O Foul Subconscious!

There are different levels of rude awakening.

MILD:

There's waking up to your spouse talking in their sleep. Now, personally, I'd rate this a 2 on the 1-10 scale of rude awakenings. Honestly, I think it's cute. And, if you can understand what they're saying, it can be downright hilarious. And if it bothers you, you can simply rub their arm a couple times, and they'll settle down.

MODERATE:

The next level would be waking up because your spouse is over on your side of the bed. Now, if you're really charitable, you can look at this as unexpected cuddle time, but more than likely you're going to prefer sleep. This requires actually waking your spouse up and telling them to please roll their butt back over to their own side of the bed. I'd give this a 4.

SEVERE: 

After that we have waking up to your spouse yelling, "OH, SH**! SH**! SH**!" in their sleep while violently throwing themselves onto your side of the bed (and on top of you). This is definitely a 9.

I QUIT: 

The only ruder awakening than the above scenario is waking up to a vision of spiders crawling all over your legs and sheets, under your blankets, causing you to create the above scenario for your spouse. This, and only this, is a 10.

My husband had an abundance of charity for me tonight, and wrapped his arm protectively around me, asking, "Are you alright? What happened?"

I was still gasping. "Spiders! Spiders! Lots and lots! In the bed!"

He was still a tad disoriented from being violently jumped on by a swearing she-devil. "Spiders?"

"No... wait..." My brain was starting to come back. "I think some of them might have been a dream."

He squeezed me tightly and settled back into his pillow. "Yeah, I think all of them were a dream."

All of them?

I tentatively kicked my leg back over to my side of the bed, feeling the sheets. Smooth fabric - not a single spider.

I indulged in the snuggle for another second before realizing the words I had dreamed upon discovering spiders in my sheets. "Um... Carl? Did I swear?"

Was he laughing? I was still too asleep to tell.

"Yes. Yes, you did."

Oops. Sorry.

And this is why I'm up at 5:30 AM on a weekend, therapy blogging.

Subconscious, just... stop.

And Now I Take on the Apocalypse

I'm a wimp.

I used to think I was strong, mighty, epic, could take on a raging allosaurus with naught but a raw steak and a small pocket knife, et cetera.

And then I went on a hike with my little brother and his family.

We hiked up Menan Butte in Rexburg, Idaho. It's almost a mile to the top, and extremely steep. Not quite must-climb-using-your-hands steep, but in parts it was about as steep as you can get without using your hands.

I was the last one to the top. Now, I could blame it on stopping to take pictures, which I did quite a bit of, but I know for a fact that wasn't it. I was stopping to take those pictures in just about every patch of shade along the trail while my gentlemanly husband stood between me and the sun because sage bushes don't really offer that much shade. My face was flame-red, sweat poured down my cheeks, and at times my breath came in labored gasps.

Meanwhile, my baby brother could have done jumping jacks clear to the top - with his 1 1/2 year old daughter on his shoulders - and been perfectly fine. His wife took it a little slower, and he stayed back to help her with that, but she still made it to the top a good 5 or 10 minutes before I did.

Okay, so my little brother is a big kid. He's 6'4", muscular, and country through and through to his bones. His wife is a tad shorter than me, averagely sized, but equally country. I grew up in the country every bit as much as my brother, and I love it desperately, but I don't even compare to either of them for incorporating it into my daily life. Maybe I should give myself some credit for that.

But here's the thing. My sister in law, who very thoroughly beat me to the top of that butte, was EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT.

I was there in Idaho for her baby shower, because the woman was 3 weeks away from popping a freaking human being out of her uterus. And she dominated me.

Now, I know it wasn't a competition, and I don't feel the sting of competitive loss at all, but when you're sitting there in the shade of your husband's flexing torso, watching your sister in law disappear over the horizon as she lugs her 8.25 month fetus up a butte, and you can barely breathe, you kinda have to take a moment to step back and ask yourself the hard questions.

Like, if the apocalypse hit, would I be one of the survivors, or one of the statistics? 

I mean, seriously. If an 8 months pregnant woman can beat me to the top of a butte, how would I fare against a horde of zombies?

If Yellowstone erupted, sending waves of bison and grizzly bears running south for their lives while simultaneously knocking out power, food, transportation means, and every other bit of modern life in the entire Western half of the United States, how would I hunt a buffalo while fighting off a grizzly bear?

If ISIS hit our nation with a set of EMPs, wiping out the electric grid, rendering cars useless, and frying every electronic device within range of the pulse (my personal favorite scenario), how would I walk/bike/ride a horse the 1,000 miles to home and safety? How would I fight off desperate/starving other people also trying to escape the city who want the provisions I'm really not strong enough to be carrying? How would I get past that pesky mountain range that stands between me and home?

I was raised with emergency prep. It's a favorite pastime of my mom's, and I grew up weeding the garden, helping can peaches, inventorying our food storage, and staying up late passing around various apocalyptic scenarios that could possibly cause us to actually need these skills we were acquiring.

