Do dreams tell all?

It has been brought to my attention that I've been taking some pretty huge leaps out of my comfort zone. And a quick check (by yours truly) confirms that this may possibly be quite true. It has been said that while some women "of certain age" may find themselves getting a facelift, going hiking in the Amazon, or moving to a beautiful ocean-front cape cod (it's true, I read it on the internet), some of us instead finally start to do those things we were meant to do but had to put off in the mommy years (I read that on the internet, too).

So maybe that's why this stay-at-home, prefers-to-read-an-adventure-story-rather-than-live-it, don't-make-me-change-a-thing mom is erupting into a blogging-linking-leading-speaking-teaching-and-possibly, (gasp) weekend-conference-going woman? Sure does make it sound like I've somehow morphed into aperson of confidence.

Ha! You may be fooled. And I may even have fooled myself. But you can't fool your dreams. Go ahead. Try it. Tell yourself that you've got all the confidence in the world and that you're not scared of that something new. Then fall asleep. See how that works for you. Here's how it worked for me.

I recently started a mom's group. It was Mariana's idea. Really, it was. Who says we can't learn anything from our children? She said that since people were always stopping us in the grocery store, at church, or at any other public venue, to comment on our family and to ask about how we parent, I should just start a mom's group. She said it as if it'd be easy. Easy for her, maybe. She's been on stage since she was 8. I could have been. I got the part. But then they gave it to Kelli because they said I was too short. They thought my character should be played by someone who was taller than the girl playing the younger sister. I don't know about that. I'm not taller then my younger brother. And my oldest will likely not be the tallest in our family. But I digress. And I'm really not bitter at all about that. Oh my, where was I?

Oh yes. So first I had to get up the nerve to ask some young mothers if they wanted to be in a group. They all said yes. Some even told their friends and they said yes. Then I had to actually plan some dates to get together. Then I had to plan my first session. I planned it as far in advance as I could so that it wouldn't come too quickly. But it did.

So the night before the first mom's group, I thought I was doing well. But then I had this very weird dream. In my dream, too many moms showed up. And they all brought lots of kids. Lots of kids who were not very well-behaved. And poor Mariana had to watch all of them by herself. One mom came in the door and announced that her kids had just had the stomach flu but not to worry. She then recanted and took her kids home. In the midst of all this chaos, the house lights didn't work so we had to sit in the dark. I'm not sure what happened to the sun coming in the windows. Then none of my words would come out right and all I got were confused looks around my kitchen table. But the worst part came when the most popular girl from my high school showed up and sat right down in the middle of the table. Talk about bringing up old fears and confidence-busters! I guess since it couldn't get much worse from there, I woke up.

And our first session went off without a hitch.

Uh, oh. The second session is this week. I think I'll skip sleeping this week.