Me: Mmm...AH-MEE
Kate: What?
Me: AH-MEE. We should get Oreos, AH-ME, and other things to put on the flattop grill. Mmm...
I then woke up and (kind of) remember Kate asking me what are the other things we need for the flattop. We tried figuring out what I was talking about in my sleep. I thought AH-MEE was a mispronunciation of my childhood word for ice cream: AH-MA-NEW. Don't ask why I called it that; I'm really not sure. Maybe I couldn't say the words 'ice cream' the way some kids can't pronounce the letter R. Kate's theory: I was trying to say Mommy. Which would make sense, since my mom will be visiting for Turkey Day. But that seems creepy, since I don't like the idea of having dreams about my mom and/or calling her Mommy. So I vehemently denied the possibility that I was trying to call out to my mom.
I still have dreams (nightmares would be a more accurate classification) where I'm working the food service jobs I held in High School. Usually, I'm working the oven at Nancy's Pizzeria. It's a conveyor belt oven that never stops and eventually, the number of pizzas coming at me becomes too much to handle. They spill over the side and land in the buckets of scalding hot water we keep on the floor to let the saucy, cheesy pizza soak in. And because my job at UPS--two years after working at Nancy's--was all conveyor belts al the time, the pizzas in this dream turn into packages. The summer before my first semester teaching, the boxes burst open when they landed in the water buckets, sending plumes of student essays into the air.
That's not what I dreamt of last night, though. I never worked with a flattop grill or served ice cream at Nancy's, and the closest thing we had to Oreos were cannoli. So maybe last night's dream had something to do with Thanksgiving. I had to go shopping today to buy the rest of the ingredients for cornbread and stuffing, and maybe the thought of doing so got me worked up to the point where the anxiety seeped into my subconscious. It wouldn't be the first time.
In the early 90's, I went with my cousin and his family to a Ukrainian summer camp in Canada. My dad had talked up the fishing in Canada so much that my cousin and I thought we would be catching our daily limit in trophy-winning fish each time we went out. He told us that because of the high temperatures and because we would be fishing from shore, the best time to catch walleye and pike would be early in the morning, before the sun had a chance to warm the water and chase the fish into deeper water. When we arrived at the camp, it was past eleven. We could see the Northern Lights above the tree line that surrounded the camp. I remember thinking it was one of the coolest sights I had ever seen. Then we all entered our cabin and saw several unraveled rolls of paper dangling from the ceiling. Each twisted strip was polka-dotted with dead flies. That was the last thing I remember before passing out. Kind of...
I have a vague recollection of talking to my aunt in the middle of the night--she in her bed, me struggling to open our cabin door. Apparently, I could not wait to go fishing because when my aunt asked me why I was up, I told her I was on my way to the lake. Not only had I been sleeptalking, I was also doing some very real sleepwalking. I wonder what would have happened had I made it outside.
Could that be what my dream last night was about? An inability to contain my excitement? I am super excited to make food for Turkey Day. And in preparation, I've been watching a lot of cooking shows on the Food Network, the Travel Channel, and PBS, though I'd probably be doing that regardless of whether or not I was cooking. Maybe I just want to get it done with so that I don't have to worry about it anymore and can enjoy hanging out with some pretty fantastic people. I'd like to think my dream was something as reasonable as that and not some nightmarish recreation of the past.
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