I was home. It was as if I was an early teenager. My father was gone, so my sister Carrie and I were sleeping with my mother. I woke up hot and thirsty, so I got up to go to the kitchen to get a drink of water. In the living room the TV was on and some infomercial was playing at full volume. Despite that, I could hear from outside that someone was trying to get into the house. I ran to my room scared, but out of habit I switched on my light. A voice outside my room said:
"Sarah, it's your dad, let me in."
I quickly turned off the light and peeked out the window. All I could see was the person's shoes, which were skate shoes. My father never wears skate shoes, so I knew it wasn't him. The intruder began to bang on the window and then . . .
I woke up. It was 6:00am and I was hot and thirsty. I got a drink and went back to bed and read until I fell back asleep and dreamed that . . .
I was on State Street and really hungry. I went into a little café to get a sandwich. The café was full of people speaking French. I was too hungry to leave, so I ordered my lunch and tried to hide in the corner to avoid speaking French. Unfortunately my French TA came in and immediately spotted me. "Sarah! Comme ça va?" she exclaimed and rattled on in French. I was trying to get out an appropriate response when . . .
. . . I was startled out of slumber because someone was banging on my back door. I didn't know if I dreamed it or if it really happened. I lay in bed a few minutes trying to decide, and finally got the courage up to investigate who was at the door at 7:30 in the morning. It was the lawn care people putting weedkiller on our grass and they left the bill on the door handle. I went back to bed and tried to read some more. I fell asleep again and dreamed . . .
I got out of bed because I could hear someone in the house, only to discover my sister Car in my kitchen looking at my floor with disgust.
"Your house is filthy. How are you going to get it ready?"
I looked around. The kitchen looked like we had never cleaned it since moving in. Every pot, pan, dish, cutlery, etc, was dirty. The floor was covered with food and mud and shoes. The rest of the house was filled with dirty laundry, books, papers, clutter, etc.
"Ready for what?" I asked confused.
"Since you wouldn't take the time to come home, we're celebrating Mom and Dad's 30th anniversary here and everyone's coming," she replied.
She was right: immediately my parents showed up. And my brother and his wife and children. I had to clear a spot off the couch so that my sister-in-law could nurse Little Bit. Then all my immediate family showed up. And all of my parent's friends. The orchestra Carrie had hired to play at the event began to set up on the newly fertilized and pesticided lawn. The conductor was a famous Viennese musician with fluffy gray hair. Didn't I want to play with them?
"I have to go to class. I have French soon!"
I told Matt, who was still in bed, that there were some people there and maybe he could straighten up, but that I had to go. I tried to slip away so I wouldn't miss the bus when . . .
I was suddenly awake remembering I had French quiz today. I got my French book out and looked at the vocab for the first time:
faire la lessive: to do the laundry
faire la vaisselle: to do the dishes
faire le ménage: to do the housecleaning
nettoyer: to clean
passer l'aspirateur: to vacuum
ranger: to straighten up
How was your day? Was it as uncanny as mine?
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8 comments:
strange you mention your dreams. I dreampt that I was trying out for an elite group of super secret special people, like a blend of the Matrix and MIB. And they let anyone enter to try out, but they had this obstacle course, that ranged from running through a building to driving through another building, all while they shot machine guns at you incessantly. Once the small minority that had managed to stay alive had ascended through the various levels of killer tag, then they congratulated you, the few, the ready (I of course was among them), and told us to meet them up at the top of the building. Everyone was drunk on their success, and began climbing the stairs. I was hesitant for some reason, when I heard the machine guns start again - the Matrix in Black has killed the remaining "victors" for failing to think outside the box. So I broke a hole in the wall, and went into another secret room, where I scaled things like Elevator food dummies to the top of the building and won.
Of course, I had never intended to enter the contest - I had merely been looking for a shortcut through the city, and it led right through their lair. And now I was one of them, and had to go kill all the new people attempting to join us.
I just hope that this in no way predicts any part of my day today.
Freud said that all dreams have deeper meaning. So I was wondering, are we to make a surprise visit for our 30th anniversary? Mutti
Amazing without bad pizza. Papa
I love how you describe the crowd of people at your place and then give Matt the understated comment, "there are some people here" as you're leaving. Glad to know I'm not the only one who has their sleep affected by school. (Lousy quizzes. But very uncanny vocabulary, as you said.) I sleep poorly if I gave to be somewhere extra early the next morning; keep waking up every couple of hours to check the time. Ugh. The German teacher at my school says he often wakes up around 3 a.m. or so and can't get back to sleep, so he'll use the time to correct papers and essays. I've had dreams - nightmares? - of grading tests: deciding if a definition is acceptable or not, calculating their grade. Ugh. Hard to rest when your mind says no!
That was karmic.
Even tho dreams can be all over the place and crazy, I find them wildly entertaining. Thanks for sharing yours :D
If we take to analyzing, what does that last one make me to your unconscious?
That first one was freaky. And so random that you would be dreaming about our "mommy days".
That's what you get for studying French.
I usually dream about polygamy, or that Christian and I are still trying to decide to get married even though we have four kids...and I feel really guilty...Or that I'm back at BYU, failing all my classes cuz I didn't know I was still enrolled all these years...
Thanks for clearing a spot for me. I wonder if being snagged unexpectedly from your routine to come down for your Papa's 70th added to your subconscious anxiety.
I find that all of my dreams are driven by my anxieties, whether the anxieties are major or barely recognizable. Once I was caring for a newborn in a glass-walled cabin when a ferocious bear began to try to break its way in. Then, I surprised myself the other day by having yet another still-in-college-but-forgot-to-attend-a-class-or-two dream, or nightmare.
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