Detached Legs?

9/6/2008 - Last night's dream
Warning... this is a little gross

Last night's dream was fairly complex but I don't remember most of it... the part I do remember is this. I was at my grandma's house visiting. I went into the kitchen where the washing machine and dryer normally are and instead, there were my legs! How they became separated from me I don't know, they were stacked up against the wall (I have no idea what I was standing on in the meantime). There were two but they looked like the same one! I started to examine them and I noticed that one looked like a slightly older version of the other one, rather than being different as legs normally are. I couldn't tell if one of them was left and the other was right. They both had the same marks and scratches, but on one of them the scratches were slightly more healed. I looked at the top leg and it had a thing like a pimple, but as it turned out as I examined it, there was something in it! It was (ugh) a botfly larvae. I picked and squeezed it out and removed it, alive. It was fairly disgusting, though quite small. On the other leg the same mark was there but it was smaller and looked like it was healing, like it had already been removed.

Jumping From Old and Bad to New and Scary (and maybe Good?)

Thursday night's/Friday morning's dream - 6/27/2008

This dream is long with several "sections." I think the first section is "connected" to the latter parts but I'm not %100 sure... the other parts are definitely connected though. There was a lot more detail to the first part and it was much longer than appears here, but I couldn't remember enough of the minor details.

At the beginning of the dream, I am no longer married, and it's been a while. What has happened to result in this (divorce? death?) isn't really addressed. I am at my parents house. My cousin expresses interest in me and keeps inviting me over, etc, I find this extremely distasteful. Other people in the family seem to support this though and think we will end up together Finally I just tell him I'm not ready for anything (really I can't imagine anything more disgusting) he is disappointed but leaves me alone. There is more involving him preparing a room and loaning me a book which has been given to him by some relatives (I don't remember what it was called but it was something about sex) but I can't remember all the details.

In the same section of the dream, our neighbor B-, shows up and is visiting the family at Grandma's. He looks younger with dark hair and beard. He sits down on the couch squished right up against me which makes me very uncomfortable. My mother asks lightly why doesn't he come sit by here, as she can see that I don't like this, but he says no, he is going to sit by me because I'm the only one that is single. I really dislike this. Also for some reason everybody else is calling him Charles, and this confuses me because this is not his name.

My overall feeling in both parts of the first section is of distaste and disgust, unhappy with the way people are interacting with me, their approaches repulse me.

The middle section... I am walking across a high, open place, maybe on top of a hill. I come into a very large, white room. It has huge windows all across one wall which look out over a cliff, very high up. Another woman is in the room, maybe someone I know, I don't remember. She is also dressed in white. I may be as well.

As she turns away to exit at one side of the room, I walk quickly across the room. I don't want her to see me come in because she will stop me. I open one of the giant windows. I want to jump out. I am dreaming lucidly at this point, that is, I'm aware that it's a dream and I seem to be able to control my actions to some extent. I hesitate but I tell myself, this is a dream, I'm not suicidal, I can jump and I will not die. But the other woman doesn't know this, she will misinterpret my actions. So when her back is turned I quickly step outside the window. I stand on the edge looking down. I remind myself this is a dream, brace myself, and jump. I am falling, falling, and I can feel the falling and am a little scared.

Then I land at the bottom of the cliff, unharmed. It is a narrow strip of beach and the tide is washing in all the way up to the base of the cliff when the waves come up. I start walking along on the narrow strip of beach, dashing between waves, or wading through the shallow water when the wave retreats. There is a small beach town in the distance which I am walking towards. In between the waves on the beach I find a giant shell, sort of like a clamshell but very large, at least 8 inches across and 5 deep. The two halves are separated but they fit together. The color is amazing and like nothing I have ever seen before, it is metallic gold and shimmering with all different colors. After wondering at it, I stop and pray, please let me keep this shell once I wake up, just this one, that's all I'll ask for.

