Killer Bicyclist

12/29/2007
Saturday Night's dream

Towards the end of a long complicated dream that I don't remember, I'm going through a logging area. I'm not sure if I'm on foot or on a bicycle, but I don't think I walked all the way there. I have lost whatever vehicle I had. Towards the end of the road, I meet up with a bicyclist. She is sort of disheveled, with wild dark hair. We talk, and she mentions offhand that she's killed a couple of people in bicycling accidents (the others were also on bicycles or in cars). She speaks of it as sort of an unfortunate side effect; I feel slightly appalled by it, but I suppose that it does happen, we just don't hear about it that much. The continuing roads are closed, possibly by flooding, or don't go where I want to go, so I set off through the woods. I'm intending to cut through the hills to the town of R-. I pass a simple wooden shed in the woods, by the side of the road, intended for travelers to take shelter in. It's like a park building. A sign stipulates that the door to the "huckleberry hut" must remain open at all times. This has something to do with the weather conditions.

Finding crystals in dangerous ground

Last night's dream

I was the father of a young girl, probably between 5 and 8. I was a young man, with dark hair, thin. We were on the old logging road, the way it used to be. Our work was gathering small crystals from the ditch, which looked like amethyst or some kind of tinted quartz, this was how I made a living. I had a ball and played catch with my daughter; teaching her how when she caught the ball repeatedly I praised and encouraged her heavily, telling her that when I was a kid I had been pretty bad at this (too true, although in my memory of that time I looked like a little girl).

The girl found a large crystal in the ditch, several inches across. It was purple, with sort of a streak in the middle that faded towards the outside. We were very happy about our discovery, but then an evil guy rode up. He had a private mine area at the top of the logging road where these stones were usually found, and thought we had stolen it. I had sort of suspected this would happen. An argument and fight ensued, I think I might have gotten injured or bloodied in some way. Then his horse stepped on the stone and it was crushed into several pieces. He was angry, but only wanted the big ones, so he rode away. I reassured my daughter that I was okay, and it was not her fault for keeping the stone, it hadn't been his anyway. She picked up the larger pieces that were left of the big stone, which were good finds for us anyway.
Later, we walked down the road, alongside the creek.

Moving AGAIN....

Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream -3 of 3

We are moving again. I'm really annoyed because we just moved, and I didn't want to move again so soon or for a long time. Also, I don't see the point of this move. My parents are moving too, which means even more stuff to pack up, and we're all going to a big place near the beach. We pack and pack and I can't imagine how we are going to get everything packed, we don't even have enough boxes. I start with the food and already the task seems insurmountable and pointless.

Packing dreams where I keep packing for some trip or something are a dream which sometimes becomes repetitive with me at stressful times, but I'm not sure if this was the same kind, partly because it didn't last as long.

Trying to find a quiet place to work or study

Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream -2 of 3

In the second dream of the night, which doesn't seem to be related, I am working at a desk in a room which is both a large school and part of my mother's office. And possibly also a church. A new person has been hired. I forget her name, but she is young with short, jaw length blond hair. She doesn't have anywhere to sit, so I offer her my desk. She takes it up front. I talk to my mother's office manager, N-, about where I should go now, and she's not sure. I want to go and ask my mother about it, but she is in some kind of important meeting. The whole office is larger and grand with lots of polished wood.

I find my way into a classroom. My friend H- is there, but the desks are somewhat small and crowded, several rows of desks with multiple chairs at them. There won't be much room for my two computers, and I also don't like people sitting beside me. And I want to work at my own level... the class will gravitate towards the slowest people in it and I will be bored and wont' be able to get anything done. At this point she's the only one in there, and there's room at the back, but I don't really want to have to work there with the other people so I go to find my mother again and ask if I can have another desk in a room to myself. But, she's still occupied. When I come back, the classroom has filled up with everybody else and the teacher, and there are no empty seats in the back. I am huffy and don't want to squeeze in with the rest, so I refuse to join them.

I wander through other rooms. There is a room with a large divided couch, which is a confession room for the church part of the building. I find a large empty classroom with a polished wood floor, and talk to a nun there about where I can work, and she tries to come up with a solution with me, but in the end we still haven't found one and I keep looking around. I don't want anybody sitting behind me looking at my computer screen, and I want a room by myself.

A dangerous market for me, attacks and poison

Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream -1 of 3

In the first part of the dream, I accompany the rest of my family to some sort of huge market. There is a $20 per car fee to get in. We have multiple vehicles. There is me, my sister and brother, my cousins, my aunt and uncle, someone who is either my husband or another guy (it changes), and one of my cousins' cousins from the other side of the family, a girl with dark hair called Jane or Jean or something like that. We negotiate the fees and the driving and eventually all make it there. We park our cars in some big garage parking area and split up into pairs of two. I think I'm with my aunt, but I get separated or don't want to stay with her and go off on my own. My husband/the other guy volunteer's to go with the cousin's cousin, who doesn't know anybody else there. This makes me jealous. I want him to go with me (if it is my husband, I think it's before we get married). I go through the huge market, it has many stores and goes in and out of huge warehouse buildings. There are tons of people there. Some of them make unpleasant comments to me or stare at me. I end up sort of lost, wandering around by myself, feeling rather uncomfortable. I run into one of my cousins, at one point, he is listening to a concert or band playing. Part of it is a huge dark warehouse with lots of open vendors, and other parts are like a mall, still others are open air market areas.

After some time, I climb back up stairs out of the bottom of the warehouse part, somebody is grabbing or harassing me in some way. I find my mother going through a jewelry section in the mall part. We meet up with my aunt at the open air vendor part, and everyone ends up gravitating back to the same area near the beginning, at the same time. Everybody else has been having a blast. It's unclear how we all managed to come back to the beginning at the same time, since it was not prearranged. Everyone drifts in except the cousin Jean/Jane and the other guy/my husband. I think about them off by themselves and am bothered.

We all stand around waiting to see if they will show up for a while, then go off looking for them. We go sideways from the mall area and there's sort of a canyon area, with hills and gullies with small trees and red crumbly clay. The females of the party decide it's time for a bathroom break and the others move away to wait. I climb the side of one of the clay hills, when suddenly an old guy in an orange/yellow checkered shirt comes after me. He looks a little loopy. I am afraid he is going to try to rape me. He pokes me with a wooden skewer with some sort of substance on the end of it, in the shoulder I think, and it hurts acutely. I wrestle it away from him and jab him with it several times. Within moments, he rolls over, dead.

I realize that the skewer had some kind of poison on it... will I die or become ill from the small amount I got? Some of the others come over but in my opinion they don't seem concerned enough about me and I am also irritated that none of them came sooner to help me. The unrelated cousin and my husband/other guy are also there now. Nobody seems to think it likely that I'm going to die from the poison or that it's anything to worry about, despite the dead guy lying there, only I am worried. We eventually make our way back to our cars, and I find mine (I'm traveling alone now, apparently). Overall I am bothered and disturbed by several things in the dream and everybody else seems happy and enjoying themselves.

Everyone likes him but me...

A few days ago... thursday night? I don't remember most of the details of the dream.

A young man, maybe around my age, was my family. I was at my parent's house and he was staying with someone in the family. At first I got the impression that he was from Egypt. I found him arrogant and annoying and my dislike for him only continued to grow. Everybody else thought he was wonderful and charming and couldn't stop commenting on it. He was somewhat handsome, but I found his attitude very offputting. Later he said something to indicate he was actually from Palestine, not Egypt. As everyone else kept talking about how great he was, I was in fear that my hatred would turn to admiration and I might actually start liking him. At one point he accompanied us to Taekwon-do.

Looking for a gift, finding crazy people

In the part I remember, I spent a lot of time walking and driving around downtown. It did not actually look like Port-, but I think it was supposed to be. The house I lived in looked sort of like one of my old houses in A-. I went over to my brother's house with him to get a present for our mother on her birthday. He had apparently forgotten to get one. First we drove to a nearby shop that sold maps and similar artifacts. I looked at theses (there were bumpy maps, globes, many small map items) and thought to myself that she might like them, but my brother didn't find what he was looking for and we left again. Then, we went to another nearby shop which sold comic books or something, but it was closed. It was getting late in the day, the afternoon was sunny but not particularly warm. We went back to his apartment. He started sorting through some drawings and comic pages he had made, in black and white, looking for one to give to her.

My aunt K- either stopped by or was going to stop by but went to my house instead, becuase we were intending to go back there. My vehicle was still there, I'd come here in my brother's. We told her we'd meet her there for lunch or dinner. But, when we called my house, expecting to find her (and arrange to eat), she was no longer there. We decided she had gotten tired of waiting and left, which made me a little disappointed.

While my brother was sorting through all his stuff, my father showed up. My father and I drove around and we went up a steep hill. It had a mansion at the top which we wall knew about, which my sister had mentioned in relation to her work, and we pointed it out and talked about it. A governor lived there, called governor margeauruex, or something like that, she was a somewhat eccentric older woman. We saw her leaning out on the balcony of the mansion, looking down. As we drove up the steep hill, a woman was walking up the hill with the cars, to the right of us. My father commented on how she was dressed up and must be going somewhere special, she was wearing a silky evening gown in a very pale cream color. I then saw that she was wearing socks (and no shoes), and said she was probably crazy instead. He said that going sockfoot didn't necessarily mean she was crazy. But as we watched, she started walking on her hands and feet (not knees), and she crossed the road and ran this way into a parking lot on the right, which eventually led up to the governor's mansion. I don't think she was wearing anything under the gown, besides her socks, and decided that she was in fact crazy.

