– Time For A Tiara: Column by Ginna Young – - I don’t think I’m better than a dog, I promise!

It’s kind of continuos, that my dark circles have dark circles and I perpetually look tired. Yeah, I work a lot of hours, and have a lot of stuff going on outside of work, but a lot of it comes from how I sleep. Sometimes, no matter how tired I am, I just can’t sleep, but it’s almost worse when I do and have weird dreams. My dreams are so vivid and real, that I wake up not a bit refreshed. For example, I’ll share one from the other night, that left me exhausted and dragging through the entire day. So, picture a cartoon background, like in a Droopy short. Brilliant blue sky, leafy green bushes, a yellowy-concrete sidewalk. With me so far? If you haven’t seen Droopy, you’re not going to have a clue what it looks like, but you get the general idea. So, there’s live action me in this cartoon plane, but it’s not supposed to be a cartoon realm, it’s supposed to be real life, yet, in my subconscious, I know the difference. Anyway, there I am, walking along said sidewalk, when I see a cute little mostly brown and white dog, sitting on his haunches, sobbing. Since this is a cartoon world, you could literally see the tears he was shedding as he bawled for all the world to hear. As I stood looking down at him, wondering if I should try to comfort him, all of a sudden, a blue cereal goblin (looked like a genie), popped out of nowhere, out of a cereal box. As he floated above said box, twisting his black, pointed goatee, with his curling smoke of a body in the cardboard carton (see, doesn’t that sound like a genie?), he got really menacing, and said if I didn’t hurry and pick some violets, and give them to the dog, he’d cut off my ponytail (that I don’t have and didn’t have in the dream). Not wanting him to cut my hair off, I looked quickly looked around and noticed the violets (that looked more like purple flowers with bright yellow centers) that had apparently been there all along, and fell to snipping them off, as fast as I could. Not fast enough apparently, because the goblin screamed at me to get a move on. Can’t you see how miserable that poor dog is, you great, big, clumsy wretch?! I’ll show you, I’ll cut off that ponytail yet, I will! Naturally, I joined the still sobbing dog in shedding some tears and informed the goblin that since I was now upset, shouldn’t I get some violets too, for myself? That made him so mad, he turned red and cartoon steam came out of his ears. YOU want some violets?! You, who is so slow, you can’t even make a dog stop crying? How dare you! You think you’re better than a dog?! “I don’t, I don’t,” I started blubbering, when my alarm went off and I shot up, back in the real world, still crying, “I don’t, I don’t!” Yeah, that was how I started my day, that time. Fun, huh? So, if you notice how tired I look, just know I probably had a dream like the one with the cereal goblin. The sad thing is, even though the goblin lived in the cereal, which is very unsanitary, it was Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which I love, and I remember really wanting some in the dream. What does that say about me? Probably that I need some professional help, but that’s not telling me anything new!