Can you believe it?
It's our last day in Kenya. I still can't totally take it in, but we've been here two weeks already.
Tomorrow we'll get on a plane for Uganda, where we'll stay for 8 days, and then off to England for 2 days (Oxford, hurrah!)
And then home, where I'll be thrust into the second week of summer school and work.
And suddenly I realized that we took dozens of hours of video footage and like... 6 pictures.
So today I'm trying to fill my camera.
Maybe I'll put on different shirts every few hours so it doesn't look like we were only in Kenya one day.
And friends at home... STOP.
Do not get married without me. Do not get engaged without me. Do not up and leave forever to New York without me.
Too many things are happening there that I don't want to miss.
I keep waking up very distressed by my dreams.
A dream where Suzie says they're leaving before we get back and we'll never see them again.
A dream where both the Haggen girls get married, but a terrifying Gollum-type creature tries to sabotage them and kill their new husbands.
A dream where a friend at home gets engaged and decides to get married while we're still in Africa.
I do not approve of all this. Just pause all activities at home until I can come back and be a part of them.
Deal?
Then I don't have to make Travis come snuggle me since I wake up suddenly and find that I'm crying.
I miss you all.
And I will try to write as soon as I can, but who knows what the internet in Uganda is like?
love
becky
Showing posts with label dream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dream. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
"Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,"
he said wisely one day, "but people don't know what it's like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment."
On that subject:
I like to sleep in late.
And by that I mean, stay in my white bed, curled up in my white room, while sun streams in through the white shades.
Everything is bright and pretty and quiet and I lie in bed -half asleep- and think-dream.
This morning, I think-dreamed this story:
17 years from now Travis and I are living in a big farm-type house. It's pretty and white inside and out. Because its run all by solar panel power, a student from the University Travis works at comes out to make a mini-documentary about how we live.
He says, "describe to me your daily routine"
I say, "I get up at 5:00 with my two oldest kids because they have to leave for early morning seminary in the next hour. They start getting ready while I go out and milk Rosie."
Rosie is the only cow we have but we use her milk instead of store bought. She is sweet and pretty. White and red. We only have about an acre of land, but that's enough for Rosie and us.
"Then I take her out to graze."
I continue, "Then I come in and shower quick, then Travis and the little kids get up and we read scriptures while the big kids and I eat breakfast. I boil water and have tea. Some of the kids have tea or hot cocoa too, Travis and the baby have juice."
In my morning dream we usually have five or six kids. For a while we had a baby who was one or two, but usually we had five kids and the littlest was four. Sometimes in my morning dream I was pregnant. Don't get confused if the number of children jumps around.
(It's hard to stay consistent in your think-dreams because you're only partially awake, but you get to think of things that you want to, because you're only half asleep.)
"Then the big kids leave for school and the little kids get dressed while Travis showers and I blow-dry my hair, etc." I say.
"Then the little kids eat breakfast, but it's only about 7:00 when they're done, and they have a half hour before school. The child who is in middle school, (usually there was just one and his name with Matt) goes out and feeds the dog and our chickens, while the littler two kids (ages 8 and 6) go pick up all the eggs from our few little chickens. We don't keep the chickens in a box, and sometimes the hens try to hide the eggs, so they kids have to search through the long grass to find all the eggs. It's just enough for our family." (We don't eat these chickens. They're just for eggs.)
"Then the kids run to the school bus and leave for school, and I go inside with my youngest child, who is usually four, and she plays while I clean up a little. We go bug her daddy, who works primarily from home, or sometimes campus."
"I'm surprised there's not a big tv in here," says the man making a doc about our life. Our living room is big and white with wide windows on two walls, and a tall bookcase on the third. There is no fourth wall, the living room just stretches until it becomes the kitchen.
"There is!" says little Carrie (usually that was the littlest one's name. Sometimes it was Grace, though.) She shows how to lower the screen from the ceiling, where we watch movies as a family from a projector.
The man looks at the bookshelf behind it. Half is full of books, and half is full of movies.
"What's your system here?" he asks.
"Well, the higher the shelves are more grown-up movies," I say. "The bottom shelf is all Christmas movies, then a shelf of documentaries, skateboarding and snowboarding movies, things like that. Here at Carrie's eye level are all the little kids movies, Disney movies, ect. Up higher is the shelf of slightly more grown-up kid movies, like Goonies, or Pirates of the Caribbean. Above that is a shelf of movies for our teenagers, chick flicks, comedies, you know. Then this shelf of International movies, and above that is movies are kids aren't allowed to watch without us, if at all."
"What great organizational skills!" exclaims the documentary film maker.
This morning dream (or think-dream as it can also be called) goes on for a long time, since Travis and I sort of awoke at like 6 and didn't get up until about 10.
But I'll spare you the rest of the details. Let me merely say that the rest includes descriptions of a very well organized mud-room, office, and the giving away of pretty kittens, since the cat we keep out with Rosie and the puppy in the barn/shed to catch mice had kittens, a description of the very big garden and everything we grow, and how each kids has their own little plot and an elaborate description of how often and when my book club meets.
It was a very nice morning.
Travis told me to be sure and write a blog post about it so we wouldn't forget, and someday we'll remember that our baby is named Carol (called Carrie) and our cow is named Rosie, and I have an ideal morning routine already planned out.
p.s. Do you know what that quote is from? If you know then you are surely my best friend of all!
On that subject:
I like to sleep in late.
And by that I mean, stay in my white bed, curled up in my white room, while sun streams in through the white shades.
Everything is bright and pretty and quiet and I lie in bed -half asleep- and think-dream.
