today was another eventful day out and about.

woke up with a migraine, which i now believe to be a continuation from yesterday's. took meds, slept til lunch, a-okay. made it for lunch appt with a couple we want to sponsor for next year who are full time unsalaried workers in student life a subsidiary of campus crusade for christ. it's no mean feat, they have 2 tiny boys!

went to the gym afterwards by myself and realised how much i like going to the gym in the arvo cos i don't have to rush and don't feel rushed unlike evenings, don't have to think of dinner etc and it's relaxing and therapeutic.

then went to mitre10 to meet C and P for more plant shopping! ended up spending $50! bought a punnet of bok choy, a punnet of broccoli, butternut squash seeds, pot of gorgeous deep purple calla lilies, a new strawberry plant, some new gloves and some rooting hormone. going to try and take cuttings from the lavender at the back again for the 3rd season! hopefully the hormone will help. (L was like, "Plants also got hormones???")

dropped by the supermarket to pick up some stuff, then home, made the filling for a shepherd's pie which we'll have tomorrow. did some filing which i've put off for ages and feel a bit better for it :) also picked up the boy and we're about to watch a DVD i've been looking for for ages - monsters vs aliens! i watched it in the cinema and i particularly liked a bit which i'm sure (as is usually the case) no one else even noticed and which i laughed and laughed and laughed at long after that part was over. even the memory of it makes me want to laugh LOL!

tomorrow, some gardening to do obviously, gotta get those guys into the ground.

this morning was fitful due to the headache and meds and sleeping and i dreamt many dreams. in one of them there was a story involving FY and a nice car she had. i woke up from that thinking hmm i miss FY should tell her about it but in a later dream i dreamt that i told her how i'd dreamt about her and realised i missed her and wanted to tell her about it. when i really woke up i was like ????

in one of the last scenes, it was like the end of a movie, there was even a soundtrack, whose title i can't place, but it's a song i know well and probably own. "Morning has come, another day, I must pack my bags and say goodbye, goodbye" It was raining and I was limping (in an earlier dream I had been in a car accident). There was a platform and I was trying to find a pair of slippers to wear to go home but there were no matching ones. They were an assortment of sandals and slippers with various patterns all in different permutations of pink (??). The platform was round and made of planks of wood painted black. I sat on the platform trying fruitlessly to match up the slippers. Then I saw S (an OT from one of my placements in real life) and she was soaked in the rain and crying but I can't remember why.

very full from dinner at Friendly Khmer Noodle House. yummy pad thai with no beansprouts! we're concerned about the level of MSG, which has caused us both sleepless nights recently, but I'm feeling ok for now so don't think about it until I have to. a few headachy days too. wonder if its got anything to do with running out of meds!

Have been having lots of weird and awful dreams. A few fitful restless nights recently. A few tired grumpy days. The days are counting down though. I wonder if when all this is over and I'm on holiday, will I mind the bad/cold weather still? Probably. It was down to like 6 degrees today! Spring! Hello!

I'm editing my final assignment, then I've got some notes to highlight for my open book exam, and preparation for the very last viva. sigh. not inspired.

anyway it's been ok. top on the list for things that help/sustain me = God. second is my sweet husband, and he's been soooo good and supportive and loving and caring even when I'm downright Miss Grumpy Pants. I know it, I feel it. I'm so blessed. (third is my laptop, which my husband bought for me!)

ok back to work. sigh.

oh yes i had a strange dream last night that woke me up and i felt so sad when i woke that i cried. couldn't go back to sleep then and lay in bed for almost 30 minutes before i got up, went upstairs and had some biscuits with milo.

i can't remember all of it, but the scene just before i woke up was this. there was a boy, and he was putting things into my pocket. i think they were supposed to be fish and prawns, but he was teasing and playful and i thought he had put two snails in my pocket. i got really angry with him, accused him of doing so and he denied it. so i said i would prove it and either looked into my pocket or poured everything out, only to find that there were no snails and there were a whole lot of good fish and prawns. i realised that he had been giving me all the best of what he got, and i woke up, and i cried.

my friend said the moral of the dream was don't be a nasty old bag. okay, point taken.

