Dreams/Nightmares

I woke up this morning in the middle of a really weird dream. We were at my friend Jamie's wedding, but instead of the fancy, black-tie-requested affair that it was, in my dream it was a little more informal -- like most other weddings I've been to, not that it wasn't formal at all. I wasn't a bridesmaid, and for some reason I didn't think that was weird, especially given that in real life I was a bridesmaid, and Eric and I got seated at a table with all of Jamie's friends from when she lived in Ohio -- which has never happened in real life.

Then the DJ started doing his thing, and his thing turned out to be this weird dinner theater stuff, where the whole bridal party was enacting a murder scene or something. I think the premise was that one of the bridesmaids had shot Jamie, and now the place was on fire and a real fire engine even showed up. Except throughout these events, my attitude was, "Oh my god, this DJ is so cheesy and lame. I guess I give him props for actually getting a real fire engine to show up, but this is so obviously all faked."

I don't know what happened next, because I woke up. Definitely a weird dream, and one of those dreams where in the dream, you know it's weird.

The one interesting thing about the dream was the food. The dinner was a buffet, and Eric and I were among the first to get our food. The buffet was a whole series of dishes that had nothing to do with each other but that I knew were Jamie's favorite things (they were dream-Jamie's favorites, anyway). Lots of Indian food (served on too-small platters with too-large serving utensils), and then a huge plate of barbecue ribs, and a bunch of stuff on a ghetto candy buffet
(like, it looked like a kid dumped out his Halloween bag on the table, not one of those nice buffets everyone's doing now). My reaction was positive -- "Oh look, these are all of Jamie's favorite foods! How nice!" even though the food was all pretty unconnected to each other and would have made for a weird dinner.

Maybe it's a sign? We're in the middle stages of picking a caterer and finalizing our wedding menu, so maybe my subconscious wants me to stop figuring out which vegetables go with seared tuna and just serve naan and ribs with dim sum and snow crab legs with drawn butter. Now that's an idea.
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I don't think I ever shared my first wedding nightmare with you. It happened about a month ago, and it was one of those totally vivid dreams where everything is REAL (and usually going badly) and there is nothing you can do about it. In the dream, it was my wedding day, only it was actually that same day in July that I was having the dream -- in other words, I had to go ahead with the wedding with only whatever planning had gotten done up to that point. So we had a place and a photographer, and that was about it. For some reason, I wasn't freaking out about the fact that we had no caterer and I can't remember what the wedding dress situation was, but my #1 concern was that my hair was all messed up. [I often sleep with my hair in a loose pony tail to keep it out of my face at night] and I apparently had to get married with my hair looking the way it did at that very moment, because there were no bobby pins or curling irons or anything to be found. So it was going to be messy, half-pony tail half-pull-through-bun, with pieces sticking out everywhere. It was quite frustrating.

So I guess I've passed a milestone of some sort, where the wedding planning anxiety, though still very mild, is important enough to invade my subconscious while I sleep. These are the only two wedding dreams I've had so far, and as long as they keep occurring no more than once a month, I can handle it. Maybe I should pay attention to my subconscious, though, and finish with the catering plans and figure out what I'm going to do with my hair.

Real Men Wear Gowns

So... it turns out I'll look at anything that shows a woman wearing a veil and a white dress.

I was browsing through CNN.com today and noticed an ad off on the sidebar that showed a woman wearing a veil. The ad read, "Real men wear gowns," and standing in front of her was a man wearing ... not a wedding gown, but a hospital gown.

Weddings AND health? Now you've got my interest!

I clicked on over, and it brought me to the website of AHRQ (the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), which I am already familiar with (they publish healthcare data and put out guidelines for preventive health screening; I use their electronic preventive services selector on my PDA regularly). But I hadn't heard about this health campaign before.

Real Men Wear Gowns is aimed at middle-aged men, it appears (based on the images, information, and videos), but its message is important for all men. It shows guys doing normal things -- playing with their kids, walking their daughters down the aisle, dancing with their wives -- while wearing a hospital gown. You can watch the videos here.


A screenshot from one of the videos.

Men are notorious, as a group, for not going to the doctor until they're very sick -- at which point, valuable opportunities to prevent disease onset or provide early treatment have been lost. It's a stereotype -- but one I've seen numerous times -- to have a male patient say, when asked why he came to the office/ER, "I wasn't going to, but my wife made me." And these are guys who often are in the midst of a serious problem -- like an active heart attack!

Too often, men try to "bear the pain," or "see if it will go away." But they shouldn't. Know the warning signs of heart attacks and strokes, and get screened regularly for overweight/obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension, colorectal cancer, STDs and HIV, depression, and AAA. Tell your fiance, brother, father, FFIL, and anyone else you know the importance of these tests. Really.

It's perfectly reasonable for a young person to have a cholesterol test done once before the age of 25 -- you should know your cholesterol score! It's better to start cutting out a cheeseburger a week and replacing it with something high in fiber now than it is to wait until you're 40 and have 20 years of damage built up.

And women, don't think you're out of the loop; there is a site for Real Women, too. Get Pap tests regularly, get the HPV vaccine, and see an Ob/Gyn before you get pregnant -- there are a lot of things that ideally should be done before a woman gets pregnant, but since so many pregnancies are unplanned, they aren't done until the first obstetrical visit. Start taking a folic acid supplement now; there's no reason not to. And of course, get all the same screening tests as the men -- hypertension, high cholesterol, colorectal cancer, HIV, etc.

Because you're planning to marry your sweetheart for life, and I know you want it to be a long and healthy one.