Standing Guard

I was having this great dream. We, my family, were flying over some sort of turquoise tropical ocean, just playing in the air like we would on land. It's funny how you can just take something like flying as a given while in a dream state; all powers of reasoning are tuned off. While looking down, I saw Rob's brother swimming under the water, and suddenly I'm thinking of his possible role in Prop 8, which jarred me awake a bit.

Then the door to our bed room opened some and that woke me. I thought it was one of our boys with a night mare, and so I called them in but no one was there. Our door, if not shut tight enough will eventually spring open with the furnace kicking in; either that or I was still dreaming.

So here I was, thinking of this dream, and then our kids, and then of my extended family, and then that chain letter, then the comments I got on it over at the other blog, and then the letter my mom sent out in reply, and then what it might mean to our family, and then about all the excuses people give to treat others badly, and then what I'm going to do about it... At 4:45 AM, I'm thinking of this painful event for my family that's looking more likely to be on its way, and it's comming, in large part, from my local culture, and for some underhanded reasons.

No sense looking to sleep again, right? I get up at 6 anyway.

Not much sense to this post either, and it's still up in the air if this gets posted eventually :-).

Being awake now kind of reminds me of how it used to be, when the boys were little and neither slept through the night for months and months. Note my tower of Diet Coke, next to that really sleepy guy in the picture there. It's from those days, about 5 years ago. I lived on caffeine, had effectively no short term memory, and could mix baby formula in half sleep. I think I got addicted to the stuff (the caffeinated pop, not the formula), and so I quite cold turkey about the time I took this picture to document my recovery :-). Haven't had one since.

Anyway, this house, usually noisy with the sounds of twin six-year olds or just silly banter between husbands, is so quiet. I feel extraordinarily protective and able to protect them at these times of night, as I remember I did back then. I suppose it's kind of like standing on guard: being up, trying to figure out how to best care for and protect your family while they sleep and we're under political attack. But I'm not really worried as much as working it through. They, even in their sleep, have a way of making me sure I'll figure out something; we'll get there somehow.