We returned to my brother's apartment. He was still sorting through stuff. My father lay down on a couch or chair and covered himself, evidently planning to sleep here and spend the night. My brother was complaining to my father about how I kept blowing air on him, on his ears. I laughed at said he made it sound romantically inclined. He said it was annoying and irritating. After other idle chitchat it became clear that they were both planning to stay here, so I decided I was going home. I would have to walk, becuase the my brother's vehicle was here, and mine was at home. It was a ways, although not insurmountable to walk, but I noticed that darkness had started to fall and some people would not consider this wise. I announced my intention to head back, and neither my brother or father made any comment about walking back in the dark (or driving me back), so I headed off.

Horse Handling

Thursday night/Friday morning's dream

Once again, I can only remember the part right before I woke up.

I came into my parents' yard. My mother had three horses there that she had been keeping just recently. I asked her if she had fed them grain and she said no, she hadn't fed them anything extra. I told her you have to feed them grain in the winter and also give them hay to graze on, and I went and got some grain and gave it to them. When I came back she was putting up hay for them in hay nets, tied to the cedar tree. I led one of the horses and was down on the road and she was doing something with the other horses. The horse I was leading was a foal, small enough that I could put my arm over his back easily. She was doing something ahead that was spooking and scaring the foal, and he went behind me, hiding, and was pulling back. I held him steady and kept pressing my back to his side, and he curved around me; it felt very secure although he was nervous and I was calming him. I woke up with this feeling around me.

Earlier in the dream there was this part where one of my coworkers, B- had turned out to be a distant relative of mine. It was like I'd learned this in a previous dream and had only now remembered it. I was programming a cell phone address book that was very complicated. I spent a long time categorizing people as family or friends, and then I realized there was this little triangular symbol that would do it for me, and I needn't have spent all that time. It was then that I saw him categorized as family, and I thought it was a mistake, but then I remembered that he was in fact a relative, as I'd found out previously. The cell phonehad a lot of different options that were confusing. There was a flood that we were navigating at this time as well, but I don't remember all the other details, although there was a lot going on.

Reflections

12/12/2007 - Tuesday night/Wednesday morning

My dreams were very fragmented and busy last night, and I can remember barely any details....

In one dream, I was posing and looking at myself in the mirror in the bedroom, and I think a relative took a few pictures of me. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my reflection was of a black woman (also I was fairly attractive and skinny). This did not strike me as odd at the time. I was still myself in the dream, not another character.

Another part involved my aunt N-, I was angry at her for some reason.

I'll add more bits if I remember but it's hard to piece it together, I was tossing and turning.

Exciting Encounters

12/10/2007 - Sunday night's/this morning's dream
I went to stay for a visit at my parents' house. There was a house that was far up the hill in the woods which my aunt K- was selling as a duplex. She'd asked if I wanted to rent or buy one half of it, and I had agreed.

We hiked up the hill to look at the duplex. Others were trying to convince me not to go look at it becuase it wasn't ready, but I wanted to see it. The trail was lushly overgrown and very steep, but we came up to the house nestled in the trees. They also tried to prevent me from going into one of the bedrooms (either in the duplex or in my parent's house) where I planned to stay that night, but I went in anyway, there was nothing unusual there.

Then while I was unpacking my stuff and changing for dinner, my friend H- popped in! I hadn't seen her for a long time. I realized that she'd been there as a surprise and this was why they hadn't want me to go into the room, becuase they thought she was in there. We was very excited to see her, and we reunited happily and later went out and ate dinner with the rest of my family.

I was intending that my friend H- or my cousin would live in the other half of the duplex, but my parents let slip that my sister was planning to live there, possibly with my cousin. I was quite upset about my sister living in the other half along with me and tried to get them to stop her from doing so. She was unmoved and acted like it was my problem.

Later I went with my husband back to S. A. His hair was longer than usual, combed back and shiny, and he led me to where we were going to stay for the time being in a very fancy hotel. We walked past a grassy hill which he ran up and down, he was very full of energy and excited. There were lots of other people around, mostly women. We went into a restaurant, and as he walked through he made a hand signal (similar to the one indicating that you don't want anymore coffee) to the person at the drink bar (non-alcoholic) which meant to prepare two of his signature drink--he was evidently well known even though he hadn't been there for a while. People greeted and acknowledge him as he went through. I was wearing several overlapping bandannas, black and white, and the rest of my hair was down. As I entered the restaurant, with him, I was given a wide, rectangular, black piece of fabric which was meant to be draped over the back of my hair from the top of my head, and then pulled over my shoulders to the front, like a shawl. This appeared to be standard, other women were dressed the same way and were given the scarf as they entered. I put it on in the same way, and I thought I looked nice.

We didn't actually eat there in the dream, but then we were outside again on the steps going up to the hotel where we were staying. On the steps, my husband put his arms around me from the right side and pulled my collar open to the right and started kissing me enthusiastically. There were quite a few people, mostly women, standing around. I was a little embarrassed, although I liked it as well, and giggling nervously I tried to cover the exposure and his head with my hand, fairly ineffectually since my hand wasn't big enough. I could tell that the women, who were staring openly, were a little jealous. After a while he continued into the building with a flourish and one of the other women said to me as I followed that some people (like me) handle such things better than others. She sounded both disapproving and wishful. I continued in after him, walking through a fancy lobby, and he showed me the room where we were staying, and said he would have to leave for a bit. It was a large well-furnished and well-stocked suite next to a workout room, with windows into it. The interior walls of it and our suite, and the others nearby, were mostly made of transparent glass. At first I thought it was a bit odd that you could see into the gym from the rooms (and vice versa). Then I realized then that he'd picked the proximity to the gym for both his and my benefit for convenience in working out, and it was a good thing. He had several dvds in the room for me to amuse myself with until he came back, and he mentioned another movie that we should see, and I agreed that he should pick it up.

The Most Embarassing Moment of My Life

12/7/2007 - Last night's/this morning's dream

I was at some sort of long term class or retreat or training with a bunch of people from work. I was staying in a room with a few other people from my department at work (D-, T- and some others), adjoining a large hall where meetings were held (other people were also staying in rooms in the building or nearby. The building was near the beach. I must have been there for the long haul, because I had both my cats with me. There was a guy there (who I don't know in real life) who people keep asking me if I'd met up with, and saying that he had said he wanted to meet me or we should get to know each other. His name was Josh or Gerald or something beginning with a J sound. My mother had also mentioned him to me before I left. He had a long, disinterested and slightly above you face, and blond/reddish curly hair. I had a vague idea of who he was, having seen him around, but had not interest whatsoever in meeting up with him, he didn't strike me the right way.

Then came the most embarrassing incident of my life (dream or waking).

I woke up in the room, and still half asleep and tired, and in my pajamas (the same ones I was in at the time of the dream, actually), I got up and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom. I left my pajama bottoms there, and had just discarded my pajama top in the entryway going into the bathroom, when I suddenly realized that there were people in the room. The entire hallway was filled with tables and other people from the retreat eating breakfast, both in the room I'd just walked across and the one I'd been about to enter. I was completely naked (except for my underwear), and had somehow walked across the room in my half-asleep state without realizing that I was disrobing in front of people.

The embarrassment was in every part of me, but there was nothing I could do, although I retreated after standing there with people staring at me for an unknown period of shock. I didn't know how I'd done this. Moments later, it got worse. The J-guy had taken a picture or video with his cell phone and had emailed it to the entire company. I knew that it was only a matter of time (very short time) until it appeared in the newspaper. Not only had the entire company seen me now and would know what I'd done, including my bosses and the CEO, back home, but also my parents! My husband, who hadn't wanted me to go to this thing in the first place! To add to the complete mortification, J- whatever his name was included comments in the email about my chubbiness and general bad shape of my body (exposed to all the world as it was). To not only be videotaped and distributed (which I didn't specifically fault him for, as if I knew that having done that, someone was bound to have taken a picture), but also criticized for the body I was exposing!

The members of my team who were there had been shocked and dumbfounded when I'd walked out, they were unsure what to make of it or why I'd done it. They weren't condemning me, and I guess could see that I'd been half asleep, but they didn't know what to say. I could tell they felt sorry for me but shocked at the same time. One of them, D- wrote me a note saying that I wasn't that chubby (as J- had said in his email accompanying the video, and also had been quoted in articles) and hadn't looked bad. He was trying to make me feel better and I did appreciate it.

It didn't end there though. I had to continue going through the seminar, passing by and talking to all these people, knowing that they'd seen me walk out naked. What sort of example had I made? I didn't know how I could keep going as embarrassed as I was, but somehow I did. Whenever I looked at anybody there I felt completely humiliated and mortified. This went on for days, continuing the seminar. It came out in the paper, and of course was posted online and on youtube, and people continued to whisper about it or mention it openly as I passed, while I tried not to react. No sort of explanation was really possible for me to make.

My cats wove in and out of the dream quite a bit, they were staying there with me in my room (which now seemed to be just me). I don't know how I kept going through the sessions but I did, it wasn't as if I could rewind or undo it, I just had to continue. Towards the end of the dream, I walked out and talked to a neighbor about the items that were in our respective yards (things from the beach, I think). I wondered if the neighbor had heard about me and suspected they probably had, who could avoid it. Then I walked down to the beach with my cat A-. He had been doing something interesting, but I don't remember the details anymore.

