Bad Ferry Trip

In the last dream of the night, I was getting on a ferry boat of some kind to go on a tour of a city. My family was also going. I was left behind and when it came time to disembark onto some kind of floating island in the harbor, I saw them leaving but was far from the exit. I called but they didn't hear me and left. I somehow managed to get onto the floating island after everybody else, but the others were already loading into a boat to take them to the mainland city for the tour. I yelled after them and they saw I was left behind but they didn't wait or come back. The boat left without me. I had to get back on the ferry, but the passengers weren't supposed to be on it (they should have left for the tour) so I sort of stayed out of sight. I yelled after my family that I would just have to jump in the water then if they wouldn't wait for me, to no effect. I ended up jumping in the water and decided to swim back the way we came, knowing I wouldn't be able to swim that far.

Crossing the Glacier

Wednesday night/Thursday morning - Dream 2

After the previous dream, which was fairly short, I went to a totally different dream. In this dream I think the character who I was was actually being controlled in a game by the real me and my sister, because towards the end we started discussing what shoudl be happening next. I am a woman during some kind of ice age period. I am crossing this huge glacier. The glacier is moving at a pretty good clip, faster than I can walk, which is why I'm taking this route to begin with. But the going is somewhat trecherous, becuase caverns and cracks open and close and fold over each other, and the surface sort of moves in solid, slow waves. I am faster than these and can avoid them but it's still dangerous. There is a bear which is traveling in the same direction; we have an amicable co-existance and are reasonably friendly with each other. We also run into a couple other bears, wolves, and other animals en route. At one point I pass a small shed which is covered with snow. The wolves and other animals are gathered around it, they want me to break it open to see if there is something to eat inside. However, I don't do so because I think there might be people inside who have frozen. Then, as I come out of the glacier into just a cold wintery ground, there are some campers and trailers there with people living in them! This is very incongruous since I thought we were in prehistoric times, and my sister and I start debating if this is possible, she says she wants to keep introducing new things to keep it interesting. The dream breaks down at this point.

Tracking an Bad Guy around Seattle

Wednesday June 18th - Last night's dream

I had a whole series of dreams last night--the last one causing me to awake feeling depressed--but this one, which was somewhere in the middle, I remember most of:

I was trailing this person as part of my work (I guess I was some kind of detective); I think my sister was with me as well, but she was just accompanying me. The suspect, was a tall very fat man with gray hair and a beard. We followed him all over Seattle, in my car and on foot, tracking him. I think I also had to get something away from him, possibly as evidence of the crimes he'd committed, because at one point while he was at a store, I think a clothing store, we trapped him in the changing room and took some papers out of his suitcase. I struggled with him some and up until this point I don't think he knew who we were, but I had to get the papers. I had some contact by cell phone with the office that was directing me. At another point we were passing a department store in the evening (it was pouring rain) and I saw my friend H- just inside the door, looking out! I opened the door and greeted her, she was very surprised to see me but invited us back to her house. We went and may have stayed with her that night, and also helped her finish up the shopping she was doing first; she was throwing some kind of get together I think for friends of her husband and she'd had to make a lot of food, and now had to buy some other things. One of the stores we went to was a European brand which I now can't remember the name of, their logo was a large somewhat digitized image of a fly. I think the name had something to do with this. (I don't think this is an actual brand, but it was well known in the dream). It was supposed to be really good, but rather expensive... I'd not bought it but we all exclaimed when we saw it. The remainder of the dream involved continuing to follow this guy around town, staying in hotels and trailing him, and sometimes catching up to him.

Fleeing From A Plot Against A Different Mother

Monday June 16 - Sunday night/Monday morning's dream

I was in a hospital with my mother and brother. However, I think I may have been somebody else (or in a different family) as they did not look like the actual relatives. My mother was very old, with short curly gray/white hair in the manner of my maternal grandmother, and my brother was older, and stocky. My mother was near death from some disease. My brother and I were the only surviving relatives, and we were waiting by her bedside (or alternately wandering around the hospital) for the final moments. The hospital was very open with staircases, hallways, and shiny wood floors. Her bed was in a large open room, not secluded, and no other patients were visible.

I was returning from a walk around the floor when my brother told me that she had passed away, and I could see the machine had stopped making noise. I was upset but barely had time to react before two people in black (henchmen like) sort of herded me away. I was wondering what was going on. Then a man also dressed in black bounded out of nowhere and started fighting them off, I didn't know who he was but he told me hurriedly that he was "on my side" and they were trying to do away with my mother.

Driving off the others, he then took me over to a different room where my mother was in another bed, alive and well! The pulse monitor was going strong. I said "you're not dead!" or something like that, and she affirmed, and said that this guy had told he what was going on. Then here came my brother (angry, he was one of the bad guys and was trying to have her die (even though she wasn't really near death after all) using the machine she had been hooked up to. He and the henchman burst into the room, but I helped my mother out of bed (she was a bit tottery but seemed well) and with the help of the unknown man, escaped from the room. We saw in the distance another person who looked like my mother but the man said it was a decoy dressed as her to derail our pursuers.

