A dream is just a dream...

Here's what happens when I stay up late reading message boards:

I had a dream that the BF and I were standing in line at the movies and there was a woman in front of us who was complaining about having tickets to a movie she never saw and she wanted the exchange them for a current movie. The usher, trying to be nice, said they would exchange her ticket this one time only.

Then the lady hollered to two children to come over so they can get new tickets, too. There was a girl – Caucasian with strawberry-blond hair and a boy – dark skin and long black hair. The woman was rather non-descript – I think she had a bun in her hair. At any rate, the tickets she wanted to exchange were for “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”The usher was shocked and started arguing with her.

In the meantime, the boy was standing next to me and began to poke me – first with his elbow and then with his fingers. I told him to stop but he just laughed and continued poking me. I finally lost it and started screaming at the woman that if these kids were hers, she didn’t deserve them because obviously she didn’t know how to raise them and I wasn’t going to stand there and be poked and teased by a crappy and rude little boy. I stormed out of the theatre and promptly woke up.

Okay, here’s the weird thing – I’m fairly certain that the girl and boy represent my cats – The girl is Isabella (strawberry blond, female) and the boy is Merlin (dark skin, black hair, male). Merlin spends much time during the night poking at me. He is deaf, so yelling at him does no good. I was wearing earplugs last night so I couldn’t hear him fussing, but I must have incorporated his poking at me into my dream.

As for yelling at the woman who couldn’t control her kids – I expect I was yelling at myself. Merlin has been exasperating lately. He’s old and whiny. Oh my God is he whiny. I never know what’s wrong with him – he wants food all the time and if there’s food in his dish, he wants different food. He’s constantly fussing at me about something and he’s not very good at telling me what he wants and/or I’m not very good at interpreting what he wants/needs. I get so frustrated with myself because I get angry with him – my poor fluff ball. I love this cat to pieces and I’m going to be devastated when he goes. I expect that I’m frustrated because I know that time is getting closer and closer and I don’t want to admit it.

And I’m not going to delve into the obvious fears I have of being a parent to an actual human child. Not ready for that yet. Not until after I at least accomplish a knee-hang on the trapeze!

Derekh Torah

Last night was my first day of my 30-week Derekh Torah class. My boyfriend of 8 years is Jewish and, until recently, I hadn’t really considered converting, although I agreed years ago to raise any children we would have in the Jewish tradition. Of course, I never saw myself as someone who would EVER have children – I’ve never heard my biological clock tick - although I always said “If it happens, it happens!” I just kind of figured my cats would be all the children I needed.

Then an odd thing happened – I started thinking about children and realized that I want one. Actually, I want twins but I can’t count on that. Heck, I can’t count on having ANY kids at this point, even though anything is possible. So, once I started thinking about children, I realized that I have no clue about Judaism so how in the world was I going to raise a child in the Jewish tradition?

And then I started working in a predominately Jewish office and met some women who are very secure in their faith and aren’t weighed down by what I always thought of as a patriarchal/separatist religion. I realized that I really didn’t know anything about Judaism at all.

So, my BF and I are taking this 30-week course so I can learn all about Judaism and I’m really excited about it. There are 16 of us in the class – 7 couples and 2 singles. 5 of the couples are like me and the BF – he’s Jewish, she isn’t. It’s going to be really interesting taking this journey with other couples in the same position as us. I don’t know what I’m going to decide at the end but at least I’ll be able to make an informed decision, which I think is the most important thing.