A Surprise Kiss

This dream is actually from the night before/morning of 11/28/2007, but I forgot to record it. November was a prolific month!

The linear time order of this dream is not linear at all, it keeps looping around. At one point I walk to the garden with a boy, and he tips me backwards and we kiss. I am surprised and excited. We are passing the F.H. and I see my father looking at us out the window (somewhat alarmed). This is because I was with this other boy earlier in the dream who I was flirting with and have been with longer. The one I kissed, I know much less, although I like him and greatly enjoy the kiss. I feel somewhat like I am cheating on the first one, even though we haven't kissed or anything, and I feel bad becuase he would be mad if he found out and probably wouldn't move forward with me or keep flirting. I don't know either of them very well but I really like the first one. Both of them are somewhat similar looking, tall, slender, and young, with shaggy light brown hair. They don't look like anyone I know in the waking world. Oddly, my husband shows up in the dream as well but I don't feel guilty about it in relation to him. This is the part of the dream I remember most strongly.

Throughout this very long dream, some of which I have forgotten, we are preparing for some kind of exhibit or show. We have to make something for it, some kind of craft. We are at a school, I think, and it may be related to that. The time order in the dream is tied in knots, back and forth all over the place. We are in the kitchen preparing for the exhibit and my husband looks at the clock over the stove. He has a final that he has to leave for at 1:10, and it is 1:11. He is relieved because he still has time. But then I tell him that the clock on the stove is wrong, and it's really almost two hours later. He'd have only about 15 minutes to finish. I can't remember if he ends up going to try to make it or not, but it's discussed. It's pretty certain that he won't be able to finish it though, even if he goes.

The exhibition is in a large building with many halls, white inside, like a school art building. My cousin K- has made something for it as well, I think it looks like a small (artificial) christmas tree, and it's green and red. We admire her work. My sister is also there, possibly helping me prepare or entering something herself. I have multiple interactions with the two boys mentioned earlier, mostly the first one who has not kissed me but who is clearly interested in me. He is also helping prepare for the exhibit or making something himself.

Don't Rent From Your Aunt

When it started I was with some family members looking at an older house. It was big, bigger than any house I've lived in but not a mansion, and very nice, roomy interesting rooms and well built, but with a number of repair problems. The master bedroom, which was on the ground floor, was a large octagonal or round room. There was a door to the outside which was no longer in use, and which was closed with a chain against it, set into the wall directly behind the headboard.

We explored the house. My aunt N- had bought it or decided to do so at that point, and later on she offered to rent it to me. Warning signs went off in my head, but I really liked it and wanted to live there, so I agreed to rent it. I paid her some of the money then (possibly prorated rent for the month, and after a couple of weeks I sent her a check for the current month's rent. There were some things that needed to be fixed, and when I called her about them, she said to just go ahead and have them repaired, and she would pay me back. This wasn't my preferred method, but I did so.

Later, I went back to visit my parents. There was a building that was like a bookstore there, with a kind of museum exhibit within it. I don't remember what it was exhibiting, but some sort of recent history anthropological artifacts. The inside was sort of like Powell's, but smaller. I milled around there and there were a number of family members there, enjoying some occasion. My aunt was there with her family, and I wanted to ask her about the check, but I didn't want to bring up a money in a group setting. I did pass her the bill info, and she gave me a check, but I didn't look at it at the time.

Later, when I looked at it, I discovered that it was for $305, when it was supposed to be like $717. I had feared something like this would happen. I went over to her house later and asked about it, treating it at first as if it had been a mistake. She said that no, it was correct, she'd subtracted one of the rent payments which I hadn't sent her. I reminded her that I had sent her both, one in person, and one mailed. In fact, as I pointed out, she had cashed them. She said no, she'd never gotten them. I offered to show her my checkbook, and she asked what kind of proof I had. I had carbon checks. She said that people who used carbon checks always irritated her becuase they would whip them out to "win" and they were easily modified after the fact. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable and she was clearly angry and trying to avoid paying me back. I got out the check carbons and showed her, but I couldn't find one of them, although I found a note she had written at the time about how much I'd paid in that installment. She didn't make any response of giving me more money, so I said, "I can get records from the bank if you want." She said she guessed I'd better do that then. Thoroughly uncomfortable and also pissed off, I left and went back over to my parents house.

I puttered around their house doing normal things, and some hours later I looked out the window and realized it had snowed a couple of inches. I decided to go for a walk. I walked down the hill, taking the dog with me. When I got to the bottom, I realized that there was a car parked in the driveway, a red truck. My aunt N- and uncle were in it, with another dog which was smaller and black, belonging to them. I asked what they were doing there and my aunt got mad, and said they could be there if they wanted to. She also said that nobody knew I was there, right now (implying that if I mysteriously disappeared, nobody would know where I'd gone, in a threatening way).

At that moment, my mother and father and sister appeared walking down the driveway. My aunt told them that I'd told them they couldn't be there, and demanded to know what they were doing there. Also she suggested that I'd been threatening them or their dog with the dog I was walking. I protested that this was not what I'd said, and repeated what had happened. My father was not fooled by their attempts to incriminate me. He said that he'd heard her say that nobody knew I was there, suggesting that he was in on her plot. After general unpleasantness they departed. I was upset. My mother took me up in the field continuing the walk, and trying to make me feel better about the encounter.

She had a tub of ice cream. It was filled with little samples of many different flavors, in small containers the size of those plastic ketchup cups they have at restaurants. This bucket was introducing a new flavor, called Love NZ for the planet Venus or Neptune (I think Venus, but I kept calling it Neptune). We walked along tasting the different flavors. There was a picture on the outside of all the different flavors within, but they weren't labeled, so you had to identify them by the picture. We tasted one which was like ice cream but had many particulates in it, like bits of cheese, which were detrimental to the overall texture. The remaining ice cream flavors we tasted were not like ice cream at all, they were more like jello. The Venus one was bright lime green and tasted like melted jello, but much sweeter. There were several other ones which were bright blue and jelly like, with various-size sparkles in them. None of them were very good. We were trying to tell them apart from the pictures on the tub, but couldn't be sure which were which.

Crossing Flooded Stairs

11/27/2007 - Saturday Night's Dream

At one point I was walking across the city. When I set out, I put on a very colorful outfit, almost clown-like in its many colors. I was somewhat doubtful about it but I don't think I had any other choices. I crossed a large open plaza with a huge number of steps going down and up hills on either side, and steps across the bottom. It was like a deep gully filled with steps. It was sunny and warm and the stairs were nicely made of cream concrete, like on a college campus. After crossing to the other part of town, I did whatever I'd come to do (I don't remember what) and sometime later, I set out back across. I walked through an area of the neighborhood I hadn't been in before, and I saw a large white sign with red letters. I don't remember all of what it said, but it was calling this area (street, district, etc) with my name. As far as I know it was not named after me, but I thought it was an odd coincidence. I wanted to go back and tell the people I'd just been visiting, but I realized I had to get home. I thought I might come back with a camera and take a picture of the sign.

It had been raining, and possibly the river had also risen in addition to that, but when I came back to the stairs the bottom of the valley was flooded with water for a short distance, several feet deep. There were some people standing on the steps on either side but they weren't crossing. I got the impression that this happened regularly, like a tide, and they were going to wait for it to go down again. I had to get home and there was no other way so I started across the water, walking through it. Partway through it occurred to me that this was probably very dangerous, but oh well... I had to cross at any rate.

Cleaning the house of the rising sun and dropping classes

This is from a few days ago on the weekend (Saturday night, I think). I don't remember it very clearly but I haven't forgotten it fully either, so here goes.

At the part I remember, my brother has gotten a job as a janitor in a hotel which is really a thinly veiled house of prostitution. Needless to say I'm not too jazzed about this. I go there and I also discover he had dropped several of his classes, one of which I "traded" to him somehow. I had been enrolled in a class about spiders, and I somehow gave my spot in the class to him, along with the reading materials I had from it so far. This included a pamphlet with a large spider on the front, and possibly some actual or fake tarantulas. I was most put out that he had abandoned this class as well.

Visiting a Park with a Holy Cliff

Last night's dream (Monday night/Tuesday morning) 11/20/2007

I went with my husband to a famous park and we spent a long time exploring it. It had beautiful thick woods and abrupt gulleys, and we found a small canyon cut 15 feet deep in the mud of the streambed, as if a flood had come through and filled up the valley with mud at the water had cut it down again. It seemed to be summer or spring time and there were lots of small plants growing and white flowers. To continue our exploration we got a guide. Several were available, ours was a young girl with bobbed blond hair and a red and white shirt. She was friendly but not flirtatious, and I did not feel jealous of her and was glad we had gotten her and not one of the male guides.

After this part of the tour was over, my mother, sister, and for some reason a friend of my husband and formerly of me, AM. I think there were some other relatives of mine as well. They parked their cars and we all gathered to visit the most important part of the park, which was a holy place. The guide showed us where to go, there was a sheer rock cliff with a small ledge wide enough to drive on, and we were supposed to drive out. Some of my relatives I think drove a vehicle, and the rest of us walked ahead. The shelf was only just wide enough for the car, and plunging over the edge would mean disaster (this had something to do with why it was a holy pilgrimage spot, you were supposed to have enough faith and bravery to make your way along the edge).

