December 11, 2008

10:21 a.m.

Mysteries

I'm tickled with myself. I created a little embossed pattern of a rooster to knit into a scarf I'm making for Pearl. I found this luscious yarn called chocolate raspberry, an acrylic/wool blend, and didn't know what I wanted to do with it but I bought 3 skeins. Once I got started on Marc's scarf I thought how much Pearl loves pink and raspberry colors. So I found a silhouette of a rooster, printed it out the right size, traced it on top of a knitting graph I made, and x'd in all the boxes inside the figure. Voila, rooster pattern. I'll knit the background and pearl the rooster. Simple, but effective (I hope).

This morning has been all about timing supplements. It's pretty ridiculous. Protonix has to be taken 1/2 hour before eating, on an empty stomach. However, fiber etc. supplement has to be taken some time before eating as well, and then I have to wait again because I'm too full to eat food for a while, but if I miss the fiber there are problems. I've also been having a glass of warm apple juice in the morning because it's supposed to help with elimination (big problems there right now). But now there's peppermint oil capsules, too, which should be taken between or before meals on an empty stomach. It doesn't seem possible to time all this and actually EAT anything. It's most frustrating. Big headache again last night as I went to bed, but some better by this morning.

I dreamed the band was in a a foreign place, staying at a B&B. I had my own room just off the lobby/breakfast area. I thought it might be noisy. It was a small room, and at first glance it seemed to be a bedroom/bathroom all in one space. The tub apparently was the bed -- I thought, I'll have to get some padding for that -- but next time I looked around, there was a little bathroom too. So I went in to shower and noticed that there was a doorway on the other side of the bathroom with no door in it. It led to a little back corridor to somewhere else in the house -- the kitchen, maybe. I thought, this won't do. I'll have to hang something over that. So I was looking around for something, and then the laundress slid my done laundry under the door, only there were several sets of pajamas that weren't mine. I gave them back to her. Meanwhile a daughter in the house was apologizing that something had happened to my backpack. I was distracted from this by a big menu that we now had to order from for dinner, and I kept not being able to focus on the task because things kept coming up. Finally they wanted to take our orders, and I didn't know what to get so I asked what Chris had ordered. She showed me a "sample platter" of it -- it was Porcupine Ribs. There were several small dishes of various things on this oval plate -- none looked like wheat so I thought maybe that was all right -- and a sort of covered bean pot or casserole pot with the ribs in it. It smelled like barbequed ribs with a hint of pineapple. I ordered that. Then the girl was apologizing again for destroying my backpack somehow, and it was then I realized it wasn't just stained or something, it was gone. I had no more backpack, and we had to pack and leave that day. I got really mad and anxious, demanding to know what they did to it. I never got an answer, but woke up kind of groggy.

Before that there was the dream of the band in the car, Chris driving. At a slow place this guy opened the driver's door and was trying to squeeze or pull Chris out of the car and take over. Another thug came in the car and I was trying to a) bite his arm and b) poke his eyes out with my fingers, but nothing was very effective. It was very scary. Mark didn't seem to be fighting against them very hard.

Weird that I remember thug #2 was wearing a light blue sweater. I was trying to bite his hammy arm and couldn't even get my teeth around it.

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On the Brain Experiment front, Marc sent me an mp3 of a 400Hz tone, which has been used to induce theta brain waves in study participants. I put it on my iPod. The first time I listened to it, before falling asleep, I'd only gotten a short way into the 12-minute file when suddenly I came to, all anxious and feeling a little sick. The tone seemed like it was drilling into my brain. I didn't have it on all that loud, but it was too much for me to handle. Isn't that weird? So next day I tried it sitting up, during the afternoon, and at the lowest possible volume. I put my big headphones over the iPod earbuds, to help block out neighborhood noise. This went better. I completely zoned out. No tones, but I went pretty quickly into that "inner hallucinatory state" of half-dreams and random flow of consciousness. Last night I tried it again before sleep, and about nine minutes in my downstairs neighbor came home and started making a little noise, so I turned it off.

I did get to a place where I didn't hear the tone any more in my ears. That's good; maybe I can still hear the music with the 400Hz tone going, then. I've hardly heard any music since I've been deliberately trying to, oddly enough. I wonder if it only goes on sometimes, or if I just can't get to the place where it is. Such mystery.