind because he had found something electronic blinking in the grass. He realized it was my Blackberry and handed it to me. I'm grateful, of course, because clearly I dropped it and would have left it behind forever and ever. And then I realize that I must have dropped it hours ago, because it's busted as hell — keys missing, panels warped, screen cracked, not functional at all. I instantly start freaking out because I don't have insurance on it and even if I did, would it cover stupid drunken mishaps like dropping it in a parking lot and people running over it with their cars? Doubtful.

Scenario No. 3 has me leaving D and A's place and getting on some kind of shuttle full of bona fide creepy freaks. I'm sitting in the back of a standard van — two people up front, three in the middle row, and then me and someone else in the back. The driver looks in his rearview mirror straight at me and saying, "Hey, baby, where you headed?" and other barely masked innuendos. He goes on and on and I try to stand strong and silent and wait for my stop. The person sitting beside him turns to look at me and I see what I can only describe as a Satanic nose, pierced by a huge, tribal-looking nosering. The van finally stops at McLean and Poplar and I get out and try to walk quickly across the parking lot of the strip mall there, but the driver of the van is walking briskly to catch up with me. Ay and B are walking close behind and B wants to know what's wrong, so I start yelling at the van driver, who is some skanky old dude with long blonde hair, "You can't just look at a girl like that and say 'Hey, baby, where you heded?" It's creepy!" B's all, "What!? Yeah, man, you can't do shit like that!" I'm screaming at the skanky dude and B and Ay try to console me as I break down into tears.

I don't know if I ever got home.