We came to a point very quickly where the floor of the shelf had a lump in it like a small landslide had come down at some point, and it would be difficult to drive the car over without it tipping off the edge, so we decided to leave it and walk on (it would have to be backed up along the ledge to get back too). I went out to the most important point, which was a finger of rock sticking out, and sat there for a while. The rock was sort of a pinky granite. It was very peaceful and yet exciting.

Then, we started to head back and I returned to a hotel room we'd rented nearby, but AM came back with me. My husband and relatives would be following shortly. I was uncomfortable being there with him and realized that when my husband came home he also wouldn't be happy with the situation. So, I claimed I had to go to the bathroom, and went in and stayed there until my husband and mother and sister came back, then I emerged after they walked in, and we all reunited. The sun was just setting at that point illuminating the room with a rosy glow.

The park was well-known in the dream but I don't know of any place like this or that looks similar in the waking world, let alone being some kind of pilgrimage spot.

Zatch

The only thing I remember from the dream is something called a Zatch. I think it was small and on four wheels, about the size of a loaf of bread, and rolled through the field.

Uncomfortable situations in the market

Tuesday night's dream.

I was wandering through a large, circular building with halls around the outside edge, containing shops of many kinds in indoor rooms. It was some time in the afternoon and I was killing time. I bought two large raw packages of hamburger at a butcher shop there, they were already thawed (or never frozen) and drippy, and I was somewhat concerned about not getting them back into refrigeration quickly enough. I carried them around with me throughout the remaining shops, conscious of the problems of setting them down anywhere.

I also went into a "Thai" store, where I spent a long time. It was full of small, decorative, very expensive knickknacks with an oriental look, decorative china and carvings. I hung around there for a long time looking at things, and then I picked up two pieces of flat carvings, about 6 by 8... dark panels with an etched scene. I started to walk out of the store carrying them, and the shopkeeper was on me in an instant, telling me how much they cost. I told him that I'd forgotten that I was carrying them, and clearly he didn't believe me, actually I didn't really believe myself and wondered what the heck I'd been doing. I felt quite embarrassed.

To my surprise, however, he was not angry at me, after I put them back down, he told me that they were getting in a similar sculpture to one I had been admiring, a small black and white figurine... I think I was looking for one of a cat and this was a different animal or something. He encouraged me to come back at a certain time when they would have the one I was looking for.

Then I ran into my coworker, T-. He followed along afterwards and asked me to come over to his place, which was very nearby, for lunch, which I eventually gave into. I was nervous as he was acting overly friendly and I'd thought he was married, but apparently he was divorced and "looking." I did not really want to go, but I felt he would think I was being very rude if I kept refusing. When we got there, we walked into a small entryway, which had lots of decorative knicknacks and draperies, and was rather dark. There was another person there, who was his brother, and he called him over to introduce me. He introduced me by saying it I was "the one I'd been telling you about", and that I was a Muslim. He said this with the air that this was fascinating. The brother, who was much larger, hung back and reacted to this information with an air of disapproval and almost disgust. I was made quite uncomfortable by both their attitudes (although the coworker meant well).

A money-making scheme, a sexual revelation, and a group of five

Sunday, November 11th - Two dreams from last night

In the first dream, I can only remember a few details. I had come up with a brilliant plan to sell hairbrushes built like human hairbrushes as dog hairbrushes, because I'd discovered that they worked a lot better on dogs than dog hairbrushes. Of course, they would cost a lot more than either, which was the marketing gimmick... brilliant, I thought! I gushed enthusiastically to several people and family members about my scheme. Everybody else pretty much thought my plan stunk, probably because it did.

The other detail I remember from this dream was that my sister revealed she was a lesbian. She expected me to have already figured this out, I think. At first, I was totally shocked, but then I remembered her telling me on many occasions about lesbians who approached her thinking she was lesbian, and I thought that maybe telling me about these had been her way of trying to let me know.

I'm 99% sure she isn't.
--------------------
second dream
--------------------
There is a group of 5 kids who hang out together, four boys and a girl, probably between 10 and 12 years old. They wander around the fall neighborhood, looking at the leaves and such, and pick up the pumpkins that are still good from people's yards, with the idea of reusing or selling them, dodging the neighbors that don't want them picking through their yards.

A costume contest is coming up at school, or they have to go in in costume the next day at any rate. One of the kids, a boy with thick black hair (who seems to be my primary character in the dream - I don't appear as myself) is very poor and not looking forward to this very much. However, he has a big crush on the girl and is trying to impress her and get her to notice him. The others get dressed the next day and head out to wait for the bus, wondering where he is. They find he has spent the night sleeping in a garbage can nearby, which is almost full with a layer of leaves on top, and him on top of that. He did this to be sure that he wouldn't be late that morning, and he heaves out of the can and joins them, with some kind of rudimentary costume on.

Dealing in the Desert with a Disappearance in the Snow

Last night's dream

My husband had gone on a walk in a mountainous park. It was snowy there. He didn't come back and I and my family and rescue people went out to look for him, but didn't find him. It was a forested area high in the hills, which looked kind of like where I used to live. It snowed again that night and he did not come back. I came to the realization over the next days that people did not think he was coming back, and he might be dead.

My mother, who had been staying there with me, took me back home, and we were going up to my grandma's house to visit when we saw a sign board with a brown poster on it, and my sister started crying and was very upset. At first I thought it was bad news about my husband, but it was actually a notice about a wake for an old friend of hers who had died a few months ago (in the waking world as well). I was surprised to see her so upset, because she'd already known of his death at the time it happened and had seemed sad then but not so upset. Something had happened to her boyfriend around this time as well, he was sick I think in a life-threatening way. It seemed odd that all three of them were in peril around the same time. It was when she got upset over the sign that I realized that everybody else already thought my husband was probably dead by now, since he hadn't been found.

I was sad, and worried, but not inconsolable or as upset as my sister had been about the sign, because it didn't seem real to accept the fact that he was actually dead, so I kept waiting and hoping. I drove back near the mountain area, wanting to stay nearby and not to return home until he was found, also leaving my work indefinitely to wait and find out.

I started walking alone and found myself in a deserty area, very dry and dusty, with some sage brush and desert plants. I ran into a guy about my age, taller and bigger than me, but very friendly, and I followed him back to a small town, where he lived. He was native american, and it was a native american town, but it was in a somewhat old-fashioned architecture style. The buildings were of the type covered with baked clay, with rounded edges, like in the southwest, but modern and comfortable inside. They were sandy colored on the outside and matched the desert around. I felt a little out of place walking through the town, but he and his family who lived there invited me in and I stayed and talked with them. They knew already who I was, it seemed, and that my husband was lost in the snowy mountain area (it had a name, but I don't remember which mountain it was). They were very nice and sympathetic to me. I stayed for a while, and watched TV with them, there were some issues with reception and we kept getting strange channels.

The guy I met offered for me to spend the night there, as I wanted to stay in the area and I had nowhere to go. He was very nice to me and as I got to know him, I realized that he liked me and was interested in me. I told him that I was very grateful of the offer (I was, and I kind of wanted to stay there), but I reminded him that I was married (I don't know if I said married, or engaged to be married). He said that he knew that (in other words, was not trying to get anywhere with me right now), and he looked sympathetic and it occurred to me that none of them thought my husband was coming back, they were just waiting for me to come to that conclusion as well, and provide comfort for me when I did. He wanted me to know that he wanted to be there for me when I understood that, but he wasn't going to pressure me, although he didn't say this, just showed it by his actions.

I realized that if my husband was really not coming back, I would keep hoping for a long time, and how long would it take before I accepted it? I never accept things, just keep hoping whenever something bad happened or I lost someone. This brought to mind the guy I had loved years before I met my husband, who hadn't been interested in me the same way. I had kept hoping he would change his mind, but it hadn't changed, and eventually I'd forced myself to move on. Looking back I knew it wouldn't have worked out but it had taken a long time to realize that. The nice guy who was helping me reminded me of him in some ways, but more gentle and nice to me.

I tried to think about how it would be and what I would do if it turned out I was a widow, but I couldn't get it to sink in. I spent a lot of time wandering around the area and thinking about it, and wondering if my husband would be found, as the nice guy who'd offered me a place to stay while waiting showed me around the town and the garden and such, and tried to make me comfortable.

The overall feelings of the dream were of sadness, thoughtfulness, the unreal feeling caused by shock, and also a sort of comfort, as if everything was going to keep going and be okay. When I awoke I still felt this and then I also felt guilty about it and about not being more distraught.

A bad haircut and a trip to a remote house

11/9/2007
Last night's dream

My husband cuts my sister's hair, but he does a bad job: random chunks off the back. Then he braids it into a really messy braid. He thinks it looks fine but my sister is quite upset about it and unbraids it, she apparently thought he actually knew how to cut hair.

There is some interim stuff I don't remember, and then we are all riding in a van. My husband is driving and there are several other people in it besides me. I am filled with a feeling of suppressed excitement of the other people not knowing that my husband and I are involved with each other, much like when our relationship was just getting started and our mutual friends didn't know about it, but we were together in front of them. We share various glances and touches and such, the significance unknown to them. It's cold outside and everybody is bundled up.

