February 8b. About my Dreams: HealthyPlace.com Dieting, Weight Loss Community

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February 8, 2000 -- 8:00 PM EST

Getting a lot of notes in the guestbook or in e-mail or from forms lately. Holy mail, Batman! The attention is startling. I appreciate the good will and notes and the shared experiences and stories and the weird little observations -- honest! Any of you readers wanting to share a story as a guest entry in this journal -- please feel free to tell me about whatever it is and why it needs to be a guest entry! :)

But it's still startling to me.

I guess I hole up in here in my office at home at night with my computer while Paul is napping and just talk to myself. It's so quiet here. All I hear is the hum of the rack beside my desk with the server and it's big green digital lights numbers glowing eerie-like.

Sometimes if I look over to the tank, I see Osiris the corn snake just watching... by the time Paul gets up we go make and eat dinner and it's definitely house time and then after that and the nightly bathing rituals I wrap up whatever I started to write and go to bed.

Basically I talk to myself and I think "out loud" and I try to just flush my head out. Me time, down time, unwind time. I get so wrapped up in my scribbles that I forget that people are sometimes peeking at me. This throws me.

Twilight Zone. Sometimes... late at night when you think you are alone.... dee dee doo doop dee dee doo doop! Baddup tadaaaaah!

The Note

Here's one from Wendy today who is talking about the MaybeBaby dream thing:

Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2000 07:37:44 -0700
From: Wendy <e-mail removed>
To: Cat <e-mail removed>
Subject: Quit making me write you! :-)

Hi Cat.
I feel like I'm being a buttinski, but sometimes when I read your journal, I end up walking around thinking "I've got to write to Cat and tell her or ask her X" So here goes...

Regarding your last journal entry about your dream about being pregnant in the red flannel nightgown: what weight were you? I mean, other than your belly. Were you your current weight or the weight you hope to be at when you get pregnant. The reason I ask is that your journal seems to reveal that your heart and body want to have a baby now, but your head doesn't. How you appeared in your dream might reveal what your subconscious has to say about timing.

I didn't write this to be nosey, and don't even necessarily want a response. Just had the strong feeling I should prod your thinking. And I personally am not into having babies at all! None for me, thank you very much.)

I know my life goes smoother when I follow my intuition and hunches. Sometimes the head just gets in the dang way!

Fondly,
Wendy

PS: Sorry if I've overstepped the bounds of our online
acquaintanceship!

This made me laugh and I decided to ask for her permission to use it as a prompt in my journal entry and she said ok.

I haven't been dreaming in Technicolor lately so I haven't been paying attention to dreams much. I only pay attention to them when I dream in Technicolor. Or at least I try to. I must have been in a writing coma when I wrote about the dream because normally, for me to mention it and refer to colors means it was a Technicolor. dream. I should have paid attention to that. But I didn't, not till Wendy threw me for a loop!

Rewind!

Ok, backtrack, rewind!

I dream two kinds of dreams. Well, more than just two kinds but in two versions. Black and white dreams and Technicolor. dreams where all the colors are super bright and striking. The point of view changes (like a watching TV kind of dream versus first person POV dream out through my eyeballs for instance ) but just two kinds as far as looks. There are no pastel color dreams. No sepia toned dreams.

The stark, black and white, film noir dreams are usually pretty short and not especially interesting. The Technicolor. dreams are the ones where I'm all up in there, totally being taken into this strange, trippy world and they last a long time. Mucho REM sleep.

The kind of dreams where when you wake up you might not be sure if it was a dream or real. The kind of dreams that might leave you stunned or breathless or wake you up suddenly. The kind of dreams where strange imagery comes out. The kind of dreams where you wake up with the answers to the problems you had the night before. "Eureka!" dreams. The kind of dreams that leave behind vague scanty impressions, but a nagging feeling.

That red nightgown dream was like that -- vague impression, but something naggy. I was really taken with the red flannel nightgown because I don't have one. That was wrong! I'll take a photo of me in my only flannel nightgown later. I've had it since my freshman year of college. It's soooo granny! It's white with pink flowers. Horrid thing my mother bought me because she was worried I'd freeze to death.

Anyway...

Writing comas.

