A mysterious teacher and a gifted girl

9/13/2007 - Last night's dream ( Wednesday Night)
Dream 1
A young teacher returns to a place that she taught before, in order to pay special attention to one student in particular. This student is a small girl between 7 and 10. She has short black hair cut about to mid ear all the way around, and has much potential. But, she has been difficult for teachers to work with and is now labeled as a problem student, and possibly delayed a level.

The young woman who has returned is probably about my age, also dark haired. She remembers the girl from teaching here for two years or quarters, etc when she was much younger. The teacher has some sort of special abilities herself, in a mary poppins sort of way, and will pull this girl into her full potential.

She only tells the girl that she is here to be the new teacher, and tells her she used to teach her when she was much younger. The girl doesn't say anything, somewhat shyly. Not sure if she remembers this woman (but she likes her already). She goes to play with the other few students in the school. It is set in a somewhat remote area in the woods.

The new teacher observes them playing outside, and begins to formulate her lesson plan. She will be teaching all subjects. Rather than teaching each one for an hour or so each day, she devotes a different day to each subject (or most of the day).

The girl is fascinated by two large old airplanes that are landed in the clearing. They seem to be antique, and are very huge and heavy flying machines (not built like typical airplanes here, but on a large X shape). She is fascinated by them and filled with longing to fly in them, climbing on them and gazing at them.

The teacher watches all this, smiling to herself. When she goes into her cabin that evening, she places a small bowl of simmering green liquid, like a candle, in the corner of her cabin on a small table by the bed. A local man with sandy brown hair, who is smitten by the new teacher, watches this and asks her about it. She explains that this will make the little girl comfortable here. The liquid smells like the wet outdoors and the airplanes, and fills the cabin with this smell. When the little girl stops by to talk to her, while the teacher is formulating her plans, she does smell it but doesn't know where it's coming from. This is some of the teacher's magic.

That morning the little girl and the teacher awaken to the sound of chainsaws. The girl looks out her window to see that the large stump outside is being cut into pieces. There is also another stump at the next house which is being cut up. The view is blocked by the first stump, but she can see pieces of it roll out. The problem is, the stump blocked the view of the toilet. As she goes to sit on it, she can see that once the stump is gone, the toilet will be visible from the next house. It's not an outside toilet, it's part of the house, but it doesn't have walls all around it.

I am "inside" the heads of both the girl and teacher in this dream, like they are characters in a story I'm writing. I felt very attached to it in the same way, as well, although once I woke up (as is often the case) the storyline seemed less coherent than it had in the dream

Dream 2
This one is quite a bit murkier in my memory...

There are some shoes and a tree, or branches of a tree, that I carry and put on a bed, which has a light pink bedspread. I am spending a lot of time there, either in the bed or just in that room. They are branches of a sensitive plant (mimosa), and I have picked them from a larger version of it. I am explaining to someone, a boy around my age, that you have to be careful of the vicious thorns in these branches (true!), but the ones I am carrying don't seem to have many of these. They look more like they are off one of the tree relatives than the actual sensitive plants. I think that I may be in this room because I am sick with something. I think that I enlist the boy to sneak more things up to me, which he doesn't follow very well.

Sleeping in my dreams in a mixed-up time

Sunday Night's Dream: (9/2/2007)
In the first part, I was on a outing of some kind by car with my grandma and possibly aunt (on my mother's side). We were in Seattle or someplace similar. They decided to stop by a place called Gringimmer's (or something that sounded similar) and were really excited about it. It was a sort of funland and restaurant, rather like an adult Chuck-E-Cheese. We arrived in the parking lot, there was an enormous iconic sign which everyone recognized (except me, but I felt I should) with the name in blue on white block letters. We got in by swinging on colored ropes, from rope to rope high over a large open amphitheater filled with those round colored balls you play in, which we eventually dropped into. Then we climbed out onto a balcony where lunch was served.

In the second part, I was returning to my apartment, driving my old Mazda pickup. I was going to move to a 2-bedroom apartment from a 1-bedroom in the same building, because my grandfather (also on my mother's side) was coming to live with me, as he needed to be taken care of. My sister rode down with me but then went somewhere else. She was still attending college but was on a break. The apartment complex that I lived in was the kind like a large hotel with exterior walkways around the outside in front of the doors, and I was on the second floor. I went inside to move all my stuff... I was now by myself and apparently I lived alone. After putting all my stuff in the elevator, I rode down to the bottom floor (possibly to get my grandpa, but he was not there), but I accidentally got off the elevator and left my stuff inside. It went back up to some other floor. The apartment building did not look that tall from the outside, but it apparently had several floors. I had to keep pressing the elevator button multiple times before my stuff came back... it seems several elevators operated within the same shaft, and it was a matter of luck if I got my stuff to come back before somebody else found it on another floor and took it. Eventually it came back, and I rode back up with it and moved it into the other apartment.

Either before or after this segment (or at the same time, the time order was all irregular), but still sometime in the middle of the day, I went to a class nearby in a similar building. I was still taking college classes part time. In the class the teacher got mad at one of the students because he had brought a sleeping bag and pillow to class. The teacher then said all of us could bring our sleeping bags and pillows, and we did so and filled up the room with them, relaxing and snoozing. I had mine handy and in fact I felt extremely sleepy and fell back into the poofiness and slept for a short time, falling asleep and waking within the same dream. Afterwards when the other students were clearing out, the teacher came to talk to me. He seemed concerned that I was so tired and that I had a sleeping bag with me. I explained that I kept it in my truck so I could go sleep in the vehicle between classes, because I got so exhausted. He seemed worried, but didn't know me well enough to say much more. I continued out of the class and went back to my apartment.

By this time it was very late, and I was feeling lonely and hungry.. I went out walking across the parking lot in the dark, looking for a restaurant or grocery store that was still open. I didn't have very much money, only a few dollars left in my checking account.

I ended up going to a small coffee shop, where I ordered my standard drink. The people here did not know me, as if I were new to the area, although I wasn't. They seemed mildly suspicious. While the barista made my drink, I looked through the other food items in the shop, trying to find something I could afford. There were cartons of ice cream but they were 10 dollars. There were a variety of unappetizing looking muffins and pastries, but the cheapest was 7 dollars. I decided I was not going to be able to buy any food. When I got my drink, the barista asked if I was familiar with some brand name (that apparently went with an energy drink they always sold in this store). I was not and she seemed rather offended (I don't remember the name anymore, but it had a read and white label with two words and I saw it on something in the store after she asked me about it). I wandered out into the dark with my coffee, still feeling hungry and alone.

This dream seems to have taken place in a mixture of time between past and future that never existed in the waking world... my husband is gone in the dream, but it's like he left, perhaps permanently, and used to be there... but my grandparents who died before I even met him are alive. The car I am driving is two vehicles ago, but I myself am my present-day self. The real-time references are to the move and lack of money in the account at that particular point in time. I'm kind of somber throughout and increasingly lonely and isolated feeling towards the end.