Confused and Confusing Grandparents

4/9/2008
Wednesday morning's dream

It had to do with my paternal grandparents (my grandfather died 14 years ago tomorrow, which I didn't realize until just now). In the dream they weren't entirely like my paternal grandparents, sort of a mix with my other grandparents some of the time, but mainly they were my paternal ones. One of them died, but which one it was changed and there were sort of two versions of the dream based on that. It was not linear. Both grandparents were going a little crazy due to some kind of age related-condition, like Alzheimer's (also not the case in real life).

At one point, I was at the house with my father. My grandfather was there, and my father told me to go down to the bottom of the hill and move my truck, becuase it was blocking in my grandfather's vehicle and we didn't want him to know this. I'm not sure what the logic was behind it, but if he'd found out he would have thought we were treating him differently (because of his condition, which we were, but he wasn't aware of how it affected his faculties) and would be mad. He was disoriented and not in full grasp of his mind. Whichever one lived was affected severely by the death of the other.

At another point I was walking down along the old railroad grade beside the river, with my grandmother I think, talking about my grandfather. It was clear that she wasn't all there. There were vehicles along the way, and she was talking about riding on a boat, and wanted to get on it. Possibly to go see my grandfather (who I think had died at this point and version of the dream), but it seemed like she was mixed up with that and arriving somewhere on a boat in a memory of the past.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Hilarity at work and my sister wins a parrot

11/8/2007
Last night's dream (Wednesday night/Thursday morning)

I was at work, talking to my coworker L-. Su- and A- were also around, in their respective cubes. At one point, L- looked up through the corner of her cube (there was a roof on her cubicle), and I looked down into the same hole with one eye, surprising her. We both laughed. L- was feeling sick and coughing, and I commented that she really should go home. To my surprise, she agreed. First, however, we decided to disassemble her cubicle. We took all the walls apart and parked them in stacks around the room. When we were done, I realized that I had mislaid one of the walls, and we scurried about looking for it. It was a wall with a large window set into it. At first, I thought it had ended up on A-'s wall, but when I looked at her wall she had a smaller window in it, so it wasn't the same one. Then, I found that I'd accidentally put the wall with the window in it in my cubicle, leaning up against the wall. We giggled and laughed throughout, having a good time.

Later, I went to watch an event where my sister had a chance to receive a prize. It was somehow connected with her work. When I arrived, the people up for the prize were seating themselves, they were in four rows with about 100 people in each row, sitting in folding chairs outside. Only a certain number of the prizes were available, and they would go in order to the people who arrived first (it was a pre-selected pool of people who were eligible, not just anybody).

I sat behind the recipients, and was joined by both of my paternal cousins, my former neighbor P-, and another elderly woman, older than P-, whom I introduced to my cousins as (after tripping over my tongue several times to get the relationship phrased right) my grandmother on my husband's side. I was talking to P- and the grandmother-in-law before my cousins approached, and I made a lightly disparaging remark about one of them as we saw them approaching. Everybody had gathered here to take part in the special occasion for my sister.

The prizes were awarded and we could see this by the indication of a bright color for each person who got it along the rows - I don't remember if this was a piece of cloth or paper passed out or what, but it was evident from a distance as it rippled along the rows. It had the air of a graduation. I couldn't tell if my sister had gotten it or not. She came back and started telling us about it, however, so I guess she did. The prize was an amazonian parrot which was being taught how to speak, she would get to keep it or take part in the lessons in some way. We were all very excited. I asked if it was learning English, and she said no, they were being taught Arabic, because it was easier for them to begin on. They would start out with 4 letters only (R, K, L, and M I think), and they would be able to approximate most words this way. All of us were very excited about the whole thing.

As we left the event, I was walking with P- and one of the others in the group, either a cousin or the grandmother-in-law, went into this large building that we passed. It was made of heavy wood, and looked old and solid, like a large barn. We only realizes that one of the party had gone inside as we walked passed and realized that person was no longer with us, they'd gone in by accident. We waited at the other end for a few minutes but they did not come out. P- said we would have to go in and get them. We opened the door on that end, which was large and closed with a mechanical metal latch, and went into a small dusty room, which led off to a hallway and a lot of other rooms. P- went into the interior while I waited there, to check it out. When she came back she was talking about what a terrible place this was, and how disgusting, and I got the impression that it was a house of prostitution. We would have to go in and get the person out as they must have been detained by someone else in the house. I spent a lot of time opening and closing the latches on the doors leading in and out of the room we were in, and observing how they worked, then I woke up.

