2011? Already??

Holy crap! It's a new year and it'll be a pretty damn exciting one, too!
I'll be having a baby in the first part of June, my daughter will be turning 7 in July, we'll be moving into a bigger place in February or March, my Grandy (grandpa) turns 90 in April and I'm going to try my damnedest to get to Texas for the festivities, and all sorts of other things will occur as well, I'm sure.

Ok, so really, what's changed? Same apartment, same job, same crazy-ass dreams. At least this one wasn't bad. Kinda exciting, actually.
I dreamt that I was back in Alaska and this man was teaching my to pan for gold on this black sand shoreline. His buddy said it we shouldn't pan there because the property was owned by the local Inuit people, but the first guy said it was ok, he had checked with them.
Anyway, I discovered this huge stone box about six inches under the surface of the sand and started to dig it out as the tide receded. The box was about 20 feet long and four or five feet wide. I pulled off the first lid, which had a shipping label etched into it, and then pulled off a smaller lid.
Underneath was a huge taxidermied giraffe. It had been in the box for a little while, but had sustained surprisingly little water damage. The most amazing thing, though, was that the giraffe had no spots. It was a tawny color all over. At the bottom, near the animals hooves, was a placard that read "Plains Giraffe".
I got the two men to help me dig the box out and hall it closer to the shore. They then began to pull the animal out in a painfully haphazard fashion, letting the hide tear and not caring if the smaller bones were scattered. I screamed at the to stop and not touch the damn thing again.
The giraffe was laid out on a large wooden slab and I managed to take the slab out of the box and lay it on the beach. (Don't ask me how I did this by myself, it was a dream, ok?)
Under the first slab were more compartments in the box filled with the skeletal and taxidermied remains of dozens of now extinct animals and some I thought might have been completely unknown to science.
There was a small skeleton of a saber-toothed cat, but it was no bigger than a house cat. There where skeletons of what looked like large rodents and a taxidermied gopher-type animal with huge canines.
I became more and more excited as I looked through the box and decided I had to call the fish and game department. Seemed like a logical first step.
The two men wanted to sell the specimens for profit and I was disgusted by this idea. I told them that the specimens had to be sent to a museum like the Smithsonian where they could be verified, studied, and displayed for the pubic.
The two men drew rifles on me, I quickly drew a pair of pistols and shot one man and told the other to lower his weapon. He did.
I called Fish and Game and an officer came out to arrest the pair and then sent out an expert to look at the box. I found out that the container had been on a ship coming to Alaska from Sweden in the 1800's and belonged to a naturalist who was actually a very distant relative of mine. (Now in reality, I think I might be the tiniest bit Swedish somewhere down the line, but not enough to really claim ancestors from the 1800's. Think back further... like viking days.)
Anyway, I was all excited and seemed to wake up, but the dream just shifted. I called my older brother and told him all about the 'dream' and he told me we should go to the place I dreamed about.
We went to that shoreline and not only found the box, but found some amazing fossils of horseshoe crabs that were nearly 15 feet across.

Bizarre, eh?

Hope my new year is as exciting as my dreams... but with less gunplay.

The Knackerboy

Knackerman: A person who buys worn-out or old livestock and slaughters them to sell the meat or hides.

As far as I know, this person will come out to a farm or ranch and buy the dying or dead animal and then haul the carcase away for the hide, and to use for glue.

Now, lets shelve that bit of information for now and move on.

I have horrible dreams. Not every night, in fact, many of my dreams are wonderful, sensual, beautiful things. However, when I have a nightmare... Well, let's just say I could probably freak out Stephen King. In fact, some of my nightmares have never been told to anyone, and never will, mainly for fear that I'll be locked away in a padded cell for a while.

Last night's subconscious performance was not the worst of the bunch, but it was awful in its own way.
No violence or torture of a physical kind, but I woke up near tears and have been up since.

I dreamt that I was in a small village with only one road which led down the center of town and over a bridge separating the 'good' side of town from the slums.
I was walking across the bridge (which seemed rather steep) toward the nicer part of the village when I saw a dirty young boy trying with all his strength to pedal a bike up the bridge. The bike had a large box on the front, so it was almost like a cart being pedaled from behind.
A bit like this:

Except the cart was wooden.

The boy, who only was about 7 or so, would put all his weight on one pedal and then the other, but was not making much progress and he began to cry.
I walked over to the boy and asked him if I could help.
At first he didn't want me to, I think he was embarrassed, but the after a few more futile efforts, he silently motioned to a rope at the front of the cart.
I took the rope over my shoulder and with him pedaling and me pulling, the cart began to move.
It seemed very heavy and I noticed that is was fully loaded a little over the top of the box and covered with a grey blanket so I couldn't see what the shapes were.
I asked the little boy, "Where are you taking the cart?"
The boy quietly mumbled, "I'm the knackerboy, ma'am," as if that explained it all.
I thought about it and wondered if this young boy's task was really to get the carcases from surrounding farms and take them to the slaughterhouse.
The lumps under the blanket looked too small to be livestock. Young animals, maybe? Deer? Either way, what an awful job for a young child.
"So do you need to go to the slaughterhouse?"
"No, ma'am. The church."
"Why are we taking animal carcases to the church?"
The boy stopped and stared at me, then slowly lifted a corner of the blanket.
The cart was full of the bodies of children. Some of them babies. All grey and slightly bloated in death.
I dropped the rope and stepped back, agape at what he had shown me.
The boy put the corner down, pedaled the cart to the church door (we were nearly there) and knocked. After a short greeting to the priest, the boy and another person took the cart to the back of the church.
I approached the priest and asked what was happening.
"The families of those children pay the boy's parents to have their children taken here to be buried."
"Oh wow... I'm going to give him some money."
"You can't. If his parents find out he took charity from someone, they'll beat him."

My god. It explained why he he didn't want me to help at first.

I found out that his parents were home, laying about, while their 7 year old son carted the bodies of dead children and babes to the church.

I met up with the boy and tried to give him an oatmeal cookie, but he'd only take half and only that on the condition that I eat the other half with him. So I did.

I woke up and couldn't sleep after that. My mind keeps replaying the dead faces of the children and the live face of a little boy who was nearly dead inside.