What Day Is It?

I'm out of it.

I can't remember what day it is, other than it's the day I took my friend to the airport and now I have to figure out what to pack because we leave Monday and I haven't done anything, but not to worry because I go in for chemo tomorrow and then I'll feel like dog poop for two days and won't have the juice to worry. Good plan, man.

So, come Monday morning, I'll have to pack, pay all the bills, do laundry (er, wait, note to self - do laundry before packing), take the dog to her "other" family, find the passports and the travel documents, find someone to drive us to the airport, remember to lock the doors, flush the toilets, wash the fish bowl, pay all the bills I currently have, send itinerary's to my next of kin, and take my drugs.

Speaking of drugs, as some of you know, I have been trying to get myself off of some anti-depressants started about nine months ago when life seemed a bit overwhelming. I was hoping to do so to return to a more "natural" state of being and sincerely believing that many of the most stressful times of my life were now behind me. Many of my friends expressed, how shall I say it, a bit of skepticism at my timing, thinking perhaps that trying to prepare for a three-week, trans-continental journey two days after doing chemo and at a time when the performance of the US airline industry has never been worse, practically guaranteeing the missing of a crucial connecting flight, or at the very least, lost luggage on our way to a wedding in the hinterlands of Hugary, with two hormonally deranged teenagers, might not be the best time to go cold turkey on anti-depressants.

Pshaw, I said - until I had the leaping spider dream.

Now, normally, I am not one to have nightmares. I don't look in the closet before going to bed. I am comfortable in an empty house at night. I am, after all, the parent of teenagers. What can be more scary?

Well, leaping, poisonous spiders for one. Let me explain.

The other night, I found myself unable to sleep. Normally, I take "mother's little helpers" at bedtime, and about a half an hour later, a bomb could go off next to me and I would never know it. But two nights ago, I could find no rest. I tossed and turned. I twisted in the sheets. I alternated between hot flashes and electrical jolts to the brainstem. This was not good.

Eventually, I believe I drifted off - not to sleep, but to that nether world between waking and sleeping states. While there, I dreamed of being in my grandparents old house, except that it didn't look anything like it. I found myself continually coming across architypical representations of my deepest phobia's - like dead, oily, rodents and spiders with very observable fangs that had little drops of venom visible at the ends. They were everywhere - especially places where I had to put my hands. They were on doorknobs, and lightswitches, and window sills and sashes.

I kept having to dispose of dead, giant rodents who were clobbered in spring traps that had been bunched together, so that there were four or five at a time. Euhhhh. They were gross.

The final touch was that I was laying on the bed trying to sleep because I was exhausted (sound familiar) and some guests arrived (uninvited), bringing their two, really obnoxious children who proceeded to get up on my bed and start jumping up and down. Before committing some heinous crime, I got up and left the room, only to return later to find the two children asleep on the bed after making a little fort from the sheets. I noticed that the window was open and that the cold air (now it was suddenly winter) was blowing in. I approached the window to close it and looked up just as one of the venomous spiders launched itself off of the sash right at my eyes. I woke up as it landed.

It was then and there that I decided to start taking the AD meds again.