In the waking world, L- has indeed been sick for a couple of days but never goes home when she is sick. I've never met my husband's grandmother and actually I don't think either of them are still alive. P- was a lot more active in the dream than she probably is now, and after I woke up I realized that I should call her again and give her my new address.

A leap not of faith - deeply affecting me

10/30/2007 - Last night's dream

Someone tells me that a former coworker of mine, who I thought had quit or gotten fired, had actually committed suicide. At first I think it is "Eric," a former coworker at my current workplace (who looks like an actual former coworker at my current workplace, who I didn't know very well), but it turns out to be someone called Billy Graham, Jr., at my previous job. (I didn't recognize him as an actual coworker from there in the waking world. Also he is apparently no relation to the famous Billy Graham, despite the name).

Apparently, over a year ago when everyone thought he was fired or let go, he actually had jumped off one of the 400-towers at my previous workplace, to his death. I am completely shocked to learn this. I'm also shocked that nobody told me this at the time and I didn't know, since it happened while I was there. In my recollection, he was a tall, somewhat gangly fellow, probably in his 20's, with light brown hair. He also taught classes on doing things in the outdoors (perhaps survival classes) at local colleges. I knew of him at work but didn't work with him directly, but now am quite caved in by the news.

A bit later, same dream, I am at a house, which I think is mine. It's not like any house I've actually lived in, and I don't think it's supposed to be. In the dream it is located near where I actually live now, although the terrain is more like SW W-. It is an old house, painted gray. A few people including my sister are with me, and we are hanging up wet clothes to dry in the house. It seems like we were out walking and got caught in a rainstorm and soaked. It's still drizzly out now and throughout the dream. There are so many wet clothes, I am afraid that they are going to steam up the inside of the house and not dry. As I am carrying clothes inside from the van which is parked out front, I realize that you can see through the large front window all the way through the house and out the back window, because I can see my sister in the backyard bringing clothes in. The windows each have a plain, white or light colored curtain completely covering them, which I thought prevented people outside from seeing in very clearly. Now I realize that they can see my quite easily when I am inside, which I don't like.

A short time later, I am riding in my mother's van with my mother and my cousin. My mother is driving, and my cousin sits in the back with me. They have come together to visit me, meeting at that house earlier in the dream, and we are now driving somewhere nearby, a wooded area. I talk to my cousin, mostly to have something to talk about as we haven't always gotten along in the past. She mentions that they had some trouble finding my house, and I agree that it's hard to find. If you don't turn at the correct spot, which is easy to miss, you have to keep going because you run into a bunch of one-way streets, and eventually 3 or 4 streets later you have to turn right and you end up at a small graveyard, where you can turn around.

Casting around for another topic, I ask her who used to teach the outdoors classes that she took a while back. I know already that it was Billy Graham, Jr., and it's not so much that I care to inform my cousin about what happened, as that I desperately need to tell SOMEone the news. She says it was Billy Graham, Jr., and mentions a few details about the classes. I am bursting to reveal the news, not in an excited way, but in the way it is when you have learned something bad or creepy and you have to tell someone so you aren't the only bearer of this information. I let some pauses go by and then say, Guess what? and tell her about the suicide. She is shocked along with me. It's just unimaginable thinking of how he killed himself jumping off the tower, and I was even THERE, and thought he had just quit or been fired, and everyone went along with it without much question when he wasn't there, and NOBODY TOLD me. It was like they were trying to keep it quiet, to keep the bad feeling away.

My mother then mentions offhand that my husband and I have such a wonderful marriage, the best one that she knows of among all the people she knows even herself. She is so happy for us. I feel extremely guilty knowing that it's not so great as it appears, but I can't tell her and don't even want to tell her and make her feel sad.

We stop the car and are preparing to go hiking in the woods, and we will visit someone on the other end. We take backpacks and my mother asks me to bring some dried fruit from the car, to give to the person that we will meet at the end of the hike. It's a man, but not someone I know. I get the dried fruit from the car, it is prunes and dried apricots in a coffee can. I take some new, freshly dried ones and place them on top to fill up the can. The new ones are enormous, one dried half being almost as large as the diameter of the coffee can. I think about how new fruit just keeps being added to the top, and likely when the guy we are giving this to digs down to the bottom, there are going to be some old moldy pieces of dry fruit, which will disgust him. However, I don't dig down to get them out, just add the pieces on top and bring it up to my mother to put in her pack.

