Creepy Dogs and Murdering

Tuesday 9/2 (Last night's)

My dreams have been really fragmented lately, can't remember most of them. Judging from what I do remember, thank goodness!

In the first part of this, I was a guy and I worked at a hotel of a bed & breakfast type. One of my jobs was to murder somebody out of each group who stayed there! Then I quickly cleaned up the room and made it all pretty for the next victim so they wouldn't suspect and the rest of the previous group wouldn't't know what happened. I killed at least two people in this dream, and I didn't feel particularly bad about it either. I was thinking in the dream after I killed the first one (I don't remember how I did so, I may have had some ability to kill... it wasn't bloody but was quite fast), well maybe I should have thought about that a little more. Nah, that's my job.

Then in another part of the dream, I'm myself again and swimming across this bay in the middle of the night. Everything is pitch black. There are some other people, friends of mine I guess, who are also swimming across. I can't see a thing and the water is cold but not very deep, I keep running into slime covered sticks and logs with my feet, which is very uncomfortable. Then I see a dog/wolf-like thing swimming in the water, only it's head is out. It has an orangish cast to its fur. It swims toward me and I am trying to get away but I keep running into things underwater. I try to dive under to hide but it grabs my hand, which is still sticking out, in its teeth, and is biting and chewing on it. Then I wake up, and can't shake the image for a long time.

In the next dream after I go back to sleep, my friend H- is visiting me and we are driving around a town (I'm not sure which one) in my vehicle. We are hungry and looking for a place to eat, and I ask her where she'd like to eat. After some discussion we decide to try a place called something like "Kitchen Mama" which is a chain restaurant (not a real one to my knowledge). I have driven here before but am not familiar with the area, but I do remember there is on nearby. After driving around a bit I stop and use my cell phone to look up the restaurant online... there is an application where I can just search for it and it will show me the ones in the area. It asks me to choose which type of Kitchen Mama restaurant I want: Some of them serve chicken as their specialty, some don't serve chicken and some of them serve it sometimes but it's not guaranteed. I ask H- which one she wants and try to search for it. After some issues with getting the results to come up I realize it is just around the corner and we drive to it.

Snow Whales

Tuesday morning, July 1

In the later part of the dream, I wake up in bed with my husband. We are both half asleep. J-, a former coworker, comes into the room, he's all excited and wants me to get up and look at the snow. I groggily get out of bed and look out the window. I am wearing a long nightgown and a scarf. It has indeed snowed, over a foot. He is gleeful and jumping around. It's not clear or addressed how he ended up in our apartment early in the morning, he says he came to tell me this so I don't have to go to work. Out the window I can see that much of the snow however has melted, I don't think the roads will be impassible. I walk towards the other end of the apartment to check in at work on my computer. I pass a room with my lead, S-, in it at her desk. She lives in my building, in my floor (actuallly it looks like she lives in my actual apartment, and that her home consists of a desk, but she doesn't). I wonder how I'm going to be able to call in "snowed in" to work when she's in the same place, it's going to be a giveaway. I go back and try to prod my husband to get up, he is sleepy. I go out to look at the snow, with J- hopping along besides (why is he here?) He points out some whales that have come. There is a large body of water, possibly a river, behind my apartment which is also all snowy, and a number of small black whales. I think they are killer whales at first but he says they are some other kind (I don't remember the kind). They are colored sort of like killer whales though. One of them has two oddly shaped mouths on its belly.

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.

The Never Badly-Ending Story

April 4, 2008

Friday Morning/Thursday Night

The main part of the dream is actually a story that I’m reading in the dream, that I’ve sort of entered into. I’m associated with one of the human characters. There are a boy and a girl, probably around 12 or 13. When I’m in the story I don’t realize that it’s a story, it’s just the main dream.

In addition to the girl and boy there is a cat, he is sort of gray/brown stripy, short-haired, and a magical creature which appears as a human baby but can also fly and turn invisible, or appear as a bird. The four of them form a team. They ride together on a bicycle, with the baby/creature in the front basket, attempting to outwit a duo of evildoers.

The team rides down a road which looks like a road near where I grew up. By the “triangle” intersection of the road, they see the evil doers in front of a house. They look like R-, a previous coworker of mine who also appeared in this dream, and an old bald guy, and both are getting into an old red pickup truck. The kids prepare to trail them without being too obvious, so they ride further down the road. After they lose them, the cat jumps down from the bike and sets off down the road. The kids look into the front basket and see that the baby has vanished, leaving only its clothes. They understand that the cat and the baby/invisible flying thing are going to keep following the truck, while the kids will try to intercept the bad guys at their destination.

The kids are at a place like my grandmother’s house. There is an alarm on the wall that rings, indicating that someone is driving up the driveway. They go to the front window and see the bad guys unloading giant lemons from the pickup truck. Each lemon is actually a captured person. The kids have cornered, but the bad guys know they are there too (outcome is uncertain).

Switch scene back to down the road from where we left the cat and bird/invisible/baby thing. The “view” pans up over the bridge that is further down the road. White feathers are fluttering down the river, blowing down the river and falling from the sky, dotting the road and water.

