Nightmares

My thoughts are about as shallow as a cookie sheet these days.

I am consumed with getting this 'book project' through the final stages and taking it off my plate entirely. The worry of the moment? The book's cover design.

My Middle Son sketched a perfect scene that encapsulated so very much of my dad's family's memories. He drew it, handed it to me and I knew immediately that it was exactly what I hoped to go on our book's cover.

My son has been busy with his own life lately. He held a job that dominated his life for the past eight months. He moved onto his farm and is tending with a list of things which must be done before winter. He has been stressed and he has been busy. So I have tried very hard not to add onto his work and stress load.

He is on holidays this week. True to his giving nature, one of the items he tended to (while tending to his own work) was to build a fence beside my driveway.

He started and finished the project within a day. He is my superhero. He is a star!

While he was here, I asked him if he was up to the task of doing a slight revision to the sketch he drew for our book several years ago. It must meet certain criteria (dimensions; 'portrait' view instead of 'landscape', etc, etc).

He agreed to take on the job.

I have been taking full advantage of the time it takes for him to complete his art work, to try and come up with little 'blurbs' for the inside book flaps and back of the book. I do not normally work on the book during the week, so the words are not flowing.  I am frustrated that I cannot finish this job at hand and it has little to do with my son's assistance that is holding me back.

None-the-less, in my dream state last night, it was my son who bore the brunt of my subconscious worrying.

My dream started with my son dropping by and I did not want to pressure him about the book cover so I didn't ask him. 

The next thing I knew, it was the middle of the night and I was tripping over their dogs in the back entrance way. It was 1:00 a.m. and my son was busy in the house and was keeping me awake. In the meantime, his girlfriend and their dogs moved in ...

Suddenly I was in the basement and there were ants everywhere. I sprayed down the ants, turned around and found one of those huge, gigantic, black furry/scary spiders. I stomped it with a shoe and tried to go to sleep.

Dream sequence continues ...

It was now 3:00 a.m. and I was trying to go to sleep (my son, still busy working in the house). I found another huge, scary spider in the bed which was beside mine. I took a tissue and squished it until I knew I 'broke its back' (this was my dream-mind thinking) and knowing I had taken care of the spider, I could tend to the mouse which was laying down beside the spider. I grabbed the same tissue, then carried and subsequently flushed the mouse down the toilet. I returned to dispose of the dead spider ... and it was gone.

I then went to tell my son about having mice in the house, when a rat did a little 'Spider-Man' maneuver and swung from the bottom of one of the kitchen upper-cupboards and into the bottom of the next one.

Ants ... spiders ... mice ... now rats!??!

Then I woke up.

There are no rodents in our home. There may be some insects lurking about, but no rodents. But the fact of the matter is ... my son never did tell me 'where he was at' with his artistic rendition for our book cover.

I believe this is all because I missed his call yesterday morning and he didn't answer his phone when I called him back. And I still have to come up with some words for the back flap of our book.

All I can say is AAAAAAACK!!!

Last week, I slipped into a state of not wanting to let this book go. Now that it is consuming and suffocating me, I need to make it go away.

Give it a week. One week from today, it could be done. Over. On its way. Flying solo.

Then maybe I had better get to cleaning the nooks and crannies in this house of ours to assure my subconscious mind that we are not infested with ant colonies, spider nests, a family of mice who are supplying the rat with a nice, rounded diet ....