a few days ago, i dreamt i was enrolled in a university programme in australia that was called SMART and was some programme of scandinavian studies. when term began my friends were in another university and although when i registered i really wanted to go to SMART, i changed my mind cos i wanted to be with my friends. i finally made my way to the uni and had a look in the scandinavian studies classroom, which was a lab and a lecture theatre at the same time, except the whole thing had about 2 feet of water, like it was sitting in a swimming pool. the pool was lit from underwater. as i looked around i saw posters and schedules, project work pinned on the boards like any other classroom, and the course looked really interesting. i'm not sure if i managed to change courses and unis cos i don't remember the rest.

where does the raw material for my dreams come from? aren't dreams supposed to be the mind's way of making sense of, categorising and filing away things and thoughts that occur in daytime?

last night i dreamt that MT had returned. as in, he'd disappeared for years and years (which in a sense he really has since I haven't seen him since what, 1995?) but yeah he was back, came to look for me, looked totally different (though only realised this when i woke up, hadn't struck me in the dream) and we had an amazing reunion... all this strange and wonderful backstory came out, as in what had happened ever since way back when, and it was pretty sweet. now that i think about it properly (though lots has been lost over the course of the day, it was most vivid just in that space between sleep and waking), he was rather hefty, no longer the thin waify person i used to know. i found that out when we hugged each other, you know, when we met.

i told him it was all different now, and incongruous with all the other dreamlike details and sequences, in my dream i was married to L, as i am, and that was correct, and i told him that.

there was another guy, another old friend, who may just exist in the dream, though he was a dearly cherished friend in it, whose name was Blair. now i wonder who's that?

i let myself forget all the vividness and detail and saga during the course of the day, because i don't need to remember it. the meeting was sweet, a surprise, and enough for me. good to know he's doing well (and i'm gonna take it as that, cos i can really believe it)

went to church as usual, bought some groceries, came home and had lunch with the family. i had my never-ending risotto and they had soup, bread and chicken nuggets. i couldn't believe my eyes when they all put honey on their nuggets! personally i haven't had nuggets for ages, all that crap that goes into it, though i'm sure one day i'll have some for a treat, and i'm sure not to put honey on them. it's an american thing, and certainly not a kiwi thing. apparently. tonight i've planned a chicken curry udon with lots of veggies. yum!

studied some schizophrenia for DFO, now fractures. *yawn* i'm so not into orthopedics.

looking forward to the week, hope it's interesting and goes fast. stay tuned!

it's the end of week 2 and we're away after week 4 and i haven't got accommodation! but i'm not terribly worried because i know God will provide at the right time.

school is insanely busy and if i was ever bored last year i certainly won't be this year. the chasing up of references and supplementary readings is endless! got some really keen-bean lecturers and i'm not complaining!

been dreaming a lot of my usual lotsaplot/saga type dreams. i realised this morning that if dreaming occurs during REM sleep and REM sleep is essential to waking rested and refreshed, then it's a good sign to be dreaming so much! must mean i'm getting lots of good REM sleep. heh... that's what i am gonna believe anyway.

we were in the lib yesterday when the husband suddenly suggested going for a spontaneous movie date :) so we were to see slumdog millionaire and needless to say, i missed india SO MUCH! i loved how he knew so much from living it, through necessity. like the benjamin franklin bit. and i must also say the cesspool bit was rather um.... i don't know, how accurate is that? i remember being in the villages and going on the ground, sans the large pool underneath. and as for my one and only encounter so far with composting toilets, i must say, the one we used was nothing like that. it was dry and smelled of grain. we used sawdust to "flush" and maybe salim should have invested in some too, that would have saved his brother somewhat.

today the husband woke up late so i drove to school myself for a full day of class. he took the bus to work. when i got home what did i see but a vase of freshly cut deep pink roses from our garden on my desk! awww!! *grin* this year i really enjoy having fresh cut flowers around the house which make the rooms smell and look gorgeous.. but i love them more when they're cut by my husband for me! who needs to spend $$$ on florists?

we also had a lunch date on tuesday at a new taiwanese place. it's a very interesting sort of cuisine, sort of maybe indigenous tribe cuisine? as opposed to more usual taiwanese fare. i had a cold, sort of noodle salad with julienned cucumber, ham or luncheon meat of sorts and carrots. yum! prices are good too, and i'm sure we'll be back. yay this is the second asian place i really like, the first being korean house. i just can't handle the ubiquitous unspecified "asian" noodle places which lace their food with what can only be copious amounts of MSG. i just can't handle it anymore. i go into MSG coma+headache+groggy etc. this also happens if i eat instant noodles and that is so hard to believe since i spent my childhood (and much of tertiary life) eating those very same noodles! maybe it's true once your body is used to fresh, healthy food unlaced with strange chemicals, you develop an aversion or reaction to it. for sure "instant" meals are nothing like freshly cooked from scratch, but i'm not that picky an eater, and i can still stomach even airplane food without much complaint. just no MSG.