A short time later: I end up staying in the house on the beach, at the town I was walking towards.. I'm not dreaming lucidly anymore just regular dreaming. The house is sort of similar to my apartment layout except there are several floors. It's also more richly and nicely decorated. I believe it belongs to my mother or she is renting it, or it belongs to friends of hers. I come in in the evening and my sister is laying on the couch, possibly asleep. I don't say anything to her. When I get up again in the morning and go into the kitchen she is still on the couch, but I sort of pretend not to notice she is there and start puttering in the kitchen. Eventually I look through the "window" between the living room and the kitchen and see that she has her eyes open and is reading or something. I say, "Oh! I didn't know you were there. When did you get here?" She says she has been there since last night and I say sorry, I didn't know she was there (I'm not sure why I'm claiming this). She seems slightly annoyed that I didn't see her.

Later on, I have gone out somewhere with my sister and I go back to the beach house alone. Some cleaning people are going to come or are already there and I'm supposed to pay them. Somehow I have already looked up that they only accept cash, and they don't charge up front but they will charge you an hourly fee when the cleaning is done.

I go in a ground-floor door to get something, quietly, I don't know if they are there yet. I'm supposed to be keeping the floor clean, it has a white carpet, but I look back and see that my boots have made large, muddy, wet tracks on the carpet. I quickly grab some paper towels and try to sort of soak up the footprints, then I look up and see that the cleaning people are there and they are already almost done.

There is a woman probably 40 or so with dark hair, and a younger man closer to my age with brown curly hair. They are very friendly and tell me not to worry about the footprints, they will get them. I apologize profusely. While they are finishing up, I gather up the stuff I need, I have a white scarf with a bright pink pattern on it that I really like, and I put it on and dress to go out. I come out and also lay out another scarf I have, which has a multi-colored pattern on it with scenes of rivers, boats, and stylized jumping salmon. It also has metallic color patches in places.

As I wait, the cleaning people talk to someone from the house next to us. She pays them and the woman gives her some kind of gold pin. Then they come talk to me. The woman takes me aside and lays a very large gold and silver decorative pin on top of the metallic scarf that I have laid out on the table. It matches perfectly. I want to refuse such an extravagant gift but I know she gave a token to the last people they cleaned house for, so maybe it is their custom. She then explains the pattern of the scarf for me, explaining what it symbolizes in my life, sort of like a fortune teller. She mentions a trip.

Then I talk to her and the young man about payment... I ask timidly if they will accept a check, as I heard that they would only accept cash. But I have just realized that I don't have enough cash, I spent most of it for lunch at a place which also only took cash. I am very anxious and somewhat ashamed as they have already cleaned. They both smile at me and say they will accept my check. I tell them it's not a local check (I don't actually live in this beach house usually of course) and they smile and say it is okay. I can't understand why they are being so nice to me, it's clear I'm getting special treatment, but I'm confused, though flattered. The guy is flirting with me too, and I like him but I'm not sure if they are for real. I ask them how much they charge per hour, and they say that I don't have to pay anything. I insist and they smile and ask what I think is a reasonable price?

I am flustered, I don't know what to say or what is reasonable, I don't want to name something too low... if I name something too high will they bring it down to what they want, or will they take it? Maybe this is a trick they use to get more money? They seem like they are being so nice to me, so I decide I will name a high amount that I'm sure is over (something like 50 dollars/hour) and if they don't bring it down I'll just eat the difference. But they laugh and won't take this price either, and they keep saying that it can be free, just for me.

My feeling in the later part of the dream here is of confusion and anxiousness (over the paying issues) but I'm also pleasantly suprised and pleased at how they are treating me and how nice they are being, especially the guy (even though I find this confusing too... do they really just love me or is there somethign else going on that I don't know?).

Creepy Head Lice

Soo.... I haven't posted any dreams for a while! I've been having them but since I haven't been posting I've forgotten most of them. It all started with this one which was just so gross I didn't post it but now I have to so I can start remembering and posting again :P

Approximately 05/11 Saturday night/Sunday morning?

I am visiting my maternal grandparent's house, I think, my aunts and other relatives on my mother's side might be there as well. I'm setting up my stuff in the room I'm going to stay in when I scratch my head and this little white wormy thing comes out of my hair in my hand. It's lice in the dream, but it does not actually look like real head lice, more like little grub like white bugs about 1/4 inch long. I keep scratching and find more, I'm totally disgusted. I end up later in the dream using some kind of shampoo to kill them in the shower, and I don't tell anybody about it. Then later we are staying somewhere again, I have determined that I picked up the lice at the relatives' house. My sister stayed there too and I finally decide I should tell her in case she might have them too. She is putting on a black wig which she got from their house. I am embarrassed about it but I tell her that I had picked some up there and she should probably check too. She says oh, don't worry I don't have any, but thanks for letting me know about it, she'll keep an eye out. Then I bend over and look at the wig she is wearing, and in the middle of the crown of the wig it is so thick with the lice it's just white, a huge pile of them. It's totally disgusting and I wake up itching and scratching, feeling grossed out (but oh so relieved that it was a dream).

