Dreams

There is so much I could be doing right now. There is also so much I could be writing about. Preparations for Christmas, for example...or the fact that I threw up last night (which I'll blame on pregnancy, rather than illness, since I feel fine today and felt fine yesterday, too, until about 5 minutes before I threw up)...or the blog award that Charree graciously gave me some time ago and which I planned to write about when I had some extra time (which never came, but regardless, I am very grateful for this award, and I've enjoyed visiting Charree's blog and having a peek into her life...she's a very talented young wife, miles ahead of where I was at her stage in life...she's inspiring to me!).
Or I could mention this "gingerbread" house that Josiah made with Jeff's help from a kit Josiah received as a gift from his Sunday school teachers. I put gingerbread in quotes because after Josiah remarked last evening about how he liked the brown pieces more than the icing or candy, I grew suspicious and asked him for a small bite. He kindly agreed; and after I tasted it, I knew why he liked it so much. It's sugar: just pressed sugar! I'd rather have that than gingerbread any day. :)
But what I really want to write about today is dreams. I've had a few recently that were vivid enough to stick with me, even after awakening, and I want to jot them down before I forget them.


First, in the early morning hours of December 9, I woke up from a particularly disturbing dream that David was sick--very sick. In the dream, I remember blood pouring from him, and this strange white substance coming out of his head from around his eyes. In the dream, my dad was acting as David's doctor and gave us the diagnosis. "Leukemia," he said calmly, as if we had known all along what was wrong and thus wouldn't feel any shock. "Leukemia." Later that day, I wasn't terribly surprised when David threw up. Despite my dream, I knew it wasn't leukemia and wasn't worried at all about David...until some days later when he was sick again, but this time in the middle of the night when fears are always bigger and I am always less rational. I will admit to Googling "leukemia symptoms" in the middle of the night that time!


More recently, I had a dream that the old church bench in our kitchen was completely cleared off. It is quite a Hot Spot, collecting various items that conveniently get dropped there and never get put away; and for quite some time, I had not been disciplined enough to get it 100% cleaned off. But in that dream, I thought, "Wow, that bench looks so nice!" When I awoke the next day, I got busy and cleared everything off it so that I could stand back and admire it again. Wish I had motivating dreams like that more often! :)


Another recent dream was that there were ants in the kitchen, especially around the dishwasher area. This wouldn't have been so unusual if it had been summertime because we do have pesky ants from time to time during warmer weather. But in my dream, I was astonished that we had ants because, after all, it's winter! I could hardly believe my eyes! I was glad to wake up from that dream and realize that it wasn't true...that yes, it's still winter...and one of the positives about winter is the absence of ants in the house! :)


Interestingly to me, I haven't had a dream I can remember about our baby. Jeff has, of course--the twin dream--but I haven't yet; or if I did, I don't remember it.


Last night, however, I did have another vivid dream. In this one, Jeff and I with Josiah and David (no Tobin in this dream) were leaving to go north to my grandparents' home in Pennsylvania (my mother's parents). Of course, they have both died (in real life), and the farm was sold, so no one we know lives there now. But in my dream, it was still their farm. We were already planning to go or perhaps were even on the way when word came of an approaching snowstorm, so catastrophic that thousands of people were fleeing from it. It was a snowstorm from the south which is odd; and as we were traveling north, it was chasing us. We started out in our car in good weather, then it started snowing and the roads became slick and we slid through one intersection after the stoplight turned red (but fortunately, the traffic in the other direction had not started moving yet, so we didn't get into a wreck), then we got into an area where it hadn't started snowing yet, but as we came around a corner to approach a bridge to cross a river, we saw that the snow had already arrived there. At this point, we must have been forced to abandon our car, maybe because of the press of people all around who were escaping via the same route we were taking. We started walking, and we did have a child's red wagon to pull. At this point, I was in front (with Josiah, I think) pulling the wagon; and Jeff was behind, followed by David who started wailing from fear of being left behind. It was difficult to stay together with all the people around us. I paused as Jeff picked David up and as the people surged around us, thankful for the wagon in which we could put David so he could ride. But that wagon was heavy to pull! In the next scene, we had arrived at my grandparents' farm; but no one was around--not my parents, not my grandparents, no one. I had a sense though that they (my parents and grandparents) would all return sometime. We were in the house, but I told Jeff that I MUST take a wire basket (the basket used, in real life, to collect eggs from the henhouse, I believe) and go down to the cellar under the house to bring more canned food into the house before the storm really got bad. It was bad already, but I knew I just had to be prepared; and with no direct entrance from the house into the cellar, it would be better to go now than later when the storm was worse. I think we were looking around for a rope that I could tie to the front door to hang onto so that I wouldn't get lost going from the house to the cellar and back (sounds like something from a Laura Ingalls Wilder book!). And then I woke up...