The cat is standing on the other side of the bridge at an intersection, where I- road meets M- Hill Rd. There are two squished cats in the road and a small squished dinosaur. The dinosaur looks sort of like a cartoony version of a triceratops, but about a foot and a half high if it were alive. The bottom half of it is a single leg: it’s sort of like an elephant foot with a head on top of it.

The cat is distraught, these are friends of his that have been killed (it’s unclear what happened to the bird/magical thing, but the feathers fluttering everywhere don’t bode well). Some passersby drive up and take in the scene. The cat rails at them: “Do you even realize what has happened? What a tragedy this is?” He points to the dinosaur and asks them what it is. They are unsure, and say it must be a cat. The cat names the kind of dinosaur (I forget what it was called, some dinosaur sounding name) and berates the hapless humans who are trying to be sympathetic but are basically clueless. “You don’t even know what it was! It was a (name of dinosaur)” (they don’t know what this is either). “It’s not even supposed to exist today. You don’t even know how tragic this is!” Etc.

The scene switches to me on the couch at my parents’ house, reading a book. The previous part of the dream was the end of the book, and I have just finished it. I am somewhat unsatisfied with the ending: I quite liked the book but the ending with the cat standing there amongst his squished friends, and no loose ends tied up about the rest of the story, is just bothersome.

I am playing some kind of music on the television screen. It is currently playing something beginning with P (Persepolis, or Persephone perhaps? This is not a song/band I know in real life, but was apparently a favorite in the dream). A coworker, Ju-, comes in and asks what music it is, and I tell him. I say shyly smiling that I hope it wasn’t too loud and bothering him in his cube. He says No, no, he really likes it and would like to borrow it. I give him the dvd box with the program and also give him the book to borrow, or maybe I give him a movie version of the book.

I start reading another book and become the character again. In it I am a girl who is returning to some kind of riding camp (she actually does look like me in this one, although she isn’t me, I’m just sort of embodying her). I/she am in something like a grocery store but with horse equipment on the shelves, and have not ridden for a long time. Some other girls (who are members of the camp) come to the end of the aisle and say to each other “Who’s that? She’s new.” I smile and say Hi, how are you, or something along those lines, intentionally pretending to be a normal, friendly person. It feels very fake. But I tell myself, I don’t know these people. I can be somebody else here, a different persona. A man comes along and tells the girls to go saddle up and me to clean a saddle that is on the shelf. I understand that this is because I have only just returned and have to work my way back up, so I am not bothered.

My sister comes into the house where I am reading on the couch and I put the book down. I know she was reading the first book and I ask if she finished it and if she liked it. She is non-committal. I tell her that I liked it but I did not like the ending, because it didn’t resolve any questions of the plot, it just ended abruptly with the cat finding the other run-over animals.

Ju- comes back in with some movies including the book (or movie version?) of the same story. I ask if he is finished already, he says no, he only got up to this point (pointing to a picture of a colorfully dressed woman on the back cover, who apparently showed up at some point earlier in the plot---In the dream I remember this. There’s a long part to the story that wasn’t included in my actual dream, which just had the very ending.). Ju- says that he’ll finish it later, so I don’t tell him how it ends or that I didn’t like the ending.

There was another part where I was myself in the house and a fat mouse was running around and one of the cats caught it and killed it, and I was planning to relate this fact to my husband to prove the usefulness of cats. I don’t remember where this part fit in chronologically, if it did at all.

Dangerous Dealings and Adoption

3/18/2008
Monday night's dream

In the first part of the dream, I am in the car with my husband. He is going to some sort of meeting which might be dangerous at a clubhouse. It is set in the trees, and he parks the car up the road from there and tells me to stay in it, he will be back shortly and may need to leave suddenly. I wait in the car, watching other people drive by and turn into the driveway slightly up the road. They look like gangsters, and I'm somewhat apprehensive.

My husband comes back and moves the car closer, so it's just outside the driveway. I can see the building from there, but just through the trees. He goes back in, warning me that I shouldn't come in after him (dangerous0 if he doesn't come back out, he will be back. I wait in the car some more.

He calls me to say to be ready to leave, and I move the car into the parking lot in front of the building, conscious that the other people might see me in the car and sort of hunkering down to avoid this. I think I end up going in to look for him after all.

Later...
I drive up to S- or somewhere nearby to pick up some children that I am adopting. We have decided to adopt several children, they are about 3 or 4 years old, and I think there are four kids in total, boys and girls. There's some talk of whether we will keep their existing names or give them new names, but they already know their names, so I think we are keeping the existing ones.

They are in different places, and I drive around to pick up two of them, a girl and boy (unrelated) with dark hair who I take home to stay in the house while I go get some others. Our apartment has many rooms now but is bare, it looks like somewhere new. Someone is there with them from my family, possibly my father or sister. I think there are still two other children to get.

Somewhere in the dream, possibly at this strange home (it might be in the future) there is a fat shorthaired grey striped tabby cat, with a short crooked tail. It's a boy, and his fur is very very silky and sleek. It doesn't look like any cat I know personally in the waking world.

