Pool party

Before I tell you about a recent dream, there are a few things you need to know about me. Ten, actually.

1. I’m an intentional optimist. Not a natural optimist. Intentional. So when I come home and find a big doggie doo in the middle of the living room, I respond, “Well, the up side of this is that the day can only get better...”

2. I’m a clutter magnet. I am always trying to declutter counters, cupboards, rooms, garages … but to no avail. For every one item I manage to place in a blue box, charity bin or garbage can, three pop up to replace it.

3. I have unruly hair. I have a wonderful stylist and just before I leave her salon, my hair looks amazing – warm brown with soft curls. By the time I back down the driveway, I look like I have been hit by lightening.

4. I can’t swim. Ok, I can swim across the narrow part of a shallow pool if I get a good push-off from the pool wall. This is an embarrassment to me since although my mother’s nickname was “Marilyn Bell,” I sink like a stone.

5. I could have been a better mother. My kids occasionally and accidentally got sunburns; I gave them peanut butter before they were a year old; I got the date wrong for pickup at John Island Camp for two of them; and I wasn’t crazy for kids’ concerts.

6. I love old men, as well as cats. Now that sounds like a sexist, ageist thing to say. But it’s true. I grew up living with my grandfather, as well as my mom and dad and brother. He had his own rooms, and I spent much of my childhood with him listening to CBC, having books read to me, moving figurines around his geraniums, and drinking sweet tea.

7. I don’t like gardening. I should. I look like an earth mother and I’m a vegetarian. But I get my hubby, Laurence, to take the compost out to the composter, and then move it from the composter to the back of the yard, and then the following spring to mix it into the garden. In May I stick a few things into the ground and then abandon them until it’s time to compost them in October. Thank heavens for ground cover.

8. I begrudge every day that I have to walk to my part-time job, rather than ride my bike. From November to April my travel time triples from 10 minutes to 30. (Nice life if you can get it, I know.)

9. I love fences in general. Good fences do make good neighbours – our neighbours would have tarred and feathered us without this divider. But our fence makes me wince to look at it. It’s withstood 25 years of kids and dogs going under it, and snow and trees falling on top of it. And it looks it.

10. Because of my volunteer work with cats in particular and my house full of pets in general, I spend a fair bit of time travelling to and from the veterinarian’s in our van.

Now the dream…

I dreamed that an area veterinarian called me on the phone and said, “Jan, I can’t stand your hair any longer. Come over here and I’ll fix it.”

She was right. My hair was a mess, but I had two babies underfoot and no car to get there. No worries, I rustled up a bicycle and managed to balance the two tots on it, along with a few bags of baby stuff. I arrived to a back yard that was only somewhat fenced in and it was filled with toddlers and clutter and a swimming pool. Aach!

Dr. Vet said when I arrived, “I don’t have any hair dye – I’ll have to go out and get some.” And left me with this assembly of toddlers that were all trying to tumble into the pool. I was frantic – running around the pool, hauling them out, catching another before it made its way back into the pool. There was no end to this herd of lemmings – trying to jump over the edge.

Just when things couldn’t get any worse, a kindly old man showed up – Dr. Vet’s father – and he was intent on showing me a compost invention he had made. You put the veggie leftovers here, it travelled to there, it composted further along, and then dropped to the bottom as loam. I so didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and it was cool – but I had human issues to deal with.

It was a hot day and I could feel the sweat just pouring off me. And then Dr. Vet arrived with the hair dye and said, “I don’t have enough time today. It’ll have to wait…” But somehow by then I had accumulated all this junk and knew I would have to call my hubby, Laurence, to come and pick me up in the van.

He was not a happy camper to be interrupted – from what I don’t know – and less happy to see all the stuff he had to load into the van. How I was able to pick out the two tots I had come with from the all the water babies in the pool, I will never know.

But the last scene in the dream was me, standing beside the edge of the pool, saying to myself, “You know, Jan, there are two ways of looking at this. You can either see this as a complete disaster or you can say, ‘The kids and I had a pool date!’” And then I woke up.

What is “the takeaway” in this dream? Two things I can see.
1. Never get your hair done by a busy veterinarian.

2. Don’t let your hubby have the van if there is any chance you’ll be invited to a pool party.

Jan Carrie Steven is a volunteer with Cat Adoption Trust Sudbury (CATS) and the co-ordinator of Small Things: Kitty Boutique and Cat Adoptions. For more information, go to www.smallthings.ca.