Caterwauling

What a weird little day. I awoke before 6 a.m., sobbing. Which usually denotes a weekday, so I was understandably confused. 😉 I don’t know what the hell I dreamed about that made me nuts, but seriously, I thought the ritual was to cry oneself to sleep and not into waking instead!

I do remember one of my dreams. I was in Old Town Alexandria, at a wedding. My own. (Stop laughing — I dream in fiction!)

It was a breezy summer day and I was wearing white (Dear Peanut Gallery: I KNOW. Move along now.) and a bunch of us were at The Chart House, hanging out on the pier and laughing, drinking and being merry.

I’ve never eaten there, as it’s out of my price range. But I used to love to go hang out on the boardwalk and sit on the rocks of the Potomac River and watch planes descend into National Airport, so it seemed right to be there.

I saw lots of familiar faces (several of you bloggers were there, even if I’ve never seen you before, I recognized you from your profile pictures). But more importantly, I saw the groom. So, any man who meets me in the next 100 years should be forewarned that I will be peering into his face to see if there’s a match or even a passing resemblance. 😉 I don’t ever see faces in my dreams, so this was strange in and of itself.

But the real bizarro part of it all was that everyone was doing a champagne toast, and I announced that I would be leaving the workforce to be a full-time wife and mom.

*faints*

*loads gun, cocks barrel, splatters brains on wall*

So I was telling this dream to my mom today (she requires encouragement that I’m not entirely disinterested in the concept), and she swears she had a dream the same night of me with two little boys. Hahahaaaaaaa, funny! *shudder*

Talk about taking dreams and turning them into nightmares!

CHEERS!

I expect I was thinking about kids because my best friend had called when I got home and we talked for a few hours, well past 1:30 a.m. She told me how she’d handed sippy cups to her kids, ages 1 and 3. The 3-year-old sat next to the younger one, put her arm around his shoulders, clinked her sippy cup to his and said, “Cheers!”

My friend was stunned because she’s never had a drink in front of them. But before we knew the first one was even in existence, she and I had done many rounds of clinked glasses. (We clink both the top and the bottom. It’s our rule. Not sure why — we were drunk when it came about, and it stuck.)

So, I’m sure her daughter learned it in utero. In any event, we’re so proud!

It’s bad enough that I’m rolling home past 10 p.m. with a pile of work still undone, but to come home to cozy up my favorite spot on the floor (as who could afford a couch with fucked-up memories of vacation plans gone awry to recover from?) and see a big, wet shit streak on it courtesy of my elder cat just makes those long, crazy days worth it. Not.

Some days, I just get tired of having to be OK with the fact that this is how it always is and this looks to be the best it’ll be for the time being. It’s hard to dream from a shit-stained floor. Or maybe I’m not OK with it but I’m just too tired to react.

I was talking to a freelance instructor this week — an otherwise wholly unimpressive sort — about how she got her own business launched. And she said, very simply, that those who can’t stop thinking about it are never going to do anything BUT think about it. It’s the person who says, fuck it, why can’t today be the day, who’s got the best chance of making it work and just doing it already. It’s just that discipline thing that’s been my barrier, but when am I going to be motivated enough to overcome it?

I looked at her and realized that I’ve got just as much to offer, intellectually, not to mention I’d add my own brand of sparkle that would put everyone else out of business. And I wonder why not try. Seriously. Exhaustion and ennui have become a security blanket in my life. I feel OK if I’m disappointed and annoyed. I’ve learned to revel in my existential discontent. In fact, I don’t know how to function outside of it.

But I need to figure out how to reverse that and start loving being alive. A day without dysfunction, even if it’s all only in my head — can I handle it? Be encouraged enough to try a second day without wanting to tie a noose around my neck and jump off a chair? consider it a victory to achieve something more than scrubbing the cat shit out of the carpet? I s’pose there’s a first for everything!