Tom and I were talking about someone we know that is pro-religious freedom. I guess I got the definition of that term wrong. I thought those for religious freedom really wanted to push their religion on everybody and have there be just one religion, but Tom is sure that it means just the opposite and that they believe everybody should be whatever they want to be.

I agree with that concept, as long as people can do it without shoving it down other people’s throats.

I’m finishing up the laundry now and taking it easy today. Oh, wait. I still have to order our groceries. I’ll do that after this entry.

Anyway, it’s been surprisingly quiet here today. I’m waiting on my new cosmetic organizer and the Sense that we ordered. Sense is the ultimate sleep monitor that includes things like noise and humidity sensors, and a sound machine that stops when the alarm goes off. That’s one of the negatives of having to sleep with the sound machine I have to sleep with. Occasionally I need to set an alarm to hold my schedule back (I can do this short-term) if I have an upcoming appointment or something else I need to be up for at a certain time. I would always worry that I wouldn’t hear the alarm over the sound machine. Not with Sense, though. Sense’s alarm starts off softly and then gets louder until it wakes you up. There’s this thing that clips to your pillow to detect restlessness, so the alarm may go off a little early if it thinks you had enough sleep. There’s an app that tallies your sleep score.

I had been sleeping well, but a nightmare woke me up last night, and then I just kept waking up for no apparent reason, which meant I was able to remember my dreams.

In one dream Tom had a toothache, though he Skyped me from work saying they were fine. Let’s hope they stay that way with his dental phobia!

In another dream, I was watching a show filmed in Connecticut. One scene was shot through a vehicle window going down a street flanked by houses and I sensed a familiarity about the scene, like I’d been on that road before. I don’t know where in the state it was supposed to have been filmed.

The weirdest dream took place in a large crowded mall. I overheard a woman ask another woman (a security guard?) in surprise, “People live here at night?”

The woman nodded, and I sensed I was one of them.

Then I was outside. It was pitch dark and I was crawling alongside what I knew was a chain-link fence even though I couldn’t see a damn thing. I knew that right beyond the fence was a pool, and beyond that was the ocean. I couldn’t see anything at all and so I turned around and began to crawl back. This time I crawled along a street that was alive with the headlights of cars, hoping no one would notice me.

The scary one took place in a small square house that was amazingly detailed. When I first woke up from this very vivid dream, I remembered how Stacey said that some people think “something’s going on” in their dreams. Like maybe they were dreams from past lives. I not only don’t believe in past lives, though, but if we dream about places that are new, then we couldn’t have been there in a past life. So that’s why I wouldn’t think they were memories of past lives even if I believed in reincarnation. But the dream made me wonder how my brain could conjure up such detail while asleep.

The house seemed somewhat old and definitely cramped and cluttered. Warm, cozy and lived-in would be how most people would describe it. I’m not sure how many bedrooms the house had, but I knew that Nane was asleep in one of them. It seemed to be nighttime. I sat in the living room with two guys in their 20s or 30s. The square smallish room had hardwood floors, a large rug, and shelves filled with books on a couple of walls. One sat in a chair across from me while I sat on a couch next to the other guy who had thick wavy dark hair. The front door was to my right. The doorway to the rest of the house was in front of me, between the guy in the chair and the bookcase. A TV sat sort of between the bookcase and the end of the couch next to the guy.

I began to accuse the guy sitting next to me of raping me. I soon became nervous and walked out of the living room and into the small kitchen that had a sink and refrigerator to my left on the exterior wall, and a stove to my right. The guy followed me, adamantly denying raping me. My nerves began to turn to fear as I “looped” around back toward the living room by walking through the kitchen, a small hallway, and into what might have been a dining room sandwiched between the bedroom(s) and living room. I woke up trying to decide if I should wake up Nane or run back into the living room where the other guy was.