Getting A Man At The Mall

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning's dream - 3/16/2011

I don't remember the earlier part of this dream, but somehow I ended up going to a mall. It wasn't a mall I know in real life, it might even have been in a different city. It was evening. I was carrying my son with me. I met S- there, who I haven't seen in a long time (the time period was current or slightly in the future, so I really haven't). What I can't remember now is if we were intentionally meeting there, or if I knew he was going to be there so I went there. At any rate, I knew he was going to be there and I wasn't surprised to see him, but rather I was looking for him and looking forward to it nervously.

Initially I went in to the mall and went to some different stores, and then I went to this counter where you could renew your passport or book travel tickets. Possibly, you could also get visa stamps there. I think the first time I saw him was around there, he was coming away from the counter. I was looking for him to be somewhere, I'd already been at the mall for a while basically just wandering around passing the time until I met him. I went to him immediately and hugged him, like when I said goodbye the last time I saw him in real life. He hugged me back but I got the feeling that I was hugging longer than he intended and he might be uncomfortable, by the time I broke away. We chatted and caught up. He had just returned from a trip visiting his family back home in J-. His trip came out through Lebanon and apparently this is why he was visiting this travel counter. Also he was planning another trip there soon. He chatted a little bit catching me up on his family, etc, his brother's recent marriage and child, and so forth, and then he went off to do something in another part of the mall that he had been on his way to. I hung around the area and went to some nearby stores, then I saw him again at the travel counter and I went there myself ( to run into him). I said, I was also planning a vacation in Lebanon soon myself, and we talked some more at the counter. I got my passport stamped or something for my trip. It seems I came up with this on the spur of the moment, because in my head, I was making plans at that time how I could request a week off work in a week or two, and actually take the trip, to make it coincide. I could actually do this, I thought, and decided to just then. We talked about going together since we would be there at the same time. Most of this time I was thinking in my head vs. paying attention to what we were actually saying, so I don't really remember most of the conversations but there was a lot of "hanging out chatting" type of conversation, and another half hug at my departure. After I was done with my activities at the ticket counter, they were still working on his, so I didn't have any clear reason to keep hanging around, though I still wanted to spend time with him. So I drifted to the next door store, hoping he would catch up with me again when he got done, though we hadn't specifically made this arrangement. A number of the stores in this mall weren't separated fully into their own entities like in a regular mall, they were more like separate rooms without doors between them, so the transitions between them were a bit odd.

The store I went into next was a bookstore or some kind (next to the travel counter). I looked along a shelf of calendars, they had different themes of different kinds of animals and bugs, then I started looking at a shelf of Anno books for my son. They had Anno's Animals (a very large version, like a supersized version) and then they had another one I'd never seen before which was called Anno's String Games or something similar, and it had a black and white illustration on each page with trees and such, and a person doing some kind of cat's cradle design. There were no words (as typical with Anno books) and no instructions, so it was hard to tell how you were actually supposed to make each design. I was curious about the book flipping through it but decided not to get it for that reason.

While I was flipping through this book, S- came into the bookstore having finished with his travel arrangements, but he saw somebody in the bookstore, a friend or relative who had been browsing, and went over to talk to him (it wasn't somebody I knew, though I'd observed him in the store). It was one of his relatives he'd just seen on his trip back home. In their brief comments (overheard) I realized that when the guy had been at the family get together back home, he let other people there think that he was gay or something as he was not in a relationship, but actually he was involved with (or possibly married to) this girl, who he introduced now to S-. She was a cute American girl with a short blond bob. He was really happy to introduce her to S- and S- was very happy for him and it seemed that the fact that he was with this girl was a big breakthrough in the family dynamics. I gather that some people in the family knew they were together but he hadn't made it evident when S- had last seen him back home.

