One weird dream

I just had this bizarre dream. Already I can’t remember it clearly, and I can only write for a minute because I have to get dressed and leave by 6:00—I have a faculty senate meeting halfway across the state today. Thank God it’s my last one as chair; I am handing the gavel over today. But I’m still reading that Kidd book, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, since I can barely read a page or two every night at bedtime before I pass out, and the section I’m almost finished with is all about dreams.

In this dream, I am working two jobs. One is my regular job, and apparently I am some sort of police officer, so every night I am out there busting criminals, running around a lot, danger and adrenaline all very normal. During the day I am working undercover, apparently trying to help arrest this group of criminals who are preying on housewives. So every day after work, I come home to this suburban neighborhood house and clean house and garden. And somehow part of this is that I am watching children who don’t belong to me. In this dream, I am very conscious of being exhausted and frustrated and having no time to myself because I am always shuttling back and forth between these two jobs, both of which are demanding. One is stressful and fearful, and the other stressful and tedious.

I’m not entirely sure where it was all going, because finally my undercover job was working and I had somehow convinced the neighborhood criminals that I was stupid enough to load up boxes and boxes of “stuff” into my own car. I knew at least one box held guns, but I was evidently persuaded that this was all in a benign cause and could just go right along, no worries. I was about to close the trunk when I looked up and noticed one of the hoodlums videotaping me from a distance, me by myself closing a car full of contraband. And then (as the classic dream lines goes), I woke up.

So what does all this mean? Probably some parts are obvious. I am really tired. I do feel like I have two jobs. I have all this service work at school and it is just nearly impossible during the day to do anything other than go to class, go to meetings, finish reports that are urgently due, etc. I haven’t been able to grade a thing in the past three days—and I have quite a few things that are overdue. So then I go home. Maybe, as a matter of fact, I have three jobs. Senate/service. School. Home. Chris has been taking care of all the kid transportation this week, and so I’ve actually had a fairly light home workweek—the last two nights we’ve taken these lovely walks after dinner and I’ve actually had time to talk to my family. But then we get back home and I need to grade. But I swear, I just can’t. I am so tired by then. I’ll get a lot of it done this weekend, but there goes the last weekend of Laura and Chris’s spring break, and nobody gets to have any fun because I need to go back to work and grade papers.

And maybe I sort of do feel like the police at school too, trying my damndest to convince my composition students that their research papers will be abysmal (if they ever finish them) if they don’t work a little on them along and along, not saving it up til the last minute. Of course, how convincing am I on this subject, when I’ve done virtually all my grading at the last minute? I am sure they’re tired of listening to me lecture.

So I am the police. And a housewife. And pretending to be stupid. My second shift and third shift jobs are wearing me out. I am trapped in a world of criminals?? Hm. I am going to take a shower.