Life is but a dream

Long gap...

2011-03-16T17:49:00.000-07:00

I stopped writing down my dreams for a while because I was having a lot of disturbing dreams/nightmares that I didn't want to remember, and when I write my dreams, it helps me remember them (and also helps me remember the next dream more clearly). Lots of stress and life changes. I started again because I had one that was significant feeling and comforting, and I want to try to start them again. I still remember bits and pieces of dreams (both good and bad) from the gap time, but I don't know if I will record them after the fact or not.

Getting A Man At The Mall

2011-03-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning's dream - 3/16/2011

I don't remember the earlier part of this dream, but somehow I ended up going to a mall. It wasn't a mall I know in real life, it might even have been in a different city. It was evening. I was carrying my son with me. I met S- there, who I haven't seen in a long time (the time period was current or slightly in the future, so I really haven't). What I can't remember now is if we were intentionally meeting there, or if I knew he was going to be there so I went there. At any rate, I knew he was going to be there and I wasn't surprised to see him, but rather I was looking for him and looking forward to it nervously.

Initially I went in to the mall and went to some different stores, and then I went to this counter where you could renew your passport or book travel tickets. Possibly, you could also get visa stamps there. I think the first time I saw him was around there, he was coming away from the counter. I was looking for him to be somewhere, I'd already been at the mall for a while basically just wandering around passing the time until I met him. I went to him immediately and hugged him, like when I said goodbye the last time I saw him in real life. He hugged me back but I got the feeling that I was hugging longer than he intended and he might be uncomfortable, by the time I broke away. We chatted and caught up. He had just returned from a trip visiting his family back home in J-. His trip came out through Lebanon and apparently this is why he was visiting this travel counter. Also he was planning another trip there soon. He chatted a little bit catching me up on his family, etc, his brother's recent marriage and child, and so forth, and then he went off to do something in another part of the mall that he had been on his way to. I hung around the area and went to some nearby stores, then I saw him again at the travel counter and I went there myself ( to run into him). I said, I was also planning a vacation in Lebanon soon myself, and we talked some more at the counter. I got my passport stamped or something for my trip. It seems I came up with this on the spur of the moment, because in my head, I was making plans at that time how I could request a week off work in a week or two, and actually take the trip, to make it coincide. I could actually do this, I thought, and decided to just then. We talked about going together since we would be there at the same time. Most of this time I was thinking in my head vs. paying attention to what we were actually saying, so I don't really remember most of the conversations but there was a lot of "hanging out chatting" type of conversation, and another half hug at my departure. After I was done with my activities at the ticket counter, they were still working on his, so I didn't have any clear reason to keep hanging around, though I still wanted to spend time with him. So I drifted to the next door store, hoping he would catch up with me again when he got done, though we hadn't specifically made this arrangement. A number of the stores in this mall weren't separated fully into their own entities like in a regular mall, they were more like separate rooms without doors between them, so the transitions between them were a bit odd.

The store I went into next was a bookstore or some kind (next to the travel counter). I looked along a shelf of calendars, they had different themes of different kinds of animals and bugs, then I started looking at a shelf of Anno books for my son. They had Anno's Animals (a very large version, like a supersized version) and then they had another one I'd never seen before which was called Anno's String Games or something similar, and it had a black and white illustration on each page with trees and such, and a person doing some kind of cat's cradle design. There were no words (as typical with Anno books) and no instructions, so it was hard to tell how you were actually supposed to make each design. I was curious about the book flipping through it but decided not to get it for that reason.

While I was flipping through this book, S- came into the bookstore having finished with his travel arrangements, but he saw somebody in the bookstore, a friend or relative who had been browsing, and went over to talk to him (it wasn't somebody I knew, though I'd observed him in the store). It was one of his relatives he'd just seen on his trip back home. In their brief comments (overheard) I realized that when the guy had been at the family get together back home, he let other people there think that he was gay or something as he was not in a relationship, but actually he was involved with (or possibly married to) this girl, who he introduced now to S-. She was a cute American girl with a short blond bob. He was really happy to introduce her to S- and S- was very happy for him and it seemed that the fact that he was with this girl was a big breakthrough in the family dynamics. I gather that some people in the family knew they were together but he hadn't made it evident when S- had last seen him back home.

This news made S- really happy. I knew it was because of me, it was like his cousin being with this girl opened up new possibilities for him or meant the family had decided it was allowable. He came over behind me where I was standing and hugged me from behind really enthusiastically, laughing and happy, to the point that he picked me up around the waist and I lifted my feet off the ground. Still hugging me like this, he whispered very quietly "I love you" in my ear. I was very emotional and happy. I whispered that I love him too, and lifted up his hand to my mouth, kissing it twice just barely, not sure if this was too much. He led me over to the cousin and his wife/girlfriend and introduced me. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and I was walking on air. Then, he raced out the back with me (there was an exit from the mall in that store which opened out through glass doors to the back parking lot). I wasn't sure where we were going exactly. I was very happy, but I did have some fleeting thoughts about the past reasons we hadn't been together, but I was too happy to wonder about them too much. We stopped just outside the doors. He wanted to go tell his mother (and possibly other family members) who were parked at the other end of the lot, I said I have to get my stuff, (my son was still inside with the cousin, and my other things) so I stopped at the exit, and he ran off across the lot bounding with excitement. I went to go back in the doors, but I spilled something on two mats outside the entrance, they were like placemats or small rugs that had been on the ground, that were mostly white, and whatever I spilled on them was some kind of food that stained orange, like spaghetti sauce. So I knelt down to clean this up. I could see at the other end of the darkened lot (which had floodlights like a typical mall parking lot, only we were behind the building not in the main lot), he met a woman (his mother) and was talking to her. Pretty soon he ran back to meet me. He asked what I was doing and if I was ready and I explained that I had started to go back in but then I messed up the rugs, holding them up (my attempts to remove the stain hadn't succeeded, just spread it around). He replied "messed on the rugs!" with an expression of fake alarm/grossed out and we both laughed. I said it this way knowing it would sound funny and he would react like that because it was funny and I wanted to see his silly expression, making fun of me like I remembered. It was still fun to be goofy although I was so painfully happy, maybe lightening the all the emotions a bit by both of us laughing. We went in together to collect my son and my things, then I woke up.

Bad Ferry Trip

2008-09-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

In the last dream of the night, I was getting on a ferry boat of some kind to go on a tour of a city. My family was also going. I was left behind and when it came time to disembark onto some kind of floating island in the harbor, I saw them leaving but was far from the exit. I called but they didn't hear me and left. I somehow managed to get onto the floating island after everybody else, but the others were already loading into a boat to take them to the mainland city for the tour. I yelled after them and they saw I was left behind but they didn't wait or come back. The boat left without me. I had to get back on the ferry, but the passengers weren't supposed to be on it (they should have left for the tour) so I sort of stayed out of sight. I yelled after my family that I would just have to jump in the water then if they wouldn't wait for me, to no effect. I ended up jumping in the water and decided to swim back the way we came, knowing I wouldn't be able to swim that far.

Mountains and Monsters

2008-09-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

Mt Hood was erupting throughout the dream. At first we set off down I- road on this long walking hike, and we could see the smoke coming from the top of the mountain (despite the fact that you can't actually see it from there). Then I saw a peculiar flurry of white in the sky near the mountain, like a gigantic monster taller than the hills moved, with snow on its shoulders. It turned out to be just that and it was stalking around, quite enormous. We traveled out to the mountain and were walking along mountain trails. At one point we came to a river which had a log accross it that people were crossing. When I went to cross I came up to an old woman who was also on the log. She said she would let me by and then without warning jumped into the river (to allow me to pass) I was aghast and fell off the other side of the log (but a much shorter distance, onto the bank. She climbed out of the water and was okay, but I was still feeling shocked and guilty. I had to explain what had happened to my family. Later the mountain started to erupt in earnest and I was packing some things to evacuate with my family. I may have had my baby at that time. I also had my cat A- but my other cat was not in the dream and I was concerned about this, wondering if something had happened to her (it was like I landed in the dream and didn't know what had happened in the recent past in my life... had something happened to my other cat that I didn't know about but everybody else knew about?).

Detached Legs?

2008-09-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

9/6/2008 - Last night's dream
Warning... this is a little gross

Last night's dream was fairly complex but I don't remember most of it... the part I do remember is this. I was at my grandma's house visiting. I went into the kitchen where the washing machine and dryer normally are and instead, there were my legs! How they became separated from me I don't know, they were stacked up against the wall (I have no idea what I was standing on in the meantime). There were two but they looked like the same one! I started to examine them and I noticed that one looked like a slightly older version of the other one, rather than being different as legs normally are. I couldn't tell if one of them was left and the other was right. They both had the same marks and scratches, but on one of them the scratches were slightly more healed. I looked at the top leg and it had a thing like a pimple, but as it turned out as I examined it, there was something in it! It was (ugh) a botfly larvae. I picked and squeezed it out and removed it, alive. It was fairly disgusting, though quite small. On the other leg the same mark was there but it was smaller and looked like it was healing, like it had already been removed.

Moving Twice

2008-09-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

Last night's dream

This was one of those long and stressful dreams, but this time the theme was moving. Which is indeed long and stressful and I hope I will not have to do again for a long time. I had to move twice in the dream, both on very short notice and both times to get away from my estranged husband. The first time I moved into this new place which was okay, it was on an upper story. It took forever to pack and cart everything from the old place to the new place. We were hurrying because he was going to come back and interfere and I didn't' want him to find out I was escaping or where I was going to. It took forever and I was totally exhausted. Then he showed up, and I had to move again. This time for some reason he was actually helping move although I was running away from him. The new place I found on very short notice was a peculiar little apartment at the very top of an old building. It had a dangerous looking internal staircase wrapping around (but not a spiral, squared) and it looked like it would be easy to fall down it. I was somewhat concerned about this especially in my condition. The rest of it was kind of funky and oddly put together but I decided it would be interesting and work well enough. It looked out onto a horse paddock. I discovered that it was owned by my old riding instructor! We met up breifly and I decided to get it, and set about tryign to get moved in as quickly as possible and get away from my husband again. The whole dream was very rushed and stressed and exhausting, definitly a stress dream.

Creepy Dogs and Murdering

2008-09-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 9/2 (Last night's)

My dreams have been really fragmented lately, can't remember most of them. Judging from what I do remember, thank goodness!

In the first part of this, I was a guy and I worked at a hotel of a bed & breakfast type. One of my jobs was to murder somebody out of each group who stayed there! Then I quickly cleaned up the room and made it all pretty for the next victim so they wouldn't suspect and the rest of the previous group wouldn't't know what happened. I killed at least two people in this dream, and I didn't feel particularly bad about it either. I was thinking in the dream after I killed the first one (I don't remember how I did so, I may have had some ability to kill... it wasn't bloody but was quite fast), well maybe I should have thought about that a little more. Nah, that's my job.

Then in another part of the dream, I'm myself again and swimming across this bay in the middle of the night. Everything is pitch black. There are some other people, friends of mine I guess, who are also swimming across. I can't see a thing and the water is cold but not very deep, I keep running into slime covered sticks and logs with my feet, which is very uncomfortable. Then I see a dog/wolf-like thing swimming in the water, only it's head is out. It has an orangish cast to its fur. It swims toward me and I am trying to get away but I keep running into things underwater. I try to dive under to hide but it grabs my hand, which is still sticking out, in its teeth, and is biting and chewing on it. Then I wake up, and can't shake the image for a long time.

In the next dream after I go back to sleep, my friend H- is visiting me and we are driving around a town (I'm not sure which one) in my vehicle. We are hungry and looking for a place to eat, and I ask her where she'd like to eat. After some discussion we decide to try a place called something like "Kitchen Mama" which is a chain restaurant (not a real one to my knowledge). I have driven here before but am not familiar with the area, but I do remember there is on nearby. After driving around a bit I stop and use my cell phone to look up the restaurant online... there is an application where I can just search for it and it will show me the ones in the area. It asks me to choose which type of Kitchen Mama restaurant I want: Some of them serve chicken as their specialty, some don't serve chicken and some of them serve it sometimes but it's not guaranteed. I ask H- which one she wants and try to search for it. After some issues with getting the results to come up I realize it is just around the corner and we drive to it.

Love in Captivity

2008-09-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

I was working on a boat at first, and later in some other workplace with uneven floors that I would slide down accidentally. I think we were being held there, and it wasn't possible to escape. But R-, an old flame of mine, was also working there and we comforted each other. He was open to affection in this dream and would hold me and calm me down, it was very comforting. We were not supposed to be together in the dream (this may have been a blanket rule against all who were enslaved in working there) so the supervisors would pull us apart, but he would get back to me. It was all very detailed but I can't remember most of it. I tried to recapture the good part when I awoke but couldn't get back into it.

A strange bump...

2008-08-31T14:05:00.000-07:00

All I remember from this dream was I developed this bizarre bump on my left shoulder, it was as large as the eraser of a pencil and of a peculiar texture with wrinkles over the outside that slipped around on top of the core. This was in addition to the scar lump I already have on my right shoulder. I finally decided they were concerning and went to talk to the doctor about them. I actually still thought I had the weird bump when I woke up but then I realized it had been a dream... I could feel it's strange shape so clearly though!

Pastry Machine Hideout

2008-08-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

I remember very little of this and the date might also be wrong.

The dream took place on this large campus with a lot of concrete buildings. I don't think it was a school campus though, it was some kind of work campus. I went into a closed off building which had once been used for manufacturing (nobody was supposed to go in there). There was a long machine which had been used to process some kind of pastries or bread, it still had gunk stuck in it. I ended up crawling out over the top of it after getting stuck in there. I'm not sure if I was trying to hide from people or what... there were other people around at some point.

A Frantic Search For A Gift To Buy

2008-08-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

Not really sure about the date on this one, I forgot about it until some time later.

In the part I can remember, I stopped by this place sort of like TESC campus. I was with some friends (possibly including K-) and we had to get a gift for some event we were going to. We were already late. We split up to go look for something and I ran across campus. There was this fashion clothing shop which I had been intending to get something at (although it was very expensive) but it was closed. But there were some people with an upright board out front selling knickknacks. I ended up buying a glass paperweight, one of the ones with a blown glass flower-like shape inside, which I thought was pretty. They also had weird colorful sparkly hair scrunchies and decorations of that sort. I rushed back to meet up with the others. They were somewhat dubious about my gift choice but I don't think anybody had found a better one. Throughout we were extrememly rushed and I felt anxious and worried that I had not been prepared.

Very Peculiar Snack!

2008-08-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

I had dreams all night long but I can barely remember anything! I will add more snippets if they come to me.

The part I remember involved my former boss Ch-, who I ran into at a fancy office building somewhere downtown. The other part I remember clearly was that I prepared and ate an open faced sandwich with peanut butter and jalepeños! (I think it also had pickles or pepperoncinis)! Definitely a weird "pregnancy related" craving. I liked it in the dream. It sounds disgusting to me now! :P

Bad Situation Gets Worse

2008-08-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

Another dream from last night, which I just remembered

I am talking to my friend H- about the issues leading to the breakup of my marriage, much as in real life the night before, except we discover through talking to each other that he had been having an affair with her! She didn't know it was him having never actually met him (the fact that she is also married and cheating in this scenario didn't seem to present a problem in the dream). But in talking to each other about what he had done to me we eventually put two and two together. We are both outraged. I am not upset at her, just mad at him because as it turns out he was cheating too, and she is also outraged at him for having done this to me (and discovering what kind of person he is). There are lots of further details in the dream, I don't remember most of them.. it involves trapping him in his lies to us and confronting him when he goes to a place like the F- house expecting to meet her as usual. He is unpleasant and angry in the dream, but we are united in our anger and outrage against him. Lots of emotional upset, unpleasantness, and enhanced feeling of betrayal. It took a moment upon awakening to separate it back from reality (which was bad enough).

A Confusing and Uncomfortable Workout

2008-08-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Friday, 8/22/2008
Last night's dream

There's a lot that happens before this, but it's already disappearing.

In the last part of the dream, I drive up to some sort of festival or fair outdoors in a country area. There are booths set up to sell stuff. You are supposed to pay to enter it but I am not there for the festival. I park my car there anyway and walk up to S- Hall, which is on a ridge nearby (not in its usual place). I am early for Taekwon-do class. My instructor is already there, stretching on the floor. My sister is also here for class and possibly my mother. I am feeling tired and I don't know how my Taekwon-do suit will fit over my pregnant stomach. I go into the women's bathroom to change clothes. After I get undressed I discover that I don't have a tee shirt to go under my Taekwon-do top. I feel exhausted. There is a bed in the room with white sheets and a quilt so I lay down on it. After a few moments there I realize someone else is already in the bed! It's some guy! I don't know who he is, he looks maybe around my age, youngish, probably with some Chinese ethnicity. I kick him awake yelling at him, and attempt to cover myself with the quilt (he on the other hand is wearing something). He wakes up slowly, and I ask, "are you a man?" (He looks like a man but I've been mistaken before on occasion, and this IS the women's room). He says that yes he is. I point out that this is the women's bathroom and he should get out of here, NOW! He is sleepy and somewhat amused looking, and says that he knows it's the women's bathroom. After additional prodding and yelling he hauls himself out and leaves. My instructor and my mother come in due to the yelling and I point out indignantly that he was in there. They don't seem as concerned, like they thought my yelling was about a real problem, and indicate I should get dressed.

I go to put on my Taekwon-do suit. At first I decide to put on the top without any undershirt since I don't have one (I don't know what I was wearing before but apparently it wasn't suitable. I don't have a bra either though, so this will be uncomfortable. Then I see there is a rather ugly yellow and black patterned shirt in the bathroom with snaps up the front, made of a thin material. I actually think this probably belongs to the guy who was in here, but it seems clean and I decide to wear it anyway, and I put it on under my Taekwon-do top. I go out and join the rest of the class. My instructor calls out the first forms and I try to get started, but everybody is going every which way overlapping my area and confusing me, they all seem to be doing different things. There is loud music playing in the background too which starts when the form stops, and stops again when it stops. After some mistakes I finally finish, after everyone else. My instructor acknowledges that it must have been difficult with everybody getting in the way (as opposed to me having not done my forms in a while) and tries to space us out a bit more. We do the next form, the loud distracting music starts again although the people don't get in the way as much, so it's very confusing.

We take our Taekwon-do tops off, then I discover that the shirt I'm wearing under it has popped open in the front. It seems they aren't really snaps but little hook things. I call over my instructor and tell her that my tee-shirt has come apart. I am hoping she has a backup tee shirt but apparently she doesn't, so I decide to just go to the bathroom again and put on my Taekwon-do top with nothing under it. She is concerned that I will overheat with my Taekwon-do top on, in my condition, but there is nothing for it. I go into a stall and change. When I come out, I see my mother and instructor are there chatting with two older guys who have set up a little table in the main part of the bathroom with food. This is special stuff they've brought in for our class. There are three dishes: a pot of spicy chili with crackers on top of it, a milder sort of soup or bean dish, and a vegetable dish which is rather odd, it's made with several different whole roasted vegetables, one of each. The man who cooked them said he personally doesn't like to add the green pepper, but that is the way his parents used to make it so he still makes it that way to remember how. After I change I come out and sample two of the dishes (I avoid the spicy chili due to my recent reactions to spicy food). I also find a discarded bunch of slightly dusty but very firm green grapes and eat a handful of those. Everyone else files out to class. The cook of the food tells me that I need to talk to him about getting proper nutrition, in a disapproving sort of way. I say I will but will have to do it later, making excuses, and go back out to class.

There's another part of the dream slightly later which involves climbing into some kind of attic or loft, and my sister and her boyfriend are up there with me... but I don't remember exactly what happens.

A Failed Recital and a Strange Vessel

2008-08-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

We are at S- Hall but I don't know that we are doing Taekwon-do. Or maybe we have finished a demonstration just now. I think it is for S- day. We are seated on the floor and there are various audience members grouped around the outside. My mother is supposed to do a reading, she is set up with a microphone. I don't remember exactly what it is, a poem or a list or instructions or guidelines or something. I think she's going to do it in Spanish for some reason. Anyway, she stands there but then she can't do it and she goes into the bathroom to recover herself. We sit there for a moment thinking she will come back, but she doesn't. My sister starts a recording with the English version and I go into the bathroom after her to see if she is okay. She is all upset and nervous. I try to comfort her and tell her that it will be okay. She can do it along with the tape even, and say the Spanish part after the English part. After much discussion she calms down and decides this will be okay and that is what she will do. When we go out, though, the tape is almost over and the audience has left. My sister is still sitting there. It's too late to do the reading.

Later, I am driving home (to my parents house) between S- hall and the Triangle, where the road curves and there are large hedges in front of one persons house. There is a large, rounded machine like a small space ship that is hovering over the swampy area to one side of the road. It is watching us. We stop and get out. We don't think it's an alien craft although it looks like one, we decide it's some sort of government monitoring thing, possibly with the help of alien technology or an alien pilot. I am with several other people, possibly my sister and cousin, I'm not sure. I am going on about Odd Thomas (as a real life person) and all the amazing things he can do, etc., except in the dream this also includes traveling to other dimensions. In fact I think he is in our area as a result of that ability. We look through a window into the ship and discover there are people aboard (we thought it was remote operated). They don't seem to be aware of us though and are facing away at a console.

Some how we get onto the ship, possibly with his help, and wander around looking at stuff. It's a fairly neat setup. I think he helps us hijack it and fly it off.

Midnight Meander

2008-08-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

Due to general life upheaval, my dreams (and sleep) have been extremely fragmented and/or disturbing for a while... so no posting. Now they begin to resume some slight coherency.

8/20/2008 (approximate)

Most of this dream remains elusive. The part I remember is: I am younger, living at home. I slip out of my room at night and walk down to the chicken yard in my nightgown/bathrobe. It is a very bright night, possible due to a full moon. I enjoy wandering around in the nighttime. Then I see my father coming down the trail, and I run to hide as I'm not supposed to be out. I duck into some tall grass at the other side of the chicken yard and crouch down. As it turns out he has already seen me and calls me out, I am afraid I will get in trouble but I don't think I do.

Later in the dream I am climbing in a tree with my sister. We are still young, maybe early teenagers at this point, but I am still pregnant.... the placement in time is incongruous. She takes my foot and pushes it against her stomach and after a bit I realize she is telling me she is pregnant, too. I am surprised but not unhappy, then I realize that she is really further along than I am and will have her baby first, but she has been keeping it a secret. Maybe it's because she is not happy about it or doesn't want to tell the father. I congratulate her, but I don't think she is still going to tell anyone else.

Don't Park Your Horse In the Garage

2008-07-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

This was a couple of days ago, I've lost track. I thought I recorded it but it turns out I didn't!

To start with I was traveling with my family. We stopped in a small town for the night but we couldn't find any lodgings. The people we talked to seemed to indicate that this was not a good neighborhood for us to stay in, and we would be better off looking somewhere else, but we were really tired and it was late so we finally found a place. I had my car and a horse which I beleive was also mine (a bay) and I parked them both in this large stable/garage thing that was next to the hotel (the horse was tied up right next to the car). The next morning we went down there and my car and my horse had been stolen! The robbers had replaced them with a different car and horse in the same place. The car was a red sports car, not brand new but actually probably nicer than my car, and the horse was a chestnut filly who was pregnant. She was actually very nice but I was upset about the thievery and I told the owners of the place that I wanted my OWN car and horse back! They basically told us they were sorry but they'd warned us about staying here and there wasn't anything they could really do.

I ended up taking the car and horse home, they were mine to use or keep as the thieves had taken my others. I did like the new horse a lot but I wanted my own horse back, even though he was kind of old and beat up he was still a good horse. I installed the horse in my parent's field. We went to talk to my aunt and uncle. As it turned out (I think we knew this at the time as well) the parking garage/stable we'd left them at adjoined a shop that they owned in that town. We all went back to see if there was news of the car. My grandma came with us as well. When we returned my car had been found dumped in the lake nearby, and they were hauling it out. It was full of water, of course, and probably ruined.

Evening was falling again and we decided to go get something to eat at a restaurant. I was with my grandma and she kept wandering off and getting lost or staring at stuff, like she wasn't all there. When it was time to leave the restaurant I couldn't find her and I finally found that she had gone out on a small balcony and was looking at the stars. I couldn't really tell if she was starting to have mental problems or she was slipping away on purpose, but she didn't normally act like this (or show such signs of mental decline in real life).

Disloyalty and Longing

2008-07-15T11:49:00.000-07:00

7/15/2008 Tuesday morning/Monday night

It's been a while since recording a dream because I've been having so much trouble sleeping through the night... when you wake up constantly it's very hard to remember the bits and pieces. But most of the one from last night stayed with me.

There are several parts to this dream, I don't remember most of the connecting bits.

I was with my sister and her boyfriend M- at my mother's office. We were coming down the back steps, but they were quite a bit more complicated than in real life. It was or had been raining and they were all wooden and slick. M- was making generally unpleasant remarks, and when I commented on the slickness, he gave me a push to slide on the steps! It was so slick I slid down the stairs to the next landing and slammed against the railing. I was very mad at him shoving me and said so, my sister was somewhat upset as well, and pointed out that I was pregnant. He wasn't particularly repetent.

