I had the strangest dream last night. I was walking alone down Henderer Road in Elkton. I was just at the mouth of the road. I can see it so clearly, it's like I was really there. As I was coming up the road, a yellow SUV of some kind came up over that little hill. Then, all of a sudden, a person on a motorbike darted out in front of the SUV. The SUV hit him and he flew into the ditch (and oddly I don't think it was the ditch there, I think it was the deeper ditch, like on Mehl Crick, but I'm not sure. Anyways, he stayed on the bike and came up out of the ditch, only to lose balance and fall again. He didn't come back up, so I ran over to see what had happened. He was lying at the bottom of the ditch, across a big rock, as if maybe his back or neck were injured. Then a car full of people who were coming by on Mehl Crick (right by where our paper box is) stopped and jumped out to come help. One of them was a doctor and he sort of took over, asking the man where it hurt, etc. I said, "does anyone have a cell phone to call an ambulance?" and the doctor-guy snapped at me, "We already did that!" Then some police came, only they weren't in uniform or anything, but I somehow knew they were authorities. They asked the people from the car what had happened and assuming it was the SUV's fault (the SUV had somehow disappeared at this point). I kept trying to break in and tell them I had seen the whole thing and it was not the SUV's fault, this guy on the bike had darted out in front of them and there was nothing they could do. First I couldn't make the words come out of my mouth (as often happens in dreams, symobolizing impotence supposedly...?), but then I could and they were just ignoring me. They kept talking to the people in the car (both men and women, and there were like 10 of them for some reason) and completely brushing me off when I said I had seen it close up and could give a full description.

Now tell me, what the hell does that mean?

I dreamt about Emily's mom last night. I have no idea what she looks like (though I think I have seen a picture at some point), so she had the face of the mom in Pieces of April. I dreamed that I put my hands on her and willed her to live, like Shaedra talks about with her "raiki" or whatever it is. I had some miraculous healing power in the dream, apparently. And I was doing everything I could to make her get better. I woke up with a wet face and a feeling of complete uselessness. There is nothing I can do. Even normal, day-to-day stuff to help Brooke and Emily out would be great, but what the fuck do you do from 1000 miles away? As usual, I wish I were capable of prayer. Though I don't know if God is a help or a hindrance with real grief, I think s/he would certainly be helpful with "sending good thoughts." Sending just my own, unamplified, seems woefully insufficient.

My house is very cold, but my tea is very hot, so it all works out.

Got lucky on a book-buying spree at the Goodwill today. I picked up a multicultural family book for Susan and Tony, Backlash, Susan Brownmiller's rape book, Amy Tan's newest book, and Molly Ivans' book about the Clinton years. That, along with Janet Frame's autobiography (I have to remember to get that from Susan before I leave) should keep me busy while I'm home.

My sense of excitement about going home is pretty repressed now. I'm honestly terrified that my mom is having surgery and that I have to be there and see her through it and stuff. Have to is the wrong way of putting that...I want to, I'm just scared of the responsibility. But at least I have a place to stay in Portland worked out (thanks Sarah!) and hopefully I will be able to make a stock-up swing by Trader Joe's. Wonder if Mark would be mad if a stock-up from Trader Joe's is all he got for Christmas? I'm sort of out of ideas.

I need to get the relaxation packs put together. I meant to make some yoga cards for them, but I don't know if I have the energy now. I wonder how much laminating costs at Kinkos?

Obviously I'm just rambling. Mmm, more stream of conciousness blogging.

I really want to be able to help Emily and her mom. I can't stop thinking about it.

I had the strangest dream this morning...

I don't remember it all that well now, but it had something to do with running into JKD, who had her hair dyed blonde, at Fred Meyer on Hawthorne in Portland. They had changed the whole store around and didn't have any organic or healthy food anymore, etc. and both JKD and I were very upset about that. Then it went into something about being mad at Erica...? It was really intense. I wish I could remember it better.

I was really really upset at the store had been reorganized and I didn't know where anything was. I can see that store so clearly in my mind and it was like my whole world had been turned upside down. And JKD wasn't really JKD, either. She was, but she wasn't.

Very very strange.

More reflections on my dream...

The dream must have had something to do with going back "home"--both to Portland and to my family, and not finding things as I left them. I didn't really have that feeling conciously when I was actually there, though. To the contrary, I felt like nothing ever changes there, as if it's time warped or something. Every time I go to my parents house, even if my visits are six months apart, I can count the changes on one hand.

