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2/14/1999 Happy New Year10:45 a.m. I awoke with the faint memories of another Wellesley dream in my head. When I am under pressure I often dream I am back at college and facing a stressful situation: for example, it's the first day of classes and I've lost my schedule, or I've forgotten about an exam, or I've lost a paper that is due. The weird thing is that I never felt particularly stressed when I was actually at Wellesley. Why does my psyche choose college as the location of my stress dreams? Last night's dream was different from most of my college dreams because it wasn't disturbing. Here is what I remember of it: I was moving into my dorm room. I was disappointed because my view wasn't as nice as that from my last room. Instead of looking out onto the campus, my window overlooked a major road. I unpacked my stuff and then realized that the dining hall had probably already closed for breakfast. I decided just to lie on my bed and read a novel. Pretty boring, huh? But it made me remember why my college years were such a carefree existence. I didn't have any small humans depending on me. I didn't have to worry about paying the utility bills or replacing the toilet paper rolls. I didn't have to buy, prepare, or serve food. If I wanted to while away the morning reading for pleasure, I could. 4:30 p.m. This morning I took the kids to the McDonald's playland so that Tab could work on painting the kitchen without distraction. If the weather had been as warm as it was on Friday, we could have gone to a playground; unfortunately it is freezing here today. I don't think it will make it above 35 deg. We went to the McDonald's a little north of Princeton instead of the one we usually visit in Pennsylvania. The maze at this one seems easier for Matthew to negotiate; he does not need Daniel to help him over the steps. Even so, the brothers ran around together for the most part. There was a birthday party going on with lots of shrieking girls. I wouldn't let my kids run around screeching at the top of their lungs even in a play area, but the parents attending the birthday party seemed oblivious to their children's obnoxious behavior. Stephanie picked up Daniel after lunch so he could spend the night at her house. I put the twins up for a nap around 2, and they fell asleep almost immediately. I can't believe they are still sleeping. It must be the after effects of their colds. While I was working on master pages for Peretti, I watched an episode of ST: Deep Space Nine I had taped. A serial killer was loose on the station, and Ezri Dax was trying to discover who the murderer was. To learn how to think like a killer, she needed to use the memories of one of the Dax symbiant's earlier hosts, who was himself a murderer. He repelled her, yet he enabled her to see things from the killer's perspective, which helped her discover the killer's identity. Though I'm not fond of the Ezri character, I liked this rather Jungian episode. It was intriguing watching someone being led to understand and even value the darker elements of her own being, a part of herself she would have rather repressed. 8:15 p.m. Tab, the twins, and I went out to dinner tonight at Pizzaria Uno. Mom had given us gift certificates for Christmas. I love the crust on their deep dish pizza: it tastes more like a biscuit than like an ordinary pizza crust, which probably means there's an astonishing amount of fat in it. As usually happens when we come with the kids we were exiled to the "children's ghetto" in back with the other families. The boys were very good there. They spent most of the time coloring with the crayons and coloring books provided, barely stopping to eat a little bit of their dinner. They split one child's meal of chicken fingers and french fries, but together ate less than half of it. Before the twins went to bed, Tab helped them sign a Valentine's card and told them to present it to me. They rushed into the living room, flourishing the card, and shouting, "Happy New Year!" They continued to wish us and each other a happy new year as I took them up to bed.
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