An Uncomfortable Visit and Other Anxious Situations

4/29/2008
Dream 2

I go out to visit my former riding instructor at her farm, it's rather awkward. We are standing in the barn and I am staring at the side of her face very closely and this is making her uncomfortable and she asks what I am doing. Later I return to my parent's house and go into the FH. When I get upstairs there's some mail on one of the desks. When I look at it I see it is SAT scores and I think they are my brother's. But then, I see my name on them, with my middle name as "TEST" and I groan, there has been some kind of mistake and the wrong name is written in on his tests, so they won't be valid. I sit down on a couch or somewhere (it's not clear in my memory) and realize it has cat pee on it. I despair becuase this means my cat is peeing on stuff again, which I thought was cured, and my husband is going to want to get rid of him, which is depressing. Then a person comes in, who I don't know. He is some kind of investigator. I'm surprised to see him there, but not bothered. He asks me if I've seen a suspicious person around, who looks like John Travolta. I confirm that I have not. I look out the window at the field, it has started snowing lightly. As I watch some of the snowflakes gather into a small swarm like a swarm of insects, which seems strange.

I did go to visit her recently but the weird awkwardness and anxiety which often seems to accompany meetings with her in dreams wasn't there... maybe something leftover from my childhood?

Packing to Escape an Invasion

4/29/2008
Dream 1

My mother and I are preparing to go on a trip, possibly to Mt. Rainier, when the country is invaded... I think by China but I'm not completely sure. We start packing up stuff hurriedly. We need to escape to the north, continuing on our trip and hide in the mountains around Mt. Rainier. Other family members are there but apparently they don't need to escape as urgently, while we two are in more danger. The buildings are occupied by the invaders, and we creep around trying to pack up items to take while hiding from them (we are somewhere in town, maybe at the office). This takes a long time, I keep thinking of additional items, like certain scarves, and grabbing them. I have a woven bag which I'm carrying stuff in. I think we are supposed to be under house arrest due to the invasion becuase we have to sneak in and out. There is a concrete building with a lot of books in it, like storage for a library, and I climb in there and try to get some to take with us, but have to evade the captors on the way out. There is a bicycle in front of the office, and I wonder aloud if I should take it with us. I ask my aunt K if it's a good one, but she says she doesn't know anything about bicycles and I should ask someone else. Eventually I think we get on our way.

The general feeling throughout is one of heightened anxiety, escape, time running short. It seems like there's a lot of stuff we have to pack which wouldn't really be necessary for escaping, and we are afraid of being caught as the captors are prowling around in the same buildings and we have to keep evading them. It's not clear why we are particular targets.

Evil Ex-Landlord Stalker Finally Gets Me

I am in my bedroom when the bedroom door starts to open. It is Ra-, my former evil landlord! I rush over and try to hold the door shut, he is acting friendly and like he just wants to talk to me. I yell at him to go away but he keeps pushing the door and is bigger and stronger than me, and I can't hold it shut. I realize that I don't want to be trapped in this room with him with no exit, so I let the door open and come out into the living room. I am yelling at him to get out of her, and pushing him towards the door, he resists but acts as if he's done nothing wrong (as is typical actually, acting friendly and ignorant while deviously stabbing in the back). I eventually work him over to the door and throw him out, yelling at the top of my lungs, get out of here, don't come back, etc. He goes. I see a girl standing at the door opposite my apartment door (it's just like the one I live in now), she looks nervous about the big row. I say sorry to her, weakly, that I don't know what he was doing here. I see now how he got into the apartment in the first place to get to the bedroom; he has removed the doorknob from the front door.

The rest of the building at least is a dorm (how/why I'm not sure, it looks exactly the same as the apartment complex and I've obviously been living there for a while in the dream). The girl is one of the new students moving in, and there is a meeting being held for the floor or building to get to know all the residents. I go to it. Among the others, I see the girl there, who is still looking at me somewhat worriedly. I and the other floor residents chat and get to know each other. The others are pairing up with roommates (I'm not, since although I live there I am not still living in my apartment with my husband (although he's gone at the moment), and am not a student like the others).

