mouse dreams and nostalgia

I think it is time for another posting before I am off onto my next destination: Israel/Palestine.

This one will be random thoughts from recent life happenings.

We found there to be a mouse in our house last week. I saw him run back and forth between the heaters and couch one evening and just yesterday Lisa saw him run across the kitchen counter and dart into one of the stove burners! It is time to get him! We now have 6 mouse traps set in various places around the house. He ate the cheese off of one of them and now I'm trying some old bologna. Anyway, these mousy events have caused me to have some disturbed dreams...

In my dream I was catching all the mice in our house and I was putting them in a tall tupperware container. They were all quite lethargic and easy for me to catch, but I had the feeling of discombobulation, not being able to keep my eye on the container and the mice I was trying to catch at the same time. I kept piling them higher and higher and what was odd was that they weren't jumping around. It was kind of like I was stacking cookies into the container except more disgusting because they had dirty fur and some were even wet. One mouse had given birth to babies and was really fat and I remember feeling gross when I put her and the pink babies in the container. I took them to work to set them free in a field, but buried them in the dirt beside a tree instead. It was almost as if I was planting them or burying a turd. Some moved around and crawled out after I placed them in the dirt. The dream moods dictionary gives some interesting interpretations of what mice or mouse dreams could mean.

Moving on to reality, Nicole, one of my best friends from growing up, got married this weekend and I got to play the best maid role in her wedding. As I drove home afterwards, passing the fields of golden grain and blue skies on the way to my parents' house, I was overwhelmed with a sad ache, which I will call a feeling of nostalgia. I know I can't change the fact that people grow up and change and life moves on, but part of me wanted to hold on to those memories I had with Nicole and not let them go. I wanted to savor those good ol' days a little longer, keep living them and pretending as if it were only yesterday, but I can't. Do you ever feel like you idealize the past and remember it as being more precious than what you actually thought it was when you were living it in the present? Does that make sense? I'm sure there must be some proverb somewhere that sums this up well, but all I can think of is the song/phrase "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone."

I'm glad to have memories, both good and bad ones, even if they make me feel sad sometimes, and even if I can't go back and relive the ones I love most.