We escaped to the outside and began a long journey to get back home and evade the pursuers who wanted her to die of the supposed illness so my brother could capitalize on what she had left behind, and also they didn't want the story to get out of course. First we crossed a rocky garden area on a hillside.

It was very chilly out and a strong wind was blowing. I saw something on the ground like a nut as we climbed up the hill. It was moving slightly, so I bent and picked it up. It cracked open in my hands and a small plant emerged from the shell and grew before my eyes, rooting in the shell. The shell also gradually grew until it was like two large broken coconut shell halves. The small plant inside matured and bloomed and then it faded and shrank back down and then other small plants in miniature started to grow out of the bottom shell, warmed by my hands. I kept the top shell canted over them to protect from the icy wind. As I watched them I realized they were rapidly going through the seasons inside the shell, and I could hasten the coming of "spring" by blowing on the shell with my breathe to warm it up mor. They continued to grow, flower, fade, turn colors, fall and then be covered by miniature drifts of blowing snow only to repeat again. I watched this as I walked along holding it in my two hands and spurring it on with my breathe.

The next place we came to, we went up a road over the top of a wooded hill. We seemed to have collected a few other people by this time. The normal road we wanted to take had a lot of junk along it in front of a house that it passed. A somewhat crazed guy with a head like a seed pod came out in the road and started shouting at us, saying nobody was allowed to come this way, and if we did we would regret it becuase the person who lived up the road at the house would come after us. We asked how we were supposed to get through and he pointed down a side road, laughing maniacally. It had a tree fallen across it. Frankly we were suspicious that he was trying to lead us the wrong way, but we didn't want to tangle with the bad people who lived in the house so we decided to take the side road anyway. Plus we knew we were still being pursued and any altercation would slow us down. So we climbed through the broken tree and continued down that road.

We came to a small roadside inn and I think spent the night there. There was a very young girl with black hair who was having to work there apparently as a prostitute, although we saw here performing in a bawdy play with another person. The man who was with us convinced her to come with us and escape from this place. She was wary of us as well but she wanted to get out so she joined our band and we got away the next morning.

Later we came to a steep hill with treacherous slippery cliffs to climb down. There was an old house at the top but it was stocked with supplies, so we stopped to feed everyone and get food for the last leg of the journey, climbing down this cliff and then finding our way out to a town again. My mother began preparing food in the kitchen for everybody.

At this point she started to look like my mother again, which confused me and sort of cast doubt on the earlier events of the dream when they were clearly different people. Possibly as a result of the realization of this discontinuity, I woke up shortly after we started climbing down the cliff.

Car Trouble on the Way to the Coast

Sunday night/Monday morning

It is the last day of work at the company I work at (which I think is not the real company I currently work at, but somewhere else). The company is shutting down so we are all ending on that day. I work there with my friend S-, my female cousin K-, and my sister, among others. When the dream opens, the work day is already over and we are leaving the building into the underground parking garage. We decide to "celebrate" or get together after work on this last day by taking a trip together out to and up the coast. After some discussion, we decide to meet up at "Mo's", a chowderhouse, and we'll stay the night at a hotel at the beach, then continue up the coast. Mo's only has restaurants at 3 towns so we try to remember which one is the most direct route from where we are (it will still be over an hour drive). We settle on meeting at the Mo's at Hecata Head (there isn't really one there in the real world, to my knowledge). My friend S- leaves first, in a very beat up old car. I was thinking we might all ride together, but then we realize that would mean somebody would have to drive me back here to get my car, so that wouldn't be good. So as it ends up we all ride separately.

Everybody makes their way out of the parking garage, I have some issues extricating my car but eventually make it out, behind everybody else. Skipping ahead somehow I am in a town somewhere along the way, having not yet reached Hecata Head, when my car breaks down. That is, I park my car outside some building, possibly to get an item of grocery for my journey, and when I come back out I realize that the back tire has disintegrated. There's sort of a foam tire insert left but the outside is all peeled away, in fact it doesn't even look driveable although I suppose I've been driving on it for a little while. Plus, it's a Sunday (why I was working or why it is now no longer evening is not explained, although I haven't actually reached Mo's yet to meet up with the others, and I don't think the drive there was supposed to be overnight... but of course this isn't an issue in the dream).