Next segment (there was stuff in between but it faded)

I had returned to visit the EWU (I think) campus for some reason and was strolling around with my sister. We started to walk back to the car, where other people and relatives were gathering to leave. At the bottom of a small hill I realized that S-, my old (and unfortunately former) friend was there. He was in a wheelchair due to a broken leg (I knew the cause of it. He was sort of behind us. I don't know if he knew that we saw him or not. Maybe he did and he knew why We didn't say anything, but at any rate, he followed along behind us, slowly. We saw him but pretended not to. My heart was pounding. I wanted to say something of course, but couldn't. My sister and I talked and laughed loudly of other things and got to the top of the hill, he was still there. Now he was no longer in a wheelchair or injured. My sister went to get into the car and I had to notice him. We spoke, I think, but I mostly just remember hugging him for a long, long, time. Every time I thought I could let go, I couldn't again. We hugged each other. We touched on how it couldn't be, given my current state of life, but at that moment I really wished it could, and it seemed that he did too. I don't know what he was wishing for though, maybe to just be friends again. My mother and aunt came up in he background, loading other people into the car. My mother saw what I was doing and knew who he was, I think, but she didn't say anything. There was also our dog in the back seat (where I was to sit with four other people, including my brother and possibly even my husband, I'm not sure. Then there were 4 other dogs in the back (it was a station wagon). They were all full sized dogs, and the last one was pretty old, my aunt (N-) boosted it up into the back because it had trouble jumping. Finally I had to let go of S- and we walked over to the car, where I squeezed in by my brother, and wondered why he wasn't on the other side holding our dog.

I woke up briefly still feeling the hug and felt guilty.

Another part, it continued after I went back to sleep but I'm not sure how it go from point A to point B.

I saw my aunt N- with some guy, acting fairly intimate. I was shocked and eventually mentioned it to my mother, who said that it was okay, she had actually gotten divorced from my uncle some months ago, but didn't want to tell anybody yet. I wondered if my cousins knew, then decided of course they must. Should I say something to them? We had been acting normal all along. I decided not to.

Then we were up at my grandma's house. There was some kind of outdoor bazaar or something and my Aunt K- was there. We moved around talking to people. There was a girl probably around my age who was an exchange student. Somebody in my family gave us both some gifts of fabric or scarves. She wanted me to help her write something, a thank-you note I think, and I was trying to accommodate. In the meantime my aunt K- kept talking to this loutish looking guy about what it was like in S.A. She was very interested in learning more but he wasn't too forthcoming.

We went up towards my grandma's actually house, and I noticed that the (dry) swimming pool had been cleaned out. The bottom of it was covered with something like moss but it had been scraped back and colored to reveal a geometric decorative pattern covering the entire bottom of the pool. I was happy that somebody had restored it to its former glory.

There was more in between here inside the house but I've forgotten it.

Then at the end, I am out in the mountains somewhere. I am climbing down hills and cliffs, avoiding the steepest part. It keeps getting steeper and steeper and finally gets to the point where I'm going to have to jump down and probably fall because it's too steep to climb down anymore. So, I wake up.

Beach With No Exit

2008-07-03T17:31:00.000-07:00

In the first part of the dream I am spending a lot of time at my parents house, and suddenly I realize that I've left everything in my apartment for weeks now... my cats, my plants, etc. I have to go back and take care of them. Then it turns out it's okay because I hadn't really moved into their house after all, it just seemed like it because it was a dream or something... very odd.

Later...

I am going to the beach with my husband and brother. We park our car at the top of a wooded cliff and make our way down to the water, I am carrying my purse and my canvas bag with a wide variety of stuff in it. I have on some kind of swimsuit thing under a very long (past my knees) white and greens striped button-up shirt. We clamber down the hill to the bottom but the water is covering most of the beach. I'm going kind of slowly and awkwardly and dropping things, so the others end up going ahead. My husband walks down in one direction and comes back, saying that they have that part of the beach closed off because the waves are too high (there are a lot of people in the small part we are at, so it's kind of crowded).

The dream pans out to a view of the dangerous part of the beach as seen from the ocean, there are numerous huge rock pillars close together, and lots of big waves crashing up against and between them. The water is definitely high and dangerous.

So, we decided to go back up and go to a different part of the beach. While we are standing htere another family comes past with some small children, also returning to their vehicle, They open a tiny door in a culvert and go through that way. When we climb back up (another slippery part of the hill), I realize we are not in the same place. My husband clears a small hole in the cliff for my to crawl through, but I don't want to. It looks like I could just squeeze through, but it will be all muddy. I say, "This isn't where we came down before! let's go back that way." Everyone is annoyed with me. My brother goes back that way to wait in the car, and we climb back down to find another way up.

But every time we climb up , it's a different situation and it's not the right place. Also, I keep dropping and spilling my purse and the bag I'm carrying and having to stop and pick them up. At one point we climb up a very narrow area, my husband is behind me. I say there is not enough room, the rock edge is very steep and I'm afraid I'll fall off into the water (which is quite close, but it's kind of brackish and it would still be unpleasant). He goes ahead of me to show me and then he ends up falling into the water. I jump in a split second later to rescue him, and dive down to where he went down and pull him up. Then I start to go down myself but kick to the top. We both drag out on the bank (the other beach-goers there don't seem to pay much attention).

Then we start climbing up a different way. This time, FINALLY, we see the parking lot with the car. My husband asks me, "you left the Honda at work, right?" I say no, I left it at my apartment. He says this is okay. This is rather odd since it's my car in the parking lot above, and we don't have a Honda anyway. Just when we get to the top I suddenly realize I don't have my purse. I don't know if I lost in the water or what, but i Have to go back for it. He complains but I insist I am not leaving it here to get lost or stolen. So I climb back down the hill. Luckily it's just sitting where I dropped it at the bank. When I go to get it, I spill my canvas bag and so I have to stop and pick up all that stuff. He comes down to help me. There are tons of things in there, a whole set of knives (dirty), Strange flat water bottles, etc. All our supplies for the trip I guess. Finally we get everything picked up, under the impassive eyes of the other beach goers, and head back up.

Snow Whales

2008-07-01T17:29:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning, July 1

In the later part of the dream, I wake up in bed with my husband. We are both half asleep. J-, a former coworker, comes into the room, he's all excited and wants me to get up and look at the snow. I groggily get out of bed and look out the window. I am wearing a long nightgown and a scarf. It has indeed snowed, over a foot. He is gleeful and jumping around. It's not clear or addressed how he ended up in our apartment early in the morning, he says he came to tell me this so I don't have to go to work. Out the window I can see that much of the snow however has melted, I don't think the roads will be impassible. I walk towards the other end of the apartment to check in at work on my computer. I pass a room with my lead, S-, in it at her desk. She lives in my building, in my floor (actuallly it looks like she lives in my actual apartment, and that her home consists of a desk, but she doesn't). I wonder how I'm going to be able to call in "snowed in" to work when she's in the same place, it's going to be a giveaway. I go back and try to prod my husband to get up, he is sleepy. I go out to look at the snow, with J- hopping along besides (why is he here?) He points out some whales that have come. There is a large body of water, possibly a river, behind my apartment which is also all snowy, and a number of small black whales. I think they are killer whales at first but he says they are some other kind (I don't remember the kind). They are colored sort of like killer whales though. One of them has two oddly shaped mouths on its belly.

Jumping From Old and Bad to New and Scary (and maybe Good?)

2008-06-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday night's/Friday morning's dream - 6/27/2008

This dream is long with several "sections." I think the first section is "connected" to the latter parts but I'm not %100 sure... the other parts are definitely connected though. There was a lot more detail to the first part and it was much longer than appears here, but I couldn't remember enough of the minor details.

At the beginning of the dream, I am no longer married, and it's been a while. What has happened to result in this (divorce? death?) isn't really addressed. I am at my parents house. My cousin expresses interest in me and keeps inviting me over, etc, I find this extremely distasteful. Other people in the family seem to support this though and think we will end up together Finally I just tell him I'm not ready for anything (really I can't imagine anything more disgusting) he is disappointed but leaves me alone. There is more involving him preparing a room and loaning me a book which has been given to him by some relatives (I don't remember what it was called but it was something about sex) but I can't remember all the details.

In the same section of the dream, our neighbor B-, shows up and is visiting the family at Grandma's. He looks younger with dark hair and beard. He sits down on the couch squished right up against me which makes me very uncomfortable. My mother asks lightly why doesn't he come sit by here, as she can see that I don't like this, but he says no, he is going to sit by me because I'm the only one that is single. I really dislike this. Also for some reason everybody else is calling him Charles, and this confuses me because this is not his name.

My overall feeling in both parts of the first section is of distaste and disgust, unhappy with the way people are interacting with me, their approaches repulse me.

The middle section... I am walking across a high, open place, maybe on top of a hill. I come into a very large, white room. It has huge windows all across one wall which look out over a cliff, very high up. Another woman is in the room, maybe someone I know, I don't remember. She is also dressed in white. I may be as well.

As she turns away to exit at one side of the room, I walk quickly across the room. I don't want her to see me come in because she will stop me. I open one of the giant windows. I want to jump out. I am dreaming lucidly at this point, that is, I'm aware that it's a dream and I seem to be able to control my actions to some extent. I hesitate but I tell myself, this is a dream, I'm not suicidal, I can jump and I will not die. But the other woman doesn't know this, she will misinterpret my actions. So when her back is turned I quickly step outside the window. I stand on the edge looking down. I remind myself this is a dream, brace myself, and jump. I am falling, falling, and I can feel the falling and am a little scared.

Then I land at the bottom of the cliff, unharmed. It is a narrow strip of beach and the tide is washing in all the way up to the base of the cliff when the waves come up. I start walking along on the narrow strip of beach, dashing between waves, or wading through the shallow water when the wave retreats. There is a small beach town in the distance which I am walking towards. In between the waves on the beach I find a giant shell, sort of like a clamshell but very large, at least 8 inches across and 5 deep. The two halves are separated but they fit together. The color is amazing and like nothing I have ever seen before, it is metallic gold and shimmering with all different colors. After wondering at it, I stop and pray, please let me keep this shell once I wake up, just this one, that's all I'll ask for.

A short time later: I end up staying in the house on the beach, at the town I was walking towards.. I'm not dreaming lucidly anymore just regular dreaming. The house is sort of similar to my apartment layout except there are several floors. It's also more richly and nicely decorated. I believe it belongs to my mother or she is renting it, or it belongs to friends of hers. I come in in the evening and my sister is laying on the couch, possibly asleep. I don't say anything to her. When I get up again in the morning and go into the kitchen she is still on the couch, but I sort of pretend not to notice she is there and start puttering in the kitchen. Eventually I look through the "window" between the living room and the kitchen and see that she has her eyes open and is reading or something. I say, "Oh! I didn't know you were there. When did you get here?" She says she has been there since last night and I say sorry, I didn't know she was there (I'm not sure why I'm claiming this). She seems slightly annoyed that I didn't see her.

Later on, I have gone out somewhere with my sister and I go back to the beach house alone. Some cleaning people are going to come or are already there and I'm supposed to pay them. Somehow I have already looked up that they only accept cash, and they don't charge up front but they will charge you an hourly fee when the cleaning is done.

I go in a ground-floor door to get something, quietly, I don't know if they are there yet. I'm supposed to be keeping the floor clean, it has a white carpet, but I look back and see that my boots have made large, muddy, wet tracks on the carpet. I quickly grab some paper towels and try to sort of soak up the footprints, then I look up and see that the cleaning people are there and they are already almost done.

There is a woman probably 40 or so with dark hair, and a younger man closer to my age with brown curly hair. They are very friendly and tell me not to worry about the footprints, they will get them. I apologize profusely. While they are finishing up, I gather up the stuff I need, I have a white scarf with a bright pink pattern on it that I really like, and I put it on and dress to go out. I come out and also lay out another scarf I have, which has a multi-colored pattern on it with scenes of rivers, boats, and stylized jumping salmon. It also has metallic color patches in places.

As I wait, the cleaning people talk to someone from the house next to us. She pays them and the woman gives her some kind of gold pin. Then they come talk to me. The woman takes me aside and lays a very large gold and silver decorative pin on top of the metallic scarf that I have laid out on the table. It matches perfectly. I want to refuse such an extravagant gift but I know she gave a token to the last people they cleaned house for, so maybe it is their custom. She then explains the pattern of the scarf for me, explaining what it symbolizes in my life, sort of like a fortune teller. She mentions a trip.

Then I talk to her and the young man about payment... I ask timidly if they will accept a check, as I heard that they would only accept cash. But I have just realized that I don't have enough cash, I spent most of it for lunch at a place which also only took cash. I am very anxious and somewhat ashamed as they have already cleaned. They both smile at me and say they will accept my check. I tell them it's not a local check (I don't actually live in this beach house usually of course) and they smile and say it is okay. I can't understand why they are being so nice to me, it's clear I'm getting special treatment, but I'm confused, though flattered. The guy is flirting with me too, and I like him but I'm not sure if they are for real. I ask them how much they charge per hour, and they say that I don't have to pay anything. I insist and they smile and ask what I think is a reasonable price?

I am flustered, I don't know what to say or what is reasonable, I don't want to name something too low... if I name something too high will they bring it down to what they want, or will they take it? Maybe this is a trick they use to get more money? They seem like they are being so nice to me, so I decide I will name a high amount that I'm sure is over (something like 50 dollars/hour) and if they don't bring it down I'll just eat the difference. But they laugh and won't take this price either, and they keep saying that it can be free, just for me.

My feeling in the later part of the dream here is of confusion and anxiousness (over the paying issues) but I'm also pleasantly suprised and pleased at how they are treating me and how nice they are being, especially the guy (even though I find this confusing too... do they really just love me or is there somethign else going on that I don't know?).

Little Fire On The Prairie

2008-06-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night/Thursday morning (6/26)

I had two dreams from this night that I remembered very clearly until I was just getting ready to write them down, and somebody said something that annoyed me. Poof! The first dream was gone just like that and I haven't been able to remember anything else about it since. I was myself in it, though. So here is the second dream:

I am "Laura" in the "Little House" series. We arrive to the prairie for the first time. There is a long straight line of the edge of a woods with tall trees on the prairie next to where we are going to put our house, and I quite surprised. I point out this to my father (Pa, in this case), saying I didn't realize that there would be woods here. The woods is different though, the trees have no low branches and the space between them is clear, like the rest of the prairie.

A little bit later we become aware of smoke coming from a neighbor's house up on a huge hill nearby. We run towards it. As we get closer we join lots of other people running in the same direction. When we get there the house or barn is well on fire and we are all coming to help, although what exactly we are supposed to do I don't know. My mother (Ma) tells me to go get on a cart. There is a cart with a bunch of stuff and people in it pulled by two large tan oxen. She tells me to drive it over the edge of the hill, where it will be safe (this is both something I can do to help, as a young child, and a safe place for me, apparently). I climb onto the cart and drive them, they are eager to run and they go over the edge of the hill, which is a huge cliff. This is what I'm supposed to do, however. I am concerned as the cart tips forward rather than staying level and lands in a crash at the bottom, breaking a bunch of stuff. But everybody is happy, only one occupant of the cart was killed as a result of the fall, and I've gotten it away from the fire.

I remember being aware of several incongruities in this dream as it was happening, such as things that didn't match the actual books or even logically things, but I dismissed them because this "wasn't really the book". The level of awareness wasn't quite to the point of realizing this was a dream but it was more than usually occurs in dreams.

A Reunion But It's Not Him

2008-06-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night/wed morning (6/25)

I am at my apartment and my old friend S- and his brother M- are coming to visit. I am anxious and nervous about this. I have not seen S- for a very long time and I don't know if I still have feelings for him or not. His brother M- arrives first and sits on the couch and talks to me for a long time. He doesn't look anything like he did when I saw him before. He acts like he knows me but really I never knew him very well. His face is haggard and he is sort of melancholy, but tries to cheer me up. He talks about me and S- (who will arrive in a bit) and says that he always knew we would end up together, so I shouldn't worry, we will be together eventually. I say that I doubt that. He says don't worry, it will happen, you're meant to be together. I said you are forgetting, I'm married now, and show him my rings. This doesn't seem to change his mind though (or the fact that this may not be what either of us want).

S- comes in but he sits far at the other end of the couch, facing slightly away so I cannot see his face. Now that he's here I feel excited and a little scared, worried, with butterflies, like I used to feel when I was around him, but more nervous because it's been so long (and I'm not really supposed to be meeting him anyway). I jump up and prepare stuff in the kitchen, trying to clear away ants that have come in. Eventually he joins me in the kitchen. My excitement fades though as he goes about preparing some food, because he doesn't look right anymore. When I first saw him he did, but now he looks more like AM-, another person I used to be friends with, and I find him not at all appealing. I'm a little dismayed by this and eventually I decide it's not him at all, and I am not happy to see the other guy. He's acting all friendly and like we are still friends, and pretending to be S-, which makes me mad.

Moderately Bad But Vague Straits

2008-06-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

First I am preparing with somebody else, possibly my sister, to go to a dance or some kind of party. This preparation takes a long time... adjusting hair, clothes, makeup, etc. I'm not really looking forward to it either and am very nervous.

Then after we get there I think, the dream morphs briefly into being about the house itself. There are two people in it, a husband and wife, and the house is somehow evil and possessing them. It talks to them, starting with the wife, and calls her on the phone. When it talks to them it uses the voice of the other person (but they know it's the house) and it causes them to start behaving strangely. The house is interested in them in a way houses normally are not, and it has sinister overtones.

Change of scene, I am now at college. I am moving my meager belongings into a small apartment (I guess it's dorm housing but it looks like an apartment). While I'm putting away things in a kitchen with lots of wood paneling, my assigned roommate arrives. She is a bit spacey and we talk a bit, I am hoping she will be nice. As we talk about ourselves to get to know each other it comes out that she is a party animal and likes to be fairly wild. I'm kind of disappointed thinking this won't work out so well. I offer to show her around the area, at any rate (the location seems to be somewhat like where I live now). I start talking about the grocery store and how good it is, then go into talking about the other grocery stores in the area and how they rank. Then I offer to take her next door and show her the grocery store, which is very close. I can tell after I say this that she is thinking a grocery store tour or any enthusiasm about it at all is fairly lame. She says that maybe she'll check out the store later. Then she goes out onto the front porch and runs into my sister, and I see them talking. For some reason she really likes my sister, and she pops in later to say that she is going to the grocery store with my sister. They leave. I'm somewhat bummed out about this and feeling sorry for myself, I wash the dishes.

Now I'm finished with college and I'm living at my parent's home again. This is the largest cohesive period of the dream. We are sitting out on the front porch when 5 or 6 people come up the trail, they appear to be Muslim. They call out asking if we have read the pamphlets they left here last time (before I came home from college) and if they agree or disagree with them; they would like to get together to discuss. One of the women walks up to me, grabs my hand and shakes it rather roughly, and tells me that my faith is suffering. I am quite offended by their methods, and I tell them so. I pat her roughly on the shoulder right back, resulting in rather wide scared eyes, and tell her is that anyway to treat another Muslim? And I tell her she should not be proselytizing and dropping off pamphlets, this is not the way of Islam. And she should not be marching up to people telling them they need to get their faith in shape. Is this any way to behave? This is not following Islam. She should take a gentle approach and they should not be proselytizing people leaving pamphlets, this is something that I despise about various christian relgions. I go on ranting for quite some time, although I don't know if I really get through. They ask again if any of us want to get together to discuss the material in the pamphlets, which I DO NOT, and then hurry away, somewhat afraid of my outburst. I'm quite out of sorts about the whole thing.

Later I am inside and I see a small book in a slipcover on the shelf. The cover looks like sort of an imitation (but not an actual imitation, just trying to look similar) of Calvin and Hobbes. I kind of glance over it and ignore it. My brother asks to borrow some more money, for a car or something, and I reluctantly loan it to him after he pleads about how he doesn't have any and he just needs this to get started. This is not the first time in the dream. Later (time has passed) my father comes in, he talks to me about how he has decided he has to add a children's book to his book collection to finally make a well rounded offering in order to sell pictures. He has already written one but nobody (relatives he's shown it to) thinks it's a good one to use. I ask to see it and he goes and gets the book I saw earlier. When I look inside I see that the cover was not related really and it's a sort of comic strip in color about some animal characters. One of them is a penguin, I don't remember the other one (maybe a small bear?). I take it to go read through it, quite enjoying it. Although I'm not sure if a very young child would appreciate all of the jokes, I still think it's good. I also use the computer for a bit. I have a spreadsheet which includes how much money my brother owes me back by now, which is 1500 (accumulated over several months). It's not really clear why I'm living at home again but I seem to be set up with my actual bed and a desk and computer, and have been there for some time now in the dream.

I am out in the kitchen later washing up and my brother and father are talking, and my father asks my brother how much he has saved up from his job. My brother says 4500. I turn around exclaiming, then why haven't you paid me back yet?? You said you didn't have anything. My brother is somewhat embarrassed and makes an excuse. Then my father asks me after my brother has gone, how much he owes me. I explain that he now owes me 1500 but I thought he didn't have anything, and now I find out that he does but hasn't paid me! My father says he will pay me the money and my brother can owe him, he doesn't seem to like the idea of my brother borrowing money from me, something to do with the situation I'm in now (again I'm not sure what situation that is but it seems to have resulted in me moving back home). I offer to show my father the spreadsheet on the computer, but he says there is no need. He starts looking through things inthe house, presumably for some money he has stashed away, but he doesn't end up finding it. Then he asks me to join him "down the stairs". This confuses me becuase there are no stairs and at any rate he's out on the porch. I try to get him to explain but eventually chock it up to not understanding. We walk down the trail. I tell him that I'm enjoying the book, although I haven't finished it yet, and I think it's quite good. We end up going over to my aunt and uncle's house accross the way, which is mildly surprising to me, but I decided he must be keeping some money there with my uncle from his book sales. This is in fact hte case.

It is quite early morning now, I realize, and my aunt, uncle, and cousins are getting breakfast together. I join them in the kitchen while my father talks to my uncle and goes upstairs, presumably to get the money. There is a large pan of flatbread in the oven and it is pulled out so everybody can take some. My uncle asks me about the money thing and I explain briefly to him. My brother is there in the kitchen too, somehow. He helps himself to the flatbread, but he is touching multiple pieces and biting some and putting them back, which I reprimand him for. My uncle hands me a piece of bread which he has eaten part of. I am confused. He points out that the edges are all burnt (he's just showing me, not expecting me to eat it, it turns out). He complains that nobody can cook the bread like he likes it here, they always burn it. It is indeed true and some of them are very burnt, but my aunt and cousin look grumpy about him mentioning this.

In fact my brother has never borrowed money from me but someone else does owe me that exact amount and probably is not going to pay it back, which has caused a lot of grouchiness from me, at myself too for lending it (again).

Overthrowing the Bad People

2008-06-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

6/22/2008 Saturday night's dream

This dream follow the life of a guy who is living in some kind of communist/big brother type oppressive regime, in an undetermined (and specifically not mentioned) country. I am basically his character. It starts when he is just a kid, the 3rd or 4th boy in a family of seven children, and follows as he grows up, which goes on for some time but I can't remember most of that part of the dream. The last part is the clearest, which was just before I woke up. In the final part, he and a group of others break into this heavily guarded control building, which is mostly concrete and with many individually sealed rooms that have to be broken through. They get into the radio system and broadcast a message that the people are uprising, and they are the guards that have been sent to suppress them, to first evade capture. Then the evil people start coming from the other direction, they fight them off. At one point they have broken into a room, when a guard enters from the other side and sees them, they slam the door to the room and lock it, and the main character tells another person to flip the switch, it heats the room up to an unbearable degree. But the door isn't locked as he told her to do, and when he stops holding it shut, the person starts to force their way out, with a great heat which would kill them all. He manages to slam the door on the guy's head and lock it, it severs the head. There's a lot of gory fighting of this nature as they valiantly make their way in, after all these years of secret organization. When they are able to reopen the incineration room (which was designed for punishing citizens or people who broke in, presumably), they grapple with even more guards. Then they break their way through to wear regular populations are held inside. They have the idea to broadcast the message about the uprising again, as they are fighting, but this time the common people hear it and it gives them the energy to rise up themselves, thinking others of them are rising up, and thus at this turning point our heroes are able to overthrow the guards and with the help of everybody else rising up together, take control of the facility.

Clutter Cleaning and A Morphing Baby

2008-06-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

6/20/2008 - Thursday night/Friday morning's dream

First I had agreed to look after my riding instructor's farm while she was away, but then before I got out there, there was a lot of severe flooding and the road became impassible. Also it was quite far away from where I live now so I don't know why I agreed to it in the first place. I drove out to where the flood waters were and contemplated going around them, but I decided it was impossible and went back to my parent's house, feeling guilty for not being able to get out there. I think I also went over to the chicken yard, it was still pouring rain and there were a lot of wet chickens and cats.

Then, I went to some very old house-combo-barn with my mother and brother. The owner of the house was selling it and they needed to get rid of all their stuff, and for some reason my mother had agreed to get it ready for sale (I think the person was a friend of hers). But getting it ready for sale really meant packing up ALL the junk that was in the house, presumably putting it in boxes, and doing something with it (selling it maybe? the person said she didn't want it). The entire place was top to bottom full of knickknacks, almost impenetrable, along with everyday living items like food and dishes in the cupboards and furniture. The furniture was staying to be sold with the house but the rest of it had to go. There was an adjoining part of the house that I think had people still living in it, but they weren't there at the moment.

