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.

Missing a past and nowhere to go

January 26^th - Saturday morning's dream

My parents and family have been arrested for something and all taken away, and the house is barricaded off by the police or FBI or something. All record of their existence has been removed from public record, but I don't think they are dead, just being held somewhere. I was the only one not taken, but I'm not sure why this is (or what crime they had been involved with). I am driving around a small hilly area somewhere in town, in the old pickup I used to drive which once belonged to my parents. The gas is almost empty. I drive back and forth in a several block area, looking for somewhere, but I don't remember where I was trying to get. I don't have anywhere to go home to now. In the dream I was still working for the old company I used to work for, and apparently was living at home. I now will not be able to go back to work there, also I won't be able to get another job because the fact that I worked there has been erased (I think the entire company has been "removed" similarly, or if not that, the fact that I had worked there for 5 years) so I have no employment history or references.

I drive up and down in the truck. I don't have enough gas to get up to a gas station at the top of the hill, so I leave the truck and start walking up to the gas station a short distance away. The path I take is through a flooded streambed in a nearby woods, clogged with fallen logs. I carry an enormous piece of driftwood (which I can somehow lift over my head despite its size) which I put down as a bridge across each flooded place, then pick it up and carry it to the next place to use again. It gets smaller and smaller with each use until it is used up. I arrive at the gas station. It's creepy and made of old concrete. I realize that I don't have any clothes on, so I can't buy gas, and also I don't have anything to put the gas in anyway. There is a Goodwill or similar clothing thrift store nearby, and I think of going there to get some clothes. But then I realize that when you have no clothes at all, it's nearly impossible to get any. It's very difficult to get any normal task done when you've lost your clothes, even getting new ones. People will freak out instead of just giving me some clothes, and possibly think I am crazy.

I decide to return to my parents’ house, which nobody is at but it's cordoned off with police tape and some kind of electronic security surveillance. I sneak into my bedroom past the security devices and pack a suitcase with some things. I think I might come back later but who knows if I will be able to. I can only take as much as I can carry, mostly clothes.

Then, I go to the house of my former riding instructor (in the truck, which I guess I got gas for after I got some clothes) not too far away and well out in the country. She and her significant other are somewhat surprised to see me but they know what has happened to my family. I have nowhere else to go and I can't get work or stay anywhere because my past has been erased, so I don't know what to do. They realize this. She mentions that they have a little room and there are a bunch of odd jobs that they've been meaning to get to, implying that I can stay there and work for her in exchange. I'm not ungrateful although I realize that they can easily take advantage of my situation in getting work out of me.

The house is extremely messy. I look around it thinking that I will clean it up and put it in order, like the protagonist of a book which I recently read (in the waking world as well as in the dream) who stays with somewhat messy foster parents. My riding instructor tells me that if I'm going to stay there, I should know that it was they who orchestrated the crime that eventually led to my parents' arrest, and they are going to continue doing these crimes (some kind of robbery I think). I accept this situation (what can I do, anyway?). Then she asks if they can take my truck to go to town, and I say sure. After they leave I realize that the authorities know whose truck it is, and so they will be tracked down and caught. I envision living here on my own, in this remote holdout. I'm not entirely sure if the authorities will eventually come after me, or not, but it seems best to stay out of the public eye.

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.

Magic and too many admirers

1/24/2008 - Last night's dream

My former lead at work, who is now in another department, comes to talk to me. He's always been somewhat serious around me, now I realize that he knows that I too was going to be selected for some mysterious and magical mission, which I am now part of. He comes to tell me. He is also in this organization. People get chosen. He explains it to me, we go into a room at work and lock the door. I get transported somewhere else after he tells me, which is part of it. There's a gigantic black and white kitten and some other kind of animal. They will be in further contact with me, but I now know that I have access to these magical resources and will be going back and forth for their missions. I feel good and kind of excited about it, although he is very serious about it, it's not all fun and games. We also have to keep it a secret from those not involved. This is all very detailed but I can only recall the broad picture.