I am frustrated and annoyed. Everything will be closed, of course. I walk around for a while trying to catch a glimpse of a likely shop, a Les Schwab or something. An older woman stops in a dark car and asks if I need help, and I tell her about the car issues and if she knows of a tire shop nearby. She thinks over possible options out loud, most of which are closed, and then after some hesitation agrees to give me a ride down the street to look for one. I hop in and we drive along, we pass a Les Schwab but of course it is closed. I consider that I might be able to buy a new tire at a general store (or for that matter, put on the spare) myself, but I am hesitant to do so becuase I'm no longer with my car, but with my old mazda pickup. This truck is absolutely terrible to retrieve the spare from, it has this weird long crank that has to be threaded through a hole in the bumper to loosen a chain holding the spare underneath... it's quite a chore and not something I am relishing. Plus for some reason I think I don't have a jack.

We pass a small convenience store with a phone booth, and I ask the lady to stop so I can look in the phone book. While I'm looking at the phone book, she realizes there's some kind of tire shop just next door to us, the sign is visible through the trees. We go over and it is in fact open. Now some tire places might come and bring a tire to you but this isn't one of them, so I go back and get my truck and drive it on whatever is left, very slowly up the street and to the shop (which is not far away). The lady goes on her way, I am grateful.

At the tire shop there is a small boy running around in the parking lot, I talk to him and he runs inside. I walk inside the shop, and there is a man with 3 or 4 little kids playing around, all probably 3-5 years old and under (they don't all look like they are related to him, I don't know if they are actually his or adopted). It appears to me that business is quite slow. I tell him my predicament and ask if I can have a replacement tire put on. He says sure! It should be done by tomorrow noon. What! I am quite taken aback and a little outraged, as it's quite clear that it's not busy and it does not seem to me that it should take this long to replace a tire. Plus I need it done today so I can continue on to the meeting place. I tell him this is ridiculous, and can't he do it today. He says he can get it done today for an acceleration fee, and when I inquire as to what it is, he doesn't want to give me an estimate, saying it will vary. Eventually he comes up with $500 dollars. I am furious as he's obviously just trying to make trouble. I say I can change the tire myself in significantly less time than that, and he (unperturbed) says go ahead. Then I tell him fine, I will just buy the tire and change it myself... how much for just the tire? It is $36 and some change. I am surprised at how comparatively cheap this is considering the amount of time he wants to take for changing it, and the acceleration fee he was going to charge, but I am agreeable to this price of course.

I am expecting him to just roll out a new tire, but instead he brings out two tire pieces and a whole lot of what can only be described as random trash. He starts stuffing the new tire halves with this, and affixing them together. This takes a little while. The kids run around and try to "help." I am not exactly thrilled with the rebuilt tire, but I don't say anything. I wonder if other refurbished tires I may have purchased in the past are made this way? How long will it hold up? But frankly I don't really care, I just want to get going, badly constructed as it may seem. Eventually he finishes building the new tire and goes back inside after I buy it. I ask one of the kids if I can borrow a jack and a wrench from the shop, but the kid says Dad doesn't let people borrow them becuase they might not bring them back. I go in and explain that I just want to borrow it to put the tire on, I'm not going to take it off the premises. He agrees and gives me a jack and wrench, and assigns one of the kids to go out and watch it (so I won't steal it). I change the tire and put the new one on, but then I wake up around this time.

Unstable Airplane Pilots

5/23 - Friday morning/Thursday night

I've had dreams pretty much every night between this one and the last one I posted, but since I didn't write down the last one at the time of course I can't remember them now :P getting back in the swing of things again!

I am with my family and we are going somewhere up in the mountains or up north to go skiing. It's a ski resort and we plan to stay there a few days (in the dream, we've been there before, and I can remember what it looks like. It's all snowy at this time of year, I don't know if it's winter in the dream or we are just in a much colder area). We have driven quite a while when we reach a small town from which we will take a private plane to reach the ski area. Time has been running short so we aren't going to actually have that much time at the ski area, but I think we are going to stay overnight once we get there.

We reach the town where we will fly from and we go out to a small house where the pilot lives. It's located on the edge of a large, flat field, surrounded by a lot of trees. They all have their leaves off, it's cold and wintery although there is no snow on the ground in this area. I and my parents unload the van and pack our stuff into the plane with the help of the pilot. She is probably 35-45, somewhat drawn looking, with faded blonde/strawberry blonde hair about down to her shoulders. I think we may have flown with her uneventfully in the past on another trip to the ski place, because we seem to slightly know her, and where everything is. Her husband, who is your typical old, balding, somewhat stout guy, a little surly looking, is also at the house and sees us off.

We all pile into the plane, which is a very little one, and she takes off down the short runway in front of the house. Then she turns the plane around and makes another go at it. I wonder what's going on but decide she must just be taking another run because that one wasn't quite right. The plane takes off. She circles the small field, and comes back again low over the runway (I remember we had to move our van back out of the way where it's parked, and think, this must be why!). Then she turns the plane abruptly upwards. It starts to climb, then flips onto it's back and we do a loop-the-loop in the air. Up until this point I was thinking the weird behavior was just stuff I didn't know about, but at this point I'm a little concerned. The plane drives up and around again, and then it starts falling. Everybody is scrambling. I realize something is definitely wrong.

