Donne and Mr. Chuckleford: Rivals for My Affections

I permit myself a weird post every so often. This is it. Hang on to your hats. ;-)

I believe I have mentioned somewhere or other that Brittainy and I have our beds set up in an L-shape so that we sleep toe-to-toe catty-corner, but can have head-t0-head talks. This morning we had one of our propped-up-on-pillows-head-to-head-pre-work-day chats. We usually reserve these for Saturday mornings, but today there was too much to tell.

"I dreamed," I said, "that I was pastry-cook to a bunch of seventeenth-century English poets."
"Rageneau!" she cried, meaning Cyrano.
"I hadn't thought of that," I said, "but it wasn't like Cyrano. It was like a prison camp... well, actually, it wasn't a prison camp so much as a tavern and a shop and someplace where I lived and some building over here"--I gestured--"where the poets lived, and there was this atmosphere of political intrigue. I guess that's from all the reading I was doing this week about John Bunyan for Pilgrim's Progress. Anyway, one of the poets was actually the explorer Frobisher, and he kept suspecting me of trying to poison John Donne. Oh, and I think I was half in love with Donne, whose wife (first or second?) had conveniently died sometime before the dream started... or maybe this was before he met his wife. It's all very confusing."

She laughed. In fact, she laughed hard and at considerable length. So did I. When we finally got to the office, however, I found that I was not the only one with strange nighttime visions...

"I dreamed that I was in this war where I and my band of lost boys had to defend this house against an attack by one of my best friends and his minions," David told us, wide-eyed. "This is the second time I've dreamed I was in a battle to the death with a friend, but at least I always wake up before we actually get down to the death duel."

Strange times. Then I sat down and discovered that my desk fountain, Mr. Chuckleford (with whom, according to Casey, I am in love), was not working properly.

"Mr. Chuckleford!" I cried. "You are not your own merry self!"

I finally managed to resuscitate Mr. Chuckleford by judicious addition of water (some had evaporated over the weekend, leading no doubt to his somber and trickling mood). Soon he was bubbling along as chuckly as ever. I found myself crooning to him. "Aw, there's a happy Mr. Chuckleford.... is he happy again?" Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Brittainy giving me one of those "what in the world?" looks.

"Um..." I said, "I guess I forgot that this isn't Children's Ministry and Mr. Chuckleford is my suitor, not one of my kids."

So today I learned:

1) Don't mix babytalk and romance.
2) It's weird to be in love with a fountain and a dead poet at the same time.
3) I don't ever want to be a pastry-cook to starving artists in the middle of a politically-charged climate in England. By the way, I think the "pastry-cook" part came from the fact that I made a pie on Saturday.

Life is amazing. I'm enjoying the adventure like all get-out. :-D