We picked our way through, not even sure where to start. I stepped into one room sort of like a barn loft (maybe it was a barn loft) and the floor was so old it simply gave way, with me on it. It fell slowly, luckily, and I didn't fall off but fell with it and landed on the floor below on top of the piece of floor that had given way. I was without injury (my mother and brother yelled helpful comments as I fell, like "lean back to keep your balance!"). There were also a lot of cats in the house, of all shapes and sizes, sitting around on the furniture and in ceramic dishes and other knickknacky items. We weren't sure what to do with them either. Faced with the enormity of the tasks, my brother and I decided to find something to eat. We managed to locate some cereal in a cupboard and were looking for related items, but I wasn't sure if we were still in the half of the house where we were supposed to be packing (where they weren't going to care if we ate anything since it was all being got rid of) or in the adjoining part where people still lived. There were a lot of used dishes sitting out, which seemed to indicate the latter... we got our cereal and tiptoed back into the main part of the house to begin the task.

Then later on I am back at my apartment, I have given birth to a very peculiar baby. It is tiny, smaller than my hand, and I think oh no, it's really early, what if something is wrong? I also worry that there are some people I haven't even told I'm pregnant yet, and here I am giving birth! Then there is the appearance of the thing. It has wrinkled reddish skin as one might expect, but is shaped sort of like a dinosaur or an alien, with a long head and pointy snout and also it has long claws. I try nursing it anyway. It does not nurse very long but then it grows and changes. I nurse it some more and each time it nurses for a few seconds and seems to grow. I am happy about this and relax about its appearance because it gradually morphs into a normal sized and normal looking baby (not before my eyes, the change is not perceptible while watching it, it just seems to happen). But then, it keeps growing. It grows into a girl who is at least 8 if not older, and clothed. She has black straight hair bobbed at her ears and is slightly chubby. I am surprised that she looks so old already, and she talks to me in a matter of fact way.

The Ache of Emptiness and Comfort

2008-06-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning - Last dream series of the night

I am in college in class. One of the classes I've been attending, which is the one I'm in now, I've been kind of slacking off on. The teacher, who looks sort of like my old math teacher from CC (but the topic is not math, it's something to do with history) plays a movie at each class and at the last class we had a paper to write in class. As I'd totally been spacing out during the previous class and the paper related to the movie, I had done pretty badly.

Now I'm back at the next class, deciding I better start paying attention and taking notes during the movie, since I'm doing pretty badly. There are 3 or 4 other people who show up for class that day, and we are seated around a long table with the far end pointing at the TV where the movie will be shown.

One of guys in class has been really irritating me, he always makes smart aleck remarks at me or acts sarcastic, and it is annoying. This happens at each class. I can't clearly remember much about how he looks now but he had shaggy light brown hair that was several inches long at least and was probably around my age or slightly older. I knew him from the class at the time, and his name, but I can't recall that either. This class I am seated at the very end of the long table, with people scattered on either side, waiting for the teacher to come in. I am slouched down in my chair, with my notebook out, feeling very discouraged and kind of depressed and unhappy, presumably about the class, but really as I've been feeling a lot lately. All signs kind of indicate to stay away from me.

Shaggy hair guy comes in and sits down next to me at the end of the table (not a usual occurrence) and makes one of his "funny" remarks as usual. I am weary, but at some level I appreciate that he does talk to me each time, there's some level of affection there I realize. There is scattered talk about having to pay attention to the movie this time becuase we'll probably have to write about it. The teacher comes in and starts to play the movie, and shaggy hair guy leans against to me very softly and rests his head on top of mine. I lay my head on his shoulder. It feels SO good I almost cry. I feel so comforted in my misery and lean back against him and we stay like that, he rests his hand tenderly on my head or my shoulder and we just lean together for the movie not really paying attention after all, or to any remarks from the teacher or others. I am aching inside with how good it feels to be held like this. The fact that I previously thought he was annoying is completely gone, and that this is wrong doesn't even matter because it touches the pain so much.

Something wakes me up at this point and I feel so empty, and want to go back to that feeling in the dream. I go back to sleep trying to get back to it, and though I end up going back to school again in the continuing dream, I can't get back to that scene or the guy.

In the continuing dream, it's the next quarter starting, first day. I am still hoping to run into him again and recapture the comfort of the previous dream. I am back at my parents house, packing up for school early in the morning, and with my are my sister and either a cousin or my brother, I'm not sure. We all get our stuff together. As we are leaving there's some altercation on the road involving my aunt and uncle and our dog. We go down to see what's going on, apparently they think he was doing something wrong and are yelling at him. He barks and another dog, a female, comes running down the hill at his call. Apparently this is also our dog but relatively new. She is a German Shepard like him, but her coat is actually white with pink vertical stripes, much like a pair of pants I used to have. She has another name but our dog calls her Cornelius. My father comes down to the commotion and I ask her if this is really her name, and he says he guesses it's the right name, as that's what the other dog has been calling her and it seems to fit.

As my father is handling the dog situation, whatever it was, we get into the car and drive into school. It's unclear what college campus this is, really, it sort of morphs between CC and EWU and this other version of EWU that has appeared in some of my other dreams. It's quite early in the morning, about 20 to 7.

My sister and I part ways in a classroom and arrange where we will meet, after some discussion we decide to meet in the "blue classroom with the cartoon characters painted on the walls". Both of us can picture and remember this room but neither of us actually remember exactly where it is, but we are sure we will find it. I can't remember where my first class is, although I know it starts at 7:30. There is an enormous clock on the wall in the classroom I'm in, where my sister and I split up, but I can't tell if it says 6:30 or 7:30. At first I think it's 6:30 but then when I look closer it appears to be 7:30. I finally ask some other people in the room, and they assure me that it is 6:30 but the clock is set wrong. I hope this is true, and I hurry off the the library to print off my schedule so I can find my first class. Hopefully it will have the same guy in it (one of the classes I'm taking is the same class, continuing the previous one, so it should).

I set off for the campus library. I am carrying a very awkward bag of stuff. In addition to my lunch and a pair of very dirty hiking boots, and school stuff, I also have 4 very large and awkward ceramic vases that I made in a previous class. I don't know why I'm hauling them around except that I'm hoping to show them to somebody, but I really am thinking I should have left them at home. I'm afraid they will break and it's very difficult to carry them all. I think I eventually decide to put them back in the van so I don't have to haul them around.

I wake up again before I make it back to the comfort of the shaggy haired guy, and I can still feel that loss in my chest. The emptiness was already there but he made me aware of it by comforting it, so when the comfort is taken away, I feel the ache more strongly.

Crossing the Glacier

2008-06-19T11:21:00.001-07:00

Wednesday night/Thursday morning - Dream 2

After the previous dream, which was fairly short, I went to a totally different dream. In this dream I think the character who I was was actually being controlled in a game by the real me and my sister, because towards the end we started discussing what shoudl be happening next. I am a woman during some kind of ice age period. I am crossing this huge glacier. The glacier is moving at a pretty good clip, faster than I can walk, which is why I'm taking this route to begin with. But the going is somewhat trecherous, becuase caverns and cracks open and close and fold over each other, and the surface sort of moves in solid, slow waves. I am faster than these and can avoid them but it's still dangerous. There is a bear which is traveling in the same direction; we have an amicable co-existance and are reasonably friendly with each other. We also run into a couple other bears, wolves, and other animals en route. At one point I pass a small shed which is covered with snow. The wolves and other animals are gathered around it, they want me to break it open to see if there is something to eat inside. However, I don't do so because I think there might be people inside who have frozen. Then, as I come out of the glacier into just a cold wintery ground, there are some campers and trailers there with people living in them! This is very incongruous since I thought we were in prehistoric times, and my sister and I start debating if this is possible, she says she wants to keep introducing new things to keep it interesting. The dream breaks down at this point.

Strange Developments

2008-06-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night/Thursday morning's Dream 1

The first dream of the night was very strange and can't be fully explained here due to its graphic nature :P Anyway I had 3 appendages which normally I would not have, which had been caused by me taking a pill for this purpose a couple months ago in the dream. The pill was supposed to cause a temporary effect, for fun, and actually I did not have a problem with it, neither did J-. However, I was standing at the FH in the bathroom, and I suddenly got to thinking... shouldn't these have gone away by now? How was I going to get rid of them by next doctor's appointment? Otherwise that would be kind of embarrassing. I wonder if the doctor's were familiar with these recreational pills. Surely they would notice that I hadn't had them before. I contemplated trying to hide them somehow, tried braiding them, but neither of these options seemed like they would work very well to conceal them.

Moving Ultrasound Date

2008-06-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

Just remembered another dream I had last night!

I was trying to schedule an ultrasound to tell if the baby will be a boy or a girl. I went to the doctor's office and the doctor said, oh, you can have it the day after your July appt. Then they took me into another room and looked on the computer to see when the ultrasound could be scheduled. But they were all booked up through July and well into August, so I couldn't have it for several weeks after! I was suspicious becuase they were using their computer to check the ultrasound schedules, and before, I'd had to schedule it with a separate office... so did they really know what they were talking about? Then I said why can't I have it with my July appt? The doctor said this would be too early to tell and I would have to wait until the next available opening in August, which meant that my husband would not be able to come after all.

Tracking an Bad Guy around Seattle

2008-06-18T11:14:00.001-07:00

Wednesday June 18th - Last night's dream

I had a whole series of dreams last night--the last one causing me to awake feeling depressed--but this one, which was somewhere in the middle, I remember most of:

I was trailing this person as part of my work (I guess I was some kind of detective); I think my sister was with me as well, but she was just accompanying me. The suspect, was a tall very fat man with gray hair and a beard. We followed him all over Seattle, in my car and on foot, tracking him. I think I also had to get something away from him, possibly as evidence of the crimes he'd committed, because at one point while he was at a store, I think a clothing store, we trapped him in the changing room and took some papers out of his suitcase. I struggled with him some and up until this point I don't think he knew who we were, but I had to get the papers. I had some contact by cell phone with the office that was directing me. At another point we were passing a department store in the evening (it was pouring rain) and I saw my friend H- just inside the door, looking out! I opened the door and greeted her, she was very surprised to see me but invited us back to her house. We went and may have stayed with her that night, and also helped her finish up the shopping she was doing first; she was throwing some kind of get together I think for friends of her husband and she'd had to make a lot of food, and now had to buy some other things. One of the stores we went to was a European brand which I now can't remember the name of, their logo was a large somewhat digitized image of a fly. I think the name had something to do with this. (I don't think this is an actual brand, but it was well known in the dream). It was supposed to be really good, but rather expensive... I'd not bought it but we all exclaimed when we saw it. The remainder of the dream involved continuing to follow this guy around town, staying in hotels and trailing him, and sometimes catching up to him.

A Guilt-Ridden Situation

2008-06-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

Tuesday June 17 - Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream

This dream is set mostly at the area my parents live. My friend K- is there as well. Earlier in the dream, I have been communicating and chatting with a guy from some other country (I don't think I am married anymore in this dream, and I'm kind of depressed and unhappy). His name is Michael, apparently he is married but is very unhappy in his marriage and his wife is some kind of terrible person. He wants to meet me. Normally I would never continue such a thing but for some reason I keep talking to him, although feeling rather guilty.

Then I am up in the woods behind my parent's house, walking with K- and talking. The guy (his name is Michael) suddenly shows up! His wife, Melissa, is also in tow. She is young with short very light wispy blond hair. He has decided he wants to visit me and just shows up unexpectedly.

I am totally flustered, and now feeling this is an even more horrible situation I've gotten into. His wife of course doesn't know that he is trying to get together with me in any way other than normal, and it turns out she is a really nice person, pretty and laughing and happy. I feel absolutely awful and I wish he had not shown up, I now have no plans to do anything with him and I want to get rid of him, and I feel very guilty.

I explain this to K-, feeling overwhelmed with guilt at having started anything with this guy to begin with. K- and I had been talking about going somewhere, possibly bringing Michael along, but of course I don't want him to come now or to ever see him again. I want to go with her and escape. The event is something called "Elf" and it's some kind of science fiction or fantasy convention. Now she says though that she doesn't know if I'd actually like it and I probably shouldn't go. I just want to get away. The whole dream is depressed, miserable, and extremely guilt-ridden.

Fleeing From A Plot Against A Different Mother

2008-06-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Monday June 16 - Sunday night/Monday morning's dream

I was in a hospital with my mother and brother. However, I think I may have been somebody else (or in a different family) as they did not look like the actual relatives. My mother was very old, with short curly gray/white hair in the manner of my maternal grandmother, and my brother was older, and stocky. My mother was near death from some disease. My brother and I were the only surviving relatives, and we were waiting by her bedside (or alternately wandering around the hospital) for the final moments. The hospital was very open with staircases, hallways, and shiny wood floors. Her bed was in a large open room, not secluded, and no other patients were visible.

I was returning from a walk around the floor when my brother told me that she had passed away, and I could see the machine had stopped making noise. I was upset but barely had time to react before two people in black (henchmen like) sort of herded me away. I was wondering what was going on. Then a man also dressed in black bounded out of nowhere and started fighting them off, I didn't know who he was but he told me hurriedly that he was "on my side" and they were trying to do away with my mother.

Driving off the others, he then took me over to a different room where my mother was in another bed, alive and well! The pulse monitor was going strong. I said "you're not dead!" or something like that, and she affirmed, and said that this guy had told he what was going on. Then here came my brother (angry, he was one of the bad guys and was trying to have her die (even though she wasn't really near death after all) using the machine she had been hooked up to. He and the henchman burst into the room, but I helped my mother out of bed (she was a bit tottery but seemed well) and with the help of the unknown man, escaped from the room. We saw in the distance another person who looked like my mother but the man said it was a decoy dressed as her to derail our pursuers.

We escaped to the outside and began a long journey to get back home and evade the pursuers who wanted her to die of the supposed illness so my brother could capitalize on what she had left behind, and also they didn't want the story to get out of course. First we crossed a rocky garden area on a hillside.

It was very chilly out and a strong wind was blowing. I saw something on the ground like a nut as we climbed up the hill. It was moving slightly, so I bent and picked it up. It cracked open in my hands and a small plant emerged from the shell and grew before my eyes, rooting in the shell. The shell also gradually grew until it was like two large broken coconut shell halves. The small plant inside matured and bloomed and then it faded and shrank back down and then other small plants in miniature started to grow out of the bottom shell, warmed by my hands. I kept the top shell canted over them to protect from the icy wind. As I watched them I realized they were rapidly going through the seasons inside the shell, and I could hasten the coming of "spring" by blowing on the shell with my breathe to warm it up mor. They continued to grow, flower, fade, turn colors, fall and then be covered by miniature drifts of blowing snow only to repeat again. I watched this as I walked along holding it in my two hands and spurring it on with my breathe.

The next place we came to, we went up a road over the top of a wooded hill. We seemed to have collected a few other people by this time. The normal road we wanted to take had a lot of junk along it in front of a house that it passed. A somewhat crazed guy with a head like a seed pod came out in the road and started shouting at us, saying nobody was allowed to come this way, and if we did we would regret it becuase the person who lived up the road at the house would come after us. We asked how we were supposed to get through and he pointed down a side road, laughing maniacally. It had a tree fallen across it. Frankly we were suspicious that he was trying to lead us the wrong way, but we didn't want to tangle with the bad people who lived in the house so we decided to take the side road anyway. Plus we knew we were still being pursued and any altercation would slow us down. So we climbed through the broken tree and continued down that road.

We came to a small roadside inn and I think spent the night there. There was a very young girl with black hair who was having to work there apparently as a prostitute, although we saw here performing in a bawdy play with another person. The man who was with us convinced her to come with us and escape from this place. She was wary of us as well but she wanted to get out so she joined our band and we got away the next morning.

Later we came to a steep hill with treacherous slippery cliffs to climb down. There was an old house at the top but it was stocked with supplies, so we stopped to feed everyone and get food for the last leg of the journey, climbing down this cliff and then finding our way out to a town again. My mother began preparing food in the kitchen for everybody.

At this point she started to look like my mother again, which confused me and sort of cast doubt on the earlier events of the dream when they were clearly different people. Possibly as a result of the realization of this discontinuity, I woke up shortly after we started climbing down the cliff.

Computer Communications Getting Out of Hand

2008-06-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Last nights' dream : 6/13/2008

All I remember is there's a huge amount of back and forth chatting on a laptop. I am set up in a house sort of like my parents house, but in a different location. I am working there, and I have to keep in touch by computer. I'm covering some kind of weird shift remotely via computer just so "somebody is there" because something important is going on. This other guy I know from somewhere (I don't remember who it is now, or even if it was a real person) keeps popping up and chatting with me, bugging me and agitating for me to go somewhere or attend some event which is going on now. I think some people end up coming by the house and running around outside too, distracting me.

There was more in a later dream, but I can't recall it now.

Breaking News Interrupted

2008-06-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night's dream 6/12/2008

There were two dreams or two parts to this dream. The second part was very realistic and I actually thought I'd told my husband about it after the dream (as an actual happening), but that part turned out to be part of the dream too!

In the first dream, I am back at H- Valley visiting my family. There's an indian or pakistani couple setting up a business (possibly a small restaurant or food cart) nearby in G. Mound, and there is a guy related to them who keeps talking to me. When he finds out I'm married, he's all annoyed. There's a confusing part with a small airplane or glider, which I think my sister is flying (I'm with her). She takes off near G. Mound. But each time she takes off, she has second thoughts right away and brings the plane down right away (it doesn't crash, I think it has a parachute attached), and we bail out. Then there's a part where I am standing where the creek goes under the road near my grandma's driveway. I have a bunch of flat flagstone-like rocks and I am stacking them in a row at the end of the road above the creek culvert (it was very important in the dream but I cannot remember what it was for), while the Indian guy hangs about and talks to me, before he finds out I'm married. I don't really care for him, although I like his relatives running the food stand, so I'm kind of relieved when he goes away.

In the second dream, I was visiting family this upcoming weekend. I was pregnant and planned to tell them about it. I went over to visit at my Grandma's, and my aunt and uncle were there as usual along with the rest of the family who already knew. I decided to wait until just before it was time to go home to break the news. I went got up and went to the bathroom or something, and when I came back, my Cousin K- was there on the couch. I was surprised as I thought she was out of the state and not expected back any time soon. I said something to the room at large like, "I have some news to tell everybody!" But then my cousin, who was sort of stroking her belly, said that she ALSO had some news to share with everybody, but she wanted to wait a bit! I realized she wanted to tell them that SHE was pregnant. I felt mad that this had come up at the same time, but she then asked me somehow not to say anything about my news yet, and I didn't want to "steal her thunder" so I decided to wait. After all, it didn't seem like it would really do for us both to announce at the same time and undermine each other. But I was still kind of pissed off. So then I waiting and the visit ended and we all got up to leave. When we were outside, I said, "weren't you going to tell them something before you left?" and she goes, "Oh, actually I decided to wait on sharing my news." At this point I don't know if she did this on purpose to ruin my news, or if she's even pregnant at all or just pretending! Either it was very annoying and I didn't end up telling anybody as a result, and repeated the incident to my husband later in the dream, indignant about it.

Writings and Another Look at Long-Ago Love

2008-06-09T11:24:00.000-07:00

6-9-2008 Last night's dream

Throughout the dream I was attending a class or lecture or reading group type thing in Oly-. I was at the time in my life where I had just graduated from college, and had moved back home and was looking for a job. My brother was somewhat older than he really would have been at the time, though. Also, I sort of could look forward and back in time in the dream. I remembered and talked about living previously in my apartment at college on my own , and trying to set up a computer network (the memory and attempt weren't anything like my actual experience). Now I was back in my bedroom at my parents house. I had two computers, with different version of windows (98 and 2000) and was trying to network them, but having some difficulties. My father offered advice.

In between I went to this class, I went up there several times, driving my brother. It had already started, I don't think it was one with a beginning or end, just one that people continued to attend. My brother was being required to go by our parents. Each session was lead by a writer with some small reputation in the area and they would lecture and lead the other people through discussions. Attendees had to write assignments from day to day; sometimes they had to turn them in, other times just read them in class. My brother had been attending this for some time, but I was just sort of stepping in now as something to do. Going to and from various sessions of this was the main substance of the dream, but we went so many times and the order mixed around, so I don't know how many times or in what order all of the events happened.

On one occasion it was morning I think and we were trying to get our assignments ready. I was telling my brother than he needed to finish writing his so we could leave, but actually I hadn't really finished mine either. That is, I had written one, and hand-written the other in my notebook but it was quite messy and out of order. I didn't know if we were going to have to turn them in this time, and it would take longer for me to re-write it by hand, so I decided I better type it on the computer, and was trying to do that, as time ran out. This notebook and another one were also a recurrent thread throughout the dream. I had two spiral bound notebooks. One was normal sized and I wrote a lot of assignments in it and notes. I also had a circular one with round pages, which I wrote smaller or shorter things in. Both of them I had crammed into my backpack with a couple other books or notepads, but I kept pulling them out, reading what I'd written, and adding stuff for the various assignments.

On that occasion due to my delay (although I was kind of blaming my brother), we ended up being rather late to the meeting. A woman was lecturing this time and she wasn't as nice as the guy who had been doing it before. She had me read aloud some passage from the book they were reading, and I stumbled over it a lot. The words sort of changed order as I read, so I would read it and it wouldn't make sense, then I would look again and they would be un-transposed. And there were confused parts like "'til Till's till arrived..." which I didn't know if it was intentionally written this way, or I was just stumbling over it.

Another time we went to the meeting I remember going next door afterwards waiting for my brother, there was a small pizza shop. The owner engaged in minor chitchat and I may have had a bite to eat. The room the classes were held in and the pizza shop were both old small buildings, not in the best condition. I drove to and from all the classes with my brother in my old truck.

Another time I arrived well before the meeting was about to start. I did it on purpose because I had seen someone leaving from the class before, whom I knew. It was R-, one of my most enduring crushes (or perhaps an early love, depending on what end of history you look at it from) He also appeared in this dream. I had not seen him since he graduated, as indeed I have not in real life either. I wasn't really planning to meet him, or not meet him, I didn't have a plan, I just came early to see if he would be there.

In fact, he was sitting at the table with his characteristic suitcase. He dressed much the same but looked a little older, unmistakably the same though. I felt a familiar catch in my chest. I was dressed peculiarly, with a weird vest, and my hair was sometimes pulled back into the sort of ponytail I always tried to avoid as child, where the hair on top is in ridges and not all smooth and round. Other times I was covered. I didn't think he would recognize me. He said a few things to me as I came in but without saying he knew who I was. The table he was seated at looked rather like my grandmother's. We were the only ones there as the next group (that I was supposed to be with) had not arrived.

Then he said something to make me realize he did in fact know me. I said as much, do you remember me then? and he said he did, laughing at my assumption that he wouldn't. We talked a little. I said something to indicate a little of what I had once felt, as in fact I'd never told him I was "interested" in him, just basically stalked him. He knew! He wrote something cryptic in my notebook, to the end of that he knew that I knew that I loved him and it might have cryptically indicated that he felt something too. It was like a riddle, I can't remember it now. It made me happy. I looked back at it in the notebook several times later in the dream. I told him then, I'd fallen in love again in college and had my heart broken, and then I'd loved again and gotten married (or would get married...this part is difficult to describe chronologically because at the time the dream is set, I hadn't even gotten a job after college yet, let alone met the man who I would later marry, yet it seemed I knew about this, even though it hadn't technically happened yet in the dream). So in this way we sort of acknowledged our once-feelings, and I learned that they'd been reciprocated, but we also knew that we were on different roads now and didn't expect to make anything of it. Still I was filled with that giddy feeling whenever I thought back on it, which I did several times in the course of the dream, and looked at his note in my book.

The strongest feeling was realizing, but without bitterness of lost opportunity somehow, that he had liked me too, and he was open to it, even though things had changed for both of us. Only the sweetness of this revelation was with me in the dream, not the might-have-beens, and it made my heart happy and fluttery to recall. The writing and the notebooks went around and around everything else. I read and wrote in the dream, and repeated his poem-like shy statement over and over in my head to memorize it, but the morning light washed it away as always, leaving only a positive dull ache, a mere shadow of the feelings in the dream.

Of Waifs and Wafers

2008-06-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Tuesday morning 6/3/2008

A confusing dream with time loops: various segments sort of replay with variations as if we are going back and doing the same sort of things again and again, but not in time-sequential order. At some point I go to some kind of Bimart or Walmart type lower-end variety store. I am in a side room talking to a manager, or a therapist, or a dentist, or perhaps all of the above. I end up getting a prescription for something, I think tooth-related. The small office has a back door out into an area sort of near S- Hall in R-. It also has a side room filled with lots of random stuff and also the hidden "junk food stash", which I don't discover until later in the dream: lots of creme-filled cookies and such, set out for people to take but obviously in an out of the way spot so only workers in this office will see them. I keep trying to casually pass through with the idea of sampling some of the cookies. There is much driving back and forth to this store, with various members of my family at some points in time, and later with a girl several years younger than me (possibly even in her late teens) called Angelina, or something similar to that. She looks a lot like a girl I know (but not well) on a forum. She is slight, with lank black hair, a pale but pretty face, and a distraught look. She has had a hard life and is basically stuck and I am helping her out, guiding her through some issues. She goes back with me to this store and we go into the office. I don't remember what the point of keeping returning to this store was, but at any rate I get some prescription I need, possibly for dental pain. The Dr returns to this room and we decide we need to slip out. I try to slip out through the junk food room but we end up having to run away so I don't get a chance to snag a treat. We get separated (some of my family members are also with us originally and we all escape but then I can't find them. I give up on them (they will find their way) and go back to me car, and Angelina has returned to the car and is sitting in it waiting for me. Good for her! I was afraid she was going to run off and do something stupid. I get in the car and we start to drive home, but for some reason we have to stop again by the office and go get something, and that point she doesn't listen anymore but jumps out of the car and runs off. I call after her but she's scared of something and can't sit tight, so she's going to get lost somewhere.

