Thought about doing an audioblog today, as I was supposed to be giving blood this morning and didn’t have much time to bang out an entry here, but woke up having, apparently, swallowed some salt and razor blades. So I’m neither giving blood, nor going to talk much this morning. But it means my original topic, which requires an audio portion, has to be dropped for the time being.

(Seriously, though, my throat has hurt a bit most days since I rode Greyhound, but I haven’t been full-blown sick yet. Maybe there isn’t a correlation after all and allergy season is upon us/me.)

I also had another night of sleeping awfully; fell asleep a little after twelve, woke up at 2-something thinking it was 7, didn’t fall back asleep for an hour, woke up again at 4:49 for another 45 minutes or so, then slept in until almost 8. It had been a few months since this had happened and I sure as shit didn’t miss it. It’ll make today’s proofreading awfully fun, I’m sure. Focussing my eyes is already a challenge and I’ve barely been awake an hour.

I do remember a dream wherein I got a phone call from my late grandmother. In the dream, I was aware that she was dead. She sounded incredibly happy, and that she was taking a wee ‘break’ (from the after-life) and was on a sunlit patio in France (I think), being served by handsome waiters, and mentioned my grandfather was well. (He wasn’t there, though – like in a movie, I could see the scene playing out.)

Even setting aside the issue of my grandmother not being, y’know, alive anymore, this scenario is one of the most far-fetched I’ve ever had in a dream. My grandmother was a very intelligent woman, but extremely xenophobic in many almost all ways, and reluctant to travel anywhere that a) couldn’t be reached in a car and b) was populated by people who didn’t speak English. (This is the same grandmother who couldn’t believe I wanted to go to Scotland, because she couldn’t imagine it being a civilized place. A bit rich coming from a woman who lived up the Valley.)

She also was, and Grandma, I love you, but it’s true, the fussiest person to ever walk the Earth. Nothing was ever good enough. Even if she told you exactly what she wanted for Christmas, whatever you bought would probably have to be returned because the sleeves were a quarter-inch too short, or the collar was a bit too itchy, or the colour wasn’t quite right. On road trips, she would inspect motel rooms before agreeing to stay somewhere. Towards the end of her life, she was living on Ritz crackers, Chicken McNuggets, tea, and port. Her relaxing on a patio in a foreign country smiling throughout makes so little sense to me now that I wonder if this dream addled my brain to the point of waking me up and keeping me up for hours on end.

Yes, let’s not blame work stress, or hormones, or the very loud rain last night; my lousy night’s sleep is all down to my dead grandmother drinking tea by the French seaside. Of course.