Freud, help me out here.

So I woke up with a start at 5:00 a.m. this morning. The remnants of the dream I'd been having were still clinging to me, like a spiderweb.

It was still crystal clear, and yet made no sense. In the first half, I was road-tripping with my eBay girls. We were all together, my Minnesota girls and the ones from across the country I met on a wonderful long weekend getaway many moons ago. We were stuck somewhere, and were all gathered around a map, trying to figure out our next move.

Cut to the weapons training. I was being schooled in the art of slingshots by some old dude. He was showing me how to use various hand held machines of mayhem, including one weird bristly thing that was whipped around above your head and then flung out with all your might. The old man demonstrated for me, and in doing so clocked a pig on the head. "We have to eat the pig now" he said, and a woman dressed head to toe in old fashioned Mexican garb (like with those black and red headdress things, and the veil??) (Flamenco! that's it.) grabbed the unconscious pig, dragged it into a fountain in the center of town and cut its throat. Yes, I watched her do it, in my dream, and was horrified. The pig stayed unconscious until the last second and then one eye opened and it looked right at me.

Cut back to me with my eBay friends. We were still talking about where we should go, when one of my bottom teeth, one of the front ones, fell out. Plop. Just popped out, into my hand. I remember looking at it, and saying, "Holy shit, my tooth just fell out." One of my eBay friends (Janet, in case you hens are wondering) grabbed the tooth, looked at it and said, "Wow." I went to a mirror and practiced smiling with my new gap.

Then I woke up. I cautiously felt the spot in my mouth where, just seconds before, I had no tooth. Phew. Tooth intact. I looked around the room. Phew. No dusty weapons-handler or bleeding pig. No eBay friends with big confusing road maps, or lovely Hispanic women wearing Flamenco dresses. Just my room. Walter rolled over and looked at me. If he could talk, I imagined he'd say, "Well, as long as you're up, how about getting your ass out of bed and taking me for a walk?".

And so we did. We went four miles, and as we walked I thought about what that weird dream was trying to tell me. I came away with this:

Time to take a road trip.
Time to see some eBay friends.
Time to stop eating bacon (I wavered between 'time to stop eating it', and 'time to start buying more of it', but I couldn't get that pig's eyes out of my brain so I went with stop. We'll see how long that lasts).
Time to floss more often and also make that dentist appointment I've been putting off.

And most importantly, time to start the 5:00 a.m. walks again. It's hard as hell to get out there, but once you do, it's so worth it. The quiet, the stillness of this lovely little city as dawn approaches...what a fabulous way to begin the day.

I'm not used to feeling so accomplished this early. Typically, the only thing I feel before 6:00 a.m. is a blurry mix of drowsiness and dread, with a pressing need for caffeine.

This is nice. Eye contact with a dying pig and dental horror notwithstanding, it's very nice.