It’s been hot lately. Actually, it’s been damn hot.
It’s been hot lately.
Actually, it’s been damn hot.
Other than becoming extra lazy and lethargic, and pining for serene swimming pools and metal buckets filled with ice cold Coronas all the live long day, the heat has been affecting my sleep.
I can attempt to combat the lethargy at least while at work and will the cabana boy/pool lounging fantasies from my head, but I take serious exception to my precious few hours of sleep being placed in jeopardy because of this atypical heat wave we’ve been having.
A couple nights ago I fell asleep on the couch around 7 p.m. I had the windows open in my living room and about an hour later I woke up sweating like a stuck pig.
Well, maybe not that bad, but for eight o’clock on an April evening it was hot enough and I was sticky enough to mumble a metaphor similar to the pig one as I peeled myself off the couch and stumbled to the wall to crank up the A/C.
You know that feeling you get when you’ve just woken up from a nap – not a full night’s sleep, but a nap that lasts somewhere between a half an hour and an hour – and on top of that you’re hot?
Your head is woozy and you feel like you could still be dreaming but you’re not quite sure. When you stand up those little white spots pepper your vision and for about a minute you stumble and sway like a drunk until they disappear.
Then on top of that you know you’ve just had a really odd dream but can’t remember exactly what it was – the kind that takes place in the same setting you’re actually in, and at first you have a hard time separating the dream from reality.
You know that feeling? I’m sure you do.
Well, as the fan clunked into place and a lulling hum signified the beginning of operation cool-down, I shuffled to each window and shut out the warm night air, still wiping droplets of sweat from the nape of my neck and grimacing a little bit with each swipe of my moist hand.
Collapsing back on the couch, still feeling slimy and disoriented, with the last bit of light side-stepping across the floor in diagonal slats from the half-opened blinds, I tried to focus on my unusual dream that had concluded just moments before.
The dream took place in my home, around twilight, on a Tuesday in late April.
As I lay on my black leather couch (that has seen better days after surviving a house full of college girls for several years), reading a Stephen King book about an other-worldly 1956 Buick Roadmaster, the door bell rang.
I put the book down on my coffee table right next to a burnt-orange candle and padded to the door in my periwinkle blue slippers.
Peering around the curtain on the front door that shields prying eyes from the goings-on of my private world, all I could see was a taupe-colored haze – like instead of looking around the curtain I had accidentally smashed my face right into it.
It was at this point when I started to fall.
For some reason I couldn’t stand up, and I began bouncing off pieces of furniture like a pin ball.
The multi-tiered plant stand in the foyer, the wooden divider that cordons off a make-shift laundry room, the fake ficus plant next to the welcome mat I wipe my feet on when I step through the door.
These things would never hold me up in real life if I fell into them, but this wasn’t real life, this was a dream, and I knew it was a dream while I was ricocheting from one inanimate object to another, so I just went with it.
But then I started to get that weird feeling you get when you realize you’re dreaming and it’s not so cool anymore, so you attempt to wake yourself up.
You know that feeling? I’m sure you do.
In my attempt to get back to the couch, feeling like the silver orb being rocketed around by The Who’s deaf, dumb and blind wizard who sure plays a mean pin ball, I suddenly woke up in total darkness, gasping for breath.
My face was buried in a taupe-colored pillow and I was attempting to obtain oxygen through its plush cotton fibers. Half of my body was on the couch and the other half was hanging off the coffee table – my thigh plunked down next to a book about a car and a burnt-orange candle.
It was 3 in the morning, every window in the house was open and I was sweating like a, well, you know, under a heavy winter blanket.
I’d dreamt the entire thing.
After closing the windows I dreamt I’d already closed, turning on the air conditioner I dreamt I’d already turned on and taking a shower to clean off the sweat I dreamt I’d already cleaned off, I was officially wide awake and couldn’t go back to sleep.
So I finished the book about a Buick, drank seven cups of coffee and waited until it was time to get ready to go to work.
And I spent the entire next day experiencing that weird, out-of-body feeling you get when you haven’t had enough sleep and you’ve drank too much coffee.
You know that feeling?
All because of this damn heat.