Later we arrive at a house, far away from anywhere. The driveway/road ends coming out of the woods, and there is a lake to the left and a large house on the bank facing it to the right. It's some kind of safe house where we are going to stay, although we don't personally know the person who lives there, we know she is expecting us. There are only two of us now, myself, an older guy who is familiar with this system, and my husband. Or I am one of the men... I think only two go up to the door. Anyway, we go up to the door. We can see through the window an older woman with short white hair sitting in an inner room, reading or working on the computer or something. The house inside is simple and modern, very large but not that fancy. This is good, we say to each other, she is home. We knock on the door, but she doesn't hear us, and keeps on reading. We keep knocking, louder and louder. There's no sense of urgency, we've reached the end of our journey and she will likely hear us at some point.

In the waking world, I recently cut my own hair (making bangs) and my husband's hair, he was happy with mine but was not at all pleased with what I did to his because it was shorter than he'd anticipated. I haven't felt that excited feeling of a secret-but-out-in-the-open relationship for a long time, it felt good but scary and I can't tell if I miss it or not.

Hilarity at work and my sister wins a parrot

11/8/2007
Last night's dream (Wednesday night/Thursday morning)

I was at work, talking to my coworker L-. Su- and A- were also around, in their respective cubes. At one point, L- looked up through the corner of her cube (there was a roof on her cubicle), and I looked down into the same hole with one eye, surprising her. We both laughed. L- was feeling sick and coughing, and I commented that she really should go home. To my surprise, she agreed. First, however, we decided to disassemble her cubicle. We took all the walls apart and parked them in stacks around the room. When we were done, I realized that I had mislaid one of the walls, and we scurried about looking for it. It was a wall with a large window set into it. At first, I thought it had ended up on A-'s wall, but when I looked at her wall she had a smaller window in it, so it wasn't the same one. Then, I found that I'd accidentally put the wall with the window in it in my cubicle, leaning up against the wall. We giggled and laughed throughout, having a good time.

Later, I went to watch an event where my sister had a chance to receive a prize. It was somehow connected with her work. When I arrived, the people up for the prize were seating themselves, they were in four rows with about 100 people in each row, sitting in folding chairs outside. Only a certain number of the prizes were available, and they would go in order to the people who arrived first (it was a pre-selected pool of people who were eligible, not just anybody).

I sat behind the recipients, and was joined by both of my paternal cousins, my former neighbor P-, and another elderly woman, older than P-, whom I introduced to my cousins as (after tripping over my tongue several times to get the relationship phrased right) my grandmother on my husband's side. I was talking to P- and the grandmother-in-law before my cousins approached, and I made a lightly disparaging remark about one of them as we saw them approaching. Everybody had gathered here to take part in the special occasion for my sister.

The prizes were awarded and we could see this by the indication of a bright color for each person who got it along the rows - I don't remember if this was a piece of cloth or paper passed out or what, but it was evident from a distance as it rippled along the rows. It had the air of a graduation. I couldn't tell if my sister had gotten it or not. She came back and started telling us about it, however, so I guess she did. The prize was an amazonian parrot which was being taught how to speak, she would get to keep it or take part in the lessons in some way. We were all very excited. I asked if it was learning English, and she said no, they were being taught Arabic, because it was easier for them to begin on. They would start out with 4 letters only (R, K, L, and M I think), and they would be able to approximate most words this way. All of us were very excited about the whole thing.

As we left the event, I was walking with P- and one of the others in the group, either a cousin or the grandmother-in-law, went into this large building that we passed. It was made of heavy wood, and looked old and solid, like a large barn. We only realizes that one of the party had gone inside as we walked passed and realized that person was no longer with us, they'd gone in by accident. We waited at the other end for a few minutes but they did not come out. P- said we would have to go in and get them. We opened the door on that end, which was large and closed with a mechanical metal latch, and went into a small dusty room, which led off to a hallway and a lot of other rooms. P- went into the interior while I waited there, to check it out. When she came back she was talking about what a terrible place this was, and how disgusting, and I got the impression that it was a house of prostitution. We would have to go in and get the person out as they must have been detained by someone else in the house. I spent a lot of time opening and closing the latches on the doors leading in and out of the room we were in, and observing how they worked, then I woke up.

In the waking world, L- has indeed been sick for a couple of days but never goes home when she is sick. I've never met my husband's grandmother and actually I don't think either of them are still alive. P- was a lot more active in the dream than she probably is now, and after I woke up I realized that I should call her again and give her my new address.

Strange sinks and wandering

11/7/2007 - Tuesday night's dream
I can only remember a few isolated scenes from this dream.

In the first one I am in a large building with tiled floors and several levels, sort of like a school building, with my sister. We walk around up and down stairs to different floors. We go into a bathroom. It's jam packed with other women waiting to use it, but when I get to the start of the line I realize that the toilets look like two sinks, very high. The one on the right is smaller than the other and becomes available next. I consider my options and how I am going to squeeze up there next to the person on the other sink. The sinks are not only next to each other and not separated by stalls, but basically visible to everybody else waiting to use the bathroom. I eventually decide that I'm not even going to try because I wouldn't be able to relieve myself in this situation, and I make my way out. We find another bathroom eventually.

Unlike most bathroom dreams, I didn't wake up directly afterwards and didn't have to go when I woke up

In the later part of the dream, or the second dream, I am walking around a rural area which is sort of like where I grew up in vegetation, but nowhere I know. The area looks kind of like the end of the road where I grew up, with lots of plants, and a creek, but nearby there is a small neighborhood built on a slight hill. I walk up through the residential area, which is somewhat hilly but not steep. There's also a nearby wooded area with an old flat wooden bridge across the creek. I think I am looking for someone who has run away from his home (as in, he was angry and stormed off and started walking), a boy younger than me, not in my family. I think I meet up with him. It might also have been me that ran off ... it fades back and forth. A cat or kitten is involved at one point or is out there with me.

To be in a play or not to be in a play

11/6/2007 - Most recent dream of last night/this morning
I had at least three dreams last night but they are all pretty hazy by now, although I remembered them briefly after each one. This was the one I could remember enough of to describe, and was the last one before I woke up.

I was with a female companion, not sure if friend or relative, and we were walking around downtown P-. We heard there was a contest going on for play writers; they would each come up with original short plays and "play off" against each other for the best one, who would get a prize. We were uninterested in the idea, putting it down.

Then, we run into one of my coworkers, J-. He is very excited and tells us about how he has entered the contest and is putting on a play that day, and needs our help as extras in the cast. Will we do it? It'll be fun! In a switch from my early attitude, I agree. We set off, we are now in my apartment building (which doesn't look much like mine, and is closer to downtown, but it's where I live in the dream.

As we head out, J- asks hesitantly if I want to change before we go. I suddenly realize that I am just wearing jeans and a tee shirt (striped pink). My hair is uncovered and is cut in a bob (which it was last cut like when I was 17, and before that I wore it that way when I was 12-13). I say yes, and hurry back to my apartment, as they wait in the hall.

As I'm coming in the door, my cell phone starts ringing, but I don't get to it before it goes to voicemail. I check the display, and it's my husband. I will call him back as soon as I get my clothes on, I hurriedly dress. Just as I finish, though, I hear the key in the lock and he comes in. He has run into the others in the hallway and they told him of the plan, and he is angry about it. He tells me that I am not going to be in the play, and asks why I didn't tell him/call him back, etc., while I attempt to offer excuses about how it's just for fun and how I was just going to call him and tell him when he walked in.

Overall mood:
In the earlier part of the dream I felt disinterested, mocking the play. Then, when I was invited to participate, I was excited, and felt daring, but a little apprehensive of my husband's reaction (although I planned to tell him, I delayed it). I anticipated him to be angry and react the way he did, although I sort of imagined if I'd been able to explain it first, I might have gotten away with it. When he was angry and said I couldn't go, I was also angry and unhappy, although fearful of his reaction as he acted like I'd been hiding something.

Trapped by a stranger's crazy mother

Monday, November 5th 2007 - Last night's dream

I was at a class or meeting of some kind, and some people had made an apple cannon, which they were firing off to great fun and general excitement by all. During the activities, I met someone and got invited to their house for dinner and to spend the night. I accepted. Afterwards I realized that my new friend was a boy about 12, which it occurred to me in the dream was a little odd (I may have been younger in the dream but it still struck me this way, because of the age difference, not because there was any flirting going on, which there was not). At any rate, I had already accepted since I felt more uncomfortable about backing out than the odd choice of friend, so off I went to his house in Ol- or L-, where he had a large, happy, friendly. and welcoming family. There were several other kids and I no longer felt particularly uncomfortable, and engaged in chitchat and games with the family.

We had dinner, and then as the evening wore on his mother sort of became unhinged. She had started out very friendly and bubbly, happy and energetic. Then she started to get angry and crazy, although still with a smile on her face. His mother had dark reddish brown hair, straight to her shoulders, and heavy, shaped matching eyebrows, and I think green or dark eyes. She was young and petite, probably in her 30s. Her face was angular and would have probably been attractive if it wasn't for the crazed expression that developed. She started loudly shooing people around the house, and declared that it was "no doorknobs time" and we had to keep all the doors open, and several other pronouncements that I no longer remember, and started to get scary.

