A Confusing and Uncomfortable Workout

Friday, 8/22/2008
Last night's dream

There's a lot that happens before this, but it's already disappearing.

In the last part of the dream, I drive up to some sort of festival or fair outdoors in a country area. There are booths set up to sell stuff. You are supposed to pay to enter it but I am not there for the festival. I park my car there anyway and walk up to S- Hall, which is on a ridge nearby (not in its usual place). I am early for Taekwon-do class. My instructor is already there, stretching on the floor. My sister is also here for class and possibly my mother. I am feeling tired and I don't know how my Taekwon-do suit will fit over my pregnant stomach. I go into the women's bathroom to change clothes. After I get undressed I discover that I don't have a tee shirt to go under my Taekwon-do top. I feel exhausted. There is a bed in the room with white sheets and a quilt so I lay down on it. After a few moments there I realize someone else is already in the bed! It's some guy! I don't know who he is, he looks maybe around my age, youngish, probably with some Chinese ethnicity. I kick him awake yelling at him, and attempt to cover myself with the quilt (he on the other hand is wearing something). He wakes up slowly, and I ask, "are you a man?" (He looks like a man but I've been mistaken before on occasion, and this IS the women's room). He says that yes he is. I point out that this is the women's bathroom and he should get out of here, NOW! He is sleepy and somewhat amused looking, and says that he knows it's the women's bathroom. After additional prodding and yelling he hauls himself out and leaves. My instructor and my mother come in due to the yelling and I point out indignantly that he was in there. They don't seem as concerned, like they thought my yelling was about a real problem, and indicate I should get dressed.

I go to put on my Taekwon-do suit. At first I decide to put on the top without any undershirt since I don't have one (I don't know what I was wearing before but apparently it wasn't suitable. I don't have a bra either though, so this will be uncomfortable. Then I see there is a rather ugly yellow and black patterned shirt in the bathroom with snaps up the front, made of a thin material. I actually think this probably belongs to the guy who was in here, but it seems clean and I decide to wear it anyway, and I put it on under my Taekwon-do top. I go out and join the rest of the class. My instructor calls out the first forms and I try to get started, but everybody is going every which way overlapping my area and confusing me, they all seem to be doing different things. There is loud music playing in the background too which starts when the form stops, and stops again when it stops. After some mistakes I finally finish, after everyone else. My instructor acknowledges that it must have been difficult with everybody getting in the way (as opposed to me having not done my forms in a while) and tries to space us out a bit more. We do the next form, the loud distracting music starts again although the people don't get in the way as much, so it's very confusing.

We take our Taekwon-do tops off, then I discover that the shirt I'm wearing under it has popped open in the front. It seems they aren't really snaps but little hook things. I call over my instructor and tell her that my tee-shirt has come apart. I am hoping she has a backup tee shirt but apparently she doesn't, so I decide to just go to the bathroom again and put on my Taekwon-do top with nothing under it. She is concerned that I will overheat with my Taekwon-do top on, in my condition, but there is nothing for it. I go into a stall and change. When I come out, I see my mother and instructor are there chatting with two older guys who have set up a little table in the main part of the bathroom with food. This is special stuff they've brought in for our class. There are three dishes: a pot of spicy chili with crackers on top of it, a milder sort of soup or bean dish, and a vegetable dish which is rather odd, it's made with several different whole roasted vegetables, one of each. The man who cooked them said he personally doesn't like to add the green pepper, but that is the way his parents used to make it so he still makes it that way to remember how. After I change I come out and sample two of the dishes (I avoid the spicy chili due to my recent reactions to spicy food). I also find a discarded bunch of slightly dusty but very firm green grapes and eat a handful of those. Everyone else files out to class. The cook of the food tells me that I need to talk to him about getting proper nutrition, in a disapproving sort of way. I say I will but will have to do it later, making excuses, and go back out to class.

There's another part of the dream slightly later which involves climbing into some kind of attic or loft, and my sister and her boyfriend are up there with me... but I don't remember exactly what happens.

A Failed Recital and a Strange Vessel

We are at S- Hall but I don't know that we are doing Taekwon-do. Or maybe we have finished a demonstration just now. I think it is for S- day. We are seated on the floor and there are various audience members grouped around the outside. My mother is supposed to do a reading, she is set up with a microphone. I don't remember exactly what it is, a poem or a list or instructions or guidelines or something. I think she's going to do it in Spanish for some reason. Anyway, she stands there but then she can't do it and she goes into the bathroom to recover herself. We sit there for a moment thinking she will come back, but she doesn't. My sister starts a recording with the English version and I go into the bathroom after her to see if she is okay. She is all upset and nervous. I try to comfort her and tell her that it will be okay. She can do it along with the tape even, and say the Spanish part after the English part. After much discussion she calms down and decides this will be okay and that is what she will do. When we go out, though, the tape is almost over and the audience has left. My sister is still sitting there. It's too late to do the reading.

Later, I am driving home (to my parents house) between S- hall and the Triangle, where the road curves and there are large hedges in front of one persons house. There is a large, rounded machine like a small space ship that is hovering over the swampy area to one side of the road. It is watching us. We stop and get out. We don't think it's an alien craft although it looks like one, we decide it's some sort of government monitoring thing, possibly with the help of alien technology or an alien pilot. I am with several other people, possibly my sister and cousin, I'm not sure. I am going on about Odd Thomas (as a real life person) and all the amazing things he can do, etc., except in the dream this also includes traveling to other dimensions. In fact I think he is in our area as a result of that ability. We look through a window into the ship and discover there are people aboard (we thought it was remote operated). They don't seem to be aware of us though and are facing away at a console.

