Briefly about PT, then... a dream sequence

So today I started physical therapy, this time as an out patient, at Kennedy Krieger. The day started early, since we had to fight through morning rush hour to get downtown for 9 oclock PT. As for the actual first day, there is very little to report, except one. The whole day was devoted to evaluating me. Poking and prodding, forcing me to move my legs this way, then that way, now this way, measuring the angles and force the whole time. The one cool thing that did come out of all that was they found a new muscle working (sort of). Kennedy is famous for their use of electrical stimulation of leg muscles, which forces the muscles to contract; this can lead to muscle recovery and various other processes. Now my left leg, for whatever reason, has never responded to electrical stimulation. For the first time, my therapist were able to feel faint contractions on my hamstrings (the muscle behind the leg that bends the knee). It's exciting and hints at possibilities down the line. I'm really excited about it, but as always its a wait and see game.

The rest of the day I spent with my brother and sister-in-law, going various places around town since it was their last day before they went back. This tired me out and left me very sore. So the moment I got back I went to lie down, falling asleep. I had one of the most vivid dream sequences I've ever had, weird in the fact that I rarely dream at all.

(This was typed up immediately after I woke up, so is as detailed and as accurate as can be when one just wakes up from a dream)

It started off with a visit to a premier event; like the Oscars it had an entire staff of people who were responsible for its upkeep: guards, cooks, janitors, etc. Having an in with a security worker, I snuck in through the bathroom, which led to the rest of the festivities. In the logic of dreams, I stopped to pee (me being standing I chose a urinal). In the next stall someone kept yelling loudly at me, yelling on how I was being inconsiderate and an awful person for sneaking into said event. I can’t remember all of his rant, but it was overheard by the janitor, who turns out was not a janitor at all. He was in fact a mob boss, supervising the union of people who were running the event. So annoyed by the man’s yelling, he slugged him and had him dragged off by goons. In the way of mob bosses, being annoyed at the man endeared him to me.

It must have been my real secret mission to befriend the mob boss in order to lead him away to beat him up (not because of a rival mob, but of some misdeed he must have carried out on a group of friends of mine). Using my friendship with the mob-boss, I lured him outside by himself (the boss waving off his guards away, because I was a friend). My real group of friends then met me outside to beat up the mob boss. Unbenounced to the rest of us, one of my cohorts had brought a gun, which he promptly used to off the mob boss.

Now here is where I must have slipped deeper into sleep, because things start to get stranger. We tried to run from our crime, but we ended up shooting both an undercover policeman who was staking out the scene in a nearby hotel and the window of a bar full of rival gang members. Miraculously, we all escaped undetected, and as the events of the other characters were explained in a CSI-like detail, it turns out everyone in the small town had either been excited involved in preparing for the town's main event or was preparing for mob-violence. The police chalked the entire thing up to mob-warfare and we were about to go clean.

It was then that the other sole witness revealed herself. A lonely old grandma, escaped from the ravages of a nursing home and her family who forced pills down her throat (possibly with good reason if you stick around for the rest of the dream). She was living out her childhood memories of being a lonely girl in an orphanage; she and her ragtag group of friends used to go to the top of the neighboring hotel (where the undercover officers had been hiding out) and laugh as they would imitate the letters of the hotel, which were spelled in giant letters on the roof. So here is loony old grandma, witnessing a murder dressed as a giant T (explaining WHY she was previously unnoticed) on the roof of the neighboring building.

Whether we were caught or not, implicated by crazy grandma’s story, was never found out. Here is where there is an abrupt SHIFT in the dream, now focusing on the same town, now ruled by tyrannical sheriff who likes everything gray: all the shops, all the people, all the children in the orphanages (sadly of which there were many). There were tons of street urchins running around uncontrolled as well; a token effort was made to round them up and put them in nursing homes (which he did with matrix like moves, running sideways on walls) but as long as they wore grey they were tolerated.

If possible, the whole thing became MORE dreamlike. There is an entire sequence that is begging to blur in my memory already, about a group of people in bright colors (mostly blues) who in Charlie Chaplin-like antics overcame the sheriff. I don’t remember how they got him there but eventually they tricked the sheriff (who tried to go undercover to catch them) into going along with the crimes, which all involved adding colors to the nearby shops. They were supposed to hide in a nearby pool at the end of the heist (when the sheriff planned to catch them). Needless to say he did not. Instead, they framed him for all the “crimes” and added insult to injury by switching his towel with a confederate flag. The town of my dream seems to be in new-England, so this was considered a great insult.

The rest of the dream is a blur of colors, chases, and various antics, already fading from memory. I know when it was near completion I was in some colorful chase sequence on a highway (with whom, I have NO idea).

It was that point when I got a phone call from a friend, waking me. I soon went back to sleep, this time dreamless, but I was left with the image of the dream in my head, which NEVER HAPPENS! So before I went back to sleep, I typed up this dream sequence.