I give one of the girls advice on living with a roommate. The most important thing to consider, I say, is the cleaning compatibility. If you have somebody who is really picky and someone who is more relaxed, that can cause some strife, but mainly for the picky person. I am not the picky sort, I say. She says that she is, so she hopes her roommate is not lax.

I go back to my apartment (I think, maybe it's just another room) with one of the girls. The phone rings. It's Ra-. I slam it down. I don't want to hear his explanation which would be fake anyway, i just want him to go away. The girl says that a bunch of them are driving out to O.S. this evening (as if it were only an hour or so like from where I used to live). I tell her I don't think it's really a good idea to go all that way tonight, it's a long drive (it's already dark out), but she decides to go anyway. I don't go with them.

I think I call my husband the next day and tell him about Ra- coming, but he still isn't home. I decide that I will report it to the landlord's office so they know about the incident.

But later that day, he comes again. This time there is a lot more struggle. I think some of his clothes are off (not all). I wrestle with him. I tell him I am calling 911 if he doesn't go away. I'm very loud and yelling and eventually force him out again after a longer fight and lots of yelling at him to go.

Now I am more scared, I can't keep fighting him off if he keeps coming back in. I go down to the apartment complex office, but it's 7 pm and it's closed. I decide to drive down to the police station. I'm not sure what I can do, or they can do... get a restraining order? But at least I'm going to tell what happened and maybe they can tell me what to do or help protect me from him.

Outside the police station an officer is seated in a parked running vehicle. I knock on the window, but he tells me that he's on duty (apparently having to go somewhere) and to go inside and talk to the people there. This seems reasonable. I go in, there's a small line of people at the counter. A policewoman, older with puffy slightly orange hair, processes them quickly, they have minor things to take care of. I'm the last person in the line, luckily, because I know I'm going to take more time than these quick people.

I just start telling her what is going on, my voice shaking. She gestures to me to squat down (she does too) and talk quietly so the other people who came in to take care of things don't overhear. Then she leads me over to a small table by the window and I continue explaining.

Suddenly the door opens and Ra- comes into the police station. Everybody is startled. He comes toward me, talking, and I try to evade him. I start running toward the door and he pulls out a handgun and shoots me. I feel it hit me through my back in the left side, probably through vital organs. As I fall to the ground I can feel it tear through my body, and I wonder if it's hit my heart. I can feel my blood pounding through my body. I think I am dying right then. Everything is tingly and pressurized and it feels like I'm going to black out, like my heart is racing.
But, I don't die right then. I am dying but I realize that I will hang on for 3 days.

What happens after that is disoriented: I may be taken back to my apartment, he may come again, or maybe it's just a flashback and I'm reliving it very briefly. I think my husband comes home; I remember him bending over me in my dying condition, I don't think I can move much. I know I won't live much longer.

Although the attitude of the evil ex-landlord was accurate: in other words pretending to be "friendly" and ignorant/innocent of wrongdoing while stabbing in the back, the breaking into my apartment, attacking me, and ultimately killing me was not :P. A frightening dream, filled with adrenalin and fear. The feeling of dying and my body shutting down when I was shot was very intense.

A Revelation About An Aunt

4/19/2008 - Saturday Morning's dream

There was an early part with my uncle but it's not clear. At this part I am at the bottom of my grandma's driveway with my grandma, we are leaving the vehicle there and walking up for some reason. We were doing something together earlier but I don't remember what. I am supposed to occupy myself with something, she has said (I don't exactly remember why) and I choose to sing. But then I can't think of any song that seems appropriate to sing with my Grandma there. All the ones I can think of have something that would be embarrassing to sing in front of her. She tells me to hurry up and pick something if I'm going to sing. I think of one and start thinking "Girl from the North Country Fair". To my surprise, she joins in and we go up the hill to her house singing it together in snatches.

