Moving Twice

Last night's dream

This was one of those long and stressful dreams, but this time the theme was moving. Which is indeed long and stressful and I hope I will not have to do again for a long time. I had to move twice in the dream, both on very short notice and both times to get away from my estranged husband. The first time I moved into this new place which was okay, it was on an upper story. It took forever to pack and cart everything from the old place to the new place. We were hurrying because he was going to come back and interfere and I didn't' want him to find out I was escaping or where I was going to. It took forever and I was totally exhausted. Then he showed up, and I had to move again. This time for some reason he was actually helping move although I was running away from him. The new place I found on very short notice was a peculiar little apartment at the very top of an old building. It had a dangerous looking internal staircase wrapping around (but not a spiral, squared) and it looked like it would be easy to fall down it. I was somewhat concerned about this especially in my condition. The rest of it was kind of funky and oddly put together but I decided it would be interesting and work well enough. It looked out onto a horse paddock. I discovered that it was owned by my old riding instructor! We met up breifly and I decided to get it, and set about tryign to get moved in as quickly as possible and get away from my husband again. The whole dream was very rushed and stressed and exhausting, definitly a stress dream.

Self-Examination, Missed Lunch Date, and Beach House

5/1/2008

I am pregnant with a girl and I go to the doctor to have her condition examined. The doctor isn't there and I wait around and finally decide to do it myself. This is relatively easy because it's in some kind of exterior womb, you can look at it on the table through sort of a transparent sack. At first it is tiny and I can see a pulsing heartbeat, but then it grows to a much more advanced stage that actually looks like a baby. I realize that there needs to be more fluid in the sack to accommodate the growth, up to 5 gallons, but I'm not sure how to get it in there.

During this time my friend H-'s husband has shown up. I'm supposed to be meeting him and H- later to go to lunch or something. I think I might be late and they came to find me. I indicate the problem and we go about trying to add more liquid, for some reason I think he is some kind of expert in these things. Then I go on my own to meet up with both of them somewhere across town. I think I end up being late or going to the wrong place, by the time we meet it's too late for lunch and we just part ways.

Then I go to a house on the beach where we are going to move. I stay in a sort of antique hotel nearby, by myself, to check out the area. There are several houses close together right on the sand, they are pretty nice. I walk around exploring. My cousin K- shows up and I am worried that people will come to visit all the time after we move there just becuase of our close proximity to the beach. K- alarms me by jumping into a large ditch nearby the houses and I yell her name, but she is okay.

Moving AGAIN....

Monday night/Tuesday morning's dream -3 of 3

We are moving again. I'm really annoyed because we just moved, and I didn't want to move again so soon or for a long time. Also, I don't see the point of this move. My parents are moving too, which means even more stuff to pack up, and we're all going to a big place near the beach. We pack and pack and I can't imagine how we are going to get everything packed, we don't even have enough boxes. I start with the food and already the task seems insurmountable and pointless.

Packing dreams where I keep packing for some trip or something are a dream which sometimes becomes repetitive with me at stressful times, but I'm not sure if this was the same kind, partly because it didn't last as long.

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.

Moving in another world, and at a loss to show how I care

In the first part of the dream, I was on a trip by myself, some kind of vacation in a jungle. At the end, I floated across a small river on a raft. My aunt and her family had been here in the past, and she had told me she could pick me up at the other side of this river on the way back from one of her trips. I had no intention of being picked up, however. She had also told me to be careful of the water lillies that grew on this water. They looked like regular white lillies, but they were poisonous to the touch. I observed them as I poled my raft to the edge and got out.
Now, I was going to walk home from here and then I was going to walk from P-- to S--. This has been a recurrent theme in my past dreams, and sometimes a desire in my waking world, to set out walking on long distances that normally people would not walk.