After dropping off the kids, I go to a variety store of some kind, like walmart or fred meyer perhaps, but it has a lot of craft stuff and imports. I don't remember what I'm looking for, and I think I'm slightly confused about it in the dream as well. It's something to do with the children. I find myself wandering around the aisles trying to remember what it is. I look at a rack of bracelets. There are two fancily dressed muslim women in the store (apparently this is a popular shopping area for muslims, which I'm somewhat surprised to discover). They whisper to each other and don't look very friendly towards me.

A Very Unfortunate Cat (gross-out alert)

3/14/2008
Thursday night's dream

Warning for the squeamish: this one is fairly disgusting, possibly the grossest dream I've ever had, or at least that I can recall. But I don't describe the imagery in great detail... your imagination can probably fill it in.

I am at my parents' house, my father is also there. Several cats come up into the front yard (all now dead actually, but in the dream they were still alive and it was normal): there is Grey Kitty, Ibn Batuta, another cat (I think Pamplemousse) and a fourth cat which is Ibn's daughter; she is black. (All the cats in the group are dark, in fact, by odd coincidence). This kitten (which didn't exist in real life) is partly grown and has not been tamed, she is several months old. She's never been brought back to the house and has been living in the woods.

I go up to the cat and she allows me to do so. She's extremely sick and needs to be taken to the vet. It appears that (completely illogical as this seems once back in the waking world) a dog defecated on her at some point in the past when she was quite young, and it is still there on her back, and quite large. She has grown up this way, and somehow this has caused disease in her, scabs on her body and maggots coming out of them. It's quite disgusting and distressing.

Despite the fact that she is not tame she allows me to get close to her. I have to take her to the vet or she will surely die. We let the cats into the house and I try to capture her to put her into a carrier to go to the vet. I follow her around a bit from room to room as my father looks on and tries to block escapes, and eventually catch her. She doesn't try to scratch or fight me, which we think is impressive considering her lack of contact with humans (although it might be a result of her condition).

At this point I don't recall what happens next or if it just fades out, but the cat is in hand to be cured if possible.

The Bugs Kept Coming...

3/11/2008
Last night's dream (Tuesday morning/Monday night)

I only remember the last part of this, which was creepy and gross. I had a small wooden toy sort of like a threadspool with holes in it that was sitting on the bedside table. I was in bed, it was morning but I hadn't gotten up yet. It was some kind of cat toy, I think. As I was fiddling with it, I suddenly realized that there were some kind of bugs inside, they looked like a cross between a centipede and an earwig, and had long wavy antennas. One of them came out of one of the holes and started crawling around; it dropped on the bed and I jumped up and knocked it away, but then I couldn't see where it had gone. My husband asked what I was doing. I said there had been a centipede, but it was gone now, nothing to worry about. I knew there were more in the toy but I didn't' want to alarm him, also my skin was crawling already. He looked at the toy though, and said he thought there were more inside. One had crawled down to the entrance of the hole and was waving its antenna around. It dropped out and landed on the floor, and as it ran across the floor it started to grow until it was an lobster, several times larger than actual lobster size. My husband jumped out of bed and ran after it, hitting it with a shoe until he killed it. He dropped it in the kitchen garbage, asking me first (joking) if i wanted to eat it. I said it wasn't really a lobster, but a centipede, it just looked like one, and I didn't care more for lobster anyway.

I asked him what we should do about the toy to get rid of the bugs... could we submerge it and drown them? or burn it? Then I was in my parents house, but I still had it. Another centipede came out, this one was very long, and it was running quickly across the floor. I wanted to kill it before it went into a crack in the floor, but my feet were bare. I stepped on it and the middle of it squished, but it kept running and disappeared into a crack. Another one squirmed out, also very long, and ran under a corner of carpet; I pulled it up but couldn't find it again. Another one came out and started running towards my sister's room door, I finally found a shoe and went after it trying to squish it. I was creeped out by all the centipedes squirming around and disappearing into corners of the house, my skin was crawling.

Then my father came out, he had the other shoe. I thought he was going to kill the remaining centipedes, but he had two cats instead and said he had to kill them. One was a brownish orange tomcat, who I don't remember the name of, and the other was a female with white and yellow splotches, who was called Lemon Cream. Both had short hair, and were not actual cats that I know. He killed them both by hitting them with the shoe. I was upset but he was strangely cheerful afterwards. I picked up a section of newspaper and read an article about it where he was joking about putting them in soup. I was mad and yelled about it, but it didn't phase him.

Captured by terrifying omniscient kidnappers

Saturday 3/08/2008
2nd dream (2 of 3)

I was at home. Our house was sort of like our current apartment, but the bedroom was in line with the living room, and the sliding glass doors were in the bedroom instead of in the living room. It was on the ground floor. Also, I'm fairly sure it was a free standing house, not part of an apartment complex. I got a sense that the dream was set slightly in the future, but not by much.

At first, my sister, mother were there visiting and my husband was home. I took a shower but didn't finish it. I had some kind of dye and was planning to streak my hair in some way to make patches of lighter blond. I hadn't told anybody this but wanted to try something different. I started to apply a little bit of it, (it could go on in the shower, or dry, and then take a shower), but ended up stopping in the middle, with little effect. I kept planning to go back and finish taking a shower.