In the same dream, the other main thread is that I have about 5 guys who are interested in me but I am not particularly interested in most of them so I need to prune them down. I feel kind of bad about this but it's getting out of hand. There's one guy who is tall, thin, he looks sort of like a taller, blond version of the Betty's boyfriend on "Ugly Betty." He comes over to my room or apartment (which seems to be in an area that looks like R- near my mother's office) after I find out about the magical thing and talks to me, telling me that he loves me. I feel kind of indifferent, which I feel bad about. I try to think about who I have loved, and how did I end up with so many people interested in me (kind of funny since I've never had this problem in real life). I was involved with this guy for a while, then we split up for about a month and during that time I got involved with another guy, who is also still interested in me, also light hair but shorter than this guy and shaggier hair. I'm not particularly interested in him either, but have been involved with them both. Now I'm back with this guy, but trying to break it off with both of them. I tell him about the other guy but that doesn't deter him. There's also a third guy who's not present at the time, with dark hair I think, and then I remember J- (my husband in real life, though apparently just an interest here), and another person I used to be in love with in real life. I cross him off already since I had determined it wouldn't work out with him. When I think about it, it seems like J-, although I don't appear to be involved with him at the time, is the only one that I ever had really strong feelings for (except the other guy I loved but that was less so and he won't work). So, I decided to pare down the others. I try to break it gently to this guy, but he's crazy about me, and I know the other one is too. I've already told the other one I think. He tells me how much he cares about me and wants to prove it to me. I just don't really have many feelings for him but I go along becuase I feel bad about being mean to him. I'll keep trying to drop him. All these guys trying to get my attention tire me out.

I end up walking down my aunt & uncles driveway with my cousin K- and my brother. I am wearing a poncho. We are on some kind of mission. Someone (my sister? but then she's not there) comments that we make a pretty good team. I don't remember what we're going to do. When we get down to the road, facing the chicken yard fence/orchard area, we all make a wish about what we want. I know that my wish is going to happen, unlike the others, becuase of my new magic available to me through being chosen for this mysterious project. I wish for something to be able to make people stop loving me, since I don't care about them. When I open my eyes after wishing, I see the apple tree in front of me has grown some apples, and I know that they are poisoned apples, poisoned not to kill but to kill the love for me. They are huge and grotesquely deformed into weird shapes, although they appear healthy. I pick one which is large and awkward like a zucchini, but apple colored. I wonder how I'm going to test it and I think i try it, but it tastes normal. I decided to give it to the smaller guy first who I'm having less trouble with, and then the main boyfriend to make him stop mooning over me, so I'll have fewer of them to worry about and they'll be happier too.

The whole premise seems rather odd, not the me being chosen for the serious and mysterious magical project so much as me having too many admirers, that I'm not interested in (but going along with anyway), and wanting to get rid of them somehow.

Invasion by squirrel (amusing) and messy roommates (not)

This morning's dream (well, it was well after midnight anyway)

We are in bed in the morning and a large black clock or radio of some kind goes off. I pick it up off the nightstand and turn off the alarm. It's still making some kind of noise. When I turn it over, I almost jump out of my skin because a tiny reddish brown hand, very much like a human's but miniature, reaches out of an opening in the back. I exclaim about this to my husband, but he's still sort of asleep. I get up and pry the clock open partway, and discover there is a squirrel inside. It's somehow crawled in there, although how it managed this is impossible to know. My cats are very interested. I shoo them away and go over to a large sliding window. The apartment is like our real apartment, but one side which has regular windows and a couch against the wall instead has another sliding glass door with a screen. Then there's sort of a slanting roof, not really a porch. In the trees immediately outside, there is black plastic rigged up to be sort of a roof or awning, but it's blown aside and looks fairly messy, and also isn't stopping the water. There's random bits of garbage underneath it as well. I think about how this should be cleaned up and the awning fixed, but recall talking with the landlady when we moved in and she didn't want to angle the plastic differently, because it would look ugly from the driveway (this is not the actual landlady, it seems our apartment is in a different building than in the waking world). I plan to fix it later anyway, she probably won't notice now.

