Friday, July 13, 2007

My First Dream in French

Or, rather, my first dream where I found myself in a French-Arab country and tried desperately to communicate in broken French.

I was with someone else, collecting all sorts of wizardly potions for some kind of ritual at this big old house and we were in the souk and found this little sort of herb shop and we needed... gawd, what was it? Nassau, nassa, something, I don't know, but they didn't have it in straight herb form so we had to order it as part of this chickpea stew.

In the dream, I forgot how to say, "I need" (j'ai besoin de) and had to use "I would like" (je voudrais), but I was terribly dissatisfied with this expression because I really did desperately need this herb for this wizardly rite, and these two guys in the back, who spoke Arabic, English, and French, quietly made fun of our paltry attempts to communicate in French.

"French isn't so hard," they said to one another, "Faim, quelque faim, it is nothing. So easy."

It wasn't until I work up that I realized the easy words they'd used to illustrate how "easy" French was were "hunger" and "some hunger."

Even in my dreams, I'm buying food and thinking about hunger. Even in foreign languages.

This doesn't surprise me, as I learned at PP that I've gained another six pounds since January. I've also started eating blueberries for breakfast instead of eggs and bacon, to cut calories, and have started drinking black coffee all morning to cut hunger. From about 9am to 7pm, except for a short hour or hour and a half after lunch, I'm hungry all day. All. Fucking. Day. And yes, I do put snacks in there: one at 10am and one at 3pm - string cheese and some carrots - just to try and cut some of that horrible hunger.

I'm hungry all the time, and seeing negative results for all that. It's enough to drive me batty. I can't fucking wait to set up this appointment with the new endocrinologist. There's some easier solution to this crap, I know.

I don't even care what language it's in.

2 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Perpetual Beginner said...

Ouch - my sympathies. I was hungry non-stop with my second pregnancy. My ob kept telling me it was normal. "Every pregnant woman is hungry." Well, no, not every pregnant woman can go to an all-you-can eat buffet, go through four full plates and still be just as hungry as when she walked in.

I had to eat by measure for eight months. It sucked.

Anonymous said...

I always just make up the words I don't know when I dream in other languages.

I am so sympathetic about the weight gain. I went from 155 to 205 between 1999 and 2002. And it didn't matter what I did, exercise-wise, food-wise--I just kept gaining. So it's driving me nuts reading about your weight gain. Dammit, you're doing everything right... and it doesn't matter.

And I know what that feels like.

(I don't like that you're hungry all the time. If you weren't a diabetic, I'd say it was a sign that you were dieting, and we all know the statistics on the long-term outcome of dieting. But you are a diabetic, so even if it does mean the same thing, you have so many more pressing concerns...

...but if you weren't a diabetic, I'd suggest maybe choosing one or two days a week to NOT be hungry? Controlling your calories the rest of the time, but just letting your body know every once in a while that you're NOT trying to starve it to death.)