The Chrysalis

I have nothing left to give.
Every ounce of my
energy,
good will,
sociability,
patience,
time,
breastmilk
has been consumed by the
insatiable
around me.

I have nothing left,
just,
very simply,
nothing.

Nothing for the wailing infant who has nursed for the last 4 hours straight.
Nothing for the whining 4 year old for whom nothing is ever good enough.
Nothing for the recalcitrant 18 month old who needs to go to bed now.
Nothing for the guests (my parents) who sat on my sofa after joining us here for pizza.
Nothing for my husband who drowses in the chair opposite me, preventing me, by his very presence, from focusing on the writing I'd like to be doing.
Nothing for me.

I have given everything I have to give.
I have become an empty shell,
the discarded chrysalis,
devoid of the life it once held.
Unlike the chrysalis, however,
My contents have not
transformed.
I have been
consumed
by those around me,
whose need
seems ever greater
than my own.

I have nothing left to give.

I'm Talking to Myself 'Cause No One Else Is Listenin'

I am feeling utterly overwhelmed. Beside the baby wanting to eat every hour and half, Evie turning aggressive against her sister (whether or not her sister deserves it) and pitching temper tantrums when the least bit tired, and Katie refusing to sleep and her behavior devolving accordingly, work is showing its usual blatent disregard of my nonworking hours, and the list goes on.

My sister called tonight to say "are you available the weekend after this? We'd like to come visit and see the baby and watch the kids Saturday night so you and John can get out." So, I ask John 'are we available'? 'Sure', he says. Then, when I'm off the phone he tells me he might have the opportunity to go to the UConn/Louisville game that afternoon/night and would I mind? It didn't occur to him that he should have told me this earlier or that this would confirm to my family that he doesn't like them. He protests that he likes my sister and her husband and he'd take her husband along. Of course, that makes it all better, now, doesn't it? Welcome to our home, see ya later! And add to that, why the fuck does he get to go out and have fun when I'm stuck here day in and day out being a slave to the children all day and working nights??! And then I feel guilty. Because he does work hard and it's not his fault that he gets to do that away from the kids. He deserves a break. He really does. But, honestly, couldn't he have told me about the game possibility when we were discussing the weekend schedule so I don't feel like a real schmuck with my sister?

Not to mention, he'd rather go to a football game that to dinner with me. Doesn't *that* make me feel great? Of course, I'm a fat blob whose hair won't cooperate and whose gut hangs over her incision like an old man's beer belly over his belt - except mine is floppier because the cause of the bulge is gone, so I guess I can't blame him. Nothing like a little confirmation that I look as much like hell as I suspected.

I got an email tonight from my boss at my church gig. The church is having a cabaret and he wants each of us ringers to sing a couple of songs. I've never sung in a cabaret environment unless you count drunken karaoke. I have NO stage presence (which is one reason why a section leader position is perfect for me) - I'm a dumpy middle aged schlub who looks as dorky on stage as Susan Whatsername from Britain's Got Talent. My fellow section leaders are spectacular singers - they leave me in the dust on a regular basis. I will look/sound horrible in comparison. I can't do this but I have to.

The main credit card is almost maxed out and we have another preschool tuition payment due in 2 weeks. On top of that, I've been nursing my laptop along and I'm not going to be able to much longer. I don't want to spend the money, obviously, but just as much as I don't want to spend the money, I don't want to go through the misery of getting a new computer up and running - finding all the discs and getting the software on there (my photoshop, I have to go back to 5.5 and install that full version, then each of the updates since then), coaxing the "IT" guy at work into putting on the Forteclient software and configuring the funky Outlook thing we use to coordinate schedules, hoping that my backup got everything I needed off the old computer and can get it onto the new computer without problems. Not to mention the simple act of determining which laptop is best for my purposes.

I am fucking exhausted and there seems to be no fucking end to the grind. I try to tell myself that tomorrow will be better but I'm gradually becoming convinced that may be an impossible dream. I know so many people have it far worse and I feel horribly guilty about griping but I'm not sure how long I can keep this up.

