So I don't typically get too personal on this blog (outside of my Star Wars and video game obsession), but I had to share this. About once a month or so I have what I call a "stress-mare." These aren't nightmares in the typical sense, but a session of what feels like 100% pure stress. I typically wake up from these dreams feeling like I've been through battle. It's almost worse than a traditional nightmare as there never seems to be a climax of any sort. It's pure "lead up", like a scene in a horror film that you know is going to lead to a brutal death.

Last night's dream was pretty bad - and weird (hence the blog post). There was some kind of escape of a wild animal. The creature was like a velociraptor. Our sized - quick - brutal - etc. My family and I had gone to a family member's house to hide out, but it was pretty calm at first. No real panic at all with the people there. As the dream went on though it got progressively worse. I remember running around the house trying to find the most secure location - checking every window - looking at the ducts as a weak point - etc. And oh yeah - my kids were there too. There wasn't any real violence at all. I do remember my dog getting killed, but it seemed to happen "off camera". As the dream was ending though things were about to get real bad. I woke up feeling completely numb - not physically - just emotionally.

Ugh. I can say that I know where the dream came from though. I read a collection of "end of the world" type stories about a year ago, and there was a story just like that. It wasn't a particularly good or scary story, but it must have been clunking around in my gray matter.

Nice. What makes this even better is that I've had about four weeks or so of insomnia. I found my 'cure' two nights ago. For some reason, a heavy blanket helps me get to sleep (even though its hot as hell). Frankly though if I keep having dreams like this I'll switch back to not sleeping.