I wake up with "The only boy who could ever reach me, was the son of a preacher man" stuck in my head, despite the apparent lack of connection to Billy Graham, and find myself wondering what the suicidal guy is supposed to teach me... that the answer is jumping off a tall building? It seems like there are too many metaphors here for me to possibly sort through. The whole dream was laced with tenseness, guilt, hidden things being revealed, and a sad feeling. The dead guy in my dream doesn't seem to be a real person in the waking world, but I did learn about 2 months ago that someone I used to know recently committed suicide, and it had a big effect on me. His ghost showed up in another dream, shortly thereafter, which I didn't log here due to other disturbing content.

Sleeping in my dreams in a mixed-up time

Sunday Night's Dream: (9/2/2007)
In the first part, I was on a outing of some kind by car with my grandma and possibly aunt (on my mother's side). We were in Seattle or someplace similar. They decided to stop by a place called Gringimmer's (or something that sounded similar) and were really excited about it. It was a sort of funland and restaurant, rather like an adult Chuck-E-Cheese. We arrived in the parking lot, there was an enormous iconic sign which everyone recognized (except me, but I felt I should) with the name in blue on white block letters. We got in by swinging on colored ropes, from rope to rope high over a large open amphitheater filled with those round colored balls you play in, which we eventually dropped into. Then we climbed out onto a balcony where lunch was served.

In the second part, I was returning to my apartment, driving my old Mazda pickup. I was going to move to a 2-bedroom apartment from a 1-bedroom in the same building, because my grandfather (also on my mother's side) was coming to live with me, as he needed to be taken care of. My sister rode down with me but then went somewhere else. She was still attending college but was on a break. The apartment complex that I lived in was the kind like a large hotel with exterior walkways around the outside in front of the doors, and I was on the second floor. I went inside to move all my stuff... I was now by myself and apparently I lived alone. After putting all my stuff in the elevator, I rode down to the bottom floor (possibly to get my grandpa, but he was not there), but I accidentally got off the elevator and left my stuff inside. It went back up to some other floor. The apartment building did not look that tall from the outside, but it apparently had several floors. I had to keep pressing the elevator button multiple times before my stuff came back... it seems several elevators operated within the same shaft, and it was a matter of luck if I got my stuff to come back before somebody else found it on another floor and took it. Eventually it came back, and I rode back up with it and moved it into the other apartment.

Either before or after this segment (or at the same time, the time order was all irregular), but still sometime in the middle of the day, I went to a class nearby in a similar building. I was still taking college classes part time. In the class the teacher got mad at one of the students because he had brought a sleeping bag and pillow to class. The teacher then said all of us could bring our sleeping bags and pillows, and we did so and filled up the room with them, relaxing and snoozing. I had mine handy and in fact I felt extremely sleepy and fell back into the poofiness and slept for a short time, falling asleep and waking within the same dream. Afterwards when the other students were clearing out, the teacher came to talk to me. He seemed concerned that I was so tired and that I had a sleeping bag with me. I explained that I kept it in my truck so I could go sleep in the vehicle between classes, because I got so exhausted. He seemed worried, but didn't know me well enough to say much more. I continued out of the class and went back to my apartment.

By this time it was very late, and I was feeling lonely and hungry.. I went out walking across the parking lot in the dark, looking for a restaurant or grocery store that was still open. I didn't have very much money, only a few dollars left in my checking account.

I ended up going to a small coffee shop, where I ordered my standard drink. The people here did not know me, as if I were new to the area, although I wasn't. They seemed mildly suspicious. While the barista made my drink, I looked through the other food items in the shop, trying to find something I could afford. There were cartons of ice cream but they were 10 dollars. There were a variety of unappetizing looking muffins and pastries, but the cheapest was 7 dollars. I decided I was not going to be able to buy any food. When I got my drink, the barista asked if I was familiar with some brand name (that apparently went with an energy drink they always sold in this store). I was not and she seemed rather offended (I don't remember the name anymore, but it had a read and white label with two words and I saw it on something in the store after she asked me about it). I wandered out into the dark with my coffee, still feeling hungry and alone.

This dream seems to have taken place in a mixture of time between past and future that never existed in the waking world... my husband is gone in the dream, but it's like he left, perhaps permanently, and used to be there... but my grandparents who died before I even met him are alive. The car I am driving is two vehicles ago, but I myself am my present-day self. The real-time references are to the move and lack of money in the account at that particular point in time. I'm kind of somber throughout and increasingly lonely and isolated feeling towards the end.

