Moderately Bad But Vague Straits

First I am preparing with somebody else, possibly my sister, to go to a dance or some kind of party. This preparation takes a long time... adjusting hair, clothes, makeup, etc. I'm not really looking forward to it either and am very nervous.

Then after we get there I think, the dream morphs briefly into being about the house itself. There are two people in it, a husband and wife, and the house is somehow evil and possessing them. It talks to them, starting with the wife, and calls her on the phone. When it talks to them it uses the voice of the other person (but they know it's the house) and it causes them to start behaving strangely. The house is interested in them in a way houses normally are not, and it has sinister overtones.

Change of scene, I am now at college. I am moving my meager belongings into a small apartment (I guess it's dorm housing but it looks like an apartment). While I'm putting away things in a kitchen with lots of wood paneling, my assigned roommate arrives. She is a bit spacey and we talk a bit, I am hoping she will be nice. As we talk about ourselves to get to know each other it comes out that she is a party animal and likes to be fairly wild. I'm kind of disappointed thinking this won't work out so well. I offer to show her around the area, at any rate (the location seems to be somewhat like where I live now). I start talking about the grocery store and how good it is, then go into talking about the other grocery stores in the area and how they rank. Then I offer to take her next door and show her the grocery store, which is very close. I can tell after I say this that she is thinking a grocery store tour or any enthusiasm about it at all is fairly lame. She says that maybe she'll check out the store later. Then she goes out onto the front porch and runs into my sister, and I see them talking. For some reason she really likes my sister, and she pops in later to say that she is going to the grocery store with my sister. They leave. I'm somewhat bummed out about this and feeling sorry for myself, I wash the dishes.

Now I'm finished with college and I'm living at my parent's home again. This is the largest cohesive period of the dream. We are sitting out on the front porch when 5 or 6 people come up the trail, they appear to be Muslim. They call out asking if we have read the pamphlets they left here last time (before I came home from college) and if they agree or disagree with them; they would like to get together to discuss. One of the women walks up to me, grabs my hand and shakes it rather roughly, and tells me that my faith is suffering. I am quite offended by their methods, and I tell them so. I pat her roughly on the shoulder right back, resulting in rather wide scared eyes, and tell her is that anyway to treat another Muslim? And I tell her she should not be proselytizing and dropping off pamphlets, this is not the way of Islam. And she should not be marching up to people telling them they need to get their faith in shape. Is this any way to behave? This is not following Islam. She should take a gentle approach and they should not be proselytizing people leaving pamphlets, this is something that I despise about various christian relgions. I go on ranting for quite some time, although I don't know if I really get through. They ask again if any of us want to get together to discuss the material in the pamphlets, which I DO NOT, and then hurry away, somewhat afraid of my outburst. I'm quite out of sorts about the whole thing.

Later I am inside and I see a small book in a slipcover on the shelf. The cover looks like sort of an imitation (but not an actual imitation, just trying to look similar) of Calvin and Hobbes. I kind of glance over it and ignore it. My brother asks to borrow some more money, for a car or something, and I reluctantly loan it to him after he pleads about how he doesn't have any and he just needs this to get started. This is not the first time in the dream. Later (time has passed) my father comes in, he talks to me about how he has decided he has to add a children's book to his book collection to finally make a well rounded offering in order to sell pictures. He has already written one but nobody (relatives he's shown it to) thinks it's a good one to use. I ask to see it and he goes and gets the book I saw earlier. When I look inside I see that the cover was not related really and it's a sort of comic strip in color about some animal characters. One of them is a penguin, I don't remember the other one (maybe a small bear?). I take it to go read through it, quite enjoying it. Although I'm not sure if a very young child would appreciate all of the jokes, I still think it's good. I also use the computer for a bit. I have a spreadsheet which includes how much money my brother owes me back by now, which is 1500 (accumulated over several months). It's not really clear why I'm living at home again but I seem to be set up with my actual bed and a desk and computer, and have been there for some time now in the dream.

