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Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better.

That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers. If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert.

Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, "the right circumstances" means having dessert shortly before bed time. This doesn't happen very often, but every now and then, dinner runs late into the evening. If that particular occurrence coincides with having dessert that evening, I might very well go to bed shortly after eating some sweets.

In those cases, I have weird dreams. What makes this especially noteworthy is that I don't usually remember my dreams. I fall asleep fairly easily, and I've been known to sleep through heavy noise in the middle of the night. However, I almost never remember my dreams the next morning. The last time that I could consistently remember my dreams, I was taking malaria medicine during a business trip. Malaria medicine just so happens to give some people psychedelic dreams as one of those fun side effects. In my case, I wasn't having particularly strange or trippy dreams, but that's what it took for me to actually remember what I had dreamt the night before.

Regardless, I've had two notable experiences where dessert before bedtime resulted in me a) remembering my dreams, and b) having odd dreams. The first time, I had a big slice of chocolate cake at a restaurant and then I was in bed no more than an hour later. That night, I had a pretty fitful sleep. I obviously wasn't awake, but I could tell that I was tossing and turning. What's more, I had a funky dream that night. Like I said, this was a strange enough experience that I ended up telling the Mild Girlfriend about it. The second time, I had frozen yogurt. This time around, I slept just fine, but I had a dream that involved Barack Obama, Nancy Reagan, a fleet of tour buses and moving vans, a goat that invaded my personal space, and, I kid you not, feral Weiner dogs. Again, it was remarkable enough that I remembered, but the contents of said dream were even more remarkable.

All of this has led to a new rule: the Mild Girlfriend says I'm not allowed to have dessert before going to bed.

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