i'm looking forward to the weekend. it's cold, grey and damp this week, very wintry, and i don't think my tomato plants are very happy about that! but we are getting a bread machine finally because we eat so much bread and at this stage much as i would like to i can't cope with baking all the bread we need. so bread machine it will be. it'll work out cheaper and healthier since we can control what goes into it. and certainly it'll be a treat to wake up to baking smells and have fresh bread for brekkie!

it was a long day 8-5 today and i'm still working on some assignments so back to that until it's time to pick the man up from work and retire together for the night... thank God fridays are short days!

since the last post, i have not been idle.

we went for our Round-The-South-Island-In-Less-Than-A-Week road trip. more about that when I can be bothered to upload photos.

i started school. FULL ON! is the only way to describe it. I also received an award, which is given to the top first year student. Not having got any heads up (I doubt they had ever told us that such an award existed) I was more than surprised when my name was announced. We'd all been dozing through the early morning usual welcome "Welcome back... well done...this year... work hard... Stage 2 now... expectations... etc etc... and then with very little preamble the head of school said, "...given to the top student... goes to A------- L--!" and everyone clapped and the two girls between me and the aisle got up to let me through and I went *blink blink* and then went up confusedly to shake the hand of the head of school and receive a massive heavy glass-fronted case, in which was a large embossed plate made of silver. My name is engraved at the back with the year 2008 for posterity! After I got over the surprise I was very pleased. My first academic award since... primary school! Heh. Came with a card "well done etc" and a $50 book voucher which is the best part I'm gonna need it!

I had a weird dream last night too, must be the fatigue and stress of class and placement looming close.

I dreamt that MC was a prawn. (Visual image is cooked prawn, you know, curled up) She was pregnant and about to spawn. She was lying in my hand and suddenly lots of large eggs started pouring out (they resembled Israeli couscous or pearl barley but who knows what prawn roe looks like, not me) and I called to L to bring a bowl. I thought we should keep the eggs moist and warm so they would hatch. But while I was thinking this, it was a bad time to act because just then K and i were in a place that wasn't TA, but which had the choirmaster playing a piano. At least he "normally" (in the dream) played a piano. This time K and i were playing and I made many mistakes, all of which were loud and jarring. There was a spotlight on us, a lime follow spot, like a concert. When the lights went out the working lights were still on and I had an argument in the wings (while being at the piano) with the person (someone male, can't remember who but someone I know in real life) about why didn't he turn the working lights off and if he doesn't how can he expect them to *be* off? But then they faded out because someone else had turned them down, although in real life working lights are switch controlled not on the lighting board and therefore cannot fade and definitely not by the hand of the lighting op. Can't remember the rest...

Life group has resumed and so has Save The Humans. This is going to be a good year! We volunteered to babysit for a couple in life group who is expecting a second child in 2 months since this will be their last V day for awhile. Not sure what the plan for Sat is yet though. We are having a date on Fri instead to avoid the sea of couples on Sat!

Had class from 8-5 today and I'm knackered. Got some work to do and then hit the sack early. Hopefully this weekend there'll be time to upload some pics of the trip!

Today is probably one of the loveliest, warm sunny days we've had for awhile, reason being that a Nor'westerly is galing but that's a minor inconvenience I reckon. I woke up tired from a(nother) strange dream (details later) so I didn't want to go into class today. 1-3pm was a zo bo class and 3-5 was perhaps more relevant. After hemming and hawing (very indecisive today) I decided to be a good girl and go for both.

Lik dropped me off just after 1pm. I walked into class and lo and behold it was empty. Stood there for awhile, wondering if I'd missed an email or something. Dithered for awhile then went out and bumped into couple of classmates. Yup class was cancelled. Bah. They were headed home but since I'd only just got there I went into the library.

5 minutes to 3pm I went to class. There were 4 other people there, and no one else came. We tried to discuss what we were meant to, and 20 minutes past 3pm we gave up. I headed back to the library to work, except that...

I didn't have half of the article I was going to work on.
I didn't bring the book I wanted to read.
AND I didn't have my phone.

I was MAJORLY twarted (ok, due to my own disorganisation, fine, fine).

So I SMSed Lik on Skype, emailed him, and finally met him online on Skype chat.