"If I Talk to God", Poison Kiss, The Last Goodnight

I dreamed I lived in an apartment upstairs from a hairstylist I used to have cut my hair. I'd borrowed her margarita mixer and was drinking it with vodka after work. I finished my drink and went down to borrow some more. She wasn't home but I borrowed it anyway. (How obnoxious of me!) Her apartment was really not a separate entity. An older couple (the owners of the house) had the first floor and her apartment was sort of merged with theirs though she did have her own kitchenette, etc.

When I got back upstairs with my illicitly borrowed mixer, I debate whether to pour a bunch into another bottle so I don't have to hang on to her mixer or just leave her a note that I owe her a bottle of mixer. I have a tray of shot glasses half-filled with booze and finally decide to just pour mixer in each one and put the bottle back with a note (I was starting to feel quite the heel for the mooching.)

I noticed that someone had decorated my dining area and left me a cheerful bouquet of flowers, a card, and a balloon for my birthday. Some of my friends had stopped by. I thought it was really sweet but disappointed I missed them. I figured they might come back though.

I dreamed last night I was at some sort of street festival. It was being held off the main street in an old mill town. City-style buildings, maybe 3-4 stories high at most. I'd wandered to the main street with a friend and as we were standing there, a jet landed on the main street. I was talking about the jet's landing gear being rotary gear instead of conventional gear (which makes no sense to me now) and was pointing out some aspect of the landing gear when I happened to glance up and realize that the pilot made an impossible landing by missing the overhead wires which were strung across the street. He landed through a gap between sets of wires that was barely as long as the plane. I yelled to another friend that it was a hell of a landing but realized she couldn't hear me. I walked over to the plane where a bunch of airport people I know were gathered and repeated myself.

~~~

I realize today that this may have been somewhat precognitive. Although today's impossible landing was in the water and not a city street, the plane was about the right size for an A320. Despite the utter impossibility of such a landing, it occurred and no one was killed in either my dream nor the reality. Also, witnesses say they actually wondered whether the plane was some sort of sea plane, the landing seemed so unprecipitous; seaplanes land on floats, a different type of landing gear certainly than conventional gear.

This is kind of odd, I know, but, for all that I'm a pilot, I don't dream (at night) about flying.

So, at any rate, I think it was a bit precognitive which doesn't happen to me much.

A couple of quick mental images from the last couple of days.

About 4 days ago:

I dreamed I was at some sort of training or school. We were being housed in an old department store, I think. My choir director was also attending the training. Instead of dorm rooms, they'd partitioned the various big areas of the old deprtment store with those pipe-and-drape things they use for tradeshows into various "roomettes". Others were complaining about it. I was thinking that at least we had a lot more space than the people who got dorm rooms but, later, it occurred to me that I would have to be very quiet if I wanted to do anything of a personal nature.

A couple nights ago:

I dreamed I was in a hotel suite. My parents and sister were there. There had been some sort of battle and John and I had retrieved these three nearly newborn infants. Somehow, either John had killed their parents in the battle or something like that. My mother asked what we were going to do with them and we were going to give them to some social service agency. We were getting ready to leave the area the next day as the battle/war in this area was done and we needed to move on. The babies are in some sort of co-sleeper attached to the bed. I'm getting onto the bed to crawl over to comfort one of the babies and thinking I didn't want to give them up, the poor little things. Meanwhile, I'm also realizing that someone (my mother, I think) has tried to clean some sort of grease spots on the comforter to the bed with some nasty chemical and has poured so much on that the pillow and comforter are soaked through in spots and unusable. I'm mad and demanding to know WTF she was thinking.

I dreamed I was watching the Olympics - ice hockey I think. I was sitting with / dating maybe? the guy from The Cutting Edge. A player collapsed on the ice so there was a break in the action and I wandered out into the hall.

I'm now in a dorm suite with an Asian man. He's participating in some sort of mathematics/science portion of the Olympics and is going to go compete in a little while. He's showing me a song he's written and we're realizing we're interested in one another. We're sitting fairly closely and my knee is touching his leg. He backs off suddenly and I worry that I've breached some sort of cultural taboo. I start to worry about his parents' acceptance of me as we've sort of decided to be together.

His girlfriend comes out of the other room to tell him it's time to dress and it occurs to me that both of us will have to break off our relationships. We're all headed out into the hallway/stairwell when they carry the fallen hockey player by. It's an old-fashioned stretcher - canvas with a wood pole on either side. It's carried by a person I don't really see on the back and the doctor/CDC guy from the beginning of XF:FTF. The player is dark-skinned and wearing a black parka, the fur-lined hood of which is mostly pulled over his face.

We go down a floor into a corridor that I somehow know is the music building from my college but it's got science labs in it now (and doesn't look anything like the music building from my college). The walls are cement block and the doors are like metal fire doors. A scientist comes screaming out of the elevator - his eyes are all oily and black (more XF stuff there) and he's crazed with fear. He grabs my arm and his fingernails dig in, leaving oily black dents. I break free and start scrubbing at my arm while he runs wildly down the hall. Most of the black comes off. I dart into one of the offices so that he can't find me. It's a weird warren and has some sort of furnace in it - looks like someone converted a boiler room into an office. There's some sort of notice about using fire to suppress intruders printed on a light blue piece of copy paper and posted above the furnace but it warns you need some sort of protective something that I don't have. I can hear the scientist running back up the hallway, trying doors, anything to get the black out of him. I round the corner in the office (it's L-shaped) and quick throw the lock. I think I'm safe but it seems it's the lunatic's office and he has the key. He heard me throw the lock so he knows there's someone in there and unlocks the door.

I run by him as he opens the door. He's carrying a butcher knife and keeps stabbing at me as we run. I'm screaming at the security guard at the end of the hallway by the elevator that the scientist has gone crazy and is trying to kill me.

I dreamed the Soprano I section leader was possessed by a demon and trying to kill me.
~~~

