---

I don't know if I am the only one, but in spring, right after the time change, I go through about a month of vivid dreaming.

I wouldn't complain if they were good dreams, but usually they involve an inability to locate someone or something very dear to me, or guns.

Two nights ago, I dreamt I could not find Jazzy, my dog. I don't remember the setting, location, or surrounding events, but do recall looking and calling and calling - asking everyone I encountered if they had seen him.

The night before that, I was looking for my GMC. The strange thing in both dreams was that the "item" had not been stolen, but was just not where it should be.

And the gun thing is rather confusing to me. Since we don't watch television, or play video games, and only watch an average of two or three "action" movies a month, why did I just wake up from a dream where I was wiping out invaders in our home with a machine gun?

(And no, we do NOT own a machine gun.)

Either way, I wake up feeling like I have haven't slept at all. And, although I know it is silly, I have to look to make sure Jazzy, the GMC, whatever I was missing is still there.

Once I dreamt someone cut off my hair and my head was bleeding profusely from the roots.

Another time, I dreamt I was shot in the head, and could feel the bullet riccocheting around inside my skull. There was no pain, and apparently no brain damage, just a force knocking my head left and right on my neck.

Twice I have dreamt I was just driving down a sunny road when I landed in a mud puddle - which was actually a sink hole (we don't have those here) - which then became a spiralling whirlpool - which then became a flood (which we do have).

Anyway, back to the most recent machine gun/home invaders piece. A man came into our home (which wasn't like our true home at all) and tried to kill Frank and I with two machine guns. Not today's machine guns, mind you, but fat, futurisitic ones that made the "pop-pop-pop" sounds of a .22. I wrestled one gun away from him, shot him, and turned to find a woman holding Frank with a hand-gun (a normal one) to his head. I shot her with the machine gun, all around Frank without hitting him, but did manage to shoot Pup, (a dog that, in reality, has been dead for six years) who is injured, and shot through the gut.

So, the woman is shot like a million times, but not dead, and I go to tie her up, but keep slipping in the ketchup which splattered on everything when the bottle was hit by a stray bullet.

I call my friends (not 911) to help me get her tied, and when I leave her in their supervision to patch up Pup, (the guns have vanished from the setting), they untie her because she's covered with ketchup and needs a shower.

I freak out, grab her naked body out of the shower and tie her up again, (at which point she's amazingly clothed and dry, with perfect hair and makeup), and says she just stopped in to see Frank, (wink,wink) whom she has met before (insinuating an affair) and the ropes slip magically from her wrists.

Frank says, "What? I don't know you!" earnestly confused, and then says, "hey, aren't you that waitress at..."

At which point, I wake up.

. . .

Frank rarely remembers his dreams.

Sometimes I wish I didn't.

---

Want to know more about DeLaHaye? Visit her web site at WV Travelers , or her online store at Impecunious Impressions, or read her weekly column at The Calhoun Chronicle.