At Grandma's the others are already there visiting. It's sunny and summery and we are sitting outside on the back patio. My mother tells me some news about my aunt N-. Apparently my aunt is a lesbian, and now she is planning to bring her girlfriend around at the end of the summer to introduce to people, she's coming out. I am not as surprised about her being a lesbian as one might think, it's like I suspected it in the dream and it seems like other people also did or they knew about it. However I think it's totally wrong for her to be still living with my uncle at their house half the time (she has another apartment elsewhere near her job: true in the waking world as well) and be planning to introduce her lover and basically announce that she is a lesbian. Why doesn't she move out from my uncle's house? Are they going to stay married? My mother says she doesn't know, but she imagines that she is continuing to stay there because she has been so far, why change now? My mother is fairly calm about the whole thing. I wonder why, and I wonder if she had somebody in her family who was gay and this is why she's so comfortable with the whole thing. I feel sorry for my uncle and feel that my aunt is taking advantage of him (not because it turns out she's a lesbian, which again for some reason I kind of take in stride, but because she's still acting as his wife but introducing her lesbian girlfriend).

This thread continues through other parts of the dream, I think my aunt herself shows up at one point as well, and there are other parts involving other family members but with this plot running through. The rest of the details are faded.

It seems like I've been having a number of dreams over the past months that attempt to illuminate or explore my irritation with this particular aunt.

Tall Buildings in the Trees and Confusion

4/11/2008

I go up to the top of a skyscraper. Normally I only go up to a lower floor (is it the building where I work)? But my sister goes up to the top one time and takes me with her. I remember this happening in the past. There were forests and such up there, and it was very very high, I looked over the edge and was sickened at the drop. The tops of the trees reached all the way up and there were walkways between them. Now I'm back up there again and I remember the previous time. I go into some kind of gathering, people are displaying clothes and serving food. I'm taking someone with me to show him around, a guy. I've just met him recently and barely know him, but somehow we ended up on this date. I am showing him this because it's an interesting thing to do but in reality we aren't welcome at this party, it's some exclusive thing. Somewhere along the line I get found out and am ducking servers who are trying to call me out and have me kicked out. There were other details here but I don't remember them.

Got a letter from somebody I thought was my friend H-, but H- is actually visiting me at the time I receive it. After corresponding some time and addressing her as such I realize that can't possibly be her name. Then I go through friends from school trying to remember her real name.. is it Ay-? M-? Il-? It's someone whose first language is not English. At first I think she is Japanese but then when I look at the writing where she wrote some in her language and it's sort of like arabic but messy...I'm so confused and ashamed I forgot her name and have been calling her the wrong one (since I know it isn't the real H- who was right there). I've gotten several letters from her and written back. She tells me she is really sad and having trouble with her boyfriend, and has been thinking about killing herself. I don't know what to tell her... surely commiseration is not a good idea now. I wrack my brains as to what I can say that will be helpful. I might call her or try to call her but it's not conclusive.

There's some confusing part about ordering Chinese food and pizza, possibly with the guy in the earlier part of the dream.

Overall feeling is sort of a sick disorientation... the height, the uncomfortable feeling of getting into a party I'm not supposed to be at, my friend contemplating suicide somewhere on the other side of the world, my forgetting of what her name really is...

Froople!

4/10/2008

The dream had something to do with "Froople" which was a traveling spa of some kind and I think also the name of a type of sort of gelatinous (but good) food they served in it... very hazy.

Confused and Confusing Grandparents

4/9/2008
Wednesday morning's dream

It had to do with my paternal grandparents (my grandfather died 14 years ago tomorrow, which I didn't realize until just now). In the dream they weren't entirely like my paternal grandparents, sort of a mix with my other grandparents some of the time, but mainly they were my paternal ones. One of them died, but which one it was changed and there were sort of two versions of the dream based on that. It was not linear. Both grandparents were going a little crazy due to some kind of age related-condition, like Alzheimer's (also not the case in real life).

At one point, I was at the house with my father. My grandfather was there, and my father told me to go down to the bottom of the hill and move my truck, becuase it was blocking in my grandfather's vehicle and we didn't want him to know this. I'm not sure what the logic was behind it, but if he'd found out he would have thought we were treating him differently (because of his condition, which we were, but he wasn't aware of how it affected his faculties) and would be mad. He was disoriented and not in full grasp of his mind. Whichever one lived was affected severely by the death of the other.

At another point I was walking down along the old railroad grade beside the river, with my grandmother I think, talking about my grandfather. It was clear that she wasn't all there. There were vehicles along the way, and she was talking about riding on a boat, and wanted to get on it. Possibly to go see my grandfather (who I think had died at this point and version of the dream), but it seemed like she was mixed up with that and arriving somewhere on a boat in a memory of the past.

