Another Dream and a Perfect Sunday

Last night I dreamed that I went to visit Kate.  Kate is my 21 year old daughter who ran away from home almost five years ago to live in Perth of all places.  I've only seen her once since then and we aren't speaking at the moment.  When I got to where she was, some kind of beach or swimming hole I was told she was in the water.  I scanned all the people swimming and couldn't see her.  Then I saw  her lying still on the bottom of the pool.  I screamed that she had drowned and yet I didn't jump right in (which is what I would do in real life of course, I'm a trained lifesaver).  Nobody else seemed to want to do anything for a while then a young woman jumped in and dove down to get her, it looked like Kate was stuck and I could see her long dark hair waving in the water.  She brought her up and worked on her but it seemed like it was too late, she was dead.  (Yes I have cheery dreams don't I?)  For some reason they put a small cardboard box over her face and I went to her and moved it and touched her and she was cold and stiff and still.  I touched her face and spoke to her and she half smiled and woke up.  I asked her if she'd been playing a trick but she swore she hadn't and I hugged her and didn't want to let her go.  The rest of the dream was just like I was visiting her and being a mother to her like I haven't been able to be for so long.  It occurred to me that she is rarely if ever in my dreams.  I had to shut myself off a bit emotionally when I realised she wasn't ever coming home, or even back to the eastern states, to save myself from the awful frantic worry of her being so far away all by herself, and so young when she first left.  So I don't know what the dream means but I needed to write it down.  She's a selfish, self centred child, I thought she might grow out of it when she got a bit of maturity but no such luck.
I got sick of us being in this little house all staring at screens of varying kinds yesterday so I decreed we would go on a picnic.  We wanted to be by the water but it was too late to drive all the way to Narrandera where we used to always go.  So we drove out to Centenary Lake at Temora, about 40kms from here.  We stopped on the way and bought a bbq chook, some crusty bread rolls, some cakes and drinks and got there to find hardly anyone about.  The other part of the lake from where you can swim is for speed boats and there were a few families there with boats and skiing etc but at first we were the only ones by the swimming part.  They have lovely big shade sails right near the water and we spread our towels and a picnic rug on the grass.  We tried out our new whiz bang picnic basket that Phill won in the Christmas raffle at work.  It's only for two but we put some paper plates, serviettes and plastic cups in there.  It was nice to have proper metal utensils and crockery plates.

Yes it was 35C yesterday, Josh is paranoid about sun damage bless his heart.

I never learn my lesson about buying "reduced" Brie.  It was a little ripe.  The lamingtons were good though.

On the way in the car I commented that I'd forgotten to put butter in the esky.  Phill started spouting how from now on he was not going to put butter on his bread (we always use the reduced fat one) blah blah.  Bugger that I'm not going to eat fresh crusty rolls without butter so I bought a little tub of margarine and he was whingeing about that in the supermarket.  I ignored him as usual and we all had our bread rolls with marg on them.  I kept going on and on about how lovely it was to have margarine for our rolls, on and on I went, to wind him up.  Guess who weakened and reached for the spread for his roll?  I had to get a shot of it of course for evidence.

As we ate our lunch I said "Aren't you glad I made you all come out and have a picnic today?"  Emily, with her usual quick wit said "Yes and the margarine was your best idea". 

As they stood in the lake which was muddy as lakes tend to be, they could feel freshwater shrimp nibbling their feet and legs.  Emily said she wanted to try to catch one and Phill said he'd never been able to get one yet (he grew up in the country, playing in rivers and dams).  The thought went through my head that if anyone could catch one by hand it would be our Em.

They sat, very still, and very patiently and sure enough she got one.  I ran to get the camera but she dropped it before I could get a shot.

She caught another one later but I was in the water with her so didn't have the camera.  That's our Em.

She swam to the other side and went exploring.

It was hot but a lovely cool breeze was blowing off the water.  The base of the lake was sandy as opposed to the weir which was mucky and slimy so it was lovely to swim and loll about in the water.  All in all just a perfect Sunday which we have all vowed to repeat often. 

I still don't know why there wasn't anyone much there.  Phill said they were all probably somewhere else.  Uh, yeah.