In bed with the rats

I had a set of awful dreams last night - the kind where you wake up, tell yourself it isn't real, then fall back asleep and dream the whole same damn thing all over again.

My dream was that I was in this courtyard and I was trying to get to a legislator's house. I don't know who the legislator is but there is a sense of urgency that if I don't get there something terrible will happen.

In the dream I'm wearing my super cute vintage green heels and I have to hop around all these dark spots on the path. As I move forward, I start to think that the spots are blood. Ick. As I get closer I realize that what I am seeing are the decapitated (for lack of better words) tails of rats. Vomit.

I am literally playing hopscotch trying to avoid the rat pieces that are multiplying by the moment, trying to keep my lunch down. Finally I reach a house that would otherwise be beautiful if it wasn't covered in dead rat mass. There was a veranda framed by wisteria- but hell, even the beauty and fragrance of wisteria can't cover up this mess.

When I walk inside the house, I feel a formidable sense of dread. There is nowhere to sit down or move to- as now I can see where the rat bodies previously attached to the tails have accumulated.

I am scared, nervous, apprehensive. I'm about to meet someone who is bad enough that they would actually live in this hellhole.

Around the corner of the room peeks Georgia Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson. That's when I wake up in terror, drenched.

Is this the byproduct of three months living day in and out in the Georgia General Assembly? Or is it because prior to my sleep I had a wonderful dinner with my sister nonprofit lobbyist friends who have been fighting this battle with all their hearts for so long yet still having to deal daily with the white male power structure that to this day decides what happens?

Or maybe its just because of this brilliant Creative Loafing Cover for the Wonderful Annual Golden Sleaze Awards: