Beach With No Exit

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.

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

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?).

Self-Examination, Missed Lunch Date, and Beach House

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.

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

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).

All Shook Up

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.

The Most Embarassing Moment of My Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kidnappings, and Friendly Foreign Female Strangers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vacation and reunion with an old friend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Work at the coast and a flooded park

At one point I was in this large circular building near the beach, with many open rooms and offices. I was wandering around talking with one of my coworkers, L-. We found a vase on another coworker's desk (not one who exists in the waking world, and at her prompting, I took it to wash it in the sink (knowing we shouldn't do this, but planning to return it before he found out... I'm not sure what the point was in taking it). It turned out the bottom had one of those cardboard pads on it, dyed blue, so when it got wet it started leaching dye. Another (also non-existent in the waking world) coworker came up while we were washing it in the sink and commented on it and how the owner had brought it back from somewhere. He was enthusiastic about it.

I tried to absorb the dye with paper towels and then went to put it back without the guy noticing, but he was already back at his desk. He was dressed in an orange and yellow striped button-up shirt and tie, with several-inches-long straight brown hair. Maybe in his forties, nobody I know in the waking life. He was somewhat surprised when we returned to discover we had his vase. We offered some lame excuse about wanting to put flowers in it or something, (he was dismayed that it was missing but didn't seem to know what to say) and I put it on the table with a folded paper towel underneath to prevent any blue die from leaching, hoping he would not notice that it was damaged. Then the guy who'd seen us washing it at the sink came by and talked jovially about the story of the vase, noting that it had cost the owner 153 dollars (at which I was somewhat shocked, since it was an ugly, squat, square pebbly green-glass vase with a cheap cardboard base, plus I could have totally wrecked it). Later L- and I wandered through other parts of the building, talking between us, but I don't remember all that we did. We were talking about age at one point (she is slightly younger than me but probably does not know that I am that young, she was talking about various pranks or comments people have made to her on account of being the youngest), and generally making friends.

In a later segment of the dream, I was returning from that building to somewhere else, and I drove up a wooded hill not that far from the coast, with plenty of standard trees, salal, and mist. I was going to stop at this park, I think I had to do something there. But when I got to the entrance, I discovered that it was flooded. There were several people just preparing to go in, they had an duffel bag with energy bars and water bottles and stuff, some of them had bikes. I had decided I was going to have to wade through part of the water. It had something to do with the fact that R- (one of the family dogs, who is no longer alive in the waking world) had just given birth to a new litter of puppies in the park on the other side of the flood. I picked over the granola bars to take one with me (I guess they were freely available), and prepared to go through the knee high water.

Apocalypse and a Paralyzed Dog which is My Fault

Dream from Saturday night (8/11)
It is the end of the world, the apocalypse is starting. One of the effects of this is the internet going down. There is a group of 100 or so people who are planning how they will survive it, a handpicked team. They have a way to keep a small network with their blogs and stuff going through the apocalypse. I am part of this team, but not by choice. It seems to have to do with my work affiliation. I am outspoken at the meeting expressing my contempt of their idea and asking why they get to single themselves out as being special enough to survive, what about the rest of the world? If just going off individual merit, my parents and family members are far more qualified, and not because they are related to me. I think the elite group should not exclude the rest of the world.

In between, I am on a trip somewhere with my family and husband. We are in a deserty region near the coast. I see the family dog, C-, being bitten on the face by a gila monster. Except, it doesn't really look like a gila monster, it is all green and swims in the water. But it is quite large, and it's bite is deadly poisonous. I feel guilty because I don't say anything immediately when I notice it, and then it finally lets go of his face and swims away (his whole head was pretty much in it's mouth) and I know that it's going to be fatal. Nobody else seems terribly concerned, until it becomes evident that his body is paralyzed (from the neck down, for some reason). We head back home. We end up in the city of P-, buildings are collapsing, or blown out and empty. We are searching for a veterinarian, but everybody is closed due to the apocalypse. We finally end up going back to the town where my parents live, where we locate a vet and leave C- there to be cared for, going back to my parent's house.