Badly Planning a Vacation; Suprise Soup

4/2/2008 - Tuesday night/Wednesday morning

I am at my parents house. I am planning a vacation trip, flying to another part of the country, the next morning. During the trip I will visit my friend H-, and I call her and tell her when we will arrive the next day. My brother is supposed to come with me.

The next morning I sleep in accidentally and wake up late, around 2. I am irritated that my brother didn't wake me up so we could leave on time and consider this to be his fault. Now we are going to be late and our vacation will also be shorter. I try to call H- a couple of times and tell her, but I can't get reception. I finally get gravelly phone reception in the dining room and leave a message on her voicemail.

Now I talk to my brother about where we are going to go. We originally had more options, and could have taken our vacation anywhere, but now we are running out of time. Also we no longer have time to drive, we will definitely need to get plane tickets and leave today. My brother can't decide on where he wants to go. Finally I narrow it down to two places, Sp- and Ti-, because "I've been there before and will be able to find my way around." Except in the dream, Ti- is a town in central Washington.

When I think about having been in both towns before, remembering in the dream, I remember going with my sister to the beach. She had a small house on the beach, and is living there now. We might visit her if we go to Sp-. She is finishing up her degree. Either someone asks me in the dream or I imagine it in the dream, if I am also still in school. I laugh and say no, I graduated from college years ago. I can't remember how many years, I try to count but I mix it up. But my brother is still in it, I say, and my sister is just about to finish or she just finished but is still there. I remember another place in Sp- in the dream, a huge colorful and very fancy mall, with huge marble stairways and fountains and giant arched ceilings with bright neon lights. (This is a mall I visited in another dream quite some time ago, but it doesn't exist in real life. Neither does a seaside in either location. I realize this in the dream, since both locations are landlocked and some ways from the ocean, but I brush off the issue. Perhaps they are actually large lakes, I reason. I recognize the discrepancy but it does not bother me).

Returning to the present of the dream, I again argue with my brother trying to get him to agree which location to go to for our trip. I tell him to forget anywhere else we'd been considering, and just pick between those two because they are fast and easy. (How we will also visit H-, which seems to be a primary purpose of me going, when she is actually in S- , is not addressed).

We are sitting in the living room arguing, he is being typically lackadaisical. He isn't really interested in going but I think our parents have told him to do so. I leave him to decide and get up to make some soup, as I haven't eaten. I open a can of Campbell's beef soup in the kitchen and heat it in a pot on the stove, then pour some of it into a bowl for me and return to the living room. As my brother and I go back and forth about the locations, I stir the bowl of soup on the coffee table. I haven't had any yet. Then i notice something in the bowl, and lift it out with the spoon. It appears to be a used condom. I am disgusted and outraged, and also I consider suing the soup company. I fish it out and dump it, and go into the kitchen but then I realize I don't really want the remainder of the soup that was cooked with it either. I am not hungry anymore even though I still haven't eaten anything.

My father comes into the house and I run out and tell him about the soup incident and express my shock and disgust, and my consideration of suing them. I decide to ask my mother about it. Then I tell my father my brother still won't decide where to go for the trip, and my father says to pick something. He thinks we should go to Sp- because then we can stop by and see my sister as well, so I think we decide to do that.

The general feeling throughout is irritation at the delay and indecision, which I mostly take out on my brother, and the fact that we're going to be late and the trip is just sort of thrown together becuase we ran out of time, and not properly planned. I'm also annoyed at not being able to meet H- at the time when I originally said I would. The level of irritation is general annoyance and stress, probably about as much as if the situation happened in real life. Also there's the gross-out factor of the soup incident, which disgusts me and makes me want the soup company to pay reparations, which is more out of character.

A Very Unfortunate Cat (gross-out alert)

3/14/2008
Thursday night's dream

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

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

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

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

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

The Bugs Kept Coming...