After everybody left, in the late afternoon, I was alone in the house and I decided I should go back and finish taking a shower and finish my hair. I noticed that there was a pickup truck parked sort of outside the living room window, with an old guy in it. I guess there was a road there or something because I didn't think this was too terrible strange, so I went back in and took a shower. I didn't put any more dye on my hair at the time, possibly forgetting. I was sitting on the bed in the bedroom, it was dusk and I noticed that there were headlights shining at an angle through the sliding glass door in the bedroom. I got up and went to the door, and then I saw that the truck was STILL there. I became alarmed by this, and I started to lock the door. It has this little lock (that frankly is probably ineffective) but it doesn't catch every time, as I fumbled with it, the guy who had been in the truck came up on the outside and pushed the door open, as I was trying to lock it. He had been waiting for me to come to the door. He grabbed me with his arm around the neck and dragged me outside. I started hitting him and screaming, but our house was in a remote location and nobody was around.

The guy took me in the truck to a waiting van, where there were several more guys (younger). They put me in the back with 3 other people who were part of the capture party. The back of the van actually had no seats, so we were all just sitting around inside. I kept hitting the people and making trouble and they eventually let go of me, although they kept trying to grab me. I debated smashing out one of the van windows and jumping out, but the van was going fast and I didn't think I'd be able to smash it out all the way and jump before somebody inside grabbed me.

We drove along through an unfamiliar part of a city. It was light outside again, possible the next day. I watched out the window, hoping to see and then seeing my husband driving in his car! He came up beside the van from behind. I banged on the window and waved my arms and he looked up at the noise (somehow) and saw me, and so he started following the van to help me escape. The van went into some kind of industrial area and made a lot of turns, and lost him. I kept watching but I didn't see his car behind us any more.

Then the van backed up to a big warehouse with a garage door, which was open. As we pulled in, one of the people in the back kicked an inside handle on the van door and the hatchback opened. I had been wondering if this handle would work, but hadn't dared to try. I don't know why he opened it early, but the van had slowed down and I took my chance and leapt out, jumping to the side so I wouldn't be trapped in the garage. The people started after me and I ran pell mell across the yard and city, jumping over small barriers and fences and anything in my way. We were in some part of a city which was up on a hill, with lots of warehouses. I came to a road going down the hill. When I looked back, they were not behind me, but I didn't go down the road. Instead, I crossed it and ran into the trees, which were adjoining. I didn't really know where I was or how far away my home was (or in which direction), but I figured I had a better chance of eluding my captors in the forest. I scrambled through the trees and came to a forest road running downhill, which was wide and paved with fir needles and such, and ran full speed down it, preparing to duck off to the side if they followed me.

A deer crashed through the trees behind me and started running down the road too. I was startled but told myself this was nothing to worry about. The deer ran fast toward me but when it got to me it turned around and ran back up the road. I kept going, leaping over small trees that had fallen across the road. I adjusted my stride, trying to figure out if great leaping jumps or shorter running steps would make me go faster.

Then a raccoon came tearing down the road from behind me. It ran close to where I was, stopped, and turned around and ran back up the road. A terrible fear gripped my insides. Somehow, I didn't know how, the animals were working for the kidnappers and seeing where I had gone. As I ran on, a white poodle and a couple of other animals, in succession (the rest wild), ran down the trail after me, stopped, and ran back. I was petrified. I didn't know who I was up against or how they were doing this.

Then I heard a huge booming voice coming from above. I stopped and looked up but saw only the trees above me, I couldn't tell where it was coming from. The voice said something like, "You cannot escape us. We can track you wherever you go, and find you wherever you hide. We are everywhere."

I was absolutely terrified, but I kept running again, I wasn't sure what else to do. After I followed the woods for a long time, I cut back out to the city. I was trying to find my husband again, since I knew he was out there looking for me, but I had absolutely no idea where he was. Then I found him. We climbed between a barrier and down through a planting above a restaurant to his car. We'd hardly gotten going again when a policeman or sheriff stopped the car.

I was frightened that he might be working for them, but I decided to take a chance. I told him I needed help, people were trying to kidnap me, and I told the whole story from the beginning. But then he said, actually he was pulling us over for something else, and named some minor thing on my record (I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't something I knew about and it also was not important). He wasn't interested in helping me with the kidnapping people and I was very frightened because it meant he was in on it. He didn't try to arrest me for them though, we kept going.

I don't remember what happened next... it faded away into another dream or I woke up. This dream was a lot scarier than most of my capture/escape dreams, and was actually the most frightening dream I've had in a long time. I still feel anxious thinking about it.

Swimming With Manta Rays

Thursday, 3/6/2008 (Last night's dream)

Okay, I know I haven't written any dreams for a while. I've had some, but I've just been so sick lately that they were for the most part totally fragmented by the time I woke up, and I was in bed all day anyway.

All I remember of last night, is what happened right before I woke up.

I was swimming in the ocean, completely underwater. It was dark and murky, although there was a little light filtering down so I could sort of see. I was swimming around with manta rays, and swimming down deeper to look at them. Most of the rays were not that big (so they probably weren't really mantas, rather the smaller rays that wash up here).

I guess I was holding my breath becuase I was not near the surface but I didn't need to come up to breathe. Although it was very dark it was not scary, in fact it felt wonderful to be swimming again, with my entire body submerged and supported by the water. The water must have been about body temperature, it didn't feel warm or cold.