And then he did the hero thing and gallantly delivered all the stuff I needed and had neglected to bring, to the library! *grin* My hero!

So now I can actually work. I feel better. I'm off to church in a bit for Save the Humans and then meeting my sweetie for dinner which he cooked and brought for us. :) Then back to the library where this time I'll be working. Lik's essays are all done and dusted so he's free as a lark now. He spent the whole long weekend working while I spent it gardening and NOT working so it's gonna be hard to get back into it now. We didn't even celebrate his birthday! It's been officially postponed because of the essay he'd been working on.

My dream, which was responsible for my muddle-headedness today, was that I was pregnant and delivered a child in the public hospital. Then I had to deliver the placenta, but the staff told me I had to wait an hour or two, so I had two options, either line up again to make an appointment to deliver the placenta or I could go to the private hospital to do that and it would be faster. I'd rung Lik when I knew I was going to deliver (I'd been waiting in the hospital itself, with J who in real life is a dentist and in the dream was going to do surgery on another floor of the public hospital and had spent my waiting time entertaining me with jokes and stuff) but he didn't understand what he was supposed to do, ie come and meet me, so he was late. Later there was a newspaper article that reported the incident and described him as "abandoning" me. Strangely both of us had Korean names in the article. And coincidentally the private hospital was run by Koreans.

So having decided to deliver the placenta at the private hospital I made my way there. By the side of the road I was on was a sort of river/storm drain with very high concrete walls, so high you couldn't see the water from the road. There were all sorts of transport companies operating on this river/drain and they were all variations on the same theme - horse and carriage. There was one company with a mechanical horse, several with horses that swam chest high in the very muddy water and some where the horses were trotting on an unseen concrete platform (perhaps attached to the walls?) I particularly remember one which had swimming horses and the carriage being pulled was a three story house! The muddy water was being splashed onto the road and I got some on me too.

At the private hospital, Lik had appeared and we wanted to get some information about registering. There was no one at the information/registration desk and other people were waiting too. Finally after ages I got my hands on a sort of laminated booklet, like the menus you see in asian restaurants with big font and low-res colour pictures. I found "Maternity" and we went to take the lift. It had a sign on it with stick figures to indicate its capacity; 2 adults and 1 child. Instead of doors it had two swinging gantry doors like at a library or swimming pool. We squeezed in (it was very small) and pressed the button for the second highest floor for Maternity. The WHOLE floor not just the lift, started to rise. As in, the lift floor was attached to the room floor so the whole room rose and inexplicably "opened" at the Maternity level. Don't ask how.

And that's all I remember. Okay I'm tired now.

the man and i had a bad night last night.

i woke up in the middle of the night hot and very disturbed by a nightmare, which i could remember clearly at the time. the man stirred and complained i'd been kicking him all night long and that he hadn't slept yet. (by morning he told me he'd only slept 1 or 2 hours) there'd been a song from the nightmare (yes, creepy) which was playing over and over in my head so although i was very sleepy i was afraid to go back to sleep. i tried hard to think of other songs to replace that one so that i could go back to sleep. at some stage i lost and sleep won.

no more nightmares for the rest of the night (also drank water and turned the heat down) but this one was enough i think.

now i can't remember the full story, but there was quite a complicated one involving a group of people and some conflict. at the end of part one, a woman appeared and resolved things. then in a strange encore or shift in focus (where if it'd been a play/movie you expect curtains to fall or credits to roll, but the actors stayed on until you started to wonder ok now what?) it became a lovely warm domestic scene with the lady and her little daughter, merely a toddler. the little girl was coloring in a book and said she wanted "number 0". "number 0, number 0, number 0" like sesame street only a gruesome one because then we zoom into the colouring book, a page turns and there's a block of something green on the page. "green!" the lady goes, plus "number 0" equals kill the girl. so as if it's entirely logical or something akin to "bedtime, honey!" she goes with a smile, "number 0 plus green, must kill her" and stabs and murders her little daughter.

this was when i woke up with a song somebody (the girl?) had been singing about number 0 and green, kill her.

:(((((((((

i'm so tired today. came in at 8am, haven't done much except read up about election news online. class now til 12, then i'll probably drive to RSA in South Dunedin to pick up some brochures for my research project. entirely relying on God to keep me awake and safe (He saved my life last night! at an intersection).

we're both really looking forward to going back to bed, early, together, again. no staying in library late tonight, i'm picking him up at 430 on the dot.