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

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

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

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

A Former Coworker Gets Creepy

3/10/2008
Sunday night/Monday morning's dream:

The only part of this I remember, I was in an office of some kind. It looked kind of like the FH. A guy who looked like a younger version of R-, someone who used to work at a company where I used to work years ago (but I never had much contact with -- he was known for getting angry about things and worked in a different dept), came out of the back room. In the dream we both worked at the place we were in, and knew each other slightly. It was after hours and we were the only people still there. We started talking. I found myself thinking he looked rather handsome. Then he kissed me. Suddenly he didn't look so handsome anymore, he looked like he was aging 20 or 30 years, looking old and haggard. He was interested in me but I was trying to think of a way to discourage this and escape.

He made some comment about how he didn't think I should pay so much attention to "that guy I talk to online," sounding jealous. I protested, realizing he was talking about my husband. I said he was going to come home back soon, in fact then I remembered, he is already back, and I told R- so. I was feeling bad about what had happened. He made more negative comments about my husband and how he didn't deserve me, etc, which made me even more turned off of him, and I was defending my husband. R- thought I should be with him instead, but I was now rather grossed out by him and wanted to leave. I didn't know how I had thought he was handsome earlier. He took off his clothes to show me these strange scars on his body, they were like yellowish brown splash marks all over his skin, and he was also horribly mutilated (looking like things had been "cut off" and healed in a nasty, ragged, way). It appeared he'd been through some kind of torture and been splashed with acid or something. I was truly repulsed, both by his appearance and his manner, although I tried to be sympathetic about the unnamed past ordeal, and I wondered how he could possibly think I would be interested in him over my husband, or for that matter, anybody else in the world.

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.

I find a friend amidst a hostile homeland and prepare for a secret mission

Wednesday 2/13/2008 - Last night's dream.
After many tired nights of fitful sleep, not conducive to dreaming, I actually got to sleep last night. I was still totally exhausted upon waking.

After getting to sleep, I "woke up" again in the dream when I heard the washing machine running. I looked over to the side of the bed where there had been a pile of dirty clothes when I had gone to sleep, and it was diminished. I tiptoed out into the living room and saw that in fact, the washing machine was going, and my husband had come home. The light was on in the study. He had not come to bed. I was sad and crept back to bed (note: this didn't actually happen, the whole waking up scenario was part of the dream, as with the next one. When I woke up in real life he wasn't there and the clothes were still unwashed). I slept for a while longer and when I woke up again, it was early morning (of today, Wednesday, but still in the dream). I walked into the living room and looked out, it had snowed in the night and the tree branches outside the window and the porch were all covered with a fine perfect coating of snow. I was a little surprised that it had snowed as it had been warming up a bit and I hadn't been expecting any more snow this year. My husband was up and he asked me if I was going to stay in because of the snow.

I looked out again, it was only about 1/2 to 1 inch of snow, and I was not going to work today but to visit my parents. I told him that I was still going to go, it wasn't much snow.

Skip ahead to H- Valley, I am arrived to visit for a few days (there's no snow there). It seems like it's been a while since I've been home. My cousin K- is also there. As I walk up to our grandma's house, I meet him and we walk together. He has been home for a while. The lawn in front of her house is no longer a lawn, it's all stripped bare and mounded up in hills, and it's dry and sandy (rocky sand, not beach sand) and dark reddish brown like clay. I am suprised by this. As we walk over the sand hills, I see a small perfect seashell about the size of a wonton, reddish yellow, laying on the sand (it's one of the spiral snail kinds). I pick it up with an exclamation of delight. I see another one of a different kind and pick it up, but it's not as nice so I drop it again. My cousin is not impressed by the find, he tells me it's been like this for a while and there are lots of shells. It seems it has been excavated and the area was once underwater. I get the impression that my grandmother may have past on a while ago and not live there anymore (this isn't new news to me in the dream, and it's not really addressed, there's just that feeling).

