Bad Situation Gets Worse

Another dream from last night, which I just remembered

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

A Reunion But It's Not Him

Tuesday night/wed morning (6/25)

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

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

The Ache of Emptiness and Comfort

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Guilt-Ridden Situation

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

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

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

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

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

An Uncomfortable Visit and Other Anxious Situations

4/29/2008
Dream 2

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

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

Tall Buildings in the Trees and Confusion

4/11/2008

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

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

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

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

Keeping Playing Alive

4/5/2008

Saturday Morning/Friday Night's Dream

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

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

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

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

Daytrip to a Glacier

3/24 Monday night?

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

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

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

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

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.

Many strange goings-on in a busy night

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

Sad and looking for a place to stay

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

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

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

Next dream:

South American "research"

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

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

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

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

Radioactive seepings downtown at work

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

Thwarting a motel evildoer

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

All Shook Up

A couple days ago- Monday night's dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dealing in the Desert with a Disappearance in the Snow

Last night's dream

My husband had gone on a walk in a mountainous park. It was snowy there. He didn't come back and I and my family and rescue people went out to look for him, but didn't find him. It was a forested area high in the hills, which looked kind of like where I used to live. It snowed again that night and he did not come back. I came to the realization over the next days that people did not think he was coming back, and he might be dead.

My mother, who had been staying there with me, took me back home, and we were going up to my grandma's house to visit when we saw a sign board with a brown poster on it, and my sister started crying and was very upset. At first I thought it was bad news about my husband, but it was actually a notice about a wake for an old friend of hers who had died a few months ago (in the waking world as well). I was surprised to see her so upset, because she'd already known of his death at the time it happened and had seemed sad then but not so upset. Something had happened to her boyfriend around this time as well, he was sick I think in a life-threatening way. It seemed odd that all three of them were in peril around the same time. It was when she got upset over the sign that I realized that everybody else already thought my husband was probably dead by now, since he hadn't been found.

I was sad, and worried, but not inconsolable or as upset as my sister had been about the sign, because it didn't seem real to accept the fact that he was actually dead, so I kept waiting and hoping. I drove back near the mountain area, wanting to stay nearby and not to return home until he was found, also leaving my work indefinitely to wait and find out.

I started walking alone and found myself in a deserty area, very dry and dusty, with some sage brush and desert plants. I ran into a guy about my age, taller and bigger than me, but very friendly, and I followed him back to a small town, where he lived. He was native american, and it was a native american town, but it was in a somewhat old-fashioned architecture style. The buildings were of the type covered with baked clay, with rounded edges, like in the southwest, but modern and comfortable inside. They were sandy colored on the outside and matched the desert around. I felt a little out of place walking through the town, but he and his family who lived there invited me in and I stayed and talked with them. They knew already who I was, it seemed, and that my husband was lost in the snowy mountain area (it had a name, but I don't remember which mountain it was). They were very nice and sympathetic to me. I stayed for a while, and watched TV with them, there were some issues with reception and we kept getting strange channels.

The guy I met offered for me to spend the night there, as I wanted to stay in the area and I had nowhere to go. He was very nice to me and as I got to know him, I realized that he liked me and was interested in me. I told him that I was very grateful of the offer (I was, and I kind of wanted to stay there), but I reminded him that I was married (I don't know if I said married, or engaged to be married). He said that he knew that (in other words, was not trying to get anywhere with me right now), and he looked sympathetic and it occurred to me that none of them thought my husband was coming back, they were just waiting for me to come to that conclusion as well, and provide comfort for me when I did. He wanted me to know that he wanted to be there for me when I understood that, but he wasn't going to pressure me, although he didn't say this, just showed it by his actions.

I realized that if my husband was really not coming back, I would keep hoping for a long time, and how long would it take before I accepted it? I never accept things, just keep hoping whenever something bad happened or I lost someone. This brought to mind the guy I had loved years before I met my husband, who hadn't been interested in me the same way. I had kept hoping he would change his mind, but it hadn't changed, and eventually I'd forced myself to move on. Looking back I knew it wouldn't have worked out but it had taken a long time to realize that. The nice guy who was helping me reminded me of him in some ways, but more gentle and nice to me.

I tried to think about how it would be and what I would do if it turned out I was a widow, but I couldn't get it to sink in. I spent a lot of time wandering around the area and thinking about it, and wondering if my husband would be found, as the nice guy who'd offered me a place to stay while waiting showed me around the town and the garden and such, and tried to make me comfortable.

The overall feelings of the dream were of sadness, thoughtfulness, the unreal feeling caused by shock, and also a sort of comfort, as if everything was going to keep going and be okay. When I awoke I still felt this and then I also felt guilty about it and about not being more distraught.

To be in a play or not to be in a play

11/6/2007 - Most recent dream of last night/this morning
I had at least three dreams last night but they are all pretty hazy by now, although I remembered them briefly after each one. This was the one I could remember enough of to describe, and was the last one before I woke up.

I was with a female companion, not sure if friend or relative, and we were walking around downtown P-. We heard there was a contest going on for play writers; they would each come up with original short plays and "play off" against each other for the best one, who would get a prize. We were uninterested in the idea, putting it down.

Then, we run into one of my coworkers, J-. He is very excited and tells us about how he has entered the contest and is putting on a play that day, and needs our help as extras in the cast. Will we do it? It'll be fun! In a switch from my early attitude, I agree. We set off, we are now in my apartment building (which doesn't look much like mine, and is closer to downtown, but it's where I live in the dream.

As we head out, J- asks hesitantly if I want to change before we go. I suddenly realize that I am just wearing jeans and a tee shirt (striped pink). My hair is uncovered and is cut in a bob (which it was last cut like when I was 17, and before that I wore it that way when I was 12-13). I say yes, and hurry back to my apartment, as they wait in the hall.

As I'm coming in the door, my cell phone starts ringing, but I don't get to it before it goes to voicemail. I check the display, and it's my husband. I will call him back as soon as I get my clothes on, I hurriedly dress. Just as I finish, though, I hear the key in the lock and he comes in. He has run into the others in the hallway and they told him of the plan, and he is angry about it. He tells me that I am not going to be in the play, and asks why I didn't tell him/call him back, etc., while I attempt to offer excuses about how it's just for fun and how I was just going to call him and tell him when he walked in.

Overall mood:
In the earlier part of the dream I felt disinterested, mocking the play. Then, when I was invited to participate, I was excited, and felt daring, but a little apprehensive of my husband's reaction (although I planned to tell him, I delayed it). I anticipated him to be angry and react the way he did, although I sort of imagined if I'd been able to explain it first, I might have gotten away with it. When he was angry and said I couldn't go, I was also angry and unhappy, although fearful of his reaction as he acted like I'd been hiding something.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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