And then we brought it home in a cardboard box

I think I may have mentioned, once or twice, that I'm prone to dreaming. And I don't mean dreaming like normal people dream. I mean that I have crazy, off-the-wall, way more memorable than most people dreams. There have been periods in my life when I dreaded going to bed because I knew that I would have so many dreams that the quality of my sleep would be affected; meaning, I think during those times I do not get enough non-REM sleep.

The types of dreams I have also go through phases. Sometimes I have more normal-type dreams, like I have to pee and can't find a useable toilet. Sometimes I have emotion dreams, in which I'm extremely angry or extremely sad. And sometimes I have prophetic-type dreams that seem to come true, hours or years later (it's where my sense of deja-vu comes from; sometimes I'm someplace or doing something and I get deja vu and then I remember, oh yeah, I had a dream about this x time ago).

My dreams have been even more off-the-wall than usual lately, though I don't feel as though my sleep is being affected currently (thank goodness). And many of my dreams lately are running along a similar theme: babies. Also, cats. I'm given birth to or breastfed a cat about six times in the last couple of months. But last night, oh, last night. Last night I had a dream that I swear must have lasted hours. I dreamed that I was full-term pregnant and going into labor; that nobody in my family knew about it, and that I was in a weird hippie commune-type place. Several other women in labor were there as well. A birth guru guy had the power to tell us which of us would have our babies first, and decreed the order in which it would happen. Labor didn't hurt as much as I expected it to, though it lasted for more than a day, and one of the women who had her baby on the first day gave birth to one that was stillborn, so she took it to some sort of sacrificial area. My labor continued while a party with lots of tasty food and drink was going on all around me. Finally, it was time for me to climb into the birthing pod to be alone while I focused, hard, on pushing out the baby. My water broke in a splash, and I felt every last second of the process as I called Dan to open the pod so he could catch the baby.

The baby looked just like I did as a baby, though it was significantly smaller. I didn't even know for sure whether it was a boy or a girl as I delivered the placenta into the pod, which looked like an alien. Finally, my work was finished, and I climbed out to be informed that it was a boy. He was about six inches long; a perfect newborn in miniature. About two hours later, we left the hippie commune and headed home, with the baby in a cardboard box on the back seat.

Dear brain: I know you want babies. Please, please do me a favor and dial back on the reality bit while I'm sleeping, would you? Thanks ever so.