Monday Morning Muse

Oh me oh my it's May already! Well, I've been too darn busy to really come up with a "theme" for this month so I hope this scattered material will be entertainment enough. Picking up where I left off last month, the luck of the tortoise has worn thin as of late. I've been settling into my job and learning all sorts of new things and pretty much enjoying it. Yeah, I 've been a bit overwhelmed with trying to juggle work, kids and their homework and multiple sporting events and playdates, keeping the house decent, and preparing for our Easter vacation, but it was all for good cause. I felt like I was a golf cart that was being driven on the freeway. Entirely the wrong machine for the task! I'm supposed to be laying around the house reading and baking fancy cookies and styling my hair decently. Not some harrassed- money- making- child- cab woman.

Then the nightmares began. You know, those freaky child neglect/ guilt inflicting kind. Maybe y'all can make some sense out of them. Here's the first one: I take my three boys over to a birthday party to drop them off for some fun. It's a house I'd never been to before so I decide to peruse the premises. I notice an unfenced really unique pool in the backyard complete with clouds of steam rising from the water as it was heated. The owners of the house are Asian and a toddler, just learning to crawl, is next to his dad on the opposite side of the pool from where I am. I notice the child edge closer and closer to the water and then fall in! No one notices this but me so I dive in to retrieve the child in my long skirt and heels. Fortunately, the child is okay. Still, no one seems to notice what has transpired. I am mortified to be at this swanky house all dripping wet so I determine that I must go home to change. I say good bye to my boys grab my purse and go. On the way home I drive over a curb doing some minor damage to my van. I'm worrying about whether or not my husband is going to notice this. When I get home, I realize that I grabbed somebody else's purse instead of mine, but now I've forgotten whose house the party was at. In my hurry to get out of there, I left the invitation with the name and address at the house and can think of no way to retrieve my children. I look in the purse for some clues as to whose it is. At this point I am in a panic and decide to sit down to gather my thoughts. I fall asleep on the couch and when I wake up my husband is home with the boys and my purse. He has miraculously solved all of my problems and I am thankful. But even though it ended well, I still woke up in a panic about my purse being missing and crashing the van. I soon realized that it was all a bad dream.

The next evening I had another nightmare. Here it is: I am in Iraq on vacation with all four of my children. My husband had to stay home to work. We seem to be the only people walking around the city but it looks more like Mexico than Iraq. We decide to visit a fancy hotel that is full of people. There are all sorts of conventions going on and stairways and elevators everywhere. It's dimly lit with red carpeting and ornate decor. The kids just want to run up and down the stairs and I am trying like mad to keep everyone together. I notice my youngest daughter is missing. Frantically, the boys and I run over the entire place searching in bathrooms, closets etc. I call security and report it. She would be easy to find as there aren't too many curly haired blond girls in Iraq. She is nowhere to be found. We walk the streets for days searching for her in unlikely places. Finally it dawns on me to check the hospitals. Sure enough I find her sick in a hospital bed. I retrieve her and she tells me how a little girl in the hotel wanted to take her to her home to be her sister! She had caught the Chicken Pox and was hospitalized. It all ended well but it was enough to wake me up out of my troubled sleep only to find that blond curly haired girl taking over my pillow! I went back to sleep only to have another dream, this time that I had brought my cat to work with me. Of course she was terrified to be in different surroundings so I put her into a room so she wouldn't run away. I left my job (it was a completely different job and building from my real job, in the dream) and drove home. Many hours later I realize that I had left my cat at work and that she probably wouldn't be there when I went back to work. I began sobbing only to wake up and realize it was only a dream.

I couldn't resist sharing all of these dreams with my hubby and asked him what he thought. He simply said that I must be feeling vulnerable right now. I don't know what these dreams mean. Maybe that I am overwhelmed and feeling unnoticed? Possibly that all of my hard work isn't really paying off? I really don't know. I'm just glad the nightmares stopped and I can get some rest!

Tootles and Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms!