Oh, Oh, Dream Weaver

I'd like to know who casts the actors in my dreams.

Seriously. We need to have a chat.

And the scripts? The weird assortment of characters, arbitrary plots and subplots that never seem to resolve and don't quite bear much resemblance to anyone I've ever met before.

I don't believe for a minute these things come out of my mind.

I mean? A monkey? Sitting in the driver's seat of a beat-up 1949 Mercury coupe, to which, evidently, I own the keys?

I've never seen a car like that, and only know what one looks like because of the wonders of Google.

But that's beside the point.

The car wouldn't start.

Last night I dreamt it was Christmas eve, and as it would appear most of us are wont to do, I spent the morning before a long trip to grandmother's house (someplace I have the feeling we will never, ever arrive) with my children at the Y, swimming in a pool teaming with dogs.

Our dog – a larger, more subdued version of herself – hangs out on long, steep staircase to the pool with a youthful Jazz trumpeter who is singing the Blues.

She has no leash.

Which, for some reason, I feel the need to immediately rectify so I tell Ittybit, who is her own, usual self, to take the shopping cart she's been skating with over to the hardware store and buy a leash with the money I painted onto potato chips.

She obliges, dear, sweet thing that she is and off she goes.

The Champ is busy cleaning loose fur out of the pool filters and turning the clumps into LEGO bricks, as I assume any child would do given a little bit of creativity and the director of some maniacal dream weaver.

I have often thought of dog hair as an underutilized byproduct of animal husbandry. So … that one MIGHT have been my contribution to the script

… But also, beside the point.

Speaking of husbands. … Where was mine?

He didn't have a role at all.

I tossed and turned and waited for my daughter to return with her shopping cart and the leash we would need to keep our not-wandering dog from not wandering.

But I couldn't sit around. I kept taking $5 cab rides within a walking distance to check on her.

Only the taxi was a yellow Beetle, and it had no doors.

Finally she arrived with the leash, which, when clipped to the dogs collar sent her running in all directions.

A woman, with the brut force of an army picked up the pooch and tossed her overhand, up two flights of stairs and into the pool.

As she did my husband appeared … and bit my nose.

It was a snap, really, more than a bite.

But it woke me up.

It was still dark outside. The house was silent. I checked the clock; it said 5 a.m.

I considered going back to sleep in an effort to see how it would end, and then I realized it was probably best to try and read until morning. Forget the whole thing. Chalk it up to fever dream and leave it at that.

The last thing I wanted to do was witness whatever kind of craziness was waiting for me at granny's house should my dreamers be able to get that darn Mercury started.

Then I'd have to admit I was out of my mind.