Last night we had a terrific storm. Lots of wind and heavy rain. I love thunderstorms. We lost power for a little over an hour. I had been making soup to eat later this week, and when I was done with the soup, I was going to make dinner. But just as I was putting the lid on the soup so it could simmer for a while, the power went out. So I had soup for dinner.
The cat woke me up at three this morning. It gets earlier every morning, I swear. Soon, we'll just be putting him outside before we go to bed. But then I might sleep through the night, and I'm sure there's something illegal about that. Anyway, when the cat woke me up at three, I could still hear the wind in the trees behind the apartment, and it sounded like the storm was still in full swing. So I told His Lordship that he really didn't want to go outside. His Lordship disagreed. I tried until five to ignore him, but he really wanted me to get up. So I lost two hours of sleep. Only to find out, when I finally tossed him out, that there was no rain along with the wind, so I could have gotten him out at three and gotten plenty of sleep. (sigh)
All of that leads up to this: I have really vivid dreams when I'm not getting enough sleep. This morning I dreamed that I was sitting in a lecture hall with a bunch of people, some of whom were my friends. And almost everyone there had a stuffed animal or toy with them. Two seats down from me, on the other side of my friend Richard, was a guy I didn't know holding a giant rubber spider.
Background: I hate spiders. My feelings about them verge on phobia. I don't mind a little verbal teasing on this account - I recognize that it's completely irrational on my part - but I do not make friends with the sort of people who might think it was funny to confront me with a spider, real or otherwise. I once decked my brother for showing me a picture of one in a magazine without warning, and then I locked myself in my room and had a hysterical fit for a while. The ability to control the reaction long enough to get rid of the spider first is all that keeps it from being a real phobia.
Anyway, this giant rubber spider wasn't one of those two-fist-sized ones that look almost real. This was the size of the guy's torso, and looked sortof like a balloon. In fact, this exact same giant rubber spider had featured in another dream earlier, only this time it looked like the color had faded. A lot. In short, it was like my brain was trying to tell me, This is not a real spider. Do not be alarmed.
I was pretty cool with it - only slightly widged out. Then this guy starts sortof playing with it; making it "crawl" on my friend Richard. I say something like, "Just keep that thing away from me!" Richard then grabs my arm and holds it out so the fake spider can be made to crawl on it. (Just a note here: Richard is afraid of roaches. True phobia. Treatment failed. He has drawn guns on them. So he knows how it is. In real life, he would never, ever do something like that to me. He'd probably have a few strong words with someone who tried it. So I don't want anyone writing him nasty e-mail along the lines of "How could you?")
Anyway, I reacted in the dream the same way I probably would in real life - I yanked my arm free from Richard's grasp, and then proceeded to hit him with it. And then I woke up.
Let's cut, now, to the dream Matt was having at the exact same time. Matt was dreaming that he was walking around in the snow with several people, including his sister, Rachael. How the subject came up, Matt couldn't remember, but Rachael told him, "But everyone loves children!"
Background time again. Matt and I are not currently interested in having children. Our parents and grandparents have been remarkably good about not pestering us, but we can tell they want us to change our minds. And we eventually may. But not anytime soon.
So Matt responds to his sister's remark with some wiseass comment like, "Sure. Liz and I actually have six kids; we just don't bring them out because they're such snots."
...And that's when I hit him in the stomach.
No comments:
Post a Comment