The others manage to bale out when the plane swoops close to the ground, but I'm still with it, and it's going up again, I fall or jump out. I am not falling straight down, but blowing sideways in my descent, away from the rest of my family and the house. I am going very fast, and I blow past some trees, trying to avoid their branches. The others are yelling that I am still up there. I realize that I am carrying a square of fabric maybe 2-3 feet wide, with strings attached. I don't think it's actually a parachute, but I decide to use it as one as I know I must slow my descent or I will crash either into a tree or into the ground. I throw it up, holding onto the strings, and it poofs out to cushion my fall. Then I drift ever so slowly straight down to the ground, and land on my feet gently.

I run back to wear the rest of my family is. They are now talking with the pilot's husband, who I think is considering flying us instead of her. She has gone down into the basement of the house, and he intimates that she is having some kind of nervous breakdown, which is why she couldn't control the plane. I go into the house and down the stairs, down several levels, and find her there. She is frantic and definitely having some kind of meltdown, and she clutches my arm, trying to tell me what is wrong. She appears to be very frightened as well. I try to determine what the matter is, which is difficult as she can barely talk, just managing to burst out snatches of speech. She finally gives me the cover of a book or journal she was writing in previously. She cannot write now due to whatever condition has seized her, but she wants me to write down what she says to take to my family and warn them.

Her husband is crazy and psychotic, and we should not go with him, she says. He seems normal but he is totally unbalanced, and we have to beware. He is going to ask us, she says, to kill his dog for him (as an example of his unbalanced behavior). We have to get away and not go with him. She has been trapped by him and I gather this led to her nervous breakdown.

I do my best to write down everything she says, but I am having a lot of trouble writing. When I write it comes out like a child's scrawl, I can't keep it in a straight line and it's barely readable. It's worse than writing with my left hand, although it feels a lot like it trying to control the pencil. But I get down as much as I can, and at her urging, I go up the stairs. My family is talking to her husband, but I manage to pull my father away, and show him what she had me write. This isn't very effective so I tell him what she said and that we can't trust him. My father is a little incredulous (especially on the word of the obviously debilitated pilot) but then I say, he is going to ask you to help him kill his dog. Sure enough he does ask that moments later, and my father is alerted to the fact that something is amiss with this guy. We decline him flying us for know and pull away to our vehicle to recoup and discuss the situation.

Packing to Escape an Invasion

4/29/2008
Dream 1

My mother and I are preparing to go on a trip, possibly to Mt. Rainier, when the country is invaded... I think by China but I'm not completely sure. We start packing up stuff hurriedly. We need to escape to the north, continuing on our trip and hide in the mountains around Mt. Rainier. Other family members are there but apparently they don't need to escape as urgently, while we two are in more danger. The buildings are occupied by the invaders, and we creep around trying to pack up items to take while hiding from them (we are somewhere in town, maybe at the office). This takes a long time, I keep thinking of additional items, like certain scarves, and grabbing them. I have a woven bag which I'm carrying stuff in. I think we are supposed to be under house arrest due to the invasion becuase we have to sneak in and out. There is a concrete building with a lot of books in it, like storage for a library, and I climb in there and try to get some to take with us, but have to evade the captors on the way out. There is a bicycle in front of the office, and I wonder aloud if I should take it with us. I ask my aunt K if it's a good one, but she says she doesn't know anything about bicycles and I should ask someone else. Eventually I think we get on our way.

The general feeling throughout is one of heightened anxiety, escape, time running short. It seems like there's a lot of stuff we have to pack which wouldn't really be necessary for escaping, and we are afraid of being caught as the captors are prowling around in the same buildings and we have to keep evading them. It's not clear why we are particular targets.

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is

4/8/2008
Tuesday morning/Monday night (or possibly the night before?)

I barely remember this but I remember that I was going across the border just north to Canada, to climb a mountain that lay immediately north of Washington. I had the name in mind in the dream, but don't recall it. I think this part was slightly influenced by me having been reading "Into the Wild" the night before at the part where the author goes to climb the "Devil's Thumb". However, I delayed my trip because someone there told me that traffic was going to be very bad going around Everett and Seattle becuase of some kind of construction that was going on, I visualized how this was happening on the map. It was a major disruption around both cities, looking like a weather map showing storm systems but instead of green rain there were blue and red curved paths to the east of both cities indicating the traffic disruption. There was more to the dream but I lost it very shortly after waking up and only remembered it a day later while I was writing the next one.

There was also this weird unrelated bit where I found a website where I could buy a topsy-turvy-swervy-curvy-tispy-skipsy-doodle (a.k.a "the green thing"). At first I thought it was not part of a dream but it does seem that it is since I can't find such a site!