Sometimes I just write to be writing. Often it's those "Babble" kind of entries or so where I fly from one thought to another and not really have theme going or anything. Head flushing. Or in that one entry, venting about my ankle and just feeling frustrated all over at everything!

I blank out. I don't see the page or the monitor and I am just there thinking and typing and writing and not really caring and just going, going, going. There. Done.

Those entries where I go back and read them and go -- "Okay, what the hell was I thinking!? How is all this babble significant to anything in my real life? Whatever!"

Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Nobody said journal writing never had to be meaningful all the freaking time!

Analysis?

So there I am minding my own business, trying to work PhotoShop stuff and then my e-mail bloops and I go see who wants what because I am expecting a heads up from work to tell me to go FTP some files to start on... and it's Wendy.

Asking me how much I weighed in my dream with the nightgown.

I had a dream with a nightgown? Oh, yeah. I did. A red one. How'd she know? I wrote that?

Then I go look and I did.

How about that. What's she asking me? What I weighed?!

This makes me laugh.

I have no idea what I weighed in the dream. I've never dreamt about weight in any way. Maybe just for laughs when I have next have a director dream (those dreams where you know you are dreaming and can tell yourself to go do things for the fun of it or to just wake up and stop dreaming) I'll make me go somewhere with a scale and just see what I weigh in my dreams. I'll have to remember to do that.

The last time I had a director dream I was living out The Shining movie and I was trying to get to open all the OTHER hotel room doors that we never get to see inside of to find out if there are crazy ghosties in there too. I guess it was just something I always wanted to do. When I realized I was having a director dream, I made the scenery change and everything to put me in the hotel. (Is this lucid dreaming? Mental note: look up lucid dreaming)

The movie characters were running around screaming and doing ...well...the movie! And I was just sort of hanging out in the hotel, totally unseen by them, but looking at stuff. I had been working at opening the doors while elsewhere in the hotel I could here them doing the movie -- meeting the cook Halloran, the hotel closing up for the season -- all that.

Then I am in the the one wing where Jack came running down after the little boy and I was screaming, "Noooo! Too fast! Go play out the scene in the lobby with the typewriter! Or the playground scene! Not this scene yet! Just let me open one more door and I'll be done with this floor! Ack!"

Of course, Jack pays me no mind since I am invisible to him, smashes the mallet around, has his struggle there between Jack-the-father and the-hotel-in-Jack, the kid runs off, the boiler blows up and the hotel is in flames and there goes my chance to open any more doors in the hotel!

Punk!

Noooo, couldn't have done the typewriter scene like I suggested. Just had to get to this part and blow up the hotel!

Back to the red nightgown dream.

I had medium length black hair. So I grew it out because right now I have short hair. I had on this red flannel nightgown. I had a big belly. I was trying to get attention from Paul who was too distracted. Aside from the wrong color nightgown and the belly, this is a domestic scene that has been played out many a time. Nothing weird about that. He always gets sucked into his computer with work and has to be pestered before he pays attention.

I want him to feel my belly because things are moving. Like I had this vague impression there were twins when all along they'd (doctor?) been saying it was just one. This was bothering me and I wanted him to feel to see if I was crazy or what. Is that one person in there kicking me or two people having a wrestling match?

I must be in late second or third trimester of pregnancy. Not first. Too big a belly and too much moving around. I remember trying to get the dream to cross over. Like switch from being a TV kind of dream where I am watching me doing stuff to the kind of dream where I am in myself -- out through my eyeballs dream -- because it might have been cool to feel what it was feeling like to have beings squirming in me. I was curious, sue me!

Nope. Dream wouldn't switch over. Couldn't make it that time. Sometimes I can make the POV flip over.

I notice I have slippers on which I never wear. They look like those floppy slippers Popo (Mom's mom) would lend us when we went to visit her in San Francisco but not. Hers were usually red or black with the dragon or big peony flower embroidery on the top or those mesh net slippers in the silver and gold. Chinatown cheapie slippers. Once mom snickered at me and pointed out this little hole in one of the slippers and said her mother never threw aaaaanything away! The ones I had on in the dream were shaped like Popo's dragon slippers but they were white quilted calico fabric instead. The little flowers were pink.

