Zombies.

I just looked back at recent blog entries. Too many women's issues. Too much body-image related crap. For things I rarely think about, they make a curious preponderance of my internet spoo.

So here's something really important to me, that I'm pretty concerned about.

I dream about zombies. A lot. More than anyone really should. I dream about zombies more than I dream about my boyfriend. Way more than I dream about sex. More than I dream about flying or falling or losing teeth. More than I dream about anything that some coke-addicted austrian could file under symbols of an Electra complex.

That's not my concern, though. I don't mind dreaming about zombies. They're usually not nightmares, even though, I have to admit, sometimes I think about zombies when I'm awake, and it scares me. Recently, though, right when I got back from vacation, I had a nightmare about zombies. I dreamed they took over my college, at commencement. I dreamed my whole family was there to watch me graduate, and the zombies came. The dream was ridiculously sped up from there on in; scenes were cut with really scary montages that indicated the passage of time. (Note to H.B- watch slightly less TV). We tried to flee to an abandoned lighthouse, up a muddy hill, to no avail. After another really disorienting montage, we were hiding in the basement of a mall in the UK (a place I've never been) that was beset with zombies and zombie dogs. It was upsetting, and I woke up sweating and scared. I was actually worried about the inner door not being locked; what if my neighbors were zombified? I wound up flipping through the channels on my TV, trying to find something to distract me at three am.

What upsets me is not the nightmare (it's a relief to have nightmares, I normally have guiltmares), nor the zombies, but that it was a nightmare about zombies. When I dream about zombies, it's like I'm in on the joke. They're normally semi-lucid dreams, family not involved, where I go around fleeing zombies and gathering survivors and having a great time. Just like the movies, but really pleasant. And well-lit.

I'm really not used to being afraid of zombies when I'm asleep. When I'm awake, like this, I normally think too much about zombies and scare myself. I'm doing it right now. It's worst when I'm opening at work, because everybody knows, in a traditional zombie movie, you first see them the morning of. Like how you know you have a problem with mice. So when I go to work, right around dawn, in the strange green light that (when I was young and vital, not old and decrepit like now) I was used to seeing from the other side, it's really eerie. The light from my back porch doesn't reach to my car, and when I'm parked out front, there's not enough light to keep the hallway from being pitch black (my upstairs neighbors keep stealing our bulb). I should be more scared of skunks and raccoons in the first case and stumbling over my bike in the second, but...the primate brain fears what it fears.

My customers don't always help my fears that the zombies are coming. People who need coffee at five thirty in the morning, and haven't had coffee at five thirty in the morning, do seem a lot like zombies. One morning I was starting to make some ice tea for the day when I looked out the window, and people were beginning to stagger towards the building. When I looked up again, there were twice as many. They were distributed, lit, and clothed perfectly for a zombie movie.

Except there was no obligitory zombie in a bridal gown. What's up with the bride zombie? She's always there. Was she buried in her wedding gown and rose, or gotten during the reception, late the night before, or did she decide, undead or no undead, she's having her wedding and then get turned?