M&Ms and Dreams

I have a candy jar on my desk.  I like to have peanut M&Ms in it, because I think they look cheerful.  But after the jar gets emptied (who doesn't like peanut M&Ms?), I think it looks depressing.  There's something very sad about an empty candy jar.  M&Ms are so pretty.  Especially the seasonal ones.  Obviously I like the Christmas ones best.  And at Christmas I splurge and fill it with the almond ones.  Mmmmm.

Yesterday I did my shopping.  Well, most of it.  And while I was out I got the giant bag of M&Ms to fill my jar.  Much better.  Sort of like after I shower and I don't feel like I'm actually clean until I brush my teeth, I clean the house and I don't feel like it's done unless my candy jar is full and I have at least one candle burning.  While I was out I saw that the Christmas stuff is out, folks.  Sorry for all of you that don't like how early it is.  I quietly loved it.  My sweet J was with me, and I swear I didn't make any comments to him about it at all, but on the way home he asked if we could put Christmas music on the radio!!!  I was so proud.  But I didn't have my iPod with me.

My mom is coming over today.  I think it will be so nice to have her here, especially since it's not really for any reason.  She can just hang out and have coffee, maybe play some video games with the kids or help me bake my pumpkin bread.  These are things she hasn't been able to do freely for a very long time, so it will feel good.  It's funny how the new normal is something you tiptoe into, as if you're not sure it's okay or not.  But she's doing an amazing job.

So as I sit here today I feel sort of weird.  I had bizzar-o dreams last night.  I think I usually do.  When I remember my dreams, it's usually because they were like some twisted movie, and it takes me a while to recover from them.  I have to lay there and tell myself what day it is, where I am, and bring myself back into reality.  And it takes me a while to shake it and feel normal again.  Much of the time my dreams are of danger.  Either someone is trying to kill me or I'm in some sort of natural disaster.  They also involve my kids or the hubby being in danger.  And they're always like some Tim Burton movie, very surreal, colorful, and usually impossible.  Like falling off a cliff and then suddenly being on an old-fashioned bicycle in mid-air when it turns into just a useless fork or something.  As if a fork would be any less useful than a bicycle when you're falling through the air.  Last night I dreamt that I had a job--this is another recurring theme for me.  Either I'm at a work place or a school as a student, and I'm in big trouble, either about to get fired for something crazy or I am desperately trying to get to the school to turn in a project that I know I'm about to be expelled for if it's not handed in on time.  Anyway, last night.  I worked at this wacky place where all my old friends also worked.  When you got there or left you rode this scary contraption with these seats that stuck out of a cable, one above the other, and they lifted you to your floor.  You always try to be on the top seat because they fall often and seriously injure the people beneath you.  How stupid!  And I had to ride it twice because my coffee machine was broken on my floor and I had to use the one on the floor below me.  So this morning I woke up and I was convinced there was something wrong with my coffee machine (God forbid).  But it's fine.

I have dreams about losing my kids, the hubby divorcing me, all kinds of terrible things.  I don't usually have pleasant dreams.  I just wish if my dreams had to be so hallucinatory that I could just not remember them.  Hubby almost never remembers his dreams.  How nice that would be.  Maybe I should do some reading about what these dreams mean, but I'm not too sure I want to know.  But once in a long while I will have a dream that I finished a project (like painting a room or spring cleaning) and I wake up and am disappointed.  Dreams are so weird!!!

Ugh.  I have to get to work.  My kiddos are still asleep.  How lovely for them.  I need to clean the downstairs bathroom.  That should bring me back to reality!