I open the sliding door and try to put the squirrel out past the screen, but it is scared and runs back inside. I spend some time rounding it up again, with little help from the cats, whose interest is not purely altruistic. Finally I get the squirrel put outside, for which I am quite pleased, and report to my husband, whose still in bed and still partially asleep. I might have a baby in the apartment too (of mine), that part is rather vague.

Later, we learn that two people are being installed in our apartment to rent along with us, courtesy of the landlady. Apparently she is allowed to do this. We are not too keen on the idea, less so when the people arrive. I come home from work and find them moved in. They are from another country, but I'm not sure where (perhaps pakistan or india?), and neither speak English especially well. Both are men probably around my age, with dark hair and somewhat dark skin, and beards. They are friendly, but they have made a total mess. They are cooking with something orange and it is splattered everywhere, all over the kitchen and bathroom (the guest bathroom). I am shocked. It looks like paint has been painted in orange dots over everything, including the counters, floor, wall, toilet, sinks. One of them appears to be making some kind of sauce, which is orange and the source of the splatters. There are tiny jars and beakers everywhere piled on windowsills, including chemistry-style ones with tubes leading from jar to jar, like he is distilling something. There's a strong smell of vinegar. The thought crosses my mind that he might be doing drugs, but upon smelling it, I decided that it really is some kind of sauce for food. They talk to me and ask a lot of questions and seem to be leading up to trying to get me to help them with getting settled into the area, which I am not at all interested in doing.

I gather up some things of ours, including our paper towels, and put them away so they can't use them. I am intending for them to get kicked out of the apartment because of the mess. When my husband gets home, I tell him this and question if we should go to the landlady and show her the mess, but after looking around, he advises that we should wait a few days if we really want her to deal with it by kicking them out. We also walk through the hall, possibly with our new roommates, and talk about the other apartments. There are two other in the building, one is larger than ours with 3 bedrooms, which I considered getting when we moved here but decided against. I'm not sure if we're trying to get them to move out on their own or what, but it doesn't appear that they have enough money to rent on their own.

I go out to my car. The outside of the apartment building and yard looks like my parents' house, yard, and driveway. When I get into my car, one of the guys comes down after me, and asks me if I am interested in selling my car. He needs one right away, he says. I don't want to talk to him, or sell my car, and try to answer politely but shortly while leaving. He keeps walking alongside, and pulls on my scarf to prevent me from going away, but then lets go immediately. I talk to him through the car window, trying to get rid of him. My husband comes out of the house and stands on the porch, and the guy eventually stops trying to talk to me and I pull off down the driveway. I don't particularly like these people. They act friendly but make me feel suspicious of their motives.

In another part of the same dream, I'm not sure if it's earlier or later, or it might be in the middle, my husband and I are reading about a park somewhere in town, which is pictured in a newspaper or magazine. I want to go there, perhaps at a better time of year. We also drive to a park we know, which is very dreary and damp at this time of year, and I get out and go for a walk. It has paved walkways along a steep hillside with bigleaf maple and a creek at the bottom. When I get down close to the creek, I realize that parts are flooded and some of the bridges are slippery with water. There are several other people walking down there who warn me to be careful, in a cheerful way that people do when they meet in a park.

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 Black Silk Scarf with Roses

Last night's dream

This one slipped away from me in scattered disarray driven by the early rays of dawn (okay, more like mid-morning), like spectators departing after a parade. Apparently I can't remember well when I'm too tired, either, and having been sleep-deprived all week, I'm now exhausted.

The only scene I remember is I am standing trying on a large black silk scarf with red roses all over it. It's triangular, or a folded square. There are several similar options to buy which I also look at. My sister and I think my mother are also there. I'm a little confused if I'm buying it for myself, or for my sister (although it seems like it's for someone who isn't there, and my sister is there). I think from other scattered images that we are in a set of outlet malls that I visited in an earlier dream several weeks ago.

Only now when I recall it, I realize this is a reference to a book I was reading last night in which one of the characters mentions in passing that she bought a black scarf with roses on it for her sister.