Then as I left the manta rays, the water was even darker and I couldn't see anything. I felt something underneath me and I reached down and touched it. It was rougher and lumpier, it was not a manta ray, and had a small hole. I thought it might be a small whale. Then (still in the dream mind you!) I woke up and was talking to my husband about swimming in the water and touching the manta rays. I had actually been touching him, not a whale, and I was amused by this and the fact that I'd thought that's what I was feeling. I was still asleep really, I didn't wake up and say this! Actually I think it unlikely that I was actually even poking him, based on the position I was lying in when I really woke up, but maybe I was and he moved away. I may have even gone back into the water at that point becuase I was really enjoying the sensation of floating underwater.

Then I woke up for real.

Forbidden Hero

Friday - 2/22/2008 - Last night's dream

I had a small black kitten, and was going to a vet's office somewhere in town (something routine I think). For some reason I was thinking that D- might be there, an old boss of mine who once worked at a vet's office I went to. When I got there, I went into the small entryway and I could see into the office and the one next to it, becuase the walls were glass or made with full windows and a glass door; but the door was locked. I checked my cell phone, it was about 10. I wondered why they weren't open yet. I gradually remembered that for some reason, the appointment had been for 10:15, not 10, so I had accidentally shown up early.

A guy I knew, around my age, was also there waiting for the office next to it to open, I don't recall what kind of business it was. He was nice looking with floppy dark blond hair, glasses, and looked sort of like somebody who works at my company but whom I don't really know, S-, who has a rather abrasive personality and many people don't care for much. He also looked a little Johnny Depp with his Secret Window persona. I am not sure if he was actually supposed to be that particular coworker, but in the dream I knew him and I knew him about as well as I knew that guy, I think he was a distant coworker if not the same one. But the guy in the dream had a different personality, he was more soft-spoken and quiet, so I think he may have been a different imaginary person who just looked similar.

We said hi and stood waiting. I had something else I was carrying besides the kitten, maybe another better behaved cat, or just some other object, but I was having a hard time keeping the kitten contained. It was sweet and black and fluffy. Then it managed to escape. The guy, who hadn't been saying much up to this point, helped me corner it but then it got away again. I crept after it, meowing and calling here kitty kitty. Unfortunately at that age it wasn't really trained to come unless it wanted to, and it was both curious as to where it was and scared of the unfamiliar surroundings. When I would almost catch up with it, it would get away again. We were right on a street and I was very panicky. The guy helped me try to capture it. Then, it ran into the street. I was petrified that it was going to be hit by a car, as they were going back and forth. He ran after it and managed to catch it and brought it back to me.

I was overcome with gratitude and thanked him profusely. He brushed off the thanks, pleased but a little embarassed. I kept telling how much I appreciated him catching the kitten. Then I felt that I just had to hug him, thanking him wasn't enough, and I was just too happy that he'd helped, also I was recovering from being really upset about the kitten almost getting run over but getting saved, and I needed a hug too. (note: I am not really a huggy, or even touchy, person with people I don't know!). I hugged him tightly, thanking him. At first he wasn't sure what to do but then I felt him respond to the hug and he hugged me back in a real hug, very gentle and comforting. It felt really good and neither of us broke it off. Then I felt guiltily intimate as I could feel how tenderly he held me against him, (and how much I liked it) and we slowly drew back a bit. He asked a little shyly if I would like to go out for coffee or something, sometime. When I looked up at his eyes I could see he was looking at me differently now, with hope and the fearful anticipation of wanting someone you don't have yet. "Oh, I'm so sorry," I said, realizing I had given him the wrong impression, "I can't; I'm married." I really was sorry, and sad. I knew that he'd only ventured to ask because of my warmth towards him, which had started innocently and ended up feeling like more, this was my fault and I felt terrible (it didn't help that I felt tempted too, if I hadn't been married). He was sad but didn't venture anything else, and the dream ended.

Why do I always end up married in these dreams and unmarried in some pointless ones? :P But I just realized something when I thought back over this dream. See, I abruptly lost the ability to fantasize 2-3 years ago, and I couldn't get it back, which I found very frustrating especially when my husband was gone for a year. I had the rest of my imagination and I could relive memories and stuff, but I couldn't weave a romantic fantasy/rescue scene/etc. like before. It's back (consciously, not just in dreams)! I have to think this is a good thing :).

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.

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.

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.

All Shook Up

A couple days ago- Monday night's dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snapshot from an Alternate Reality Life

1/3/2008 - This morning's dream

This dream took place as sort of an alternate universe type version of the meeting between myself and my husband. I was fully present in the dream, yet sort of aware at the same time that it was another version of reality, like a different way my life could have been (although not that it was a dream).

