Don't Park Your Horse In the Garage

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).

Moderately Bad But Vague Straits

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).

Breaking News Interrupted

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.

Of Waifs and Wafers

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

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 Revelation About An Aunt

4/19/2008 - Saturday Morning's dream

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

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

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

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

Confused and Confusing Grandparents

4/9/2008
Wednesday morning's dream

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

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

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

Nobody grocery shops but me!

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.

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

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

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.

A dangerous market for me, attacks and poison

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

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

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

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

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

Looking for a gift, finding crazy people

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

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

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

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

Don't Rent From Your Aunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visiting a Park with a Holy Cliff

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hilarity at work and my sister wins a parrot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A leap not of faith - deeply affecting me

10/30/2007 - Last night's dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10/29/2007 - Last night's dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mysterious Glowing Rocks, Age Control

Tuesday Night, 8/14
Something is going on up on the new logging road, at the end of the road. Signs are put up indicating that there is going to be some kind of explosion tonight as they try to unearth some kind of large rock (with the idea that people will go to watch the excavation). We toy with the idea of going to it, but end up not. As evening falls, word gets out that something strange has been discovered. It is a large sandstone rock but it has transparent parts, and inside is a glowing green cavity. The area is now restricted. Everybody speculates about it. My father mentions that he ran into some police in the woods earlier as they were wandering around sectioning off the area. They had Geiger counters to test for radioactivity (he cannot remember what these are called, I supply the word. Then the family starts discussing how it is actually pronounced... "jijer, jiger, giger, gijer").

Later I am thinking about that hollow rock they found and playing with an inflatable globe. The air keeps going out, but there is a patch over the north pole which can be positioned to prevent the air from going out so fast. I fiddle with this for some time, deflating, inflating, and putting the patch over the hole.

I am back in my apartment. My brother is there. He is very young, and running around playing with a squirtgun. In the dream I am aware that he is not really that young, and that I should update his activities (and appearance) to be more appropriate to his real age, perhaps lounging on the couch and doodling. I envision this, but, in the end, I keep him the same age. Although I am aware this is not reality, and also aware that I can influence it, I don't think I was aware that I was actually dreaming. It was pretty strange.

He has been playing with the computer and listening to music as well, and he has some kind of video game. It is not playstation or gameboy but something else which begins with P. I tell him he can use the computer on the guest account that my husband recently set up (about the only thing that's also true in the waking world), or play video games with the playstation, if he wants to, but he opts not to do so right now, and runs around playing. The dream fades back and forth between this house and my parents' house with the radioactive rock activities, switching scenes.

There's another later chapter to this dream, but I can't remember it.

2nd cousin and a strange night on the town

I fell asleep reading at 5 something in the evening and woke up at 9 when the phone rang.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the first part of the dream, which is less clear, I was going to meet my second cousin (in real life), H. In the dream, I recalled meeting her twice before and playing with her, once when I was about 8 and once slightly later. In real life I can actually only remember the second time. She was about my age and therefore it was most appropriate, I had thought as a child, that she be friends with me instead of my cousins. I knew she had a horse, named Comet. I was excited to see her again in the dream, but very anxious because I was afraid that she would not remember me. It is often this way with people I knew only slightly but who I remembered well, seemingly significant figures in my life when I was merely a passing face among many in theirs. There were many preparations along with other members of my family to meet the cousin, and we were in a green place, in town I think. I don't remember if it actually got to the point of meeting her in the dream, but I think not.

In the second part, which was much more detailed, I am in Port- near my work, but it is different than Port- in reality, much more like a small town. This is the first time I think I have dreamed about living in this city since moving here... it sometimes takes a few months for "dream time" to catch up with "real time" elements in my life. I am going to see a play or movie later at a small theater, which one of my former coworkers, R, (who I don't even particularly like), is also going to. We talk briefly about how maybe we will see each other there and if each other is going to stop at a cafe to have something to eat first, with me feigning interest but hoping I will not run into her. It is a late night showing, it will start after 9 p.m. It seems that several other people from work are also planning to go. This may be why I'm involved in it in the first place. My husband is around, but I don't know if he is actually going to it (I don't remember him ending up there later). My sister and brother are here, and we are at a house, perhaps mine, although it is not familiar. I decide to go to a cafe a few blocks away to get something to eat. I also need to pick up the tickets in advance for the movie. Since I don't want to walk over to the cafe and get something to eat by myself, I enlist my brother to go with me, which he does extremely reluctantly. We walk to this small cafe which is a knight's move away from the house we are in, block-wise, and I order some kind of chocolate-moussey-cakey kind of dessert. While we are waiting to leave there, I remember suddenly that I need to pick up the tickets, and off we go to the theater to pick them up. I didn't get to eat the dessert, and I think we are intending to come back for it but we forget and go home again.

