Sitting at my desk at work simply trying not to cry. Why? I’ve no idea. Everything hurts right now, and I don’t mean physically. I wish more than anything in the world I could talk to someone. 

This is what therapy is for, right? Only I somehow can’t make myself trust my therapist. Family? I truthfully have none, although I was born into a rather large one. Friends? It isn’t that I don’t trust them. I do. I only don’t want to burden them. Yes... that’s right, burden them. Because I feel like it does. Not to mention the fear that they’ll somehow be hurt by things I can’t explain. 

Title: Riders on the Storm
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 820
Pairings: Not really
Spoilers: Nope
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, I just dream about 'em
Summary: Had another dream with the boys in it. This is what it's like when they enter my subconscious mind. 

Title: …And Justice for All
Rating: G to PG (shrugs)
Wordcount: 2,073
Pairings: None (yeah, I know, weird, right?)
Spoilers: None really but S3 character involved
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, I just dream about 'em
Summary: Just a little dream I had.

Right, so here's my Daemon as chosen by the Movie Site, The Golden Compass. Hehe, it calls me modest.  And while he is lovely, my True Daemon is much better, I think. Her pic is below (and yes, My True Daemon is Female. don't ask me how that happened, it just did)

(anyone else notice that my Daemon and Dean's are both tigers? coincidence? somehow I don't think so, but no, didn't do it on purpose *grins*)

Ever have one of those days when you'd really like some Pie but the creepy restaurant owner is too busy fattening up the couple at the next table to serve you some? Ever been tied up and sacrificed to an Apple Orchard God? Things like that might turn you off from good ole' fashioned Apple Pie forever, wouldn't they?

Well, it isn't exactly the story that was handed down to me by my Grandma, but our family stopped baking 'Apple Pie' years ago for the following recipe. 

Overheard at Work
Q: What do you do when your brain isn't occupied?
A: Make up verses for the Doors' Riders on the Storm

Which has me thinking about something that's actually been happening a lot to me lately.

Sleep

Yeah, that's right. Sleep. I have this very strange form of narcolepsy (yes, I really do) where when I'm stressed, I fall asleep. Granted, my symptoms aren't as bad as some. I can feel it coming on, so it doesn't affect my driving or other daily activities (on long trips I have been known to pull over and sleep tho). Now, I say that it doesn't affect my daily activities. It does, in a way. Once I'm out, I'm out. Meaning I'm late to work, don't get up to go places I know that I need to, I miss things with friends, etc.

And lately, I've been stressed. Very stressed. Stressed to the point my hair is falling out more again (by the handfull, not pretty). Why? Over a job that I'm not really all that happy with, and one that I won't have much longer anyway. Or maybe I'm actually stressed that I won't have it - who knows?

So, anywho.... back to the question: What do you do when your brain isn't occupied? And my first reaction is :shock: O_O When the Hell isn't my brain occupied??? When I'm working, I'm online with other things too *coughSNcough*; when I'm chatting, I'm often making lists in my head about what I need to do at work; when I'm reading, I'm also writing new articles and chapters for my fics, etc; and when I'm casually surfing tv, the net or staring out the window, I'm creating new PS images in my head or making note of a song that I either have or need to add to my collection. So, again, just when is my brain NOT occupied?

That's just a few of the things my brain occupies its time with. That's the short list, in fact. And did ya notice the things missing in that list? Yeah, it's cause my brain is so busy thinking about them that it's spending as much time AVOIDING them alltogether as it can. That would be my programming, site design, business, gallery and jewelry in case ya didn't know. :P <-- what my brain does to me every time I bring those topics up.

And as for the sleep thing? Like I said, just when is my brain not occupied? Because when I sleep, I dream. Man, do I dream! Most of the time, I wake up even more exhausted than when I went to bed -- and not due to my very comfy mattress, I can tell you that.

Where was I going with this lil' train that would not stop? Nowhere. Just my brain killing time avoiding work. :P

 Okay, that's it. I'm tired of feeling stupid. :(

I don't like this job one bit anymore. It's a great place to work - everyone friendly, great music, etc (beer in the fridge? come on! can't beat that!). But they're treating me like I don't know squat because I DON'T FUCKING KNOW HOW/WHERE THEY SET UP THEIR OWN DATA??? And they tell me to ask, but look at me like an idiot when I do. :(((((((

I feel like I'm getting a run-around here. They've truthfully no use for me - they brought me in to "test" but there's nothing TO test - no working data. And they expect ME to set that up without knowing anything about the company. I'm happy for the work. Glad to be getting a paycheck this month. But it would be nice to be useful and not be treated like a complete imbecile. Is it not bad enough that I'm a contractor and so totally dispensible that no one has any need of me anywhere?

[/whine]

 Sitting in a "ghost town" restaurant with mom, Kim and some younger girl I didn't know. As if we were all on vacation together. Just us girls as we were when we were younger - I was mid-twenties, I think? It also seemed Grandma owned the restaurant, as it was next door to the barn-style store that my grandparents own in my dreams (yup, 'nuther recurring dream I have. they own a store similar to the one I worked in with the bridal shop - second-hand clothing store that the owner allowed me to run for a while. and I guess 'cause that woman was like a grandmother to me, that's where that part of the dreams come from. they even had me sign invoices as if I were a member of the family. only in the dream, the store is an endless barn full of second-hand clothes that seems to go on forever and people can get lost in. ok, but back to the restaurant). 

