January 1, 2013 Does coffee consumed late cause weird dreams?

Even though we left the bar just after midnight and got home about 1:00, I still ended up staying awake until 3:00 as a result of excess caffeine in my system.  Wouldn't you know, Toby started clawing the bed at O dark thirty and I had to lock him out.  Sadly, everyone except Dylan and Loki joined him in his temporary banishment.

But I finally woke at 10:00 to a very strange dream.  At first, I was part of a small team who was supposed to be checking a large number of sailors in before sailing, and we were given a ridiculously short amount of time to do it in, especially considering the fact that most of us were untrained.  I found myself, on several occasions, wandering around a 94 story building/ship trying to figure out where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing.  At one point, I was talking to a woman whose young children I already knew.  She commented that the job I was doing didn't match my resume very well.  When asked how she got my resume, she told me that she pulled it off of the internet.  What she had was clearly not mine, nor was her concept of what I do anywhere close to reality.  I finally told her that I was a corporate Controller and showed her my real resume.  This led to a discussion about what should and should not be included in a resume.  We saw one in which the person mentioned that they were taking anxiety drugs.  I was horrified and said that was something which should never be included in a resume.  A woman who was an HR expert contradicted me saying that for certain high pressure jobs, employers want to see that the individual would do everything they could to stay on task, no matter how intense the pressure of the job became.  Of course, I was completely baffled!

Ultimately, I got lost wandering around the ship and ended up in an area where the elevator only went to the 8th, 91st, 92nd, 93rd and 94th floors.  As I needed to get back to around the 27th floor, I had to go to the 8th floor first, but somehow, I kept getting off of the elevator to either talk to someone or wander more.  I finally did get back to my floor where everyone was in a room working on the check-ins.  By then it was after 5 and we had to have everything done by 11.  My own room was a mess with clothes scattered everywhere but instead of packing, I kept putting clothes on and taking them off, sometimes forgetting to put something on before running down the hall to see how things were going.  I realized that I'd forgotten the hard copy of my boarding pass and hadn't made copies of the luggage tags, and tried to get ahold of Heather to find out if I could download from the iPad to a flash drive so I could have some printed in the ship's business center.  The dream ended when I woke up while standing beside a tumbled bed pulling clothes out of the midst of the pile of bedding.

All I can really get from this is that, a week and a half before my cruise, I'm having a bit of trip anxiety. 

(Hours later)
Spent the day being about as lazy as I get these days.  I made an enormous pot of chicken vegetable soup, cleaned the sandboxes and took out the trash, cleaned up the kitchen a couple of times and dug into Animals Divine Tarot I got for Christmas.  It's definitely an interesting deck with symbolism from many cultures, along the lines of the Haindl Tarot but more mixed up.  It will be a bit of a challenge to read as I'm not familiar enough with some of the cultures it contains, but it will certainly be worth a try as I embark on my voyage to step out of my comfort zone to read from some of my other decks.  I think I'm becoming addicted to Tarot decks.  I'm counting the ones I can see from where I sit and I'm up to 13 or 14.  (I have two copies of the Spiral Tarot so I don't want to count that twice).  I'm pretty sure I have a deck or three behind the books on the shelf above my monitor and there's a suspicious velvet bag which, I'm sure, contains another.  I guess I should catalogue the ones I have one of these days so as to avoid duplication (except for the aforementioned intentional duplication).  My Tarot cards are definitely calling to me again, but I need to clear a space before I try to read.  Although I decluttered my desk fairly recently, I need to do a more thorough job so the junk doesn't interfere with any readings I might do.  I can definitely see myself spending more time on my spiritual side this year if for no other reason than to understand some of the craziness that is seeping into my dreams!

I haven't made any more sense out of last night's dreams, but sometimes I think that, although I remember them, I'm not meant to make sense of them as much as I'm just meant to think about something that might be confusing or worrying me.  It's as if the dream is simply opening up another avenue of thought, or it might even just be making my concerns seem so ridiculous that I let them go in favor of the good laugh!  Either way, I won't stop listening in case one has a really important message for me, as has occurred in the past.

So it's onward into a new year with new successes and new challenges.  I'm really looking forward to it with a heart full of hope and love and excitement!

My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful for a huge pot of soup to feed me for the rest of the week and then some.
2. I am grateful for days spent in introspection and me time.
3. I am grateful for an abundance of opportunities, health and love.
4. I am grateful for energy in its many forms which will sustain and guide me through this year's many changes.
5. I am grateful for my friends and family who remind me how very blessed I am.

Love and light.