The leaves are falling, I really need to rake, and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. This year’s holiday will be a quiet one, as we will be home alone. No mother-in-law. No step-mother. No planned trips. Just me, The Coach, our clan of critters, a jumbo sized pile of grading, and two steaks pork chops on the grill. Our Christmas plans are equally dismal. We had thought about driving to the Grand Canyon, but that’s not gonna’ happen. Gas prices are high, Sally is not the most fuel efficient car in the world, I’m a little broke because I need to pre-pay my trip to Mexico, and 10 days in a car with two dogs is a little daunting. My family — what’s left of it — has completely bailed on Family Christmas Eve, seeing how my aunt and uncle will be headed for Q-Tip land, a.k.a., Florida.
Is it any wonder that I am having really weird dreams about my family? When I was a kid, we used to load up the car Wednesday after school and drive 12 hours to my aunt’s house, arriving about the time one of my female relatives was pulling a dried out turkey out of the oven. We used to do the same for Christmas, leaving the warmer climes where we lived for the snow-covered yards of my father’s northern kin. We always stayed with my aunt and uncle, who had this big, huge honkin’ house. My step-sisters hated sleeping upstairs because they swore it was haunted, but my cousins had a kick ass foosball table on the second floor landing. My aunt always had a real tree set up in the formal living room — which I remember as red, but my aunt swears was pink with red furniture. Of course, she swears they had a dog named Speedbump or Bumper (or something like that), but I don’t ever remember seeing a dog in that house (and my uncle is petrified of my dogs, so what’s up with that?).
I tell you this because I had a dream last night that involved my aunt’s old house — the house from my childhood memories, not the prefab house they live in today. In this dream, the Coach and I bought this old, drafty house. (That house was probably about three times the size of my currently drafty house, but I digress.) Anyways, in the dream, we went around the house putting up Frost King plastic sheeting on all the windows. Only, about two months’ after the winterizing plan, I realized that the house was a duplex and that we never did the other side of the house! In the dream, I thought to myself: ”Well, that’s just fucking odd. I don’t remember this house being a duplex when my aunt lived here” and “How on earth have we lived here for a couple years and never knew that it was a duplex? We could have been renting out the other side to help pay the mortgage.”
Whatever. I have no clue what this dream actually meant. All I know is that I have never dreamt about moving to LMTOTPTOHAMcFTY (a.k.a., Little Midwest Town on the Prairie That’s Only Had A McDonald’s for 10 Years). And while I might drool over those big houses, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to pay the electric bill. Hell, my boss told me that he had an electric bill that was $1000 for one month last winter. Good grief. Who the hell can afford that???
Understanding dreams is always fun… dreams tend to reflect my phobias–like getting stuck in immigration or customs.
When I was really little, I used to have nightmares about pink spiders. I *hate* spiders. Maybe that’s about the same as your immigration phobia. Only, you have to deal with your phobia more often than I do. The Evil Kitten has become quite the spider killer.