So we were the only people sitting in the old-style restaurant - seemed to be in South or far West Texas somewhere. Dust blowing outside the pane-glass window wall. Little bits of grass growing here and there - but no trees. The waitress in an old-fashioned 50s style orange uniform, bee-hive hair and everything. The restaurant, a combination restaurant-souvenir shop with everything I remember from the crap truck-stops as a kid (mom insisted that truck stops always had the best food, otherwise truckers wouldn't stop there, so we ALWAYS ate in truck stops when I was a kid - never in fast food restaurants. I think it was more because it was cheap than anything. They never did make the connection to how sick I got after we ate and the truck stop food.... I did though. That's when I learned how to be VERY careful what I ordered. And possibly when I started hating red meat? Ok, again, back to the dream.) Short, metal shelves full of Texas-style souvenirs. Shot glasses with Texas and bluebonnets painted on them. Ashtrays in the shape of Texas. Stuffed animals hanging on sticks (never fully understood that one, but they made it into the dream too). Tiny Texas license plates with kids' names on them. Cheap, trinket jewelry of fake arrowheads, leaf charm bracelets and 'spinner' necklaces. A counter with barstools. A postcard rack next to the register at the end of the counter, showing postcards of 100-feet tall armadillos and jack-a-lopes looming over buildings and cars. Very open and airy, which really only emphasized the dust hanging in the air - visible in the sunlight shining in. Dust in West Texas always just seems to "sit" on the air. It doesn't really settle anywhere. 

The door jingled and a young man walked in wearing a grey sweatshirt, jeans and navy blue jacket. He sat at a far table and I could now see that behind him in the restaurant led to a darkened bar. The open door showed the contrast of the restaurant, still bathed in the evening sunlight and the bar - dark with neon lights and a green/blue lampshade with a red Coors logo visible through the door hanging over a pool table. Three or four more 'spot' lights hung from the ceiling over the bar on chrome pipes, lit but not really illuminating the darkened room.

Mom was sitting beside me at our table on the other side and she said something now, turning my attention away from the bar and the handsome young man. Kim was across from me and the young girl with us across from Mom, eating an ice cream. I answered Mom and then Kim suddenly turned my attention to my cell phone sitting silent on the table in front of me. I looked at her and she said, "You might want to turn that on." Giving her a quizzical look, I did and it almost immediately started ringing. 

"Hello? This is Kat?" 

How in the world did Kim know that phone was going to ring right at that moment? A familiar voice sounded through the phone and also aloud in the quiet restaurant at the same time. Jensen. 

"This place is kinda dead. *chuckle* You wanna get a drink?"

I turned and looked back to my right at the young man, also on a cell phone, smiling at me. He had caught Kim's attention and pointed to my phone to get her to tell me to turn it on. He nodded his head back toward the bar behind him and closed his flip-phone, still smiling. I sat back, stunned for a moment, then looked and saw a number on the cell. Smiling, I punched the buttons to save it in my contacts and added his name to the number. Hit dial and turned to watch him again as he answered. Looking directly into his eyes, "You realize this means I have your personal number now?" I stood and walked over to him and he stood too. Facing each other, still on the phone, he answered into it, looking back into my eyes. "Yes, I know. I wanted you to have it. I've had your number for some time. It seemed only fair." He shrugged, closed his phone, still smiling, and picked me up by the waist, kissing me.

[/End Dream]

Something inside just doesn't feel right. I can't put a finger on it. Back to the Beginning. I cleared half my board and it still didn't work. DECLARE variable; INSERT INTO LI Detail, not just Invoice/Header. Simple, right? CALL new_receipt; CALL new_writeoff; CALL new_applied_trans (whoah, wait a minute? what is this one doing? CRAP! Back to the beginning); CALL new_overage...

Cannot clear my friggin' head. As cloudy as the sky outside (which, btw, is sitting on top of the buildings below). Haze inside and out. UPDATE invoice SET balance... finally something that makes a bit of sense. Maybe I should lay off the coffee...

(note to self: one of these days I'll find that poem daniel and I wrote. would really help with the fanfic ideas... 13 pages; 13 stanzas; 13 lines each... hell of a poem really... god I miss him)
Did I mention I'd had too much coffee?

Okay, so I figured out one thing. Calcuations are off in SP, but working in query. So DBE works but DB doesn't. Got it? Sure, that makes sense. Of course it does. And balance? Does Nothing in DBE. Chocolate, pretzels and more caffeine for lunch. Mmmmmm. Shoulda had the soup. Now I'm feeling kinda queasy. Great. Did I say that I figured out why my head is hazy? No? Yeah, figured it out. So, yeah.... whatever... not liking the solution for clearing it... you know if I could stand on my head, I absolutely would. Need to look at this from a different perspective. No, climbing on top of the desk didn't work - already tried that. Have spent most of the last few days sitting on the desk, in fact. I'm told stream-of-consciousness doesn't use punctuation - screw that! Back to the VERY beginning.

