Chapter 24
And…how does that make you feel?

And the weird dreams continue. I fell asleep today for a little nap. I don’t nap well, I don’t come out of naps well and after I have woken up I am unsure where I am or what I am doing and I am very cranky. Needless to say I rarely ever take naps. But today I was so tired that I laid down on my bed and fell asleep. Then came the dream, in which it was my birthday, except that I was born in January and the dream was taking place in summer time. I told people about my birthday though and I told them that dinner was at 5pm. I think it was a Thursday too. Anyway, so I picked up my dad from somewhere…and then drove us, somewhere, it wasn’t home, and I can’t tell if I thought it was or if it was my brother’s house. When we were driving my dad said, “Man, that fog is bad” and I kept driving because when he first said it I had no clue what he said. It wasn’t until later, when I was trying to make a left turn and there were cops all around (just driving like normal, by the way I was ok, no ticket) that I realized that there was really bad fog. So I turned to my dad and said, “Oh is that what you were talking about? Yeah the fog is really bad.” I braced myself for this turn in the road because I knew it was coming and that’s how in the dream I knew where I was going, but thinking about it now none of it makes sense. I also had this fear that someone or something, real or supernatural was going to pop out of the fog and cause me to swerve and get into an accident. We get to this really nice house and my dad and I get the groceries into the house and he starts making my cake. I remember saying or thinking that I hoped everyone could make it to the house okay for dinner. Then it occurs to me that I didn’t tell my mom or my sisters what time dinner was so I was just hoping they would come over. I remember getting upset at one sister and my dad told me she lived in North Carolina and couldn’t get here that fast and I think the other sister had work and couldn’t get out of it. My mom comes home and my best friend from middle school is there with her baby! She doesn’t have a baby in real life and she probably shouldn’t, especially after this dream. We go to have dinner in the downstairs of this house and I look out on of the basement windows at the neighbor’s house and there is a big red sign with white letters that says, “This house is closed due to repair.” And I remember thinking to myself, “that house is new why do they need repairs?” And then a bad feeling came, like something horrible had happened there but I couldn’t remember the details, something to do with the children. So I go and sit down with my parents and my former best friend and her baby who looks more like a scratched up cabbage patch kid than anything else. My dad starts to say something and my mom tries to stop him and then he goes ahead saying that he needs to tell me this. He then proceeds to tell me that it might be best for me if I move out, my mom is all upset because she wants me to live at the house forever and my dad keeps insisting. I have mixed emotions I’ve been trying to tell them that I have a place to live and I can move in within a couple of weeks but at the same time being told I can’t live with them anymore upset me. So I get up and leave the room ‘to think’ and I change into my pajamas. (Don’t ask it doesn’t make sense to me either). And I remember thinking as I put on the pajamas that I had to drive home so why was I changing, and then I decide I would change out of them when it was time to leave, I just needed to feel comfortable right now. Then when I feel ready I go back into the room and my old best friend is holding her baby in a position like she doesn’t want to hold her and the baby’s face is scratched up (as I mentioned it was like this before) and I wonder what kind of mother this girl is and does she just drop her like her cell phone and figure things will still be ok? She starts to tell me that she has had it and I am looking at the baby who is looking back at me and she isn’t even crying, she’s just looking at me like, “can you believe this girl?” So I asked what happened and she goes off about something I can’t remember and I told her she should really be more careful with that baby because she’ll grow up hating her, and then I get a mental picture of that girl growing up with her face all scratched like that and am grateful I don’t have to raise her (sounds rude, but this is really what happened in the dream). So then my friend sticks the baby out towards me, and I look at the little girl wondering what my friend expects me to do…she doesn’t want me to hold her does she!? Finally I hold out my hands and take the baby. Who then starts to fuss, and I try to show my friend what you do when the baby is crying, how you help them, and show them love, and figure out what they want, because I don’t really remember the baby being there during dinner so I think in my mind I thought she had been sleeping. This baby was ugly, real ugly, mostly due to the scratches and if her mother took better care of her those would heal and who knows. Anyway, I tried to show affection towards this baby and hesitantly kissed it on the cheek to show my friend that mothers kiss their babies on the cheek. But anyway, so I stand up to rock the baby even though I know sleep can’t be what this baby is looking for and my mom (who is suddenly laying in bed and so is my dad and my friend is sitting on the edge of their bed…which I had been too right before I stood up) asks me to go and get a video clip about the Shock-O Bottom (It’s part of the downtown city back home) and it has to do with musicians and since my friend is a musician I figure my mom is trying to cheer her up. But I’m frustrated because I have a crying baby and I don’t know where in the world that video clip is. So my mom starts telling me where it is and it’s as though I am inside a computer because she tells me where on her computer it is and I access it from the room right there as I am standing and the video clip comes up and my friend stands up to get close to it and watch it, and it’s about her old band, the one she can’t sing for anymore because she had a baby. Then my phone rang so I didn’t get to see what happened, but man, what a weird dream.