I am out in the kitchen later washing up and my brother and father are talking, and my father asks my brother how much he has saved up from his job. My brother says 4500. I turn around exclaiming, then why haven't you paid me back yet?? You said you didn't have anything. My brother is somewhat embarrassed and makes an excuse. Then my father asks me after my brother has gone, how much he owes me. I explain that he now owes me 1500 but I thought he didn't have anything, and now I find out that he does but hasn't paid me! My father says he will pay me the money and my brother can owe him, he doesn't seem to like the idea of my brother borrowing money from me, something to do with the situation I'm in now (again I'm not sure what situation that is but it seems to have resulted in me moving back home). I offer to show my father the spreadsheet on the computer, but he says there is no need. He starts looking through things inthe house, presumably for some money he has stashed away, but he doesn't end up finding it. Then he asks me to join him "down the stairs". This confuses me becuase there are no stairs and at any rate he's out on the porch. I try to get him to explain but eventually chock it up to not understanding. We walk down the trail. I tell him that I'm enjoying the book, although I haven't finished it yet, and I think it's quite good. We end up going over to my aunt and uncle's house accross the way, which is mildly surprising to me, but I decided he must be keeping some money there with my uncle from his book sales. This is in fact hte case.

It is quite early morning now, I realize, and my aunt, uncle, and cousins are getting breakfast together. I join them in the kitchen while my father talks to my uncle and goes upstairs, presumably to get the money. There is a large pan of flatbread in the oven and it is pulled out so everybody can take some. My uncle asks me about the money thing and I explain briefly to him. My brother is there in the kitchen too, somehow. He helps himself to the flatbread, but he is touching multiple pieces and biting some and putting them back, which I reprimand him for. My uncle hands me a piece of bread which he has eaten part of. I am confused. He points out that the edges are all burnt (he's just showing me, not expecting me to eat it, it turns out). He complains that nobody can cook the bread like he likes it here, they always burn it. It is indeed true and some of them are very burnt, but my aunt and cousin look grumpy about him mentioning this.

In fact my brother has never borrowed money from me but someone else does owe me that exact amount and probably is not going to pay it back, which has caused a lot of grouchiness from me, at myself too for lending it (again).

A Guilt-Ridden Situation

Tuesday June 17 - Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream

This dream is set mostly at the area my parents live. My friend K- is there as well. Earlier in the dream, I have been communicating and chatting with a guy from some other country (I don't think I am married anymore in this dream, and I'm kind of depressed and unhappy). His name is Michael, apparently he is married but is very unhappy in his marriage and his wife is some kind of terrible person. He wants to meet me. Normally I would never continue such a thing but for some reason I keep talking to him, although feeling rather guilty.

Then I am up in the woods behind my parent's house, walking with K- and talking. The guy (his name is Michael) suddenly shows up! His wife, Melissa, is also in tow. She is young with short very light wispy blond hair. He has decided he wants to visit me and just shows up unexpectedly.

I am totally flustered, and now feeling this is an even more horrible situation I've gotten into. His wife of course doesn't know that he is trying to get together with me in any way other than normal, and it turns out she is a really nice person, pretty and laughing and happy. I feel absolutely awful and I wish he had not shown up, I now have no plans to do anything with him and I want to get rid of him, and I feel very guilty.

I explain this to K-, feeling overwhelmed with guilt at having started anything with this guy to begin with. K- and I had been talking about going somewhere, possibly bringing Michael along, but of course I don't want him to come now or to ever see him again. I want to go with her and escape. The event is something called "Elf" and it's some kind of science fiction or fantasy convention. Now she says though that she doesn't know if I'd actually like it and I probably shouldn't go. I just want to get away. The whole dream is depressed, miserable, and extremely guilt-ridden.

Computer Communications Getting Out of Hand

Last nights' dream : 6/13/2008

All I remember is there's a huge amount of back and forth chatting on a laptop. I am set up in a house sort of like my parents house, but in a different location. I am working there, and I have to keep in touch by computer. I'm covering some kind of weird shift remotely via computer just so "somebody is there" because something important is going on. This other guy I know from somewhere (I don't remember who it is now, or even if it was a real person) keeps popping up and chatting with me, bugging me and agitating for me to go somewhere or attend some event which is going on now. I think some people end up coming by the house and running around outside too, distracting me.

There was more in a later dream, but I can't recall it now.

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.