Not much going on with me lately. My two oldest are home for Thanksgiving break and so I am quite a bit more distracted than usual.

I do not look forward to Thanksgiving day. My husband has invited everyone to our house this year, so it will be a very looooong day.

Yesterday I went to the dentist to have old fillings repaired. It was not a pleasant experience. I got panicky when they gave me the lidocane because it made my throat numb to the point that when I was laying down it felt like I was drowning. My blood pressure was super high (145/80) and had it not been for the laughing gas I think I would have passed out from the panic. I left with four repaired fillings two hours after I arrived and grateful that it was over.

Just now I am thinking how the thought of family here for Thanksgiving give me a very similar feeling to the dentist. lol I wish I had some laughing gas to help me cope! I will likely drink lots of wine instead. 🙂

After Thanksgiving my husband and I will be celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary. I decided we should try and celebrate with a trip, just the two of us, since we seldom celebrate at all. My husband said he wanted to go to Rainbow Hearth Lodge, the place I went on my solo retreat earlier this year. So, I booked us two nights in the sky loft.

I would like to visit two state parks – Inks Lake and Colorado Bend State Park – and then fish at Lake Buchanan as much as I can. My ideal plan would be to visit Inks Lakes early on the 23rd and run some of the trails there. Then on the 24th (our anniversary) I want to visit Colorado Bend State Park and run the trail to the waterfall. In between we will enjoy the lake and prepared meals at the lodge.

Since booking the room, tensions between my husband and I have intensified. We are just not on the same wavelength. I am hoping it does not mess up the trip. The last time we took a trip to celebrate our anniversary was in 2013 when I was pregnant with my third child. We went to San Antonio to see the Alamo. Sadly, it rained the whole weekend. I never got to go to the Alamo because the night we arrived I got the stomach flu really, really bad. Being I was pregnant at the time it was three times as bad as normal. I was sick the entire trip. 😦

Time for Healing

I have read several blog posts about this particular time being the perfect time for healing. This feels very real to me right now. Not only am I taking time to “heal” my physical body (dentist yesterday, eye doctor today) but I am feeling especially drawn to change my diet again. I am avoiding breads and simple carbs as much as possible. I would like to go gluten-free again but with the holidays this is not going to be easy. So I am just focusing on eating gluten in moderation.

There is also the feeling of working on relationships, a kind of fine-tuning and re-evaluation. I think my anniversary trip will be good for this. I have been feeling especially disconnected from people as well and this could also be purposeful, though how has yet to be revealed.

One especially triggering relationship is the one I have with my MIL. As I mentioned in a previous post, we are practically giving her our Prius because of her inability to afford a new car. I am especially triggered by my MIL’s lack of preparation for her own retirement and her continued and purposeful dependence on her son’s. She has told me more than once that she expects her sons to take care of her and that she doesn’t intend to save money for future problems that might arise (such as her car problems). She makes plenty of money to pay for her own living expenses but chooses instead to use the money for things she wants and let her son’s pay for the necessities. It really bothers me that she is like this and proud of it. In contrast, I see my own mother, how she worked hard for her retirement and will not ask for help from me or my sisters unless she absolutely has to. As a result, I feel a high respect and admiration for my mom and would help her with anything she asks.

So, every time my MIL asks for help, etc (which usually means quite a bit of money) I get really, really resentful. I am working on this, trying to approach it/her with love, but it is very, very difficult! I have awful thoughts, thoughts I should not have, and it creates a lot of guilt at times. I feel this MIL scenario is a repeat from my previous marriage. They say lessons repeat until they are learned. This is one of mine. 😦

Similarly, it seems that healing is on the agenda for dreamtime. I went to bed last night thinking about the beautiful heart-centered, soul connections I have felt in the past. It was brought on by reading a blog post about just such connections. Prior to bed I asked to go OOB or at least have a lucid dream involving such connections but knew immediately that my request would not be granted because there was “work to be done.”

Dream: Unfair

The dream began with my step-father going to the doctor to treat an aggressive, cancerous (need to be more positive) growth. I recall hearing the doctors describe it as “cauliflower (sad, need to be uplifted) shaped” while I saw in my mind an image of a flower-like, white mass of cells.

