“Remoted - Hybrid” – Day 567 (Monday)

At 3:00 Monday morning, Winston uttered his gentle “oof,” and in true Pavlovian fashion, I awakened, swung my legs off the bed and into the daily wear slip-on shoes, grabbed my glasses off the small bureau near the bed, slipped on the purple bathrobe, and headed down the stairs. His Canine Overlordship hovered at the top of the staircase. When the latch clicked to unlock the front door, he made his way down the stairs, along the front of the buffet, took a right at the end of the dining room table and headed in a straight path through the dining room, across the front porch, through the open doorway and down the concrete stairs to freedom and potty relief. Before losing his vision, this was done at a full run, but now he gingerly picks his way along. Once he was on the lawn for his business, I bolted back into the house to the human potty for my own. Then it was back up the stairs and to the still warm bed.

For ages, maybe a couple years, but I’m not sure, this has been a nighttime routine, first with Moose, who was often up several times during the night, and now with Winston, who usually needs to go out around 3:00 or 4:00, depending on what time we went to bed.

Awake from the brief exercise break, I could hear the rain pouring down. For what felt like hours, but I was afraid to check the time after the first 30 minutes, I couldn’t get back to sleep. There was tossing and turning, possible because Winston was now in his own bed on the floor and I was no longer pinned under the covers by his weight. It’s October, so this could be the start of the nearly-annual sleep issues event.

I finally fell back to sleep, and careened down the rabbit hole of a crazy dream. I was at the office-office in pajamas and robe and realized I needed to be dressed in “real clothes” because one, I was at the office and two, I had a meeting soon. It became a quest for work clothes, shoes, and my phone through a building that started as a business office and transformed into a massive house with countless rooms, which kept growing to include staircases that went to only certain levels and requiring a trip completely across the entre building to find another one that went to some magical correct floor.

People crowded the place and included the highest level of the bank, plus seemingly random groups bustling about, lounging on sofas, sitting on staircases, napping in the bedrooms. I needed to contact the office and was afraid I’d be fired, but couldn’t find a phone or a computer or even a clear path out of a room. The dream went on and on, anxiety and stress growing with each blocked effort to locate shoes, find a phone, get some proper clothes or someone to help me. The funniest part was when a former roller derby teammate appeared and we were suddenly on a little stage in ballet costumes and were improvising and trying to dance our way out of the situation. 

When the alarm went off at 6:15, I woke up exhausted, but chuckling about the dancing part. Bits of the dream have popped into my mind all day. I hope work never gets that nuts or feels as suffocating and stressful as in the dream.

During the day, things went much smoother, except for one little thing after work. Yesterday's purchase of bread and cheese and this morning's crazy dream had me wanting the comfort of a grilled cheese sandwich for supper. Soup was added, because there was a container of mystery soup in the freezer, and fresh mushrooms and broccoli in the fridge. The fresh stuff was sauteed in butter and the ice-block of soup was added with some half and half to heat up. 

The glitch was the Aldi sliced American cheese. It came out of the package gritty, feeling like it had fine grain salt all over it, probably to keep the slices from sticking together. That was okay, but the cheese didn’t melt in the sandwich. The end result was bread, beautifully and evenly grilled from crust to crust surrounding cheese that wouldn’t melt, even after a 30-second cycle in the microwave. So weird. And if all life’s problems could be as minor as not-melty cheese, that would be great.