Badly Planning a Vacation; Suprise Soup

4/2/2008 - Tuesday night/Wednesday morning

I am at my parents house. I am planning a vacation trip, flying to another part of the country, the next morning. During the trip I will visit my friend H-, and I call her and tell her when we will arrive the next day. My brother is supposed to come with me.

The next morning I sleep in accidentally and wake up late, around 2. I am irritated that my brother didn't wake me up so we could leave on time and consider this to be his fault. Now we are going to be late and our vacation will also be shorter. I try to call H- a couple of times and tell her, but I can't get reception. I finally get gravelly phone reception in the dining room and leave a message on her voicemail.

Now I talk to my brother about where we are going to go. We originally had more options, and could have taken our vacation anywhere, but now we are running out of time. Also we no longer have time to drive, we will definitely need to get plane tickets and leave today. My brother can't decide on where he wants to go. Finally I narrow it down to two places, Sp- and Ti-, because "I've been there before and will be able to find my way around." Except in the dream, Ti- is a town in central Washington.

When I think about having been in both towns before, remembering in the dream, I remember going with my sister to the beach. She had a small house on the beach, and is living there now. We might visit her if we go to Sp-. She is finishing up her degree. Either someone asks me in the dream or I imagine it in the dream, if I am also still in school. I laugh and say no, I graduated from college years ago. I can't remember how many years, I try to count but I mix it up. But my brother is still in it, I say, and my sister is just about to finish or she just finished but is still there. I remember another place in Sp- in the dream, a huge colorful and very fancy mall, with huge marble stairways and fountains and giant arched ceilings with bright neon lights. (This is a mall I visited in another dream quite some time ago, but it doesn't exist in real life. Neither does a seaside in either location. I realize this in the dream, since both locations are landlocked and some ways from the ocean, but I brush off the issue. Perhaps they are actually large lakes, I reason. I recognize the discrepancy but it does not bother me).

Returning to the present of the dream, I again argue with my brother trying to get him to agree which location to go to for our trip. I tell him to forget anywhere else we'd been considering, and just pick between those two because they are fast and easy. (How we will also visit H-, which seems to be a primary purpose of me going, when she is actually in S- , is not addressed).

We are sitting in the living room arguing, he is being typically lackadaisical. He isn't really interested in going but I think our parents have told him to do so. I leave him to decide and get up to make some soup, as I haven't eaten. I open a can of Campbell's beef soup in the kitchen and heat it in a pot on the stove, then pour some of it into a bowl for me and return to the living room. As my brother and I go back and forth about the locations, I stir the bowl of soup on the coffee table. I haven't had any yet. Then i notice something in the bowl, and lift it out with the spoon. It appears to be a used condom. I am disgusted and outraged, and also I consider suing the soup company. I fish it out and dump it, and go into the kitchen but then I realize I don't really want the remainder of the soup that was cooked with it either. I am not hungry anymore even though I still haven't eaten anything.

My father comes into the house and I run out and tell him about the soup incident and express my shock and disgust, and my consideration of suing them. I decide to ask my mother about it. Then I tell my father my brother still won't decide where to go for the trip, and my father says to pick something. He thinks we should go to Sp- because then we can stop by and see my sister as well, so I think we decide to do that.

The general feeling throughout is irritation at the delay and indecision, which I mostly take out on my brother, and the fact that we're going to be late and the trip is just sort of thrown together becuase we ran out of time, and not properly planned. I'm also annoyed at not being able to meet H- at the time when I originally said I would. The level of irritation is general annoyance and stress, probably about as much as if the situation happened in real life. Also there's the gross-out factor of the soup incident, which disgusts me and makes me want the soup company to pay reparations, which is more out of character.

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.

A Photographic Tragedy in Five Parts

Friday night/Saturday morning 2/16/2008

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

Part 1.

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

Part 2.

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

Part 3.

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

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

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

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

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

Part 4.

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

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

Part 5.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Trip to My Aunt's Old House, in a Foreign Country

2/9/2008 - Last night's dream.

The last few nights I've been very tired and lacking in sleep, which generally causes me not to remember my dreams. But last night I caught up on it and remembered a bit.

I was in a place that looked like a foreign country. It was green and hilly and had ruins and very old buildings built into the hillsides, somewhere in Europe I think. I traveled through, taking in the sights. The area I was in was out in the country. There were a lot of small houses, scattered about, mixed in with some very old small ones built out of stacked and mortared rounded rocks which now were converted into people's back sheds and such. My Aunt N- had a house here, and I was going to see it. It was a house she had lived in as a child once and had returned to look at, although I think she was going to sell it and not stay there. I was going to describe it and take pictures for some project of my own.

