I've been having very strange dreams over the last two weeks. They've been so real that I wake up and remember them as events rather than fictionalized fantasies and wish fulfillments. The problem is that they are not happy dreams; they are futuristic, doomed-utopia dreams. I'm always running from the new government, trying to break the new rules without being caught and my sister and I are against everybody else. In one dream, I had a baby and I kept forgetting I had a baby and I would run to my room to check on it after leaving it alone for three hours or a day. The baby was very tiny and I loved it like crazy, but I'd become so distracted by everything else that I would forget I was raising something. In one part of the dream, I'm carrying the baby around in a mason jar half filled with water and I chat to people and realize some time later that I should look down and check on the baby, maybe give it a little "coochy, coochy coo!" I look down and the poor baby is under the water and it's so tiny and small and I just adjust it and look up.

What does this mean? Does this mean that I want a baby, but I want a baby for the attention of having one? For the convenience of loving something? And even more strange: Jon was the father of the baby and sometimes came and picked the baby up and walked away saying, "Come for a walk with Daddy."

I think I'm going crazy; going crazy, or the infamous biological clock that infests itself in every woman is beginning its whirring. Ever since my niece was here over a month ago, I've been thinking about babies. Holding a baby and taking care of a baby and loving a baby. Kids say hi to me and wave to me and in the grocery store they smile, I can't help but think about what my baby might look like. Then there's the real me; the one that is awake. And I think, "I'm too dang selfish." I want to have sex whenever I want; lay down on the couch and watch Law & Order over and over again; read a book; decide to wander around a store for not particular reason and eat ice cream, then go to a movie, then see a friend, then smoke some pot and drink a beer and say, "Well, I'm going to bed now." Selfish.

I'm going to be 26 years old soon. On May 26, I'll be 26. This only happens once. What will happen in that year? Will I decide what I want to return to school to study? Will I get a raise? A new job? Will I find a new apartment? Will I get engaged? Married? Pregnant? Will I break up? Will I get a new sofa? Will I forge a great bond with my new cats? Will something happen that is great and grand?

My biological father has been trying to call me. He said in an email that he agrees with me on everything "for the most part," and wants to talk about it on the phone rather than over email, so he's called me twice so far and left messages because I've been sleeping each time he calls. Ick. That's my only reaction. I want to hide under a couch and say, "Forget you. Just email me an apology and then freakin' forget it; I don't want to hear it!" Childish and a bit hypocritical of me, isn't it? I started the conversation in the first place and now I want to act like it's unspoken and over with. I feel like I had the opportunity to say, This is how I feel. Now let's shut up and just know it and feel awful about it and then when I'm comfortable enough, and only then, apologize.

Life doesn't work that way, I'm learning.

In truth, he can just give me money for 25 years of abandonment. I'll get new clothes, a couch, pay off some college loans and then say, "Hey! Why don't you take me out to dinner?"

Ha ha. I kill myself with my uncomfortable humor.