I’m feeling a bit peaked, as my mother used to say. The reason I’m not feeling well is very straightforward — I haven’t been sleeping well. The reason I’m not sleeping well, however, is less transparent.

I’ve been having dreams. I have always been prone to complicated, convoluted, theatrical dreams. These dreams have more twists than an M. Night Shyamalan screenplay. They have characters that are fully fleshed, and strongly motivated. I have dreams that take longer to describe to someone than it took to actually dream them.

I don’t have such dreams all that often. At least, I didn’t until the last week or so. Lately, instead of peacefully slumbering and recharging my batteries for the coming day, I have been revving up my REM state, and suffering through cinematic dreams.

I had a dream last week that I was going on a road trip across the country, and was putting a great deal of effort to try and track down Omegamom’s home address in Montana, using Google Earth and satellite photography, with cross-references to various hints she has dropped in her blog in order to do so. Never mind that I know full well that Omegamom doesn’t live in Montana.

One night last weekend I spent the entire night trying to consummate a clandestine tryst with one member of a lesbian couple. I can’t remember the details, but I awoke suffused with an acute mixture of arousal and guilt.

Then there was last night. The particulars are fuzzy, but my wife and I were on the run and in extreme danger. We had left our newborn sextuplets in neonatal intensive care, and were careful to avoid even members of our own family. Meanwhile, a female serial killer was stalking state parks in the area.

Suffice it to say that I haven’t been getting much rest. Why am I having these dreams? I haven’t got a clue. Clearly I’m stressed about something, but my subconscious hasn’t seen fit to reveal precisely what.

Now, in an unrelated matter, we have also been discussing getting a dog. Not just any dog, but a stray dog that a friend of ours had found and was caring for. She had tried to find the owner, with no luck, and it was just too hard for her to keep the little guy. This was not the kind of dog I had envisioned myself getting, when I finally allowed myself to get a dog. He’s a tiny, high-energy thing; apparently a chihuahua mix. We had bonded the first time we met, after he climbed up on the couch behind me and stuck his tongue all the way down my ear canal. After we left, the wife and I kept thinking about him, and what a great little dog he was, and how sad it would be if he got adopted out to just any old family.

So, that was the situation when I got a phone call this afternoon from the wife. It turned out that the dog had gotten injured, the woman who was taking care of him was freaking out, and he was going to be turned over to Animal Services. Instead of soberly contemplating the pros and cons, considering whether our cats would be able to tolerate a dog, and planning how we would keep him in the yard, we had to decide pretty much instantly if we wanted to adopt him ourselves. After just a few minutes, we decided to go for it.

Unfortunately, he had already been picked up, and was now officially the property of Animal Services. So. He’ll get evaluated by a vet, and held for 4-7 days, and then sent somewhere else to be adopted. My wife is trying to cut through red tape to get first dibs on him, but he hasn’t even been put in their system yet.

So. We may or may not be adopting a dog. He may or may not be seriously injured. It may or may not be a stupid thing to do. And I may or may not get a decent night’s sleep tonight.