Daring Police Duo

Tuesday night 3/17/2011 – Wednesday morning 3/18/2011

I’m in part of this dream but I only come up occasionally, mainly it follows other characters.

At the beginning of the dream I’m milling around this town doing fairly mundane things, but it sort of maps out the town and gets the lay of the land as I go around. It’s a small-medium sized town that is not a real place, but in the dream I guess I live there. It’s sort of similar to a combination of Ab- and Mo- but with significant changes, I don’t think it’s actually supposed to be either but rather a new place.  In the dream I do things like go to a nearby grocery store. My parents have come to visit and I meet my parents there (possibly at a restaurant adjacent to the grocery store, it’s kind of a strip mall area) but they also need to get some things at the store, and then drive my mother around a little. They aren’t familiar with the area but I am somewhat. She wants me to take my car through the carwash after we leave the grocery store. 

About this time, luckily, action shifts to other characters in the dream and the real story, which I don’t really appear in again until one other time, and I’m not part of the story.  The main characters are much more interesting. 

The story centers around two police officers, a young woman and a slightly older guy named Sam. They are out patrolling the city as a duo. This isn’t their first outing as partners but the woman is still fairly new here. Sam is on the slender side, dark hair and a bit scruffy looking, not classically handsome but sort of attractive in an ugly way. He’s probably in his late thirties though I’m not very good at guessing ages. The female officer is a young, gorgeous woman, tall and thin with long pale blond hair. She has a somewhat mysterious past. As she explains to Sam later in the dream, she doesn’t know what her real name is. She was adopted as a child and they did not know what her name was before either. She’s tried other names but she can’t remember names so she immediately forgets them. She compares it to writing a name on a scrap of paper, and then dropping the paper. Then she doesn’t pick it up because she doesn’t remember what’s on it or why she should. So, she doesn’t think of herself as having any name. (Sam has a hard time imagining not thinking of yourself by a name at all… like an empty nutshell). Other people refer to her as Spirit. This is partly because she doesn’t have a name and partly because she comes and goes a lot… leaving one town without notice, showing up somewhere else. (She’s apparently been a cop in other places as well but is relatively new to this one). She also has a lot of trouble remembering other people’s names, including Sam’s, although she’s been working with him for a little bit already and they are developing a connection to each other.  This whole discussion happens later in the dream where they pause in the action but I don’t remember exactly where it fits in so I mention it now in order to refer to them by name.

Sam and Spirit are out patrolling the city, it’s daylight still when this starts. They visit the grocery store/restaurant parking lot area after being called because of some problem and talk to the people there.  Then they head over to a radio station higher on a nearby street, where Sam thinks there may be some trouble going on. It’s called AM FM or has that in the name. It is suspected to be a center of operation for some gang or drug dealers, though that hasn’t been clearly established. They go in and talk to the people, who are very friendly and open acting (covering up any suspicious activity) so they aren’t able to catch them at anything. They get a call again back at the grocery store area that the problem person has returned, so they drive back. There are some gaps here that I can’t remember that clearly and other things that happen, but somehow Sam identifies the bad guy who is a small unpleasant person. He puts the person in the police car but somehow in the struggle the guy locks him out. Sam tells him through the window that he can’t escape that easily, he has other skills. Then Sam proceeds to squeeze through the door latch (apparently very strange other skills!). The guy is freaked out and terrified. 

Another officer is also called out on the scene, I don’t remember his name but he works with Sam and Spirit sometimes. He is interested in Spirit but this isn’t really returned. He does something at this juncture that isn’t particularly helpful but ticks off Spirit, like letting the bad guy escape perhaps or causing some problem for Sam by the way he reacts to the situation (he and Sam aren’t really best buddies, possibly because of Spirit). In description he’s a slightly smaller/stockier guy, but still youngish, curly brownish hair, average looking.

I think it’s probably in here somewhere that there’s a quiet period and Sam and Spirit have the conversation about names and Spirit’s past, maybe while they’re taking a break eating. I know they are sitting outside together somewhere at the time and it’s afternoon light. It’s an intimate moment which pulls them closer together.

