Jet A was $5.20

Nightmares ... the kind that grab a fist full of your gut ... and twist.  I wake up wide-eyed ... I am not smack dab in the middle of an aerial war zone ... thousands of feet above stable mother earth.  Familiar shadows reassure me ... a glass of water right there beside my bed.  I sit up pushing the damp hair away from my neck ... and I breathe, ssshhing myself.  It is so dark outside, and quiet ... deep night. My toes trace tiny circles on the wood floor ... Shhhsh just a bad dream ... . 

Yeah ... same dream.  I think this one is worse the the swinging suspension bridge.  The floor boards in that one would fall away as I passed over them.  "Don't look down ... keep moving forward ... there is no turning back", that's what I would tell myself and finally after many nights of peril I arrived on  bloodied knees at the door ... the destination ... it was freaking locked!  The cool thing about re-occuring dreams is eventually one realizes that this is the dream.  I told myself to have the key next time.  I wore it around my neck like a talisman ... that dream series ended with the turning of the door handle.  Gosh I'm glad I don't dream that anymore. It woke me up with a pounding heart and sweaty palms ... seemed so real, I am surprised I didn't have rope burns and splinters. I don't laugh at that nightmare now, but I do smile when I remember it ... I made it through.  Why does the unconscious brain take us anywhere other then ... on vacation?  I think I am going to do some dream research.

Most recently, I had been dreaming that I was co-pilot on a flight that was in big trouble.  Storms, Dark, Annunciators which I could hear but not see ... Low Fuel ... the unmistakeable smell of an electrical fire, maybe the fire had been extinguished, the cockpit seemed to be in a cloud of it's own.  The dream mutates in repetition, and when I'm awake reflecting on it, it's fuzzy as dreams tend to be, but I know that I am worried about low fuel and I am worrying about Va ... that's what I always wake remembering ... that and that the lightning explodes brightly in to large open places ... sometimes I can see the ground below ... it's exactly where it should be and I think there are several good ways to get the plane to there.  (Awake it reminds me of what hope really is.) The captain seems hell bent on besting this many tailed night beast.  I seem to be along for the ride in my own dream.  Ummm ... that doesn't seem right!  After several nights of this dream I composed myself and said ... yeah, we need to land as soon as possible.  Perfect.  Exactly what needs to happen next in a nightmare like that. It was a dream about a power struggle with the elements, natural and otherwise ... but it should have been a dream about ... a safe landing. That's not what happened, but the dream did stop.  I stopped having the dream.  For several nights I have just slept through.  Thank God ... I have been tired.

I think that dream means something.  And ... I think dreaming-me did, and said, eventually, what I could.  I think dreaming-me figured it out.  I was thinking I needed to save the flight cause the captain was, ummm, captivated by the ride ... locked in on to the contest.  But ... no matter how amazing my super duper co-pilot stuff could possibly be,  no matter how many nights of do-overs this dream gave me "saving" the flight was never going to be my option ... or, my job.  Best case scenario for dreaming-me is to hope the Chief Pilot  doesn't have many reasons to be totally pissed at me.