At my parents house, my father discusses with my husband how we should head back to our home. One proposal is for my husband to take the truck, and my father to take the tractor, with me riding on the back, and go into town. At the time I don't realize it, but later I think my father knew that the dog was going to die at the Vet's and would need to be retrieved. Later, I am standing on the covered porch at my parents house as darkness falls. I can actually feel the darkness closing in around me, it is velvety soft and warm. I go inside to the living room, my parents are sitting on the couch and chair. I ask them if they have heard anything about C-, or something like that. They do not say anything at all. We stand there looking at each other, me with the growing realization that this must mean he has died, but nobody says anything.

We are still standing there when my husband comes in the door and I wake up, without the question being answered.

Trip to Algae Mountain

I have gone to visit my sister at a place she has been staying for a while, and we go to see the main attraction. It is a big rock set at the edge of a bay or inland sea. The waves wash up and crash over it but you can walk to it in between. She tells me that the rock is best accessed at high tide, which doesn't make any sense, because you can only get to it when there is some ground exposed between the land and the rock. The ground around the rock (normally underwater) is covered with white shells and rocks. The surrounding land is hazy with mist or sea spray and is smooth and mounded with bluffs covered with thick green grass. The rock itself is completely covered (almost upholstered) with that thick, cushiony grass-like algae. It looks like it would be slippery but I manage to climb up it, following my sister's lead, without slipping, and we cross it between waves crashing on it.

We go up to a smooth dark gray small slab of rock, partway up the side of the bigger rock. There is a young man with a backpack standing in front of it scratching something on it with a small stone. When he leaves, my sister follows suit and when it is my turn, I see that people have recorded their names or initials and when they visited the rock. There is a line of alphabet letters and most people have scratched their name/initials and date under the appropriate letter. But some people who have visited many times, like my sister, have their names separate with a list of dates underneath. There is not a lot of extra room to write in and I look for a place to scratch my name and the date. There is not enough space under the letter for my initial. My sister tells me to hurry up, and I realize that a line has formed behind me of several boys (maybe 10 years old) waiting to scratch their names. The first boy in line has dark hair and blacked rim glasses, and looks Asian. Finally I find a small empty space and scratch in my initials and the date (all the dates are years, as I recall). The stone is soft like claystone and easy to carve in. When I finish, I realize that the boys are being rounded up to get back into a van, which is parked nearby on another part of the rock. I realize they have to leave without having time to leave their marks, in an apparently very short but important trip out to this rock, and feel sorry for holding up the line.

After they are gone, an old woman comes up and asks my sister if she found something that the woman's brother or husband (not sure which) left her some weeks or months ago. I had the impression that the man who left it here has passed away or something. It seems that my sister has been coming here often. She looks behind the scratching rock, which has a back sort of like a podium, and removes a pouch, looking through it, but does not find the missing object. My sister is very helpful and eventually determines from talking to the slightly tottery old woman that the object is a Leatherman (one of those folding knife/pliers things). She shows the woman her Leatherman and the woman nods enthusiastically. Then from her purse she digs out another Leatherman, more worn looking, and this one has an enormous screw attached to it, maybe 6 inches long and proportionally thick (it was not part of the Leatherman, just tacked on afterwards). The woman is delighted and thanks her profusely.

We return to a house which is somewhat like my parents' house and somewhat like a house that my grandparents used to have. Several people are taking turns using the bathroom. When I go in, I think to myself that the house is big, fancy, has 7 rooms, and yet it only needs one bathroom. It's certainly sufficient, I think (notwithstanding all the people who apparently keep needing to wash muddy clothes in the bathroom), and comparing this to the real life fact that we recently were looking for a 2 bedroom apartment that my husband insisted had to have 2 bathrooms as well... surely unnecessary.

