Disloyalty and Longing

7/15/2008 Tuesday morning/Monday night

It's been a while since recording a dream because I've been having so much trouble sleeping through the night... when you wake up constantly it's very hard to remember the bits and pieces. But most of the one from last night stayed with me.

There are several parts to this dream, I don't remember most of the connecting bits.

I was with my sister and her boyfriend M- at my mother's office. We were coming down the back steps, but they were quite a bit more complicated than in real life. It was or had been raining and they were all wooden and slick. M- was making generally unpleasant remarks, and when I commented on the slickness, he gave me a push to slide on the steps! It was so slick I slid down the stairs to the next landing and slammed against the railing. I was very mad at him shoving me and said so, my sister was somewhat upset as well, and pointed out that I was pregnant. He wasn't particularly repetent.

Next segment (there was stuff in between but it faded)

I had returned to visit the EWU (I think) campus for some reason and was strolling around with my sister. We started to walk back to the car, where other people and relatives were gathering to leave. At the bottom of a small hill I realized that S-, my old (and unfortunately former) friend was there. He was in a wheelchair due to a broken leg (I knew the cause of it. He was sort of behind us. I don't know if he knew that we saw him or not. Maybe he did and he knew why We didn't say anything, but at any rate, he followed along behind us, slowly. We saw him but pretended not to. My heart was pounding. I wanted to say something of course, but couldn't. My sister and I talked and laughed loudly of other things and got to the top of the hill, he was still there. Now he was no longer in a wheelchair or injured. My sister went to get into the car and I had to notice him. We spoke, I think, but I mostly just remember hugging him for a long, long, time. Every time I thought I could let go, I couldn't again. We hugged each other. We touched on how it couldn't be, given my current state of life, but at that moment I really wished it could, and it seemed that he did too. I don't know what he was wishing for though, maybe to just be friends again. My mother and aunt came up in he background, loading other people into the car. My mother saw what I was doing and knew who he was, I think, but she didn't say anything. There was also our dog in the back seat (where I was to sit with four other people, including my brother and possibly even my husband, I'm not sure. Then there were 4 other dogs in the back (it was a station wagon). They were all full sized dogs, and the last one was pretty old, my aunt (N-) boosted it up into the back because it had trouble jumping. Finally I had to let go of S- and we walked over to the car, where I squeezed in by my brother, and wondered why he wasn't on the other side holding our dog.

I woke up briefly still feeling the hug and felt guilty.

Another part, it continued after I went back to sleep but I'm not sure how it go from point A to point B.

I saw my aunt N- with some guy, acting fairly intimate. I was shocked and eventually mentioned it to my mother, who said that it was okay, she had actually gotten divorced from my uncle some months ago, but didn't want to tell anybody yet. I wondered if my cousins knew, then decided of course they must. Should I say something to them? We had been acting normal all along. I decided not to.

Then we were up at my grandma's house. There was some kind of outdoor bazaar or something and my Aunt K- was there. We moved around talking to people. There was a girl probably around my age who was an exchange student. Somebody in my family gave us both some gifts of fabric or scarves. She wanted me to help her write something, a thank-you note I think, and I was trying to accommodate. In the meantime my aunt K- kept talking to this loutish looking guy about what it was like in S.A. She was very interested in learning more but he wasn't too forthcoming.

We went up towards my grandma's actually house, and I noticed that the (dry) swimming pool had been cleaned out. The bottom of it was covered with something like moss but it had been scraped back and colored to reveal a geometric decorative pattern covering the entire bottom of the pool. I was happy that somebody had restored it to its former glory.

There was more in between here inside the house but I've forgotten it.

Then at the end, I am out in the mountains somewhere. I am climbing down hills and cliffs, avoiding the steepest part. It keeps getting steeper and steeper and finally gets to the point where I'm going to have to jump down and probably fall because it's too steep to climb down anymore. So, I wake up.

The Ache of Emptiness and Comfort

Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning - Last dream series of the night

I am in college in class. One of the classes I've been attending, which is the one I'm in now, I've been kind of slacking off on. The teacher, who looks sort of like my old math teacher from CC (but the topic is not math, it's something to do with history) plays a movie at each class and at the last class we had a paper to write in class. As I'd totally been spacing out during the previous class and the paper related to the movie, I had done pretty badly.

Now I'm back at the next class, deciding I better start paying attention and taking notes during the movie, since I'm doing pretty badly. There are 3 or 4 other people who show up for class that day, and we are seated around a long table with the far end pointing at the TV where the movie will be shown.

One of guys in class has been really irritating me, he always makes smart aleck remarks at me or acts sarcastic, and it is annoying. This happens at each class. I can't clearly remember much about how he looks now but he had shaggy light brown hair that was several inches long at least and was probably around my age or slightly older. I knew him from the class at the time, and his name, but I can't recall that either. This class I am seated at the very end of the long table, with people scattered on either side, waiting for the teacher to come in. I am slouched down in my chair, with my notebook out, feeling very discouraged and kind of depressed and unhappy, presumably about the class, but really as I've been feeling a lot lately. All signs kind of indicate to stay away from me.

