Nightmare Time

I've blogged before about how the only kind of nightmares I have are nightmares about being unprepared. In college, I would frequently have nightmares in which it was the beginning of finals week and piano juries were starting, and I would look in my pile of piano music and realize that not only did I not have my jury piece memorized, I didn't even have it learned, and my jury was 48 hours away. In the summer, I had a nightmare once that my parents had driven me halfway back to college for the next year, and I realized I had left the cute little tupperware-like containers my grandma had gotten me at home. We turned around and went back for the containers, and I discovered that I had left EVERYTHING at home - clothes, shoes, books - and hadn't packed anything. (Forgetting things at home is a really big deal when college is ten hours away...) Once I started teaching, I had dreams about getting onstage and realizing that the group in front of me had no idea how to sing the songs that were on the program.

Apparently having dreams about unpreparedness is pretty common - at least from what I've read. I never knew that, and I always assumed I was having these dreams because I usually procrastinated and was really disorganized.

I'm really organized now. You wouldn't believe that if you toured the house I live in, but that's mainly due to three years of living out of 18 blue storage tubs and mixing my stuff with my grandma's...but I am extremely organized. Ask my co-workers - they're convinced my future children are going to be named B1, C2, etc. for the cells of a spreadsheet. The joke in our department is that if there is a way to make something into a spreadsheet, Kristen will do it. This is mostly because I do that very thing. We're hosting a music festival at school in a few weeks and I have several spreadsheets going...for music, general expenses, student info, etc. I could go into school right now and tell who goes to what school and any food or environmental allergies they have. But I digress. I organize things well, I keep things on schedule, and that is how I live my life. And my hope is that my wedding day will be a day that goes smoothly, not because people are perfect (because they're not!) but because I will have packed the necessary items for the wedding and the honeymoon, moved everything I can possibly move to our new house, and gotten everybody's gifts and thank-you notes around in advance. In other words, because I will have planned ahead and been organized.

So explain the following dream that I just woke up terrified from:

It was my wedding day. I was in Grandma's house in my wedding dress. The dogs were piddling and puking all over the carpet so I had to keep running the carpet cleaner. I wasn't wearing any makeup and I hadn't brushed my teeth. My parents showed up and said that we needed to be at the church in four minutes for pictures (I might mention that our church is almost 10 miles away!) but this was the first I'd heard about any of that. Then I realized I also wasn't wearing any jewelry. I hurried to brush my teeth, realized they were still fuzzy, brushed them again, and then went on a hunt for jewelry. I thought about the gold necklace my parents had given me for my high school graduation, but then realized that wouldn't look right since my engagement ring and wedding band are both white gold, so I commenced searching for a pearl necklace (which, incidentally, I don't think I own.) All the while, the thought going through my head is was I really didn't want my wedding day to be like this...I wanted to have everything ready...oh well, guess this is how it is, and I never get another try. Then my parents came in and started tag-team yelling at me about how I never organize anything and how they always knew my wedding day would be a train wreck just like this.

Eek!