Laowai

We were walking the other night – on our way to dinner and we saw a big dead rat. Now that just makes the place where I live sound awful, but Evanston really is a nice green and pleasant place. And yet I can’t deny that we have seen rats on a couple occasions. It was just dead, dead, dead, there on the edge of the sidewalk with it’s un-hairy tail. Brian said it looked like somebody ran over it with a bike. It was kinda deflated looking.

My sleep is really different these days – I am super tuned to any little sound that Bea makes. I must sleep really lightly and so I remember my dreams more. The night after we saw the rat I kept dreaming that we had run over the rat with the stroller and then I was all panicked because I thought we had pushed the stroller all over the living room where Bea rolls around on the floor. Of course we did not run over the rat and we never push the stroller into the living room. But that didn’t stop me from having this revolving dream. I kept imagining Bea sucking on the hard floor like she does occasionally when she rolls off the rug. It was like she might as well have been licking the rat. So then I would become half awake and tell myself that this was silly but all the same I should be sure to scrub the floors tomorrow. And then I would doze off and have the same crazy dream again and again and again. I must have gone over the same scenario 20 times in the night. I woke up with a headache and a tense neck and shoulders. I should have just gotten up to clean the floor and then gotten back to the business of sleeping. Brian thinks I’ve gone nuts. Hmmmm.