Anne was named after me! I had been wondering for so long when someone would consider this poor old spinster hag without a child (that's me!) and help her carry on her tradition...thank heavens for little Annie's birth in 1987 (and her parent's choice of name!).

Ever since Anne went away to spend her junior year in Belize, I haven't heard much from her. I hope that her nightmares have quieted down. Did all of you know about Anne's nightmares?

I probably shouldn't reveal too much since she's at that age where they still get embarrassed about everything, but this girl has the most sensitive soul. Every little disquietude that she encounters during the day comes back to haunt her during the night, while she's most vulnerable.

Once, when she was a little girl and staying with me for the weekend, she had the most horrible dream! When she woke up, she was crying and hollering. But she refused to confess the subject of her nightmare. And so, taking a hint, I decided instead to distract her from her scary thoughts: we played with alphabet blocks. I took this photo of her silly creation:

Then, as I was settling her back into bed, I promised to sleep there beside her all night long. We agreed on 3 silly rules about what to do should a BEE, a cup of TEA, or an EX dream pop up in her mind when she closed her eyes:

(1) BEE --> change adjacent items directly above it, below it, to its left, and to its right: back by one. Leave the bee as it is.
(2) TEA -->change adjacent items directly above it, below it, to its left, and to its right: forward by three. Leave the tea as it is.
(3) EX --> change adjacent items directly above it, below it, to its left, and to its right: back by two. Leave the ex as it is.

And they could only be done in that precise order and never used retroactively. For instance, if by executing a "treatment" on a TEA turned it into a BEE, she wouldn't then go back and perform the BEE treatment on the new BEE. Similarly, if the treatment on the TEA turned it into a TEA, she wouldn't get stuck in the feedback loop and then execute the TEA treatment once again on the new TEA. Oh I know that these rules seem silly, but they made a ton of sense to us at 4.30 in the morning after some bad dreams and a bleary eyed play session with blocks. And they helped coax little Annie back to sleep.

The next morning,we played checkers for hours - zig zaging back and forth and leapfrogging over each others pieces in oh-so-meaningful ways to our creative approach to the game. I still wonder what that dream was about...