Haven't had a "someone's trying to kill me" dream in a while. Guess it was about time one cropped up.

Two last night that I recall...

1. I was at a party at SN's house. This is an annual party and usually so packed you can barely move but this time almost nobody was there. Also, the decor was much more like my house in style than theirs. Since nobody showed up but us, they decided to leave for Florida early. I was thinking it was a real waste of all that food and was eating cookies until I realized that I was probably holding them up. The doorbell rang and another small group of guests arrived to AN's frustration (because he wanted to get to FL) and I seized the opportunity to eat more cookies.

2. I dreamed that John and I and the girls were traveling through Florida by car. We stopped at a rest area and a snake (a coral snake) slithered up my leg and bit me in the knee. I karate-chopped its head off but it nicked my skin. I made John call 911 and the dispatcher (a grumpy sheriff type) didn't believe me. He thought I was an overreacting tourist but sent an ambulance. A large circle around the puncture on the outside of my knee was turning cyanotic (sp?) and there was an equally large dark spot on my ankle (no bite there though).

Then I was in a hospital and they're trying to inject antivenom (sp?). They mixed a clear liquid with some stuff to form a sludge that looked like greasy gravy (greasy on top and sludgy underneath) that they wanted to pump into me. It was too thick to fit into a regular syringe so they loaded up one of those syringes the dentist gives you when you have your wisdom teeth out and were about to stick the nose of that directly into the bite wound and squirt probably a cup's worth of this sludge in my knee. I was terrified of how it was going to hurt to have a cup of sludge injected via the syringe equivalent of a fire house but equally terrified I was going to die.

Make of those what you will.

I dreamed I was having another baby. DJ and her husband were there and I was going to be doing a VBAC in this really strange birthing chair thing. My OB was there too.

Hi folks,

I haven't been failing to post. Ok, well, I have but only because I've been getting so little sleep I'm not remembering my dreams at all. The school year isn't doing my body any good, that's for sure.

Hopefully something soon.

PPG

Ok, I know I've been dreaming but I have only two mental images left for 3 days worth of dreams...

From three nights ago -
I'm picking up a very long cat turd from the floor with a kleenex.

