Every second of the night I live another life

I woke up this morning in the aforementioned puddle of sweat with an aching head, an exhausted body and some general dizziness. I chalked it up to allergies, a shift change at work and stress. As I was feeding Claren, though, I realized why I was tired: I had so many dreams last night. They kept pouring out of my head all day.

Since I was working late, I went back to bed and was no more awake when I woke up later. While I was in the shower, I realized my problem: I had forgotten to take my evil happy pills. I took them and was OK for most of the day but still exhausted.

Here are my dreams; tell me I don't have a right to be tired? The dreams are not in chronological order because I don't remember them flowing into one another. And I do not think this is all of them.

• There was a meeting with a PR person from Toyota, Nissan and I think Renault, one person each. The meeting was held at my grandmother's dining room table. I think the third automaker was Renault because the PR person was a red-headed woman with a French accent. She was not very good either. The Nissan guy was Arabic but some papers he gave us said he was Sudanese. The papers also said Sudanese was a religion and he believed in Jesus or Santa Claus, I can't remember which. The Toyota guy was generally a jerk and way confident. He was Caucasian. But I liked the little PR video he showed; it featured Spider-Man 3.

After the meeting we went back to work, of course in gram's living room. I was sitting on the floor in front of my boss, who was on a loveseat. He said the move to the living room was a temporary switch because of the PR meeting.

• I also dreamed I was back at my college newspaper. I don't remember much except they redecorated and took away my desk.

• Briefly, I dreamed of running over Claren's pinch collar and picking out clothes for work. I don't remember why but the clothes thing was real involved.

• I was in a choose your own adventure book, and I got to see both endings. It involved this grifter couple who weren't really bad, but they got mixed up with the wrong crowd and I was trying to save them. I was gritty and chiseled (maybe like Brad Pitt). I was also tied to a chair and a cop was interrogating me. The grifters were there and so was the really bad guy. I was forced to choose how to answer the cop's questions. If I answered them correctly, it suggested I was guilty of this bad thing they were doing. I wasn't. But if I was honest the real bad guy might stand up, shoot me, the cop and the grifters.

At first I chose to answer the questions correctly and that scenario ended with the cop shooting the bad guy right in the forehead. I triumphed the other way, too, but I forget how. Both times the story ended with the woman grifter killing her partner and leaving him slumped over the steering wheel in a car across the street from my parents.

• Finally, I dreamed Anna Kournikova lived below me when I worked in North Carolina. Why as ritzy tennis star would live in North Carolina, let alone Winston-Salem, let alone that apartment complex is beyond me. She also was not happy, just waiting for some nice journalist to come in and swoop her off her feet.

What does it say about my self-esteem that I don't even get the girl in my dreams? I followed the story online of how Anna found love with a freelancer who wrote about it.

I sort of want to skip my pills every so often now just for a thrill.