Creepy Dogs and Murdering

Tuesday 9/2 (Last night's)

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

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

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

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

Disloyalty and Longing

7/15/2008 Tuesday morning/Monday night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Very Unfortunate Cat (gross-out alert)

3/14/2008
Thursday night's dream

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

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

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

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

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

A Photographic Tragedy in Five Parts

Friday night/Saturday morning 2/16/2008

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

Part 1.

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

Part 2.

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

Part 3.

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

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

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

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

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

Part 4.

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

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

Part 5.

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

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

Snapshot from an Alternate Reality Life

1/3/2008 - This morning's dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding crystals in dangerous ground

Last night's dream

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

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

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.

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.