Catching up

I seem to have added a new category of anxiety dream to my repertroire. I have the height dreams (including the rickety stairs ones), and bridge dreams (which I suppose also incorporates height), and water dreams (and sometimes bridge over water dreams, and of course the rickety bridge over water dreams), and the driving off the bridge into water dreams . . . Also the travel anxiety dreams, i.e., forgetting to make reservations, forgetting to pack, missing the plane; and of course the getting lost ones. Last night was a new one. I had a knitting anxiety dream.

In the dream, I was supposed to go somewhere with some people--I don't know if it was just for the day, or for the weekend, or what. It seemed to be people from work. They were waiting for me, and I was late because I couldn't find some yarn that I wanted to take with me. I was in the middle of knitting pair of socks, had finished one and had started the next one, and I was afraid that I would run out of yarn while I was away from home.

This is a very real fear among knitters, not just me, but it's one of the things that I think about and plan for when going out of town. What am I going to knit? And what if I run out of yarn? The chances of actually knitting while on vacation are fairly slim, but if I don't have something to knit with me at all times, then I'm assured of having a nice long space of time with nothing to occupy my hands.

I knit in line at the post office, while waiting at the license bureau, at movies before the movies start, and occasionally at stop lights.

So anyway, in the dream I was searching everywhere for another ball of sock yarn. I looked in the linen closet (which was apparently my parents' linen closet, funnily enough), and in all the drawers and everywhere I could think of, but couldn't find this one particular ball of Opal sock yarn that I knew I had. I found some really ugly acid green acrylic yarn with fuzzy black "flags," and I briefly considered taking that and starting a new pair of socks with it, but even in a dream, that didn't sound like a good idea.

The situation with the cats is getting better. A few nights ago we tried leaving both of them loose in the house when we went to bed, and that seems to be working fine again. The problems tend to start after I get up, and they both want to come into the bathroom with me, or when we go downstairs and Dinah wants to sit on my lap and Pye wants to sit in the window. That seems to be too close for comfort.

It's been so stressful and upsetting, and I absolutely could not figure out what to do, but things are beginning to calm down and it seems like everything might finally be okay. Last night was a breakthrough of sorts--I woke up in the middle of the night when I felt Dinah climb over me to the middle of the bed where Pyewacket usually sleeps. By the time I was awake enough to figure out what was going on, I could hear the sounds of a bath in progress--Dinah had requested a head bath, and Pyewacket was accommodating her.

I nudged Bob, and whispered, "Pyewacket is washing Dinah's head!" and he said we'd better separate them before it went on too long, but I asked him to leave them alone for just a few minutes more. Generally what happens is, when Pyewacket is finished--whether or not Dinah is finished--Pye will nip her, and that didn't seem like a good idea. After a few more minutes of washing, I reached down and picked Dinah up and put her up by me. Then Pye sat up and looked at her, and Dinah hissed, so I think I made the right move.

The rest of the night was quiet, and there weren't any incidents this morning, either, so while I'm sure it will be up and down for awhile, at least it doesn't look like we'll have to get rid of Dinah any time soon. Thank goodness.

Let's see, what else? I got flowers at work yesterday! Cello sent them--yellow roses in a dark blue glass vase. Gorgeous. And Bob has a pet toad at work. He said there's a toad that apparently lives in his watering can, and when he goes out to water the flowers, the toad clings to the side of the can and rides along. Bob says he's careful to leave a little bit of water in the can and to set it in the shade when he's finished.

And like everyone else in the world, I'm reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I'm going to have to hurry up and read it this weekend, because I know I'm going to accidentally find out the ending if I don't finish it soon. Friends who don't read the books (there are more of them than you might think) keep threatening to accidentally reveal the ending to me, since they don't have any reason to avoid finding out. Dan was teasing me on iChat this afternoon, and I was going, "La la la, I can't HEAR you," and then he admitted that he couldn't even remember who it was, because it didn't mean anything to him. He said maybe he'd find out, and then pay Dave to shout it out when I least expected it. Boys.

Oh, and speaking of books, I just finished listening to the audio version of The Time Traveler's Wife. What an amazing book! I'm looking forward to actually reading it now, rather than listening to it, but I might have to wait awhile since the ending was really wrenching. I told Misty that I'd been listening in the car, and she said she wasn't sure she would have been able to do that and drive at the same time, and I totally understood that. The morning that it ended, I had to sit and compose myself for a few minutes before I went in, wipe the tears off my face, and hope that no one noticed that I'd been sobbing in the car.

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