Day Twenty-five

I have absolutely no idea what I dreamed about last night. I think this may be in part because I was awoken so many times  for a variety of reasons. The most memorable was in the wee hours of the morning. Jesse doesn't recall any of this happening and therefore thinks it was in fact a dream....

I was in that foggy realm of sleep where I'm not sure if I was half awake when I heard the noise or if the sound was in fact what woke me up. Anyway, I was startled by the sound of a baby crying. It was that distinct middle-of-the-night-baby-wail. It was loud and clear. So loud and clear, in fact that it sounded like it was practically outside the window. The dogs woke up too. They jumped up immediately and started to run outside. I tried to stop them so I could hear better.  It sounded so much like a baby, but I thought it could possibly be a cat (occasionally we do hear middle-of-the-night-cat-in-heat moans) so I was trying to keep the dogs in so I could distinguish which it was.  I also didn't want the dogs to add to the noise by running outside and barking. In my mid-sleep-ness, I started to worry that if it was a baby, maybe it was a baby in the backyard (a la baby in the bassinet on the front porch) and if the dogs went out they'd trample it. Then I figured, if there was indeed a baby in the backyard, and if the dogs found it, I'd know right away and I'd know to get up and investigate.  So I let them go.  To my knowledge, there was no baby in the backyard, and the dogs didn't even bark when they went outside.  They came back in only to hear the wailing again, and return outside to nothing. Now, the most bizarre part of all this is that none of our neighbors have babies. They are all retired.  I suppose it could be a visiting grandchild, but even still, the crying was so loud, it seems odd that the crying would have carried through so many walls, windows, and yard.

So, while I know it wasn't a dream, it was still a mid-night experience that occurred while I was sleeping that has haunted me all day.