This news made S- really happy. I knew it was because of me, it was like his cousin being with this girl opened up new possibilities for him or meant the family had decided it was allowable. He came over behind me where I was standing and hugged me from behind really enthusiastically, laughing and happy, to the point that he picked me up around the waist and I lifted my feet off the ground. Still hugging me like this, he whispered very quietly "I love you" in my ear. I was very emotional and happy. I whispered that I love him too, and lifted up his hand to my mouth, kissing it twice just barely, not sure if this was too much. He led me over to the cousin and his wife/girlfriend and introduced me. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and I was walking on air. Then, he raced out the back with me (there was an exit from the mall in that store which opened out through glass doors to the back parking lot). I wasn't sure where we were going exactly. I was very happy, but I did have some fleeting thoughts about the past reasons we hadn't been together, but I was too happy to wonder about them too much. We stopped just outside the doors. He wanted to go tell his mother (and possibly other family members) who were parked at the other end of the lot, I said I have to get my stuff, (my son was still inside with the cousin, and my other things) so I stopped at the exit, and he ran off across the lot bounding with excitement. I went to go back in the doors, but I spilled something on two mats outside the entrance, they were like placemats or small rugs that had been on the ground, that were mostly white, and whatever I spilled on them was some kind of food that stained orange, like spaghetti sauce. So I knelt down to clean this up. I could see at the other end of the darkened lot (which had floodlights like a typical mall parking lot, only we were behind the building not in the main lot), he met a woman (his mother) and was talking to her. Pretty soon he ran back to meet me. He asked what I was doing and if I was ready and I explained that I had started to go back in but then I messed up the rugs, holding them up (my attempts to remove the stain hadn't succeeded, just spread it around). He replied "messed on the rugs!" with an expression of fake alarm/grossed out and we both laughed. I said it this way knowing it would sound funny and he would react like that because it was funny and I wanted to see his silly expression, making fun of me like I remembered. It was still fun to be goofy although I was so painfully happy, maybe lightening the all the emotions a bit by both of us laughing. We went in together to collect my son and my things, then I woke up.

Writings and Another Look at Long-Ago Love

6-9-2008 Last night's dream

Throughout the dream I was attending a class or lecture or reading group type thing in Oly-. I was at the time in my life where I had just graduated from college, and had moved back home and was looking for a job. My brother was somewhat older than he really would have been at the time, though. Also, I sort of could look forward and back in time in the dream. I remembered and talked about living previously in my apartment at college on my own , and trying to set up a computer network (the memory and attempt weren't anything like my actual experience). Now I was back in my bedroom at my parents house. I had two computers, with different version of windows (98 and 2000) and was trying to network them, but having some difficulties. My father offered advice.

In between I went to this class, I went up there several times, driving my brother. It had already started, I don't think it was one with a beginning or end, just one that people continued to attend. My brother was being required to go by our parents. Each session was lead by a writer with some small reputation in the area and they would lecture and lead the other people through discussions. Attendees had to write assignments from day to day; sometimes they had to turn them in, other times just read them in class. My brother had been attending this for some time, but I was just sort of stepping in now as something to do. Going to and from various sessions of this was the main substance of the dream, but we went so many times and the order mixed around, so I don't know how many times or in what order all of the events happened.

On one occasion it was morning I think and we were trying to get our assignments ready. I was telling my brother than he needed to finish writing his so we could leave, but actually I hadn't really finished mine either. That is, I had written one, and hand-written the other in my notebook but it was quite messy and out of order. I didn't know if we were going to have to turn them in this time, and it would take longer for me to re-write it by hand, so I decided I better type it on the computer, and was trying to do that, as time ran out. This notebook and another one were also a recurrent thread throughout the dream. I had two spiral bound notebooks. One was normal sized and I wrote a lot of assignments in it and notes. I also had a circular one with round pages, which I wrote smaller or shorter things in. Both of them I had crammed into my backpack with a couple other books or notepads, but I kept pulling them out, reading what I'd written, and adding stuff for the various assignments.

On that occasion due to my delay (although I was kind of blaming my brother), we ended up being rather late to the meeting. A woman was lecturing this time and she wasn't as nice as the guy who had been doing it before. She had me read aloud some passage from the book they were reading, and I stumbled over it a lot. The words sort of changed order as I read, so I would read it and it wouldn't make sense, then I would look again and they would be un-transposed. And there were confused parts like "'til Till's till arrived..." which I didn't know if it was intentionally written this way, or I was just stumbling over it.

