[alatar]

Bare with me...like a melting icicle, this post eventually comes to a point.

Sleep escapes me, but dreams rarely do.

Never been much for sleeping. Back in the day, three hours a night was efficient as long as once a week I could catch a power nap for 45 minutes. In the college years this was done in deserted hallways having a bench or two consecutive seats on which to crash. Even with that, still, one eye was always open as you just never knew.

Much older now, and now I wouldn't mind sleeping a bit longer, but the opportunities are few and far between with the kids. Five contiguous hours would be excellent; 5-7 hours in 45-180 minute bites is more the norm. Still, things change, and lately we've been on the upswing.

A typical night has me sleeping on the couch with the youngest. She's been a challenge, and we've (obviously) stood on our heads (while juggling) to keep her asleep and from waking the others. Anyway, she sleeps on one side of the couch, and I sleep half-seated with my feet between her and the edge so that when she wakes up, I know it. Keeps her from hitting the floor. Also keeps me from sleeping deeply.

After that, lately around 3 AM, me and the little one seek out my wife, who may or may not be sleeping in the master bedroom - she may have had to deal with one of the others and nightmares, wet beds and the sometimes coughing fit.

From then I may sleep to sunrise - or not - when I give up and get up to start the day and the coffee.

Side effects of sleep deprivation: being constantly tired (duh!) and being more prone to hallucinations. I've learned to deal with both. On the bad nights (like when I've seen every hour of the clock), I try to skip out on intense activities the next day like brain surgery as you just know you're going to make a mess of it. Oops! The hallucinations are like being color-blind - you know that you're seeing something differently than everyone else, but you learn to work with that version of reality, seeing grey and saying "green" (or, more like seeing a Balrog and saying "box."). The hallucinations aren't really vivid - just for a fleeting moment you see something and, given a million choices, your brain calls it wrong at first glance. Anyway, but that's more like waking dreams in some way, but I've not had any that involved the Downs, and so I digress.

One benefit of being awakened multiple times during the night as one tends to remember more dreams. If you wake up, you remember the last dream that you had. If not, the dream gets overwritten by the next one as you cycle through REM sleep during the night. And if you’re lucky, you can wake up, sort out the last dream a little, add some ‘better’ ideas, and fall back asleep, having front-loaded the imagery. Upon waking again after the next REM cycle, you can have had an even better dream than the first time. Or not.

Another effect of days with no sleep, at least for me, is that I tend to get emotions. Not emotional, as on any normal day I have few to none (they were surgically removed at birth during an experiment gone awry), but emotions. These, to me, are a stranger experience than seeing a car floating through the air. Suddenly I'm sad while watching all of the people leave the warm comfort of their last hope to march out to their freezing deaths, as seen in 'The Day After.'

It’s completely fictional, but at that moment, I care.

Odd, that. Best guess is that my anger towards Peter Jackson regarding Gandalf in the Return of the King Extended Edition was due to momentarily acquiring emotions. Argh! Anyway, so fast forward (or backward if you consider 'now' to be the current time) back to the Downs, back to when the amnesty went into effect. I had been reading some of the uglier posts. Briefly fell asleep, and had one of many dreams that concerned the Barrow Downs, and this one stuck out.

The main detail - I'll skip the list of cameos and description of the setting and surroundings - was that there was a poster, who in my dream was represented as having three heads. Where the face should have been there were…more like wolf, or werewolf heads, as you could see the brown hairy snouts protruding from the nose area, and it wasn't like you could see them if you looked dead on the person. It was only when he/she/it thought that you were looking away that these ghost-like three heads were visible. And it were if the pseudo somewhat visible head inside the three virtual wolf heads shook like it was a video projection from a shaky lens. I felt myself shuddering, as there was more to this person than was apparent. Something was wrong. Sickly dead wrong, as this person sought to cause despair. Dressed well, as so for all intent there seemed to be no problem, but there were the teeth, the sharp teeth of a predator which you could only see when you weren't supposed to.

I woke with the feeling that there was a wolf loose amongst the sheep that graze the green pastures of the Downs. A virtual wolf, looking to kill, to mindstomp, and soon it would begin stacking up prey, like (I presume) in the werewolf games where each morning brings bad tidings. Said nothing at that time - but due to those darned emotions I actually considered this to be some evidence that there was a problem. So I said nothing, and watched and waited, but found nothing. But still...

...just can't shake the feeling that there’s a wolf about.