Car Trouble on the Way to the Coast

2008-06-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

Sunday night/Monday morning

It is the last day of work at the company I work at (which I think is not the real company I currently work at, but somewhere else). The company is shutting down so we are all ending on that day. I work there with my friend S-, my female cousin K-, and my sister, among others. When the dream opens, the work day is already over and we are leaving the building into the underground parking garage. We decide to "celebrate" or get together after work on this last day by taking a trip together out to and up the coast. After some discussion, we decide to meet up at "Mo's", a chowderhouse, and we'll stay the night at a hotel at the beach, then continue up the coast. Mo's only has restaurants at 3 towns so we try to remember which one is the most direct route from where we are (it will still be over an hour drive). We settle on meeting at the Mo's at Hecata Head (there isn't really one there in the real world, to my knowledge). My friend S- leaves first, in a very beat up old car. I was thinking we might all ride together, but then we realize that would mean somebody would have to drive me back here to get my car, so that wouldn't be good. So as it ends up we all ride separately.

Everybody makes their way out of the parking garage, I have some issues extricating my car but eventually make it out, behind everybody else. Skipping ahead somehow I am in a town somewhere along the way, having not yet reached Hecata Head, when my car breaks down. That is, I park my car outside some building, possibly to get an item of grocery for my journey, and when I come back out I realize that the back tire has disintegrated. There's sort of a foam tire insert left but the outside is all peeled away, in fact it doesn't even look driveable although I suppose I've been driving on it for a little while. Plus, it's a Sunday (why I was working or why it is now no longer evening is not explained, although I haven't actually reached Mo's yet to meet up with the others, and I don't think the drive there was supposed to be overnight... but of course this isn't an issue in the dream).

I am frustrated and annoyed. Everything will be closed, of course. I walk around for a while trying to catch a glimpse of a likely shop, a Les Schwab or something. An older woman stops in a dark car and asks if I need help, and I tell her about the car issues and if she knows of a tire shop nearby. She thinks over possible options out loud, most of which are closed, and then after some hesitation agrees to give me a ride down the street to look for one. I hop in and we drive along, we pass a Les Schwab but of course it is closed. I consider that I might be able to buy a new tire at a general store (or for that matter, put on the spare) myself, but I am hesitant to do so becuase I'm no longer with my car, but with my old mazda pickup. This truck is absolutely terrible to retrieve the spare from, it has this weird long crank that has to be threaded through a hole in the bumper to loosen a chain holding the spare underneath... it's quite a chore and not something I am relishing. Plus for some reason I think I don't have a jack.

We pass a small convenience store with a phone booth, and I ask the lady to stop so I can look in the phone book. While I'm looking at the phone book, she realizes there's some kind of tire shop just next door to us, the sign is visible through the trees. We go over and it is in fact open. Now some tire places might come and bring a tire to you but this isn't one of them, so I go back and get my truck and drive it on whatever is left, very slowly up the street and to the shop (which is not far away). The lady goes on her way, I am grateful.

At the tire shop there is a small boy running around in the parking lot, I talk to him and he runs inside. I walk inside the shop, and there is a man with 3 or 4 little kids playing around, all probably 3-5 years old and under (they don't all look like they are related to him, I don't know if they are actually his or adopted). It appears to me that business is quite slow. I tell him my predicament and ask if I can have a replacement tire put on. He says sure! It should be done by tomorrow noon. What! I am quite taken aback and a little outraged, as it's quite clear that it's not busy and it does not seem to me that it should take this long to replace a tire. Plus I need it done today so I can continue on to the meeting place. I tell him this is ridiculous, and can't he do it today. He says he can get it done today for an acceleration fee, and when I inquire as to what it is, he doesn't want to give me an estimate, saying it will vary. Eventually he comes up with $500 dollars. I am furious as he's obviously just trying to make trouble. I say I can change the tire myself in significantly less time than that, and he (unperturbed) says go ahead. Then I tell him fine, I will just buy the tire and change it myself... how much for just the tire? It is $36 and some change. I am surprised at how comparatively cheap this is considering the amount of time he wants to take for changing it, and the acceleration fee he was going to charge, but I am agreeable to this price of course.

I am expecting him to just roll out a new tire, but instead he brings out two tire pieces and a whole lot of what can only be described as random trash. He starts stuffing the new tire halves with this, and affixing them together. This takes a little while. The kids run around and try to "help." I am not exactly thrilled with the rebuilt tire, but I don't say anything. I wonder if other refurbished tires I may have purchased in the past are made this way? How long will it hold up? But frankly I don't really care, I just want to get going, badly constructed as it may seem. Eventually he finishes building the new tire and goes back inside after I buy it. I ask one of the kids if I can borrow a jack and a wrench from the shop, but the kid says Dad doesn't let people borrow them becuase they might not bring them back. I go in and explain that I just want to borrow it to put the tire on, I'm not going to take it off the premises. He agrees and gives me a jack and wrench, and assigns one of the kids to go out and watch it (so I won't steal it). I change the tire and put the new one on, but then I wake up around this time.

A new coworker, a new husband, and a new dimension

2008-06-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

6/1/2008
Saturday night/Sunday morning - 3 dreams:

1.
A new employee named M- something (maybe Michael?) has been hired at the place where I work, which is a different place from where I actually work. We have a sunken room with computers around the edge, no cubicles (and different coworkers). M- is a rather obvious geek, and everybody else is sort of put off by him right away. He is tall and gangly, with a peculiar manner, being very particular and exacting and not given to the social graces. This bothers everybody, however it does not bother me and I think he holds great promise. I tell the others this as well. I take a computer across from his and try to help him get started with everything (he's not grateful or any nicer to me, but I still feel he holds a lot of potential value inside).

2.
This dream doesn't really have a clear plot that I can recall, however, I am back at my parent's house and walking through the woods above the house. With me is my husband but it's not my actual husband, in the dream I am married to a guy who used to be Jewish but converted to Islam. We compare various points we have learned. We're relatively newly married and not that familiar with each other, but we like each other pretty well. I am visibly pregnant, and later my parents, myself, and my husband talk on the road. They give me suggestions on which skirt looks better in my condition.

3.
This dream is hard to describe and recall. I am in the city downtown, in a sort of desolate area. There is a place which looks almost like a mirror in the land and the part on the other side is sort of a mirror image of the city on this side, but not quite. Plus it's vary hazy over there. I walk to that side without thinking about it, then I run into a young, skittery person who lives there, maybe on the street. They pull me aside, and explain that I'm not supposed to be able to cross over to this side, it's like another dimension and only this other type of creature (people I guess, but not people like me) can go there, and they can't go back and forth. There's a feeling of mild danger and uneasiness on both sides. I'm not sure why I, of all people, can cross to this other part, I didn't realize I was going into something special. Somehow we determine that the connection may be related to these frozen fruits and vegetables that I got at the grocery store. Flash back to the grocery store scene, I am going through one of those horizontal freezers, picking out fruits and vegetables. I have brought them with me into this other dimension area and the person there is quite eager for them, I get the impression that there's a food shortage here. More stuff is happening but then I wake up and lose it.

Terror at the Stadium

2008-05-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

Friday night's/Saturday morn's dream
May 31 2008

My husband and I are at the top of a hill in a wooded area. There is a very steep dirt path down the side of the hill, quite long a rickety, you would basically have to run down it catching yourself on trees becuase it's so steep. We are in S. A. in an area I have not been to before. I have a bunch of things with me and I run down the hill, calling to him to come on. I stop at a landing part way down and call back, but he's taking his time (or not coming at all) so I scamper on ahead. When I get to the bottom I realize I haven't got my cell phone or wallet or anything, just a picture frame (with a picture of him) and I think my keys. I was going to call him and tell him I'm at the bottom but as I don't have my phone and it's now too far to shout, I can't.

I walk a little ways on across a small grassy area and now suddenly I'm in the middle of a city. There's a huge outdoor arena set up with stadium seating semi-circular around a stage, and there's a play going on. I walk around the base of the seating looking for a place to sit down and watch. It's fairly tightly packed. Finally I sit down on the right side close to the stage, on an empty space on a wide bench. There are people sitting on the other side of it but they are facing the other way with their backs to me, and there's plenty of room. I've only sat there a few seconds when the person I'm sitting back-to-back to turns around and grabs me, pulling me back towards him. He is a very large fat american guy with similar comrades and he tries to kiss me, I start struggling and hitting him, and moments later some S. A. policemen arrive. I tell them what he did and he makes some feeble excuse like I was sitting in their seat and he was just trying to get me to move. I am standing clutching the picture to my front but the policemen knock it to the ground when they pull me off the seat, and the glass in the picture frame breaks. They ask me for ID but of course I don't have any. One of the policeman picks up the picture frame, the picture is of my husband in traditional clothes, and I tell them he is my husband. They take the photo out of the broken frame and behind it are a few sheets of legal paper with my handwriting on it. It's something very old and I panic and try to get it back, not knowing what it is. Is it an old story I wrote? Will they decide it's incriminating? But they take it. Then one of the policeman leads me over to the side of the stage in the corridor between two curtains and asks me again what happened. I explain to him again but he also tries to grab me and kiss me, I fight him off and run out of the corridor, but the policeman are all there and probably going to arrest me now, and the other spectators aren't sympathetic either. I am trapped and am petrified of what will happen. I feel I should not have come here and ended up in this situation. I am wondering if my husband will catch up and be able to help, and why did I leave my things behind?

A Cool Lunch

2008-05-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

May 30 - Thursday night/Friday morning

In the first dream, I am sitting in the back seat of a car parked in the downtown area. It is extremely hot and sunny outside, and I am wearing my long tie-dyed skirt. One of my coworkers, B-, is in the front seat, and we exchange conversation. Unlike in real life, he is being quite nice and I am surprised but happy about this. I have some food with me, a carton of cottage cheese into which I have mixed some chives (I was reading about this in the newspaper last night, it sounded like an odd combination) and some canned fruit in a storage container. I get out of the car and walk down the street looking for a place to eat. I end up going into a store a little ways away which sells dishes. However, walking in you wouldn't know it sells dishes becuase there's a large empty entryway with a bench and two rooms. You have to go through them to get into the actual store part. My sister either comes by while I'm talking and I tell her this, which she did not know before, or I tell her later on the phone. However, I am not here to shop; I've just come because it's cool and air conditioned inside and blazing hot outside. I sit down on the bench and eat my cottage cheese and fruit. A guy might come by to see what I'm doing there, or I was thinking about what would happen if he did.

I had 1 or 2 dreams after this one but I can't remember enough to begin describing anything, although I did right after I woke up (but I had to get ready for work, drat it all). I think my mother was in one of them.

Strange Labors

2008-05-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 25? (previous night's dream)

This dream was super confusing, all I remember is the end, where I went into labor on this conveyor type thing flat on my back (this was the correct equipment in the dream). Everything was very loud and unsettling and I couldn't pay attention to what was going on. My husband and a doctor came and went several times.

Unstable Airplane Pilots

2008-05-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

5/23 - Friday morning/Thursday night

I've had dreams pretty much every night between this one and the last one I posted, but since I didn't write down the last one at the time of course I can't remember them now :P getting back in the swing of things again!

I am with my family and we are going somewhere up in the mountains or up north to go skiing. It's a ski resort and we plan to stay there a few days (in the dream, we've been there before, and I can remember what it looks like. It's all snowy at this time of year, I don't know if it's winter in the dream or we are just in a much colder area). We have driven quite a while when we reach a small town from which we will take a private plane to reach the ski area. Time has been running short so we aren't going to actually have that much time at the ski area, but I think we are going to stay overnight once we get there.

We reach the town where we will fly from and we go out to a small house where the pilot lives. It's located on the edge of a large, flat field, surrounded by a lot of trees. They all have their leaves off, it's cold and wintery although there is no snow on the ground in this area. I and my parents unload the van and pack our stuff into the plane with the help of the pilot. She is probably 35-45, somewhat drawn looking, with faded blonde/strawberry blonde hair about down to her shoulders. I think we may have flown with her uneventfully in the past on another trip to the ski place, because we seem to slightly know her, and where everything is. Her husband, who is your typical old, balding, somewhat stout guy, a little surly looking, is also at the house and sees us off.

We all pile into the plane, which is a very little one, and she takes off down the short runway in front of the house. Then she turns the plane around and makes another go at it. I wonder what's going on but decide she must just be taking another run because that one wasn't quite right. The plane takes off. She circles the small field, and comes back again low over the runway (I remember we had to move our van back out of the way where it's parked, and think, this must be why!). Then she turns the plane abruptly upwards. It starts to climb, then flips onto it's back and we do a loop-the-loop in the air. Up until this point I was thinking the weird behavior was just stuff I didn't know about, but at this point I'm a little concerned. The plane drives up and around again, and then it starts falling. Everybody is scrambling. I realize something is definitely wrong.

The others manage to bale out when the plane swoops close to the ground, but I'm still with it, and it's going up again, I fall or jump out. I am not falling straight down, but blowing sideways in my descent, away from the rest of my family and the house. I am going very fast, and I blow past some trees, trying to avoid their branches. The others are yelling that I am still up there. I realize that I am carrying a square of fabric maybe 2-3 feet wide, with strings attached. I don't think it's actually a parachute, but I decide to use it as one as I know I must slow my descent or I will crash either into a tree or into the ground. I throw it up, holding onto the strings, and it poofs out to cushion my fall. Then I drift ever so slowly straight down to the ground, and land on my feet gently.

I run back to wear the rest of my family is. They are now talking with the pilot's husband, who I think is considering flying us instead of her. She has gone down into the basement of the house, and he intimates that she is having some kind of nervous breakdown, which is why she couldn't control the plane. I go into the house and down the stairs, down several levels, and find her there. She is frantic and definitely having some kind of meltdown, and she clutches my arm, trying to tell me what is wrong. She appears to be very frightened as well. I try to determine what the matter is, which is difficult as she can barely talk, just managing to burst out snatches of speech. She finally gives me the cover of a book or journal she was writing in previously. She cannot write now due to whatever condition has seized her, but she wants me to write down what she says to take to my family and warn them.

Her husband is crazy and psychotic, and we should not go with him, she says. He seems normal but he is totally unbalanced, and we have to beware. He is going to ask us, she says, to kill his dog for him (as an example of his unbalanced behavior). We have to get away and not go with him. She has been trapped by him and I gather this led to her nervous breakdown.

I do my best to write down everything she says, but I am having a lot of trouble writing. When I write it comes out like a child's scrawl, I can't keep it in a straight line and it's barely readable. It's worse than writing with my left hand, although it feels a lot like it trying to control the pencil. But I get down as much as I can, and at her urging, I go up the stairs. My family is talking to her husband, but I manage to pull my father away, and show him what she had me write. This isn't very effective so I tell him what she said and that we can't trust him. My father is a little incredulous (especially on the word of the obviously debilitated pilot) but then I say, he is going to ask you to help him kill his dog. Sure enough he does ask that moments later, and my father is alerted to the fact that something is amiss with this guy. We decline him flying us for know and pull away to our vehicle to recoup and discuss the situation.

Creepy Head Lice

2008-05-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

Soo.... I haven't posted any dreams for a while! I've been having them but since I haven't been posting I've forgotten most of them. It all started with this one which was just so gross I didn't post it but now I have to so I can start remembering and posting again :P

Approximately 05/11 Saturday night/Sunday morning?

I am visiting my maternal grandparent's house, I think, my aunts and other relatives on my mother's side might be there as well. I'm setting up my stuff in the room I'm going to stay in when I scratch my head and this little white wormy thing comes out of my hair in my hand. It's lice in the dream, but it does not actually look like real head lice, more like little grub like white bugs about 1/4 inch long. I keep scratching and find more, I'm totally disgusted. I end up later in the dream using some kind of shampoo to kill them in the shower, and I don't tell anybody about it. Then later we are staying somewhere again, I have determined that I picked up the lice at the relatives' house. My sister stayed there too and I finally decide I should tell her in case she might have them too. She is putting on a black wig which she got from their house. I am embarrassed about it but I tell her that I had picked some up there and she should probably check too. She says oh, don't worry I don't have any, but thanks for letting me know about it, she'll keep an eye out. Then I bend over and look at the wig she is wearing, and in the middle of the crown of the wig it is so thick with the lice it's just white, a huge pile of them. It's totally disgusting and I wake up itching and scratching, feeling grossed out (but oh so relieved that it was a dream).

Building a College Fantasy

2008-05-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

5/6/2008 Tuesday morning/Monday night

I arrive at my old college, EWU; I am going to start going to school there again (maybe for another degree?). For some reason, I am disguised as a boy. I have my hair styled so it looks like it is short and hanging over most of my face, with a bandanna and a white tee shirt with an illustration on it that is mostly green. This makes my eyes look green.

I walk up to the dorm from the outside, it's apparently my old dorm (although it looks nothing like it, but in the dream I am familiar with it). I have arrived on the very first day, and although I haven't made the necessary preparations in advance or picked up my key, I know that the door will be unlocked for all the students moving in, so I am able to get in. The door leads to steps immediately going steeply down, and then going up again on the other side, then up up up further. I follow them and when I come to the top there is a large gap to step across to the doorway, which if you didn't remember to step across would be dangerous to put your foot in. In the dream I remember needing to step over this gap when going out and down the stairs, from when I was there before.

The door opens out at one end of the hallway in the dorms. There are students wandering everywhere, moving their stuff in and out. In the first room on the left, the door is open and the occupant is seated at the computer, and another person is sitting next to him in a chair with his back mostly to the door. It is my old friend S-, who I haven't seen for so very long. I knew/hoped he would be here, but I wasn't sure. I suppress my excitement and walk past (he will not recognize me in the initial disguise, I think, plus he is looking the other way). My heart is pounding.

I go down the hall looking for an open room. Rather than having rooms assigned, people just choose them and move in on the first day, and many people are already moved in. I realize that this is a bit of a problem, since I am kind of getting back into this at the last minute (I haven't registered for classes either or anything). A girl that I apparently knew before at school recognizes me and says hi, how's it going, etc. and I respond in kind. I realize that my disguise is totally ineffectual if she recognized me anyway, so I may as well take it off. I duck into the nearby bathroom.

I look at myself in the mirror, I don't think I am recognizable in my disguise but apparently I am, so I take off the bandanna and put my hair back where it belongs. My eyes look very green, which I attribute to the influence of the green on the tee shirt. Even the whites of my eyes look tinted with an almost florescent green, apparently a reflection. I wonder if S- will recognize me like this.

I use the toilet, being in some gastric distress. It appears that I have consumed a lot of long plant vines like pathos and onion greens, and I'm in quite a bit of discomfort.

That taken care of, I go back down the hall. People have cleared out a bit. I stop in the doorway of another room near the end of the hall, but on the other side from where he was before, and S- is sitting there, waiting for me. He did see me go past before, and he smiles and is happy to see me after so long. We say hello and other small things. I want to rush forward but I hang in the doorway, unsure of his reception. Now I can't picture him exactly as he was in the dream, but it was very clear then.
I say "well, it looks like I may not get a room on this floor after all, I should have come earlier," or something like that, ruefully, since everybody is snapping them up. He says that he reserved one for me, just a couple doors down from his. I say "Ah you're such a sweety," surprised and pleased. He just smiles, but I see that he has tears sparkling in his eyes, he is, like me, choked up with happiness and emotion at our meeting again. I've never seen him like this before. I know now that it is not just me aching with the fulfilled longing of seeing each other again, and this makes me deliriously happy.

I go down to the room he saved for me to put my stuff there. I am thinking, feeling slightly guilty at our meeting and the fact that I am here with him and enjoying this time and feeling so good. But then I think, it's just a dream, after all. I don't have to feel guilty, I'm not really cheating because it's not real and it's out of my control. Strangely even though I actually THINK to myself that it's a dream and use this to justify my time with him, the dream doesn't become lucid and I can't control anything, plus everything still feels completely real. It's a strange setup. I feel a little sad thinking that it's only a dream, and I'm not going to be here with him all the time. But then I tell myself I should be happy it's a dream. If it were not, he wouldn't be all welcoming to me and certainly wouldn't have gotten me a room right next to him, he would be trying to drive me away instead, rather than acting like I'd always hoped for. Plus I would be cheating on my husband since I'm married now. I think, in real life this is impossible and I'm happy that I have such a better relationship with my husband than things went in the past with S- in real life. At least because this is a dream I can come back and visit it again and again and spend some of my time here, under the dream conditions of our affection. (Even though generally you can't just choose to return to and keep going on the same dream at will, in the dream I think this will work).

I leave my bag in my room and tell S- that I'm just going to go back out to my car and get the rest of my stuff, we will meet up then and go eat or register or something. I go back out to the parking lot. When I get to my car, I see that there is a NEW large dent in the side. It is quite large, and looks like somebody fell out of the sky and landed on the car crushing a dent the shape of their head and upper body. A person standing nearby in the parking lot points it out to me and says that some people were having a fight nearby and one of them must have been thrown against the car. Also for some reason my trunk is open.

I'm somewhat perturbed by this but still in a pretty good happy mood because of S-, so I close the trunk, and hop in the car to get my stuff. I think I will straighten it up a little bit in case S- and I go somewhere in the car later, I'm not sure if he has his car here or not. Then I realize that there is a person in the car, of an unsavory sort... dirty looking with long stringy hair and bad intentions. I don't think he was expecting to see me, just stealing stuff, but the guy pulls me in and locks the doors. I think he has some kind of weapon, but I'm not sure. He starts driving. I am being kidnapped! I am a bit panicky. He goes through my stuff but fails to find anything useful, although he takes my cell phone.

I grab a paper with financial information when he isn't looking and put it into my purse. He drives for a while, it looks sort of like the area near where I grew up, but it's not. I am thinking how I can get the cell phone back and call or message for help while he is distracted. He shows me the phone where he has downloaded additional ringtones and I pretend that I like one of the tunes and want to set it as the default on the phone. He buys this and I fiddle with the phone. Unfortunately while I'm doing this he finds the financial paper in my purse, and tells me so, but I pretend not to be disturbed. I have to call or message for help. He has rearranged everything on my phone though in the course of downloading stuff, and so the normal keys don't go to the same places. I pretend to be setting the ringtone but frantically search through and find recent calls. But S- of course is not in the recent call list, since I haven't called him. My husband is there but I don't call him becuase he is far away and wouldn't be of much help in this situation. I go to the address book on the phone, and S- is there (Not sure when he got there though). I was going to call and whisper but then I realize this will be really obvious and the kidnapper might retaliate, so I send a message saying I'm kidnapped, call the police. Then I just sit back and hope.

I end up being taken to some kind of farm that has dog kennels, and the kidnapper locks me in one of them, presumably while he makes off with the stolen goods. But in a very short time S- arrives with the police and rescues me. I'm impressed since I hadn't actually been able to say where I was. Then I wake up before anything else happens.

Somehow I'm able to enjoy the fantasy of this unrealistic reunion even though I know it's not real (and that I don't even want it to be real since that wouldn't work), and most of the dream I'm just indulging in that and the feelings that accompany it

Rearranging The House

2008-05-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

5/5/2008

I think this actually came before the previous dream I recorded, in the same night...but this one is very vague.

I'm living in a house with a bunch of other people, some of them might be animals. There's an issue with rearranging the furniture to different rooms, I want to move a dining set into a room with a window so there will be light, but they have moved the couches in there. I start rearranging them again and telling them to help. I am quite upset about something, I think other circumstances in my life, throughout the whole dream, which lends angst to everything else that happens. There's a lot more to the plot and the other characters but it's all a confusion now.

A Lesson About Carelessness With Personal Info

2008-05-05T12:29:00.000-07:00

5/5/2008
I go to some kind of bar or nightclub. At the beginning of the dream I am some kind of drug lord or gang leader or something (not myself, a big tough guy who is quite a bit older) and everyone pretty much gets out of my way. There's a rack where you put personal items where you are there and I know nobody will bother mine becuase of my reputation.

I hang around for a while and later I turn into my actual self. A guy meets up with me and introduces himself as Arthur Moresy or Morsly (something beginning with Mor and ending with Y), he seems interested in me and nice enough, but I'm somewhat evasive. I am not sure what he wants but I'm pretty sure it's not what I want (I don't know why I'm even in this club in the first place now, and am feeling uncomfortable. I certainly don't want to hook up with anybody).

He is probably a little older than me, sort of non-descript with very light, short, blond hair. I tell him my name and such but say that I can't hang out right now because I have to go make a call in my vehicle. He offers to give me a ride out, so I accept. I retrieve two forms with my info, a small one and a larger one (maybe vehicle registration?) from the rack that holds personal items and go with him. After a short ride I thank him and hop out.

As I walk across the parking lot I realize that I don't have my car key (I have my other keys but the chains were separated). I go back to him in his vehicle (he is still there and he gives me my key. He says oh, you also forgot this, and hands me the forms, which I was sure I had with me but must have left in his vehicle. Then I see that there are a whole stack of copies of the larger form. He asks me (somewhat mockingly) how many I want? I blush and am very irritated. He explains that he had a copier handy and made copies, (he gives them all to me). Then he jokes that he's going to apply for a bunch of credit cards in my name as my SSN was on the form. He is trying to point out that I shouldn't be so careless with my personal info because anybody could pick it up and and steal my identity, but I do not think it's funny, and stalk across the parking lot in a huff. I am now calling him Ian, he has told me that the first name he gave me is his middle name or something, he never gives out his real first name at clubs (and neither should I, he implies). I search the lot somewhat huffily, but can't find my vehicle. He helpfully (unhelpfully) points it out in the next lot over becuase he knows the license number from my info.

