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It wasn't the most restful of nights last night.

For a change, Penny didn't wake up to complain of bad dreams or being unable to sleep, but Alex started making noise around 3:30, and since he's had a diaper rash for the last couple of days, I got up to change his diaper so he'd stay clean and dry. Luckily, he went back to sleep after only a few token protests.

Added to that were the dreams.

In the first, I was someone else, a poverty-stricken man with a wife and kids, being accosted by a gangster to whom I owed money and was unable to pay. It was bad enough when I thought he was going to double the already exorbitant interest rate, but then he indicated that he'd given up on my being able to pay and he was simply going to make an example of me... I woke up in a cold sweat.

The hell was that about? We're pretty stable financially right now; money is always a concern (especially with the latest economic shenanigans) but it's not a major issue for us. (Heck, the financial burden just eased, what with Penny leaving daycare for public school.)

Maybe it's not money at all. Maybe it's about time, and the way that I don't, that I can't have enough time for all the things I want to do. Still, it was a pretty severe dream, especially since I'd just gotten around to thinking I might have made a certain peace with my schedule. So maybe that's not it, either. What debts or deficits do I have that are approaching danger levels? I don't know.

And then there was the dream, close to morning, that -- for no reason I could tell -- Matt bonked me on the head with a... I'm not sure what it was, except that it was filthy, and it left a smear of shit in my hair. No, I don't mean "shit" as in "random stuff," I mean "shit" as in "poop."

The smell was palpable, even in the dream, and I was somewhere that I couldn't just go wash it out, I had to carry on with my day and pretend that I didn't have a glop of excrement on my head.

I don't know what my subconscious was trying to tell me about there, either. Do I feel like Matt is dumping too much on me? Not that I'm aware of. (Okay, I admit to a touch of resentment if he fires up WoW while I'm cooking and cleaning and making lunches, but he doesn't do that very often -- he's usually chasing Alex around, keeping him from eating used kleenex and catfood while I'm doing the evening chores.)

Maybe it wasn't really Matt in the dream, but that he was a stand-in symbol for the whole parenting gig. Maybe I'm resenting all the extra work that goes with that. Which wouldn't really surprise me. It's no secret that I don't deal as well with babies as with older kids. As much as I love Alex, I look forward to his walking, to feeding himself, to talking, to being out of diapers.

I don't know if that's ringing true, either, though.

Maybe they don't mean anything. Maybe I just got a bad chicken nugget.