So why the dream, then?

I had a frighteningly realistic dream last night about my future son, Liam. He was blonde and brown eyed, and he looked more like Mark than like me. He was about a year old, barely toddling, not really talking, learning so fast I couldn't keep up. He was playing with the dog, playing with Mark, nursing...I woke up crying. I spent all morning thinking about whether or not we could pull off a baby right now.

We can't, of course, and I don't think I'd even want to if we could. But where does this fucking feeling come from, then?

I had a dream last night about my daughter. My daughter, who has never been born, or even conceived, or even really considered, and yet I could see her so clearly. She was maybe 3, with curly blonde hair. Skinny, gawky, but beautiful, and so smart. Her knee was skinned. I was wearing a suit in the dream, and I sat on the floor to play with her. We were in a room with good natural light and stacks of books. I could hear her laugh, and I could feel the love and the impatience I would have towards her.

Where is this coming from? Not only is it weird for me to think about having a kid, but it's doubly weird for me to think about a girl--when I do imagine this, I ALWAYS imagine a boy. But this wasn't like I was imagining, it was like I was remembering.

I had a sex dream last night. First one I've had in ages.

It was about Dale Watson.

I dreamed about you again last night
You never have the same face twice
But I always know it's you
And you're always looking better than you really do
-Everything But the Girl

I've been having extremely odd dreams, prominently featuring two guys I used to date. The first, M., is someone I dated early in high school. It was a massively unhealthy relationship for me, though brief and, retrospectively, very educational. I haven't seen him in years. I learned recently that he married last summer and is happily employed in the field he'd always intended to be employed in, and I'm happy for him and wish him no ill will. We had a brief relationship over ten years ago. I couldn't be more over it. Seriously.

The second, S., was a more serious relationship. The most serious one I've had besides the one I am in now, actually. We dated pretty much all the way through college. It, too, was pretty fucked up, but it's also in the past and there's no ill will there either, though there certainly was for quite a while. S. and I remain friends, in that way in which you stay friends with someone like that.

So I have no idea why I'm dreaming about them. My dream last night, featuring M., was about me walking around the video rental store that used to be in my home town (isn't there anymore), dressed in a long pink wig, and running into him. I was horribly embarrassed about the wig, but for some reason couldn't remove it. The whole dream was very frustrating and I woke up really irritated. Even in the dream I remember thinking "I'm doing so well now! Why can't I show these people the truth about how well I'm doing? Why do they always catch me off guard like this?" Which is irritating, because why the hell would I care? I AM doing well, and I don't have anything to prove. And what the fuck would be wrong with a pink wig anyway?

I know nobody should ever post their dreams to their blog, because nobody cares, but this is too good to pass up. Anyone armchair dream analyzers out there, have at it.

I've been having a lot of dreams recently in which I have a baby. This isn't all that surprising, I guess, given the whole almost-27-bio-clock thing. Interestingly, none of the dreams have been about actual pregnancy or adoption or childbirth, or even particularly about taking care of a baby--they've just been dreams about other things in which I happen to have a kid. Fair enough. Last night, though, I dreamed that I was in London, living, apparently, and I had a small child. Maybe in the five or six months old range? Not a tiny infant, but dependant, breast-feeding, not walking, etc. And some friends, headed up by my Portland roomie E., whom I haven't seen or heard from in forever, said that they were taking a day trip to Barcelona and did I want to go. They explained that somebody in their group had to work the next day, so they'd be driving there (five hours), hanging out, then coming back late. (And yes, I know it is more than five hours from London to Barcelona, but apparently my subconcious has a shitty sense of geography.) They also said that another friend of their's could watch my kid in some apartment. I said sure, the baby disappeared, and we were on our way. Then in the next sort of dream-frame, I was like, "Wait, where's my kid?" and they told me the kid was with whomever it was with. And I, shocked, said, "I can't leave my baby with a stranger!" as if I hadn't given consent just minutes prior. And I made them take me to the apartment where the baby was. And she was fine, the stranger having turned out to be my cousin Jenny, but the apartment was very, very crowded with people and furniture, and everyone was smoking. So I took the baby into a back room, the "dog room," which was dirty and filled with dogs, but nobody was smoking there. I was trying to nurse the baby there when my father came in and started blowing smoke in its face. Which is weird, since he stopped smoking like ten years ago.

Then I woke up and recommitted myself to not having kids.

