Interpreting my dreams

If you want your dreams to be as fascinating to other people as they are to you, don't mention it's a dream until the end of the story.
@thewoodenslurpy 

I have a rule, instituted because Emma was that sort of child, that I will only listen to a dream if it is 30 seconds long.


That's all.

If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.

I don't usually remember my dreams but when I do, I can usually trace them back to something really real happening in my life.

For example, I woke up Saturday with a sore jaw from clenching my teeth all night.  I had dreamed about Emma leaving home.  In the dream I was mournfully sad and thinking it would be so much worse to send her than Braeden because when Braeden left home, at least I still had Emma.

(Side note:  What's going to happen when Mark leaves?  Despair and wretchedness, that's what.  One time I was lamenting my children growing up and leaving home and my dad told me I should have had more children.  I don't want more children.  I want these exact same children.  For longer.)

I was walking with Emma in the dream and then I quickly scooped her back in alarm because we were at the spot between my grandparents' house and my cousin Shanon's house where I sometimes saw snakes when I was growing up.

(Another side note: I was unreasonably scared of snakes as a child.  They don't really scare me now--mice are way more scary now--but when I was a kid, and would walk to Shanon's house, I would determine just where along the walk it would be closer to run home or run to her house if I saw a snake.)

(I never claimed to not be a weird kid.)

Anyway, back to the dream.  Are you still with me?  I realize the hypocrisy here because listening to dreams is the worst (hence the 30 second rule) and I'm writing about my dream.

In my dream, at the snake spot, an enormous bigger-than-you've-ever-seen snake was crossing the road and I was holding Emma back and protecting her.

(Because I'm suddenly a slayer of snakes?)

I don't know.

In my non dreaming state, I haven't been nearly as sad about Emma graduating as I was Braeden.  For one thing, rather than a mission, she is going to college, 30 minutes away.

In my dreaming state, I think I'm sad and will miss her and want to save her from everything bad or unknown or scary, including really big snakes.

OK, was that less than 30 seconds?