He's actually trying to jolt me into realizing I should be more careful but I'm just irritated about him mocking me, even though I know he is not actually going to do anything with the info (except maybe call me, he still wants to get together). Also I'm irritated becuase I feel stupid for leaving the stuff in his car in the first place and making it easy for him to trick me and point out the obvious carelessness.

Self-Examination, Missed Lunch Date, and Beach House

2008-05-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

5/1/2008

I am pregnant with a girl and I go to the doctor to have her condition examined. The doctor isn't there and I wait around and finally decide to do it myself. This is relatively easy because it's in some kind of exterior womb, you can look at it on the table through sort of a transparent sack. At first it is tiny and I can see a pulsing heartbeat, but then it grows to a much more advanced stage that actually looks like a baby. I realize that there needs to be more fluid in the sack to accommodate the growth, up to 5 gallons, but I'm not sure how to get it in there.

During this time my friend H-'s husband has shown up. I'm supposed to be meeting him and H- later to go to lunch or something. I think I might be late and they came to find me. I indicate the problem and we go about trying to add more liquid, for some reason I think he is some kind of expert in these things. Then I go on my own to meet up with both of them somewhere across town. I think I end up being late or going to the wrong place, by the time we meet it's too late for lunch and we just part ways.

Then I go to a house on the beach where we are going to move. I stay in a sort of antique hotel nearby, by myself, to check out the area. There are several houses close together right on the sand, they are pretty nice. I walk around exploring. My cousin K- shows up and I am worried that people will come to visit all the time after we move there just becuase of our close proximity to the beach. K- alarms me by jumping into a large ditch nearby the houses and I yell her name, but she is okay.

An Uncomfortable Visit and Other Anxious Situations

2008-04-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-25T12:31:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Hiding in the Rain with my Past

2008-03-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

3/31 (Monday night)

My old friend S- has come. He is staying at a small open shelter I have in the woods, it's like my parents' house but with open walls, perhaps it is broken down. I am the only one there anymore.It is pouring with rain outside and dark. We are both packing to go hide out somewhere else in the woods. I keep finding more small items we will need and putting them in my overnight bag. I don't know where everybody else is but there's some danger of being discovered by bad people roaming around, which is why we are going to hide.

We have to hide out in the woods, camping, from someone or something and probably stay there for a while, but we're going to do it together. We've sort of been thrown together in this situation by accident, not by design really, although he greets me in a friendly way. The whole circumstances are very unclear to me now. At first I am just happy he is there but throughout I become more and more aggravated and frustrated by his behavior of being stubborn, and trying not to get too close to me. It's depicted very realistically in the dream in a way that I'd consciously forgotten.

Daytrip to a Glacier

2008-03-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

3/24 Monday night?

I am at a hospital for standard procedures, eye exam, etc. My husband is also there. It's irritating me becuase he is off in this game room that also serves food, like hotdogs, and not meeting up with me. I know he's somewhere in the complex, and I've found him there before, but I don't know where he is. I don't want to go look for him again. I may have to miss one of my appointments (I came in for a series of different things). I mention the fact that he's supposed to be there to one of the nurses, but I'm frustrated at him and i don't want to reveal the extend of the disconnection to a stranger.

My sister comes and I go off with her and possibly some other people. I am wondering if I should just leave in the middle of the day, as he is still expecting me to be at the hospital, but I give in and go. There's no point sitting around waiting and we will be back the same day. We travel around the country to sightseeing spots. A cathedral, a ruined castle, natural formations. Flying and driving from one far flung spot to another. I'm feeling kind of miserable and also ab it guilty about leaving, but defiant.

My sister and I arrive at a northern town. I'm still pretty depressed. It is the edge of a glacier, which we can see coming down through the mountains. It's a tiny town, mostly abandoned these days. Maybe once busy during the gold rush. I look for the name of the town, and see a ranch with a big wooden side, it's called 700 Rose. There was another town name I thought it was but then I realize this is the name. I am just with my sister now, we drive around this area looking at the glacier and rocks. There is a woman standing near the glacier, with her back to me, and as I walk away she doesn't recede into the distance properly, the perspective is all off. I realize this in the dream but I don't realize it's becuase it's a dream.

We walk down by some rocks that are carved by the glacier. They are tall thin shards, like those created flaking stone tools. They are many colored and very beautiful, the upright shards thin enough in places to see the sunlight shining through. I marvel at the beauty.

Dark Cage

2008-03-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

Possibly 3/23, Sunday night?

Very unclear and confusing one...

All I remember is it was dark, there's some kind of futuristic cage like structures, like the skeletons of former metal buildings, I'm running around within it, escaping people. There were a lot of other people involved. I may have been living there, homeless. It might be in the future. It was long and complex but I couldn't remember it for a long time, and even now I still just have one or two images.

Seemingly Random Snippets

2008-03-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

Tuesday/Wednesday night?

I've been having really disjointed dreams lately. There was another the day before this one but I don't really remember enough to go on, except that I was at home and was a teenager, and was involved romantically with a guy that my father wanted me to break up with, and I was upset and defiant about it. My brother was also in the dream.

The dream the following night was even more disjointed. I remember: Poplar trees. Me as a small child, possibly a boy, running away from somewhere (maybe home) and crawling down into a secret camp I had under a bridge. Someone else was with me who had not been to the place before. There was a trap door leading down to it, and a slow moving river. There were some brightly colored things, maybe jewels. I planned to subsist on my own for a while after the escape.

Also in this dream I read a news article about somebody like Halle Berry, who was a celebrity, but NOT Halle Berry, who had just given birth to a daughter. The baby was named something that sounded Indian, and contained letters like S, A, N, D (the name was not in that order though, and it was longer. It was not sand :P). I had read about this before, but in this article, it said that in addition to the Indian name, she was being brought up to that religion (maybe Hinduism?). I thought this was very strange, as the family was actually not of that religion and they had no cultural connection either, aside from the name they had chosen. I wondered if it would be another crazy celebrity trend that other people would start doing as well.

Dangerous Dealings and Adoption

2008-03-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

3/18/2008
Monday night's dream

In the first part of the dream, I am in the car with my husband. He is going to some sort of meeting which might be dangerous at a clubhouse. It is set in the trees, and he parks the car up the road from there and tells me to stay in it, he will be back shortly and may need to leave suddenly. I wait in the car, watching other people drive by and turn into the driveway slightly up the road. They look like gangsters, and I'm somewhat apprehensive.

My husband comes back and moves the car closer, so it's just outside the driveway. I can see the building from there, but just through the trees. He goes back in, warning me that I shouldn't come in after him (dangerous0 if he doesn't come back out, he will be back. I wait in the car some more.

He calls me to say to be ready to leave, and I move the car into the parking lot in front of the building, conscious that the other people might see me in the car and sort of hunkering down to avoid this. I think I end up going in to look for him after all.

Later...
I drive up to S- or somewhere nearby to pick up some children that I am adopting. We have decided to adopt several children, they are about 3 or 4 years old, and I think there are four kids in total, boys and girls. There's some talk of whether we will keep their existing names or give them new names, but they already know their names, so I think we are keeping the existing ones.

They are in different places, and I drive around to pick up two of them, a girl and boy (unrelated) with dark hair who I take home to stay in the house while I go get some others. Our apartment has many rooms now but is bare, it looks like somewhere new. Someone is there with them from my family, possibly my father or sister. I think there are still two other children to get.

Somewhere in the dream, possibly at this strange home (it might be in the future) there is a fat shorthaired grey striped tabby cat, with a short crooked tail. It's a boy, and his fur is very very silky and sleek. It doesn't look like any cat I know personally in the waking world.

After dropping off the kids, I go to a variety store of some kind, like walmart or fred meyer perhaps, but it has a lot of craft stuff and imports. I don't remember what I'm looking for, and I think I'm slightly confused about it in the dream as well. It's something to do with the children. I find myself wandering around the aisles trying to remember what it is. I look at a rack of bracelets. There are two fancily dressed muslim women in the store (apparently this is a popular shopping area for muslims, which I'm somewhat surprised to discover). They whisper to each other and don't look very friendly towards me.

A Very Unfortunate Cat (gross-out alert)

2008-03-18T12:59:00.001-07:00

3/14/2008
Thursday night's dream

Warning for the squeamish: this one is fairly disgusting, possibly the grossest dream I've ever had, or at least that I can recall. But I don't describe the imagery in great detail... your imagination can probably fill it in.

I am at my parents' house, my father is also there. Several cats come up into the front yard (all now dead actually, but in the dream they were still alive and it was normal): there is Grey Kitty, Ibn Batuta, another cat (I think Pamplemousse) and a fourth cat which is Ibn's daughter; she is black. (All the cats in the group are dark, in fact, by odd coincidence). This kitten (which didn't exist in real life) is partly grown and has not been tamed, she is several months old. She's never been brought back to the house and has been living in the woods.

I go up to the cat and she allows me to do so. She's extremely sick and needs to be taken to the vet. It appears that (completely illogical as this seems once back in the waking world) a dog defecated on her at some point in the past when she was quite young, and it is still there on her back, and quite large. She has grown up this way, and somehow this has caused disease in her, scabs on her body and maggots coming out of them. It's quite disgusting and distressing.

Despite the fact that she is not tame she allows me to get close to her. I have to take her to the vet or she will surely die. We let the cats into the house and I try to capture her to put her into a carrier to go to the vet. I follow her around a bit from room to room as my father looks on and tries to block escapes, and eventually catch her. She doesn't try to scratch or fight me, which we think is impressive considering her lack of contact with humans (although it might be a result of her condition).

At this point I don't recall what happens next or if it just fades out, but the cat is in hand to be cured if possible.

The Bugs Kept Coming...

2008-03-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

3/11/2008
Last night's dream (Tuesday morning/Monday night)

I only remember the last part of this, which was creepy and gross. I had a small wooden toy sort of like a threadspool with holes in it that was sitting on the bedside table. I was in bed, it was morning but I hadn't gotten up yet. It was some kind of cat toy, I think. As I was fiddling with it, I suddenly realized that there were some kind of bugs inside, they looked like a cross between a centipede and an earwig, and had long wavy antennas. One of them came out of one of the holes and started crawling around; it dropped on the bed and I jumped up and knocked it away, but then I couldn't see where it had gone. My husband asked what I was doing. I said there had been a centipede, but it was gone now, nothing to worry about. I knew there were more in the toy but I didn't' want to alarm him, also my skin was crawling already. He looked at the toy though, and said he thought there were more inside. One had crawled down to the entrance of the hole and was waving its antenna around. It dropped out and landed on the floor, and as it ran across the floor it started to grow until it was an lobster, several times larger than actual lobster size. My husband jumped out of bed and ran after it, hitting it with a shoe until he killed it. He dropped it in the kitchen garbage, asking me first (joking) if i wanted to eat it. I said it wasn't really a lobster, but a centipede, it just looked like one, and I didn't care more for lobster anyway.

I asked him what we should do about the toy to get rid of the bugs... could we submerge it and drown them? or burn it? Then I was in my parents house, but I still had it. Another centipede came out, this one was very long, and it was running quickly across the floor. I wanted to kill it before it went into a crack in the floor, but my feet were bare. I stepped on it and the middle of it squished, but it kept running and disappeared into a crack. Another one squirmed out, also very long, and ran under a corner of carpet; I pulled it up but couldn't find it again. Another one came out and started running towards my sister's room door, I finally found a shoe and went after it trying to squish it. I was creeped out by all the centipedes squirming around and disappearing into corners of the house, my skin was crawling.

Then my father came out, he had the other shoe. I thought he was going to kill the remaining centipedes, but he had two cats instead and said he had to kill them. One was a brownish orange tomcat, who I don't remember the name of, and the other was a female with white and yellow splotches, who was called Lemon Cream. Both had short hair, and were not actual cats that I know. He killed them both by hitting them with the shoe. I was upset but he was strangely cheerful afterwards. I picked up a section of newspaper and read an article about it where he was joking about putting them in soup. I was mad and yelled about it, but it didn't phase him.

A Former Coworker Gets Creepy

2008-03-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

3/10/2008
Sunday night/Monday morning's dream:

The only part of this I remember, I was in an office of some kind. It looked kind of like the FH. A guy who looked like a younger version of R-, someone who used to work at a company where I used to work years ago (but I never had much contact with -- he was known for getting angry about things and worked in a different dept), came out of the back room. In the dream we both worked at the place we were in, and knew each other slightly. It was after hours and we were the only people still there. We started talking. I found myself thinking he looked rather handsome. Then he kissed me. Suddenly he didn't look so handsome anymore, he looked like he was aging 20 or 30 years, looking old and haggard. He was interested in me but I was trying to think of a way to discourage this and escape.

He made some comment about how he didn't think I should pay so much attention to "that guy I talk to online," sounding jealous. I protested, realizing he was talking about my husband. I said he was going to come home back soon, in fact then I remembered, he is already back, and I told R- so. I was feeling bad about what had happened. He made more negative comments about my husband and how he didn't deserve me, etc, which made me even more turned off of him, and I was defending my husband. R- thought I should be with him instead, but I was now rather grossed out by him and wanted to leave. I didn't know how I had thought he was handsome earlier. He took off his clothes to show me these strange scars on his body, they were like yellowish brown splash marks all over his skin, and he was also horribly mutilated (looking like things had been "cut off" and healed in a nasty, ragged, way). It appeared he'd been through some kind of torture and been splashed with acid or something. I was truly repulsed, both by his appearance and his manner, although I tried to be sympathetic about the unnamed past ordeal, and I wondered how he could possibly think I would be interested in him over my husband, or for that matter, anybody else in the world.

Difficult Access Points

2008-03-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

3/09/2008
Saturday night/Sunday morning's dream:

This was long and involved but I can only remember a few basic parts.
In the earlier part of the dream I was climbing up this vertical dirt cliff, which had some grass growing on it. I grabbed hold of this and other vegetation to help climb up, as the ground kept sliding out from underneath. The cliff itself was located on a hill above some part of town, because houses and gardens ended at a wooded area, and we went through it to get to the cliff above. Some other people were with me. It was some kind of contest or race to climb up it. I had been to the cliff before, because I lead the way, but I don't know if I had been up it.

Somehow I managed to crawl up the hill, as did at least some of the other people, and at the top was an old house, abandoned. We went inside, and looked through it, finding some old books. I don't remember what else we did up there but we may have camped out.

Later I was on a college campus, looking for a guy. I don't think I know him in real life, but in the dream I was close to him, but I think we'd had a fight. He was young and black, with fluffy hair. I went into the library to look for him, and possibly found him but then lost him again. The library had some kind of check-in/check-out system of glass doors in front of the main desk, so people could only get in under certain circumstances, perhaps if they had a card or paid. I went in and out a couple of times, and advised another person who was stuck outside that if they banged on the glass, the person at the desk would let them back in and then they could pay what they owed.

Then in a later part of the dream I was transported to a school that was like Hogwarts, but it was not Hogwarts. I was Harry. I was unsure where to go. The main hall area had students scurrying off to their different living areas, but all the names were different, and I couldn't remember which one I was supposed to be in. This was Hogwarts in the last year, apparently, when it was corrupted, and all the names of the 4 "houses" had changed, or else it was another similar school. I was very confused and stood there trying to remember the original names and figure out where I was supposed to go.

A Family Inheritance

2008-03-08T13:06:00.001-08:00

Saturday 3/08/2008
3rd dream (3 of 3)

This came right after the previous dream but I don't think they were connected because nobody was chasing me, and it was set in the present (today).

I went to visit my family, as planned for today. When I got there I found that my husband was planning to call one of my grandpas' meetings (he used to have these family meetings for a short period of time to advance his philosophy. But he's been dead for many years). I asked why he was calling one when grandpa was dead, and he said it was actually about a family property.

He called the meeting at my grandma's house, with my family and also our neighbor J- and his wife. Then he outlined the problem. Apparently there was another piece of property (land) which belonged to the family, but somehow it had ended up in the hands of Mary somebody. Mary had died just recently, and at her death, J- was supposed to have reclaimed the property again for us (somehow it was his fault that it had gone to her instead of staying in our family in the first place). But he hadn't done so, and our family wanted it back.

I don't remember exactly what the upshot of the meeting was or if he was going to get it back, but the next day my sister, brother, and I went out to an old barn or warehouse, presumably a building on the property, to recover some belongings that had been there for a long time. We went through boxes of papers and piles of junk, and found a lot of old drawings and things we'd made as kids, collected in boxes by our grandma on our mother's side (who also passed away some time ago). We were supposed to sort out various items and bring them home, on our parents' instructions. I'm not sure if we were going to lose the property again or get it back.

Captured by terrifying omniscient kidnappers

2008-03-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

Saturday 3/08/2008
2nd dream (2 of 3)

I was at home. Our house was sort of like our current apartment, but the bedroom was in line with the living room, and the sliding glass doors were in the bedroom instead of in the living room. It was on the ground floor. Also, I'm fairly sure it was a free standing house, not part of an apartment complex. I got a sense that the dream was set slightly in the future, but not by much.

At first, my sister, mother were there visiting and my husband was home. I took a shower but didn't finish it. I had some kind of dye and was planning to streak my hair in some way to make patches of lighter blond. I hadn't told anybody this but wanted to try something different. I started to apply a little bit of it, (it could go on in the shower, or dry, and then take a shower), but ended up stopping in the middle, with little effect. I kept planning to go back and finish taking a shower.

After everybody left, in the late afternoon, I was alone in the house and I decided I should go back and finish taking a shower and finish my hair. I noticed that there was a pickup truck parked sort of outside the living room window, with an old guy in it. I guess there was a road there or something because I didn't think this was too terrible strange, so I went back in and took a shower. I didn't put any more dye on my hair at the time, possibly forgetting. I was sitting on the bed in the bedroom, it was dusk and I noticed that there were headlights shining at an angle through the sliding glass door in the bedroom. I got up and went to the door, and then I saw that the truck was STILL there. I became alarmed by this, and I started to lock the door. It has this little lock (that frankly is probably ineffective) but it doesn't catch every time, as I fumbled with it, the guy who had been in the truck came up on the outside and pushed the door open, as I was trying to lock it. He had been waiting for me to come to the door. He grabbed me with his arm around the neck and dragged me outside. I started hitting him and screaming, but our house was in a remote location and nobody was around.

The guy took me in the truck to a waiting van, where there were several more guys (younger). They put me in the back with 3 other people who were part of the capture party. The back of the van actually had no seats, so we were all just sitting around inside. I kept hitting the people and making trouble and they eventually let go of me, although they kept trying to grab me. I debated smashing out one of the van windows and jumping out, but the van was going fast and I didn't think I'd be able to smash it out all the way and jump before somebody inside grabbed me.

We drove along through an unfamiliar part of a city. It was light outside again, possible the next day. I watched out the window, hoping to see and then seeing my husband driving in his car! He came up beside the van from behind. I banged on the window and waved my arms and he looked up at the noise (somehow) and saw me, and so he started following the van to help me escape. The van went into some kind of industrial area and made a lot of turns, and lost him. I kept watching but I didn't see his car behind us any more.

Then the van backed up to a big warehouse with a garage door, which was open. As we pulled in, one of the people in the back kicked an inside handle on the van door and the hatchback opened. I had been wondering if this handle would work, but hadn't dared to try. I don't know why he opened it early, but the van had slowed down and I took my chance and leapt out, jumping to the side so I wouldn't be trapped in the garage. The people started after me and I ran pell mell across the yard and city, jumping over small barriers and fences and anything in my way. We were in some part of a city which was up on a hill, with lots of warehouses. I came to a road going down the hill. When I looked back, they were not behind me, but I didn't go down the road. Instead, I crossed it and ran into the trees, which were adjoining. I didn't really know where I was or how far away my home was (or in which direction), but I figured I had a better chance of eluding my captors in the forest. I scrambled through the trees and came to a forest road running downhill, which was wide and paved with fir needles and such, and ran full speed down it, preparing to duck off to the side if they followed me.

A deer crashed through the trees behind me and started running down the road too. I was startled but told myself this was nothing to worry about. The deer ran fast toward me but when it got to me it turned around and ran back up the road. I kept going, leaping over small trees that had fallen across the road. I adjusted my stride, trying to figure out if great leaping jumps or shorter running steps would make me go faster.

Then a raccoon came tearing down the road from behind me. It ran close to where I was, stopped, and turned around and ran back up the road. A terrible fear gripped my insides. Somehow, I didn't know how, the animals were working for the kidnappers and seeing where I had gone. As I ran on, a white poodle and a couple of other animals, in succession (the rest wild), ran down the trail after me, stopped, and ran back. I was petrified. I didn't know who I was up against or how they were doing this.

Then I heard a huge booming voice coming from above. I stopped and looked up but saw only the trees above me, I couldn't tell where it was coming from. The voice said something like, "You cannot escape us. We can track you wherever you go, and find you wherever you hide. We are everywhere."

I was absolutely terrified, but I kept running again, I wasn't sure what else to do. After I followed the woods for a long time, I cut back out to the city. I was trying to find my husband again, since I knew he was out there looking for me, but I had absolutely no idea where he was. Then I found him. We climbed between a barrier and down through a planting above a restaurant to his car. We'd hardly gotten going again when a policeman or sheriff stopped the car.

I was frightened that he might be working for them, but I decided to take a chance. I told him I needed help, people were trying to kidnap me, and I told the whole story from the beginning. But then he said, actually he was pulling us over for something else, and named some minor thing on my record (I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't something I knew about and it also was not important). He wasn't interested in helping me with the kidnapping people and I was very frightened because it meant he was in on it. He didn't try to arrest me for them though, we kept going.

I don't remember what happened next... it faded away into another dream or I woke up. This dream was a lot scarier than most of my capture/escape dreams, and was actually the most frightening dream I've had in a long time. I still feel anxious thinking about it.

Nobody grocery shops but me!

2008-03-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

Saturday, 3/8/2008

1st dream (1 of 3)

I was living at home again, or actually at my mother's office, and I had decided that my job was to do all the grocery shopping. I had a special list. I went out and did this, and came back (it took a long time), but when I got home I saw that my sister and brother had also returned with some groceries. I was mad and told them that the grocery shopping was my job, and I had it all worked out to buy exactly what was needed, and if they wanted additional items they should add them to a supplementary list on the refrigerator. My mother came home and was happy that everybody had gone to the store, and couldn't figure out why I was annoyed. I don't remember a lot of details but this dream was pretty long and involved. I think there was a part with movies and pizza (sleeping at my mother's office) after that.

Swimming With Manta Rays

2008-03-06T18:48:00.000-08:00

Thursday, 3/6/2008 (Last night's dream)

Okay, I know I haven't written any dreams for a while. I've had some, but I've just been so sick lately that they were for the most part totally fragmented by the time I woke up, and I was in bed all day anyway.

All I remember of last night, is what happened right before I woke up.

I was swimming in the ocean, completely underwater. It was dark and murky, although there was a little light filtering down so I could sort of see. I was swimming around with manta rays, and swimming down deeper to look at them. Most of the rays were not that big (so they probably weren't really mantas, rather the smaller rays that wash up here).

I guess I was holding my breath becuase I was not near the surface but I didn't need to come up to breathe. Although it was very dark it was not scary, in fact it felt wonderful to be swimming again, with my entire body submerged and supported by the water. The water must have been about body temperature, it didn't feel warm or cold.

Then as I left the manta rays, the water was even darker and I couldn't see anything. I felt something underneath me and I reached down and touched it. It was rougher and lumpier, it was not a manta ray, and had a small hole. I thought it might be a small whale. Then (still in the dream mind you!) I woke up and was talking to my husband about swimming in the water and touching the manta rays. I had actually been touching him, not a whale, and I was amused by this and the fact that I'd thought that's what I was feeling. I was still asleep really, I didn't wake up and say this! Actually I think it unlikely that I was actually even poking him, based on the position I was lying in when I really woke up, but maybe I was and he moved away. I may have even gone back into the water at that point becuase I was really enjoying the sensation of floating underwater.

Then I woke up for real.

Forbidden Hero

2008-02-22T12:25:00.000-08:00

Friday - 2/22/2008 - Last night's dream

I had a small black kitten, and was going to a vet's office somewhere in town (something routine I think). For some reason I was thinking that D- might be there, an old boss of mine who once worked at a vet's office I went to. When I got there, I went into the small entryway and I could see into the office and the one next to it, becuase the walls were glass or made with full windows and a glass door; but the door was locked. I checked my cell phone, it was about 10. I wondered why they weren't open yet. I gradually remembered that for some reason, the appointment had been for 10:15, not 10, so I had accidentally shown up early.

A guy I knew, around my age, was also there waiting for the office next to it to open, I don't recall what kind of business it was. He was nice looking with floppy dark blond hair, glasses, and looked sort of like somebody who works at my company but whom I don't really know, S-, who has a rather abrasive personality and many people don't care for much. He also looked a little Johnny Depp with his Secret Window persona. I am not sure if he was actually supposed to be that particular coworker, but in the dream I knew him and I knew him about as well as I knew that guy, I think he was a distant coworker if not the same one. But the guy in the dream had a different personality, he was more soft-spoken and quiet, so I think he may have been a different imaginary person who just looked similar.

