Dreaming of Me

I've been having some pretty vivid dreams, lately. Vivid is a strange term, to me, to explain the phenomenon of dreams that stay with you. Mostly because I generally think of the color saturation definition of vivid rather than the "realness, freshness, trueness to life" definition. But they were "true to life" dreams. Not so much in what happened during the dreams, but more along the lasting impression and emotion I felt afterward.

I dreamed last night that I lost the appeal. I lost the appeal that I hadn't realized had been pushed up to late September, from the late February/early March estimate given to me by my lawyer. I lost the appeal because my lawyer hadn't given me his brief to review ahead of time. I could have added so much to that document. Not only did I lose the appeal, but for some reason, I lost custody in the process. I had to go to work to quit so I could move, unemployed, back to Omaha. It was shocking, discouraging, sad. I immediately wanted to call my lawyer when I woke up to make sure that he was still on top of things. It made me want to hear him tell me, again, that our chances of winning were greater than 95%. But that was the other thing. Part of the reason why the dream was so shocking and sad was because I knew our chances were so good.

When this all came about a little over a year ago, my lawyer warned me that our chances of winning the original case were 50-50, maybe even 40-60 (the bad way). District Court judges in Omaha, NE happen to LIKE Omaha, NE. They raised their children there. They don't like to separate kids from their parents. Damn. Since my options at that time were to stay in Omaha, unemployed, likely in danger of losing my house or move to a better job with a better climate for my family, we took our chances. We knew the chances. We prepared ourselves for a devastating loss. We won. And I still tear up thinking about the day we found out.

Now, my Debbie Downer lawyer (for whom I am eternally grateful) was giving us 95-5 98-2 odds. Why wouldn't I assume that it's in the bag? Except, in my dream, it wasn't. And it was even more devastating than if we had lost in the first place. So I think I'll start preparing myself for a hail mary-style loss. God, I hope we don't lose.

So...Some random thoughts I've had these past few weeks (since I'm not a very devoted blogger, lately).

I saw a stranger in the break room the other day. We had been out of napkins for a few days, and suddenly, here was this stranger, at 4pm on a Monday, taking tally of everything in there. Weird. The next day, the napkin basket was full, and a backup napkin pack was in the cupboard. Cool. Today (a mere 2 days later), the napkin basket is empty and the backup is 3/4 gone. Someone in my office steals napkins. I'm going to have to start watching the break room door a little more closely.