I just keep on dreaming 'til I run out of cake.
It's official: the linear dreams are at least partially a response to stress, and the result of my brain trying to soothe itself with situations wherein even being dramatically stupid won't cause me actual harm. Why do I say this? Because the last installment in this ongoing alternate reality series happened in May, just before BayCon. Now that I'm getting ready to head off into the wide blue yonder and slingshot myself towards New York City, well...thanks, brain. Thanks a lot. Y'know, most people's heads are happy to chase them with giant stalks of carnivorous broccoli when they get overly stressed. But you just have to be different, don'cha? You just have to show off. Now cut it out, or I swear, I'll watch all of the first season of America's Next Top Model in one sitting. DON'T THINK I WON'T.
As usual, and despite the fact that some people remember more of the details of these dreams than I do, I'm going to go ahead and provide a quick recap. It helps. This particular installment in the series of linear dreams is actually unique, in that it picks up almost immediately following the one before it (most of them have gaps of several weeks, if not several months): yes, we're going back to the 2013 Baltimore WorldCon. There's never been that little time between dreams, which is sort of fascinating, because it means my brain actually totally saved the last installment, in order to pick up semi-seamlessly where we last left off.
In the dream series, we're all existing some generally-undefined amount of time in the future; this dream and the one that came before it are interesting, in part, because they're happening so firmly in 2013. At the time of the dreams, I'm living in an unidentified small town in the Pacific Northwest; prior dreams have indicated that the small town is near, if not actually a part of, Seattle. The smart bet is on Snohomish, but thus far, there's been no real good in-dream reason to track down the actual name of the place I live. The relocation was based on both personal and economic reasons -- in the dream-setting, I'm actually writing full-time, and that makes the cost of living in California pretty much a non-starter. Kate and GP have also relocated to the Pacific Northwest; last time I checked, so had Chris (he isn't in this dream at all, so who knows where he is by now?). Kate is employed part-time as my handler, which means she navigates me from place to place and gets paid for it. She's also working in the same capacity for my friend Jennifer, which seems to be working out well for everyone. Chris and Tara run my website, and Vixy, Rebecca and Beth are our primary forum mods. Mysteriously, none of them have killed me yet.
This particular dream takes place entirely in Baltimore, far away from my little dream house, but I'm going to mention it anyway, on the meat pinata theory of 'reminding the universe that sometimes you want certain things to happen.' We have me nested, solo, in a compact-but-cozy little house decorated entirely in orange, green, and randomly weird, which is just about perfect for me. (When your home decor includes 'let's calligraph phrases out of Stephen King on the kitchen walls,' you know you're a little left of center.) Because I am a masochist, I have three Siamese cats (Lilly, Starla, and Kylie). Because I am practical, I have a Sharpei crossbreed (Hyacinth). And because I am me, I have two iguanas (Cobweb and Moth; I'm sure that one day, this series of dreams will include a trip to Iguana Rescue and the acquisition of a Mustardseed). In proof that these dreams are improbable but not pure wish fulfillment, which is really very unfair of them, I do not have a pony or a Stephen King Room, and James Gunn still hasn't called me.
In the specific timeline of the linear dreams -- which is vague but consistent -- the Toby Daye books sold some time around, um, when they actually sold. (If I'm precognitive, we're totally going to need to start telling the universe that in my dreams, I have a pony.) The first seven books have been published, as well as the first prequel, and part of my purpose at the Baltimore WorldCon is advertising for Tributes in the Dust, aka, 'book seven.' The Newsflesh trilogy and the Clady books have also sold, as have the Grace books (which was news to me, thank you dream; sadly, I didn't have a chance in the dream to sit down and read them, so I don't know how I resolved the book one pacing issues). The third season of October has just finished airing on the CW, and season four is currently being filmed. (If you're curious about the show, look at earlier recaps. It only really impacted this week's dream by being the focus on a single panel, and that wasn't so bad.)
When last we left our intrepid adventurers, they were attending an impromptu ice cream social in Wes and Mary's hotel room, having wisely stocked ice cream against just such a planned occasion. It was late Thursday night of the WorldCon, and confirmed attendees included 'damn near everyone,' although the ice cream social consisted of me, Tara, Vixy, Meredith, Kate, Mary, Wes, Rand, and Erin. The last dream ended with Erin telling me I didn't need to worry about the rest of the WorldCon -- which, remember, I was Toastmistress for, in addition to having a billion panels, a concert, and an upcoming deadline -- because it was all a dream. This was awesome. This was fabulous. This was...