On my way I saw something I wanted to stop and look at. I decided to walk up the hill to see it, and continue up to her house, which was at the top of the hill. I walked up about halfway to a sort of cave. It was one of the stone houses built into the hillside, an old ruin part of a building built hundreds of years before, of which there were many around here. It was now being used by someone as a woodshed. At first I felt nervous walking in, since of course I didn't belong there, but then someone came, possibly the owner, and showed me around. I think it was an old guy pleased to have it be a tourist attraction.

I looked around the dimly lit inside, the wood was stacked meticulously against all the walls in enormous heaps. The pieces of wood were each only a few inches long, split to that uniform size. I found the magnitude of the woodpiles and their exacting construction quite fascinating, and I took a few pictures, although I was concerned they might not turn out because of the dim light inside and the bright daytime light coming in through the doorways. I found myself describing it in my head for the piece I would write about my trip.

Then I climbed up the hill and arrived at the house my Aunt was at. It was more modern, but still built decades ago in or before her childhood. She didn't seem too pleased to see me although she had been expecting me, but took me in and showed me through the rooms, without much interest. I took note of the interesting features. The rooms were differently made, narrow and antique and irregularly shaped. There was a dangerous looking laundry chute several stories deep. The staircase was wooden with close, narrow steps, and curved up to a dark upstairs. I looked at it and she, somewhat indifferently but smugly, told me I should check out the feature of the slide. I moved a wooden lever on the side of the staircase, and the steps rotated so the stair became a smooth slide, something that now reminds me of some Little Nemo strips (although it didn't in the dream. In the dream I'd heard of this feature before from movies but never actually seen one, and I thought it was rather nifty to be able to examine one in person). She recalled enjoying sliding down it as a child. I was looking through a few other rooms on the ground floor and taking notes as my Aunt stood by, when my Uncle drove up in the parking lot below. We went to the open door and looked down to the gravel lot below. He greeted us cheerily. I remembered I had brought some items for him, and gave them to him. There were three of them, but I don't remember what they were any more. Then there was a fourth item, which was a photo album collection that included pictures of me from a play or show I'd been in some years ago. I don't remember what it was for or what he had needed it for. He politely accepted all the items, with thanks.

My aunt somewhat snippily said aside to me that he already had two of the items, which she and/or someone else had given him previously, and the third had come up in discussion in the past and he'd said he didn't like it. I was somewhat unsure how to respond to this, she was obviously displeased with me for bringing the items. I said something like he'd accepted them pleasantly enough or seemed to like them. Of course, she acted as if she knew better, being his wife and all and therefore privy to such things which I wouldn't be. It struck me she was acting jealous of me for some reason. She was more openly displeased about the photo collection, specifically because of the types of photos of myself that were included. I felt that the whole situation had become rather uncomfortable.

Here my recollection becomes disjointed, but I remember driving somewhere away from there with somebody, and it was nearing Easter time.

An ill-intentioned identity-switching boss

Jan 28th (The first Sunday Night/Monday Morning dream)

I am traveling to another country somewhere on a mission connected with my job. My boss has specially selected me to come along, and I am flattered. He starts out looking and acting like "Daniel", the boss on "Ugly Betty," but then quickly morphs into D-, one of my former team leads at my current job (the same one who appeared in this dream). I'm happy working with both versions of him. Then he later morphs into an old evil landlord I used to have, R-. During the time he is R-, I am working on mashing with my hands some kind of food (maybe bread dough?) in a big pot that is on the ground. I am bent over at the waist to knead it, and my hair falls forward touching the ground and falling into the bowl. It keeps being in danger of getting stuck in the food. R- is talking while I do this, and he makes me uncomfortable. As he continues talking I realize he is coming on to me and flirting, and expecting me to do the same in exchange for him getting me this role on the trip. I reject him, at first not quite sure that he's doing this, but then more forcefully. I don't like him anyway and he is also married. He puts more pressure on me and makes me more and more uncomfortable. I plot my escape.

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.

Kids plan a trip to Rainbow Falls, which ends as usual

Last night's dream (or what I can remember of it).

My cousin asks me in the course of some other conversation if I would like to go to a waterfall (in a park), Rainbow Falls. She mentions she's been wanting to go for a while. I am surprised that she would ask me, but I kind of like the idea. I say that I haven't been there since I was just starting college (which is actually true). Then I tell her how we used to jump into the water there when we would go, which was icy cold.

We repair to my parent's house. Despite the fact that I'm apparently in the current day based on my previous comment, we are all very young now, I'm probably 9 or so and everyone else is proportionally aged. A childhood friend of ours is visiting, A- (now deceased, a couple months ago). I have the idea that he's visiting me, but likely it's my sister. We are preparing to set off for Rainbow Falls, but my mother tells me that A- was tired and has gone to sleep, and said he didn't want to be disturbed. I'm a bit perturbed by this, and debate whether we should wait for him to wake up so he can go with us, or leave without him.