We said hi and stood waiting. I had something else I was carrying besides the kitten, maybe another better behaved cat, or just some other object, but I was having a hard time keeping the kitten contained. It was sweet and black and fluffy. Then it managed to escape. The guy, who hadn't been saying much up to this point, helped me corner it but then it got away again. I crept after it, meowing and calling here kitty kitty. Unfortunately at that age it wasn't really trained to come unless it wanted to, and it was both curious as to where it was and scared of the unfamiliar surroundings. When I would almost catch up with it, it would get away again. We were right on a street and I was very panicky. The guy helped me try to capture it. Then, it ran into the street. I was petrified that it was going to be hit by a car, as they were going back and forth. He ran after it and managed to catch it and brought it back to me.

I was overcome with gratitude and thanked him profusely. He brushed off the thanks, pleased but a little embarassed. I kept telling how much I appreciated him catching the kitten. Then I felt that I just had to hug him, thanking him wasn't enough, and I was just too happy that he'd helped, also I was recovering from being really upset about the kitten almost getting run over but getting saved, and I needed a hug too. (note: I am not really a huggy, or even touchy, person with people I don't know!). I hugged him tightly, thanking him. At first he wasn't sure what to do but then I felt him respond to the hug and he hugged me back in a real hug, very gentle and comforting. It felt really good and neither of us broke it off. Then I felt guiltily intimate as I could feel how tenderly he held me against him, (and how much I liked it) and we slowly drew back a bit. He asked a little shyly if I would like to go out for coffee or something, sometime. When I looked up at his eyes I could see he was looking at me differently now, with hope and the fearful anticipation of wanting someone you don't have yet. "Oh, I'm so sorry," I said, realizing I had given him the wrong impression, "I can't; I'm married." I really was sorry, and sad. I knew that he'd only ventured to ask because of my warmth towards him, which had started innocently and ended up feeling like more, this was my fault and I felt terrible (it didn't help that I felt tempted too, if I hadn't been married). He was sad but didn't venture anything else, and the dream ended.

Why do I always end up married in these dreams and unmarried in some pointless ones? :P But I just realized something when I thought back over this dream. See, I abruptly lost the ability to fantasize 2-3 years ago, and I couldn't get it back, which I found very frustrating especially when my husband was gone for a year. I had the rest of my imagination and I could relive memories and stuff, but I couldn't weave a romantic fantasy/rescue scene/etc. like before. It's back (consciously, not just in dreams)! I have to think this is a good thing :).

A Detached College Girl, a Tsunami, and a Magic House

2008-02-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 2/20/2008 - Last night's dream

I was at college, whether back to school or originally I'm not sure. There was an auction being held for airplanes, and my sister and cousin K- were both there. My sister wanted to buy a particular plane, and wanted us both to pitch in some of the money. When my sister stepped away to bid, I said to my cousin that I wondered why my sister was getting a plane, when she gets height sick. She laughed and I got the impression that the plane was really for my cousin. I didn't put in any money in the pool, and when my sister bid, she ended up accidentally buying a different plane than the one she wanted (there were four or five small planes available, the one she wanted was I think yellow but she ended up with a black and red one, or vice versa).

Next, I was hanging out with some other girls, who I thought were muslim, trying to make some friends. I eagerly tried to converse with them. One of the girls who I initially kind of liked had two white dots on her forehead, slightly overlapping (somewhat like the mark that some hindu women wear). She looked vaguely Indian. I wanted to ask her about the dot, since I had thought she was muslim, but I couldn't figure out quite how to phrase it without seeming rude or accusatory. I talked with many of them about various things, but now I can't remember the details; I felt very detached from them although I was trying not to be. We may have arranged to go somewhere.

I went to the beach where all the college kids were going to hang out that afternoon. Shortly beforehand, I had realized from the weather or the TV report or something that there was going to be a tsunami, but I decided to go anyway since everybody else was going. I parked my car with some difficulty in a large parking garage on the beach, and walked out. Lots of people were hanging out. There was a long stretch of hilly dunes between me at the parking garage and the water. Somebody said let's go down to the water, and I replied that I thought the water would come up here, or something along those lines. The others didn't take it seriously. I wondered how they could not have noticed that it was coming.

The tsunami waves started coming up, but we were so far up the beach that they weren't that high when they got there, just water flowing all the way up through the dunes to the garage. The others were surprised but I was not. I watched it with interest. By the time the first wave reached where I was at the entrance to the garage, the water was gentle and only about a foot high, but I could see higher water further down the beach between the dunes. Another wave came, higher, this one had a jello-like consistency. People ran out playing in it and exclaiming over it and its strange texture; I just watched. Then the bigger waves came and we took cover inside the parking garage. The water washed up against the outside, preventing going out on the beach side. People discussed how we were going to get out in our cars. A large grid was brought and attached to the inside of the wall, and I understood that they were going to bash a huge hole in the wall to drive out through, and the webbing would hold the pieces of concrete together when they fell, sort of like the safety glass in a car windshield. I was not riled up during any of this, just interested in a detached way. The others were excited and scared by turns.

I went back to an old house in town and climbed up inside, it had several stories. By this time it was dark. The house belonged to one of my former bosses, C-. He was happy to see me and decided to give me the grand tour, showing me around. I don't think we'd run into each other for a long time (although in real life, I didn't work for him until many years after college, but I think I was younger in the dream... time was twisted up anyway). Anyway, in the dream he was also my former boss and we hadn't seen each other for a long time. He took me up to the third floor, up slanty stairways. There were lots of old knickknacks, and big windows and skylights and telescopes and a kitchen with lots of stuff laying out. He showed me a way to walk up the middle of a messy, sloping counter. This put us into a secret part of the building, another dimension sort of. It looked the same, but nobody else could see us. There were tours of people constantly being led through the house, because it was of historical interest, but when we did this, we could see them but they didn't know we were there. They flowed in and out. When they would come in, he would turn on the kitchen faucet under one of the big windows, and run water over an apple as if washing it. Something about this kept us in the hidden dimension of the room.

He showed me stars out two of the windows, something was significant about them. As we looked around, and he pointed at things, he stood behind me closely and gradually put his hand on my back. It was intimate, but I was not put off by it. Rather, I was excited about what might happen next and anticipatory. It felt as if when I was young and very nervous, and interested, but also comforted. I wasn't afraid, but felt good. (I was not married yet in the dream, it seemed like many years ago, and I didn't get the impression he was either as he lived here alone, at any rate I felt no guilt). I leaned back into him and he put his arms around me, and we stood like this several times, talking quietly and still showing me the stars and sights, in between washing the apple to keep the other people in the dark. I started having some problem with my contacts, and took them out and tried to rinse them with my small eyedrop bottle, but when I tried to put them back in, it was like the contacts were the size of dinner plates and wouldn't fit. One in particular gave me a lot of trouble. He suggested I take them out (we both had at some point agreed that I would spend the night rather than heading back to campus tonight, it was discussed innocently enough), but I didn't have my carrying case to put them in or any actual contact solution. Finally I managed to get it back in and it went back to normal size. We continued looking around and hiding from the tour groups, touching and talking quietly.

In the past, say a year or more ago, I had a series of tsunami dreams, it was one of the recurrent themes. I'm not sure what triggered that repetitive theme, but I haven't had one for a while. In those ones I was always excited, electrified by the power of the wave, high with an adrenalines rush that comes of catastrophe. It didn't really have that effect in this dream, although as usual I wasn't scared, but I was more emotionally detached than excited by it. I was detached like this through the whole dream, in fact, seeing and being interested in the goings on around me but unable to connect to them somehow. That is until the last part, where I was no longer emotionally detached, but rather getting butterflies in a good way. Which also surprised me when I woke up (I wouldn't want to imagine such a thing happening with C- in real life, I think it would have creeped me out).

A Return To Inexplicable Teenage Angst

2008-02-18T15:49:00.001-08:00

Sunday Night/Monday Morning (2/18/2008)

I am living at home again. My bedroom is just as it used to be, except there is a huge flatscreen TV under the window, which might double as a computer. There's something I'm not supposed to be watching on it and my father has gotten really mad at me about it. I am now in there by myself, and have smuggled in some movies that I absolutely have to finish (unclear why, I think it's not the specific movies that are bad but the fact that I'm watching anything). I quickly switch the screen when he bursts in at one point mad about something, he doesn't realize I'm watching them. I finish them up somehow.

My friend H- has come to visit. We both seem younger. She spills a bunch of small objects on the floor and I help her clean them up. She tells me something surprising about her that I never knew, but now I don't remember what it was.

In the morning, my mother prepares to leave for work. I ask if I have to come along. It seems that I still have this job, but perhaps not for long. I was under the impression that I was going to have to work for her at least part time, being back at home. She says no, I don't have to, unless I want to, and then she didn't know if she could find something for me to do. I stay home. I am at odds with both parents about something, and I'm in a bad mood and sulky about it. I grumpily decide that I will walk to my job, although I have a car. It's a very long walk but apparently I've done it before when I have to. I know my father will be mad at me for walking instead of driving. It's drizzly too, and the hardship and long walk makes me feel physically pained to match my mental anguish, which is somehow comforting.

Surprisingly, the dream doesn't leave me with a bad mood at all, although I'm fighting and angsty towards my parents in much of it. The part with my friend was longer, and was good, but I don't remember most of it.

A Photographic Tragedy in Five Parts

2008-02-18T15:07:00.000-08:00

Friday night/Saturday morning 2/16/2008

I'm tempted to record these separately because they were in distinct parts or chapters, but at the same time I didn't get the sense that they were different dreams, just a continuation. Some of the same threads continued throughout.

Part 1.

I am somewhat younger, a little kid but not too little. I am going up the old logging road, several others are as well including members of my family. It's some kind of race, plus people are after. If I get to the end in time, I can elude them. There is a large mechanical device at the beginning where the gate would be, like some kind of huge tractor or earth moving equipment. I think it might prevent people from getting through or catch them. I get passed it and run quickly to the end. At the end of the logging road there is an abrupt hill, very steep, down to the house. Some people are going down before me, I can see them at the bottom. I have to be quick. There is a walled garden covered with roses at the bottom. If I can get down there, it will be too late for my would-be captors to catch me. I scramble down the hill and into that garden courtyard. I am safe. I go out through the metal gate where the other people are. I think my grandma (my mother's mother, now deceased) is there, among many others.

Part 2.

It's the present day and age again. I am on a trip and I stop to stay at my Aunt K-'s house. That night there is a lunar eclipse (in the waking world, there will be one in a few days). The moon rises in eclipse, huge and orange on the horizon, many times larger than normal. There are dark markings on the moon, like lines in a ring around the middle, reminiscent of the pattern in an eye. I quickly retrieve my camera. I set it on "bar" which is like panorama but not as wide, and take many pictures. The dark pattern on the moon changes two or three times as it continues to rise, and I take more pictures.

Part 3.

We continue on (the same?) trip, out into the desert. We meet up with our guide, it is my husband (but he's not my husband yet in the dream), but he is bigger than my husband is in real life. After driving for some long distance, we come to our destination, which is a cluster of huge rocky mountains in the middle of the desert. An old guy we run into at the entrance takes my my right arm and looks at it. He says that I will soon lose it or hurt it (I don't remember what he says exactly, but it's in that wise mysterious prophet of doom kind of way).

We continue into the mountains. They aren't really big enough to be mountains, it's more like just a big rocky area with very tall rocks. We wind in between them, driving. Our guide warns us about the little blue and yellow snakes that live here. If they bite you, you will die immediately, they're very deadly. He stops the car and the others in my family get out with the guide and walk up a rocky slope to go look at something.

I see something else. There are several enormous black shiny snakes, bigger around than my arm, wrapped up in a pile on a rock shelf, very close by. They are rare to see, and I have to get a picture. They are so black they are blue, and they regard me impassively, unafraid, but also not moving from their ledge. I will go get a picture while the others are off looking at whatever they went after. When I walk towards the black snakes, I realize that there are tiny blue and yellow snakes all over the ground in between where I was and the ledge. They are only a few inches long and are spaced only a few inches apart on the ground, and are almost cartoonish in their garish appearance and eyes. They move in an upright manner.

I step between them to get close enough to get a good picture, and snap several pictures of the black snakes. But then the yellow and blue ones start biting me. I am bit three times on my left leg, on the top of the foot, somewhere else on the foot, and up my calf on the outside, right below the knee. They cling after biting. It hurts a lot and I yell and run up to the high ground again, knocking them off. Our guide returns and looks them over, then announces we have to get to the nearest doctor as soon as possible. I realize that he must have exaggerated how poisonous the snakes really were, since I'm not dropping dead, but am still somewhat worried. He asks me what limb the old man had warned about, but I tell him it was the right arm and not the left leg.

We all pile back into the vehicle and he drives out through the rocks along the road. We pass a small "clearing" in the rocks off to the right, and I look out the window and see a large grizzly bear, defecating in the clearing. For some reason this is very amusing to me, and I consider making a joke to the others about bears doing it somewhere other than "in the woods", but I realize after some consideration that nobody else is going to find this at all amusing (also nobody else saw the bear). A little bit farther one we pass a goat amongst the rocks and maybe some others as well, but this part fades away.

Part 4.

I am still on a trip with my family, but there are more people now, it's a huge extended family of grandparents, aunts, relatives, possibly even my husband. We have stopped to sightsee at some sort of significant place, and so we walk across a big valley of rocks, dotted with huge mounds like a mima mounds with no grass, made out of boulders much higher than people. When we get up to the high ground, I arrange everybody for a group portrait. Out comes the camera again. But I'm having trouble getting to actually take a picture on the "bar" setting. I keep changing the settings. It turns out I am using a laptop, not a camera, but this is okay, because it's the laptop that goes with the camera and that I will transfer the pictures to eventually, and it can also take pictures. The group is restless, and they only hold their pose or position for a few seconds, then they move and talk to each other, assuming I've taken it. I'm getting very frustrated with them and my inability to get it to take the right picture. Then I realize it's not my laptop, it's a red one. I switch out for my proper one. I'm still not able to take it. The group complains and still I haven't gotten any decent pictures. I finally locate my actual camera and possible manage to snap some, although they probably aren't any good becuase I couldn't get the settings to stick and people kept moving. But the group won't stay together any longer.

Looking down the valley of the mounds that we've just cross, I can see their pattern which I wasn't aware of when I was walking through them. I also see a plume of smoke from one and then fire. I realize all of a sudden that they are volcanoes (very tiny ones :P) and one of them is erupting. I exclaim upon this to everyone and they are all excited, and we quickly run down the hill to get a closer look, standing right at the base (this doesn't seem like what you do after realizing there is an erupting volcano nearby, if you are very smart, but it all turned out fine).

Part 5.

We are back at my parents' house. I am cooking a big vat of soup on the stove, possible corn chowder. There is a guy there, I think named Zach. He is tall and somewhat gangly, we're both teenagers or close to it I think. This is our first get together at my parents house, I guess he is interested in me and I've invited him over, but we don't know each other that well (or that is, I don't know him too well, as I will discover). I have constructed an elaborate dinner, including the soup, but I run out of some ingredient. Otherwise practically everything else is ready to eat. I'm under some stress from preparing the meal. He is hanging around the kitchen not doing much. He kisses me, and it feels like he has slime in his mouth. I am disgusted and tell him as much, scooping a wad of slime out of my mouth with my hand and showing it to him. He suggests that we serve the soup using some kind of excavator scoop (like from miniature construction equipment). At first I am not paying attention and what he says doesn't' really register. But when he says it again, I suddenly realize that I actually DID this, with another guy, who I dumped becuase he turned out to be a criminal or something, at any rate he and I didn't last long. I ask Zach, "what did you just suggest? Because I've done that before with somebody else..." I am very suspicious and he sees this and realizes that he has made a mistake. He excuses himself to go get some corn from the garden for the soup. Turning it over in my head, I realize that it's the same guy and he's reinvented himself in a new persona to get back together with me. CREEPY. As it turns out, he does know me better than he pretends.

I go out to take something to the yard. The yard is totally different than in real life. It's a sunny grassy knoll with apple trees and such, and a barn and rolling hills in the distance. It's a beautiful summer day. When I get back in, I realize that my family has started dishing up their food because they are tired of waiting, even though I'm just about done. They have loaded up plates, some with one item of food, some with two others, etc. None are laid out like I was planning, or with all the courses I created, they've just taken stuff buffet style. I pretty much melt down, after all the work I've put into preparing this dinner I am furious that they aren't going to let me set it out my way. Everybody else complains they just want to eat. I'm beside mad. Zach returns and realizes I've figured out who he is, and I'm mad about that too and want nothing to do with him. I sulk lividly in the side of the yard while everyone else picnics on the grass with the meal I've prepared, out of order and not as I wanted to serve it.

I find a friend amidst a hostile homeland and prepare for a secret mission

2008-02-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 2/13/2008 - Last night's dream.
After many tired nights of fitful sleep, not conducive to dreaming, I actually got to sleep last night. I was still totally exhausted upon waking.

After getting to sleep, I "woke up" again in the dream when I heard the washing machine running. I looked over to the side of the bed where there had been a pile of dirty clothes when I had gone to sleep, and it was diminished. I tiptoed out into the living room and saw that in fact, the washing machine was going, and my husband had come home. The light was on in the study. He had not come to bed. I was sad and crept back to bed (note: this didn't actually happen, the whole waking up scenario was part of the dream, as with the next one. When I woke up in real life he wasn't there and the clothes were still unwashed). I slept for a while longer and when I woke up again, it was early morning (of today, Wednesday, but still in the dream). I walked into the living room and looked out, it had snowed in the night and the tree branches outside the window and the porch were all covered with a fine perfect coating of snow. I was a little surprised that it had snowed as it had been warming up a bit and I hadn't been expecting any more snow this year. My husband was up and he asked me if I was going to stay in because of the snow.

I looked out again, it was only about 1/2 to 1 inch of snow, and I was not going to work today but to visit my parents. I told him that I was still going to go, it wasn't much snow.

Skip ahead to H- Valley, I am arrived to visit for a few days (there's no snow there). It seems like it's been a while since I've been home. My cousin K- is also there. As I walk up to our grandma's house, I meet him and we walk together. He has been home for a while. The lawn in front of her house is no longer a lawn, it's all stripped bare and mounded up in hills, and it's dry and sandy (rocky sand, not beach sand) and dark reddish brown like clay. I am suprised by this. As we walk over the sand hills, I see a small perfect seashell about the size of a wonton, reddish yellow, laying on the sand (it's one of the spiral snail kinds). I pick it up with an exclamation of delight. I see another one of a different kind and pick it up, but it's not as nice so I drop it again. My cousin is not impressed by the find, he tells me it's been like this for a while and there are lots of shells. It seems it has been excavated and the area was once underwater. I get the impression that my grandmother may have past on a while ago and not live there anymore (this isn't new news to me in the dream, and it's not really addressed, there's just that feeling).

Later my cousin, myself, and some other people (my siblings and/or other cousin) go out for a walk across the logging roads. A new neighbor has apparently moved in somewhere between two of our other neighbors on the road, and according to my cousin they are somewhat hostile. My impression is that we kids haven't been home for some time so they don't really know who we are. We walk down to the bottom of a logged area where the trees start again, and there is a small bridge over a creek and we can see a trail continuing on. We start across but a man appears, he has black hair and a beard and outdoorsy clothes, and doesn't look like anyone I know. He yells at us to get out of the area. It's clear that he thinks we are trespassers who are dumping trash on the logging road or hunting or something, not neighbors. We protest but he is gone without understanding.

I end up finishing the walk by myself (I think my cousin went down the trail the guy told us not to). I end up on the road and I am walking past another neighbor's house on the way home (the E-'s). I see Bob and say hello as I pass, he talks to me about something but now I don't remember what. When I get about halfway home, by a bend in the road and creek, I stop. There is a bunch of dumped junk by the side of the road, all sorts of equipment and computer stuff. It's mine and I have to stow it here looking like junk so nobody takes it, becaues I need to pick it up later. The creek is high. I muck about nearby, suspending things over the bank, and I see a kid. He has black hair and looks kind of like a fictional character I used to have called RH. He's younger than me by a few years, and smaller, and he is one of the hostile neighbors. I call out a greeting. At first he is suspicous of me and wants me to get out of there, but I try to calm him down. I tell him I live her but have been away, I'm one of the family that lives up the road, and I describe where my grandma lives (or used to live) on the other side of the logging area. He has heard of the family and is suprised that I'm one of them but he seems to accept this. As we talk I get the idea that he's had trouble with strangers trespassing around the area, and that he's also run into my cousin and gotten a negative impression from him (which doesn't suprise me, since my cousin wasn't exactly trying to proceed softly with the other guy). The kid's name is Riley, and we both take a liking to each other. They live across the creek from the E's, he says. We talk about the other neighbors on the road and who lives there. Although nothing else has really changed from when I used to live there, I really feel like an outsider come home here, like the environment no longer feels I belong (the others of my generation are also affected this way).

We arrange to meet later; as I have to get home for some kind of dinner party, and I have to come back later and get this stuff. I have been assigned a secret mission that involves the equipment, and will be leaving directly after we come back to collect it. Riley wants to come with me on the secret mission and I agree.

I go home to my parent's house and am preparing for some kind of dinner with lots of people coming over. It's unclear exactly when this happens in the timeframe of the rest of the dream. I start making vast quantities of tea and looking for various pots to store it all in, and I am concerned that it will go bitter before the guests arrive. There are other preparations as well but I don't recall them all exactly. I'm stressed about it.

The actual party is skimmed over. Next thing I am out walking again, back down the road from the same walk before. I am wearing a poncho and pants, but nothing else on top and the poncho is flung back over my shoulders. I see a guy and I think it's Bob. He greets me. When I get closer I realize it is not Bob but some other guy (who doesn't even look like him, and is kind of creepy). I pull the poncho down to where it belongs, to cover yourself. The guy seems to want to talk with me, making complimentary but creepy remarks, but I hasten past with few words.

I end up at the bend in the creek again. The equipment is still there, and I start the laborious process of hauling it all out of hiding and folding it up. Parts are suspended over or submerged in the creek, or hidden in an old desk, and there are also cables plugging various bits together. I am working fast becuase I need to leave soon on the secret mission, and I don't want anyone to drive by and see me or get suspicious. My cousin and siblings show up and want to know what I'm doing. I don't want to talk about the secret mission becuase I can't explain it here, of course. They are persistent and purposefully annoying with their questions, trying to get me to explain. Riley shows up as planned. He is angry to see my cousin there (having previously run into him) but I quickly explain to my family that I know who Riley is and he is one of the new neighbors, and is coming with me, and I explain to him that my cousins aren't really intruders.

Once they hear that Riley is going with me, of course, they want to come too. I am irritated but finally I tell them it's a secret mission and they insist that they want to come, so I give in. But I won't tell them any of the details now. I get all of the stuff hauled up and am ready to go when another kid shows up. He is small and pale, with buzz cut blond hair, and seems to be slightly mentally disabled. He tells me he wants to go on the secret mission to. He has a toothpick which he is playing with. He pokes me with it. I ask him about something to do with the toothpick, (like, does he want to take it with him) and use his response as a reason why he can't come. I feel a little mean about this but it's impossible to reason with him. He's unhappy but accepts the explanation. He ends up breaking the toothpick in half by accident. The rest of us are all set to leave on the Secret Mission, but then I wake up for real this time.

The overall feeling in the dream is somewhat despondent and depressive, although it has good moments like finding the shell and Riley, who I enjoy being with. I am having trouble sleeping even in the dream world. Also I am irritated a lot and stressed by preparing for things, like the party and the secret mission, and the other people except Riley annoy me very easily.

A Trip to My Aunt's Old House, in a Foreign Country

2008-02-09T23:32:00.000-08:00

2/9/2008 - Last night's dream.

The last few nights I've been very tired and lacking in sleep, which generally causes me not to remember my dreams. But last night I caught up on it and remembered a bit.

I was in a place that looked like a foreign country. It was green and hilly and had ruins and very old buildings built into the hillsides, somewhere in Europe I think. I traveled through, taking in the sights. The area I was in was out in the country. There were a lot of small houses, scattered about, mixed in with some very old small ones built out of stacked and mortared rounded rocks which now were converted into people's back sheds and such. My Aunt N- had a house here, and I was going to see it. It was a house she had lived in as a child once and had returned to look at, although I think she was going to sell it and not stay there. I was going to describe it and take pictures for some project of my own.

On my way I saw something I wanted to stop and look at. I decided to walk up the hill to see it, and continue up to her house, which was at the top of the hill. I walked up about halfway to a sort of cave. It was one of the stone houses built into the hillside, an old ruin part of a building built hundreds of years before, of which there were many around here. It was now being used by someone as a woodshed. At first I felt nervous walking in, since of course I didn't belong there, but then someone came, possibly the owner, and showed me around. I think it was an old guy pleased to have it be a tourist attraction.

I looked around the dimly lit inside, the wood was stacked meticulously against all the walls in enormous heaps. The pieces of wood were each only a few inches long, split to that uniform size. I found the magnitude of the woodpiles and their exacting construction quite fascinating, and I took a few pictures, although I was concerned they might not turn out because of the dim light inside and the bright daytime light coming in through the doorways. I found myself describing it in my head for the piece I would write about my trip.