...really, really annoying when I woke up, opened my eyes, and found myself staring at the back of Meredith's head. Mer doesn't snore, which is a good thing; neither do Kate or Amy, who were passed out in the next bed over. I pushed myself onto my elbows, stared, checked the clock -- 7:35 AM -- flopped back onto the pillow and gave serious thought to crying. Yes. The linear dream faked me out by causing me to remember Erin saying it was just a dream, followed by a moment of silence, and then all my friends laughing at me before Kate hauled me off to make me go to bed. The linear dream used its own defined structure against me to force me back into it. Even when I'm asleep, my brain is a sadistic monster, fond of torturing me in any and every way it can possibly come up with. And don't think I'm planning on forgiving it any time soon.
Fortunately, because this dream was an immediate continuation of the one before it, I didn't actually need a fresh 'as you know, Bob...'; I knew where I was and what was going on. I just didn't like it much, as, in the dream, I had dreamed that I dreamed it, and finding out that it was real was distressing. I got dressed, grabbed my laptop, and retreated downstairs to the coffee shop in the hotel lobby, hence to plug in my iPod and process more edits on Coyotes Never Say Good-bye, aka, 'the very last of the Clady books.' Sadly, this effort was totally trashed by the fact that a) I'm reasonably recognizeable, b) I was Toastmistress, so there was a picture of me in the program book, c) a new Toby book had just recently come out, and d) people who wake up before eight o'clock in the morning at conventions don't really have much to occupy their time, and hence spend a great deal of effort in finding things to do. After the fifth person wanted to come up and talk, I abandoned my attempts to write, closed the laptop, asked the barristas to push some tables together, and turned it into an impromptu coffee klatch. A great many people bought me coffee. Kate would curse their names later, when the caffeine crash came, but at the time, it was entertaining.
Around nine, other members of our party drifted in, in the form of Mary, Wes, Vixy, and Brooke: the early riser's brigade. My first panel was at ten-thirty, which left sufficient time for Wes and I to take breakfast orders and make a run to an interesting little Mexican/diner food fusion place that did pretty excellent breakfast burritos. (And that's excellent by my standards -- I had an egg white scramble with mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, and chicken breast, in a whole-wheat burrito wrap. For me, this was essentially heaven.) We returned to the hotel, distributed food to the lobby crew, and I went trotting upstairs with breakfast for my roommies, so I could placate them after I had to wake them up. Much grumbling followed, followed by much nomming as I slammed through the process of showering, fixing my hair, and getting dressed.
Clothes for Friday: clean jeans, October T-shirt, the pendant that Mia made me after Ashes of Honor got published, green kitten heeled shoes with little pumpkins painted on the backs. Sometimes, I am twelve. Also, sometimes I am running the fine line between what Kate will and won't tolerate in my wardrobe, but as my evenings all included 'dress like a grownup' events, she let me slide.
Panel the first: 'Folklore, Fantasy, and the Celtic Bias: Why Is It Always Elves?'. That was an insanely fun panel, at least in part because so many people had decided they wanted to be panelists that we wound up just getting off the podium, sitting on the edge of the stage, and joining in a really enthusiastic round-robin of ideas and suggestions and alternate folklores. Also, stupid. There was an astonishing amount of stupid introduced into the conversation, some of which was just too painful to write down. (Memo for the curious: if it was invented within the last fifty years, it is not 'folklore.' It is, in fact, still in the category of 'fiction.' Urban folklore can arise that quickly, but it's always the sort of thing that doesn't have a pinpoint source. So asking Emma Bull why she's never considered writing a serious scholarly fantasy about the Otherkin and their historical roots? Just gonna get you blinked at, since 'Otherkin' as a vocabulary and community are a relatively recent concept.)
Ninety-minute panel slots for sixty minute panels is a whole world of win, as it meant that my ten-thirty panel wrapped at eleven-thirty, and I was able to go up to my room and grab a fresh sketchbook before my noon panel, which was a distressingly well-attended discussion of the Toby books. It was awesome in that, y'know, hello fan base and continued publication, and distressing in that whole 'oh God I am so scared of this room that I have actually just forgotten what people don't know yet.' Fortunately, most folks wanted to discuss the changes brought about by Tributes in the Dust, and were thus less inclined than normal to try tricking me into giving spoilers. I am very, very appreciative of your restraint, fictional audience. I am less appreciative of your restraint, dream-versions of Mia, Vixy, and Kate, as it is not terribly nice to sit around and gloat at people because you've read segments of book eight and they haven't.
