Random.

I had a dream last night that one of my girlfriends was a college cheerleader. One of the cheerleaders on her squad was sick, so she asked me to fill in. Of course I said yes, why wouldn't I? (Never was a cheerleader in my day). Before I knew it, I was in a red and white knitted Spartan sweater (3 times too big for me), a tiny cheer skirt, high socks, ugly eighties tennis shoes and a heinous mom-bob hair cut, cheering at a huge bowl football game. Except I didn't know any of the cheers, or moves. I did have a binder with all the words of the cheers written out, and all the moves in parenthesis. So I'd lay the binder on the ground in front of me, my eyes glued down on it, try to follow the cheers, and frantically flip through the pages to find the next cheer we were doing. I was also boyfriend/girlfriend with my ex-boyfriend's youngest brother, who is 6 years younger than me. I kept having awkward encounters with said ex-boyfriend, because somehow I had ditched him for his little bro. I kept thinking, "How did this happen? How am I dating him? How do I let him down easy?" But their whole family was there, cheering me on as I cheered at my first football game, said ex-boyfriend glaring at me the entire time.

Then a kid I went to jr. high and high school with named Brad Vucovich popped out of the crowd. It was the 7th grade version of him. (I wouldn't mention the name, but I find it note-worthy that my sister blogged a little something about him a few months back in this post. Poor guy.) And it's not like I saw this kid or talked about him recently or anything, there's absolutely no logical explanation why he showed up in my sub-conscious. Except that punk stole my binder, the cheer binder I so desperately needed to perform. He yelled, "You're not a cheerleader!" and disappeared with it. His personality was a bit antagonistic growing up, so maybe it does make sense that he would do this. Then I was there all to myself, front and center, trying to follow along with the cheers in front of thousands of fans who suddenly didn't find too much interest in the game at all, but more in our riveting performance.

I know what this means. This means I have an unfulfilled fantasy that must be fulfilled. This means I am supposed to figure out how I can still be a cheerleader. Maybe there are some intramural cheer squads practicing and performing somewhere right now. Maybe they would have a uniform for me even though I'm swollen with child. And maybe I could be part of the squad and learn the cheers and not have to depend on my binder that could so easily be taken away from me. I could be a confident cheerleader. Maybe we could make up dances to perform at half-time shows somewhere, and hi-five each other after hard practices. I know what I've got to do. And these kinds of things don't just fall into place, they don't just happen. It's all up to me to make it happen.

On another note, I'm already done with winter. Happens every January. But I do like that Lucy stalks Jason while he is task oriented. Just like this fall while he tried to blow leaves, remember? I like that he pretends like he's not supposed to like it. And I like that he sighs and shakes his head laughing when she follows him around, picks her up and looks up at me watching them from the window with that, "What am I going to do with her?" expression. I like that.

And I like that our backyard sorta looks like Narnia. Not to mention the half-man/half-goat creature that we let live out there named Mr. Tumnus. That kinda makes me think of Narnia, too, but not nearly as much as the wintery trees.