dreams

This dream can't be said to be recurring, because it's not, in its details. All the same, though, I have it. Once a year maybe, sometimes twice, sometimes once every two, I have a dream where I'm pregnant. Or I've just given birth.

I don't have the baby. The baby is nowhere to be seen.

It's not a stress dream. I am not hunting high and low looking for the baby, worried that it is shrivelling up somewhere with a last mewl, I am not worried that I am a very bad person for letting that happen.

I am calmly thinking. Oh well. The baby will be alright.

Sometimes I find the baby. Sometimes I don't.

Two nights ago, the baby appeared. I had just finished thinking The baby will be alright when I looked down at my cupped hands and there was the baby. My baby was the tiniest swiss army knife, the size of two rice grains; oxblood, the silver corkscrew tucked in safe along the side.

I found the baby and I loved it.

Ohhhh, I loved this baby. Just like they said. You fall. In love. My tiniest swiss army knife baby.

The alarm started beeping at 7 am this morning and I pawed along the ledge around Eric's mattress, found my thermometer, popped it in my mouth and hit the on button. I didn't close my eyes again because I never opened them. I lay very still. To get an accurate reading of your basal body temperature, you have to have had 3 or 4 hours solid sleep, and not have moved around too much. Movement can raise your temp and give you a false reading.

Eric rolled over.

"I'm buying a gun from the guy. At the Shanghai. The one... "

My eyes certainly opened then. No one has ever before told me they were buying a gun as a way of saying good morning. But what could I say? I needed this temperature, having missed yesterday's after a 4 am pee. If moving around a bit was going to possibly give me a bad reading then opening my mouth was definitely going to fuck that temperature up. So I just said "Mmm?" as Eric continued with the details, the oddness accruing as he went.

The thermometer beeped. It fell out when I opened my mouth. "You're buying a gun?"

"Yeah, weird dream, eh?"

I started breathing, scrabbled for the pen and my chart, scribbled what might turn out to be an illegible 61, turned back over and snuggled myself under Eric's arm. "Morning, baby."

Yesterday morning, I had a dream that Eric and I were at a cottage. I was inside. There was a screen door that I opened to talk to him. He was sitting at a dark red picnic table in a clearing to the side of house. There was a big fish tank behind him and a big fish tank to his left. I was outside. Looking at the fish, asking which ones were these and which ones were these. They were fantastical fish with swoopy fins and very bright colours.

Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from Eric saying that his severum had had babies. 300 of them. Give or take.

In the wee smas today, I had a dream I was chasing a mouse down my hall.

At 6:35, I woke up to the sound of Freya hunting. Mouse hunting, I knew before I'd even opened my eyes. Her mouse hunting sounds are very distinctive. But by the time I'd woken up fully, put on my glasses and house coat and had gotten a plastic tub, there was no chasing for me. The mouse was very dead.

What will I dream of tonight? Do you figure on death or life?