The boy who I'd come with was short, with light brown hair in a bowl cut. I discovered that his hair covered a deformed ear that had been cut or damaged in some way by his mother during one of her crazy sessions. He and the other kids and the father acted as if they'd seen this behavior before, and worked around it. It was clear that they didn't like it and were scared of her when she got like this, but they didn't know what to do.

The hidden side of her either became apparent in the morning or I ended up staying the night anyway because I couldn't escape. In the morning I was in a small room which they'd made up for me to spend the night in, getting dressed. I was hurriedly getting clothes out of my overnight bag and packing everything else. I realized that somehow I was going to have to gather up my various things that were left around the house without the mother noticing that I was trying to leave until I had everything and could make a break for it, there would be or already had been an effort to keep me captured here.

I had the door partly closed, but not shut, and was trying to put on a bra, but none of them would fit. There were two in my bag that were brand new, which I'd bought the night before at the mall nearby. One was black with a black pattern, and the other was light green with a pattern of tiny dark green leaves. The problem was, both of them were too small, which was confounding since they were brand new. I frantically rooted through the overnight bag--I seemed only to have dressy clothes, like a black skirt and black pantyhose, that would take too long to throw on and escape. I was also supposed to have my TaeKwon-Do suit in there, because I was supposed to go to a workout later (which might also have been my excuse for leaving them, I didn't really want to go to it but I did want to get out of here any way possible), but I realized that somehow I had not packed it.

As I struggled to get dressed, the mother burst in with a crazy glint in her eye and said she THOUGHT she had announced that it was no doorknobs time, wasn't that right? I tried to make excuses that the door had not actually been closed, but she started yelling about no doors or locks, and called on one of her young daughters to back her up. The girl was 6 or 7, with light blond hair, and she was too young to realize that her mother was off her rocker, things like no doorknob time were apparently normal to her (the mother although striking fear into my heart still had a "happy" face frozen on). She sent her daughter around removing knobs and doors, ranting maniacally, as I frantically continued dressing, trying to figure out a way to get out of there.

A leap not of faith - deeply affecting me

10/30/2007 - Last night's dream

Someone tells me that a former coworker of mine, who I thought had quit or gotten fired, had actually committed suicide. At first I think it is "Eric," a former coworker at my current workplace (who looks like an actual former coworker at my current workplace, who I didn't know very well), but it turns out to be someone called Billy Graham, Jr., at my previous job. (I didn't recognize him as an actual coworker from there in the waking world. Also he is apparently no relation to the famous Billy Graham, despite the name).

Apparently, over a year ago when everyone thought he was fired or let go, he actually had jumped off one of the 400-towers at my previous workplace, to his death. I am completely shocked to learn this. I'm also shocked that nobody told me this at the time and I didn't know, since it happened while I was there. In my recollection, he was a tall, somewhat gangly fellow, probably in his 20's, with light brown hair. He also taught classes on doing things in the outdoors (perhaps survival classes) at local colleges. I knew of him at work but didn't work with him directly, but now am quite caved in by the news.

A bit later, same dream, I am at a house, which I think is mine. It's not like any house I've actually lived in, and I don't think it's supposed to be. In the dream it is located near where I actually live now, although the terrain is more like SW W-. It is an old house, painted gray. A few people including my sister are with me, and we are hanging up wet clothes to dry in the house. It seems like we were out walking and got caught in a rainstorm and soaked. It's still drizzly out now and throughout the dream. There are so many wet clothes, I am afraid that they are going to steam up the inside of the house and not dry. As I am carrying clothes inside from the van which is parked out front, I realize that you can see through the large front window all the way through the house and out the back window, because I can see my sister in the backyard bringing clothes in. The windows each have a plain, white or light colored curtain completely covering them, which I thought prevented people outside from seeing in very clearly. Now I realize that they can see my quite easily when I am inside, which I don't like.

A short time later, I am riding in my mother's van with my mother and my cousin. My mother is driving, and my cousin sits in the back with me. They have come together to visit me, meeting at that house earlier in the dream, and we are now driving somewhere nearby, a wooded area. I talk to my cousin, mostly to have something to talk about as we haven't always gotten along in the past. She mentions that they had some trouble finding my house, and I agree that it's hard to find. If you don't turn at the correct spot, which is easy to miss, you have to keep going because you run into a bunch of one-way streets, and eventually 3 or 4 streets later you have to turn right and you end up at a small graveyard, where you can turn around.

Casting around for another topic, I ask her who used to teach the outdoors classes that she took a while back. I know already that it was Billy Graham, Jr., and it's not so much that I care to inform my cousin about what happened, as that I desperately need to tell SOMEone the news. She says it was Billy Graham, Jr., and mentions a few details about the classes. I am bursting to reveal the news, not in an excited way, but in the way it is when you have learned something bad or creepy and you have to tell someone so you aren't the only bearer of this information. I let some pauses go by and then say, Guess what? and tell her about the suicide. She is shocked along with me. It's just unimaginable thinking of how he killed himself jumping off the tower, and I was even THERE, and thought he had just quit or been fired, and everyone went along with it without much question when he wasn't there, and NOBODY TOLD me. It was like they were trying to keep it quiet, to keep the bad feeling away.

My mother then mentions offhand that my husband and I have such a wonderful marriage, the best one that she knows of among all the people she knows even herself. She is so happy for us. I feel extremely guilty knowing that it's not so great as it appears, but I can't tell her and don't even want to tell her and make her feel sad.

We stop the car and are preparing to go hiking in the woods, and we will visit someone on the other end. We take backpacks and my mother asks me to bring some dried fruit from the car, to give to the person that we will meet at the end of the hike. It's a man, but not someone I know. I get the dried fruit from the car, it is prunes and dried apricots in a coffee can. I take some new, freshly dried ones and place them on top to fill up the can. The new ones are enormous, one dried half being almost as large as the diameter of the coffee can. I think about how new fruit just keeps being added to the top, and likely when the guy we are giving this to digs down to the bottom, there are going to be some old moldy pieces of dry fruit, which will disgust him. However, I don't dig down to get them out, just add the pieces on top and bring it up to my mother to put in her pack.

I wake up with "The only boy who could ever reach me, was the son of a preacher man" stuck in my head, despite the apparent lack of connection to Billy Graham, and find myself wondering what the suicidal guy is supposed to teach me... that the answer is jumping off a tall building? It seems like there are too many metaphors here for me to possibly sort through. The whole dream was laced with tenseness, guilt, hidden things being revealed, and a sad feeling. The dead guy in my dream doesn't seem to be a real person in the waking world, but I did learn about 2 months ago that someone I used to know recently committed suicide, and it had a big effect on me. His ghost showed up in another dream, shortly thereafter, which I didn't log here due to other disturbing content.

Late for Group Pic, Meeting My Mother-In-Law

10/29/2007 - Last night's dream

For the last couple of days, I've been dreaming, but I lose the dream almost immediately upon awakening. The last one, I remember a few minor bits and pieces, but that is all.

I arrive at work not late, but too late for a group-picture that was taken this morning. The people who were in it are just drifting away back to their places; only a few remain. I realize that I have an alarm set on my cell phone, which has only just come up, that I was supposed to arrive early today for the group picture. I am secretly relieved since I didn't want to be in it anyway. The date on my cell phone indicates that today is Oct 30th. I think that I didn't arrive earlier because I was going around flooded roads, it is stormy and rainy (this part is vague and happened earlier)-- that and not getting the reminder on the phone and forgetting about the group picture.

Later in the dream, I meet my mother-in-law for the first time. She is happy and friendly to me, and I think she even pats me on the head. She is somewhat shorter than me, round, wearing a long dress which is many-colored, including pink and green (but casual). She has medium-long brown hair. She expresses happiness in meeting me, then a few minutes later, she pulls me down conspiratorially and stage-whispers that both of us (her and me) will have to be careful to make sure we don't eat cookies and candy, especially back home (her home country, which I'm not sure if I'm actually in in the dream or not) to keep the weight off. I find this to be a somewhat negative comment indicating that she thinks, and is planning to enforce, that I need to lose weight. I especially feel that it's negative because she is considerably fatter than me. I'm not sure how to react so I don't really react to it at all. She acts very friendly despite the comment, and is all smiles.

In real life, I haven't met her yet :S. Nerves? I actually did arrive late to work, later than in the dream, but there's no group picture, nor is there tomorrow (on the actual 30th).

7-Layer Soup, and Unclassy Phone Calls

10/26/2007 - Last night's dream (really early this morning and later this morning)

In the first dream, I was with my Aunt K-. She asked me to try some soup she had made, evaluating it for something. It was called Seven-Layer Soup, and it actually had layers of liquid, that you could see were distinct from each other. There were vegetables and beans and such in it as well. I tried it, taking a spoonful from each layer. You could dip your spoon down to a certain layer and lift it up through the other layers, and it kept whatever layer you had dipped to. The soup was good, although not exceptional. The most impressive feature was the layering. There was more to the dream, but this is the only fragment I can remember.

In the second dream, much later in the night, I was talking to my husband. As it turned out, he had been cutting class a LOT. He would call his teacher in the morning at the time class was starting (they had a phone in the classroom). If the teacher didn't answer, he considered this a valid excuse not to come to class, because he'd called and they hadn't been there. If they did answer, he would say he was calling in sick or something (not that they ever answered). I was rather upset and frustrated and tried to explain to him that this was not a valid reason not to go to class, nor should he expect his teachers to answer their phones. My teachers almost never answered the phone when class had started, I said. He should just go to class and stop calling in, and furthermore if he did reach the teacher, it would be too late for him to get to the class anyway (of course, this was the point of the whole exercise, to skip class).