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is

4/8/2008
Tuesday morning/Monday night (or possibly the night before?)

I barely remember this but I remember that I was going across the border just north to Canada, to climb a mountain that lay immediately north of Washington. I had the name in mind in the dream, but don't recall it. I think this part was slightly influenced by me having been reading "Into the Wild" the night before at the part where the author goes to climb the "Devil's Thumb". However, I delayed my trip because someone there told me that traffic was going to be very bad going around Everett and Seattle becuase of some kind of construction that was going on, I visualized how this was happening on the map. It was a major disruption around both cities, looking like a weather map showing storm systems but instead of green rain there were blue and red curved paths to the east of both cities indicating the traffic disruption. There was more to the dream but I lost it very shortly after waking up and only remembered it a day later while I was writing the next one.

There was also this weird unrelated bit where I found a website where I could buy a topsy-turvy-swervy-curvy-tispy-skipsy-doodle (a.k.a "the green thing"). At first I thought it was not part of a dream but it does seem that it is since I can't find such a site!

A Dark Game of Crystals

4/6

Sunday Morning/Saturday Night

This dream didn’t have me in it… there was a big group of maybe 8 girls and 8 guys (some of the girls had a resemblance to girls on “America’s next top model” who were in a contest. I wasn’t any of them, just privy to the events. They were in this big complex, sort of like a labyrinthine restaurant, and they had to collect pairs of colored crystal rods. If they didn’t they would be thrown out. The contest wasn’t the voluntary type, it was more like they were stuck here and needed to succeed for survival.

The dream followed various pairs of girls and guys through the complex, finding the rods. The crystal rods were about a foot long and a finger’s thickness, and made of colored glass or crystal with a matte finish. One side was flat and the other side had hash marks on it. They had to collect pairs of each color. I think the rods were limited, so if somebody else found one of the colors you wouldn’t get that pair (unless you got it away from them) The rods were hidden in places throughout the buildings. I think there was a time limit involved as well.

One of the girls got thrown out, but she forced her way back in through a secret entrance. She still had some of her rods, and she found another one inside a mailbox, but when she pulled it out, it was already broken. Several people debated whether this would be acceptable or not, but in the end they continued on.

I don’t remember a lot of the details of this dream. Overall it was very dark and gloomy, mostly candle-lit, and the players were frantic to get the tasks completed.

Keeping Playing Alive

4/5/2008

Saturday Morning/Friday Night's Dream

This dream is very hazy and spotty, I don’t remember most of it. The gist of it was that I and my sister were two characters, a little boy and a little girl (and possibly some others). This was the main part of the dream. I was the little boy, my sister was the little girl, but the characters weren’t brother and sister. I don’t remember the details of what happened to us, although at one point I had to climb up through the window of a restaurant, a Burgermaster I think, and up the hill behind it over some greenery. The boy and girl had great affection for each other and they were trying to establish how they felt.

It later came out that my sister and I were playing a game (that we used to play in real life) where we came up with and controlled and narrated various characters. The girl and boy were new ones, not ones we’d played with before in real life. My sister and I were talking about them afterwards and she pulled out a legal tablet. She’d written down the names of various characters in this game, and a number that was assigned to them (this had something to do with a number that the little girl who was her could see in people). Next to each one she wrote an L. I asked her what that was, and she explained to me that whenever we played with a character, she wrote and L next to their name because that meant they were still alive.

This struck me as very nostalgic and sad because we didn’t play as much as we used to. I told her I was glad we were playing again, as we hadn’t done so for a long time, aside from this particular game (which had apparently been going on for a while). I felt really happy that we were playing again, and sad about those characters who didn’t get the “L” anymore and thus were not alive.

When I woke up I realized that we hadn’t really been playing that game since it was a dream, and it really HAD been a long time since we’d done so, and I felt sadder and missed it.

The Never Badly-Ending Story

April 4, 2008

Friday Morning/Thursday Night

The main part of the dream is actually a story that I’m reading in the dream, that I’ve sort of entered into. I’m associated with one of the human characters. There are a boy and a girl, probably around 12 or 13. When I’m in the story I don’t realize that it’s a story, it’s just the main dream.

