I am rare and undocumented!

No, not as in undocumented worker. So last night at 1:21 a.m. I had a very disturbing experience. In mid-dream, without any connection to the dream or anything else in my waking life, I "heard" a crushing, crashing noise that sounded just like a transformer had blown up.

Interestingly, my dream-self and all the other characters in my dream reacted to this sound by falling to the decks, and I was short of breath from the shock of it. The explosion sound didn't seem part of the dream, somehow. Now, I usually dream lucidly, and this was no different, but both my dream-self and my "real" self were astonished at this sound. In other words, I hadn't "created" it as part of the dream I was quite involved with at the time. I woke up with "WTF?" on my lips. My heart was pounding, I turned on the light and went to the window, thinking maybe we were having a freak December thunder storm (it's been raining here on and off for the last few days). No one else was disturbed - husband and cat were both sound asleep.

So what happened to me? I believe I've found the answer (because diagnosing myself with information gleaned from the internets is a thing I like to do):

EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME

Seriously. The symptoms match up, the description of the experience, and oh yeah, the bit about being stressed out.

I'm rather proud that I've achieved a rare and largely undocumented sleep phenomenon. Plus, I prefer this explanation than the other ones I considered at 2 a.m.:

• alien abduction
• a family of deer were fricasseed in a transformer up the street
• I'm living a sequel to "Scanners"

I've actually had smaller experiences just as I've fallen asleep, though no where near as dramatic. Turns out there's something of a working theory about how and why this happens to some people.

And here I was thinking I've been managing stress pretty well with lavender bubble baths, acupuncture, Reiki, meditation, massage, and playing with my cat. Really, like what else is there to do? Oh yeah, get back to L.A. where it won't rain for 5 days straight and there is work to be had. Less than 2 weeks to go...