I walk into the living room to ask my cousin how we are getting there, anyway. Are we riding horses, walking? She is there with my sister and they say that they are going to ride 4-wheelers (they have them there). I'm somewhat annoyed becuase my sister is now going with my cousin and both of them have transportation, while I don't (it's beginning to look like I'm going to be excluded from the trip, again, probably by design). My brother says he's going to take his big wheel (a giant plastic trike thing he had when he was a few years old, which he is again in the dream as we've all shrunk age-wise), and I can ride on it too. I'm touched by his generosity but obviously this isn't a practical solution, and he's probably not really going anyway because of his age.

My father is on a ladder painting and/or patching a small hole in the wall in the living room, and he asks me to hand him a metal trowel of some kind. He gives me the one he was using, which is of the normal sort, and I hand him one with some kind of rotating wheel, like a super-fancy pizza cutter. He's sort of in a short temper, tired, maybe becuase of the repair. I'm kind of bummed about the whole state of affairs, the fact I've been excluded from an excursion again, and that A- has gone off to sleep, which seems strange.

A Meeting about Money in a Remote and Cavernous Building

1/5/2008 - Not last night but the night before... Saturday morning's dream.

I had received an offer for some kind of huge scholarship. However, I was a little suspicious of the conditions and I wanted to make sure it was legitimate. So, I drove to the specified location to meet a representative. It was several states away.

The place where we were meeting was a huge gray concrete building, with gigantic rooms and high ceilings, sprawling in a drippy temperate forest with tall trees, rhodedendons, and salal. I met the representative, an older woman with the sort of pale blond hair that comes from dyeing gray hair, cut into a bob. She was slight, dressed in the sort of semi-professional garb of an office clerk, with light slacks and a floral patterned black silky shirt. We had to go to another room in the building to answer my questions, so she led me through a veritable maze of rooms, the ceilings in most of them were hundreds of feet high. It was all dark and empty, without furniture, just bare concrete. As we got higher above ground level, I looked out a large window and saw a scattered few people far below starting to arrive up the front steps, which was a different place than we had come in. They came from a long trail up through the woods. I asked her if that was the way we had come in (we'd walked around for some time in the building until I was thoroughly lost), and she said no, they were going in the front door to collect theirs. She actually shuddered, and I got the impression that she was glad to have avoided them, although she seemed quite happy to see me.

We finally reached an inner room which was smaller and painted, with carpet, and a large file cabinet, from which she procured a file with information about the money. She spread it out and went through it with me, there were a number of smaller amounts mentioned for various purposes. It seemed that this company managed the application for the winnings, and I was one who had been selected to apply, but the amount was not yet determined. I asked her (this was the catch, I knew) how much I would owe them, if I won. She said that they would take 15 percent of the winnings, and outlined an example in which I won millions and then paid them back a small portion. I thought this was a pretty good deal, and felt less suspicious about the whole thing. Another thing I asked her was if I should get back her the same way I came. She gestured with the papers (perhaps they contained instructions), and said that it depended on how I'd come. There were two ways to get here, through Arizona or through Texas. I said I'd probably come through Arizona, coming from Oregon, but she shook her head, puzzeled, and said no, I would probably be coming through Texas then. I was a little surprised. Despite the fact that I had driven here, I had a very unclear idea where we were, even what state we were in, and now was even more confused about it.

I continued asking her quite a few questions about the scholarship and contest. At first she was eager to answer them, but then she gradually became irritated by so many questions, and began to move farther and farther away. I could see that she was starting to get annoyed with the questions, but I persisted, I had quite a few. She gradually moved out of the room into a place in front where elevators opened up. I could now see that there were people arriving who worked there, starting to move about the huge interior. A man in a business suit came out of the elevator and started talking to her, she acted like it was quite important that she talk to him, but I suspected she was just trying to avoid more questions from me. She continued intermittently responding to me (I stood in the doorway of the room we had been in). More business folks arrived. Three more of them came out of the elevators and stood waiting to talk to her, men in navy blue business suits. They were exact duplicates of each other, a cut and paste job, and I remember thinking at the time that this was a bit lazy (of whom though, I wonder now... me for dreaming it? :S).

She gradually continued to move away until she was standing down some steps on a lower level quite a long ways away from me, talking to some of the men in business suits. I had to shout to reach her. I called one last question, which she answered, and found that all of them had been responded to. In general I felt positive about the plan. Now it was time for me to leave, and I started making my way out. I had no idea how we'd come in, it had been long and complicated. I started out down a huge spiral staircase, extremely wide with a very high ceiling, that we had come up together. I think eventually I ended up going out the front door, because I knew where it was, although it was not where I had parked my car.

Exciting Encounters

12/10/2007 - Sunday night's/this morning's dream
I went to stay for a visit at my parents' house. There was a house that was far up the hill in the woods which my aunt K- was selling as a duplex. She'd asked if I wanted to rent or buy one half of it, and I had agreed.