The dream fast-forwards to a time after my step-father passed away. My mom is beside herself with grief and trying to organize a gathering at their house to honor her husband’s life.

Time fast-forwards again. I am sitting in my old bedroom on the bed in shock. My mom had not lived very long after her husband’s death. It was a surprise to the whole family. I am a bit non-emotional. Not numb but content and accepting of all that happened.

I piled up a bunch of books (wisdom) my mom (aspect of self) had and put them in a box to go to the trash. The books were various kinds, some of poetry (inspiration) others about life and how to manage stress and other unexpected life events. As I sat thinking I realized I should probably not toss all the books and so went back to the box to retrieve them. The box was full of water (emotion) when I checked but this seemed normal in the dream. I spotted a poetry book and reached in and retrieved it and then flipped through it’s pages. I remember thinking I didn’t like to read poetry but decided to keep it anyway because it had been my mom’s.

I dug deeper into the box somehow ending up inside the box and completely under water. Once inside, the water seemed not to exist. Instead, I was sitting with a woman discussing something I can’t recall now. She asked me, “What’s wrong?” I said, “I miss my mama.” With my words a huge amount of grief washed over me seeming to originate from my throat. It felt like I was gagging on grief it was so intense! I could sense of huge ball of energy in my throat that felt to be three times the size of it. This ball of grief came up and out through my third-eye and crown. I heaved as if throwing up and tears poured out of my eyes. This happened twice before it woke me up and a third time once I was awake.

Once awake it took me a while to compose myself. I was a bit confused by the sudden outpouring of grief over a dream. In considering my emotion it did not seem in anyway connected to losing my mother. What it seemed to be connected to was the unfairness of what happened to her in the dream. She had finally found her true love after an entire lifetime without him. When she was in her mid-sixties. they reconnected and she married him. Then just four years later he was taken from her.

Of course, none of the dream scenario has actually happened. My mom and step-father are happily married and there is no indication of either being sick.

A song was going through my head as I attempted to return to sleep:

Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days
When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out

Dream: Healing

The dream from before seemed to continue, only instead of my step-father dying he was still alive and my mom had died before him. I was talking to my step-father about what he was going to do. He invited me to come live with him in their house to be his partner. I thought it weird and asked him why he would even consider it. He responded that at least we were family and I was a part of her (my mom).

There was discussion then about how my sisters would react if my mom died – the greed and fighting over the scraps left behind. It made me sad and I wanted nothing to do with any of it. The sadness turned into the gut wrenching grief again but it was less intense and did not wake me.

Then I was inside a large building that reminded me of an administrative building of some sort. I walked into a room where a couple of women were standing. It felt like I was reporting to them. One woman looked at me strangely so I looked down at myself and saw that I was completely naked (vulnerable). I apologized saying, “I’m sorry. I always do that, don’t I?” I had a bag with me and put on a large sweatshirt (need to relax) and a pair of bikini bottoms (emotionally vulnerable). I said to her, “For some reason I only have a swimsuit.”

It felt like I was in a mental hospital. My sisters were there with me but I can’t remember it all now. It seemed like we were discussing the above dream scenario and how each would react. I remember leaving my sisters with the woman and going to the door. I opened it and saw a long hallway leading to another locking door. I held the door open waiting for my sisters but they never came. One woman looked at me disapprovingly and I knew I needed to not hold the door open. So, I went through and let it lock behind me.

I didn’t enter a long hallway, instead I was traveling with my older sister to an industrial complex. I believe my step-father was there with us. She was looking for a specific building but we couldn’t find it. A man approached me at one point. He stared at me and I realized I knew him. He asked me to kiss him, saying if I did he would lead me where I needed to go. I did not want to kiss him but opted to give him a peck on his lips. This was enough and he led me away.

We entered a very large swimming pool (healing) filled with all kinds of people. I waded through the clear water for a while.

I can’t remember much else from this point on except some strange tangents off of the dream involving a house with three rooms, one full of crystals (healing), and then going upstairs to a green carpeted music room that had a fish aquarium full of orange sucker fish (ideas from subconscious).