I am on my college campus, several years ago. Quite a few, if we're being honest. It's a bright, sunny summer day. I'm dressed fairly stylishly, in black and gray, with bleached hair, in a ponytail, and am full of confidence. As I walk off campus to my car, a man (my husband, who does not know me yet in the dream) notices me and apparently decides we have to meet, because he and some friends who are with him jump in a car and follow my car. He is wearing a light blue button down short-sleeved shirt. I am fully aware that I have caught his attention, but I continue driving home, watching in the rear view mirror, and singing out loud along with the radio (I went through quite a few actual songs in the dream, but now I don't remember which ones they were). I am sort of playing a game with my pursuer. Neither I nor my husband look quite like we do in real life, possibly because of the alternate reality... we are both dressed differently, with differently styled hair, and I at least also act quite a bit differently, sort of like people I used to observe, but was entirely unlike: who were popular, stylish, flirty, happy and bubbly and attracting attention. He's somewhat more subdued and less outwardly self-assured than in real life, although the differences are harder to pinpoint in someone besides myself. We're the same people, but living a different life.

He follows me all the way back to my house, which is a many-hours-long drive (going home for the summer, not home for class). In this reality I actually live in my real-life uncle's house, across the street from my parent's house (no sign of my uncle/aunt/cousins, the house belongs to me). When I get out, at my house, we meet properly and he stays and visits. We don't know each other but are trying to get to know each other now.

We walk down to the little bridge by the creek, and sit down on the bank of the creek, chatting and laughing. I end up putting my leg in front of a yellow jacket hole in the bank, and they come out stinging and biting me several times on my left lower leg, it's very painful. This is somehow his fault for having me sit down there, and I also don't get up, he has to drag me away from the nest (I'm not sure if I can't get up because of the stings on my leg, or I think he ought to move me - possibly both. There's definitely a sense of milking the "helpless" persona). I admonish him for getting me into this, but I'm not really mad. He returns with a can of Raid and sprays it on the nest, and we go back up to the house.

The house is the same, but it's remodeled totally differently inside. The first room is blue and more spacious, with a high ceiling and several not-very-comfy white couches and tall chairs in a sparse, modernistic style. My brother is also visiting me or staying with me for a while, and is already sitting there. I introduce them. My (future) husband has hurt his knees during the wasp incident, and I offer to rub them (not entirely altruistically). Then my brother intervenes and says that he has something painful on his lower back and wants me to look at it or remove it. He lays down, and there's a small spot on his lower right back. I try to see if i can squeeze out a sliver or pus or something but it looks more like a scar, not like there is anything in it. However, whenever I so much as touch it he screams in pain, so he quickly decides that it's not worth it. Then discussion leads to a mark on my shoulder which occasionally itches me, and hurts when I scratch it, an old red scar (existing in the waking world). My (future) husband is of the opinion that I should have it looked at, but I dismiss it.

Then we end up going up to my grandma's house to visit her, but I don't remember what happens there. The dream finishes up with a sort of "this is how it ended" scene back in the blue room, at some point later in time than when the rest of the dream took place, like when a movie skips ahead at the end to show you how the characters lives turned out. My name is now "Irianna" (not sure of the spelling, it seemed in the dream like it had more letters..Iarriana?). My husband and I are together there, possibly married now although that's not specified. We have a small white poodle-type dog, sort of like my waking-world former roommate used to have, but I have died it bright purple, "so its life will be more interesting."

With that finish, I wake up (or rather, I spent the next 45 minutes trying to wake up, drifting in between consciousness and remembering parts of the dream. In my semi-awake state, I feel it's very necessary to remember the name and the purple dog). The whole official "alternate reality" version of my life, as opposed to being weird becuase it was a dream was sort of a new one for me. Also, the amount of extreme physical pain (experienced by me and the others) was higher than usual, although I've felt pain in dreams before. The weirdest thing was how I acted like a totally different person, embracing behaviors that I don't do or even dislike, but that are common in many young women I know.

The Most Embarassing Moment of My Life

12/7/2007 - Last night's/this morning's dream

I was at some sort of long term class or retreat or training with a bunch of people from work. I was staying in a room with a few other people from my department at work (D-, T- and some others), adjoining a large hall where meetings were held (other people were also staying in rooms in the building or nearby. The building was near the beach. I must have been there for the long haul, because I had both my cats with me. There was a guy there (who I don't know in real life) who people keep asking me if I'd met up with, and saying that he had said he wanted to meet me or we should get to know each other. His name was Josh or Gerald or something beginning with a J sound. My mother had also mentioned him to me before I left. He had a long, disinterested and slightly above you face, and blond/reddish curly hair. I had a vague idea of who he was, having seen him around, but had not interest whatsoever in meeting up with him, he didn't strike me the right way.

Then came the most embarrassing incident of my life (dream or waking).

I woke up in the room, and still half asleep and tired, and in my pajamas (the same ones I was in at the time of the dream, actually), I got up and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom. I left my pajama bottoms there, and had just discarded my pajama top in the entryway going into the bathroom, when I suddenly realized that there were people in the room. The entire hallway was filled with tables and other people from the retreat eating breakfast, both in the room I'd just walked across and the one I'd been about to enter. I was completely naked (except for my underwear), and had somehow walked across the room in my half-asleep state without realizing that I was disrobing in front of people.

