Horrific dreams, and I think I broke my car.

A calming picture, because one is oh, so needed right now!

This whole day has just been off and terrible, and it started with a particularly horrific nightmare I had last night. I dreamed my niece was missing -- I'd started walking her to school through the big, scary woods behind her house (which isn't really her house, and a forest which did have, in my defense, well-lit paths and other people on them at the time) and let her go the rest of the way on her own. She never got to school.

There was great consternation all around, and we were all afraid she was dead. I was sure, though, that she was alive and in the forest, so I girded my loins and went in (by the way, my brother had a much nicer home in my dream -- the main room was huge, with massive picture windows looking out over the wooded hills behind the house; if I hadn't been so verklempt, I'd have set a spell and just watched the wind in the trees). I found a massive fortress or castle, all in ruins, and I saw her walking across the battlements, looking down at me. At the time, I was merely concerned with getting up there to her, helping her escape whatever had captured and put her there, but now...I have an impression that she was annoyed with me.

Of course, at that point I awoke. In my dreams, my niece has always symbolized my writing. I get the feeling that my writing self is resentful of the time I'm spending working in Desklandia, because for the past two weeks (as I've adjusted to a full schedule again) I've not done anything. I've barely even blogged, and that does count toward my daily writing totals (hey, every little bit counts when you're trying to maintain a writing habit.)

And there was a little part of me worrying that the fact that the niece went missing meant my writerliness has gone missing, too. I'm always afraid that one day I'll find out I'm not really a writer after all, I'm just a poser, avoiding the real thing I am, which is most likely demented cat lady (or dog lady, really) or perhaps a postal worker -- and we all know the job prospects for postal workers right now.

So I'm blogging. Toes in first, then we'll ease the rest of the leg over the side, yes?

In other news, I think I've broken my car. Seriously broken it, this time. I was on the highway and it suddenly slipped into second. I made it to a non-highway road and it just as suddenly went back into regular drive gear. Criminy. It was shifting hard into and out of second as I accelerated all the way home, too.

I still think, no matter what the brother says, that my transmission is going. Shot to hell from that badly done transmission fluid change (don't ever, ever, ever get your transmission fluid changed at the places that specialize in oil changes -- they don't put the right stuff in). But brother thought my fluid might just have been low, so I added some in. Now I think I might have added too much.

Sigh.

At least I have some nice, new sparkly yarn in the mail (as of tomorrow). I bought it as a special treat, for having got the temp work, and I couldn't, in all good conscience, tell the dyer who specially hand-dyed it for me, to keep it because I'm having car trouble. It's not her fault, and she started working on it before I sent the payment because I was so certain I'd be ok for a while.

In any case, $29 is a drop in the bucket compared to what new transmissions cost. So I might as well fiddle as this Rome burns, at least when it comes to my yarn.

Perhaps I'll feel better tomorrow, if I don't have another creepy dream where Nieceling runs away to castles in dark forests to spite me.