Moving in another world, and at a loss to show how I care

In the first part of the dream, I was on a trip by myself, some kind of vacation in a jungle. At the end, I floated across a small river on a raft. My aunt and her family had been here in the past, and she had told me she could pick me up at the other side of this river on the way back from one of her trips. I had no intention of being picked up, however. She had also told me to be careful of the water lillies that grew on this water. They looked like regular white lillies, but they were poisonous to the touch. I observed them as I poled my raft to the edge and got out.
Now, I was going to walk home from here and then I was going to walk from P-- to S--. This has been a recurrent theme in my past dreams, and sometimes a desire in my waking world, to set out walking on long distances that normally people would not walk.

I walked back to my home, and then crossed the river into V--, to establish my route. At that point, I planned to return to my house, I was going to pack my overnight bag for the rest of the trip. When I turned back some floodgates by the edge of the river (which in the dream was more a flooded small stream) had opened, and muddy water covered some of the paths I had been on. There were several people sitting around who had seen me cross before and watched with amusement at the idea that I was going to get wet crossing back. A girl ahead of me gave up and plowed through, soaking her pants. I was not planning to get soaked for the remainder of my walk, and hopped across a narrow part, onto a large rock, and then jumped the rest of the way across, wetting only a corner of my pant leg.

I returned to my apartment for a bag and set out on the longer walk. It was somewhat late in the day and I could tell that it was going to be dark by the time I arrived at my parents house (an overstatement, since in the real world I think it would be impossible to walk that far in a day, much less a few hours). Almost all the way there, my father was driving by and picked me up, and I reluctantly allowed myself to ride the remainder of the way, I had walked most of it.

In the next part of the dream, I had returned to my home, some time later. Then my cousin returned from a long trip, and wanted to see me. My husband was away and I was trying to get out of visiting my cousin because it would bother him, but also he had chosen to be away and so I couldn't call him and tell him so I ended up going along with it for a little while. I walked along the waterfront to where my cousin was staying to get it over quickly, trying to act nice and friendly. The waterfront was like a conglomeration of some small beach towns I've seen. It had bricked decorative walkways along the fronts of very tall narrow buildings on the edge of the bay. One of them was the building my cousin was staying in. Another was a museum or rocket launching center or something, with a gift shop downstairs. My cousin was acting strangely, and invited me in for dinner. People came up spiral staircases from farther down in the building, carrying tray after tray of food, like an elaborate thanksgiving feast complete with turkey. I was appreciative but protested that I couldn't eat it all and had eaten recently. My cousin was somewhat disappointed. We strolled around for a while more and my cousin asked me a strange question, which made me both somewhat uncomfortable, and also disappointed that I couldn't think of the answer. "If you had 1000 "carules" to spend, how would you show someone that you care for them more than anything in the world." (or some word very similar to that, which was a real word in the dream that meant something like "love points," all the energy and resources that go into demonstrating care and love. In this case 1000 was an extremely large amount, equivalent to saying someone had one the lottery if it had been money).

I was somewhat taken aback at the question, and I wondered if my cousin was getting at something, but I decided to not think about that. I thought about it in terms of showing my husband how much I care and love him. But I could not think of what I would do with my carules, if I had so many to use. I was disappointed and finally said I'd have to think about it, and we watched the seagulls as I felt sad and somewhat inadequate to not know how to spend them.

After I extricated myself from the visit with my cousin, I went to my house to pack my things to move to a new a apartment. I was moving rather suddenly, and to an apartment that I did not particularly like. It was on a second floor, but if you opened the window it looked out onto other people's windows and balconies, and was not private. Also, some parts of the apartment had curtains between them instead of walls. I do not know why I had to move so suddenly. I sat in my apartment cramming the last items into a duffel bag, which were some items of clothing. Some of them I really have in the real world, others were items familiar to me in the dream but that I don't have in the real world. I also crammed my remaining stuffed animal, very worn, into the bag. Some coats and scarves were the last. My mother was helping me pack, although aside from this everything else had been moved.

We walked out past the gift shop on the waterfront, and my mother and I stopped there. I considered buying a small plastic animal but ended up not doing so. We chatted aimlessly and then I continued to the apartment. I felt sad, as I often do when moving.

