bag of bread

I started P90X two weeks ago. P90X is a series of hourlong workout DVDs with the somewhat humiliating tagline "Go from regular to RIPPED in 90 days!" It operates on the principle of "muscle confusion," meaning . . . you read your delts pro se briefs, and they get shredded? I don't know. I started it up because I needed a fitness goal for motivation after the marathon. Now all sorts of exotic muscles on my bread bag of a body are constantly sore.

I don't know how much of a change I'm expecting in my physical fitness, but the program has already given me some life and career revelations - e.g. I've been doing the same workout (one foot in front of the other x 10,000) for eight years, and I thought it was enough but trying something different for even two weeks has shown me how much room I have for improvement; I'm actually capable of changing if I let myself be taught by other people, etc. - but that is a story for a different post. What I wanted to write about is a collateral effect of doing these workouts every morning: I am on a regular sleep schedule. Those who know me will know how groundbreaking this is. I've struggled with insomnia and chemical soporifics for years, and I always thought my preferred schedule was 3 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. For two weeks, I've voluntarily woken around 7:30 a.m. and I feel actually sleepy at 11:30 p.m, instead of just stir-crazy and wired and ready for another three hours of staring at glowing squares. Doesn't sound like much of a change, but it's really making me feel optimistic. Not to sell you on P90X, of course, but just to give myself a pat on the ripped lats.

Another collateral effect of exhausting myself every day is that I've been having very vivid, often unpleasant dreams. For example, a few nights back I dreamt that I was spectator to a school shooting. I escaped, but only narrowly, after witnessing florets of other people's blood misting the air. I found a way out by climbing the school's mesh window protectors like a climbing Koopa Troopa, up and down, zig zag, leaping gaps. After I dropped to the ground, police directed me and the other escapees to army crawl the entire six-mile loop of Central Park. JS had been with me inside the school, and I thought she had gotten out, but by the time we crawled to 8th Avenue and 110th Street, she had become a clear plastic bag filled with baguette ends. I understood instinctively that JS had transformed into a bag of bread, so I spoke to her morsels, even though she did not respond. I crawled on, holding her in my hands like an M-16, telling her we were going to be fine.

This is the second time I have dreamt of JS becoming an inanimate, uncommunicative object. What does it mean, P90X?