♫Because my dreams are bursting at the seams♫

Amber is jealous of my travels and adventures.

No. Not those travels and adventures.

The ones I have in my dreams. And the fact that I remember them.

"Sarah, you need to write them down and send them to me. We'll write a book. It'll be bizarre and fabulous," she said.

"What'll we call it?" I asked.

(long pause) "Sarah's Dreams."

"The title will be the only thing about the whole book that makes sense," I said, thinking of the far-from-normal contents and turns of my sleeptime mental wanderings.

I (usually) love my dreams. The recurring ones (that aren't nightmares) are like old friends who come to visit; the buildings and places in them like the long-forgotten imagined castles, mountains, lakes and villages of my childhood, that have come back to greet me and remind me of why I loved them. And once I recognize a place, even in my sleep, I'm able to relax a little more and enjoy whatever story is about to play out before and around me, and to enjoy the ride ... literally, when a roller coaster happens to appear on the scene. In a perfectly logical way, of course.

There are the recurring spider nightmares that I've written about. I've had confrontations with ex-boyfriends; I've met up with long-dead relatives; I've gone back to old jobs, high school and dance recitals; I've been so late getting a newspaper to the printer that the sun was rising when the nightmare ended and I woke up; I've had to do junior high school all over at a different school; I've gone to Hogwarts; I've told my brother that I resigned from writing his three-volume personal statement for medical school as I flung hundreds of loose-leaf pages at him; and I've married complete strangers.

Last night - and this is so bizarre that I have no explanation for it or any idea where it came from - there was a snapping turtle on my pillow. I may have screamed a little as I ran away from it (sorry, neighbors). I woke up in the bathroom, out of breath and clutching the wall, hoping the turtle hadn't chased me in there.

A turtle.

Usually, though, there aren't spiders, turtles, ex-boyfriends or anonymous husbands. There are fabulous places to go, fabulous things to do, and a roller coaster to get me there.

And on that tangent, I am wholeheartedly in love with Owl City's "Fireflies."