Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 30, 1993 TAG: 9401080002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
My husband spent all our money at TJ Maxx buying denim and blue corduroy mini-skirts - for himself!
And last night an animal-rights activist punched me out and rolled my bovine body down our backyard hill while my friends and family just stood there grinning and pointing, saying things like, ``WOW! WHO'DA THOUGHT SHE'D ROLL SO FAST WITH THAT WIDE A GIRTH?!''
The larger I get into this pregnancy, the weirder my dreams. The more pants I pop, the more psycho my sleep.
Dreams are nature's way of telling us that no matter how well we think we've got it together, deep-down in the bowels of our subconsciousness we're just as messed up as the next guy.
Or at least we fear we are.
I'm a very thorough worrier. I like to worry about everything - under the theory that if you worry about something, it probably won't happen.
I worry about being a bad mother, that the water they spray on your produce at Kroger has bad chemicals, breast cancer, taking a soap-opera-like fall down the stairs, static cling, story deadlines, the 9-year-old clutch finally going out on my car - on the interstate, in a snowstorm.
My husband's worries, on the other hand, range from ``When's the last time the dog pooped?'' to ``If Beth ate all the leftover pizza again I'm going to kill her.''
He should be in a Far Side cartoon. If I could draw him asleep in bed with a dream-bubble floating out from his head, there would literally be visions of sugar plums dancing in his head.
While he drools and dreams his storybook world, I sleep fitfully - my stomach and legs propped up by pillows - and dream of being the victim of catastrophic illness, murder, hate.
Last month I dreamed I was trying to breast-feed my child for the first time, and the baby glared at me and growled in a perfect Wolfman Jack voice: ``GET THAT NASTY THING AWAY FROM ME!''
It was like a scene from the '70s baby-horror flick ``It's Alive.'' My baby could talk, and he hated my guts!
My mom - who always knows just the right thing to say, if you know what I mean - detailed for me her own pregnancy-anxiety dream: ``I dreamed when I saw your baby, he had gobs and gobs and gobs of ear wax,'' she told me, recounting the number of Q-Tips she had to go through to get her new grandson into shape.
At least she didn't stick a bobby pin in his ear, like she used to do to me. And if you ever see me wiping my baby's face off with my own personal spit in public, or cutting his bangs crooked the day before school pictures - slap me, will ya?
Dreams tend to showcase our fears and failures, everything we try to push back into the closet of our minds - door shut, key swallowed. The harder we try to keep the stuff in the closet, the more it tends to regurgitate itself in our sleep.
When I was in graduate school last year, I was so nervous about the short-story reading I was scheduled to give the next day I couldn't talk about it, didn't even tell my husband.
That night I dreamed I stepped up behind the lectern, and my story pages were ... nowhere in sight. For hours, it seemed, I stood there panicking in front of everyone. Then finally when someone handed me my story, I started to read it - only it was written in Chinese.
I've been so busy lately I haven't had time yet to read the five child-development books my mother-in-law sent me months ago. I know I'll find time eventually, but for now I keep putting them off.
That may explain why I keep dreaming about bringing the baby home - and having no idea what to do with him. Every time I turn around, the baby multiplies, and there are two crying babies, then four, and so on, and so on ... until my eardrums explode, and I wake up in a pool of sweat.
Which is actually one of the great biological functions of demented pregnancy dreams. They're often so bad they wake you up in the middle of the night.
Just in time to make that eighth trip to the bathroom.
\ Beth Macy, a features department staff writer and a Thursday columnist, is in her seventh month of pregnancy. Her co-workers have been very polite about the fact that she wears the same pair of black stretch pants - every day.
by CNB