I remember thinking this: Boy, I am turning into a terrible dresser in pregnancy. Ugly red flannel nightgown with white lace trim and quilted slippers?! Shawn would laugh at me. Wait, why am I thinking about Shawn? He's not in this dream. And why does Paul get to wear his brown lizard T-shirt with the blue jeans he likes when I get stuck in ugly red flannel?!

Now that I think about it is also reminds me of my Aunt Jean, Dad's older sister. I don't know why, but it does. I don't remember what her nightgowns looked like. I only remember when I was little sometimes I'd go spend the night over there and she had this cool room that made no sense because it was five or six feet above the floor. There. This big door just halfway up the wall in the dining room!

My cousin Eric kept it as his room with all his records on the walls. It was like a small room or a large closet but I never understood why it was just "floating" up there. (My paternal grandmother's had a weird closet too but in a different way.) He'd leave the door open and leap up there and torment me because I was too little to jump and even if I stood on a chair I couldn't go up there. I remember he let me up once and I thought it was so cool and then Aunt Jean told him to let me down and never to let me up there again because I could fall out and crack my head open. So unfair to be little! Everyone was always telling me I'd crack my head open! I used to secretly wish I could have a weird room that floated in the middle of the wall like that when I was older.

I'll have to describe it all some other time. Oh, and her dining room table. But maybe I am reminded of Aunt Jean because she wore slippers like that?

Back to Wendy. I stare at her note some more.

"The reason I ask is that your journal seems to reveal that your heart and body want to have a baby now, but your head doesn't. How you appeared in your dream might reveal what your subconscious has to say about timing."

Timing? Ok, pause. Consider this in my head.

[...]

What bugs me most? Red flannel. Xmas?! Shawn thoughts? (His birthday is Xmas Eve)

[...]

I am dreaming I am pregnant for Xmas? No way! Is that what the Mrs. Claus get up is about? Holy, crack up, Batman!

Pause while I hysterically start laughing at my desk. Tears streaming and everything. That one just tickled my fancy! Soooo funny! Is that what that is?

I wrote Wendy a short note and then I got back to work and now here I am writing about it all.

Not This Xmas!

Hoo boy. That was too fun! Technicolor. dreams can be so entertaining sometimes. I may be getting all baby stupid. I might be considering it as a MaybeBaby and leaving the door open there.

But no way in hell will I be having any babies for Xmas. Not this one anyway. (Be really funny if I ever did get pregnant and did have a Xmas kid for me to read backwards to this entry. Hahahaha!)

Freaky premonitionist Technicolor. dreams. Say that three times fast.

Hahahahahaha!

I'm getting comfortable considering it at a MaybeBaby. Maybe this, maybe that. Castles in the air.

The reality?

I've got too many other things to deal with before actually getting to the business of taking off the "maybe" in front of "MaybeBaby."

I have to give Paul space. Even if I come to terms with motherhood and parenthood first, he needs to follow his own timetable. I'm not going to force it on him if he's not ready to come to terms with fatherhood. That's not how we operate!
I have to get more fit, reach target weight, just hang out there a while. This whole vegan thing is not like old hat here. I've been at it for not that long and I still an learning. Eating vegan just for me is challenging enough. I don't want to have to deal with the idea of a vegan pregnancy just yet!
We have to pay off credit cards, put aside money for baby junk -- furniture, clothes, bills, tra la la. We haven't even discussed adoption, infertility, hoards of other issues tangential to the decision to have kids, if we have them.
My iguanas need aviaries and a screened, heated patio for winter. They'd have to be outside. I can have iguanas and very young children free roaming in a house together. And I am not going to displace my pets and give them up. I committed to their care and well being!
I want to enjoy working, and I want to enjoy alone time with Paul. Kids put a crimp in your style. I'm not ready to give it up just yet.

Ugly Nightgown So... the only flannel nightgown I plan to be wearing for the time being is going to be my six year old, tent-like ugly, white one with the fading pink and purple flowers and the too-short sleeves.

The same one I wore when Paul and I first met in the college dorms. The same one I used to tied him up to the bed posts. The same one I wear when I am cold or sick. The same one I use to dry off the iguanas when they have had a bath in the tub. The same one I sometimes dry the bathroom floor with. The same one he's used for a towel to dry his hair.

When I decide to dye it Santa Claus red I'll yet know! ;)

~Astrophe