Lately I’m baby-sitting 4 out of 5 weekdays (1:30pm onward), which is awkward... Weekdays, during the day, are when I have time to myself to write, work on projects, edit photos, take care of plants, rest, screw around, or do whatever it is I most need to get done.
This morning was a fine example of my mind’s struggle to find a way to take it all on, instead of sighing and accepting that, once again, I’m being thwarted by my life. I actually have a handful of Thoughts entries that I haven’t been able to finish off and html, and I’d thought I would finish at least one of them this morning (this one is going to be very very very hastily and sloppily written). Unfortunately, after a little Twitter and coffee and trying to start checking my email (which I still need to do) I realised I was dazed and needed to lie down before the baby arrived.
Doing so is a little worrisome (understatement), I wouldn’t want to be thoroughly unconscious when the baby and his Mom arrived at my door. And it bothered me that, once again, I wouldn’t even be writing something simple. I did manage to sleep for about an hour, though, and the worries played themselves out in my dreams.
Part 1 of the dream probably sounds as trite as can be. A guy, who was me but I was also an outside observer (I think I began as him, and then became the outside observer due to writing worries), was potentially getting involved with a young woman he’d met who was about his age. I know that part ran on, but I can’t remember it outside of vagaries. He soon met a rather stunning older, but not much older, woman. Something, I no longer have any idea what, gave him the impression that she was long-lived and near-immortal.
This is where I began parting ways with him. He was thinking about vampires, and even asked her if she could make him one (she said no), I was thinking about Miriam from The Hunger who is actually a Lamia. Yes, yes, of course I had the hots for Miriam. Who didn’t? But I wouldn’t advise becoming her companion, even though I don’t personally fault her for giving in to loneliness (to be fair, she could warn people of what they’re in for).
Because I’d withdrawn, I left “the guy” behind and instead watched not-Miriam having a conversation with some other guy who was aware of her reality. She did find the guy who had been me appealing, but the problem was... the younger girl he was involved with was her daughter. This is getting to be a bit of a soap, except in that if it was a soap he’d be sleeping with the daughter and her grandmother by now and then hitting on her Mom. New guy asked if she had looked at the guy, because apparently whatever she was had some kind of mesmerising gaze (as did her daughter, hence formerly-me falling into lust or whatever with both of them). This was also apparently because... they were elves.
Okay, vampires or Lamia being mistaken for vampires or whatever wasn’t already overdone enough so my brain switched to elves. Probably because I saw The Hobbit recently, and Galadriel was in it. Yeah, yeah, I had a thing for Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings books when I was a kid. I very badly wanted to be like her. Who didn’t? You might be wondering if I ever had a thing for male characters. Sure! When I was 10 I had a crush on Justin the rat in Secret of NIMH (the book, otherwise known as Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH, I thought the movie sucked hard).
I can’t (unfortunately) for the life of me remember what it was, but something in the conversation they had seemed great enough to overcome the *sigh* factor of vampires and elves and make me think “I must write that down!”. It was so utterly perfect for... something... I even spent time trying to figure out what in the dream, and eventually settled on a short story because I wouldn’t have time for anything else.
The dream then devolved into a chaotic combination of trying to find my way out of it so I could write the words down before I forgot them (didn’t work out), and trying to make sure I was up in time for baby-sitting (that I managed with 1/2 hour to spare). Several times in the dream I managed to get up and walk out to the living room, where my computer is (the main reason why my work hours are those hours when I’m home alone, I’ve already been disrupted in hastily writing this but I managed to recover my thought chain), but each time that only spurred the dream into a new story. Including visitors dropping by as soon as I was about to write. Of course.
I don’t remember how many stories passed, most of them seemed pretty trivial. The last one involved me being in a prisoner work camp, where I (really myself this time) and some guy I was friends with were trying to protect a baby. I know life solidly sucked there, and I had known I needed to get the baby out of there, but then I became a little confused again (and, yes, I was still thinking about what it was that I’d needed to write down, and finding no way to manage it).
My friend came down a short flight of concrete stairs out in the workyard and hailed me. I wandered over, he shushed me and said we’d be in deep shit if we got caught talking. Then (as I nonchalantly hovered near him without looking at him) he conspiratorily told me a plan, most of which I’ve forgotten by now, about how, when something or other happened, we would be able to do something or other else to escape with the baby.
The plan involved lunch time, because eating was also on my real life to-do list that I was rapidly running out of time for.
It seemed like it could work! It would be terrifying, but trying was necessary and it could work. I agreed tentatively to the plan, but very honestly told him I would need to see how much of an anxiety attack I was going to have over it. I walked off, feeling the fear.
And then I thought “But, wait, why do we need to escape? I can write in the morning now, and it’s only 4 days a week... it’s better than when baby-sitting was starting at 11am and I had nothing...”. This, of course, was waking reality intruding on my dream reality plots. Needing to take the dream baby and escape from the workyard was real in the dream, but the part of me that kept trying to go write down a dream conversation for a short story couldn’t figure out why I would run away with the dream baby and turn baby-sitting into a 24-7 job.
Fortunately that dilemma seemed to confuse me enough to wake me up. Unfortunately I was so dazed from several switches in reality, during the several dream attempts at getting to my computer, that by the time I’d had some coffee and started figuring out who I actually am (amidst several different dream versions of me) the conversation I’d needed to write down had become an amorphous dark blob in my brain and about all I could clearly remember were the cliches I rejected in my sleep.
And then it was time to baby-sit. Oh well.
There was some potential good news at the end of the day, though. It’s possible that a job change for the real baby’s Mom will result in me mostly only baby-sitting on Thursdays and Fridays. If that works out, I’ll have 3 days to write and catch up on other work and I, hopefully, won’t need to be so selfishly torn about whether or not to help a poor baby escape oppressive workyard prisoner conditions.
Cross your fingers for me! At least if it doesn’t work out this might convince me that I can churn out a corny little Thoughts entry at light-speed. Even if I can’t finish figuring out what to include in the 1st CPAOD Sampler, plot to take over the world (if my cat is Pinky, she’s direly jealous of the competing lap lump who has taken over our plotting time), sleep with somewhat less convoluted dreams, or do much of anything else.
(No, I don’t want to take over the world. I obviously want some me time.)
Back to the Thoughts Index.