Since I rearranged the furniture in my bedroom about 3 weeks ago, I’ve been having trouble sleeping.  Some nights I’ll be up until 3 or 4 am not feeling tired at all.  Since it doesn’t seem to be going away, I decided to try out some melatonin again to help encourage the sleep.  I tried melatonin about a year and a half ago, but I always felt a little crazy when I took it and was woken in the middle of the night after sleeping for a bit – almost like I wasn’t really awake – so I stopped taking it.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, melatonin is something that our bodies naturally produce and helps with our sleep-awake cycle.  Taking a melatonin supplement assists your body with recognizing that it’s time to sleep.  Once I take a melatonin strip (that tastes like mint-chocolate), I can expect to start yawning and feeling sleepy within 30 minutes to an hour.

One thing that I forgot about however, were the vivid melatonin dreams.  On days when I take melatonin, I have highly vivid, crazy dreams that I can remember really well.  Last night was no exception.

It all started when my parents were featured on the David Letterman show.  They were running a profile on Plaster Rock, New Brunswick and my parents were the spokespeople for the small town.  David Letterman had them on his show and they talked about the town and then told David Letterman that they were adopting a baby from South Africa.  I was surprised and excited to see my parents on the show – I had no idea that they were going to be on and yelled through the apartment to let Darrick know that they were on Letterman.  He didn’t make it in time to see them on TV.  Not long afterwards, I met up with my parents.  The journey there was rough.  There were a lot of transport trucks on the road driving side by side, so to get past them, people were driving up the middle line between them.  Then, sinkholes started to appear out of nowhere and the trucks started to fall down the sinkholes into hot lava that had accumulated there.  We passed by this area quite easily and headed on our way to mom and dad’s.  Once we arrived there, my brother and his wife had also arrived and my parents had just received their new baby from South Africa.  It was a baby boy and they were very excited to have the chance to raise another child.  We decided to go get some things for the new baby.  We travelled along the road again where there were more large 18-wheeler trucks driving dangerously and falling into lava sink holes.  Our car fell into a lava sinkhole, but we were able to survive by driving on small chunks of road that popped out of the lava. They had words on them encouraging us on our way (“You Can Do It!”). We arrived at a toy store to gather baby supplies and I was put in charge of carrying my new adopted baby brother.  At some point, near the exit of the store, I put the baby down and lost the baby.  My (real life) brother and I searched all over the place and eventually found the adopted baby handcuffed with a zip-tie to a pole outside a pet store.  The baby was wearing a chicken costume and was being used as some kind of attraction to draw in customers.  The owner of the pet store was angry that I was trying to release the baby, saying that he found the baby and now it belonged to him.  I spit in his face and he spit in my face as we argued and eventually, he disappeared and I was able to free my baby brother.  We went inside the pet store and I washed my face.  Then I told my friends and family to feed all of the kittens in the pet store as I could tell they had been mistreated.  Even the pet store assistant joined in in helping the kittens because he didn’t really like the owner.  The kittens were fed and washed….. and then I woke up.

Thanks to the Dream Analysis book (10,000 Dreams Interpreted) that my parents gifted to me in my teens, I have been able to unlock some of the mysteries and secrets from my dreams.  Sadly, the dream book is not as specific as I want it to be… It doesn’t list chicken costume or lava or David Letterman or losing babies. Here’s what I came up with:

Dreaming of your parents: signifies health and easy circumstances, harmony and pleasant associates, pleasant changes, fortunate environments

Increase in the size of your family: failure in some plans, but success in others.  Adopting a child: denotes an unfortunate change in your abode.

Roads and Vehicle: new undertakings will bring grief and loss of time.  threatened loss or illness.

Store/Shop: Prosperity and advancement will be accelerated by your energy and efforts of your friends

Engaging with an Adversary: Promptly defend any attacks on your interest, sickness may threaten you after this dream

Spitting: Unhappy terminations of seemingly auspicious undertakings, disagreement and alienation of affectations

Overcoming enemies: will surmount all difficulties in business and enjoy greatest prosperity

Kittens: Abominable small troubles and vexations will pursue you

So…. apparently some good and some bad will come to me.  Sounds like life.  Fortunately I already know that it’s not about what happens to you, but how you deal with and approach the circumstances that you have been given that matters the most.

Sweet Dreams!