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Thursday, May 31
another crazy dream
So the other night Mr. Wonderful was telling me about that hoax from the 60s where conspiracy theorists thought that Paul was dead. They found all these "clues" on album art, in lyrics, in lyrics played backwards... Supposedly Paul died and they filled his spot in the band with a look-a-like. Anyway, we read webpage after webpage about it, laughing at some of the clues and shivering at others. I read them aloud while he was putting a puzzle together. We went to bed and I had this dream...
I dreamed that my brother died. My mom and I were together and she was doing her whole "oh-well-it's-done-with-nothing-to-be-done-about-it-now" thing. But we had to decide what to put in the ground on top of his coffin. We had several pieces of fabric that we were trying to decide on. One was the set of green curtains my mom had made for him that had the mushrooms on it... she didn't really want to put them in the ground because she had worked so hard on them, but she thought they would be best on top of his coffin. Then mom and I were driving somewhere -- perhaps the viewing? -- and I found out that Mr. Wonderful was dead, too. I wasn't upset about it right away, I was like... numb. But we got to the place we were going I was sitting in a chair and I just melted to the floor like I had no bones and I started to cry these huge wracking sobs. I was so hysterical I couldn't talk, you know when kids get so upset and they're hiccupping and sobbing and trying to tell you something? I was crawling on the floor, more like slithering, and I was begging someone to tell me it wasn't true, to take me to him right away or I would die right there. I can remember staring at the floor and the hardwood floor had white paint drops on it and I was picking at them with my fingernails but they were smooth and it was like someone had varnished over them and I couldn't find a way to scrape them up. At least I didn't eat any flowers in this one, but I take it back about the other dream being the worst... this was the worst.
So anyway, after I ranted and raved in that blog the other day about Mr. Wonderful being so hard on the kids, we finally talked about it last night and we got NOWHERE. I was like "I feel like you're too hard on them and they are going to start feeling like they're not good enough for you. It's my job to protect them from things that would hurt and if it were me, I would be hurt if you interrupted me and corrected everything I said." (Bean is still learning to pronounce things properly and he is FOREVER correcting her. She's only three, SHE'LL GET IT.) And I told him that. He was like "I'm not going to stop trying to teach her." So we basically got nowhere on that. Then he was like "They don't listen to me, they look at you to see if you're going to back me up and you never do." Well I haven't lately because I don't agree with you and I think you're being too hard on them. And so I told him THAT. We just went round and round for HOURS until he finally says he's not happy. Pulling all this "what happened to us" and "is this going to work out?" crap. Great, now he's going to break up with me. What the fuck. He said I'm just so negative and I let myself get so stressed out that I can't be happy and that makes him unhappy and he's not an unhappy person. Okay, now we're pinning all his happiness on me. Well, obviously this upset me because I don't want to do anything to ever make him unhappy and I would die if I thought I did something to push him away and I lost him. So I apologized and told him I'd try harder to make sure the kids saw us as equals and I'd try harder to be happy... but wait... where did he do any conceding? Where did he say he was going to do anything differently? He didn't. He did eventually say he would only correct her pronunciation AFTER she finished her thought. I just think finishing a THOUGHT out loud is more important at THREE YEARS OLD than actually saying the words right. So what if she says "yuv" instead of "love?" SHE'LL GET IT. She CAN say the L sound, it's just that she's thinking faster now and it'll take a while to get into the habit of concentrating and saying it right. That's a lot of pressure on a three year old, let her get it in her own time, don't make her feel like she's just not good enough for you because she can't say her SSSes yet. Anyway, I fell asleep feeling like we got nothing accomplished but he's acting like everything's fine today.
In the next chapter we go back to the fun world of cable technical support…