At the end of the panel, we announced a surprise: Mia had actually taken bottles of each of the Toby-themed BPAL scents and made pendants around them, which I had since signed. The pendant-and-perfume combos were all up for auction on eBay, but were only being announced through the website forums and the BPAL forums, which meant they'd be offered to a relatively limited audience. (This had been done with Beth's full knowledge and approval; she donated the perfume.) The Lab was getting half the proceeds from the auctions, and then both the Lab and my crew would be donating half of what they actually got to charity. (I dunno the Lab's charity; our charity was Pacific Siamese Rescue. Because I love my kitties.)
Post-panel, I had a half-hour break, during which Kate forced me to return to the room and actually eat one of the salads from my room fridge, refill my water bottle, and get a fresh DDP. Even in my dreams, Kate makes sure I don't collapse and die. Mia came along, because she was planning to skip my next panel -- on trends in modern horror fiction -- in favor of helping to keep the forums from turning into an absolute bloodbath as people asked questions and slammed our server downloading pictures. Mia is a good Mia.
The panel went well, and uneventfully, although I got to meet Max Brooks, which made me very happy. Largely because it gave me the opportunity to nitpick his virology (which is, to be fair, absolutely horrible, although it's also not the focus of his zombie fiction). I am a very picky girl where my zombies are concerned, and I'm even more picky where my virology is concerned, and when you make any effort whatsoever at combining the two, I'm probably going to pick at you. High point of the panel, at least for me: the people hall costumed as Shaun and Georgia Mason who came in, struck a pose at the back of the room, and then left. I am sometimes so very easy to please that it isn't even a tiny bit funny.
Panel to reading, reading to signing, signing to crawling upstairs and hiding in my hotel room until my Vicodin kicked in.
My last panel started at seven, and was a part of the evening programming because it was on a somewhat adult topic -- namely, 'The Coming Plague: How Are We All Going To Die?'. Apparently, I really do look like a kid on Christmas morning when I'm talking about Lassa fever coming out of the jungles and slaughtering us all, because the two panelists who'd never been on a virology panel with me before looking deeply disturbed. Not as disturbed as they looked when I started in on legacy plagues and the likelihood that eventually, a plague pit with the right conditions would be opened and let out the Black Death for a return engagement. I really don't understand why this is viewed as such a bad thing...
Kate had skipped the virology panel, since she's heard it all before -- usually six or seven times, and usually with a lot of giggling, although I do think she would've appreciated the MRSA song -- and when we regrouped in my room prior to heading down for the filk concerts (Tony and Vixy were on at nine), she had hunted and killed the dreaded Kentucky Fried Chicken, thus supplying us with the calories we would need to make it through the remainder of the night. I ate chicken and processed edits, which I had neglected horribly during the course of my insanely-overpacked day. (And as a memo, remember that, during the dreams, I actually have to live through these days. So the dream included overcrowding, people who needed showers, fighting through the halls, being mobbed by people who didn't want to let me reach my next panel, and general hellishness.)
Tony and Vixy went to get changed. Fortunately, I was only with them on two songs, so I was able to finish eating, get dressed, and saunter down to the concert room in a reasonable fashion. Wes had very sweetly made sure no one stole the table I had set up at the back of the room, and I settled down with my laptop to process edits until I was needed on the stage. The concert kicked ass, and you really should have been there. Hopefully, in another five years, you will be. Vixy has definitely improved as a songwriter since 2008, and wow has Tony kept up.
Was that gloating? Yup.
Of course, after the concert, I literally relocated to the open filking, sat in the corner, and worked until two in the morning, when Meredith came to haul me off to bed. Memo to self: try never to do a WorldCon when you have a deadline, because you're really not going to have time to have very much fun. Mer was incredibly tolerant about me keeping her in the room to twitter at her about the book, even though she was actually having a nighttime social life at the convention. There was a message from Merav on the room phone, letting us know that she'd be picking up Matt and Cindi from the airport about an hour previous, so they were presumably on-site by that point.