I woke up when his alarm went off and was temporarily soothed by this, signaling that it has all been a dream and he really wouldn't do anything so ridiculous because here was his alarm getting him up for class. But then it became evident that he wasn't going to class after all, making me illogically REALLY upset due to the combination with the dream (and extreme lack of sleep).

Escape As Angry Teenager and How to Respond to a Violent Death

Sunday, 10/21/2007 - Last night's dream

In the first part, I am at the beaver dam with my cousins and possibly siblings, at a younger age. We are escaping or hiding from some people, possibly our parents, but we are hiding separately from each other. I spend a lot of time crawling through several-foot-tall grass, sneaking away quietly from those approaching on the road. At one point, someone passing by sees me, but as it turns out does not capture me but points out that my hiding place is visible and I should move. I drop to ground level and belly crawl through the grass to a safer vantage point. I crawl out onto a bank from where I have a view of the road but can duck down into the grass again. My younger cousin is being taken past on the road by an adult. I wave at her somewhat smugly indicating that I have not yet been captured, the adult does not see me. She looks unhappy but doesn't give me away.

In the second, much longer part, I am at my parent's house. I am still living at home, and am much younger, a young teenager, and at permanent odds with my parents. I have just arrived to take my evening shower and am next in line. My father is complaining about how I have not been studying SAT paperwork for a big test (I don't think it's the SAT but something else which I'm using those materials to study for). I am mad and don't want to study it. When my younger brother arrives, my father tells him to shower next while I do some studying. I am extremely upset by the unfairness of it all, and decide to leave home in a fit of teenage angst. I stomp off afterwards.

I pack some possessions and take off on foot, setting up camp for the night in the woods by my grandparent's driveway, not far away. I am quite furious with my parents and am fed up with living at home. There is some interim part earlier where I am captured in a woodshed or barn with my cousins and/or siblings, and we escape. At any rate, my cousins and siblings come along and find my camp, and since they are also running away (from the captors, not from their parents), decide to stay with me. They have other supplies, so I grudgingly allow it and we set up a tent. It is going to be extremely close quarters, and I consider moving into a tree instead. My younger cousin cautions that this would not be a good idea, because I am pregnant and if I fall I could injure the baby. This is true, I consider. Apparently I have been pregnant all through the dream (showing quite a bit), this isn't new news.

Then, some friends and relatives of my cousins come down the driveway to our hiding place with my aunt N-, who says they have freshly escaped as well and are going to stay with us. This is the last straw! I do not want to share my hiding place with all these people, but the others want to allow them to stay with us. I announce angrily I am going off to make my own camp. I pack up my few belongings and stalk off. Dusk is falling. I hear coyotes howling and reconsider the tree idea. I pause on a hillside and see a wolf or coyote walking nearby. Someone, possibly my lover/future husband, is with me now and we change to look like mountain lions (or appear so to the coyote), it sees us lying together and passes by without approaching us.

Then I am alone again. I have more possessions than I need to set up sleeping quarters, so I decide to put them in my car, which is parked on the side of the road. I consider taking the car and parking it at the edge of the field and spending the night there, but I can't think of anywhere to park it that my father won't see it in the morning, and I want to be more hidden than that since I have told them I am going to leave home and live on my own. I put some items into a box in the car. While I'm doing so, my mother walks up.

She seems sad and asks me what my plans are. I am grouchy and say I am about to leave. She suggests a place several valleys over that supposedly has some jobs available right now. I am somewhat surprised, and a bit disappointed, since I was sort of thinking she would try to convince me to come home, but I don't want to show this. I grumpily say, "Well, maybe I'll go there then." My mother sits down in the car with me first to talk to me, and shows me a necklace that she got. It is made of many brightly colored strands of string, like a very vibrant hammock, and is very long. It looks like it is a stylized version of long elaborate hair. Halfway down there is a multicolored plastic ball which pulls the strands together, and at the end they all come together in a larger ball, which is like a comet with the strings as its tail. I comment on this similarity, and my mother says that she thought it would make up for her thinning hair as she gets older, and tells me about a shop in an open air market where she bought it recently.

As we are talking there, we see a guy who has just arrived in a small dark blue car. He is maybe 30 with dark hair, and is very agitated. His friend is lying injured by the side of the road just a little distance from my car; the friend has just been hit by a car (another car, apparently). He is freaking out asking us what he should do in terms of first aid. My aunt K- has walked up as well in response to his cries. We gather around. It is immediately evident that there is no hope for his friend. The injured person's head is sliced cleanly in two like a cantaloupe, and bleeding. The live guy is panicking and freaking out. He asks if he anyone knows how to apply a tourniquet. He reasons that cut off limbs can be amputated and people survive, right? My aunt makes gentle, reasoned responses to each of his queries, indicating that she doesn't think it will help in this case, breaking it to him gently that his friend cannot recover. Every time he says something, I want to blurt out the obvious--The guy's head is cut in two! That cannot be fixed or transplanted--but I hold myself back and marvel that she is able to respond without stating the obvious. I can see that stating the obvious would make the already upset guy much more upset, but I myself cannot formulate a response that doesn't include this pretty bluntly. He also asks about calling an ambulance. He says he tried to call M-, but he couldn't get through. "M- who?" says my aunt. I am surprised again (M- is the name of my grandfather, her father, deceased a few years, who would have been living across the street if he was alive. But she doesn't give any indication of this to the distressed person). He says M- was an old friend of his who lived nearby (probably the same person, but again my aunt doesn't say anything about this and I stop myself as well).

I find myself wondering at the back-and-forth play in this conversation, obviously she (and my mother, who is also responding in the same fashion) want to help and calm the guy, and their responses are working, but I can't figure them out or what I would say to get that effect. I can only tell that my blunt statements that come to mind should definitely not be spoken, and I am able to restrain myself from saying anything since they are doing a much better job.

Kidnappings, and Friendly Foreign Female Strangers

Friday, Oct 19 - morning's and last night's dreams

I am at my parent's house, and we are preparing to go to a play in O-. My husband is also going. At the last minute I don't feel well and tell them that I may not go after all. They leave early and tell me to come along if I change my mind.

I do change my mind and go in by myself, but before I get into where the audience is sitting, I am kidnapped. I am taken backstage where there are several other kidnapped people, mostly children (and I seem to be younger) who are being forced to participate in the production.

The play is like an Anime cartoon, and I play my role and am tied up afterwards. None of us are recognizable to the people watching because we are in costume, and the audience doesn't realize what is really going on backstage.

As the play ends, I manage get myself and some others free and we escape in the pandemonium. I make my way out to the audience chamber. I can see my husband sitting in the audience, apart from my parents. He thinks that I came in late and wasn't able to find a seat near him. Next to him, an Indian woman in her 30's is sitting. She is apparently a friend of my mother's. She is talking to my husband as they get up to leave. I observe the interaction but she doesn't seem to be flirting with him, and I don't feel jealous of her. I step over the seats to cut down to his row, they have flat desks like student's chairs. He turns and sees me, and we are both happy and smiling. I reach out my hand and he takes it, helping me down from the desk, and places it around his shoulders or neck. The Indian woman thinks we are adorable. We make our way out, happy, explaining to each other how we got separated.

--------------------------

In the second dream, I have been kidnapped again (or maybe it is the same time) and escaped. As it turns out, I helped another woman escape too. She is a political activist who has been accused of communism and other things, and has been locked up for years by some kind of strict regime. She is tall and slim, tan, with graying long dark hair, and is probably in her forties, and very smiley and pleasant, but definitely with an air of someone who does and plans to do daring things. She is extremely grateful that I have orchestrated her escape (she is well known, apparently, but I did not know who she was at the time, just a prisoner like myself who of course I would help escape along with me). She wants to reward me by taking me on a vacation to some place by the ocean, in Mexico, or Spain I think (she speaks Spanish natively, but I am not sure which country she is from originally, she might be South American). I recall that I know some Spanish, but it has faded over the years. Still, I am excited to go, but hesitant. I don't know her at all, and I also am not sure of the financial arrangement. Is she offering to pay for the trip, or just hoping I can go visit her there? I try to figure this out, and she speaks of the trip happening in May. For some reason, I think this will conflict with plans that my husband has, but I tell her I will talk to him about it. I know my parents will be worried at my involvement, and I'm not sure my husband will want me to go, but I'm a bit thrilled at the idea.

A Surprise Visit from an Old Friend!

10/16/2007 - Last night's dream.

I haven't been remembering my dreams enough to even put a cohesive sentence together about them for several weeks, just snips and bits here and there.
Last night, however, I remembered a little more.

My old college roommate and friend, H-, showed up unannounced or on very short notice to visit and see me. She was in the dream still pregnant, I think (last time I talked to her in the waking world she was, although she would have given birth by now). Or maybe I was instead. She was going to stay with me for several days or weeks. She mentioned the traffic driving down here from S-, and we also talked about what route I would take later on to drive into work to avoid traffic problems. I talked to someone on a cell phone several times during this, possibly my husband, checking in about what was going on. The weather was gray and rainy, just like in the waking world at this time. She was very energetic, bouncy, and very casual/friendly with me, despite the fact that it has been years since we have seen each other. It was unclear to me how long she was planning to stay, and I was trying to make arrangements for this without making it too obvious, although I was very happy to see her and glad she had come. I think she was wearing a black and red outfit.