The embarrassment was in every part of me, but there was nothing I could do, although I retreated after standing there with people staring at me for an unknown period of shock. I didn't know how I'd done this. Moments later, it got worse. The J-guy had taken a picture or video with his cell phone and had emailed it to the entire company. I knew that it was only a matter of time (very short time) until it appeared in the newspaper. Not only had the entire company seen me now and would know what I'd done, including my bosses and the CEO, back home, but also my parents! My husband, who hadn't wanted me to go to this thing in the first place! To add to the complete mortification, J- whatever his name was included comments in the email about my chubbiness and general bad shape of my body (exposed to all the world as it was). To not only be videotaped and distributed (which I didn't specifically fault him for, as if I knew that having done that, someone was bound to have taken a picture), but also criticized for the body I was exposing!

The members of my team who were there had been shocked and dumbfounded when I'd walked out, they were unsure what to make of it or why I'd done it. They weren't condemning me, and I guess could see that I'd been half asleep, but they didn't know what to say. I could tell they felt sorry for me but shocked at the same time. One of them, D- wrote me a note saying that I wasn't that chubby (as J- had said in his email accompanying the video, and also had been quoted in articles) and hadn't looked bad. He was trying to make me feel better and I did appreciate it.

It didn't end there though. I had to continue going through the seminar, passing by and talking to all these people, knowing that they'd seen me walk out naked. What sort of example had I made? I didn't know how I could keep going as embarrassed as I was, but somehow I did. Whenever I looked at anybody there I felt completely humiliated and mortified. This went on for days, continuing the seminar. It came out in the paper, and of course was posted online and on youtube, and people continued to whisper about it or mention it openly as I passed, while I tried not to react. No sort of explanation was really possible for me to make.

My cats wove in and out of the dream quite a bit, they were staying there with me in my room (which now seemed to be just me). I don't know how I kept going through the sessions but I did, it wasn't as if I could rewind or undo it, I just had to continue. Towards the end of the dream, I walked out and talked to a neighbor about the items that were in our respective yards (things from the beach, I think). I wondered if the neighbor had heard about me and suspected they probably had, who could avoid it. Then I walked down to the beach with my cat A-. He had been doing something interesting, but I don't remember the details anymore.

Don't Rent From Your Aunt

When it started I was with some family members looking at an older house. It was big, bigger than any house I've lived in but not a mansion, and very nice, roomy interesting rooms and well built, but with a number of repair problems. The master bedroom, which was on the ground floor, was a large octagonal or round room. There was a door to the outside which was no longer in use, and which was closed with a chain against it, set into the wall directly behind the headboard.

We explored the house. My aunt N- had bought it or decided to do so at that point, and later on she offered to rent it to me. Warning signs went off in my head, but I really liked it and wanted to live there, so I agreed to rent it. I paid her some of the money then (possibly prorated rent for the month, and after a couple of weeks I sent her a check for the current month's rent. There were some things that needed to be fixed, and when I called her about them, she said to just go ahead and have them repaired, and she would pay me back. This wasn't my preferred method, but I did so.

Later, I went back to visit my parents. There was a building that was like a bookstore there, with a kind of museum exhibit within it. I don't remember what it was exhibiting, but some sort of recent history anthropological artifacts. The inside was sort of like Powell's, but smaller. I milled around there and there were a number of family members there, enjoying some occasion. My aunt was there with her family, and I wanted to ask her about the check, but I didn't want to bring up a money in a group setting. I did pass her the bill info, and she gave me a check, but I didn't look at it at the time.

Later, when I looked at it, I discovered that it was for $305, when it was supposed to be like $717. I had feared something like this would happen. I went over to her house later and asked about it, treating it at first as if it had been a mistake. She said that no, it was correct, she'd subtracted one of the rent payments which I hadn't sent her. I reminded her that I had sent her both, one in person, and one mailed. In fact, as I pointed out, she had cashed them. She said no, she'd never gotten them. I offered to show her my checkbook, and she asked what kind of proof I had. I had carbon checks. She said that people who used carbon checks always irritated her becuase they would whip them out to "win" and they were easily modified after the fact. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable and she was clearly angry and trying to avoid paying me back. I got out the check carbons and showed her, but I couldn't find one of them, although I found a note she had written at the time about how much I'd paid in that installment. She didn't make any response of giving me more money, so I said, "I can get records from the bank if you want." She said she guessed I'd better do that then. Thoroughly uncomfortable and also pissed off, I left and went back over to my parents house.

I puttered around their house doing normal things, and some hours later I looked out the window and realized it had snowed a couple of inches. I decided to go for a walk. I walked down the hill, taking the dog with me. When I got to the bottom, I realized that there was a car parked in the driveway, a red truck. My aunt N- and uncle were in it, with another dog which was smaller and black, belonging to them. I asked what they were doing there and my aunt got mad, and said they could be there if they wanted to. She also said that nobody knew I was there, right now (implying that if I mysteriously disappeared, nobody would know where I'd gone, in a threatening way).

At that moment, my mother and father and sister appeared walking down the driveway. My aunt told them that I'd told them they couldn't be there, and demanded to know what they were doing there. Also she suggested that I'd been threatening them or their dog with the dog I was walking. I protested that this was not what I'd said, and repeated what had happened. My father was not fooled by their attempts to incriminate me. He said that he'd heard her say that nobody knew I was there, suggesting that he was in on her plot. After general unpleasantness they departed. I was upset. My mother took me up in the field continuing the walk, and trying to make me feel better about the encounter.

