A night of soap bubbles

I didn’t go to bed last night until after midnight and I slept quite soon after that.

I woke with nightmares somewhere after three; I think I got too hot or it might have been the cheese on toast I had for supper. It’s a nightmare that crops up from time to time, where something evil and unearthly has somehow inflitrated my home and I am required to perform an exorcism. I remember reciting the Lord’s Prayer and demanding that the thing (under my bed at this point) leave at once. I might even have directed it to move into the light but I can’t be sure. One curious thing for those of you who interpret dreams (I am talking to you, Robert) the dream was set not only in my parents’ house, but in the bedroom I had as a child but not a teenager. It wasn’t exactly as I remember it; the drab wallpaper was there but the double bed that inhabits the room today was there instead of the single bed of my childhood. I woke up partially during the dream and took better control; the monster(which I never saw) had been reluctant to obey me, but when I became lucid within the dream, I found the atmosphere of dread and terror dissipated and I work feeling OK. Usually after such a dream I wake in a cold sweat and turn the light on for a while; I often also reach for some item of religious comfort, or my husband (who could be said to be that too, given his calling)

I went back to sleep and dreamed assorted dreams that have left me with fragments of bubbles, solidified slightly to shards of very fine and sparkly glass. I’ve been playing with them since I woke, rearranging them to make pretty or interesting patterns.

It feels rather good. I feel like a child with a new Fuzzy Felts set, one with glitter and satin as well as the usual bright and not-so-bright colours, to play around with and make new pictures. None of them are permanent because, if you ever had Fuzzy Felts, the joy of them was being able to change the pictures at will to tell a new story.

The really  funny thing is that even though I didn’t go to sleep till almost 1am, I woke at about 8am, feeling ready for the day. Even when I got to bed at 9pm and sleep till 6.45 I wake often as if I have tossed and turned all night. Obviously this needs more thought; recent research suggests that sharing a bed is not actually good for sleep, but I do suspect that NOT sharing one is likely to be bad for marriages. I don’t yet know if it was the skewing of my sleep pattern that has effected this change, or if it’s a mere one-off, or whether as is equally likely, that I am just relaxing from stopping my work schedule, or because I slept alone.

More research needed. I suppose I could always go and sleep in a tent in the garden to see what effect that has….