Saturday 24 April 2010

Honey, I Zapped the Kids


Thesis stress, some personal worries, and the warm weather have teamed up to give me some wacky dreams lately.

One of last night's dreams:

My sisters come over to visit my newborn baby. I take them to the kitchen, say, 'Here she is', as I open the oven and pull out the tray. On the tray sit four burnt meatballs. My eldest sister says, 'You put the oven on too high'. I look back at the dry meatballs, my baby girl.

Then I made myself wake up.

Any creative suggestions as to what this means besides the standard: 'modern woman worrying about whether she can have it all'?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Can't really offer anything other than to say it sounds like something from David Lynch!! x

Alana said...

Obviously means it's time to cook a big hearty meatball dinner for all your babies here at Wolfson ;)

Kate said...

This is a truly terrifying dream. I really don't know what to add!!

Sarah said...

How distressed were you? Was it real panic or just confusion/frustration?

I would say it has nothing to do with fertility and everything to do with responsibility (those meatball babies depend on you like you're God)and fear of failure (whether your sisters were supportive of you or not after you ruined dinner-babies is not the point - family are the longest serving witnesses/censors to our worst behaviours).

Next?

Anonymous said...

I had lots of dreams about babies when I was working on the dissertation. Somewhere along the way, I read a dream thingie that said baby can stand for creative project. Which makes sense, that we'd worry about our "baby" (thesis/dissertation) in various dream scenarios.

I had one where I dreamed that my baby was being eaten by an alligator. (Probably representing the tearing-apart of my poor little manuscript in review?) It was just horrific!

Hope you're doing well. Have been thinking about you and sending good writing vibes your way!

Academic, Hopeful said...

Thanks for the feedback, ladies. I think you're onto something (and yes it made me panic in that twisted, bad chemicals, Lynchy way).

I had another baby dream the other day, except that it was my twin's baby, grossly underfed and my older sister told her she needed to tie him up in a plastic bag so she did. I snuck back and got him out of the bag. I am not sure what this means about my thesis...or my family...or my fear of them...

One of my friends - also writing a thesis - has dreams about eating her baby in a tortilla wrap.