From two nights ago -
I'm in some sort of fish truck with a friend and she's showing me a fish wrapped in plastic wrap on one of those white styro trays they use in meat departments. It's got kind of a shimmery rainbow effect on its scales. We've (she's) been making the rounds of restaurants/homes dropping off various fish/seafood. This is the only one left. I ask "what's that?" She says, "This, my friend, is a Undeliverable Fish."

~~~

I think I'm going to adopt that term "Undeliverable Fish"... to mean something along the lines of an idea that's totally escaped my mind (like these dreams evaporated). It was just something about how she stated it... Very random but wicked funny and apropos (in the dream) all at the same time.

So there you have it, cat turds and undeliverable fish.

Ok, so nobody was after me personally in last night's dream and, back to the usual, I was nice and calm through the whole thing.

I'm in the military - I think I'm a pilot by training though I'm not sure I'm flying now. Probably AF but maybe another branch. I'm stationed at a stargate-like research facility on an island in a very wide but not terribly deep river that abuts a large metropolis (Minneapolis/St. Paul maybe except that the city's only on one side of the river). I'm returning to base from being on leave somewhere in a regional jet (smaller than a 737, maybe a 727?). The other passengers are civilians, I believe. I know the pilot (MO).

I'm watching out the window as we descend to land. We're low enough that I can clearly see the facilities hidden under the riverbed. The river was diverted over the flood plain to hide the facilities built underground there and, through the brown tinted but transparent water, you can clearly see the roads, buildings, etc. that used to be part of the community (but aren't anymore since it's, well, all flooded) from the air, particularly this low. The river is maybe 20' deep in most places. There is a airport in the middle - the tarmac looks fresh and the runways look like they run 36/18 and maybe 30/12. I know they're meant for smaller craft like fighter jets. I also see what I recognize as a troop transport (flat ferrylike boat with individual spaces painted on top like parking places).

I can feel us starting to flare to land but realize it's too soon, that we're not going to make the runway. I feel the pilot fighting the aircraft but the tail catches in the water, pulling the nose to the left. We make it out of the water but it feels like the aileron is stuck and we keep veering sharply to the left. We clip a couple phone poles and a tree or two. We finally knock a few windows out of one side of a skyscraper (with the tip of the wing) and come to rest quite normally on a side street facing the river, as if we were a car waiting to turn onto the main boulevard that runs along the river.

Everyone appears to be ok but they're starting to get up and want to get out of the plane. I order everyone to "SIT DOWN!" and identify myself as a military officer. I tell them that we need to wait for assistance. I go to the front of the plane and ask MO if there's a way to "crack a window" (i.e., get some ventilation) without turning the plane back on. He says no and asks me if I'm "playing it as a 5?" (Treating it as a potential terrorist threat.) I say yes - grateful that he remembered the number because I was wracking my brain for it and couldn't come up with it. This is why we can't leave the plane as, if it is a terrorist threat, it (and any suspects and evidence) needs to remain contained. People on the street (random passersby) are trying to open the doors anyway. (One looks like TB and is just as bullheaded as he is in RL.) The doors look like city bus doors though reinforced and not see through.

Ok, I haven't remembered a dream in a while but, yow, I'm kind of wishing I didn't remember this one.

It seems we were out with friends and kids at some sort of resort for the weekend. (John's "growing up" friends and their families.) I'm at the front desk of the hotel - which is a series of little booths, almost like the ticket windows at an arena (but done in teak, etc. not plastic and metal) - and his friend JP is at the other window. JP is trying to make chitchat with me but it's overly familiar chitchat, suggestive. My business is done and I try to say goodbye and get the hell out of there when he looks me full in the face. His eyes are all funny - I mean, they look like eyes, but he looks crazy, possessed (Twin-Peakian). The words coming out of his mouth aren't anything alarming but I know that he wants to rape and possibly kill me. I'm trying to reach John on my cellphone but can't. I'm terrified. I back away and he starts to follow but he's called up to the window and he can't get away right then. I wonder if I should call his wife and warn her.

I flee across the street to another hotel where there is a conference going on. I'm not registered for the conference and the hotel is just about booked - they don't want to rent me a room. I'm desperate to get registered and upstairs to call John before JP gets done across the street and figures out where I went. I con the desk clerk into thinking I own a timeshare in the hotel and she gives me a key. I can see JP coming in the door as the elevator doors close behind me. I don't think he saw me but there's enough uncertainty that my heart is still pounding.

I examine the keys (there are 3) the clerk gave me, wondering which one to use.I decide to use the key with the white plastic top and I go up to the top floor and let myself into the room, locking the door behind me.

I check out the room for safety (entrances/exits/ways JP could get at me) and try to call John again. It's a very nicely appointed room, luxurious even, and has a very large, clear bathtub surrounded by a greenhouse-like enclosure on an outdoor patio on the roof. I'm checking the greenhouse enclosure to see if it's secure enough for me to dare take a bath as it looks so peaceful. I'm still frantic when I wake.

