The Eclectic Mix

Great. My subconscious has been working overtime at night. But on the upside, it’s providing fodder for the ol’ blog.

Wednesday night, I dreamt the FDS actually came to our house to “watch how [I] interact with the family.” I arrived home from work, only to find she and Jenni gathered at the kitchen table, talking about, well…Me, and all of those things about me that give me some pause–the quirks and foibles that make me take that moment to just think about how I come off to others.

Then I stop caring and move on. But back to the dream.

FDS continued “observing” and talking with Jenni, and invited herself over to dinner. Now I’m reasonably certain she wouldn’t do this–she has a husband of her own and seems to be polite at the very least, and someone who values her time with her family. But still, it was disconcerting, if for no other reason than for now, I’d like to keep the two of them at arms length from each other. But there I was, cooking for my wife, the kids, and my therapist, thinking “just what the hell am I going to do now?”

Thursday was the bi-weekly pow-wow with her, so of course, it was shared. She thought it was a riot. Then evaluated it’s meaning for me on a deeper level. No, I’m not sharing.

I’m not sure it helped.

Last night, FDS was back, this time invited over by Jenni, because she “thought she’s really great, and I think we should get to know each other.”

Oh, perfect. The only thing that could make this worse would be…

You regulars here will know that the cat talks in my dreams. And Pippin is the sort of personality in my dreams that would make a nasty drunk in real life. She’s blunt, opinionated, old, unforgiving, and unapologetic.

So again, at the table were my wonderful wife, my therapist (who I do actually appreciate because she’s helped me so much), and my, um, vociferous cat.

Powderkeg? Check. Fuse? Check. Matches? We don’t need no steenkin’ matches, this sucker’s gonna blow on its own…

No offense, mom, but if you were there, I think space-time would have folded in upon itself, trapping me in some endless one-hour loop of opinionated women. I know that all of you care about me and want to help me in your own way, but if that had happened, I might have gnawed my own arms off just to get away.

The specifics elude me–Jenni talked like she does about her family at parties, animatedly and pointing out our quirks. And the cat, well she was actually laughing–a first, I think. Right around that point, I woke up, disturbed beyond words at what I’d just managed to spool up in my own head.

Remind me for my next session to change the address in my file.

See you tomorrow.

No, no memories tonight. Thought I’d instead regail you with tales of last night’s dream.

All five of us are in the basement playing on the Wii. Pippin is sleeping, as she frequently does, in the Blue’s Clues thinking chair in front of the fireplace. As we’re playing, one of the girls gets all excited and jumps up and screams, scaring the cat instead of meowing, talks.

“What? What the hell was that?” She says.

Now, in my dreams, Pippin has talked to me for years, but she doesn’t talk to anyone else. When I tell my family about my dreams and about the fact that the cat talks in them, they laugh at me.

In the dream, everyone just stops dead after Pippin talks. The girls jump up and down and start yelling “she can talk! She can talk!” Jenni and Patrick are equally excited. They’re jumping up and down, trying desperately to get her to talk again, and incredulous that she’s really talking.

They beg her to talk. And she just looks at them. Then…

“Meow.”

That’s all she does for quite a while, and my family gives up and goes upstairs for some snacks. As soon as the last one clears the stairs, the cat turns to me.

“I thought they’d never leave.”

She and I talk for a while, then one of the kids comes downstairs. And mid-sentence, Pippin goes from talking to meowing.

And yes, I already ran this one past FDS.

See you tomorrow.

Dreams are an odd thing, really. Your brain digs deep down and lets loose with all the paranoia, fear, repressed memories, and other flotsam it can get and somehow mashes it into a story that offers some strange comment on your mind.

Many of my dreams, for instance, involve my cat, Pippin, talking to me. Yeah. She talks in my dreams. Has almost since I got her. And she doesn’t just talk. She is, for lack of a better term, the angry, judgemental, little old lady of my dreams. If I’m doing something stupid in my dream, she’ll be the first to tell me so.

Monday night, I had a winner of a dream. Not sure what it means exactly, but here you go:

Jenni, currently at Luther Seminary pursuing her Children, Youth and Family master’s, decides to go all the way and study to become ordained. I’m thinking “great, more school…” But, being the supportive sort I am, I give it my blessing.

Some time into it, she needs to settle on a final project. Something big. Something worthy of the position she’s seeking, rolling however many years of education into one huge, monumental, all-encompassing final project.

She decided that she wanted to have a dinner party with God, Jesus and a few of the disciples (no, I don’t remember which ones).

Okay, ignoring the sheer logistics of having two-thirds of the holy triumvirate gathered at the dining room table, it certainly was an audacious plan. But I was still supportive.

But I was also hugely freaked out. I mean, what do you serve to God and Jesus? In the dream, I was going through every cookbook I could get my hands on. French food? Too heavy. It was spring, after all. Steaks on the grill? Good, but maybe a little showy? Pork chops? Nope. Jesus is Jewish.

I even considered a taco night, realizing that whatever I served I needed to make sure the kids would eat something, too. Considering the fact that my options with them are limited to chicken nuggets, hot dogs, spaghetti and mac & cheese, this didn’t seem to be going well.

I was getting frantic and frustrated. Two days before dinner, I still had no menu, no plan, and no suggestions from Jenni. “Whatever you make will be fine,” she said.  Yeah right. I’m going to burn God’s pot pie, and then he’ll never forgive me.

Here’s the really frustrating part. Normally, my dreams end at least with some closure. Instead, my alarm went off, woke me up, and I was last considering whether I should just make a turkey dinner and sweet potatoes.

But I was having a hard time pairing a dessert with it.

There you go, Freud. Take that one apart for me.

12 days of Christmas starts tomorrow. Tune in to see what it’s all about.

See you tomorrow.