Then I climbed up the hill and arrived at the house my Aunt was at. It was more modern, but still built decades ago in or before her childhood. She didn't seem too pleased to see me although she had been expecting me, but took me in and showed me through the rooms, without much interest. I took note of the interesting features. The rooms were differently made, narrow and antique and irregularly shaped. There was a dangerous looking laundry chute several stories deep. The staircase was wooden with close, narrow steps, and curved up to a dark upstairs. I looked at it and she, somewhat indifferently but smugly, told me I should check out the feature of the slide. I moved a wooden lever on the side of the staircase, and the steps rotated so the stair became a smooth slide, something that now reminds me of some Little Nemo strips (although it didn't in the dream. In the dream I'd heard of this feature before from movies but never actually seen one, and I thought it was rather nifty to be able to examine one in person). She recalled enjoying sliding down it as a child. I was looking through a few other rooms on the ground floor and taking notes as my Aunt stood by, when my Uncle drove up in the parking lot below. We went to the open door and looked down to the gravel lot below. He greeted us cheerily. I remembered I had brought some items for him, and gave them to him. There were three of them, but I don't remember what they were any more. Then there was a fourth item, which was a photo album collection that included pictures of me from a play or show I'd been in some years ago. I don't remember what it was for or what he had needed it for. He politely accepted all the items, with thanks.

My aunt somewhat snippily said aside to me that he already had two of the items, which she and/or someone else had given him previously, and the third had come up in discussion in the past and he'd said he didn't like it. I was somewhat unsure how to respond to this, she was obviously displeased with me for bringing the items. I said something like he'd accepted them pleasantly enough or seemed to like them. Of course, she acted as if she knew better, being his wife and all and therefore privy to such things which I wouldn't be. It struck me she was acting jealous of me for some reason. She was more openly displeased about the photo collection, specifically because of the types of photos of myself that were included. I felt that the whole situation had become rather uncomfortable.

Here my recollection becomes disjointed, but I remember driving somewhere away from there with somebody, and it was nearing Easter time.

Desert Stew

2008-02-04T13:55:00.000-08:00

2/2/2008 - Saturday Morning's Dream

I had a series of three or four dreams this night, but I only remember this part of one of the early ones.

I was driving in a desert, possibly with my husband and/or others, but I felt alone. We were in an open jeep-like car, somewhat reminiscent of what Thompson and Thompson drive through the desert in Tintin. We drove and drove, we were somewhat lost I think. It was bare and flat, and somewhat gravelly. We could see the track of another vehicle, or maybe it was our own. Night fell and it started to get cold. We camped in a small shelter, which I think was already set up there. We had no supplies, but I found an onion on the ground and told the others that I was going to make stew. We did not have any meat, but I crawled around in the dusk, in the edges of where the tent was pitched. There were some other dusty vegetables discarded on the ground. I picked up a large thing which I thought was a large potato, but when I looked at it closely I could see that it was the head of an octopus. The legs were gone, there were 8 slightly wet looking pencil-sized holes in a straight line in the bottom of it, where they had been cut off. This is what tipped me off to its true nature. I discarded it with some disgust. I found some other onions, potatoes, and carrots. They were dirty but in good shape, and I went on to make a stew. I was pleased with myself managing to find food for us to make the best of our stranded situation and was looking forward to the hot dinner, although I don't think the others were as keen on my resourcefulness. I don't remember the rest of the dream or the ones that came after, although one of those took place on the bank of a river in a sunny park.

Another return to college - with many campus changes

2008-01-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 1/30 - Last night's dream

We are back going to my old college, EWU, again. My husband is going to enroll in classes there, I'm not a student but am living there too. At first we have a small apartment in the nearby city, S-, except it looks like P- in the dream. I don't like living there, and I convince my husband that it would be better for us to get a room in one of the dorms (or married student housing, if we can't live in the dorms) or an apartment near campus.

So, we move there. I go to see the campus. It's close to the start of the quarter or the first day of class. I am wandering around by myself looking at everything. All the empty space that used to be in the campus (malls, walkways, lawns, etc) has been filled up with all sorts of brightly colored and somewhat garish constructions, including music venues, eateries, and things that look like public art. I can barely recognize it. I am a little dismayed at the changes, it makes it look crowded and ugly. There are people streaming all over the place. Music is playing and there are a lot of students out and about, hanging out. I wander through the crowds, looking at and climbing on the strange colored constructions. I can't tell what some of them are for, one looks sort of like a brightly colored electrical transformer station with forks (the kind you eat with) attached ornamentally. They all appear to be additions for entertainment, not new study halls.

I have forgotten the name of the hall that we got our room in and am trying to find my way back to it. My husband got mad at me over something and took the room key, so I don't actually have a way to get in. I'm not sure where he's gone to either, but am not expecting to find him. Night has started to fall. I know I can ask somebody at the door to let me in and say I've lost my key, but I can't remember the name of the building we've just moved in to, so I roam around aimlessly trying to remember its name or where it is. I think it is yellow colored but I can't be sure.

I walk into a building but it turns out to be some kind of clothing store. The door was unlocked, but the store is closed for the day and the lights are off, and when I realize this, I quickly try to find my way back to the front door. When I come out, I pass by 4 young girls, maybe a bit younger than me, who are wearing hijab but dressed in a trendy manner with lots of denim. They look like they are from around Indonesia or Malaysia. I think of asking them for directions but they ignore me and talk together as they walk past, so I don't say anything. I try another door but it is a bathroom (somewhat grimy) so I come out again. I've totally lost track of where our dorm is and feel sort of panicky and lost, but resigned to it. I think about how I should put my key on a lanyard around my neck, the way many people used to carry their dorm keys when I was in school (I think I kept mine in my pocket at the time). I wander across the crowded campus again, observing all the happy rowdy people in a detached way. There is a girl with long reddish brown hair past her waist, laughing with a young dark haired guy, and many others I look at. I wonder if the other students know that I'm not a student anymore, or if they think I'm one of them.

Back in college again (again)

2008-01-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

Sunday, Jan 27th (Sunday morning's dream, which I forgot about until now).

I was back at school at EWU, at the beginning of the quarter. My husband was there too and we were going to both live on campus, I think, possibly in the married student housing. I was returning to get another degree. They went through a peculiar dorm-sorting procedure where you went to the dorm of your choice and the available rooms got divided up and roommates assigned.

There was a guy, probably my age or a little younger, with sandy blond hair. He had to come over to do homework or was going to be our roommate or something. I knew my husband wouldn't like this. We talked about various tasks that had to be done and the dorm room sorting. I also wandered around the campus, looking at things. I knew that nobody I'd known when I'd gone to school there before was still there, but I couldn't help feeling that I might suddenly see someone I knew.

The dream went on for a while with myself and other students making various arrangements to prepare for school starting, but I no longer remember the details.

Me as an irresponsible TV character

2008-01-28T21:36:00.000-08:00

Jan 28^th (Monday morning’s dream).

At one point I am the character "Charlie" from "two and a half men," but I am also myself. The kid, Jake, is also there and I'm his uncle, but I'm also me. At one point I call my sister on my cell phone (who is my sister in the dream too). We arrange to meet up somewhere; she is coming down to visit me. I think we are going to go on a drive somewhere scenic, possibly up the Gorge. I start traveling up a rocky mountain road the kid. I accidentally let him fall into a huge crevasse where he hurts himself, but I really don't feel guilty enough about it, and I think I leave him there for a bit until someone compels me to go back and get him. Somehow I end up in an altercation with somebody who I don't really know, I think an older woman, in red. I try to elude her but she keeps coming after me, yelling at me about some bad thing I've done. She keeps popping up as the dream continues on and I'm with my sister on our excursion.

It's all very disjointed, possible because I'm sick. I keep waking up over and over in the night and have a hard time going back to sleep. A snowbank enters the picture after I realize it's snowed a little bit in the night.

An ill-intentioned identity-switching boss

2008-01-28T21:34:00.000-08:00

Jan 28th (The first Sunday Night/Monday Morning dream)

I am traveling to another country somewhere on a mission connected with my job. My boss has specially selected me to come along, and I am flattered. He starts out looking and acting like "Daniel", the boss on "Ugly Betty," but then quickly morphs into D-, one of my former team leads at my current job (the same one who appeared in this dream). I'm happy working with both versions of him. Then he later morphs into an old evil landlord I used to have, R-. During the time he is R-, I am working on mashing with my hands some kind of food (maybe bread dough?) in a big pot that is on the ground. I am bent over at the waist to knead it, and my hair falls forward touching the ground and falling into the bowl. It keeps being in danger of getting stuck in the food. R- is talking while I do this, and he makes me uncomfortable. As he continues talking I realize he is coming on to me and flirting, and expecting me to do the same in exchange for him getting me this role on the trip. I reject him, at first not quite sure that he's doing this, but then more forcefully. I don't like him anyway and he is also married. He puts more pressure on me and makes me more and more uncomfortable. I plot my escape.

Missing a past and nowhere to go

2008-01-28T21:31:00.000-08:00

January 26^th - Saturday morning's dream

My parents and family have been arrested for something and all taken away, and the house is barricaded off by the police or FBI or something. All record of their existence has been removed from public record, but I don't think they are dead, just being held somewhere. I was the only one not taken, but I'm not sure why this is (or what crime they had been involved with). I am driving around a small hilly area somewhere in town, in the old pickup I used to drive which once belonged to my parents. The gas is almost empty. I drive back and forth in a several block area, looking for somewhere, but I don't remember where I was trying to get. I don't have anywhere to go home to now. In the dream I was still working for the old company I used to work for, and apparently was living at home. I now will not be able to go back to work there, also I won't be able to get another job because the fact that I worked there has been erased (I think the entire company has been "removed" similarly, or if not that, the fact that I had worked there for 5 years) so I have no employment history or references.

I drive up and down in the truck. I don't have enough gas to get up to a gas station at the top of the hill, so I leave the truck and start walking up to the gas station a short distance away. The path I take is through a flooded streambed in a nearby woods, clogged with fallen logs. I carry an enormous piece of driftwood (which I can somehow lift over my head despite its size) which I put down as a bridge across each flooded place, then pick it up and carry it to the next place to use again. It gets smaller and smaller with each use until it is used up. I arrive at the gas station. It's creepy and made of old concrete. I realize that I don't have any clothes on, so I can't buy gas, and also I don't have anything to put the gas in anyway. There is a Goodwill or similar clothing thrift store nearby, and I think of going there to get some clothes. But then I realize that when you have no clothes at all, it's nearly impossible to get any. It's very difficult to get any normal task done when you've lost your clothes, even getting new ones. People will freak out instead of just giving me some clothes, and possibly think I am crazy.

I decide to return to my parents’ house, which nobody is at but it's cordoned off with police tape and some kind of electronic security surveillance. I sneak into my bedroom past the security devices and pack a suitcase with some things. I think I might come back later but who knows if I will be able to. I can only take as much as I can carry, mostly clothes.

Then, I go to the house of my former riding instructor (in the truck, which I guess I got gas for after I got some clothes) not too far away and well out in the country. She and her significant other are somewhat surprised to see me but they know what has happened to my family. I have nowhere else to go and I can't get work or stay anywhere because my past has been erased, so I don't know what to do. They realize this. She mentions that they have a little room and there are a bunch of odd jobs that they've been meaning to get to, implying that I can stay there and work for her in exchange. I'm not ungrateful although I realize that they can easily take advantage of my situation in getting work out of me.

The house is extremely messy. I look around it thinking that I will clean it up and put it in order, like the protagonist of a book which I recently read (in the waking world as well as in the dream) who stays with somewhat messy foster parents. My riding instructor tells me that if I'm going to stay there, I should know that it was they who orchestrated the crime that eventually led to my parents' arrest, and they are going to continue doing these crimes (some kind of robbery I think). I accept this situation (what can I do, anyway?). Then she asks if they can take my truck to go to town, and I say sure. After they leave I realize that the authorities know whose truck it is, and so they will be tracked down and caught. I envision living here on my own, in this remote holdout. I'm not entirely sure if the authorities will eventually come after me, or not, but it seems best to stay out of the public eye.

Many strange goings-on in a busy night

2008-01-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

1/16/2008 - (Out of order, yep :P. I saved it on the wrong computer then forgot to post.)

Sad and looking for a place to stay

In the first part of the dream, I was coming from my parents’ house, but going to P- to stay with my aunt K-. I'm not sure why I couldn't stay at my own house, maybe I didn't live there yet. I didn't call in advance but ended up in downtown and wandered around trying to find a place to call. There was a library named Io Jima. I stood outside of it and called. My aunt was surprised that I was there, and I was embarrassed to explain that I needed to stay with her. It seems like maybe it was my house and she was just watching it for me while I was away, but hadn't expected me back so soon. I hadn't lived there before though, it was a brand new house for me that she was watching. We arranged for her to meet me downtown where I was. I went to a restaurant nearby and waited. There was a little boy there and I followed him around the building for some reason. I think my aunt picked me up and took me to the house, but then she was in the attic. There was a crawlspace there through a hole in the ceiling, but the cover that hid it was coming loose. It was like a door on a long strip of white leather, which was wearing out. I mentioned that I would get it repaired. We established a place for me to sleep up there, on a pallet near a big window, and I slept there. I seemed to be running away from something or had to stay there because of some kind of unpleasant situation that I was trying to get away from and had not had any place else to go.

The next day my siblings and cousins met me at the same restaurant downtown. It was an empty, old building all painted white, which didn't seem to be actually serving anything. Apparently this meeting indicated I needed to go back to my parents’ house.

When I got back I went over to Grandma’s for the weekend visit. We were all sitting around when my sister saw my mother coming back from a walk. She had my brother (young) with her and also some little kids including one in a backpack, which weren't hers but a friend's. I was surprised to see them. Someone commented that I had no sooner left than she'd replaced me with new kids. They came in and helped themselves to cookies and juice. I tried to smile at one of the little girls but she was solemn and suspicious of me. I saw my brother come in from the kitchen and spit on the floor. I got up and went into the kitchen and called him after, beckoning to him, and when he came I told him in a whisper that he needed to clean up the spit. He was chastened and moved to do so. My other aunt N- had already noticed it but he got to it. However, when I got back to the couch, my mother and the girls were sitting in my place and there was no room. I tried to sit but she didn't move, so I got up and went upstairs and sat sulkily by myself with my book, feeling excluded. I could hear my father talking downstairs about some woman who'd made great advances in her life, and it sounded like he was talking about me, and he described this book he'd read that was really good, called something beginning with P. Propet or Portent or something like that. The title was strange but a real word. He seemed to be sticking up for me, I thought, perhaps comparing me to the person in the book. My mother hadn't read the book and said he should have told her about it earlier. To which he said he had tried to get her to read it, and five times she had refused, tapping her finger on the book’s title, and said she “wouldn’t read a book with that damn title.”

Next dream:

South American "research"

I was in some country, I think in South America, there to study. There were two groups of young men there who were competing in some kind of coming-of-age ritual, although they were already close to my age. I was going to follow along with one of the groups for research. We trekked across the countryside. One of them was tall and close to my age, with pale skin and dark hair, handsome. The next was short and sort of fat, with curly long red hair and a long faded beard, looking sort of like a coworker. Another one was tall and darker, and the fourth I don't exactly remember but he was unattractive in some way. None was a leader; they all had to work together.

At one point they came to a river. They showed me one of the rules in their culture. They floated a small animal down the stream and the others watched from the opposite bank. But then they floated another animal that looked sort of like a dumpy green fruit-like frog, which turned its back on the watchers from the bank. Because of this, they yelled and threw things at it. I commented that the animal didn’t understand facing them or turning its back, but they explained that this was their tradition. Another one came by and faced them and they did nothing to it. Later the one that had turned its back floated in the water with a greasy stain coming from it, as if it were sick or dying. I am not sure if this was a way to identify dying animals (that they had seen it was sick beforehand) or if they had injured it. The entire scene with the floating animals I had seen before in another dream, but undeveloped as to its meaning and the surrounding story.

We got a move on then, one of them chastening the others for dallying there so long. We ran up hills, along narrow trails, etc. I ran to keep up, they were able to move faster than I. It was some kind of race against the other group. We camped for the night in a small tent with all of us. I wondered how we were going to spend the night like that, but the dream skipped over it so I never found out. In the morning I found myself waking with the handsome guy that I kind of liked still there, preparing to pack up. We talked and he ended up kissing me, and I got carried away by this and tried to go further. He protested that this would be a huge problem in the competition and get him and his group disqualified, but didn't resist very much. But immediately the other team member with the red beard popped in. He was totally shocked. I was embarrassed, and the other guy started moaning and praying and asking forgiveness for having done this. The other guy was angry and pointed out he'd put his whole group in jeopardy, but you could also see he was hurt that I'd picked that guy and not him or the others. We continued on and finished the race.

The two people on the council who awarded prizes picked their team to win despite the indiscretion, which apparently they were open about to the judges, but they fined the guy who had kissed me to 185,000 and possibly also a time in their jail. I was taken aback and felt very bad about my part in it, and thought the punishment harsh, but everyone was very relieved by it (apparently it could have been worth) and relieved that their group had passed.

Radioactive seepings downtown at work

Next: I am back in P-, possibly at work. I have been sent into another room to retrieve something. It has a big window across all one wall. I look out as I go there and see a big funnel cloud, but I can't tell if it’s a tornado or just a cloud shaped like that. In the room, I see the city landscape and I see a nuclear tower in the middle of it. It's normally quiet or not in used, but now it starts generating huge clouds of steam. People are in a closer room, watching, which I can also see through a glass wall into (I can see through the glass wall and the real window to see outside the building). As I'm watching wondering what is going on with the tower, is it going to explode? Some military people come in. some are already watching. They wear tan uniforms, and might not be military but work for the nuclear plant, but are somehow official. A short roundish woman in uniform asks me if I would like to come into the next room next to the window to get a better view (indicating there's no option about it). I go in with her and watch and ask some questions about it but don't learn much. After a bit I leave via going to the bathroom (as a kind of excuse to leave the room). But when I look at the toilet, instead of water, it's filling with blue stuff similar to toilet bowl cleaner, which is thick and sticky and everywhere. I try to wipe it off the seat but it comes back. It's somehow connected to the activity at the nuclear tower. I decide it won’t work and leave the bathroom and manage to get out of the room too, since now I want to leave instead of being stuck watching with the others. Then I wake up.

Thwarting a motel evildoer

Later the same day morning, I fall back to sleep and I have another dream where my husband and I are floating down a river in a canoe or other small boat. We stop and we want to spend the night at some kind of hotel. The place beside the river bank is like a miniature wooden house, with several parts, just barely big enough for a person to get inside and lay down. It’s like part of a fun park. We end up going in anyway. Somehow we have more space inside the house. There is a big guy in there too. I take a little boy, my brother or son, into the bathroom and go down the stairs. When I get down the stairs I get an awful feeling that something bad is happening upstairs and I race back up. I envision the big guy going into the bathroom after the little boy and trapping him in there. When I get up to the top I see he is not doing that but something else threatening, I don’t remember what. I somehow get up the banister, and manage to jump to the landing he is on, and stab him with a knife. I call to my husband and he comes and helps and we kill the guy. I only caught him because I had had that thought at the exact right moment to avert disaster. We run away out of the house after killing the guy.

Magic and too many admirers

2008-01-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

1/24/2008 - Last night's dream

My former lead at work, who is now in another department, comes to talk to me. He's always been somewhat serious around me, now I realize that he knows that I too was going to be selected for some mysterious and magical mission, which I am now part of. He comes to tell me. He is also in this organization. People get chosen. He explains it to me, we go into a room at work and lock the door. I get transported somewhere else after he tells me, which is part of it. There's a gigantic black and white kitten and some other kind of animal. They will be in further contact with me, but I now know that I have access to these magical resources and will be going back and forth for their missions. I feel good and kind of excited about it, although he is very serious about it, it's not all fun and games. We also have to keep it a secret from those not involved. This is all very detailed but I can only recall the broad picture.

In the same dream, the other main thread is that I have about 5 guys who are interested in me but I am not particularly interested in most of them so I need to prune them down. I feel kind of bad about this but it's getting out of hand. There's one guy who is tall, thin, he looks sort of like a taller, blond version of the Betty's boyfriend on "Ugly Betty." He comes over to my room or apartment (which seems to be in an area that looks like R- near my mother's office) after I find out about the magical thing and talks to me, telling me that he loves me. I feel kind of indifferent, which I feel bad about. I try to think about who I have loved, and how did I end up with so many people interested in me (kind of funny since I've never had this problem in real life). I was involved with this guy for a while, then we split up for about a month and during that time I got involved with another guy, who is also still interested in me, also light hair but shorter than this guy and shaggier hair. I'm not particularly interested in him either, but have been involved with them both. Now I'm back with this guy, but trying to break it off with both of them. I tell him about the other guy but that doesn't deter him. There's also a third guy who's not present at the time, with dark hair I think, and then I remember J- (my husband in real life, though apparently just an interest here), and another person I used to be in love with in real life. I cross him off already since I had determined it wouldn't work out with him. When I think about it, it seems like J-, although I don't appear to be involved with him at the time, is the only one that I ever had really strong feelings for (except the other guy I loved but that was less so and he won't work). So, I decided to pare down the others. I try to break it gently to this guy, but he's crazy about me, and I know the other one is too. I've already told the other one I think. He tells me how much he cares about me and wants to prove it to me. I just don't really have many feelings for him but I go along becuase I feel bad about being mean to him. I'll keep trying to drop him. All these guys trying to get my attention tire me out.

I end up walking down my aunt & uncles driveway with my cousin K- and my brother. I am wearing a poncho. We are on some kind of mission. Someone (my sister? but then she's not there) comments that we make a pretty good team. I don't remember what we're going to do. When we get down to the road, facing the chicken yard fence/orchard area, we all make a wish about what we want. I know that my wish is going to happen, unlike the others, becuase of my new magic available to me through being chosen for this mysterious project. I wish for something to be able to make people stop loving me, since I don't care about them. When I open my eyes after wishing, I see the apple tree in front of me has grown some apples, and I know that they are poisoned apples, poisoned not to kill but to kill the love for me. They are huge and grotesquely deformed into weird shapes, although they appear healthy. I pick one which is large and awkward like a zucchini, but apple colored. I wonder how I'm going to test it and I think i try it, but it tastes normal. I decided to give it to the smaller guy first who I'm having less trouble with, and then the main boyfriend to make him stop mooning over me, so I'll have fewer of them to worry about and they'll be happier too.

The whole premise seems rather odd, not the me being chosen for the serious and mysterious magical project so much as me having too many admirers, that I'm not interested in (but going along with anyway), and wanting to get rid of them somehow.

Invasion by squirrel (amusing) and messy roommates (not)

2008-01-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

This morning's dream (well, it was well after midnight anyway)

We are in bed in the morning and a large black clock or radio of some kind goes off. I pick it up off the nightstand and turn off the alarm. It's still making some kind of noise. When I turn it over, I almost jump out of my skin because a tiny reddish brown hand, very much like a human's but miniature, reaches out of an opening in the back. I exclaim about this to my husband, but he's still sort of asleep. I get up and pry the clock open partway, and discover there is a squirrel inside. It's somehow crawled in there, although how it managed this is impossible to know. My cats are very interested. I shoo them away and go over to a large sliding window. The apartment is like our real apartment, but one side which has regular windows and a couch against the wall instead has another sliding glass door with a screen. Then there's sort of a slanting roof, not really a porch. In the trees immediately outside, there is black plastic rigged up to be sort of a roof or awning, but it's blown aside and looks fairly messy, and also isn't stopping the water. There's random bits of garbage underneath it as well. I think about how this should be cleaned up and the awning fixed, but recall talking with the landlady when we moved in and she didn't want to angle the plastic differently, because it would look ugly from the driveway (this is not the actual landlady, it seems our apartment is in a different building than in the waking world). I plan to fix it later anyway, she probably won't notice now.

I open the sliding door and try to put the squirrel out past the screen, but it is scared and runs back inside. I spend some time rounding it up again, with little help from the cats, whose interest is not purely altruistic. Finally I get the squirrel put outside, for which I am quite pleased, and report to my husband, whose still in bed and still partially asleep. I might have a baby in the apartment too (of mine), that part is rather vague.

Later, we learn that two people are being installed in our apartment to rent along with us, courtesy of the landlady. Apparently she is allowed to do this. We are not too keen on the idea, less so when the people arrive. I come home from work and find them moved in. They are from another country, but I'm not sure where (perhaps pakistan or india?), and neither speak English especially well. Both are men probably around my age, with dark hair and somewhat dark skin, and beards. They are friendly, but they have made a total mess. They are cooking with something orange and it is splattered everywhere, all over the kitchen and bathroom (the guest bathroom). I am shocked. It looks like paint has been painted in orange dots over everything, including the counters, floor, wall, toilet, sinks. One of them appears to be making some kind of sauce, which is orange and the source of the splatters. There are tiny jars and beakers everywhere piled on windowsills, including chemistry-style ones with tubes leading from jar to jar, like he is distilling something. There's a strong smell of vinegar. The thought crosses my mind that he might be doing drugs, but upon smelling it, I decided that it really is some kind of sauce for food. They talk to me and ask a lot of questions and seem to be leading up to trying to get me to help them with getting settled into the area, which I am not at all interested in doing.

I gather up some things of ours, including our paper towels, and put them away so they can't use them. I am intending for them to get kicked out of the apartment because of the mess. When my husband gets home, I tell him this and question if we should go to the landlady and show her the mess, but after looking around, he advises that we should wait a few days if we really want her to deal with it by kicking them out. We also walk through the hall, possibly with our new roommates, and talk about the other apartments. There are two other in the building, one is larger than ours with 3 bedrooms, which I considered getting when we moved here but decided against. I'm not sure if we're trying to get them to move out on their own or what, but it doesn't appear that they have enough money to rent on their own.