Meredith poured me into the bed, still whinging, handed me Amberlee, kissed me on the forehead, and turned to leave the room. I whined further about all the things I still wasn't prepared to do, and she smiled, kissed my forehead again, and said, "Don't worry about it."
"How can I not worry about it?" I asked.
"Easy. You're asleep."
"Oh, right," I said...
...and woke up.
As usual, and despite the fact that some people remember more of the details of these dreams than I do, I'm going to go ahead and provide a quick recap. It helps. This particular installment in the series of linear dreams is actually unique, in that it picks up almost immediately following the one before it (most of them have gaps of several weeks, if not several months): yes, we're going back to the 2013 Baltimore WorldCon. There's never been that little time between dreams, which is sort of fascinating, because it means my brain actually totally saved the last installment, in order to pick up semi-seamlessly where we last left off.
In the dream series, we're all existing some generally-undefined amount of time in the future; this dream and the one that came before it are interesting, in part, because they're happening so firmly in 2013. At the time of the dreams, I'm living in an unidentified small town in the Pacific Northwest; prior dreams have indicated that the small town is near, if not actually a part of, Seattle. The smart bet is on Snohomish, but thus far, there's been no real good in-dream reason to track down the actual name of the place I live. The relocation was based on both personal and economic reasons -- in the dream-setting, I'm actually writing full-time, and that makes the cost of living in California pretty much a non-starter. Kate and GP have also relocated to the Pacific Northwest; last time I checked, so had Chris (he isn't in this dream at all, so who knows where he is by now?). Kate is employed part-time as my handler, which means she navigates me from place to place and gets paid for it. She's also working in the same capacity for my friend Jennifer, which seems to be working out well for everyone. Chris and Tara run my website, and Vixy, Rebecca and Beth are our primary forum mods. Mysteriously, none of them have killed me yet.
This particular dream takes place entirely in Baltimore, far away from my little dream house, but I'm going to mention it anyway, on the meat pinata theory of 'reminding the universe that sometimes you want certain things to happen.' We have me nested, solo, in a compact-but-cozy little house decorated entirely in orange, green, and randomly weird, which is just about perfect for me. (When your home decor includes 'let's calligraph phrases out of Stephen King on the kitchen walls,' you know you're a little left of center.) Because I am a masochist, I have three Siamese cats (Lilly, Starla, and Kylie). Because I am practical, I have a Sharpei crossbreed (Hyacinth). And because I am me, I have two iguanas (Cobweb and Moth; I'm sure that one day, this series of dreams will include a trip to Iguana Rescue and the acquisition of a Mustardseed). In proof that these dreams are improbable but not pure wish fulfillment, which is really very unfair of them, I do not have a pony or a Stephen King Room, and James Gunn still hasn't called me.
In the specific timeline of the linear dreams -- which is vague but consistent -- the Toby Daye books sold some time around, um, when they actually sold. (If I'm precognitive, we're totally going to need to start telling the universe that in my dreams, I have a pony.) The first seven books have been published, as well as the first prequel, and part of my purpose at the Baltimore WorldCon is advertising for Tributes in the Dust, aka, 'book seven.' The Newsflesh trilogy and the Clady books have also sold, as have the Grace books (which was news to me, thank you dream; sadly, I didn't have a chance in the dream to sit down and read them, so I don't know how I resolved the book one pacing issues). The third season of October has just finished airing on the CW, and season four is currently being filmed. (If you're curious about the show, look at earlier recaps. It only really impacted this week's dream by being the focus on a single panel, and that wasn't so bad.)
When last we left our intrepid adventurers, they were attending an impromptu ice cream social in Wes and Mary's hotel room, having wisely stocked ice cream against just such a planned occasion. It was late Thursday night of the WorldCon, and confirmed attendees included 'damn near everyone,' although the ice cream social consisted of me, Tara, Vixy, Meredith, Kate, Mary, Wes, Rand, and Erin. The last dream ended with Erin telling me I didn't need to worry about the rest of the WorldCon -- which, remember, I was Toastmistress for, in addition to having a billion panels, a concert, and an upcoming deadline -- because it was all a dream. This was awesome. This was fabulous. This was...