Later my cousin, myself, and some other people (my siblings and/or other cousin) go out for a walk across the logging roads. A new neighbor has apparently moved in somewhere between two of our other neighbors on the road, and according to my cousin they are somewhat hostile. My impression is that we kids haven't been home for some time so they don't really know who we are. We walk down to the bottom of a logged area where the trees start again, and there is a small bridge over a creek and we can see a trail continuing on. We start across but a man appears, he has black hair and a beard and outdoorsy clothes, and doesn't look like anyone I know. He yells at us to get out of the area. It's clear that he thinks we are trespassers who are dumping trash on the logging road or hunting or something, not neighbors. We protest but he is gone without understanding.

I end up finishing the walk by myself (I think my cousin went down the trail the guy told us not to). I end up on the road and I am walking past another neighbor's house on the way home (the E-'s). I see Bob and say hello as I pass, he talks to me about something but now I don't remember what. When I get about halfway home, by a bend in the road and creek, I stop. There is a bunch of dumped junk by the side of the road, all sorts of equipment and computer stuff. It's mine and I have to stow it here looking like junk so nobody takes it, becaues I need to pick it up later. The creek is high. I muck about nearby, suspending things over the bank, and I see a kid. He has black hair and looks kind of like a fictional character I used to have called RH. He's younger than me by a few years, and smaller, and he is one of the hostile neighbors. I call out a greeting. At first he is suspicous of me and wants me to get out of there, but I try to calm him down. I tell him I live her but have been away, I'm one of the family that lives up the road, and I describe where my grandma lives (or used to live) on the other side of the logging area. He has heard of the family and is suprised that I'm one of them but he seems to accept this. As we talk I get the idea that he's had trouble with strangers trespassing around the area, and that he's also run into my cousin and gotten a negative impression from him (which doesn't suprise me, since my cousin wasn't exactly trying to proceed softly with the other guy). The kid's name is Riley, and we both take a liking to each other. They live across the creek from the E's, he says. We talk about the other neighbors on the road and who lives there. Although nothing else has really changed from when I used to live there, I really feel like an outsider come home here, like the environment no longer feels I belong (the others of my generation are also affected this way).

We arrange to meet later; as I have to get home for some kind of dinner party, and I have to come back later and get this stuff. I have been assigned a secret mission that involves the equipment, and will be leaving directly after we come back to collect it. Riley wants to come with me on the secret mission and I agree.

I go home to my parent's house and am preparing for some kind of dinner with lots of people coming over. It's unclear exactly when this happens in the timeframe of the rest of the dream. I start making vast quantities of tea and looking for various pots to store it all in, and I am concerned that it will go bitter before the guests arrive. There are other preparations as well but I don't recall them all exactly. I'm stressed about it.

The actual party is skimmed over. Next thing I am out walking again, back down the road from the same walk before. I am wearing a poncho and pants, but nothing else on top and the poncho is flung back over my shoulders. I see a guy and I think it's Bob. He greets me. When I get closer I realize it is not Bob but some other guy (who doesn't even look like him, and is kind of creepy). I pull the poncho down to where it belongs, to cover yourself. The guy seems to want to talk with me, making complimentary but creepy remarks, but I hasten past with few words.

I end up at the bend in the creek again. The equipment is still there, and I start the laborious process of hauling it all out of hiding and folding it up. Parts are suspended over or submerged in the creek, or hidden in an old desk, and there are also cables plugging various bits together. I am working fast becuase I need to leave soon on the secret mission, and I don't want anyone to drive by and see me or get suspicious. My cousin and siblings show up and want to know what I'm doing. I don't want to talk about the secret mission becuase I can't explain it here, of course. They are persistent and purposefully annoying with their questions, trying to get me to explain. Riley shows up as planned. He is angry to see my cousin there (having previously run into him) but I quickly explain to my family that I know who Riley is and he is one of the new neighbors, and is coming with me, and I explain to him that my cousins aren't really intruders.

Once they hear that Riley is going with me, of course, they want to come too. I am irritated but finally I tell them it's a secret mission and they insist that they want to come, so I give in. But I won't tell them any of the details now. I get all of the stuff hauled up and am ready to go when another kid shows up. He is small and pale, with buzz cut blond hair, and seems to be slightly mentally disabled. He tells me he wants to go on the secret mission to. He has a toothpick which he is playing with. He pokes me with it. I ask him about something to do with the toothpick, (like, does he want to take it with him) and use his response as a reason why he can't come. I feel a little mean about this but it's impossible to reason with him. He's unhappy but accepts the explanation. He ends up breaking the toothpick in half by accident. The rest of us are all set to leave on the Secret Mission, but then I wake up for real this time.

