Category — the crazy stops here

In an valiant effort to defeat my mortal enemy- insomina- I picked up some chamomile tea at the grocery store last week. I was a little skeptical, because Sleepytime tea turned out to be ’stay up all night writing and surfing the innerwebs’ tea. This is the Stash brand, which I’ve heard good things about, and it does give me the yawn and nods.

It also gives me super crazy dreams.

My dreams have always been very vivid, and have never made much sense (when held to the standards, of say, viable fiction or the waking world), but this is getting… ridiculous.

Thursday night, I had a dream that I woke up and there was a cheetah in my living room. It had baby kitten cheetahs. My house cats were carrying baby cheetahs around in their mouths. I was the only one who was bewildered- they were all “yeah, we have a cheetah now, and it has babies. get with it, already.” I fed the house cats, and the cheetah wandered into the kitchen and started head-butting me in the thigh, so I pulled a steak out of the fridge (I don’t generally *keep* steak on hand, but I had one in my dream), and hand-fed her. She rubbed her big cat cheetah muzzle against my hand, and I was worried about what might happen if she served up a love bite, the way the house cats do when they’re being snuzzled on. Before I could find out, I woke up.

Last night? Last night takes the cake.

My Dad stole a baby for me.

I was in bed, fast asleep, when my Dad let himself into my house. He put a baby in my bed, and I tried to question him, and he said we would discuss it when he’d had some sleep. I moved some pillows around, moved to the middle of the bed, and went back to sleep. Holding a baby.

When we woke up in the morning, I asked Daddy if he had anything to feed the baby, and he jumped up.

“Yeah, I stole the diaper bag too. I know about babies. There’s some formula in there.”

“Okay, Dad? Why did you steal me a baby?”

“You said that I couldn’t give you babies, but I figured out how. It’s gonna be great- the Mom looks a lot like you.”

“But, Dad, what I said was that you can’t be the only man I need because I would like to have a family someday. Someday, Dad, with a husband. What the hell am I going to do with a baby? Do you know how hard it’s going to be to raise a baby on my own? And this is going to make dating awkward, to say the very least…”

“Well, you can’t return a stolen baby.”

“Dad, how am I going to afford this kid? Babies need stuff. Tons and tons of stuff, and I have to work, and I can’t take a baby to work.”

“I’ll give you some money, but you can’t return a stolen baby.”

Then I realized the the formula he was talking about had been premixed and sat out in the car all night, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t good anymore. My father then suggested that if I tried hard enough to nurse the baby that “nature would take its course”.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

Part of me wants to stop drinking the tea, and the other part can’t wait to find out what weirdo dream it will give me next.

** there is not even the slightest possibility that I am pregnant. this was suggested to me by a coworker, who now sports a bruise on his shin. **

Who chooses a scenic highway with a top speed limit of forty-five miles an hour over the interstate? This girl. I drove the Blue Ridge Parkway to Lynchburg, Virginia this weekend. I could have taken I-40 or I-26 to I-81 and made it in four hours, but I didn’t.

The Parkway is one of my favorite places in the world. So simple, so beautiful- in a world of double-tandem semi-trucks and seventy miles per hour speed limits, the Parkway is a haven, a refuge. My parents don’t call me their “little ridge-runner” for no reason.

I regretted my route once; when I found myself behind a car with Iowa plates on a steep decent with more than a few descending decreasing radius curves- a fancy engineering term for a bitch of a curve. A descending radius curve is where the road changes elevation in the curve- you’re not just turning, you’re also going downhill. A decreasing radius curve is where the turn gets harder as you go through it.  So, of course, a declining decreasing radius curve is one that combines a drop in elevation with a tightening of the curve once you’re in it.

What makes these curves so treacherous? The grade of the decent causes your car to accelerate, which makes you want to hit your brakes to slow back down, but that makes it almost impossible to steer into the apex of the curve. You pick up speed when it is the last thing you need.

After you’ve driven in the mountains for awhile, you get the hang of these nasty little curves. You learn to start into them slower than you would a level turn. The car sets itself a line as you start the curve and pick up speed, and your job is to interfere as little as possible with that natural line, steering only as much as necessary, and only braking very lightly just before the apex if absolutely necessary.

People from Iowa are perhaps not familiar with this technique. So they fight the line. They ride their brakes or hit their brakes hard in the apex, which makes steering much harder. I feel for them- they’re scared, they’re getting a lesson in vehicle physics that isn’t had in Iowa, they are white-knuckled and full of fear. (Not to mention that they’re melting their brake pads and running the risk of losing braking power altogether). It’s frustrating and irritating for me to ride behind them; they ruin my line when they fight their own, but I’m irritated while they are scared for their lives.

I wish I could tell them not to fight the line. To slow down a little more coming in, if they’re nervous, but once the curve starts, take your foot off the pedals and just steer. Fighting the line is actually more dangerous.

I’ve been stressed, scared, frustrated, angry and unsure of myself. The life I dream of is on the horizon, and the life I once cherished is ending slowly but surely, like the passing of mileposts. I cannot see what the road looks like from where I’m at to where I’m surely headed, and that element of uncertainty is what makes me crazy. I drive myself crazy trying to plan and plot and scheme and prepare for every possible outcome or pitfall or obstacle, drafting plans A through ZZ in a attempt to find some security in life-changing situations that are well beyond my control.

I’ve been fighting the line. I’ve been braking and freaking out and over-steering like a flatlander. I’m making things much, much harder than they have to be, and more dangerous too, in the sense that my health and emotional stability have suffered, are suffering, and that means that I’m not bringing my best self to anything I’m involved in.

Time to take my foot off the brake, loosen my grip on the wheel and trust the road.

“Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You’ll sail the perfect line..”

-bob seger “in your time”