I had this really odd dream the other night, and it's stuck with me over the past couple of days in a way dreams generally don't, as if it is compelling me to write it down. I used to be the type to keep a dream journal and try to figure out what it all meant when I dreamed something particularly weird, but since starting anti-depressants I've dreamed much less, so I haven't done that in years. This one, however, seems to want to be recorded.

It started out at the elementary school where I went, where my mom worked for many years in the library. It was all very vivid--I could see the cool old tree outside the library door and I was in the parking lot. Then my friends M. and B. were there, with M.'s mom. They were sitting in the backseat of M.'s mom's car, a dark blue Ford Taurus wagon that I spent a lot of time in as a kid and remember very well. It was strange--they looked they way they looked as little girls, five or six years old, but they were adults, clearly, as was I. The conversation we were having was adult, we were grown ups inside.

Then suddenly I was in the backseat with the two of them and M.'s mom was driving down the highway. It was very frustrating, because M. kept telling her mom that I was still in the car and she needed to take me back to the school, but her mom just said I could call my mom to come and pick me up when we got where we were going. When M. asked where we were going, her mom said we were going to the home of a man whose name seems familiar to me from home, but who I have no face or details for in my memory.

Then we pulled up to a mobile home, just off the highway. We went up some steps into a screen door and M.'s mom said something about the woman who lived there having an uncensored version of "Braveheart" we could watch, but us kids had to cover our eyes at the nasty parts. When we walked into the living room, there was a woman sitting on the couch and several kids all around. The woman was not specifically someone I know from home, but more like an amalgamation of several of a certain "type" of woman I know from home. She'd be easier for me to draw than to describe, but the people I grew up with would recognize her from a description. She's older than our moms were when we were kids, maybe in her mid or late 40s. She has long hair and our moms have short hair. She smokes and her whole house reeks of smoke, and she probably drinks generic soda rather than brand name. Her kids don't have clean clothes or washed faces, and she probably has more than two. She wears tank tops with no bras, even though her breasts are big, and tight jeans, and she drinks in the bar with the men and talks too loud. Her husband likely refers to her as his "old lady." That I can give that description, I think, and see her so clearly in both my concious and subconcious mind, speaks to how there are class divisions even when everybody is poor. While the women who make up this composite share the exact same monetary class as my family, I was taught as a kid, in a million subtle ways, to believe she and her family were beneath us. It's not something easily put into words, but in the dream it made sense and all of the tropes were instantly recognizable.

After we'd be in the living room for a while, with me feeling uncomfortable because of the indoor smoking, which I've alway associated with a lower social class (again having been taught to do so as a kid in a million subtle ways), and the raunchy jokes the woman and M's mom are telling, the man of the house comes home. This is where the dream gets really weird. He has a face I recognize, with messy graying beard and bright eyes, but I don't know who it is or if it's the same person whose name I've given him in the dream. He comes in the room and yells at us all to clear out because he wants to fuck his old lady. We all run outside, me and M. and B., M's mom, the other kids. For some reason, even though I really want to, we don't leave, but I'm somehow able to call my mom and tell her where I am and ask her to come and get me. She's irritated that I've taken off, and not happy with M's mom for refusing to bring me back, but she's mostly not happy with where I am hanging out, so she says she'll come.

Then we're back in the house. M. and B. and I are sitting around a glass coffee table. The woman who lives there is nowhere to be seen, but we somehow understand tha the has hurt her, maybe beat her up. M's mom is gone. He comes towards us and says something about how if we're going to be in his house, one of us is going to be next. It's ominious, and I know we're in danger and the danger is sexual. I feel myself tense, and M. and B. look scared. Then I notice that right there on the coffee table, where there was nothing before but an ashtray and a TV Guide, is a bright blue crowbar. I recognize the crowbar, I can see it another context, on a shelf in the wood shed at my parents' house. Without thinking, I pick it up and start swinging, telling the man to leave us alone. I keep swinging it at him and he backs up, even though I don't hit him. When the dream ends, I am still swinging and screaming at him that my mom is on her way.

I had a very involved dream last night about accidentally being at a party intended for A-list mommy bloggers. Dooce was there, and she was very stylish. Alice, from Finslippy, was very kind, as was Suburban Bliss' Melissa. I was super intimidated by Mighty Girl Maggie Mason. And I was really bummed that Eden from Fussy wasn't there, because at least she and I have dogs in common. Then they found out I don't have kids and kicked me out.

What do you make of that?