The overall feeling in the dream is somewhat despondent and depressive, although it has good moments like finding the shell and Riley, who I enjoy being with. I am having trouble sleeping even in the dream world. Also I am irritated a lot and stressed by preparing for things, like the party and the secret mission, and the other people except Riley annoy me very easily.

A strange visit to the optometrist

1/4/2008 - This morning's dream

Only a few scenes stand out clearly. I can't remember enough of the first part of the dream leading up to this segment, or exactly what happens after it, although the dream continues on in both directions.

I am going to an optometrist's office. It's one I haven't been to before, I am new in town. It's a small office, when I walk in the door there is a doctor, probably in his 30's, seated in an examining chair, right inside the door, tilted backwards (where a patient would sit). He has short black straight hair, and a white coat, and is main optometrist. When he looks up at me, I explain that I'm here for somebody else (maybe my husband?). I am not actually being examined today, but we are doing preliminary tests and I'm getting to know the doctor. Later, I or someone else will return for an actual appointment. The main optometrist in the chair sends me off with another guy who is sort of an assistant optometrist. This guy is much older, with gray hair. We go into a back room. As we go in, the old optometrist asks me if I know of a good contact lens solution. Do I have any problem with my contacts getting dry? He also wears them, apparently. It strikes me as odd that he is asking me (a patient) this, thinking I would know more about it, but I tell him what kind I use and say it's been working fine. In fact, I had been thinking about asking if he knew a better one, but I decide against it after this conversation. He is nice enough but doesn't seem that knowledgeable.

Once in the room, we sit at a small wooden table and talk. He says he's going to give me some preliminary tests, which consist of looking at some pictures which are of the "magic eye" sort and similar optical illusions. Except these versions are very clear and amazingly realistic, they don't look like regular magic eye pictures at all. One of them shows a brown version of buildings, sort of escher-esque. I comment on how nice these magic eye pictures are, I've never seen any like this. He agrees that they are quite nice, not like the common ones you find in the newspaper comics. (They actually did used to print them there when they became popular a few years ago, although I haven't seen them there for a while). There's actually an example of one of the usual ones there in the office, in a newspaper which has the comics page showing. I am trying to look at it to compare without him noticing, since he's still talking and that would be rude, but I try to sort of sneak looks at it.

For a while we talk amiably, but then I grow increasingly uncomfortable, and he also changes into a different person, younger, and sort of disturbing or creeping me out. I prepare to leave, but before I do so I put on some different clothes out of a backpack, over my existing clothes. They're a pair of pink pants and a sort of maroon or purple top.

The next part of the dream is unclear and somewhat confusing, but it involves me going into another room, I'm not sure it's in the same building but it has a stark medical look. There is a large machine that looks sort of like a printing press. It's used for some kind of physics-defying travel, maybe time travel or jumping from location to location. I think I or someone else uses this machine but the dream becomes increasingly mixed up at that point, and bops around from place to place, including a trail behind the house and someone else's house, and other people enter the picture. A lot more happens before and after the eye doctor which is related, but I've lost the linear thread of what happens.

Creepy People Everywhere

Earlier and fainter in my recollection, I am at some kind of taekwon-do tournament. There are a lot of creepy people there, and I end up having to pay a fee which I sorely need, even though I was not intending to participate, just watch. The whole thing is very uncomfortable, although I can't remember exactly why. There are some people there from my real life taekwon-do past, although changed, and there is some (I think negative) conversation amongst the others about my recent marriage to my husband.

Afterwards, my husband and I are driving through some kind of mall parking lot, I think leaving the dojang, and there is a scary guy who keeps hassling the car. First we end up driving away to escape him, and the parking stub blows away. Then there is another guy (in cahoots) who won't let us out of the parking lot without paying 15 bucks again for the parking. We don't have any more than that (and we already paid, but thanks to his buddy we don't have the receipt), but finally with him yelling and putting a gun to the window, we give him the money and tear out of there.

Then we are in a movie store and a new movie is playing on the TV inside, people are muttering about it. Rumor has it that embedded in the story (which I think is a cartoon) are directions for some kind of terrorist plot.