Another time we went to the meeting I remember going next door afterwards waiting for my brother, there was a small pizza shop. The owner engaged in minor chitchat and I may have had a bite to eat. The room the classes were held in and the pizza shop were both old small buildings, not in the best condition. I drove to and from all the classes with my brother in my old truck.

Another time I arrived well before the meeting was about to start. I did it on purpose because I had seen someone leaving from the class before, whom I knew. It was R-, one of my most enduring crushes (or perhaps an early love, depending on what end of history you look at it from) He also appeared in this dream. I had not seen him since he graduated, as indeed I have not in real life either. I wasn't really planning to meet him, or not meet him, I didn't have a plan, I just came early to see if he would be there.

In fact, he was sitting at the table with his characteristic suitcase. He dressed much the same but looked a little older, unmistakably the same though. I felt a familiar catch in my chest. I was dressed peculiarly, with a weird vest, and my hair was sometimes pulled back into the sort of ponytail I always tried to avoid as child, where the hair on top is in ridges and not all smooth and round. Other times I was covered. I didn't think he would recognize me. He said a few things to me as I came in but without saying he knew who I was. The table he was seated at looked rather like my grandmother's. We were the only ones there as the next group (that I was supposed to be with) had not arrived.

Then he said something to make me realize he did in fact know me. I said as much, do you remember me then? and he said he did, laughing at my assumption that he wouldn't. We talked a little. I said something to indicate a little of what I had once felt, as in fact I'd never told him I was "interested" in him, just basically stalked him. He knew! He wrote something cryptic in my notebook, to the end of that he knew that I knew that I loved him and it might have cryptically indicated that he felt something too. It was like a riddle, I can't remember it now. It made me happy. I looked back at it in the notebook several times later in the dream. I told him then, I'd fallen in love again in college and had my heart broken, and then I'd loved again and gotten married (or would get married...this part is difficult to describe chronologically because at the time the dream is set, I hadn't even gotten a job after college yet, let alone met the man who I would later marry, yet it seemed I knew about this, even though it hadn't technically happened yet in the dream). So in this way we sort of acknowledged our once-feelings, and I learned that they'd been reciprocated, but we also knew that we were on different roads now and didn't expect to make anything of it. Still I was filled with that giddy feeling whenever I thought back on it, which I did several times in the course of the dream, and looked at his note in my book.

The strongest feeling was realizing, but without bitterness of lost opportunity somehow, that he had liked me too, and he was open to it, even though things had changed for both of us. Only the sweetness of this revelation was with me in the dream, not the might-have-beens, and it made my heart happy and fluttery to recall. The writing and the notebooks went around and around everything else. I read and wrote in the dream, and repeated his poem-like shy statement over and over in my head to memorize it, but the morning light washed it away as always, leaving only a positive dull ache, a mere shadow of the feelings in the dream.

Packing to Escape an Invasion

4/29/2008
Dream 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Difficult Access Points

3/09/2008
Saturday night/Sunday morning's dream:

This was long and involved but I can only remember a few basic parts.
In the earlier part of the dream I was climbing up this vertical dirt cliff, which had some grass growing on it. I grabbed hold of this and other vegetation to help climb up, as the ground kept sliding out from underneath. The cliff itself was located on a hill above some part of town, because houses and gardens ended at a wooded area, and we went through it to get to the cliff above. Some other people were with me. It was some kind of contest or race to climb up it. I had been to the cliff before, because I lead the way, but I don't know if I had been up it.

Somehow I managed to crawl up the hill, as did at least some of the other people, and at the top was an old house, abandoned. We went inside, and looked through it, finding some old books. I don't remember what else we did up there but we may have camped out.

Later I was on a college campus, looking for a guy. I don't think I know him in real life, but in the dream I was close to him, but I think we'd had a fight. He was young and black, with fluffy hair. I went into the library to look for him, and possibly found him but then lost him again. The library had some kind of check-in/check-out system of glass doors in front of the main desk, so people could only get in under certain circumstances, perhaps if they had a card or paid. I went in and out a couple of times, and advised another person who was stuck outside that if they banged on the glass, the person at the desk would let them back in and then they could pay what they owed.

