Klowns in my Koffee

Daily Kup (My Life in Dreams)
I had a strange dream last night. I often dream of a house where we lived when I was a child. It was an old farmhouse, a portion of which had been built before the Civil War. It creaked and groaned and was an uncomfortable place to be alone. I would often have the disquieting feeling of being watched when no other living person was there.

Later, as an adult and more than 1000 miles away, I would dream of the house dragging me against my will up the stairway or down to a dark corner of the basement. In the dreams, I never find out what lies in wait for me because I wake quaking before reaching the end.

My family sold the property to a man who boarded it up and let it stay vacant for twenty years. During that time, it was vandalized repeatedly. I drove by on a visit to see the front door broken in and gaping like a black mouth. I stayed in the car.

My family, still feeling a sense of ownership for the property that was no longer theirs, would occasionally slip into the house to retrieve a vintage light fixture or other item from the increasingly stripped and damaged residence on the theory that the whole place likely would be torched shortly anyway. My brother said that the interior walls had Satanic graffiti. I went there myself once through the overgrowth with a shovel to dig up the rose bush that my father had given my mother for their first anniversary. The city eventually bulldozed the whole thing into the cellar when the floors started to collapse.

But, in my dreams, it's always there.

I've been working on lucid dreaming, the type of dream where you realize that you are having a dream at the time. These dreams are frankly a whole lot of fun, though I've probably wasted the potential in sophomoric dream-time pursuits like telling off obnoxious people or flying by flapping my arms. The whole key seems to be to try to do the opposite of what you usually do in the dream until you establish control. Fear is the last to come under control.

In last night's dream, I bound through the front door of the house and up the stairway. It's dark because the windows are boarded but somehow I'm still able to see. Horrible, guttural screams emanate from the bedrooms. I yell, "What's going on up there?" I stride toward the room where most of the noise is coming from and fling open the door. There is a young man lying on the bed and he is very ill. Somehow, I'm not surprised by this and set about evaluating his condition and getting him blankets and water. More unearthly sounds come from the room that was my grandmother's bedroom and later my room. Again, I walk directly there and demand to know what is happening. Two very pregnant young women are in labor. I knock the plywood off the windows to let in the light and start to get supplies to help them delivery their babies just like I know what I am doing.

When I woke up, I had a sense of "Well, that takes care of that." And I think it just might.

A-Plus for Frugal but Friendly
We don't have a lot of extra resources for gifts for each of the kids' teachers. Attila the Son, in particular, has a small and dedicated army of intervention people who see him for an hour or so a week each. A gift card for each one of them would be the fiscal equivalent of getting a root canal, but without the novocaine.