Now that is strange

Today I have done something that I don't think I've done since I was, oh, maybe four months old; I'll have to ask my parents: I slept, pretty much uninterruptedly, for eleven hours. ELEVEN.

That's usually about how much sleep it feels like I get in a week, so you can understand my sense of wonder and accomplishment. That cough medicine is some powerful stuff!

I don't like to take sleepy-making cough medicine very much because it makes me have the weirdest dreams, completely unlike taking sleepy-making allergy medicine, which just makes me, well, go to sleep. After slugging down three teaspoons of this cough medicine two nights ago, I dreamed that I left my husband to go off on a wild, romantic tangent with Heath Ledger, something that is completely unlike my usual staid and church-ladyish Catholic self. Not to mention the fact that Heath -- God rest his soul -- is no longer with us. This morning, I have a vague memory of dreaming that I went to the circus and got first one balloon, then two, then three and finally so many that my feet lifted off the ground and I went up, up, up and was dismayed when my sandals fell off.

It didn't take as many balloons as you might have thought, which is the very essence of dream-ness. Well, that and running off with a willing Heath Ledger.

I guess the strange dreams are better than the experience one of my friends had when taking this particular brand of cough syrup, though. She totally hallucinated and claims that Jesus was walking around her bedroom carrying a lantern.

"How do you know it was a hallucination?" I asked. "There are many saints who have seen Jesus, like St. Anthony of Padua and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque."

"Well, first of all, I am not a saint," she replied smartly. "And second of all, when I sat up in bed and said, 'Jesus, what are you doing here?' to him, he ignored me and just kept on pacing around with his lantern. But my husband growled, 'Lie down and go back to sleep, willya?' I don't think Jesus would have ignored me if he were really there. And he probably would have said something to my husband for being so grumpy to me when I was sick."

I had to concede the point. And I've also kept an eye on her over the years, and if she's a saint-becoming, she's got a heck of a long way to go. HAHAHAHAHAAA!!! (I can get away with saying that because I'm sick and under the influence of cough medicine. Snaa-a-ap!)