Monday, October 31, 2005

Dreams and Other Things

My husband and I both work full-time jobs. In our free time, he runs a fledgling software business, and I carry the brunt of rearing our 8 1/2 month old son.

Most of our conversations are in the car, traveling to Target for yet another palate diapers. A typical exchange goes something like this:

"Did you get any sleep last night?"
"Hmmm. Maybe. I'm not exhausted."
"How many times was he up?"
"Lost count at three."
"How was work?"
"It was work. You?"
"Urrg."

Or perhaps:

"Did you eat?"
"Moe's. At three."
"Should I make you food?"
"Urrg."

Or my favorite:

"How are you feeling?"
"Sick. I'm definitely sick. My legs hurt and my head hurts and I have that metallic-y taste in my mouth you know you get when you're sick. I feel like crap. When will the baby stop getting me sick?"
"Did you take a vitamin?"
"Urrg."

But the other day we were driving back from the pumpkin patch, when Rick says to me, "I had a dream about you last night."

Oh really? I'm hoping it's a dirty one, but I know better. Haven't shaved my legs in two weeks.

"I dreamed that I went to the movies without you. I went to a movie with a bunch of people...I think my brother was there...but you couldn't come. But I went anyways. And I felt really bad because I knew it was a movie you wanted to see."

Rick is used to elaborating on his dreams when he does stuff without me, because otherwise I get mad. Since we don't have much of a social life now, he knows it pisses me off when he has an imaginary social life without me.

Good husband. Thank you for humoring my psychosis.

Rick's recounting of his dream also made me remember one of my recent ones. I'm not remembering many of them, since I don't think I've made it to REM since the third trimester. But the other night, I had a pretty vivid one. Color and all.

I dreamed that Rick took me to the amusement park and we went on the roller coaster, in the second car from the front. The humps and hills of the coaster quickly morphed into the humps of the Smithfield Bridge and the hills of Mount Washington. We were speeding along, high atop the Pittsburgh landscape, screaming and whooping, and the whole time I'm thinking, "My, this is incredibly dangerous. Whoever designed this ride did not have safety in mind. If anyone were to fall, they'd surely die."

And, as if on cue, the man in the front car stood up, raised his arms above his head, and did a graceful dive off the coaster. It seemed so choreographed, I thought for sure he must be base jumping. I watched him fall. Plummeting, plummeting, it seemed like forever.

Now I'm a pretty lucid dreamer, so the whole time I watched him fall, I though to myself, "This is a dream and I will wake up before he lands."

Apparently that only works when I am falling. Third party fallers are free to hit the ground.

And hit it he did. Splattering in glorious Technicolor. And I thought, "Well look at that."

And then I woke up.

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