This morning, I think-dreamed this story:
17 years from now Travis and I are living in a big farm-type house. It's pretty and white inside and out. Because its run all by solar panel power, a student from the University Travis works at comes out to make a mini-documentary about how we live.
He says, "describe to me your daily routine"
I say, "I get up at 5:00 with my two oldest kids because they have to leave for early morning seminary in the next hour. They start getting ready while I go out and milk Rosie."
Rosie is the only cow we have but we use her milk instead of store bought. She is sweet and pretty. White and red. We only have about an acre of land, but that's enough for Rosie and us.
"Then I take her out to graze."
I continue, "Then I come in and shower quick, then Travis and the little kids get up and we read scriptures while the big kids and I eat breakfast. I boil water and have tea. Some of the kids have tea or hot cocoa too, Travis and the baby have juice."
In my morning dream we usually have five or six kids. For a while we had a baby who was one or two, but usually we had five kids and the littlest was four. Sometimes in my morning dream I was pregnant. Don't get confused if the number of children jumps around.
(It's hard to stay consistent in your think-dreams because you're only partially awake, but you get to think of things that you want to, because you're only half asleep.)
"Then the big kids leave for school and the little kids get dressed while Travis showers and I blow-dry my hair, etc." I say.
"Then the little kids eat breakfast, but it's only about 7:00 when they're done, and they have a half hour before school. The child who is in middle school, (usually there was just one and his name with Matt) goes out and feeds the dog and our chickens, while the littler two kids (ages 8 and 6) go pick up all the eggs from our few little chickens. We don't keep the chickens in a box, and sometimes the hens try to hide the eggs, so they kids have to search through the long grass to find all the eggs. It's just enough for our family." (We don't eat these chickens. They're just for eggs.)
"Then the kids run to the school bus and leave for school, and I go inside with my youngest child, who is usually four, and she plays while I clean up a little. We go bug her daddy, who works primarily from home, or sometimes campus."
"I'm surprised there's not a big tv in here," says the man making a doc about our life. Our living room is big and white with wide windows on two walls, and a tall bookcase on the third. There is no fourth wall, the living room just stretches until it becomes the kitchen.
"There is!" says little Carrie (usually that was the littlest one's name. Sometimes it was Grace, though.) She shows how to lower the screen from the ceiling, where we watch movies as a family from a projector.
The man looks at the bookshelf behind it. Half is full of books, and half is full of movies.
"What's your system here?" he asks.
"Well, the higher the shelves are more grown-up movies," I say. "The bottom shelf is all Christmas movies, then a shelf of documentaries, skateboarding and snowboarding movies, things like that. Here at Carrie's eye level are all the little kids movies, Disney movies, ect. Up higher is the shelf of slightly more grown-up kid movies, like Goonies, or Pirates of the Caribbean. Above that is a shelf of movies for our teenagers, chick flicks, comedies, you know. Then this shelf of International movies, and above that is movies are kids aren't allowed to watch without us, if at all."
"What great organizational skills!" exclaims the documentary film maker.
This morning dream (or think-dream as it can also be called) goes on for a long time, since Travis and I sort of awoke at like 6 and didn't get up until about 10.
But I'll spare you the rest of the details. Let me merely say that the rest includes descriptions of a very well organized mud-room, office, and the giving away of pretty kittens, since the cat we keep out with Rosie and the puppy in the barn/shed to catch mice had kittens, a description of the very big garden and everything we grow, and how each kids has their own little plot and an elaborate description of how often and when my book club meets.
It was a very nice morning.
Travis told me to be sure and write a blog post about it so we wouldn't forget, and someday we'll remember that our baby is named Carol (called Carrie) and our cow is named Rosie, and I have an ideal morning routine already planned out.
p.s. Do you know what that quote is from? If you know then you are surely my best friend of all!
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Night Ideas
Saul Bellow said "You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."
I suspect that he was wrong, because oftentimes in the middle of the night I wake and scribble down something.
In the morning I find phrases like "Rabbit Feet" and remember that I dreamed about a girl who found a secret school in the basement of her actual school. In the secret school everyone is part animal. The girl discovers she has rabbit feet. How did she never notice?
I find a post-it that says "Bathroom Journal" about a girl who hides her journal in the library which is in a bathroom. Also, she writes lies in her journal. So half of the excellent book I could write would be her lying journal and the other half would be a third-person narrative about how crappy her real life is.
Seriously. I have about one brilliant idea like this a week. I wake up feeling happy and secure in the promise of a Printz award.
Then, a few hours later, I look back on what my dream was REALLY about.
Of course, the scene in Twilight where Edward sparkles in the sun came to Meyer in a dream...
Maybe Rabbit Feet could be the next best seller.
I suspect that he was wrong, because oftentimes in the middle of the night I wake and scribble down something.
In the morning I find phrases like "Rabbit Feet" and remember that I dreamed about a girl who found a secret school in the basement of her actual school. In the secret school everyone is part animal. The girl discovers she has rabbit feet. How did she never notice?
I find a post-it that says "Bathroom Journal" about a girl who hides her journal in the library which is in a bathroom. Also, she writes lies in her journal. So half of the excellent book I could write would be her lying journal and the other half would be a third-person narrative about how crappy her real life is.
Seriously. I have about one brilliant idea like this a week. I wake up feeling happy and secure in the promise of a Printz award.
Then, a few hours later, I look back on what my dream was REALLY about.
Of course, the scene in Twilight where Edward sparkles in the sun came to Meyer in a dream...
Maybe Rabbit Feet could be the next best seller.
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