I slept fitfully last night. My dreams were filled with clogged toilets, snarling dogs and curiously large rabbits that could leap like kangaroos cranked up on steroids.
Most nights when I have weird dreams, I head to the kitchen to drink a glass of milk and eat some gingersnaps. That usually does the trick, and when I go back to bed I practically hibernate.
That did not happen last night. When I dozed off after my gingersnap fix, I immediately began to have visions of plumbing problems dancing in my head.
At one point in my dream, I pulled a telephone from the commode. Not a tiny cell phone, but one of those old timey black wall phones with a rotary dial. What made it worse was that it was ringing. Even in the depths of the weird-dream marathon, I did not dare answer it.
I have a feeling that some of my dreams would have left a competent psychiatrist scratching his head. “You say the phone was ringing? I'll have to look that one up in the manual.”
Around 4 a.m. I awoke again, this time I dreamed that my truck was being repossessed by the finance company. I kept trying to convince the tow truck driver that both my cars had been paid off several years ago, and in fact I was debt free. But he kept popping his chewing gum as he said, “Tell it to the judge.”
This time I did not bother trying to sleep any more. I got up, put on some coffee to brew and sat out on the back deck for a while looking at the sky.
The waning moon left plenty of room to see the stars in the southern sky. I found myself wishing I knew more about astronomy and the names of the constellations.
Until recently, my old rooster would begin crowing about this time of morning, but last month I was carrying gallon jugs of water to the pen and he flogged my leg with his sharp spurs.
I bled like a stuck hog, as the old saying goes. I called an old friend that has chickens and asked if he would like a new rooster.
Now Speckles the rooster lives in a different zip code. The lesson he never learned was, “Never spur the hand (or leg) that feeds you.”
When the coffee finished brewing, I poured a mug and added some honey. Quietly I worked in the office filing papers and sorting magazines.
We are fairly good housekeepers, but when I flipped on the lamp on the top of my desk, I realized there was a layer of dust thick enough to grow carrots. Since I was not sleeping, I might as well be dusting.
All in all, it was a productive way to spend a few sleepless hours. I really do not want to make it a habit. So tonight if I dream of big bunnies or hear a ringing phone in my commode, I am going to look for a shrink.
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Rick Watson is a columnist and author. His latest book Life Changes is available on Amazon.com. You can contact him via email at rick@homefolkmedia.com.