In addition to the girl and boy there is a cat, he is sort of gray/brown stripy, short-haired, and a magical creature which appears as a human baby but can also fly and turn invisible, or appear as a bird. The four of them form a team. They ride together on a bicycle, with the baby/creature in the front basket, attempting to outwit a duo of evildoers.

The team rides down a road which looks like a road near where I grew up. By the “triangle” intersection of the road, they see the evil doers in front of a house. They look like R-, a previous coworker of mine who also appeared in this dream, and an old bald guy, and both are getting into an old red pickup truck. The kids prepare to trail them without being too obvious, so they ride further down the road. After they lose them, the cat jumps down from the bike and sets off down the road. The kids look into the front basket and see that the baby has vanished, leaving only its clothes. They understand that the cat and the baby/invisible flying thing are going to keep following the truck, while the kids will try to intercept the bad guys at their destination.

The kids are at a place like my grandmother’s house. There is an alarm on the wall that rings, indicating that someone is driving up the driveway. They go to the front window and see the bad guys unloading giant lemons from the pickup truck. Each lemon is actually a captured person. The kids have cornered, but the bad guys know they are there too (outcome is uncertain).

Switch scene back to down the road from where we left the cat and bird/invisible/baby thing. The “view” pans up over the bridge that is further down the road. White feathers are fluttering down the river, blowing down the river and falling from the sky, dotting the road and water.

The cat is standing on the other side of the bridge at an intersection, where I- road meets M- Hill Rd. There are two squished cats in the road and a small squished dinosaur. The dinosaur looks sort of like a cartoony version of a triceratops, but about a foot and a half high if it were alive. The bottom half of it is a single leg: it’s sort of like an elephant foot with a head on top of it.

The cat is distraught, these are friends of his that have been killed (it’s unclear what happened to the bird/magical thing, but the feathers fluttering everywhere don’t bode well). Some passersby drive up and take in the scene. The cat rails at them: “Do you even realize what has happened? What a tragedy this is?” He points to the dinosaur and asks them what it is. They are unsure, and say it must be a cat. The cat names the kind of dinosaur (I forget what it was called, some dinosaur sounding name) and berates the hapless humans who are trying to be sympathetic but are basically clueless. “You don’t even know what it was! It was a (name of dinosaur)” (they don’t know what this is either). “It’s not even supposed to exist today. You don’t even know how tragic this is!” Etc.

The scene switches to me on the couch at my parents’ house, reading a book. The previous part of the dream was the end of the book, and I have just finished it. I am somewhat unsatisfied with the ending: I quite liked the book but the ending with the cat standing there amongst his squished friends, and no loose ends tied up about the rest of the story, is just bothersome.

I am playing some kind of music on the television screen. It is currently playing something beginning with P (Persepolis, or Persephone perhaps? This is not a song/band I know in real life, but was apparently a favorite in the dream). A coworker, Ju-, comes in and asks what music it is, and I tell him. I say shyly smiling that I hope it wasn’t too loud and bothering him in his cube. He says No, no, he really likes it and would like to borrow it. I give him the dvd box with the program and also give him the book to borrow, or maybe I give him a movie version of the book.

I start reading another book and become the character again. In it I am a girl who is returning to some kind of riding camp (she actually does look like me in this one, although she isn’t me, I’m just sort of embodying her). I/she am in something like a grocery store but with horse equipment on the shelves, and have not ridden for a long time. Some other girls (who are members of the camp) come to the end of the aisle and say to each other “Who’s that? She’s new.” I smile and say Hi, how are you, or something along those lines, intentionally pretending to be a normal, friendly person. It feels very fake. But I tell myself, I don’t know these people. I can be somebody else here, a different persona. A man comes along and tells the girls to go saddle up and me to clean a saddle that is on the shelf. I understand that this is because I have only just returned and have to work my way back up, so I am not bothered.

My sister comes into the house where I am reading on the couch and I put the book down. I know she was reading the first book and I ask if she finished it and if she liked it. She is non-committal. I tell her that I liked it but I did not like the ending, because it didn’t resolve any questions of the plot, it just ended abruptly with the cat finding the other run-over animals.