Shaggy hair guy comes in and sits down next to me at the end of the table (not a usual occurrence) and makes one of his "funny" remarks as usual. I am weary, but at some level I appreciate that he does talk to me each time, there's some level of affection there I realize. There is scattered talk about having to pay attention to the movie this time becuase we'll probably have to write about it. The teacher comes in and starts to play the movie, and shaggy hair guy leans against to me very softly and rests his head on top of mine. I lay my head on his shoulder. It feels SO good I almost cry. I feel so comforted in my misery and lean back against him and we stay like that, he rests his hand tenderly on my head or my shoulder and we just lean together for the movie not really paying attention after all, or to any remarks from the teacher or others. I am aching inside with how good it feels to be held like this. The fact that I previously thought he was annoying is completely gone, and that this is wrong doesn't even matter because it touches the pain so much.

Something wakes me up at this point and I feel so empty, and want to go back to that feeling in the dream. I go back to sleep trying to get back to it, and though I end up going back to school again in the continuing dream, I can't get back to that scene or the guy.

In the continuing dream, it's the next quarter starting, first day. I am still hoping to run into him again and recapture the comfort of the previous dream. I am back at my parents house, packing up for school early in the morning, and with my are my sister and either a cousin or my brother, I'm not sure. We all get our stuff together. As we are leaving there's some altercation on the road involving my aunt and uncle and our dog. We go down to see what's going on, apparently they think he was doing something wrong and are yelling at him. He barks and another dog, a female, comes running down the hill at his call. Apparently this is also our dog but relatively new. She is a German Shepard like him, but her coat is actually white with pink vertical stripes, much like a pair of pants I used to have. She has another name but our dog calls her Cornelius. My father comes down to the commotion and I ask her if this is really her name, and he says he guesses it's the right name, as that's what the other dog has been calling her and it seems to fit.

As my father is handling the dog situation, whatever it was, we get into the car and drive into school. It's unclear what college campus this is, really, it sort of morphs between CC and EWU and this other version of EWU that has appeared in some of my other dreams. It's quite early in the morning, about 20 to 7.

My sister and I part ways in a classroom and arrange where we will meet, after some discussion we decide to meet in the "blue classroom with the cartoon characters painted on the walls". Both of us can picture and remember this room but neither of us actually remember exactly where it is, but we are sure we will find it. I can't remember where my first class is, although I know it starts at 7:30. There is an enormous clock on the wall in the classroom I'm in, where my sister and I split up, but I can't tell if it says 6:30 or 7:30. At first I think it's 6:30 but then when I look closer it appears to be 7:30. I finally ask some other people in the room, and they assure me that it is 6:30 but the clock is set wrong. I hope this is true, and I hurry off the the library to print off my schedule so I can find my first class. Hopefully it will have the same guy in it (one of the classes I'm taking is the same class, continuing the previous one, so it should).

I set off for the campus library. I am carrying a very awkward bag of stuff. In addition to my lunch and a pair of very dirty hiking boots, and school stuff, I also have 4 very large and awkward ceramic vases that I made in a previous class. I don't know why I'm hauling them around except that I'm hoping to show them to somebody, but I really am thinking I should have left them at home. I'm afraid they will break and it's very difficult to carry them all. I think I eventually decide to put them back in the van so I don't have to haul them around.

I wake up again before I make it back to the comfort of the shaggy haired guy, and I can still feel that loss in my chest. The emptiness was already there but he made me aware of it by comforting it, so when the comfort is taken away, I feel the ache more strongly.

Unstable Airplane Pilots

5/23 - Friday morning/Thursday night

I've had dreams pretty much every night between this one and the last one I posted, but since I didn't write down the last one at the time of course I can't remember them now :P getting back in the swing of things again!

I am with my family and we are going somewhere up in the mountains or up north to go skiing. It's a ski resort and we plan to stay there a few days (in the dream, we've been there before, and I can remember what it looks like. It's all snowy at this time of year, I don't know if it's winter in the dream or we are just in a much colder area). We have driven quite a while when we reach a small town from which we will take a private plane to reach the ski area. Time has been running short so we aren't going to actually have that much time at the ski area, but I think we are going to stay overnight once we get there.

We reach the town where we will fly from and we go out to a small house where the pilot lives. It's located on the edge of a large, flat field, surrounded by a lot of trees. They all have their leaves off, it's cold and wintery although there is no snow on the ground in this area. I and my parents unload the van and pack our stuff into the plane with the help of the pilot. She is probably 35-45, somewhat drawn looking, with faded blonde/strawberry blonde hair about down to her shoulders. I think we may have flown with her uneventfully in the past on another trip to the ski place, because we seem to slightly know her, and where everything is. Her husband, who is your typical old, balding, somewhat stout guy, a little surly looking, is also at the house and sees us off.

