Nighttime Thoughts

What do you think about when you wake up in the middle of the night? I am trying to be careful about what I do think about, because often when I go back to sleep, my dreams continue my waking thoughts, but have a twist that I don't enjoy. Sometimes that will even wake me up again because the dream is so weird. Then I try to trace back my thoughts to see the origin of my dreams.

Last night I was awake for a while and started thinking about my siblings and the places they were living during their older years. Since several lived in retirement complexes similar to Culpepper Place (in fact, one was actually there, with a different name) my dreams, later in the night, placed me in some type of a nursing facility. I seemed to be in a pretty good shape, but was being taken with several other people to another floor in the complex for some activity. When I stepped in the elevator it immediately soared upward through all the many floors till it hit the bottom of the roof. Then it immediately dropped down to the basement floor. The other people in the elevator seemed to think I could help them get out, but just when I thought I had the doors opened, the elevator took off again. Finally, still in my dream, we were able to get out when the elevator was in the basement. We decided that if this place wasn't run any better than that we would leave, so we all went walking in the woods, dressed in our hospital gowns and robes. We found a little creek and sat down and somehow some food materialized and we had a picnic. I began to worry that the people at the facility would be missing us so I started walking back when I heard a siren. I thought that they were after us, but then I had to turn off my alarm clock so I don't know what happened next.

I have a friend that says our dream have meanings and indicate what is worrying us. I do remember thinking yesterday that it would be nice to have someone take care of everything for just a day or so, so maybe my residence in my dream was showing me that it isn't always fun to not be in control. I have never been afraid of elevators, but I have ridden them out of their usual shaft in other dreams, so maybe I do have a hidden concern about them some way. Having a picnic in the woods is nice and feeling guilty is a familiar emotion, so maybe my dream was sorting out some of my earlier thoughts.

Sometimes when I wake up at night I spend time trying to plan what I will do/need to do/don't want to do the next day. That does not produce more sleep so I try to avoid such thoughts. Sometimes it is productive however when my thoughts make me realize that I didn't put the second load of laundry in the dryer and Marilyn won't have her favorite sweatshirt to wear if I don't get up and take care of that.

My all time favorite getting back to sleep routine however is to push the mute button on my brain and let the music that I have heard during the day return to my memory. This is best on Sunday nights, but works well if certain commercials have been aired during the day.

The theme song from "Cheers" that is being played as background for some commercial is one that sticks in my head forever. The words "where everybody knows your name" that are in the song is soothing when I think of how nice it is to live where that is true.

I would like it even better if I could remember all the other peoples' names.