Stroke dream

I just remembered an alarming dream I had this morning.

But first, the background: about a week ago I had this strange experience. I was sitting at my computer in the evening when I heard a sound like a pop inside my head. My initial thought was that it was a precursor for a stroke. My fear was so intense that I got queasy, which only exacerbated my fear. I quickly looked up stroke warning signs on the Net, but none of them really fit. There was no headache, pain or actual dizziness or numbness. it didn't say anything about popping sounds. As soon as I calmed down I felt better. I realized the sound had probably come from one of my sinuses clearing. I'm certainly not at risk for stroke.

Anyway, this morning after Danny kissed me and left for work I fell back asleep in his bed for several hours. I dreamt that I had had a stroke and was paralyzed on the left side. My whole arm was tingling. I don't remember anything else about the dream except despair and a terrible sense of loss.

I finally woke up, lying on my right side with my left fist wedged against the mattress and the arm braced in a rigid upward angle. My arm had in fact gone to sleep.

Turning Day

Memories of summer: Marian at Bon Echo Provincial Park, August 24.

This photo did not originally make the cut, perhaps (unconsciously) because Marian and I were on each other's case during that trip (read High Pines Trail). I took a lot more photos of Brenna on that occasion. The rest of the series is posted here: August light; Bon Echo.

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Over the past few years, winter solstice has become the most important day of the year for me. Ironically, I'm often so busy getting ready for Christmas that I forget about it, fail to mark it in any particular way. It doesn't need to be marked. It is what it is.

For me this is a turning point. I experience Seasonal Affective Disorder, which means my body and moods are sensitive to seasonal changes in light. I disapprove of the term disorder: it seems like a perfectly natural and useful cycle for creatures adapted to living in extreme northern habitats. Winter should be a time for near hibernation. But I digress.

While SAD affects many people worst in late winter, I tend to feel it the most during the months when sunlight is waning most discernibly: October and November. Once we pass winter solstice, light starts to return again, slowly at first. So this marks the turning point. Those long northern days are still a long way ahead, but at least we have already passed through the worst of things.

This year, thanks to a fluorescent light fixture mounted behind my computer monitor, I have not felt the symptoms so badly.

But it's still a point of turning. It is that thing so many of us crave: a new beginning. For many people that will be New Year's Eve. And who knows, I might even save a resolution or two for Dec. 31. But the real launch pad of my annual calendar is Dec. 21.

Now that I've built up to that, I ought to say something momentous. Make a prediction or resolution. I haven't done anything in particular to celebrate the day. Brenna and I went on one last run to the grocery store to pick up a few items I had missed, then I came home, washed dishes, and prepared the dressing for the Christmas turkey. I listened to Marian practice guitar.

I'm about to go make a tourtiére for dinner, a French Canadian meat pie traditionally served after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. My family isn't French Canadian or Catholic, and we won't be following that tradition, but I like this dish too much to pass the holidays without making it once. So as usual this season seems to have a lot to do with food, and that has to do with SAD, too, because the way decreased light affects our pituitary gland, it makes us crave comfort foods, specifically carbohydrates.

But I will take a moment now to think about what I aspire to in the coming year. Two things come to mind.

First, I want to complete a revision of the novel I wrote in November, Pilgrim's Cross. And no, to those following the writing, I haven't finished the last chapters, but that will be first on my agenda after the kids go back to school. And once the revision is done, I'll consider how to go about getting it published.

The other goal is also to do with publication. I want to sell at least one article to a magazine. I would like to sell much more than that, but let's get practical here. A new beginning should not set one up to fail, but to strive. This is attainable, and success has a way of propagating.