The details are vague in the next part but Sam and Spirit end up back in some business establishment and something happens to cause an argument between them, and Spirit stomps out. She is mad and upset with Sam over something he said or did that made her feel like he didn’t care about her. By this time, it’s dark out. Spirit walks away on foot along the side of a road, mad. Several cars pass by her. 

Unbeknownst to her, Sam gets a call that there is trouble at the radio station and heads back over there in his squad car. It’s a trap though… they are not happy about his interference earlier and are luring him back to get rid of him. When he shows up they pretend to cooperate but once he gets the bad guy back in his car, the guy manages to distract him and the others setup a severe crash in the parking lot (to look like an accident) where his car is rammed and destroyed.

Meanwhile, Spirit is walking along the road, several people have offered her  a ride. Then, the other officer we’ve met earlier stops and she is talking to him as he sits in the car (she doesn’t want a ride) when she hears over the radio the radio station mentioning that there has been an injury accident in their parking lot. She immediately knows that Sam is in trouble and it must be him (and suspects foul play, since the radio station is reporting this before the police department has received an injury report from their own officer). She runs off on foot without explanation to go to the radio station, argument with Sam momentarily forgotten in light of the fact that he is in danger and probably injured.  The other officer doesn’t really know what’s going on or where she went but decides to go after her. 

When Spirit gets to the radio station and sees the wreckage, she is distraught. Sam is gone, she doesn’t know where, but presumably he was taken to the hospital as it’s reported he had serious or life threatening injuries. By this time other people are aware of the accident (though not the real nature of it which only Spirit suspects, that Sam was targeted). She is very worried about him, and immediately sets off to try to get to the hospital. By this time, it’s next morning. The other officer is trying to catch up with her and follow her, she doesn’t want his help. She gets on a train going to the hospital, he tries to catch the same train but loses track of her. At this point the action follows the other officer. He really does want to catch up with her and make good with her (and more, of course, since he’s interested in her) and can’t figure out why she’s avoiding him. He suspects she’s going to the hospital, so he also boards a train which he thinks is the same train, but it turns out she was on the one before so he’s slightly behind. The train is an old fashioned kind of train operating as an inner-city rail, it has dining cars and such inside which he pushes through, annoying the waiters, while he’s trying to find her. The train crosses the bridge which is in the middle of town to the other side of the river, where the hospital is located. 

Spirit gets off the first train, she doesn’t have any idea where the hospital is (or even if there is more than one) but she races around looking and finds a building not far from the train station that is labeled as some kind of hospital or recovery center. It is a big building with glass fronts and is run by some sort of religious organization. The nurses and doctors all have white uniforms and headscarves, but I don’t think it’s actually a Muslim hospital but rather some obscure Christian sect. The name of the hospital is long and complicated and I don’t remember it.  She goes into the hospital and is asking after the injured officer, the people working there present sort of a barrier to going in and don’t want to tell her anything. It’s a very private recovery center and they don’t know if they should tell her, or let her in. Also, she can’t remember Sam’s name now due to her problem with names so she doesn’t have the specific information to get access to see him or know if he’s there.  She is desperate to find out if he is okay. Somehow she manages to slip past the initial workers at the front who basically exist to prevent access from random inquisitors, and gets into a laundry area, where she attempts to disguise as a hospital worker between stacks of sheets. She is discovered pretty quickly by some other people working in the laundry area. When she explains what she is doing there, they act sympathetic to her plight, but they end up committing her as a patient (she has some other injury sustained in earlier events, coupled with her inability to give either her name or the name of the officer she is looking for, they decide she has a major head injury requiring recovery…plus she’s not in uniform anymore now which doesn’t help her credibility). She doesn’t resist this even after she figures out that they’re not really helping her, because it’s a way for her to stay inside and try to find Sam later. However, initially she is sequestered in her own room.