Then in a later part of the dream I was transported to a school that was like Hogwarts, but it was not Hogwarts. I was Harry. I was unsure where to go. The main hall area had students scurrying off to their different living areas, but all the names were different, and I couldn't remember which one I was supposed to be in. This was Hogwarts in the last year, apparently, when it was corrupted, and all the names of the 4 "houses" had changed, or else it was another similar school. I was very confused and stood there trying to remember the original names and figure out where I was supposed to go.

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.

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.

Escaping from a bookstore and recovering my car

1/2/2008 - This morning's/last night's dream

I had been captured by some people and they had also taken my car and my husband's car (his car was a dark color, mine was just like mine in the waking world). I was held downtown (a somewhat shorter version of downtown than in the waking world). The evil doers also had a company with an office downtown. I don't recall what their company did or exactly how they ended up capturing me. There were some other people involved as well, including my husband. We weren't being held together, but we were able to communicate by cell phone.

I was in a bookstore, somewhat like P-'s (in fact it probably was P-'s). I plotted my escape. I was loose, but there were people roaming about the store, and keeping an eye out to make sure that I did not escape. The bigger problem after I got out, in my mind, was how to recover my car, which I needed.

At the time I was to escape, I woke up at night in the bookstore. It felt like I was on the second floor. I moved very quietly to avoid waking up the other people. I had to find a particular book, which would somehow help me escape; I couldn't get out without it. I snuck through the lighted areas of the store, avoiding being seen by people, and found the book. It was fairly large, the size of a dictionary, with text and pictures on the cover. I wondered how I could smuggle it out without being caught (it was now morning, and light out): there were two problems, me being seen and recognized, and someone noticing that I was carrying the book. I somehow managed to hide it under my shirt, partly stuck in the waistband of my pants (this would have been fairly obvious to anyone looking closely, but it worked).

I escaped from the bookstore like this; then I had to make my way to the company office. Once out, I ditched the book somewhere, apparently I didn't need it anymore. The office was a small, first floor office of an ordinary type. There, other members of the group were fighting the main evil person who had orchestrated this. I think she was the head of the company. They had gotten the car keys back, which I ended up with somehow as a result. With them distracting the company headquarters, I went to search out the car. I knew that both cars would be parked in a parking lot nearby, but which one? I called up my husband on my cell phone, I think he was involved in foiling the evildoers to prevent them from coming after before I got the car back. I questioned whether we should go to the police at this point, but we decided not, because then the company would know that I was looking for the car before I actually had it in my possession, and could get it away from me again.

I went from lot to lot, it was a race against time becuase the evil people now knew I had escaped and they were trying to get the car away. At one point I called and reported that my car was missing, and gave the license number (to a police or tow truck company, I'm not sure). I didn't identify myself, but they told me which lot the vehicle had been towed to. I set off to find it. I scanned the cars in lot after lot. The evil doers were chasing after me at the same time. I managed to move my husband's car to a safe location (since I couldn't drive both at once) but when I went back for mine, they had moved it again. I finally found it. The key I used to get into the car looked like one of those classic "skeleton" type keys that aren't really used for anything anymore, rather than a regular car key.

I escaped out of town in my vehicle and ended up driving through a trail in a forest. It looked like it was May, spring but not as soggy anymore. Everything was mossy and green. The trail was wide and flat, but there were many fallen trees across it. I went over the trees in the car easily, like they were gently sloping speedbumps, slowly going up and over each one. There were other people driving over them in the woods too, and white horses jumping them, but I was no longer being pursued, I had shaken off the evil doers and gotten away.

Later on, I was walking on a logging road. The terrain was very hilly and uneven, and I was high up looking out over everything in the valleys and surrounding hills. I was in an unfamiliar part of the logging road system, but was making my way home. I'd come this way before, many years ago (and also in other dreams, I think). I realized, however, that the field I used to orient myself when I got close to home was no longer a field, it was grown in with trees. Would I still be able to find it and find my way?

I had three small devices with me, about the size of my cell phone or slightly smaller. they were shaped like an elongated half circle, or a rectangle that was round on one end. At least one of them had brown line symbols marked on the front. I used these devices for something in the dream, but I woke up while I was using them, and I now I can't remember what they were for, or what they were called.