T y p e. o n e. c h a r a c t e r. a t. a. t i m e. (secretarial school and all that you know)

If ANY of this makes sense to anyone, more power to ya! I don't expect it to, but that's ok. Makes no sense to me either. Wait. It does. But tomorrow it won't. This is what I get for just typing what's in my head without filtering first.

Just one more thing to say, really:

YAWP!

(yeah, that worked) 

Okay, so the new job is going great, right? Wrong. The honest truth? I've no idea what I'm doing. They brought me in to help update their accounting system. Great, I can do that. Work with code, stored procedures, visual studio, databases... all fine. Oh, but wait - *I* won't be working with visual studio or any of the coding - that's all left to their existing developer, who, by the way, is never friggin' here! *headdesk*

So what am I doing? "Testing" data. That should be fine. Not a problem. They want me to tell them what 'breaks' as I test it. Sure, ok. Except their existing system isn't set up to DO anything with the new data. So they give me a "development" environment to work in. Only is IT set up to DO anything with the new data? No, of course not. Because their developer is still trying to wrap his head around the concept of "storyboarding" and acting like Scotty - "It can be done, Captain, but it won't be easy." *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

What part of "It isn't going to break, because there's nothing in the system TO BREAK" do these "IT" guys not get? I told them in this morning's meeting what WILL potentially break and what was their response? We're not worried about that right now. We'll have 10 days in January to figure that one out. And just so ya know, kiddies, this contract is only until the end of this month, so I won't be around in January to tell them "I told you so."

And did I mention that this accounting "system" they have doesn't even calculate a SUM TOTAL? You heard right. Because 'Scotty' didn't fully understand the need for it, so he just left it out. Gah! I need coffee!

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

Wow. So okay, the dreams are never-ending! Last night I think I had some of the most vivid dreams I've had in a long time. And I do mean 'dreams' plural. Because there were several...

 Right, so here's an odd Jensen dream for ya. First of all, let me just describe what I looked like in this dream. My face was scarred up and my nose was just huge. It felt like it had been broken or something and when I looked in the mirror, I didn't recognize my face at all. In fact, if you've seen Dark Angel, I sort of looked like I could be Joshua's kid sister. Yeah - dog-faced girl.

I was wandering the streets near a strip of bars - a place I've been to in my dreams before so it was familiar. Comfortable. Not the nicest neighborhood, you understand, but I fit right in. Now when I usually dream of this place I'm either a streetwalker or grew up there, so again, although a dangerous neighborhood, I fit in. (and no, that hasn't been one of my many jobs, in spite of a few offers I've had.) This place in my dreams draws a lot of bikers, truck drivers, tough guy types to the bars too. So I was out on the street and it was no surprise at all that an 18-wheeler pulled up to the bar in front of me. The odd thing was that Jensen opened the passenger side door and stepped out. Maybe Dean would fit in in this neighborhood, but even he would be a little uncomfortable - on edge there, waiting for something to happen. But Jensen? No way.

So he stepped down from the rig and came straight over to me. This made me a bit nervous. As I said, for some reason, I had this huge, broken nose and looked like dog-faced girl escaped from the circus so I really didn't want to meet him this way. I looked around for a place to hide, to run, but of course there was nowhere to go. (Is there ever in dreams?) However when he reached me, he leaned over and kissed me like he knew me. He took my hand and guided me back to the rig with him, saying, "Aren't you coming?"

I was so confused! I even looked around for one of the nearby bikers or gang-bangers to stop him from taking me off. These were my people after all, and he was a stranger here. But they all just looked on with smiles on their faces, like they were happy to see me with him. Jensen was being gentle and slow and holding my hand like a high school sweetheart, leading me back to the 18-wheeler and I was looking around panicked like he was trying to kidnap me. So he climbed back up into the rig and looked down at me. Only as he turned around after getting into the cab of the truck (again on the passenger side), it wasn't Jensen, but this guy from high school that I'd had a huge crush on since the 7th grade. Can you blame me? The hunk was the spitting image of Scott Baio! So the guy from high school looked down at me and repeated what Jensen had said, "Aren't you coming?" And suddenly I couldn't wait to get out of that neighborhood and away from that life, but climbing into the cab of the rig proved harder than I'd thought. I had to stretch up on tiptoe to even reach the bar that you hold onto to climb in, and then I had to use my arms to pull my weight up to the lowest step. So all my attention was focused on getting into the truck, but I was determined. This was finally my way out! By the time I reached the cab and climbed in, it was Jensen again. Sitting in the passenger seat. And they were bucket seats so the only place to go was on his lap. I straddled him, facing him and hid my face in my hands. I didn't want him to see how ugly I was. Only he took my hands from my face and kissed me. He kept telling me over and over that I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever known and how much he loved me. That he wanted to protect me and take care of me.

So... easy enough to know where the dream came from, eh, Dean? Doesn't mean I'm not still the dog-faced girl from the circus or the monster from my last dream tho......