Now we are back with the other officer on the train. He gets out and locates the hospital (easier than Spirit did, presumably because he’s lived her longer).  The hospital workers react better to his pleas to get in than Spirit’s when he asks if this is the place with two injured officers.  They let him in, but they don’t tell him which rooms Spirit and Sam are in, so he has to go from door to door. There are numerous strange little cupboards, some numbered, most of them high up on the wall and only accessible by climbing up ladders or crawling across windowsills. The inside walls in this room and cupboard (room) doors are made of wood slats, somewhat like an old style barn, and very irregular. At this point, I reappear in this dream as myself, (with my son in tow) trying to figure out how to even get up to the cupboards, I start climbing one ladder but give it up because it’s fairly hard to do one-handed. Then it’s back to the other officer, he climbs up one of the ladders and opens a few doors, then he opens one door and it has a small opening into a room at about head height. You can’t actually go through the door because it has a screen over it, but you can look into the room. Spirit is in the room with another man, and this makes the officer very upset and shocked. She sees him at the window and comes over. She is mad that he is there and keeps following her around. She comes out and yells and him to leave her alone. The officer protests that he was coming to make sure she was okay, and asks why she is so mad at him and never wants him around. She reminds him of whatever he did to make things hard for Sam earlier in the dream (the details of which I can’t remember), he didn’t realize that this would make Spirit upset (because of her connection with Sam). He feels defeated and leaves. Spirit is now out of the room and goes looking for Sam again. She goes from one part of the large hospital building to another and walks through this open area sort of like the inside of a swimming pool building. There are separate pits of water in places, screened off by low walls, for treatment. In many of these there is also a doctor with a lot of electrical equipment, and the patient is in the water soaking, and possibly getting shock treatment or something (however, despite its diabolical sounding nature, everyone is pretty calm).

Spirit runs from place to place and finally locates Sam, who is soaking in a Jacuzzi sized small pool (naked or nearly so) not being electrocuted or anything at the moment. He sits up, she is excited, happy, and crying to be reunited and see that he is okay. He has mainly recovered from his injuries during treatment (several days at least have passed since the accident now, somehow, and all this time she did not know if he was dead or lying comatose or with serious injuries).  They embrace, he calms her down and comforts her, both are emotional.  He gets out of the pool, there is a small couch area with blankets and towels alongside of it where they sit talking intimately, and he starts tickling and kissing her feet until she is laughing hysterically and groaning, and writhing around, burying her face in the towels. Several bystanders nearby gather to watch, amused by their display of affection and her reaction.

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.

Missing a past and nowhere to go

January 26^th - Saturday morning's dream

My parents and family have been arrested for something and all taken away, and the house is barricaded off by the police or FBI or something. All record of their existence has been removed from public record, but I don't think they are dead, just being held somewhere. I was the only one not taken, but I'm not sure why this is (or what crime they had been involved with). I am driving around a small hilly area somewhere in town, in the old pickup I used to drive which once belonged to my parents. The gas is almost empty. I drive back and forth in a several block area, looking for somewhere, but I don't remember where I was trying to get. I don't have anywhere to go home to now. In the dream I was still working for the old company I used to work for, and apparently was living at home. I now will not be able to go back to work there, also I won't be able to get another job because the fact that I worked there has been erased (I think the entire company has been "removed" similarly, or if not that, the fact that I had worked there for 5 years) so I have no employment history or references.

I drive up and down in the truck. I don't have enough gas to get up to a gas station at the top of the hill, so I leave the truck and start walking up to the gas station a short distance away. The path I take is through a flooded streambed in a nearby woods, clogged with fallen logs. I carry an enormous piece of driftwood (which I can somehow lift over my head despite its size) which I put down as a bridge across each flooded place, then pick it up and carry it to the next place to use again. It gets smaller and smaller with each use until it is used up. I arrive at the gas station. It's creepy and made of old concrete. I realize that I don't have any clothes on, so I can't buy gas, and also I don't have anything to put the gas in anyway. There is a Goodwill or similar clothing thrift store nearby, and I think of going there to get some clothes. But then I realize that when you have no clothes at all, it's nearly impossible to get any. It's very difficult to get any normal task done when you've lost your clothes, even getting new ones. People will freak out instead of just giving me some clothes, and possibly think I am crazy.

I decide to return to my parents’ house, which nobody is at but it's cordoned off with police tape and some kind of electronic security surveillance. I sneak into my bedroom past the security devices and pack a suitcase with some things. I think I might come back later but who knows if I will be able to. I can only take as much as I can carry, mostly clothes.

