Be Careful what you wish for….

After a week in the deep freeze the sun is shining again, but the wind makes it feel very cold. It is what it is. We do live in Northern Alberta after all. I was getting rather antsy with all the inactivity though. Even though I do work part-time, it does begin to feel somewhat like the movie, Groundhog Day, with every day seeming pretty much like the last: eat, sleep, work, do it again. I promise the universe I will not complain about the lack of excitement any longer, however, after events of last night and this morning.

Last night the fire alarm went off late in the evening. My husband has been having constant low blood pressure readings. That means he can get quite dizzy when standing and is at risk of falling. So, here we were, fire alarms blaring while we tried to decide what to do. He uses a walker, so stairs are a huge problem. (We live on the fourth floor of an apartment building.) In the end I decided to nip down the stairs to see what was going on. I took my phone with me so I could let him know what was happening. I met lots of anxious neighbors on the stairwell, each of us wondering if there was indeed a fire or if it was a false alarm. In the end it was just a false alarm. That was wonderful. Not the kind of excitement anybody wants in the depths of winter however!

The depths of winter are particularly cold in the evening and in the early morning, before the sun has worked its charm. I had been up maybe ten minutes or so when it happened again. The freaking fire bells went off and cleared the sleep completely out of my brain. (It usually takes me thirty minutes or more to be fully awake.) Did I say Groundhog Day? “Ugh,” I thought, “here we go again”. Pull on the mukluks, the gloves, and the parka, trudge down the stairs to investigate, but this time I forgot my phone in the apartment. I guess the sleep muddle wasn’t completely cleared. In the end it was another false alarm. So, universe, thank you for the wake-up call. Yes, life can be a bit boring when you are confined indoors, but we are warm, safe, and have everything we need. That more than compensates for a little ennui. I will remember to count my blessings, and to be careful what I wish for!

I like dreaming

“And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.” – Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

Dreams are so weird, at least mine are, most of the time. I once had a dream dictionary so I could look up the meaning of my dreams, even though it strictly advised that dreams are subjective. In other words, what the color red, for example, means to me will not have the same meaning for someone else. It requires a lot of deep thinking to figure out what the symbolism inherent in dreams means to me. I don’t have time to interpret my dreams these days. Between work and home life my schedule will not allow me the time to spend on indulging myself with what dreams may mean.

Still, it is intriguing and can give great insights. It’s too bad I can no longer give them much thought. It was actually a lot of fun, and sometimes very instructive. I do like fantasy worlds, after all. And dreams can be that. They can also be horrendously realistic, sometimes frighteningly so – like a masked man banging down your door while holding a knife in his hand – that’s the stuff of nightmares for sure! My imagination can get a little out of hand. I remember scaring the daylights out of myself when I was a child. The mental images were so real! But, I like dreaming. Dreams can take me places my pocketbook never could. And sometimes they can lead to an inspiration that pays off in real life. Just because I no longer spend hours on dream interpretation doesn’t mean I’ve ceased paying attention.

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in – what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” – Victor Hugo, Les Miserables