In the waking world, after a sudden initial contact several months ago and over the last couple of months, following a silence of many years, she has stopped responding and I'm no longer able to get in touch with her. This was something that always bothered me greatly in the time between losing touch with her after college and the sudden happy contact at the end of last year and a few times since then, and has again been bothering me that she has dropped out of sight once more.

Vacation and reunion with an old friend

Saturday 9/15 - Last night's dream (Friday night)
I went to stay in a small town near the shore, at first I thought it was near the ocean, because there was a huge misty bay with lots of waves. I walked down to the shore by myself and watched them roll in. But later in the dream, when I am high on the hill I can see the other side, so maybe it was a river.

We are at a vacation house, I and various unidentified members of my family. My college friend, Il-, who I haven't seen for so long, is coming there too, and I am so excited to see her again. There is a row of hotels/apartments in tall, narrow colorful buildings, sort of like those San Francisco row houses you see pictures of, but more Victorian and slightly less garish looking. They range down the street curving over a hill, facing the water.

When Il- arrives I go next door to see her. She brings her husband with her, whom I have never met before. However, he looks sort of like her fiance that I knew in college (whom we both dislike now), even though I know he doesn't actually look at all like him, and even consider this thought in the dream. We are very happy to see each other again, and spend time going back and forth between the apartments and trying to catch up.

Later, I take her up to the hill above the town, and point across the river. We must have been in W-, because I tell her, "Do you see those hills across the water? That's O- over there." They are very green and it seems amazing that we are looking at another state across the water, like when you cross the straits of Juan de Fuca and see Canada where there was nothing before, and it's another country... for some reason it feels unique even though they're all the same ground with nothing intrinsically different between.

As we watch, the immensely wide river valley in between the bodies of land is filling up with fog and mist settling on the water.

There is a lot of interaction in the dream between us, talking and catching up haltingly, and other family members pop in (I don't know if my husband does), but all that is faded.

The overall feeling was that full, excited, intense, fearful feeling of meeting someone you were close to after a long time, and the joy that keeps full when it goes right. I missed her more when I awoke, and once again puzzled over that mysterious bond of friendship that glues two people together tightly and strongly and almost instantly, even through little shared time together, and really not even knowing that much about each other... while at the same time you can spend day in and out with so many other people in your life and even know them better and it never happens.

In the waking world, I took a vacation for a couple of days to the beach with my family, but it didn't look like this. And no Il-. I haven't seen her in years.

Taco Bell's Notorious Secret Passageway

9/14/2007 Last night's dream (Thursday night)

Stories and memories keep popping up about a taco bell in A- which had a secret passageway in it. It's unclear where the secret passageway went, or where in the store it's actually located (if it's still there), but everybody I run into in the dream keeps mentioning it (my uncle, friends, etc). I have been to the restaurant in question several times in the dream. I recall a series of memories connected to the story of the passageway, including my father telling me about it when I was young and in the restaurant, and starting to show me, but my mother stopping him. My uncle relating a tale about it. Someone I didn't particularly like tells the story, etc. It seems that everyone in the generation older than me has crawled through this passageway at least once.

After going through the series of memories and stories about it, I finally end up in the taco bell in question myself. Nobody will tell me where the passageway actually is, of course. I also wonder if the owner of the store, who surely must have noticed people going through it all the time, has blocked it off. I wander around a bit, wondering where it would be located, and see a storeroom with files in it. Some of the files are in boxes on the floor. As I watch, an employee comes in and moves one of the boxes of files to reveal a trapdoor in the middle of the floor. It's easy to see why it's difficult to hide, although the store apparently tries to do so. He goes through into the floor.

I think about how, at other times, this room serves as the front office for my mother... the trapdoor is never evident because it's always covered by a large rug.

Somehow I go through the door or come from the other side and end up witnessing several people using the door. Actually, I think at this point I stop being me, because they can't see me there (or I start being someone else in their group). Anyway, two or three guys crawl down through the trapdoor. They hand things down through the trapdoor, which opens into some sort of garage/storage room underneath the restaurant, which is open to the outside. All of them are relatively young, in their 20's maybe... the leader is a heavyset fair guy, pleasant enough. I wonder why nobody comes because they are making a lot of noise throwing things down, including heavy things like office chairs. Suddenly, two police appear through the hole and others come in surrounding them.

In addition to the leader guy, there are one or two other guys, friends of his, and his wife and son, who is maybe 10. He is ashamed of being caught and they are all captured, his wife and son upset about how they will live now. Overall my feeling for them is of sympathy. However, the police who captured them have nothing but contempt and also go on about how dangerous this is. One of them shows me how dangerous and stupid the guy was in the way he drove up. He shows me a line of trucks, 4 or 5, which they parked outside to haul the goods away. Safety violations! says the cop. None of the cars have headlamps, apparently so they can sneak away in the dark (although it's not actually dark yet). The headlights just popped off like plastic ones on plastic trucks, and are sitting in a pile, ready to be popped back on when necessary. In addition, the leader/father's truck has a very dangerous fuel source, the cop shows me. There is some kind of tank in the back with tubes coming out of it, which is a fuel cell. It's powered by some kind of liquid (I don't remember what now... vinegar maybe?) over a huge pile of pennies inside the tank. This causes some kind of chemical reaction and powers the truck or gives it a huge power boost. The cop gets in the truck to demonstrate and it drives forward wildly, far too fast, narrowly avoiding crashing into a nearby roof support. He points out to me how he could have been killed. I think he's being a bit foolish.

Shortly afterward I am back inside the restaurant with my family. They are talking about the robbery, and picking out food items from a small internal grocery store within the restaurant. It sells things like vegetable and dry packets of reheatable food, and those Japanese candies in brightly decorated wrappers. My mother keeps asking me if I like, or would finish eating/take home, various items of food if she bought them, including a packet of green beans. Most of the offers I reject. I sort through a large box of dry food packets from some foreign country, trying to pick some out. I am still feeling sorry for the family of thieves who were caught.

I am unaware of any real secret passageway in a Taco Bell, and my mother's office doesn't double as one...I'm actually not even sure in the dream which town it was in, but it began with A.

A mysterious teacher and a gifted girl

9/13/2007 - Last night's dream ( Wednesday Night)
Dream 1
A young teacher returns to a place that she taught before, in order to pay special attention to one student in particular. This student is a small girl between 7 and 10. She has short black hair cut about to mid ear all the way around, and has much potential. But, she has been difficult for teachers to work with and is now labeled as a problem student, and possibly delayed a level.

The young woman who has returned is probably about my age, also dark haired. She remembers the girl from teaching here for two years or quarters, etc when she was much younger. The teacher has some sort of special abilities herself, in a mary poppins sort of way, and will pull this girl into her full potential.

She only tells the girl that she is here to be the new teacher, and tells her she used to teach her when she was much younger. The girl doesn't say anything, somewhat shyly. Not sure if she remembers this woman (but she likes her already). She goes to play with the other few students in the school. It is set in a somewhat remote area in the woods.

The new teacher observes them playing outside, and begins to formulate her lesson plan. She will be teaching all subjects. Rather than teaching each one for an hour or so each day, she devotes a different day to each subject (or most of the day).

The girl is fascinated by two large old airplanes that are landed in the clearing. They seem to be antique, and are very huge and heavy flying machines (not built like typical airplanes here, but on a large X shape). She is fascinated by them and filled with longing to fly in them, climbing on them and gazing at them.

The teacher watches all this, smiling to herself. When she goes into her cabin that evening, she places a small bowl of simmering green liquid, like a candle, in the corner of her cabin on a small table by the bed. A local man with sandy brown hair, who is smitten by the new teacher, watches this and asks her about it. She explains that this will make the little girl comfortable here. The liquid smells like the wet outdoors and the airplanes, and fills the cabin with this smell. When the little girl stops by to talk to her, while the teacher is formulating her plans, she does smell it but doesn't know where it's coming from. This is some of the teacher's magic.

That morning the little girl and the teacher awaken to the sound of chainsaws. The girl looks out her window to see that the large stump outside is being cut into pieces. There is also another stump at the next house which is being cut up. The view is blocked by the first stump, but she can see pieces of it roll out. The problem is, the stump blocked the view of the toilet. As she goes to sit on it, she can see that once the stump is gone, the toilet will be visible from the next house. It's not an outside toilet, it's part of the house, but it doesn't have walls all around it.

I am "inside" the heads of both the girl and teacher in this dream, like they are characters in a story I'm writing. I felt very attached to it in the same way, as well, although once I woke up (as is often the case) the storyline seemed less coherent than it had in the dream

Dream 2
This one is quite a bit murkier in my memory...

There are some shoes and a tree, or branches of a tree, that I carry and put on a bed, which has a light pink bedspread. I am spending a lot of time there, either in the bed or just in that room. They are branches of a sensitive plant (mimosa), and I have picked them from a larger version of it. I am explaining to someone, a boy around my age, that you have to be careful of the vicious thorns in these branches (true!), but the ones I am carrying don't seem to have many of these. They look more like they are off one of the tree relatives than the actual sensitive plants. I think that I may be in this room because I am sick with something. I think that I enlist the boy to sneak more things up to me, which he doesn't follow very well.