~~~~

Normally in dreams when people are trying to kill me (ok, I need a short label for 'people trying to kill me'), I'm very calm and just do what I need to. In this dream, I was frantic and absolutely panic-stricken terrified. I woke up with adrenaline still rushing through my veins.

I've taken the girls to a Music Together class that's up by the Canadian border. The teacher is a guy about my age or a little older. I run into GM, who I haven't seen in ages and who is equally delighted to see me. The teacher, who was a little supercilious, is impressed I know GM. He (GM) has funky new glasses - they've got a really heavy frame and a single large lens that's ground differently on either side so as to function as two lenses.

There is an optician located in the gift shop next door to where the music class is and I go in to see if I can get something similar. The glasses frames are scattered around the shop rather than in racks. I like a pair that are thick brushed aluminum. As the optician is making them up, I look around the shop.

1 -

We're having our baby baptized only it's at John M. Greene Hall (JMG - big lecture/concert hall where I went to college). Fr. A. is there from the church we currently attend. As part of the service, we have to light candles in this 6-candle candelabra but they just won't stay lit. When we finally get them lit, one or two melt down incredibly quickly. After the service, I run into SN, my boss. I'm changing the baby on a table (that looks like the dining room table from the house I grew up in) in the stage left wing. There is a stack of large acoustic ceiling tiles standing on the floor nearby.

2 -

John and I are taking the girls sledding. It's a family run commercial operation. We're trekking through farm fields to get to the sledding hill/facility. We run into the people that live behind us and their kids. Somehow I get separated from John and the girls but I do manage to find my way back pretty quickly - I just got on the far side of a hedgerow. We finally come to an area where some young (teenage) workers are directing people and they hand John and I snow shovels - blue handles with white plastic blades - and point the way.

Access to the sledding hill is through a building that's sort of a changing room kind of thing. You get into a building through an upwardly inclined chute and a narrow trap door. It seems that this was more designed to drop things out of the building that get into it. The building has the qualities of a second rate ski lodge. Everything's kind of dim and made of plywood. There are banks of steep plastic slides all over. I am surprised because there is a goodly drop between the end of the slide banks and the floor - at least a foot to two feet in some cases. There are a lot of people milling about half-dressed in snowgear (again, very ski lodge-ish). Each family gets their own little changing room.

The plastic shovels are to sled on - you sit on the blade and steer with the handle. We realize we don't have one for the girls. John goes to the main common area of the building and gets a single shovel with double wide blue blade for the girls. For some reason I have to go outside to get something. I get stuck in line behind a heavy lady trying to get in through the chute. She can't figure out how it's done. I explain how to do it and she slowly wriggles through as I wait (rather impatiently). I almost get stuck when I do it and am a little embarrassed at being frustrated with her.

We're finally almost ready to hit the hill. I'm looking out of our changing room to the next part of the building. It's in two levels. The bank of slides in this room has a huge (10') drop at the base. I see snow and water trickling down/off the slides. Then I see what I think is a doll go down but it hops to its feet at the bottom and I realize it's an older man. I'm worried about keeping the girls from accidentally going down those slides.

Only 1 that I remember tonight.

I'm starting back to college - a state school, I think - and I'm in a group of people that need new ID cards. But the building is under renovation: there is plastic sheeting everywhere and the ID card system doesn't appear to be working. People are frustrated but just hanging out waiting.

I figure out there's another way to "skin the cat" so to speak and head down to an office. I think I have Katie with me. The receptionist (MD) is leaving for the day but agrees to do my ID before she goes. Fr.A. comes in and we trade Star Trek jokes as MD does my ID.