I walked back to my home, and then crossed the river into V--, to establish my route. At that point, I planned to return to my house, I was going to pack my overnight bag for the rest of the trip. When I turned back some floodgates by the edge of the river (which in the dream was more a flooded small stream) had opened, and muddy water covered some of the paths I had been on. There were several people sitting around who had seen me cross before and watched with amusement at the idea that I was going to get wet crossing back. A girl ahead of me gave up and plowed through, soaking her pants. I was not planning to get soaked for the remainder of my walk, and hopped across a narrow part, onto a large rock, and then jumped the rest of the way across, wetting only a corner of my pant leg.

I returned to my apartment for a bag and set out on the longer walk. It was somewhat late in the day and I could tell that it was going to be dark by the time I arrived at my parents house (an overstatement, since in the real world I think it would be impossible to walk that far in a day, much less a few hours). Almost all the way there, my father was driving by and picked me up, and I reluctantly allowed myself to ride the remainder of the way, I had walked most of it.

In the next part of the dream, I had returned to my home, some time later. Then my cousin returned from a long trip, and wanted to see me. My husband was away and I was trying to get out of visiting my cousin because it would bother him, but also he had chosen to be away and so I couldn't call him and tell him so I ended up going along with it for a little while. I walked along the waterfront to where my cousin was staying to get it over quickly, trying to act nice and friendly. The waterfront was like a conglomeration of some small beach towns I've seen. It had bricked decorative walkways along the fronts of very tall narrow buildings on the edge of the bay. One of them was the building my cousin was staying in. Another was a museum or rocket launching center or something, with a gift shop downstairs. My cousin was acting strangely, and invited me in for dinner. People came up spiral staircases from farther down in the building, carrying tray after tray of food, like an elaborate thanksgiving feast complete with turkey. I was appreciative but protested that I couldn't eat it all and had eaten recently. My cousin was somewhat disappointed. We strolled around for a while more and my cousin asked me a strange question, which made me both somewhat uncomfortable, and also disappointed that I couldn't think of the answer. "If you had 1000 "carules" to spend, how would you show someone that you care for them more than anything in the world." (or some word very similar to that, which was a real word in the dream that meant something like "love points," all the energy and resources that go into demonstrating care and love. In this case 1000 was an extremely large amount, equivalent to saying someone had one the lottery if it had been money).

I was somewhat taken aback at the question, and I wondered if my cousin was getting at something, but I decided to not think about that. I thought about it in terms of showing my husband how much I care and love him. But I could not think of what I would do with my carules, if I had so many to use. I was disappointed and finally said I'd have to think about it, and we watched the seagulls as I felt sad and somewhat inadequate to not know how to spend them.

After I extricated myself from the visit with my cousin, I went to my house to pack my things to move to a new a apartment. I was moving rather suddenly, and to an apartment that I did not particularly like. It was on a second floor, but if you opened the window it looked out onto other people's windows and balconies, and was not private. Also, some parts of the apartment had curtains between them instead of walls. I do not know why I had to move so suddenly. I sat in my apartment cramming the last items into a duffel bag, which were some items of clothing. Some of them I really have in the real world, others were items familiar to me in the dream but that I don't have in the real world. I also crammed my remaining stuffed animal, very worn, into the bag. Some coats and scarves were the last. My mother was helping me pack, although aside from this everything else had been moved.

We walked out past the gift shop on the waterfront, and my mother and I stopped there. I considered buying a small plastic animal but ended up not doing so. We chatted aimlessly and then I continued to the apartment. I felt sad, as I often do when moving.

I reached the new apartment and put my stuff down. My husband had returned and looked at it not liking it very much, as I had expected. My brother was also there to see. I put the stuff in the kitchen and we looked at the apartment somewhat grumpily. My husband also wondered why I'd had to move so suddenly.

There was a break in the dream and then in the last part, one of my neighbors in the apartment complex was having a fight with another neighbor, trying to get her to move out on some half-baked legal claim. The one who was being pushed out was like my old neighbor back in A-, an old woman. The one trying to get her evicted was like my old college roommate, but obnoxious. I watched with some distress, but not knowing what to do. My mother stepped in and began explaining to the old woman what her legal rights really were, and trying to mediate the whole thing.