Shark Puppies: The unspoken global warming threat

I am experiencing a return of the mysterious North American Sleeping Sickness I contracted last month, so I took a coma-like 3 hour nap this afternoon. During my blissful escape into unconsciousness, I had a very vivid dream. Global warming had proceeded apace, and I was walking along an icy shoreline with a leading scientist-of-the-future, who explained to me that climate change had resulted in a drastic evolutionary leap in sharks. The sharks, who were swimming conveniently right at the edge of the land so we could observe them, were now all having live birth, and their young lived on land and looked like puppies. While we spoke, one of the sharks had some of the aforementioned shark puppies, which were cute and round and black and brown, and the puppies started frolicking on the beach. My children, who appeared at this point as if from nowhere, were naturally drawn to the cute baby creatures, which then turned and bared their horrifying shark teeth, scaring the holy bejesus out of me and the kids. I really wish I had any artistic ability, because the vision of the gnashed-teeth shark puppies is really haunting me. Maybe I'll give it a shot later, I don't want to deprive anyone else of the horror.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you...

I have been at home with the kids now for 2 years full time, 3 years if you count the year I worked part time before that, and I think that has finally been enough time to recover from the psychic scars of my first crack at a career. I'm done with that career, and now done having babies, and soon my babies will be done being babies and I am finally starting to really believe in life after this. I was beginning to think I would just continue to dither in relative complacency until the kids were grown and my husband retired, then call it a life and release whatever vestiges of ambition still loitered on the perimeter of my dreams.

I may be overdoing it, though, aspiring to a career that will take more schooling than I've already had, and that I don't exactly qualify for to begin with. There are a whole lot of ifs in the plan I'm formulating. If I convince the pre-med catch-up program to admit me (despite my inadequate grades), if I get straight As in that program and rock the MCATs, if I get into one of the only two medical schools in driving distance, if I don't just crack under the pressure and give up at some point or change my mind as is my wont, if I get my MD and can actually decide what I want to DO with it - practice or research or business? - well then, I'll be pretty damn happy. And old. I'll definitely be old by the end of all that. So, although I may seem a bit young now for this midlife angst, I won't be by the time it comes to fruition.

In the meantime, life is so the same here, it's hard to think of current events to mention. Everyone's mostly better, illness-wise, big boy is mostly hideous, behavior-wise, little boy is mostly odd, husband is mostly funny with a side of annoying. I'm eating mostly locally with splurges for avocados and chocolate. The twins are mostly sleeping and the weather has been mostly god-awful. Summer is a vortex of sameness, a slow seductive hiatus of a season. I think it may be just what I needed.