Yes, I know other people's dreams are boring, but it's what I got going on.

I'm going through one of those times during which I can't seem to get enough sleep, partly because I'm always having crazy dreams like these:

Two nights ago: I had three daughters. There was the Bean, the Peanut and another girl, who in my dream took the form of one of the Bean's real-life classmates. We were on a family vacation in California, and attending some kind of informal outdoor sporting event. The girls were going off to sit on their own, and I was telling them have fun, and where to meet us later. Bean and Peanut ran off, and the middle daughter (she was younger than the Bean and older than the Peanut, an impossibility in real life) gave me a quick kiss and took off with them. I turned to my husband, alarmed, and said, "I have no memories of her as a baby!" and he said "me neither." I could vaguely recall having been pregnant with her, but it was like remembering a story I'd read about someone else. I felt terribly sad at not really knowing this child, and horrified to be that detached from my own daughter. How could I know the oldest and youngest girls so well, feel so closely bonded to them, and completely blank on the whole history of the middle one? Yet I knew I must've had her, because there she was, calling me Mommy just like the other two.

Upsetting!

Later that same dream, the three (!) girls and I were asleep back at the hotel, and Mr. S. finally came in at 4:00 AM. He'd been out with friends, and told me that one of his friends had asked him to play soccer with them, and he'd said sure, why not. He never gets time with his friends, he said. His life is work, and home, and the girls, and never any time out with friends! Fine, I said, but you don't even like soccer. Then I realized two things: that he was having an affair with this friend of his, and that I didn't care. If you want to play soccer, go ahead, I said. But I don't see why you had to drag us all to California to do it.

Yeesh! Granted, I don't think of infidelity in the absolute terms I once did -- older and wiser, I can see how it comes about in some relationships, and why some couples don't make it a deal breaker -- but still. If Mr. S. were having an affair, it's safe to say I would not be wholly indifferent.

Then last night: I was living with my parents in the house I grew up in. One morning we opened the front door to find that our neighbor across the street (nobody I ever knew in real life) had begun building himself a three-car garage with an apartment above and a cupola on top, right in our front yard. It cast a great shadow over our house. The neighbor was sitting outside in his car, supervising the construction. I was furious, but my mother insisted we couldn't say anything to him about it. BALLS! I yelled. I HATE THIS! I stormed out of the house and up to the guy's car. He rolled down the window, and I sputtered to him about the building. "What, you don't like it? Fine. It comes down. Brick by brick, I'll take it all down" he said, full of mock surprise that I didn't think it was the best thing ever. My mother still chided me for talking to him, and I yelled at her, SCREW THAT! I'M TIRED OF NOT SAYING WHAT I THINK! and then marched away up the street.


Well. Who the heck knows what that's all about. Maybe my inner teenager still has some hollering to do.

Someone said that dreams are us "whispering in our own ears." What are you saying to yourself these days? Are you making any sense, or just churning up emotion, or both?