1 -

I had an interesting dream that I forgot before I had a chance to write it down. I was reaching for the paper when the baby started screaming and the dream fled. All I remember is this tray of pieces of angel food cake on doilies. And it wasn't just slices - they were shaped like spikes, tapered to a narrow point and four sided, and were frosted with coconut, I think.

2 -

I'm at my college for a reunion. John and I have walked through the library that also now encompasses an art museum and art museum gift shop. We walk past the gift shop back by the music department and out. We get into some sort of vehicle - a trolley maybe though it's not running on rails. At first, the ride through the woods is normal, pretty. It's sunny and relatively warm. The dirt road starts to curve to the left. We start to hear a clacking noise and we see a bunch of people on a walking tour run through the woods panicking - I notice one woman in particular; she's wearing a coral colored t-shirt and an overshirt - Chicos kind of stuff made out of that stretch matte jersey. The clacking sounds gets louder and I see the giant crab/spider things chasing the women through the woods. They are probably 2 feet from toe to toe in diameter; their undersides are cream and their tops are mottled brown. The clacking comes from their front claws snapping open and closed.

Whoever is driving speeds up. The women are screaming "Don't let them get you!" to us as they run. I hear the metal wheel of the vehicle catch one of the things underneath and it crunches loudly.The upper part of the windows of the vehicle are open, they're double hung like trolley windows. We're trying to close them though the creatures don't seem to have noticed us yet.

The vehicle can go much faster than the women can though and we make it back up to the music department before the things get to us. As we walk through the building, deciding what to do next and letting our nerves calm down, two women walk past, half carrying the woman in coral between them. She looks drunk almost and her face is twisted maniacally. She says to us as they pass us "You don't have to run" and she laughs in a really scary way.

Somehow I know that she's going to turn into a whole bunch more of those things and that the place will be even more infested. I know we need to get away. We run into a guy who is going to take a group on a "tour" which is really an escape from the creatures (who are sentient). We all mount horses and ride for a little while, then we have to rollerblade down this pebbled path down a steep hill. S0mehow I know I can do this. John chooses to walk but I rollerblade (though I don't beat him down the hill by much). Now, all we have to do is walk through the swampy water and we'll get to the hill on the other side and back to the dorm where we'll be ok.

As we're trudging through the waist high water, one woman screams that she feels something on her legs. Someone else screams "they're here too" and people start running madly for the far side. John and I and the organizers of the escape run too even though we think they might be mistaken as to what brushed their legs. John slips and almost drowns in the bog in the confusion. I manage to get him up and we make it to the far side. The shore is rocky and it seems like this body of water is one of the great lakes. The hill stretches up - a fairly steep climb but not too steep to mow and it's a vast expanse of well-cultivated lawn with grey stone gothic buildings at the top.

~~~

The building that houses the library/art museum/art museum gift shop/music department doesn't exist in the waking world but I know I've dreamed about it before - it's beautiful, all deep warm wood panelling, beautiful leaded glass. Then the gift shop is built into a wide corridor (added long after original construction). It's (as a result) long and narrow and encased in sheet glass floor to ceiling. You wouldn't think the juxtaposition of beaux arts and modern would work but it does. I also remember dreaming about the crab/spider things before but I don't believe it was the same dream. They remind me of organic versions of the replicators from Stargate.

Another night featuring cryptic handwriting.

1 -

This dream took place in the same old house I dreamed about yesterday. Katie was in it. The rest reads "Tabes/Talses exat and de?iey incl".


2 -

The organist is having a recital at Yale. I invite my mother. The concert hall is big and more like a church.

3 -

SB is getting an award and/or giving a particularly noteworthy lecture at a college. People are crowding into the hall. The person introducing him has a hard time keeping the crowd under control. I'm standing at a side entrance, just inside the door. I can't really see the stage as the door faces a small landing with stairs up to the stage on one side and up to the gallery on the other. The hall is darkened, except for the spotlights. I know that he's not one of the company golden boys but neither am I. I cheer wildly as he's introduced.

4 -

I'm going back to college. I had Katie and took time off for that. I'm going to be sharing an apartment with an older couple to save money. My dad drops me off. John and Katie are supposed to come on the weekend but they come that night to stay for a bit as a surprise. I'm thrilled because I was more homesick than I expected. I'm following the old couple's daughter through the apartment as she shows me around. It's big and laid out quite oddly. You enter into a hallway and there's a little kitchenette across from the door. If you turn left it leads to the bedrooms. Turn right, it leads to a hallway that turns left into the living room. If you keep going, you turn left into the "real" kitchen. It's very large and very 1970s. There is a huge jar - like an apothecary jar - with a glass lid on the counter and there are things floating in a clear liquid. They look like severed baby hands and feet. I feel faint and start to back away, saying to the daughter that I can't stay here. She pats me on the back solicitously and says, "Oh no, dear, those are giraffe feet".