Then, I go to the house of my former riding instructor (in the truck, which I guess I got gas for after I got some clothes) not too far away and well out in the country. She and her significant other are somewhat surprised to see me but they know what has happened to my family. I have nowhere else to go and I can't get work or stay anywhere because my past has been erased, so I don't know what to do. They realize this. She mentions that they have a little room and there are a bunch of odd jobs that they've been meaning to get to, implying that I can stay there and work for her in exchange. I'm not ungrateful although I realize that they can easily take advantage of my situation in getting work out of me.

The house is extremely messy. I look around it thinking that I will clean it up and put it in order, like the protagonist of a book which I recently read (in the waking world as well as in the dream) who stays with somewhat messy foster parents. My riding instructor tells me that if I'm going to stay there, I should know that it was they who orchestrated the crime that eventually led to my parents' arrest, and they are going to continue doing these crimes (some kind of robbery I think). I accept this situation (what can I do, anyway?). Then she asks if they can take my truck to go to town, and I say sure. After they leave I realize that the authorities know whose truck it is, and so they will be tracked down and caught. I envision living here on my own, in this remote holdout. I'm not entirely sure if the authorities will eventually come after me, or not, but it seems best to stay out of the public eye.

Exciting Encounters

12/10/2007 - Sunday night's/this morning's dream
I went to stay for a visit at my parents' house. There was a house that was far up the hill in the woods which my aunt K- was selling as a duplex. She'd asked if I wanted to rent or buy one half of it, and I had agreed.

We hiked up the hill to look at the duplex. Others were trying to convince me not to go look at it becuase it wasn't ready, but I wanted to see it. The trail was lushly overgrown and very steep, but we came up to the house nestled in the trees. They also tried to prevent me from going into one of the bedrooms (either in the duplex or in my parent's house) where I planned to stay that night, but I went in anyway, there was nothing unusual there.

Then while I was unpacking my stuff and changing for dinner, my friend H- popped in! I hadn't seen her for a long time. I realized that she'd been there as a surprise and this was why they hadn't want me to go into the room, becuase they thought she was in there. We was very excited to see her, and we reunited happily and later went out and ate dinner with the rest of my family.

I was intending that my friend H- or my cousin would live in the other half of the duplex, but my parents let slip that my sister was planning to live there, possibly with my cousin. I was quite upset about my sister living in the other half along with me and tried to get them to stop her from doing so. She was unmoved and acted like it was my problem.

Later I went with my husband back to S. A. His hair was longer than usual, combed back and shiny, and he led me to where we were going to stay for the time being in a very fancy hotel. We walked past a grassy hill which he ran up and down, he was very full of energy and excited. There were lots of other people around, mostly women. We went into a restaurant, and as he walked through he made a hand signal (similar to the one indicating that you don't want anymore coffee) to the person at the drink bar (non-alcoholic) which meant to prepare two of his signature drink--he was evidently well known even though he hadn't been there for a while. People greeted and acknowledge him as he went through. I was wearing several overlapping bandannas, black and white, and the rest of my hair was down. As I entered the restaurant, with him, I was given a wide, rectangular, black piece of fabric which was meant to be draped over the back of my hair from the top of my head, and then pulled over my shoulders to the front, like a shawl. This appeared to be standard, other women were dressed the same way and were given the scarf as they entered. I put it on in the same way, and I thought I looked nice.

We didn't actually eat there in the dream, but then we were outside again on the steps going up to the hotel where we were staying. On the steps, my husband put his arms around me from the right side and pulled my collar open to the right and started kissing me enthusiastically. There were quite a few people, mostly women, standing around. I was a little embarrassed, although I liked it as well, and giggling nervously I tried to cover the exposure and his head with my hand, fairly ineffectually since my hand wasn't big enough. I could tell that the women, who were staring openly, were a little jealous. After a while he continued into the building with a flourish and one of the other women said to me as I followed that some people (like me) handle such things better than others. She sounded both disapproving and wishful. I continued in after him, walking through a fancy lobby, and he showed me the room where we were staying, and said he would have to leave for a bit. It was a large well-furnished and well-stocked suite next to a workout room, with windows into it. The interior walls of it and our suite, and the others nearby, were mostly made of transparent glass. At first I thought it was a bit odd that you could see into the gym from the rooms (and vice versa). Then I realized then that he'd picked the proximity to the gym for both his and my benefit for convenience in working out, and it was a good thing. He had several dvds in the room for me to amuse myself with until he came back, and he mentioned another movie that we should see, and I agreed that he should pick it up.

