Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream...

I sailed away to China. In a little row boat to find ya but you said you had to get your laundry clean.

Okay, if you are a child of the 80's you'll likely recognize that. If not then google it and you'll know.

My husband rarely remembers his dreams. I remember every detail of mine. Good, bad, scary, funny, all of them. I'm not a heavy sleeper and while I never have been, once I acquired a family, I found I sleep even lighter. It's the mommy ear syndrome. Most women have it and practically all men don't.

I wake up after each of my dreams. I either have to pee or I'm checking to make sure my teeth are still in my mouth. I hate that dream. It's a recurring one but only the theme is the same. The actual situation or story of the dream is different. Apparently my subconscious likes variety when expressing its fears.

The teeth falling out dream is supposed to be related to a feeling of a loss of control. Um, duh. A control freak by genetics, I probably have this dream every time I feel my control spiraling downward, which is about every 15 minutes or so daily.

I don't lose my teeth in the dream. They all just seem to fall out and I spend the entire three seconds (that seems like hours) of the dream carrying them around (sometimes in a cooler, sometimes in my hand) asking people to help me. No one ever does. There's never any closure to the dream. I never have them put back in and no one ever helps me. I just wake up, run my tongue over my much appreciated horse teeth and breathe a sigh of relief. Then I pee.

Last night I dreamed that I was at the home of a person who's husband just passed. In real life, someone did just pass but I don't know the family. They've been on my mind and in some twisted way, my psyche is trying to sort through it. I knew her in the dream. I told her I'd help her and would bring her any kind of food if she needed it. She told me she didn't because someone had just given her a new set of stainless steel appliances for her kitchen. She showed me them and I can still see how they sparkled. What I wouldn't give for stainless steel appliances! I think that dream was telling me to rush to Lowe's and get new appliances. Probably my husband would like to be a part in that decision and since he wasn't in the dream, I think I'm screwed. No new appliances for me yet.

The dream shifted then. I was in some unknown park with my son and another clearly unimportant person because he was unidentifiable. I was wearing a total bar-whore outfit... f*** me boots, black lace tights, a mini-skirt and some crop top that showed off my great abs (hey, it's a dream. I can at least have great abs in a dream, right?) You do know that everyone goes to the park dressed in their best bar-whore clothes, right?

While walking through the park, I cut my leg on a bush. The bleeding was fast and furious and I begged Mr. Unknown to call 911. He did. He told them I said I was dying and had my 10 year old son confirm it. He did. I didn't say I was dying and made sure to yell that in the background while I tried to cover my bleeding leg with my hands. Mr. Unknown gave me the phone and the 911 operator (a male, go figure) told me that I'd called 911 from that park too many times before and I'd just have to drive myself to the hospital because they didn't believe me. And then he hung up. He hung up. Dream Carolyn was not happy.

I turned with incredible anger,to Mr. Unknown and said, "If I die, it's your fault!" and then I turned to my son and said, "And yours too!" As I walked away, my son looked upset. I felt terrible. I asked him what was wrong. He showed me his pen (when did he get a pen in this dream?) and said, "I lost my pen cap. Can I go back and find it?"

Here I am, gushing quarts of blood by the second, trying to walk to my car to drive myself to the hospital and my son wants to go back and find his pen cap. I was thinking he was upset that I might die but no, he was upset because he lost his pen cap.

I woke up with some serious leg pain after that dream. I have some residual pain from nerve damage from my back surgery and I'm sure I was unconsciously feeling it, thus dreaming about my leg. But where did the pen cap come from?

My son's 10. What's important to him is not always on target with my list of priorities so my guess is I'm trying to explain that to myself and find a way to handle it better (perhaps blaming him for my death is not a good option). Who knows. After I made sure my leg wasn't bleeding. I got up and peed.