I know how to purify water. I know how to grow food. I know how to keep stored food fresh. I know first aide. I know fire. I know how to travel via horseback. I know how to work with a family to use teamwork to survive.

And in all that survival training, it never dawned on me that I might need to include physical fitness in emergency prep. I always just sort of assumed that when I needed to do something physical, I'd just do it. The words "physically incapable" never really occurred to me.

Flash forward a couple weeks.

Carl won a Pulse at work. This device is a pedometer, altitude meter, heart rate monitor, and sleep monitor all in one that also syncs with your smart phone.

Carl doesn't have a smart phone, so he gave it to me. It was a pretty effective slap on the butt.

The WHO recommends that to be healthy, you need to take a minimum of 10,000 steps per day.

Do you know how many steps I take on an average day?

3,000.

That's right, ladies and gentleman, I am 1/3 as active as I should be just for basic health. No wonder I couldn't beat an unborn child to the top of a hill. 

This is unacceptable. If I only ever walk a mile or two each day, how can I be expected to hike the Rocky Mountains on my 1,000 mile trek to safety?

So, since I'm wearing a pedometer all day, I set some goals.

To start with, bare minimum, 10,000 steps per day. That's roughly 5 miles. Also, I have to gain a minimum of 100 feet in altitude by taking the stairs or walking uphill.

I've done it for two days now.

My legs and butt are killing me.

But just you wait. I will dominate this apocalypse thing!!!

Oh horror of horrors.

So, I'm just sitting there in my fluffy rocking chair, all innocent like. Eating my burrito, you know. Minding my own business.

Suddenly, from the space between my elbow and my stomach, and onto the plate that sits on my lap, crawls a massive, black, spindly-legged spider.

This may be the first time in the last 25 years that I deliberately threw the entirety of my lunch into the air, and onto the floor.

[shudder] Uuuuuugh. [/shudder]

You may play me bagpipes, and call me, "Your Highnessness."

Perhaps it was inspired by the recent Scottish vote for independence, perhaps not. I don't really know what brought it on, but something inspired my mother to compile my family's Scottish lineage, up through the royal Stuart clan.

Yay, Stuarts!

Let me tell you a little bit about my Scottish connections.

I've known for years that I had Scottish blood in me - Stuart clan at that - but there was never much to do with it. I liked the movie, "Brave." My little brother plays the bagpipes. I have a soft spot in my heart for Celtic music, and a desperate love for their knots and other art motifs.

That was about the extent of it.

Then I married an Armstrong.

Not just any Armstrong, of course. I married one with a strong "clan" mentality to their family. They love their Scottish heritage, and proudly display their coat of arms, while wearing their blue and green tartan on their ties.

See, there's this thing about the Armstrongs, though. Way back in the whenever ago, they rebelled against the ruling clan of their day. Which was - you guessed it - the Stuart clan. (Or Stewart... multiple spellings there, but it's the same family, and I think it looks better with a "u.")

Back in 1530 there was this little incident where King James V may or may not have promised safe passage to this guy named John Armstrong (aka, Gilnockie Johnnie), and then captured and hanged him. But see, Johnnie was a border reiver, which meant he plundered and raided and stuff. That was a thing back then. There were tensions between England and Scotland, so a bunch of English and Scottish people would raid the England/Scotland border. The thing is, they didn't really care if you were English or Scottish. If you lived in the borderlands, you either raided, or got raided.

And the Armstrongs were a very powerful clan that lived near the border.

Now, Gilnockie Johnnie was one of the most notorious border reivers of his day. According to the all-wise, all-knowing Wikipedia, he led a band of 160 guys around, burning stuff down. Like Netherby. He did that one. And then some dude named William Dacre burned the village of Canonbie, where he was living.

So, around 15 years after James V came to power, he decided he'd about had enough of these stinking Armstrongs. He got in touch with Johnnie and told him, "Oh, yeah. You can totally walk through this area where my guys are definitely not waiting to capture you. Not a problem! Totally safe passage!"

And Johnnie did it.

And got captured.

And got hanged, along with 36 of his reiver guys.

Now, I'm not sure how this was supposed to solve the king's problems with the Armstrong clan in general, since it just pissed them off, but it stopped the Johnnie problem.

Then James went to battle against the English in the Armstrongs' home turf. It was 1542, the Battle of Solway Moss, which took place in a bunch of bogs and eerie stuff like that. The Armstrongs loved all this creepy bog stuff, but the king's army kinda fell in and a few of them drowned.

Being subjects of the Scottish crown, the Armstrongs were called in to help the king win his battle. And they totally could have kicked English butt, knowing the bogs so well as they did. But, well, they were still a bit sore over the whole Gilnockie Johnnie incident of 12 years prior, and they just sort of shrugged and said, "Nah. We'll just stay here and soak in the bog. Have fun with your English buddies."

And the Scottish lost. Dismally.

So, the Armstrongs and the Stuarts. Not really friends.