I go out to my car. The outside of the apartment building and yard looks like my parents' house, yard, and driveway. When I get into my car, one of the guys comes down after me, and asks me if I am interested in selling my car. He needs one right away, he says. I don't want to talk to him, or sell my car, and try to answer politely but shortly while leaving. He keeps walking alongside, and pulls on my scarf to prevent me from going away, but then lets go immediately. I talk to him through the car window, trying to get rid of him. My husband comes out of the house and stands on the porch, and the guy eventually stops trying to talk to me and I pull off down the driveway. I don't particularly like these people. They act friendly but make me feel suspicious of their motives.

In another part of the same dream, I'm not sure if it's earlier or later, or it might be in the middle, my husband and I are reading about a park somewhere in town, which is pictured in a newspaper or magazine. I want to go there, perhaps at a better time of year. We also drive to a park we know, which is very dreary and damp at this time of year, and I get out and go for a walk. It has paved walkways along a steep hillside with bigleaf maple and a creek at the bottom. When I get down close to the creek, I realize that parts are flooded and some of the bridges are slippery with water. There are several other people walking down there who warn me to be careful, in a cheerful way that people do when they meet in a park.

Kids plan a trip to Rainbow Falls, which ends as usual

2008-01-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

Last night's dream (or what I can remember of it).

My cousin asks me in the course of some other conversation if I would like to go to a waterfall (in a park), Rainbow Falls. She mentions she's been wanting to go for a while. I am surprised that she would ask me, but I kind of like the idea. I say that I haven't been there since I was just starting college (which is actually true). Then I tell her how we used to jump into the water there when we would go, which was icy cold.

We repair to my parent's house. Despite the fact that I'm apparently in the current day based on my previous comment, we are all very young now, I'm probably 9 or so and everyone else is proportionally aged. A childhood friend of ours is visiting, A- (now deceased, a couple months ago). I have the idea that he's visiting me, but likely it's my sister. We are preparing to set off for Rainbow Falls, but my mother tells me that A- was tired and has gone to sleep, and said he didn't want to be disturbed. I'm a bit perturbed by this, and debate whether we should wait for him to wake up so he can go with us, or leave without him.

I walk into the living room to ask my cousin how we are getting there, anyway. Are we riding horses, walking? She is there with my sister and they say that they are going to ride 4-wheelers (they have them there). I'm somewhat annoyed becuase my sister is now going with my cousin and both of them have transportation, while I don't (it's beginning to look like I'm going to be excluded from the trip, again, probably by design). My brother says he's going to take his big wheel (a giant plastic trike thing he had when he was a few years old, which he is again in the dream as we've all shrunk age-wise), and I can ride on it too. I'm touched by his generosity but obviously this isn't a practical solution, and he's probably not really going anyway because of his age.

My father is on a ladder painting and/or patching a small hole in the wall in the living room, and he asks me to hand him a metal trowel of some kind. He gives me the one he was using, which is of the normal sort, and I hand him one with some kind of rotating wheel, like a super-fancy pizza cutter. He's sort of in a short temper, tired, maybe becuase of the repair. I'm kind of bummed about the whole state of affairs, the fact I've been excluded from an excursion again, and that A- has gone off to sleep, which seems strange.

A Black Silk Scarf with Roses

2008-01-11T15:31:00.000-08:00

Last night's dream

This one slipped away from me in scattered disarray driven by the early rays of dawn (okay, more like mid-morning), like spectators departing after a parade. Apparently I can't remember well when I'm too tired, either, and having been sleep-deprived all week, I'm now exhausted.

The only scene I remember is I am standing trying on a large black silk scarf with red roses all over it. It's triangular, or a folded square. There are several similar options to buy which I also look at. My sister and I think my mother are also there. I'm a little confused if I'm buying it for myself, or for my sister (although it seems like it's for someone who isn't there, and my sister is there). I think from other scattered images that we are in a set of outlet malls that I visited in an earlier dream several weeks ago.

Only now when I recall it, I realize this is a reference to a book I was reading last night in which one of the characters mentions in passing that she bought a black scarf with roses on it for her sister.

All Shook Up

2008-01-10T14:20:00.000-08:00

A couple days ago- Monday night's dream

I haven't remembered my dreams since then because I didn't write this down, due to some parts I didn't particularly want to remember. But I remember them anyway, so here goes.

In the first part, I am living in an apartment at the coast. It's similar to mine now except for the location, but has my same things in it. It's several stories up, and looking out the window you can see the beach and water immediately below, and look down the tide line in at least one direction. I have two cats, one of them is A-, my orange cat, and the other is black but is not Q-, it looks more like a young C-, a cat I used to have years ago, who died.

At the dream's opening, my sister is visiting me. It has snowed, and when we look out the window at the beach far below, we can see smatterings of snow down there on the sand as well. I don't remember what specifically happens during the visit, we may go down to the beach or something, or just talk.

Later, I am alone. My cat C- is racing around the house in a frantic fashion, as cats sometimes do, I try to get him to calm down. Then the apartment is suddenly hit by an earthquake or huge storm wind or something, at any rate it sways wildly back and forth. Things fall off the walls. The cats panic. The door rattles so violently that the deadbolt lock begins to rotate. I am scared and trying to keep my feet, but I fight my way across the moving apartment to reach the door; it is going to burst open any minute as the lock untwists. In retrospect, I don't know why it's was important to keep the door locked at this time (what was out there?), but it was. I reach it just in time as the door starts to open and slam it shut and lock it again. The movement finally stops shortly afterwards, with no apparent serious damage done although things are in disarray.
The next part is later in the same dream, I am visiting my parents. I am walking with my father in the back yard, talking. Parts of the house are rearranged somewhat so that the bedroom windows aren't facing the same way they do in real life. I see my mother through the window on the bed, with an unknown guy. I walk up and bang on the glass, demanding to know what he is doing there. She tries to calm me down, my father sees what is going on but doesn't say much. My parents are both sad and decide to separate. I am very wrought up and miserable. My father seems sad but quiet, he doesn't seem as angry as I expect, just disappointed and resigned. I don't know who is going to leave there in the end, but I end up walking down the trail with my father, talking. I decide in my mind that he must end up staying there in the end and my mother moving out, because she (and possibly the unknown guy, I don't know) wouldn't be able to run the place without my father. Other details happen but I can't recall them.

Both parts of this dream seemed to relate to fear of something undefined; I don't feel like they signal specific fear of what happened in them, but something else. The first part of the dream was scary, but the second part really bothered and upset me, which is why I didn't particularly want to write it down (there's no relation to anything in the waking world here, nor have I had this type of dream before, so I found it disturbing). But, then I couldn't remember the dream I had the next night, even though I know I had one, or last night's. I have to write them down to remember what comes next, it seems, or the old dream just sticks around blocking the new ones.

Incidentally, C- the cat also reappeared from the dead in this dream.

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Update: A curious thing. The same day I posted this (but a couple days after the actual dream) a small freak tornado struck this area, although not the part of town where I was at.

Meetings in the Restrooms

2008-01-06T13:21:00.000-08:00

1/6/2008 Sunday morning's dream

The entire part of this dream that I can remember seemed to take place in a large public bathroom. There were numerous people, men and women, flowing in and out and getting into discussions with me about one thing or another.

Oops... forgot to post this. Posting out of order *gasp**gulp*

A Meeting about Money in a Remote and Cavernous Building

2008-01-06T12:48:00.001-08:00

1/5/2008 - Not last night but the night before... Saturday morning's dream.

I had received an offer for some kind of huge scholarship. However, I was a little suspicious of the conditions and I wanted to make sure it was legitimate. So, I drove to the specified location to meet a representative. It was several states away.

The place where we were meeting was a huge gray concrete building, with gigantic rooms and high ceilings, sprawling in a drippy temperate forest with tall trees, rhodedendons, and salal. I met the representative, an older woman with the sort of pale blond hair that comes from dyeing gray hair, cut into a bob. She was slight, dressed in the sort of semi-professional garb of an office clerk, with light slacks and a floral patterned black silky shirt. We had to go to another room in the building to answer my questions, so she led me through a veritable maze of rooms, the ceilings in most of them were hundreds of feet high. It was all dark and empty, without furniture, just bare concrete. As we got higher above ground level, I looked out a large window and saw a scattered few people far below starting to arrive up the front steps, which was a different place than we had come in. They came from a long trail up through the woods. I asked her if that was the way we had come in (we'd walked around for some time in the building until I was thoroughly lost), and she said no, they were going in the front door to collect theirs. She actually shuddered, and I got the impression that she was glad to have avoided them, although she seemed quite happy to see me.

We finally reached an inner room which was smaller and painted, with carpet, and a large file cabinet, from which she procured a file with information about the money. She spread it out and went through it with me, there were a number of smaller amounts mentioned for various purposes. It seemed that this company managed the application for the winnings, and I was one who had been selected to apply, but the amount was not yet determined. I asked her (this was the catch, I knew) how much I would owe them, if I won. She said that they would take 15 percent of the winnings, and outlined an example in which I won millions and then paid them back a small portion. I thought this was a pretty good deal, and felt less suspicious about the whole thing. Another thing I asked her was if I should get back her the same way I came. She gestured with the papers (perhaps they contained instructions), and said that it depended on how I'd come. There were two ways to get here, through Arizona or through Texas. I said I'd probably come through Arizona, coming from Oregon, but she shook her head, puzzeled, and said no, I would probably be coming through Texas then. I was a little surprised. Despite the fact that I had driven here, I had a very unclear idea where we were, even what state we were in, and now was even more confused about it.

I continued asking her quite a few questions about the scholarship and contest. At first she was eager to answer them, but then she gradually became irritated by so many questions, and began to move farther and farther away. I could see that she was starting to get annoyed with the questions, but I persisted, I had quite a few. She gradually moved out of the room into a place in front where elevators opened up. I could now see that there were people arriving who worked there, starting to move about the huge interior. A man in a business suit came out of the elevator and started talking to her, she acted like it was quite important that she talk to him, but I suspected she was just trying to avoid more questions from me. She continued intermittently responding to me (I stood in the doorway of the room we had been in). More business folks arrived. Three more of them came out of the elevators and stood waiting to talk to her, men in navy blue business suits. They were exact duplicates of each other, a cut and paste job, and I remember thinking at the time that this was a bit lazy (of whom though, I wonder now... me for dreaming it? :S).

She gradually continued to move away until she was standing down some steps on a lower level quite a long ways away from me, talking to some of the men in business suits. I had to shout to reach her. I called one last question, which she answered, and found that all of them had been responded to. In general I felt positive about the plan. Now it was time for me to leave, and I started making my way out. I had no idea how we'd come in, it had been long and complicated. I started out down a huge spiral staircase, extremely wide with a very high ceiling, that we had come up together. I think eventually I ended up going out the front door, because I knew where it was, although it was not where I had parked my car.

A strange visit to the optometrist

2008-01-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

1/4/2008 - This morning's dream

Only a few scenes stand out clearly. I can't remember enough of the first part of the dream leading up to this segment, or exactly what happens after it, although the dream continues on in both directions.

I am going to an optometrist's office. It's one I haven't been to before, I am new in town. It's a small office, when I walk in the door there is a doctor, probably in his 30's, seated in an examining chair, right inside the door, tilted backwards (where a patient would sit). He has short black straight hair, and a white coat, and is main optometrist. When he looks up at me, I explain that I'm here for somebody else (maybe my husband?). I am not actually being examined today, but we are doing preliminary tests and I'm getting to know the doctor. Later, I or someone else will return for an actual appointment. The main optometrist in the chair sends me off with another guy who is sort of an assistant optometrist. This guy is much older, with gray hair. We go into a back room. As we go in, the old optometrist asks me if I know of a good contact lens solution. Do I have any problem with my contacts getting dry? He also wears them, apparently. It strikes me as odd that he is asking me (a patient) this, thinking I would know more about it, but I tell him what kind I use and say it's been working fine. In fact, I had been thinking about asking if he knew a better one, but I decide against it after this conversation. He is nice enough but doesn't seem that knowledgeable.

Once in the room, we sit at a small wooden table and talk. He says he's going to give me some preliminary tests, which consist of looking at some pictures which are of the "magic eye" sort and similar optical illusions. Except these versions are very clear and amazingly realistic, they don't look like regular magic eye pictures at all. One of them shows a brown version of buildings, sort of escher-esque. I comment on how nice these magic eye pictures are, I've never seen any like this. He agrees that they are quite nice, not like the common ones you find in the newspaper comics. (They actually did used to print them there when they became popular a few years ago, although I haven't seen them there for a while). There's actually an example of one of the usual ones there in the office, in a newspaper which has the comics page showing. I am trying to look at it to compare without him noticing, since he's still talking and that would be rude, but I try to sort of sneak looks at it.

For a while we talk amiably, but then I grow increasingly uncomfortable, and he also changes into a different person, younger, and sort of disturbing or creeping me out. I prepare to leave, but before I do so I put on some different clothes out of a backpack, over my existing clothes. They're a pair of pink pants and a sort of maroon or purple top.

The next part of the dream is unclear and somewhat confusing, but it involves me going into another room, I'm not sure it's in the same building but it has a stark medical look. There is a large machine that looks sort of like a printing press. It's used for some kind of physics-defying travel, maybe time travel or jumping from location to location. I think I or someone else uses this machine but the dream becomes increasingly mixed up at that point, and bops around from place to place, including a trail behind the house and someone else's house, and other people enter the picture. A lot more happens before and after the eye doctor which is related, but I've lost the linear thread of what happens.

Snapshot from an Alternate Reality Life

2008-01-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

1/3/2008 - This morning's dream

This dream took place as sort of an alternate universe type version of the meeting between myself and my husband. I was fully present in the dream, yet sort of aware at the same time that it was another version of reality, like a different way my life could have been (although not that it was a dream).

I am on my college campus, several years ago. Quite a few, if we're being honest. It's a bright, sunny summer day. I'm dressed fairly stylishly, in black and gray, with bleached hair, in a ponytail, and am full of confidence. As I walk off campus to my car, a man (my husband, who does not know me yet in the dream) notices me and apparently decides we have to meet, because he and some friends who are with him jump in a car and follow my car. He is wearing a light blue button down short-sleeved shirt. I am fully aware that I have caught his attention, but I continue driving home, watching in the rear view mirror, and singing out loud along with the radio (I went through quite a few actual songs in the dream, but now I don't remember which ones they were). I am sort of playing a game with my pursuer. Neither I nor my husband look quite like we do in real life, possibly because of the alternate reality... we are both dressed differently, with differently styled hair, and I at least also act quite a bit differently, sort of like people I used to observe, but was entirely unlike: who were popular, stylish, flirty, happy and bubbly and attracting attention. He's somewhat more subdued and less outwardly self-assured than in real life, although the differences are harder to pinpoint in someone besides myself. We're the same people, but living a different life.

He follows me all the way back to my house, which is a many-hours-long drive (going home for the summer, not home for class). In this reality I actually live in my real-life uncle's house, across the street from my parent's house (no sign of my uncle/aunt/cousins, the house belongs to me). When I get out, at my house, we meet properly and he stays and visits. We don't know each other but are trying to get to know each other now.

We walk down to the little bridge by the creek, and sit down on the bank of the creek, chatting and laughing. I end up putting my leg in front of a yellow jacket hole in the bank, and they come out stinging and biting me several times on my left lower leg, it's very painful. This is somehow his fault for having me sit down there, and I also don't get up, he has to drag me away from the nest (I'm not sure if I can't get up because of the stings on my leg, or I think he ought to move me - possibly both. There's definitely a sense of milking the "helpless" persona). I admonish him for getting me into this, but I'm not really mad. He returns with a can of Raid and sprays it on the nest, and we go back up to the house.

The house is the same, but it's remodeled totally differently inside. The first room is blue and more spacious, with a high ceiling and several not-very-comfy white couches and tall chairs in a sparse, modernistic style. My brother is also visiting me or staying with me for a while, and is already sitting there. I introduce them. My (future) husband has hurt his knees during the wasp incident, and I offer to rub them (not entirely altruistically). Then my brother intervenes and says that he has something painful on his lower back and wants me to look at it or remove it. He lays down, and there's a small spot on his lower right back. I try to see if i can squeeze out a sliver or pus or something but it looks more like a scar, not like there is anything in it. However, whenever I so much as touch it he screams in pain, so he quickly decides that it's not worth it. Then discussion leads to a mark on my shoulder which occasionally itches me, and hurts when I scratch it, an old red scar (existing in the waking world). My (future) husband is of the opinion that I should have it looked at, but I dismiss it.

Then we end up going up to my grandma's house to visit her, but I don't remember what happens there. The dream finishes up with a sort of "this is how it ended" scene back in the blue room, at some point later in time than when the rest of the dream took place, like when a movie skips ahead at the end to show you how the characters lives turned out. My name is now "Irianna" (not sure of the spelling, it seemed in the dream like it had more letters..Iarriana?). My husband and I are together there, possibly married now although that's not specified. We have a small white poodle-type dog, sort of like my waking-world former roommate used to have, but I have died it bright purple, "so its life will be more interesting."

With that finish, I wake up (or rather, I spent the next 45 minutes trying to wake up, drifting in between consciousness and remembering parts of the dream. In my semi-awake state, I feel it's very necessary to remember the name and the purple dog). The whole official "alternate reality" version of my life, as opposed to being weird becuase it was a dream was sort of a new one for me. Also, the amount of extreme physical pain (experienced by me and the others) was higher than usual, although I've felt pain in dreams before. The weirdest thing was how I acted like a totally different person, embracing behaviors that I don't do or even dislike, but that are common in many young women I know.

Escaping from a bookstore and recovering my car

2008-01-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

1/2/2008 - This morning's/last night's dream

I had been captured by some people and they had also taken my car and my husband's car (his car was a dark color, mine was just like mine in the waking world). I was held downtown (a somewhat shorter version of downtown than in the waking world). The evil doers also had a company with an office downtown. I don't recall what their company did or exactly how they ended up capturing me. There were some other people involved as well, including my husband. We weren't being held together, but we were able to communicate by cell phone.

I was in a bookstore, somewhat like P-'s (in fact it probably was P-'s). I plotted my escape. I was loose, but there were people roaming about the store, and keeping an eye out to make sure that I did not escape. The bigger problem after I got out, in my mind, was how to recover my car, which I needed.

At the time I was to escape, I woke up at night in the bookstore. It felt like I was on the second floor. I moved very quietly to avoid waking up the other people. I had to find a particular book, which would somehow help me escape; I couldn't get out without it. I snuck through the lighted areas of the store, avoiding being seen by people, and found the book. It was fairly large, the size of a dictionary, with text and pictures on the cover. I wondered how I could smuggle it out without being caught (it was now morning, and light out): there were two problems, me being seen and recognized, and someone noticing that I was carrying the book. I somehow managed to hide it under my shirt, partly stuck in the waistband of my pants (this would have been fairly obvious to anyone looking closely, but it worked).

I escaped from the bookstore like this; then I had to make my way to the company office. Once out, I ditched the book somewhere, apparently I didn't need it anymore. The office was a small, first floor office of an ordinary type. There, other members of the group were fighting the main evil person who had orchestrated this. I think she was the head of the company. They had gotten the car keys back, which I ended up with somehow as a result. With them distracting the company headquarters, I went to search out the car. I knew that both cars would be parked in a parking lot nearby, but which one? I called up my husband on my cell phone, I think he was involved in foiling the evildoers to prevent them from coming after before I got the car back. I questioned whether we should go to the police at this point, but we decided not, because then the company would know that I was looking for the car before I actually had it in my possession, and could get it away from me again.

I went from lot to lot, it was a race against time becuase the evil people now knew I had escaped and they were trying to get the car away. At one point I called and reported that my car was missing, and gave the license number (to a police or tow truck company, I'm not sure). I didn't identify myself, but they told me which lot the vehicle had been towed to. I set off to find it. I scanned the cars in lot after lot. The evil doers were chasing after me at the same time. I managed to move my husband's car to a safe location (since I couldn't drive both at once) but when I went back for mine, they had moved it again. I finally found it. The key I used to get into the car looked like one of those classic "skeleton" type keys that aren't really used for anything anymore, rather than a regular car key.

I escaped out of town in my vehicle and ended up driving through a trail in a forest. It looked like it was May, spring but not as soggy anymore. Everything was mossy and green. The trail was wide and flat, but there were many fallen trees across it. I went over the trees in the car easily, like they were gently sloping speedbumps, slowly going up and over each one. There were other people driving over them in the woods too, and white horses jumping them, but I was no longer being pursued, I had shaken off the evil doers and gotten away.

Later on, I was walking on a logging road. The terrain was very hilly and uneven, and I was high up looking out over everything in the valleys and surrounding hills. I was in an unfamiliar part of the logging road system, but was making my way home. I'd come this way before, many years ago (and also in other dreams, I think). I realized, however, that the field I used to orient myself when I got close to home was no longer a field, it was grown in with trees. Would I still be able to find it and find my way?

I had three small devices with me, about the size of my cell phone or slightly smaller. they were shaped like an elongated half circle, or a rectangle that was round on one end. At least one of them had brown line symbols marked on the front. I used these devices for something in the dream, but I woke up while I was using them, and I now I can't remember what they were for, or what they were called.

Going back to school, thoughts of future and past

2008-01-01T15:43:00.000-08:00

1/1/2008
Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream

Throughout, the theme is that I am going to go back to college again starting this coming summer/fall. I have somehow secured a scholarship for continuing studies, and am planning to return to EWU. I'm fairly excited about this. In the earlier parts to the dream, I'm under the mistaken impression that I originally got my AA degree there and am returning to get my BA degree. But later on I remember that I actually did get my BA there, and so now I have to decided what I will be studying... will I get 2nd bachelor's degree? Will I pursue Art, which I have always enjoyed but held off studying until the end, for foolish reasons? Will I get a master's as well? In what? The possibilities open up to me and I continue to think about this throughout the dream. I also remember the past and times I had there, and recall how long ago it was, 7 years really? Will I still remember things that I learned that I need to continue in my studies, like advanced math? I remember several returns to the campus that I have had in other dreams, which are actual past events in this dream. In fact, some undetermined work I was doing in another dream where I was back on campus comes up in this one, in light of the fact that I've actually been on campus recently for while. I speculate about people I knew back then, although surely they are no longer going to school there. I also tell people at work (I seem to be still working back in A-) and a number of other real-life acquaintances that I am going to stop working and return to school.

At one point, I am with my mother and we are travelling somewhere, possibly back to visit the campus prior to me moving back. We stop and have to wait in line somewhere, (at an airport maybe?) for a long period of time (we're sitting down on the ground). We end up next to a young muslim woman about my age, and we make our acquaintance. She is somewhat shy, and from another country recently come here, but I am not sure from where. Her mother or perhaps other relatives of hers are also there. She gives us tea and later some sort of meat meal which is sort of like teriyaki chicken and a Chinese beef stir fry. My mother talks enthusiastically and at one point mentions that we haven't eaten in a long time, at which point she hurries off to go find us some more food. I admonish my mother, saying that she's already given us a bunch to eat and my mother inadvertently made her feel guilty.

I follow the woman into other rooms, she apparently lives here. It's a sparse place, sort of like a laundry room, but with colorful accents. We chat in a friendly way and I discover that she is also starting studies at EWU. She already has a room lined up there. I tell her I will shortly be moving back there too, and I am quite happy to have met her. I share various bits of knowledge that I remember from my past there. Some of it, in fact, is misremembered, which I realize later in the dream. For instance, she asks me about one dorm hall, Morrison, and if it is really true that you can only access the outside storage when the water is low? I say yes, you have to go in by boat otherwise (remembering this and picturing it in my head) and my sister used to live there, I didn't recommend it. The only benefit is access to the Morrison cafe, which is directly above. I recall a place by docks which you have to row in and out of. Then I remember that my sister didn't actually go to this school. Then I also remember that this can't be Morrison, because that was the hall I lived in. So what is the name of that one? (In real life, there's no hall with water access). I'm a bit stumped at how my memory has gotten twisted around like this, and hasten to try to correct the stories, but now the misremembered bits bug me. She also mentions that the description said they all had outside storage, but she supposed she could get used to it.

In general I laud the campus and recall it fondly. I'm excited to be returning and going back to school. I wonder idly if I will be allowed to live in the dorms since I am married now. Will I have to live in the married student court? But my husband won't be moving there with me. In fact, should I have arranged to pay for a whole dorm room to myself, so I won't have a roommate? But I did have a roommate before, actually, which wasn't so bad most of the time... Chains of thought like this continue as the rest of the dream goes on, including interacting with the young woman. A lot of it is spent reminiscing over my recollections of EWU, and trying to correct misrememberances. This goes on for quite some time, most of which I don't recall in detail.

Later in the dream we are walking through an area of woods which looks sort of like the trail up to my parent's house. It's dark, but not completely dark... just past dusk. There is a large hollow tree, and there is someone who is somewhat dangerous or wild hiding inside, we keep trying to catch glimpses through holes and cracks. He has climbed up high inside, and we can't get him out. There's some talk of shooting through the holes, but I don't want him killed, it's not necessary. We go around and around this topic for some time, and circle the tree and look up inside, trying to see in and to determine a plan.

The main and very long part of the dream, which is about the return to college, is filled with a combination of excitement towards the future and nostalgia as I remember my previous time there, with a mixture of happiness and sadness. The actual events and preparation move slowly, and I don't remember most of them, mentally I'm not really keyed into them. Instead I'm thinking about returning to school and my thoughts on this, remembrances (both true to life and not), and imaginings fill up most of this part of the dream. There's also a connection remembering other actual dreams where I returned there (though not to attend) which factor into this dream.

Killer Bicyclist

2007-12-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

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....

2007-12-25T16:07:00.000-08:00

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.