~~~
Weirdly and horrifyingly, I remember when I wake up this morning that I had another dream where something appeared to be severed baby feet and hands and was told in the dream they were giraffe feet. It leaves me feeling quite sick most of the day so I'm really hoping that whatever factors of the ether are working to that end please STOP with the "giraffe feet" thing. You wanna make me dream that someone's trying to kill me? Ok. No more severed baby/kid parts, ok??

1 -

I am driving through cornfields to DM's parents home. It's a classic mid-western style farmhouse. I am going to be staying with them for a while. I climb the stairs and it reminds me of home.
(In FL, DM's parents are farmers but orchardists, not corn, and their house is a salt box not a midwestern farmhouse.)

2 -

I am upstairs in an old house converted to offices. My work has had everyone take a course and take a test. I am looking for my test results but they aren't posted. CT tells me she didn't have time to post them all but they're in the pile. I find my test and I passed.

3 tonight - but only one that was more than a snippet.

1 -

John and I are out with friends - 2 other couples and a single woman. The three women are all dressed in pale yellow sleeveless linen sheaths. I don't recognize any of them. We're walking around a city looking for somewhere to eat. We are on a street on the edge of the business district and there are a lot of empty storefronts. I wander ahead. I'm thinking about renting one of the storefronts to sell my jewelry from. I try to the doors to one that looks likely and they open. It used to be a bagel store and their black and red logo is still on the door. There's a guy in there. I tell him I was thinking about renting it but he's already leased it and is doing the build out for a new sub shop he's planning to open. He's friendly and we talk about safety in the area until John catches up with me. There's a second storefront that looks nice but it's much larger than I need.

The group has dinner in a cafe and then we walk through the business district back to the parking garage. This part of the city is much better lit and cleaner; the sun is just starting to go down. We pass a brick plaza/park. It's sunken slightly and is flanked on three sides by several very wide sets of shallow stairs (maybe 20-25' wide and 30-35 steps long with a small landing about halfway down) descending from street level to the plaza that double as ampitheater seats. The fourth side is bordered by the entrance to large glass high rise office building. There are trees and shrubbery at the top of the steps opposite the office building - they screen the brightly lit parking garage behind them.

From the sidewalk above the plaza, I can see there's an Irish step dance demonstration going on. (Oddly, the people doing the demo are wearing German costumes not the traditional Irish gear.) I suggest we go down and watch it. One girl's date is a really obnoxious guy and he puts up a stink so he and his date go on home. One of the other girls apologizes for him - apparently he knows he's a jerk and is trying to get better through biofeedback.

As we're watching the demo, Katie starts bouncing around to the music (she was not with us until this point so I'm not sure how she got there), all blond curls and enthusiasm. A roly poly older woman behind and to the right of me suggests that maybe she'd like to try dancing, that the teacher would give a demo lesson. I think she must be involved with the dance school or something. The teacher comes over. Katie charms her as well and she starts a demo lesson right there, showing Katie how to stretch, etc.

2 -

I hear a phone ring but can't get to it because I'm changing the baby or something like that. I hear my friend MH leaving a message. The only word I catch clearly is "oat."

3 -

John is upset with me about some insulation fluff that fell from the vent in the attic and is making a mess in the hall. I promise him I'll clean it up as long as he gets the vacuum out.

N.B. The last one was so real that I had to ask John when he called this morning if we'd had a discussion about insulation fluff and vacuums.