She had a tub of ice cream. It was filled with little samples of many different flavors, in small containers the size of those plastic ketchup cups they have at restaurants. This bucket was introducing a new flavor, called Love NZ for the planet Venus or Neptune (I think Venus, but I kept calling it Neptune). We walked along tasting the different flavors. There was a picture on the outside of all the different flavors within, but they weren't labeled, so you had to identify them by the picture. We tasted one which was like ice cream but had many particulates in it, like bits of cheese, which were detrimental to the overall texture. The remaining ice cream flavors we tasted were not like ice cream at all, they were more like jello. The Venus one was bright lime green and tasted like melted jello, but much sweeter. There were several other ones which were bright blue and jelly like, with various-size sparkles in them. None of them were very good. We were trying to tell them apart from the pictures on the tub, but couldn't be sure which were which.

Cleaning the house of the rising sun and dropping classes

This is from a few days ago on the weekend (Saturday night, I think). I don't remember it very clearly but I haven't forgotten it fully either, so here goes.

At the part I remember, my brother has gotten a job as a janitor in a hotel which is really a thinly veiled house of prostitution. Needless to say I'm not too jazzed about this. I go there and I also discover he had dropped several of his classes, one of which I "traded" to him somehow. I had been enrolled in a class about spiders, and I somehow gave my spot in the class to him, along with the reading materials I had from it so far. This included a pamphlet with a large spider on the front, and possibly some actual or fake tarantulas. I was most put out that he had abandoned this class as well.

Uncomfortable situations in the market

Tuesday night's dream.

I was wandering through a large, circular building with halls around the outside edge, containing shops of many kinds in indoor rooms. It was some time in the afternoon and I was killing time. I bought two large raw packages of hamburger at a butcher shop there, they were already thawed (or never frozen) and drippy, and I was somewhat concerned about not getting them back into refrigeration quickly enough. I carried them around with me throughout the remaining shops, conscious of the problems of setting them down anywhere.

I also went into a "Thai" store, where I spent a long time. It was full of small, decorative, very expensive knickknacks with an oriental look, decorative china and carvings. I hung around there for a long time looking at things, and then I picked up two pieces of flat carvings, about 6 by 8... dark panels with an etched scene. I started to walk out of the store carrying them, and the shopkeeper was on me in an instant, telling me how much they cost. I told him that I'd forgotten that I was carrying them, and clearly he didn't believe me, actually I didn't really believe myself and wondered what the heck I'd been doing. I felt quite embarrassed.

To my surprise, however, he was not angry at me, after I put them back down, he told me that they were getting in a similar sculpture to one I had been admiring, a small black and white figurine... I think I was looking for one of a cat and this was a different animal or something. He encouraged me to come back at a certain time when they would have the one I was looking for.

Then I ran into my coworker, T-. He followed along afterwards and asked me to come over to his place, which was very nearby, for lunch, which I eventually gave into. I was nervous as he was acting overly friendly and I'd thought he was married, but apparently he was divorced and "looking." I did not really want to go, but I felt he would think I was being very rude if I kept refusing. When we got there, we walked into a small entryway, which had lots of decorative knicknacks and draperies, and was rather dark. There was another person there, who was his brother, and he called him over to introduce me. He introduced me by saying it I was "the one I'd been telling you about", and that I was a Muslim. He said this with the air that this was fascinating. The brother, who was much larger, hung back and reacted to this information with an air of disapproval and almost disgust. I was made quite uncomfortable by both their attitudes (although the coworker meant well).

A money-making scheme, a sexual revelation, and a group of five

Sunday, November 11th - Two dreams from last night

In the first dream, I can only remember a few details. I had come up with a brilliant plan to sell hairbrushes built like human hairbrushes as dog hairbrushes, because I'd discovered that they worked a lot better on dogs than dog hairbrushes. Of course, they would cost a lot more than either, which was the marketing gimmick... brilliant, I thought! I gushed enthusiastically to several people and family members about my scheme. Everybody else pretty much thought my plan stunk, probably because it did.

The other detail I remember from this dream was that my sister revealed she was a lesbian. She expected me to have already figured this out, I think. At first, I was totally shocked, but then I remembered her telling me on many occasions about lesbians who approached her thinking she was lesbian, and I thought that maybe telling me about these had been her way of trying to let me know.

I'm 99% sure she isn't.
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second dream
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There is a group of 5 kids who hang out together, four boys and a girl, probably between 10 and 12 years old. They wander around the fall neighborhood, looking at the leaves and such, and pick up the pumpkins that are still good from people's yards, with the idea of reusing or selling them, dodging the neighbors that don't want them picking through their yards.

A costume contest is coming up at school, or they have to go in in costume the next day at any rate. One of the kids, a boy with thick black hair (who seems to be my primary character in the dream - I don't appear as myself) is very poor and not looking forward to this very much. However, he has a big crush on the girl and is trying to impress her and get her to notice him. The others get dressed the next day and head out to wait for the bus, wondering where he is. They find he has spent the night sleeping in a garbage can nearby, which is almost full with a layer of leaves on top, and him on top of that. He did this to be sure that he wouldn't be late that morning, and he heaves out of the can and joins them, with some kind of rudimentary costume on.