My nephew woke up at 12:30 a.m. last night/this morning. I saw him in the hallway, tiptoeing past my door in his pajamas, so I went out to see what he needed. “I don’t know,” he said. (Along with “That’s no good!”, it’s one of his new favorite phrases, I think.) He’d awakened and just wasn’t sleepy.

So I booted up YouTube and we watched some “Bugs Bunny” episodes; it’s part of his night-time ritual at home with his daddy and I thought maybe it would help him get back to sleep (not so much–I think he finally drifted off an hour and a half later, snuggled up against my back while I read in bed). He fell in love with “Bully for Bugs,” which I have now watched with him six times in the last 23.5 hours. “Oh, dear!” he says whenever something happens to the bull.

I’m starting to understand why he yelled about killing the orangutan yesterday. I’d forgotten how wantonly violent Bugs Bunny is. But I bet the writers had a heck of a lot of fun thinking up new and ingenious ways to kick the butts of Bugs’ enemies.

***

Classes start tomorrow. This morning, I dreamed that

a) I arrived late at my first class in a state of deshabille that included a bathrobe that kept flapping open to reveal things it shouldn’t. Then I had to leave early because I’d lost my keys and was frantic to find them. At some point I also realized I had on a Mardi Gras mask so the students couldn’t see my face, and I worried that they would all think I was crazy and drop my class and complain to the department.

b) Some family members (I won’t name them because it isn’t their fault) were getting married and wanted me to sing “Think of Me” from Phantom of the Opera in their wedding. I protested that I’m tone deaf, I can’t sing that well, no way did they want me to perform. But they insisted. I didn’t have a chance to practice, and when the time came for the song, there was a guy singing along and accompanying on the guitar. He was awesome and I was off-key and all over the scale. He was furious at me for ruining his song. At the end, there was a moment of stunned silence and then pity clapping. I was mortified.

c) I had two pet king cobras. One bit me, then the other slithered out of its tank and Bishop sat on it. I reached beneath him to move him off the snake, and it bit me twice. He also got bit, and at some point, so did both the cats. There was much more, including a family member (again, that person shall remain nameless here, although s/he laughed pretty hard when I narrated this part) who happened to know that constrictors are attracted to the smell of urine. So this person peed in a trail away from the tank, where I had not only the cobras but also–suddenly, in the way of dreams–a python and a boa. The python and boa followed the pee to a new tank, and we sealed in the cobras to gradually suffocate/starve to death/die of thirst. This is a not infrequent theme in my dreams: that I discover I’ve bought venomous snakes as pet, and I don’t know what to do with them, so I passively or actively kill them.

I checked an online dream dictionary for the heck of it and learned that cobras indicate creativity and that snake bites mean you’re nervous about something. I did not need a dream dictionary to tell me that.

(Tonight I started reading Handling Serpents by Jimmy Morrow and Ralph W. Hood, and it now occurs to me this might not be the best timing ever. But I’m increasingly intrigued by the phenomenon of serpent handling churches. I can totally see how it’s addictive: If you do it the first time and don’t get bit, I imagine there’s a huge rush. But then you have to try again and again, and eventually, depending who you are, you either get bit a bunch of times and survive, or get a really bad bite and die. I so want to visit one of these churches, but knowing me, I wouldn’t be able to stop at just observing; I’d end up dancing around with a rattlesnake. And I KNOW if I did that and didn’t get bit, I’d have to try it again…and again…)