We all pile into the plane, which is a very little one, and she takes off down the short runway in front of the house. Then she turns the plane around and makes another go at it. I wonder what's going on but decide she must just be taking another run because that one wasn't quite right. The plane takes off. She circles the small field, and comes back again low over the runway (I remember we had to move our van back out of the way where it's parked, and think, this must be why!). Then she turns the plane abruptly upwards. It starts to climb, then flips onto it's back and we do a loop-the-loop in the air. Up until this point I was thinking the weird behavior was just stuff I didn't know about, but at this point I'm a little concerned. The plane drives up and around again, and then it starts falling. Everybody is scrambling. I realize something is definitely wrong.

The others manage to bale out when the plane swoops close to the ground, but I'm still with it, and it's going up again, I fall or jump out. I am not falling straight down, but blowing sideways in my descent, away from the rest of my family and the house. I am going very fast, and I blow past some trees, trying to avoid their branches. The others are yelling that I am still up there. I realize that I am carrying a square of fabric maybe 2-3 feet wide, with strings attached. I don't think it's actually a parachute, but I decide to use it as one as I know I must slow my descent or I will crash either into a tree or into the ground. I throw it up, holding onto the strings, and it poofs out to cushion my fall. Then I drift ever so slowly straight down to the ground, and land on my feet gently.

I run back to wear the rest of my family is. They are now talking with the pilot's husband, who I think is considering flying us instead of her. She has gone down into the basement of the house, and he intimates that she is having some kind of nervous breakdown, which is why she couldn't control the plane. I go into the house and down the stairs, down several levels, and find her there. She is frantic and definitely having some kind of meltdown, and she clutches my arm, trying to tell me what is wrong. She appears to be very frightened as well. I try to determine what the matter is, which is difficult as she can barely talk, just managing to burst out snatches of speech. She finally gives me the cover of a book or journal she was writing in previously. She cannot write now due to whatever condition has seized her, but she wants me to write down what she says to take to my family and warn them.

Her husband is crazy and psychotic, and we should not go with him, she says. He seems normal but he is totally unbalanced, and we have to beware. He is going to ask us, she says, to kill his dog for him (as an example of his unbalanced behavior). We have to get away and not go with him. She has been trapped by him and I gather this led to her nervous breakdown.

I do my best to write down everything she says, but I am having a lot of trouble writing. When I write it comes out like a child's scrawl, I can't keep it in a straight line and it's barely readable. It's worse than writing with my left hand, although it feels a lot like it trying to control the pencil. But I get down as much as I can, and at her urging, I go up the stairs. My family is talking to her husband, but I manage to pull my father away, and show him what she had me write. This isn't very effective so I tell him what she said and that we can't trust him. My father is a little incredulous (especially on the word of the obviously debilitated pilot) but then I say, he is going to ask you to help him kill his dog. Sure enough he does ask that moments later, and my father is alerted to the fact that something is amiss with this guy. We decline him flying us for know and pull away to our vehicle to recoup and discuss the situation.

Snapshot from an Alternate Reality Life

1/3/2008 - This morning's dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't Rent From Your Aunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, November 11th - Two dreams from last night

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

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

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

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

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.

Apocalypse and a Paralyzed Dog which is My Fault

Dream from Saturday night (8/11)
It is the end of the world, the apocalypse is starting. One of the effects of this is the internet going down. There is a group of 100 or so people who are planning how they will survive it, a handpicked team. They have a way to keep a small network with their blogs and stuff going through the apocalypse. I am part of this team, but not by choice. It seems to have to do with my work affiliation. I am outspoken at the meeting expressing my contempt of their idea and asking why they get to single themselves out as being special enough to survive, what about the rest of the world? If just going off individual merit, my parents and family members are far more qualified, and not because they are related to me. I think the elite group should not exclude the rest of the world.

In between, I am on a trip somewhere with my family and husband. We are in a deserty region near the coast. I see the family dog, C-, being bitten on the face by a gila monster. Except, it doesn't really look like a gila monster, it is all green and swims in the water. But it is quite large, and it's bite is deadly poisonous. I feel guilty because I don't say anything immediately when I notice it, and then it finally lets go of his face and swims away (his whole head was pretty much in it's mouth) and I know that it's going to be fatal. Nobody else seems terribly concerned, until it becomes evident that his body is paralyzed (from the neck down, for some reason). We head back home. We end up in the city of P-, buildings are collapsing, or blown out and empty. We are searching for a veterinarian, but everybody is closed due to the apocalypse. We finally end up going back to the town where my parents live, where we locate a vet and leave C- there to be cared for, going back to my parent's house.

At my parents house, my father discusses with my husband how we should head back to our home. One proposal is for my husband to take the truck, and my father to take the tractor, with me riding on the back, and go into town. At the time I don't realize it, but later I think my father knew that the dog was going to die at the Vet's and would need to be retrieved. Later, I am standing on the covered porch at my parents house as darkness falls. I can actually feel the darkness closing in around me, it is velvety soft and warm. I go inside to the living room, my parents are sitting on the couch and chair. I ask them if they have heard anything about C-, or something like that. They do not say anything at all. We stand there looking at each other, me with the growing realization that this must mean he has died, but nobody says anything.

We are still standing there when my husband comes in the door and I wake up, without the question being answered.