A Bit Disturbing

I awakened from a dream early one morning.

All I could remember was that there was an eighth dwarf.

Named Shredder.

I don't know what to do with that information.

On the Day of the Dead

I probably shouldn't have been surprised to have received a visit from the departed. After all, they say the veil between the worlds is thin at this time of the year.

Yesterday I'd put Josie down for a nap in her crib at the foot of the bed. "You lie down too, Meema! On the big bed."

Well, okay. I was sleepy and the room was warm as I'd built a fire in the little wood stove. I'll just rest my eyes, a bit, then sneak out once she goes to sleep, I told myself.

And then my late mother-in-law and my mother, also late, came to the door to see Josie.

At first I told them not to talk so loud, as Josie was asleep. But they were insistent. And now she was waking up. So I said, "Look, Josie, it's-" then suddenly realized she'd never met them and had no name for them. So I used the names her daddy had for them, "... it's Gran and Virginia."

After which the dream devolved into an emergency situation involving a leg of lamb in the microwave (not something I'd ever do) and grease pouring out and dripping off the walls of the pantry where the microwave lives in real life. A grease fire about to happen.

And then the phone (once there was a landline in the pantry) rang, and someone began a long litany of complaints about the writing class (not mine) they were taking.

"Are you learning anything from it, however indirect?"  I asked, just before I woke up.

I lay there pondering about the dream. And wondering if I'd learned anything from it, however indirect.

Neither my mother nor my mother-in-law really approved of me, and our relationships were less than ideal. And they didn't much like each other either. But lying there thinking about the dream, I realized that they are both a part of Josie. (As are her six other great grandparents. And her sixteen great-great grandparents and her thirty-two great great grandparents . . .)

And maybe, in her, are all these differences reconciled.

Maybe. At any rate, the dream made me feel more warmly about those two.  Which was a nice gift on the Day of the Dead.

We've Missed You on the Frontier

The plangent notes of the bouzouki filled the air in the smoky tavern. Without thinking, I extended my arms and began the traditional knee-dipping Greek dance. Behind me a man said, "We've missed you on the frontier." 

And as I went into the first low dip, my left leg cramped and I awakened. The next few minutes were spent trying to ease the cramp and wondering where exactly that dream had come from. And where it would have gone... 

And I mused on the word frontier  -- a magical word. We have so few frontiers these days -- these days when condos and expressways proliferate in what were once frontiers.

But what was the frontier referred to in the dream? And why Greek dancing? Alas, my subconscious leads a life of its own -- evidently far more interesting than mine -- and it keeps quiet about it.

I could almost believe that it inadvertently slipped up when it let that dream through and then realized its mistake and shut it down with a cramp before I could learn any more.

(Disclaimer: My only experience with Greek dancing is watching the movie Zorba the Greek -- there's a clip HERE.)

Chasing Steeples

 As we were watching a DVD of Inspector Morse last night (alas, we've run through all the Foyle's War episodes,) I found myself thinking of our last trip to England -- a walking tour in the Cotswolds in 2006.  We made our way along well-marked public paths through fields and woods and almost always, as we approached the next village, we would sight the steeple of the largest and oldest church.

 We managed to visit a few stately homes and even statelier gardens but my favorite parts were less grand ... the pastures (humming 'Sheep May Safely Graze') . . .

 

and the tidy vegetable gardens.

 The houses set me dreaming . . . how charming to live in a cottage with a thatched roof!

Or, in this house below, which I saw only at a distance. It was perhaps my favorite, isolated as few others were.

 But a quick perusal of the ads offering houses for sale let us know that not in this lifetime could we ever afford property in the Cotswolds.

Not even a fixer-upper.