...really, really annoying when I woke up, opened my eyes, and found myself staring at the back of Meredith's head. Mer doesn't snore, which is a good thing; neither do Kate or Amy, who were passed out in the next bed over. I pushed myself onto my elbows, stared, checked the clock -- 7:35 AM -- flopped back onto the pillow and gave serious thought to crying. Yes. The linear dream faked me out by causing me to remember Erin saying it was just a dream, followed by a moment of silence, and then all my friends laughing at me before Kate hauled me off to make me go to bed. The linear dream used its own defined structure against me to force me back into it. Even when I'm asleep, my brain is a sadistic monster, fond of torturing me in any and every way it can possibly come up with. And don't think I'm planning on forgiving it any time soon.
Fortunately, because this dream was an immediate continuation of the one before it, I didn't actually need a fresh 'as you know, Bob...'; I knew where I was and what was going on. I just didn't like it much, as, in the dream, I had dreamed that I dreamed it, and finding out that it was real was distressing. I got dressed, grabbed my laptop, and retreated downstairs to the coffee shop in the hotel lobby, hence to plug in my iPod and process more edits on Coyotes Never Say Good-bye, aka, 'the very last of the Clady books.' Sadly, this effort was totally trashed by the fact that a) I'm reasonably recognizeable, b) I was Toastmistress, so there was a picture of me in the program book, c) a new Toby book had just recently come out, and d) people who wake up before eight o'clock in the morning at conventions don't really have much to occupy their time, and hence spend a great deal of effort in finding things to do. After the fifth person wanted to come up and talk, I abandoned my attempts to write, closed the laptop, asked the barristas to push some tables together, and turned it into an impromptu coffee klatch. A great many people bought me coffee. Kate would curse their names later, when the caffeine crash came, but at the time, it was entertaining.
Around nine, other members of our party drifted in, in the form of Mary, Wes, Vixy, and Brooke: the early riser's brigade. My first panel was at ten-thirty, which left sufficient time for Wes and I to take breakfast orders and make a run to an interesting little Mexican/diner food fusion place that did pretty excellent breakfast burritos. (And that's excellent by my standards -- I had an egg white scramble with mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, and chicken breast, in a whole-wheat burrito wrap. For me, this was essentially heaven.) We returned to the hotel, distributed food to the lobby crew, and I went trotting upstairs with breakfast for my roommies, so I could placate them after I had to wake them up. Much grumbling followed, followed by much nomming as I slammed through the process of showering, fixing my hair, and getting dressed.
Clothes for Friday: clean jeans, October T-shirt, the pendant that Mia made me after Ashes of Honor got published, green kitten heeled shoes with little pumpkins painted on the backs. Sometimes, I am twelve. Also, sometimes I am running the fine line between what Kate will and won't tolerate in my wardrobe, but as my evenings all included 'dress like a grownup' events, she let me slide.
Panel the first: 'Folklore, Fantasy, and the Celtic Bias: Why Is It Always Elves?'. That was an insanely fun panel, at least in part because so many people had decided they wanted to be panelists that we wound up just getting off the podium, sitting on the edge of the stage, and joining in a really enthusiastic round-robin of ideas and suggestions and alternate folklores. Also, stupid. There was an astonishing amount of stupid introduced into the conversation, some of which was just too painful to write down. (Memo for the curious: if it was invented within the last fifty years, it is not 'folklore.' It is, in fact, still in the category of 'fiction.' Urban folklore can arise that quickly, but it's always the sort of thing that doesn't have a pinpoint source. So asking Emma Bull why she's never considered writing a serious scholarly fantasy about the Otherkin and their historical roots? Just gonna get you blinked at, since 'Otherkin' as a vocabulary and community are a relatively recent concept.)
Ninety-minute panel slots for sixty minute panels is a whole world of win, as it meant that my ten-thirty panel wrapped at eleven-thirty, and I was able to go up to my room and grab a fresh sketchbook before my noon panel, which was a distressingly well-attended discussion of the Toby books. It was awesome in that, y'know, hello fan base and continued publication, and distressing in that whole 'oh God I am so scared of this room that I have actually just forgotten what people don't know yet.' Fortunately, most folks wanted to discuss the changes brought about by Tributes in the Dust, and were thus less inclined than normal to try tricking me into giving spoilers. I am very, very appreciative of your restraint, fictional audience. I am less appreciative of your restraint, dream-versions of Mia, Vixy, and Kate, as it is not terribly nice to sit around and gloat at people because you've read segments of book eight and they haven't.
