Dreamweaver, I believe you can screw my head up right...

Occasionally I go through periods where my dreams are incredibly intense and vivid, and seem to take almost more energy and attention from me than my waking life. Now is one of those times, and I'm exhausted and deeply weirded out. Plus, it doesn't make for much of a conversation starter.

Me: How was your weekend?

Acquaintance: Oh, you know, fine.

Me: Cool, cool. Mine involved dreams where I have to cough up all my teeth into ziplock baggies. And then I had to dig through a pile of dead soldiers to find mementos for their families. And then? I gave birth to a wolf.

Acquaintance: Wow. I have to go away now.

I know this can probably be easily explained by biological cycles, perhaps as yet another instance where I'm just receiving hormonal junk mail from my meddlesome uterus, but I've never been one to find much comfort in logic. Why believe in rational theories when one can panic over vague symbology?

Usually when I'm confused about something, or even just vaguely curious, I google it. I love, by the way, that "google" has become a verb, because only an action word could describe the close, sometimes-inappropriate relationship I share with this search engine. I rely on it for everything-- not just hard facts like addresses or the meaning of "retromingent"-- I also use it to clear up philosophical and emotional dilemmas, like, for instance, what the hell my dream about coughing up all my teeth was about.

Evidently, tooth loss is a fairly common dream theme, which is exciting for me in a way because typically when I share my dreams with other people, they cough uncomfortably and ask me how many drugs I did as a teenager. The bad news is that since a lot of people dream of losing their teeth, there are just as many explanations-- everything from undiagnosed eating disorders to fears of getting old/being unattractive to losing one's job to fears of marital infidelity to losing the ability to speak.

It's the last one that resonates with me. I think I'm afraid of losing my voice. This weekend I cooked a huge dinner for Pants and his buddies, cleaned the house, and continued work on my wifey projects in advance of Pants' military promotion. It was exhausting, and very little of it had anything to with me, in the strictest sense. At the same time, another blind relocation approaches, and the more I try to convince myself I'm fine with it, that I'm ready for a change, the more some subterranean part of me freaks out and concocts disturbing dreams.

As for this morning's dream about crawling across a mountain of dead soldiers whose bodies were concealed beneath a massive parachute, and digging through the wreckage in search of identifiable mementos to send home to their families-- who the fuck knows? Maybe that's less a symbol and more a reflection of the fact that I'm pretty close to open panic about the state of the war and Pants' guaranteed involvement in it. In fact, I find it more than a little disturbing how much I'm encouraged to work on some elaborate banner for him and how little substantive dialogue there's been among the spouses about what these guys are getting ready to do. I feel like I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of women quietly sipping tea while the hems of our jeans have all caught fire.

But maybe this is unfair-- maybe they're all dealing with it in their own healthy, private ways. Maybe somehow, magically, they've figured out the triple-lotus psychological contortion required to be completely OK with everything that's going on, who's in power, who's likely going to be in power next, and what exactly our husbands will be asked to do. Me though, I'm not there yet, and I'm going to have to give birth to a few more wolves and spit up a few more teeth before I am.