… with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut intricately to look like Cher?
I’m not even sure how to get into this one. I don’t really actually believe my husband is having an affair – like sleeping with someone else. I do, however, know that he has something else he loves in his life far more than he will ever even acknowledge me, which could be considered something of an affair. That, in a nutshell is: his career in film.
Obviously this is a regular bone of contention, for a number of reasons that I need not blather on about. Among that bone of contention is the fact that his career is not entirely creative and actually in film, his job includes mostly managerial tasks more often than not (payroll, telephone answering, office managing, scheduling, computer fixing); as well as the fact that it is not sustainable financially in the long term. Then there is the old adage “I guess everything you said while we were dating wasn’t exactly true, or at the very least are now forgotten promises.” That is all sort of the tip of the iceberg. Needless to say, though, my subconscious reminds me regularly of my feelings about this in my dreams.
Usually my dreams are more like nightmares, and they almost always express the unrelenting homesickness I feel for Chicago. Last week I had the same dream three nights in a row: that we went to one of my favorite delis in Chicago, because of course we lived in Chicago (enter homesickness and forgotten promises). But then when it was time to wrap the sandwiches up in plastic wrap, I got wrapped in it instead and sent back in a To Go box to California. That is a nightmare.
But then I have nights like last night, where it is still painstakingly obvious that my subconscious is trying to work out my unhappiness and concerns with this situation, and more importantly my husband’s affair with his job – but it is so bizarre and hilarious you can’t help but be humorously perplexed.
A few weeks ago, Nick finally agreed to give Chicago a shot for a predetermined period of time. The idea was he would get a job that he can be happy in, as well as exert some of his creativity; yet, broaden it considerably so that he would actually have a shot at finding a job, rather than what he has now which is a very narrow and niche position (quite frankly, he even has difficulty finding what he wants here in LA – the film capital of the world). We made a list of things that would need to happen before said major life change would occur, like financial planning of it all, research over where we’d like to live in the ‘burbs, job searching, etc. But then no discussion was had again about it until finally I brought it up and asked: “so have we dropped this whole “give Chicago a shot”-plan, or what?” This started up the conversation again and of course the job matter is the biggest one, so I asked my husband exactly what kind of job he wanted to tailor his resume to, search for, etc. His response you ask? “One where I can make a lot of money managing and editing in film.” To me that meant “exactly what I have now.” And that was the end of the conversation; we went to sleep about 30 minutes later.
So obviously I had a dream about it all, and woke up feeling like there wasn’t even a point of getting out of bed. California really has nothing to offer me, personally, and I have run out of errands, chores, laundry, and projects to do. But the dream that I had was just so terribly bizarre, I can’t help but wonder what it all meant (besides of course the obvious).
Scene 1
We lived in Chicago-land area, and in fact moved back to the town I grew up in: Homer Glen. My mom was really involved in the church in the town over, where I went to school as well, called Shepherd of the Hill. The church was a prevalent part of my dream last night. Nick and I became members of the church again and I decided to join the church choir (yes, I was in the children’s choir there when I was little). And I continued to stay in the choir even though Mrs. Schroll – the church’s music director – told me my singing sucked. Those were actually the words she used, too – “your singing sucks.”
Scene 2
While at choir practice one afternoon, a bunch of my friends from high school and other areas of my life in Chicago came to hang out at the church. Of particular note is that there were a few that didn’t seem too interested in meeting up while I was on my vacation there last month, but in my dream they were all about hanging out. They all wanted to take a ton of photos with my camera phone, but kept wanting to put the camera angle really high up in the air so that they didn’t look like they had double chins. They kept wanting to put it higher and higher and I kept dropping the phone, and getting really annoyed. And to make matters worse, the pictures that came out all had people making that God-awful duck face and/or Jesus continued to show up in the photo, walking around behind us wearing the ugliest pair of flip flops I had ever seen.
Scene 3
At home later in the dream, our fence was broken. Not the whole thing, just one slat that kept banging in the wind.
Scene 4
After coming back inside from trying to repair the fence, and continuing to hear it flap in the wind because I obviously did not fix it, I saw my husband talking to something in the kitchen. I walked over to him to see him quiet down immediately and hide something in a brown paper lunch sack.
B(itch): “What the hell are you doing?”
Nick: “Nothing.”
B(itch): “No, seriously – who were you just talking to?”
Nick: “No one! God, what is your problem?!”
And then he stormed out, leaving the brown paper lunch sack on the counter.
After I heard him drive away, I looked in the sack to see he had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread in there, only he had cut and molded it very extensively to resemble Cher.
Confused and disturbed, I carefully put Cher PB&J back into her lunch sack and left it on the counter.
Scene 5
Back at Shepherd of the Hill for more choir practice, Mrs. Schroll started screaming at me that I was running late. I came in and she started doing this warm up song we did when I was really little and in the cherub’s choir – the peanut butter and jelly song. It goes something like “peanut … peanut butter … and jelly … peanut … peanut butter … and jelly.”
Choir practice ended shortly after that and Mrs. Schroll yelled at me again, only this time she said I needed to go downstairs to the church kitchen and take the macaroni and cheese out of the refrigerator to heat up because Nick and Cher PB&J would be there soon.
Then I woke up at the sound of my husband shutting the front door to go to work.
Interestingly enough, faithful blog followers, late last week Pookie entertained the idea that Nick is a robot. He rarely shows any emotion for anything and is often very controlled in what he does, and then he admitted that he never dreams (at least what he remembers). Am I just having crazy dreams for the both of us – me and my robot husband? Is this just more of the obvious – that I am terribly homesick and cannot reconcile such feelings, and that my husband will never stop having his affair with his career?
Or is it something else? Or worst of all – is it nothing?
Heather Christena Schmidt 
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