The Most Embarassing Moment of My Life

12/7/2007 - Last night's/this morning's dream

I was at some sort of long term class or retreat or training with a bunch of people from work. I was staying in a room with a few other people from my department at work (D-, T- and some others), adjoining a large hall where meetings were held (other people were also staying in rooms in the building or nearby. The building was near the beach. I must have been there for the long haul, because I had both my cats with me. There was a guy there (who I don't know in real life) who people keep asking me if I'd met up with, and saying that he had said he wanted to meet me or we should get to know each other. His name was Josh or Gerald or something beginning with a J sound. My mother had also mentioned him to me before I left. He had a long, disinterested and slightly above you face, and blond/reddish curly hair. I had a vague idea of who he was, having seen him around, but had not interest whatsoever in meeting up with him, he didn't strike me the right way.

Then came the most embarrassing incident of my life (dream or waking).

I woke up in the room, and still half asleep and tired, and in my pajamas (the same ones I was in at the time of the dream, actually), I got up and stumbled across the hall to the bathroom. I left my pajama bottoms there, and had just discarded my pajama top in the entryway going into the bathroom, when I suddenly realized that there were people in the room. The entire hallway was filled with tables and other people from the retreat eating breakfast, both in the room I'd just walked across and the one I'd been about to enter. I was completely naked (except for my underwear), and had somehow walked across the room in my half-asleep state without realizing that I was disrobing in front of people.

The embarrassment was in every part of me, but there was nothing I could do, although I retreated after standing there with people staring at me for an unknown period of shock. I didn't know how I'd done this. Moments later, it got worse. The J-guy had taken a picture or video with his cell phone and had emailed it to the entire company. I knew that it was only a matter of time (very short time) until it appeared in the newspaper. Not only had the entire company seen me now and would know what I'd done, including my bosses and the CEO, back home, but also my parents! My husband, who hadn't wanted me to go to this thing in the first place! To add to the complete mortification, J- whatever his name was included comments in the email about my chubbiness and general bad shape of my body (exposed to all the world as it was). To not only be videotaped and distributed (which I didn't specifically fault him for, as if I knew that having done that, someone was bound to have taken a picture), but also criticized for the body I was exposing!

The members of my team who were there had been shocked and dumbfounded when I'd walked out, they were unsure what to make of it or why I'd done it. They weren't condemning me, and I guess could see that I'd been half asleep, but they didn't know what to say. I could tell they felt sorry for me but shocked at the same time. One of them, D- wrote me a note saying that I wasn't that chubby (as J- had said in his email accompanying the video, and also had been quoted in articles) and hadn't looked bad. He was trying to make me feel better and I did appreciate it.

It didn't end there though. I had to continue going through the seminar, passing by and talking to all these people, knowing that they'd seen me walk out naked. What sort of example had I made? I didn't know how I could keep going as embarrassed as I was, but somehow I did. Whenever I looked at anybody there I felt completely humiliated and mortified. This went on for days, continuing the seminar. It came out in the paper, and of course was posted online and on youtube, and people continued to whisper about it or mention it openly as I passed, while I tried not to react. No sort of explanation was really possible for me to make.

My cats wove in and out of the dream quite a bit, they were staying there with me in my room (which now seemed to be just me). I don't know how I kept going through the sessions but I did, it wasn't as if I could rewind or undo it, I just had to continue. Towards the end of the dream, I walked out and talked to a neighbor about the items that were in our respective yards (things from the beach, I think). I wondered if the neighbor had heard about me and suspected they probably had, who could avoid it. Then I walked down to the beach with my cat A-. He had been doing something interesting, but I don't remember the details anymore.