We hiked up the hill to look at the duplex. Others were trying to convince me not to go look at it becuase it wasn't ready, but I wanted to see it. The trail was lushly overgrown and very steep, but we came up to the house nestled in the trees. They also tried to prevent me from going into one of the bedrooms (either in the duplex or in my parent's house) where I planned to stay that night, but I went in anyway, there was nothing unusual there.

Then while I was unpacking my stuff and changing for dinner, my friend H- popped in! I hadn't seen her for a long time. I realized that she'd been there as a surprise and this was why they hadn't want me to go into the room, becuase they thought she was in there. We was very excited to see her, and we reunited happily and later went out and ate dinner with the rest of my family.

I was intending that my friend H- or my cousin would live in the other half of the duplex, but my parents let slip that my sister was planning to live there, possibly with my cousin. I was quite upset about my sister living in the other half along with me and tried to get them to stop her from doing so. She was unmoved and acted like it was my problem.

Later I went with my husband back to S. A. His hair was longer than usual, combed back and shiny, and he led me to where we were going to stay for the time being in a very fancy hotel. We walked past a grassy hill which he ran up and down, he was very full of energy and excited. There were lots of other people around, mostly women. We went into a restaurant, and as he walked through he made a hand signal (similar to the one indicating that you don't want anymore coffee) to the person at the drink bar (non-alcoholic) which meant to prepare two of his signature drink--he was evidently well known even though he hadn't been there for a while. People greeted and acknowledge him as he went through. I was wearing several overlapping bandannas, black and white, and the rest of my hair was down. As I entered the restaurant, with him, I was given a wide, rectangular, black piece of fabric which was meant to be draped over the back of my hair from the top of my head, and then pulled over my shoulders to the front, like a shawl. This appeared to be standard, other women were dressed the same way and were given the scarf as they entered. I put it on in the same way, and I thought I looked nice.

We didn't actually eat there in the dream, but then we were outside again on the steps going up to the hotel where we were staying. On the steps, my husband put his arms around me from the right side and pulled my collar open to the right and started kissing me enthusiastically. There were quite a few people, mostly women, standing around. I was a little embarrassed, although I liked it as well, and giggling nervously I tried to cover the exposure and his head with my hand, fairly ineffectually since my hand wasn't big enough. I could tell that the women, who were staring openly, were a little jealous. After a while he continued into the building with a flourish and one of the other women said to me as I followed that some people (like me) handle such things better than others. She sounded both disapproving and wishful. I continued in after him, walking through a fancy lobby, and he showed me the room where we were staying, and said he would have to leave for a bit. It was a large well-furnished and well-stocked suite next to a workout room, with windows into it. The interior walls of it and our suite, and the others nearby, were mostly made of transparent glass. At first I thought it was a bit odd that you could see into the gym from the rooms (and vice versa). Then I realized then that he'd picked the proximity to the gym for both his and my benefit for convenience in working out, and it was a good thing. He had several dvds in the room for me to amuse myself with until he came back, and he mentioned another movie that we should see, and I agreed that he should pick it up.

Visiting a Park with a Holy Cliff

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bad haircut and a trip to a remote house

11/9/2007
Last night's dream

My husband cuts my sister's hair, but he does a bad job: random chunks off the back. Then he braids it into a really messy braid. He thinks it looks fine but my sister is quite upset about it and unbraids it, she apparently thought he actually knew how to cut hair.

There is some interim stuff I don't remember, and then we are all riding in a van. My husband is driving and there are several other people in it besides me. I am filled with a feeling of suppressed excitement of the other people not knowing that my husband and I are involved with each other, much like when our relationship was just getting started and our mutual friends didn't know about it, but we were together in front of them. We share various glances and touches and such, the significance unknown to them. It's cold outside and everybody is bundled up.

Later we arrive at a house, far away from anywhere. The driveway/road ends coming out of the woods, and there is a lake to the left and a large house on the bank facing it to the right. It's some kind of safe house where we are going to stay, although we don't personally know the person who lives there, we know she is expecting us. There are only two of us now, myself, an older guy who is familiar with this system, and my husband. Or I am one of the men... I think only two go up to the door. Anyway, we go up to the door. We can see through the window an older woman with short white hair sitting in an inner room, reading or working on the computer or something. The house inside is simple and modern, very large but not that fancy. This is good, we say to each other, she is home. We knock on the door, but she doesn't hear us, and keeps on reading. We keep knocking, louder and louder. There's no sense of urgency, we've reached the end of our journey and she will likely hear us at some point.

In the waking world, I recently cut my own hair (making bangs) and my husband's hair, he was happy with mine but was not at all pleased with what I did to his because it was shorter than he'd anticipated. I haven't felt that excited feeling of a secret-but-out-in-the-open relationship for a long time, it felt good but scary and I can't tell if I miss it or not.