Tonight, my mom sent me my Stuart lineage. I'd always wondered how it connected into the royal line, and now I know. We go up through Charles II of England, son of James I of England, who was also James VI of Scotland. (You can thank Elizabeth I for naming the Scottish heir as her heir as well, finally uniting England and Scotland, and ending their wars... sort of...) This leads us to James' mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. (No, that is not bloody Mary, for those people back in my freshman year who tried to convince me I was descended from a blood-soaked, homicidal maniac slaughtering innocent civilians in the name of the Catholic Church. That was Mary I of England, daughter of Henry VIII. And for the record, Bloody Mary never had any kids for me to be descended from anyway, though she did have a raging case of stomach cancer that she thought was a pregnancy.)

Mary, Queen of Scots, was the daughter of James V, of Gilnockie Johnnie fame. So it was definitely my direct ancestor who broke his oath to a notorious raider and got his butt whooped by the English in retaliation.

After getting the entire line traced from myself, up through each generation, to Mary (my mom stopped there, but a quick Wikipedia search told me my family's history with the Armstrong clan), I spent dinner time referring to my Armstrong husband as "traitor," and requesting such things as bowing before me, and referring to me as "Your Majesty."

Cause, I mean, I am royal blood here.

He refused to acknowledge my royal authority. Those dang Armstrongs just haven't gotten over the whole Gilnockie Johnnie thing. I mean, come on. It was five hundred years ago. Let it go, already. And then worship me.

But then, while I may be royal, the Armstrongs do have the cooler tartan.

And I'll have to live with that.

My Little Soapbox of the Day

It's a tiny rant. I promise. No long winded examples, or crushing guilt, or anything like that.

I was just thinking about how opening doors and pulling out chairs for women has kind of become one of those things women - specifically the ones who have feminist leanings - have used to show us all that men still consider us the weaker sex.

I hear it a lot.

"When men open the door for me, it really upsets me, because they're telling me I'm too weak to do it myself."

Okay, first point I'd like to make, it's a door. Not even a raging chauvinist truly believes a woman is too weak to open a freaking door.

Ah, but it's the symbol! Because this originated as a symbolic gesture indicating that women were weak and needed men to assist them in life. Or, another explanation I've seen is that it's because women were restricted from doing a lot of things, and were compensated by having doors held open for them.

Right?

Ummm...

Probably not, in fact.

I don't actually know where it originated, and I don't care enough about this gesture's history to go back and do actual research. But, if I were to throw out a guess, I'd say it probably had something to do with the ridiculous outfits women used to wear (hoop skirts, anyone?), and the fact that there have been periods in history when opening a door in those getups really was a trial.

That's just a guess, of course. But what really matters, is why do people do it today?

I've known a lot of men - really decent men who definitely didn't see women as "the weaker sex" - who made a point of opening doors for us. And why did they do this?

Because their momma's told them to. And they respected women.

No, seriously.

Without fail, every last one of the guys I've known who hold to traditional ways of treating women (opening car/building doors, walking on the outside of the sidewalk, holding chairs, taking coats, etc.) did it because their mothers taught them that was how men acted when they respected women. It wasn't about "protecting" us, or "doing things we couldn't." It was straight up respect.

These aren't "symbolic gestures indicating the woman needs help." They're small acts of kindness.

And maybe we should start treating them as that: a man showing us kindness, because he respects us.

Assuming that a man is a chauvinist because he opened a door for you seems like an awfully bigoted assumption, don't you think?

I changed my blog's name, and other indications I may have become old.

It's funny - I'm almost embarrassed to post on my blog anymore.

And I'm definitely embarrassed to post my blog entries on Facebook.

Why?

Well... I appear to have outgrown my blog title.

Way back in the olden days, I thought "Hippos are Stampeding Through My Brain" was the most hilarious thing ever. It was off the wall, made very little sense, and accurately described my life at the time (I think I came up with that during finals week, or at least midterms). Before that I had changed my blog title anywhere from 1-10 times per week, and was thoroughly enjoying the new world of the blogosphere.

But, well... my life moved on.

Finals were years ago. Off the wall humor doesn't make me giggle half as hard as it used to. And I **horrified gasp** read the NEWS now!!! Consistently. And frequently, I have something to say about it.

But see, when I post something along the lines of "Why going into Iraq was a terrible idea, and whether or not we need to be in there now," or, "Here are the inspirational thoughts I had while enduring a heart-wrenching trial," those thoughts are carried to you, dear universe, by a herd of stampeding hippos.

Thanks a lot, college-kid self.

So, I just didn't write those thoughts.

And now, I'm addressing the problem - those dang hippos.

They have been fired from my blog, no longer carrying to you my thoughts and dreams and crap like that.

So, since you're quite obviously already hanging around in the swirling vortex of Chaos we like to call the Internet, welcome to my little piece of it.  My blog will hereafter be known as "My Speck of the Maelstrom."

And, in case you're suddenly struck with the horrifying thought that I might have become too mature, you can comfort yourself with the thought that I still think farts are hilarious.