Midnight Meander

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

8/20/2008 (approximate)

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

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

Seemingly Random Snippets

Tuesday/Wednesday night?

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

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

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

A Return To Inexplicable Teenage Angst

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bad vacation before life imprisonment

I was on a long car trip with my mother, brother, and possibly my sister. We were going up this road by Mt. St. Helens where we had apparently gone before in the dream world (I have been in real life, but not on this road and it didn't look like in the dream). I was going to be going to prison for the rest of my life at the end of the trip. I am not sure what crime I was accused of committing (or had committed), but the trial had already taken place. I was feeling strangely resigned/numb inside. My sister was with us for part of the trip, but not all of it, and I think I was bickering with her. She may have had something to do with me going to prison.

We had been hiking in the volcano area, and we drove up there again to camp for the night. It was a very desolate landscape, and not much like the actual Mt. St. Helens area. The ground was very flat until a large charcoal gray moon-like landscape rising up to the mountain. We parked at a gravel pull-out beside the road where we had camped in the past, near a small town. I was discussing what we would see on the remainder of the trip with my brother, who was very young in the dream. He was looking forward to a kind of junkyard on the side of the road where they had assembled various metal parts into robot-like figures, which he remembered this from a previous trip.

We had set up the tents and sleeping bags and stuff, and I was sitting in the tent contemplating what it really meant to go away for life, and if I should contact any old friends and tell them, when I discovered my small bag of supplies had been stolen (containing various items of clothes, utensils, pans, and food for the trip). I was furious. I remembered seeing a tall (taller than me), chubby woman with past-shoulder length strawberry blond hair lurking around the stuff in the last town we stopped at, which had some sort of market in session. I tore out to go look for her. I rushed through the stands and items for sale, looking for my things. My mother was there and asked what was going on. She didn't seem overly concerned when I told her they had been stolen. I found some of my things and forcibly took them from the woman, who was upset and protesting. I think she may have had some mild mental disability. She managed to steal some of the items again, and I took them back again. The next morning when we were getting ready to go, I noticed that they had gone missing a third time. By this time, I knew the woman's name, Renee Brene (it rhymes). When I mentioned this, as I sought to find the woman's house, my mother said that she knew her or her mother from a long time ago. She came along with me.

We found the woman was living in a house with my aunt K (my mother's sister, who had apparently moved to this town unbeknownst to us). My stuff, including a bunch of dirty dishes she'd taken, were found there. My mother reminisced with my aunt in the kitchen as I went through each pan and item and washed it (they had food on them), before stacking it up in a plastic bag. Renee was upset and whining/crying a bit. While my mother was talking to my aunt, my aunt brought to light what was apparently an old family secret that my mother hadn't known about. It was a major revelation, but I don't remember what it was. Sometime after that I woke up and realized I had overslept and was late for work.