Dreams
I was in the middle of a pleasant, albeit bland, dream featuring the characters from Veronica Mars, when I was jolted awake by the sound of Mina barking.
Mina had already woken us up 2 hours earlier, when Chris had taken her and the perplexed but willing boys outside. Mina had pooped, and we had hoped that would be the end of it.
One minute I was watching Wallace try to find a job, and the next minute Chris was springing up from bed.
“It’s a fire!” he yelled, and dashed downstairs.
Now that I think about it, in broad daylight, it occurs to me to wonder why he abandoned me to my fate if there was indeed a fire. But at the time, half-groggy with sleep, my main thought was, “How did he smell the smoke?”
Chris has a terrible and almost nonexistent sense of smell, and rarely does he smell something I can’t. I sniffed the air experimentally. I didn’t detect any smoke, but my nose was all blocked up.
I heard Chris open the door to the dog room. I got out of bed and staggered downstairs. Should I be collecting our valuables? Helping him with the dogs? Chris sounded quite calm in the dog room. As a matter of fact, he almost sounded like…he was giving them treats.
I decided to go to the bathroom while I waited for Chris to emerge. I heard him shutting down my computer, and I wondered wildly if my computer was the cause of the smoke. Then I looked at the smoke alarm on the ceiling between the bathroom and the dog room. It was suspiciously silent.
Chris came out of the dog room, carefully shutting the door behind him. I looked up from the toilet seat and asked plaintively, “Is there a fire or not?”
Chris looked embarrassed. “I guess you didn’t hear me. I was mumbling to myself when I came down the stairs that the smoke alarms would have gone off if there’d been a fire.”
“Why did you shut off my computer?”
“I thought the noise might be bothering the dogs.”
I puzzled over this. Finally, I asked, “So why did you think there was a fire? Were you having a dream?”
“I thought I saw smoke along the roof line.”
“You mean a roof in your dream?”
“No, no, I mean the ceiling…when I got up, my eyes were all scrunched and I thought I saw smoke around the ceiling.”
Chris washed his hands.
“I guess it was just smoke boogers in my eyes,” he said, and we went back to bed.
Posted by: ssjane | June 13, 2005 | 11:47 am
Posted in: This Life