Work at the coast and a flooded park

At one point I was in this large circular building near the beach, with many open rooms and offices. I was wandering around talking with one of my coworkers, L-. We found a vase on another coworker's desk (not one who exists in the waking world, and at her prompting, I took it to wash it in the sink (knowing we shouldn't do this, but planning to return it before he found out... I'm not sure what the point was in taking it). It turned out the bottom had one of those cardboard pads on it, dyed blue, so when it got wet it started leaching dye. Another (also non-existent in the waking world) coworker came up while we were washing it in the sink and commented on it and how the owner had brought it back from somewhere. He was enthusiastic about it.

I tried to absorb the dye with paper towels and then went to put it back without the guy noticing, but he was already back at his desk. He was dressed in an orange and yellow striped button-up shirt and tie, with several-inches-long straight brown hair. Maybe in his forties, nobody I know in the waking life. He was somewhat surprised when we returned to discover we had his vase. We offered some lame excuse about wanting to put flowers in it or something, (he was dismayed that it was missing but didn't seem to know what to say) and I put it on the table with a folded paper towel underneath to prevent any blue die from leaching, hoping he would not notice that it was damaged. Then the guy who'd seen us washing it at the sink came by and talked jovially about the story of the vase, noting that it had cost the owner 153 dollars (at which I was somewhat shocked, since it was an ugly, squat, square pebbly green-glass vase with a cheap cardboard base, plus I could have totally wrecked it). Later L- and I wandered through other parts of the building, talking between us, but I don't remember all that we did. We were talking about age at one point (she is slightly younger than me but probably does not know that I am that young, she was talking about various pranks or comments people have made to her on account of being the youngest), and generally making friends.

In a later segment of the dream, I was returning from that building to somewhere else, and I drove up a wooded hill not that far from the coast, with plenty of standard trees, salal, and mist. I was going to stop at this park, I think I had to do something there. But when I got to the entrance, I discovered that it was flooded. There were several people just preparing to go in, they had an duffel bag with energy bars and water bottles and stuff, some of them had bikes. I had decided I was going to have to wade through part of the water. It had something to do with the fact that R- (one of the family dogs, who is no longer alive in the waking world) had just given birth to a new litter of puppies in the park on the other side of the flood. I picked over the granola bars to take one with me (I guess they were freely available), and prepared to go through the knee high water.

All Hallows Dream, in which a cat comes back

It's Halloween. I am going to some kind of party, wearing all black and a red hooded cloak (no, until now I didn't think of any connection to little red riding hood). I think I'm just trying to look different than usual, not dressed as something. I spend a fair amount of time sorting through very similar looking clothes in my closet, in a room much like the one I grew up in at my parents house (it might be that one). I do go to the get-together, and sort of hang around awkwardly not knowing what is going on, which is fairly accurate (except, in real life I don’t celebrate Halloween anymore). Darkness is falling.

Somehow I find out that my cat, which was apparently missing for some time, and has been found by somebody and taken to some kind of shelter. The cat in question is C-, who actually died several years ago, but in the dream he was still alive, just lost. I am absolutely overjoyed to get the call. I go with my husband to go find this place. We drive down drizzly logging roads at dusk. Near somewhere that looks like the road where I grew up, we see a young girl with a small pony, riding up the road. I mention to my husband that there used to be a pony at the end of the road that would escape and come down to our house. But then I realize that that pony has surely passed on by now, and this must be a different pony. It is also smaller and browner, almost the size of a Shetland pony.

We get to the place where the cat is being kept, which actually looks kind of like I imagine a preschool or kindergarten would look inside. There are a number of small children, and lots of children's drawings and brightly colored letters and such on the walls, but there are also dividers sort of like cubicles. A short round woman, probably about 40, with light abundant curly hair pulled back into something like a ponytail talks to us about the cat. She seems reluctant to turn him over, and somewhat disapproving of my having lost him. When I see him, he looks actually quite a bit different than C- looked in real life, but in the dream he looks like I expect. He is black like C-, but he also has a small white mark on his chest, and a smaller one next to his left ear, which C- didn't have, and he has some very small brown/torti marks on his face. In the dream, however, he looks "right" and I am very happy to have found him. I have not brought a cat carrier (typical), so I borrow my husband's jacket, which is a light tan one, pick up the cat and wrap him in it tightly with his head out (he is somewhat frightened and jumpy and all claws). I remember all of this part very clearly, and we go back to the car to take him home.