I reached the new apartment and put my stuff down. My husband had returned and looked at it not liking it very much, as I had expected. My brother was also there to see. I put the stuff in the kitchen and we looked at the apartment somewhat grumpily. My husband also wondered why I'd had to move so suddenly.

There was a break in the dream and then in the last part, one of my neighbors in the apartment complex was having a fight with another neighbor, trying to get her to move out on some half-baked legal claim. The one who was being pushed out was like my old neighbor back in A-, an old woman. The one trying to get her evicted was like my old college roommate, but obnoxious. I watched with some distress, but not knowing what to do. My mother stepped in and began explaining to the old woman what her legal rights really were, and trying to mediate the whole thing.

Wet Desert

I haven't been remembering dreams very well for the last couple of weeks, although the faint ghosts of some of them have flitted around the corners of my waking world. I remembered some scraps from last night, though.

I was in Saudi Arabia with my husband. The land was not like I would imagine it to be, instead it was like a very very drizzly fall day at the beach, but humid. The sand was gray like the northern beaches and wet and stretched away in uneven flatness, with trickling water in between. Visibility was very short, and it was hazy and drippy. We walked to an old building with public showers, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. It was very large and made of thick, dark, old wood and stone, and was tall and shadowy with staircases going up and down and rooms sort of like dark, wooden locker rooms. My husband went into the men's part, to shower, and I went to the women's part. Nobody else was there, although when I looked out around the corner of the wall, I could see at least one distant figure in the haze, not coming or going I think. I don't remember if I showered or not, but I fumbled a lot with putting my hair up afterwards. It would not stay, and I had 3 or 4 wooden pokers of different kinds that I was trying to keep it up with.

There was more, including riding in a car before or after, I think, but that was the only part I can remember. The whole dream was very quiet, with sort of a pregnant waiting feeling, but not negative.

Rhododendron Forests - Epistle to Dippy?

Last night, I went to bed with an excruciating headache, almost as bad as a migraine. Somehow I got to sleep, but it stayed even in my dream, and was still there when I woke up.
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It was the Fourth of July weekend (I'm aware that it doesn't fall on the weekend this year, but in the dream it purported to be this year). My husband and I were on a vacation of some sort. We were walking along a sandy road near a coast. The area was very beautiful, with pale golden sand, brilliant blue water, and a low forest of rhododendrons in many, many colors: blue and unrealistic multicolors among the more normal pinks and purples. I realize now that in words, it sounds much like the southern Oregon coast dune area we visited recently, with mountains of sand and rhododendrons growing wild in the woods by the hundreds (pink ones), but it actually didn't look at all the same. For one thing, there was nothing growing in this deserty forest except the rhododendrons, and they were growing in the sand right beside the water.

We walked back up to some kind of guest house where my family was staying. It was white and airy inside. My mother showed us (my husband mainly, because in the dream I had already seen them) a collection of taekwon-do trophy's that my brother had won over the years. In addition to traditional trophies, there was a collection of larger statues that looked like they were made of painted wood or paper mache, sort of like saints. My brother acted typically bored and dismissive about them.

Then, my husband and I were driving through Lincoln Creek Valley, trying to decide where to go to see the fireworks display. We were discussing if we would go all the way to the reservation (where I used to go to see them in real life, near my parent's house), although this would be a pretty long drive for us from where we live now, so I don't know why we didn't find anything closer. On the way, we saw a group of taekwon-doists performing outside of a church or barn. We almost stopped, but when we slowed down I saw that it wasn't a group that I knew, so we kept driving.

Throughout the dream, I had a very large bruise on my forehead, above my left eye, which was extremely painful. I couldn't remember how I had gotten it (not too unusual in real life, I end up with bruises quite often whose origin I can't remember), although in the dream several people expressed concern about it. It was exactly where my real-life headache was centered. When I woke up the headache was still killing me and I couldn't imagine how I'd actually managed to sleep with it.