Ju- comes back in with some movies including the book (or movie version?) of the same story. I ask if he is finished already, he says no, he only got up to this point (pointing to a picture of a colorfully dressed woman on the back cover, who apparently showed up at some point earlier in the plot---In the dream I remember this. There’s a long part to the story that wasn’t included in my actual dream, which just had the very ending.). Ju- says that he’ll finish it later, so I don’t tell him how it ends or that I didn’t like the ending.

There was another part where I was myself in the house and a fat mouse was running around and one of the cats caught it and killed it, and I was planning to relate this fact to my husband to prove the usefulness of cats. I don’t remember where this part fit in chronologically, if it did at all.

Badly Planning a Vacation; Suprise Soup

4/2/2008 - Tuesday night/Wednesday morning

I am at my parents house. I am planning a vacation trip, flying to another part of the country, the next morning. During the trip I will visit my friend H-, and I call her and tell her when we will arrive the next day. My brother is supposed to come with me.

The next morning I sleep in accidentally and wake up late, around 2. I am irritated that my brother didn't wake me up so we could leave on time and consider this to be his fault. Now we are going to be late and our vacation will also be shorter. I try to call H- a couple of times and tell her, but I can't get reception. I finally get gravelly phone reception in the dining room and leave a message on her voicemail.

Now I talk to my brother about where we are going to go. We originally had more options, and could have taken our vacation anywhere, but now we are running out of time. Also we no longer have time to drive, we will definitely need to get plane tickets and leave today. My brother can't decide on where he wants to go. Finally I narrow it down to two places, Sp- and Ti-, because "I've been there before and will be able to find my way around." Except in the dream, Ti- is a town in central Washington.

When I think about having been in both towns before, remembering in the dream, I remember going with my sister to the beach. She had a small house on the beach, and is living there now. We might visit her if we go to Sp-. She is finishing up her degree. Either someone asks me in the dream or I imagine it in the dream, if I am also still in school. I laugh and say no, I graduated from college years ago. I can't remember how many years, I try to count but I mix it up. But my brother is still in it, I say, and my sister is just about to finish or she just finished but is still there. I remember another place in Sp- in the dream, a huge colorful and very fancy mall, with huge marble stairways and fountains and giant arched ceilings with bright neon lights. (This is a mall I visited in another dream quite some time ago, but it doesn't exist in real life. Neither does a seaside in either location. I realize this in the dream, since both locations are landlocked and some ways from the ocean, but I brush off the issue. Perhaps they are actually large lakes, I reason. I recognize the discrepancy but it does not bother me).

Returning to the present of the dream, I again argue with my brother trying to get him to agree which location to go to for our trip. I tell him to forget anywhere else we'd been considering, and just pick between those two because they are fast and easy. (How we will also visit H-, which seems to be a primary purpose of me going, when she is actually in S- , is not addressed).

We are sitting in the living room arguing, he is being typically lackadaisical. He isn't really interested in going but I think our parents have told him to do so. I leave him to decide and get up to make some soup, as I haven't eaten. I open a can of Campbell's beef soup in the kitchen and heat it in a pot on the stove, then pour some of it into a bowl for me and return to the living room. As my brother and I go back and forth about the locations, I stir the bowl of soup on the coffee table. I haven't had any yet. Then i notice something in the bowl, and lift it out with the spoon. It appears to be a used condom. I am disgusted and outraged, and also I consider suing the soup company. I fish it out and dump it, and go into the kitchen but then I realize I don't really want the remainder of the soup that was cooked with it either. I am not hungry anymore even though I still haven't eaten anything.

My father comes into the house and I run out and tell him about the soup incident and express my shock and disgust, and my consideration of suing them. I decide to ask my mother about it. Then I tell my father my brother still won't decide where to go for the trip, and my father says to pick something. He thinks we should go to Sp- because then we can stop by and see my sister as well, so I think we decide to do that.

The general feeling throughout is irritation at the delay and indecision, which I mostly take out on my brother, and the fact that we're going to be late and the trip is just sort of thrown together becuase we ran out of time, and not properly planned. I'm also annoyed at not being able to meet H- at the time when I originally said I would. The level of irritation is general annoyance and stress, probably about as much as if the situation happened in real life. Also there's the gross-out factor of the soup incident, which disgusts me and makes me want the soup company to pay reparations, which is more out of character.