At the end of the panel, we announced a surprise: Mia had actually taken bottles of each of the Toby-themed BPAL scents and made pendants around them, which I had since signed. The pendant-and-perfume combos were all up for auction on eBay, but were only being announced through the website forums and the BPAL forums, which meant they'd be offered to a relatively limited audience. (This had been done with Beth's full knowledge and approval; she donated the perfume.) The Lab was getting half the proceeds from the auctions, and then both the Lab and my crew would be donating half of what they actually got to charity. (I dunno the Lab's charity; our charity was Pacific Siamese Rescue. Because I love my kitties.)
Post-panel, I had a half-hour break, during which Kate forced me to return to the room and actually eat one of the salads from my room fridge, refill my water bottle, and get a fresh DDP. Even in my dreams, Kate makes sure I don't collapse and die. Mia came along, because she was planning to skip my next panel -- on trends in modern horror fiction -- in favor of helping to keep the forums from turning into an absolute bloodbath as people asked questions and slammed our server downloading pictures. Mia is a good Mia.
The panel went well, and uneventfully, although I got to meet Max Brooks, which made me very happy. Largely because it gave me the opportunity to nitpick his virology (which is, to be fair, absolutely horrible, although it's also not the focus of his zombie fiction). I am a very picky girl where my zombies are concerned, and I'm even more picky where my virology is concerned, and when you make any effort whatsoever at combining the two, I'm probably going to pick at you. High point of the panel, at least for me: the people hall costumed as Shaun and Georgia Mason who came in, struck a pose at the back of the room, and then left. I am sometimes so very easy to please that it isn't even a tiny bit funny.
Panel to reading, reading to signing, signing to crawling upstairs and hiding in my hotel room until my Vicodin kicked in.
My last panel started at seven, and was a part of the evening programming because it was on a somewhat adult topic -- namely, 'The Coming Plague: How Are We All Going To Die?'. Apparently, I really do look like a kid on Christmas morning when I'm talking about Lassa fever coming out of the jungles and slaughtering us all, because the two panelists who'd never been on a virology panel with me before looking deeply disturbed. Not as disturbed as they looked when I started in on legacy plagues and the likelihood that eventually, a plague pit with the right conditions would be opened and let out the Black Death for a return engagement. I really don't understand why this is viewed as such a bad thing...
Kate had skipped the virology panel, since she's heard it all before -- usually six or seven times, and usually with a lot of giggling, although I do think she would've appreciated the MRSA song -- and when we regrouped in my room prior to heading down for the filk concerts (Tony and Vixy were on at nine), she had hunted and killed the dreaded Kentucky Fried Chicken, thus supplying us with the calories we would need to make it through the remainder of the night. I ate chicken and processed edits, which I had neglected horribly during the course of my insanely-overpacked day. (And as a memo, remember that, during the dreams, I actually have to live through these days. So the dream included overcrowding, people who needed showers, fighting through the halls, being mobbed by people who didn't want to let me reach my next panel, and general hellishness.)
Tony and Vixy went to get changed. Fortunately, I was only with them on two songs, so I was able to finish eating, get dressed, and saunter down to the concert room in a reasonable fashion. Wes had very sweetly made sure no one stole the table I had set up at the back of the room, and I settled down with my laptop to process edits until I was needed on the stage. The concert kicked ass, and you really should have been there. Hopefully, in another five years, you will be. Vixy has definitely improved as a songwriter since 2008, and wow has Tony kept up.
Was that gloating? Yup.
Of course, after the concert, I literally relocated to the open filking, sat in the corner, and worked until two in the morning, when Meredith came to haul me off to bed. Memo to self: try never to do a WorldCon when you have a deadline, because you're really not going to have time to have very much fun. Mer was incredibly tolerant about me keeping her in the room to twitter at her about the book, even though she was actually having a nighttime social life at the convention. There was a message from Merav on the room phone, letting us know that she'd be picking up Matt and Cindi from the airport about an hour previous, so they were presumably on-site by that point.
Meredith poured me into the bed, still whinging, handed me Amberlee, kissed me on the forehead, and turned to leave the room. I whined further about all the things I still wasn't prepared to do, and she smiled, kissed my forehead again, and said, "Don't worry about it."
"How can I not worry about it?" I asked.
"Easy. You're asleep."
"Oh, right," I said...
...and woke up.