We are waiting until it's time to meet my mother and Aunt K at the restaurant, and suddenly two people are at the door demanding to be let in, police. I am not properly dressed to answer the door so we are all frantic. My sister refuses to get the door either; I push my brother forward and he finally goes and opens it while I struggle into additional clothes. My husband has just arrived and is wants to know what is going on with these people. As it turns out, apparently I left the cafe without paying for the dessert, and they have actually come to my house to collect the money. I tell my flustered husband that I need to return to the cafe to pay and go off dragging my brother along again. When I come back my husband takes me in the car to go to the restaurant. All of this happens in a fairly small radius of blocks. We pass a small organic halal grocery store, which I apparently knew about but my husband didn't (I didn't tell him about it for some reason). He exclaims over how it is close to my work, and I say yes this is great, I can walk over and get a sandwich or something easily. The people working out in front at some fruit stand extension of the store call back and forth to my husband, but now I can't remember what they were saying. We continue to the restaurant and I think my husband says he doesn't want me going to that grocery store.

We meet my mother at the restaurant. It is very old-fashioned and ornate, with lots of brass decoration, red velvet, and lace. I leave them at the table and go into the bathroom, which is connected to a curtained waiting room. The bathroom has an enormous sink, but no toilet, although there is a large chamber pot sitting on the edge of the sink, apparently for decorative purposes. I contemplate using this and pouring it into the sink but eventually decide not to. In leaving, I go out the other end of the room and notice a mirror which reflects down the hall to where our table is. I am pleased to see that my aunt has joined my mother and husband at the table. Then, when I walk back to the table (in the other direction) I realize that something is very off... The table I saw when I looked out the other end of the bathroom would have been located kitty-corner from where our table actually is (but it's definitely the same table). I exclaim over this to my mother and we talk about the apparent physics-defying properties of this restaurant.

After the restaurant, we go to the play/movie. There is a big star, I think a basketball star called Jamal or Jamar or something in the audience tonight, and so the place is absolutely packed with people hoping to get close to him. It's a fairly small theater in terms of how many sets of seats there are, though.

Before you get to the seats, there is this screen you can walk over set into the floor, and if you look down through it you can see the star's car parked below in the underground garage. The car is very fancy. I note that when I came in here earlier to buy tickets, the screen was taut and easy to walk across, but now, presumably because of excited fans standing/jumping on it, the panels of the screen are very saggy and it is more like walking across sections of an old screen door or a trampoline. The others in my party opt not to try walking on it for this reason.

When we get to our seats I discover my mother has reserved seats in the front row right next to the celebrity sports guy for herself and me, with the seats for my sister and brother slightly offset behind us. I am VERY excited about this. Let me just say that in real life this would be extremely bizarre, because I have no interest in sports or celebrities, and I have no idea who any of these people are anyway, let alone wanting to sit next to one. Anyhow, it dawns on me while my mother is talking about how excited she was that she had been able to adjust the seating arrangements to move me up to the front row (originally I guess we were all sitting together), that this is for my birthday (which in real life I don't celebrate). The movie, special seating arrangements, dinner at the fancy restaurant are all to make me feel special and appreciated (which I hadn't realized or the occasion for them, or that it was about me). It was akin to a real-life moment when I was four and my mother made muffins to celebrate me finishing my reading book. Until she told me what the muffins were for, I was completely clueless to the fact that they were for a celebration, or indeed, that there was anything to celebrate.

In the dream, we never actually get to the movie, I am just super psyched about being next to the big star, and everybody around me is jealous and commenting on it (he is not actually sitting there at the moment). I have no idea how my mother had the leverage to get these seats. About this time though, I wake up to a phone call.