Some how we get onto the ship, possibly with his help, and wander around looking at stuff. It's a fairly neat setup. I think he helps us hijack it and fly it off.

Everyone likes him but me...

A few days ago... thursday night? I don't remember most of the details of the dream.

A young man, maybe around my age, was my family. I was at my parent's house and he was staying with someone in the family. At first I got the impression that he was from Egypt. I found him arrogant and annoying and my dislike for him only continued to grow. Everybody else thought he was wonderful and charming and couldn't stop commenting on it. He was somewhat handsome, but I found his attitude very offputting. Later he said something to indicate he was actually from Palestine, not Egypt. As everyone else kept talking about how great he was, I was in fear that my hatred would turn to admiration and I might actually start liking him. At one point he accompanied us to Taekwon-do.

Trapped by a stranger's crazy mother

Monday, November 5th 2007 - Last night's dream

I was at a class or meeting of some kind, and some people had made an apple cannon, which they were firing off to great fun and general excitement by all. During the activities, I met someone and got invited to their house for dinner and to spend the night. I accepted. Afterwards I realized that my new friend was a boy about 12, which it occurred to me in the dream was a little odd (I may have been younger in the dream but it still struck me this way, because of the age difference, not because there was any flirting going on, which there was not). At any rate, I had already accepted since I felt more uncomfortable about backing out than the odd choice of friend, so off I went to his house in Ol- or L-, where he had a large, happy, friendly. and welcoming family. There were several other kids and I no longer felt particularly uncomfortable, and engaged in chitchat and games with the family.

We had dinner, and then as the evening wore on his mother sort of became unhinged. She had started out very friendly and bubbly, happy and energetic. Then she started to get angry and crazy, although still with a smile on her face. His mother had dark reddish brown hair, straight to her shoulders, and heavy, shaped matching eyebrows, and I think green or dark eyes. She was young and petite, probably in her 30s. Her face was angular and would have probably been attractive if it wasn't for the crazed expression that developed. She started loudly shooing people around the house, and declared that it was "no doorknobs time" and we had to keep all the doors open, and several other pronouncements that I no longer remember, and started to get scary.

The boy who I'd come with was short, with light brown hair in a bowl cut. I discovered that his hair covered a deformed ear that had been cut or damaged in some way by his mother during one of her crazy sessions. He and the other kids and the father acted as if they'd seen this behavior before, and worked around it. It was clear that they didn't like it and were scared of her when she got like this, but they didn't know what to do.

The hidden side of her either became apparent in the morning or I ended up staying the night anyway because I couldn't escape. In the morning I was in a small room which they'd made up for me to spend the night in, getting dressed. I was hurriedly getting clothes out of my overnight bag and packing everything else. I realized that somehow I was going to have to gather up my various things that were left around the house without the mother noticing that I was trying to leave until I had everything and could make a break for it, there would be or already had been an effort to keep me captured here.

I had the door partly closed, but not shut, and was trying to put on a bra, but none of them would fit. There were two in my bag that were brand new, which I'd bought the night before at the mall nearby. One was black with a black pattern, and the other was light green with a pattern of tiny dark green leaves. The problem was, both of them were too small, which was confounding since they were brand new. I frantically rooted through the overnight bag--I seemed only to have dressy clothes, like a black skirt and black pantyhose, that would take too long to throw on and escape. I was also supposed to have my TaeKwon-Do suit in there, because I was supposed to go to a workout later (which might also have been my excuse for leaving them, I didn't really want to go to it but I did want to get out of here any way possible), but I realized that somehow I had not packed it.

As I struggled to get dressed, the mother burst in with a crazy glint in her eye and said she THOUGHT she had announced that it was no doorknobs time, wasn't that right? I tried to make excuses that the door had not actually been closed, but she started yelling about no doors or locks, and called on one of her young daughters to back her up. The girl was 6 or 7, with light blond hair, and she was too young to realize that her mother was off her rocker, things like no doorknob time were apparently normal to her (the mother although striking fear into my heart still had a "happy" face frozen on). She sent her daughter around removing knobs and doors, ranting maniacally, as I frantically continued dressing, trying to figure out a way to get out of there.

Taekwon-do & chicken yard part 2, and me as a guy on drugs

Last night's dream: Wednesday Night 9/5/2007
In the first dream I was up at my parents house. Some relatives, possibly aunts, drove up in a car. My best friend from childhood, S-, was there, but she was only 8 or 10 years old. My sister had painted S-'s face blue and was trying to make sure that she didn't touch it and get it on her Taekwon-do suit.

I went down to the chicken-yard, my father was there cleaning it up. One side had been disked and plowed to make it all flat (this is beginning to sound like a strange sequel to this dream... maybe it is?). The sidewalks and inside were all clean, and the chicken's were enjoying pecking the tilled up earth. On the other side of the yard, I helped him move some boards against the bottom of the fence, which had been moved to cut down weeds and grass growing there.

Then I went to Taekwon-do with my sister, as we used to do when I was younger. By the time we got there it was absolutely pouring with rain, although I was not wet. We went inside and took our shoes off, I was wearing my black wooden clogs. When I took off my shoes, I discovered that the socks I was wearing were filthy, and I rolled them up with the clean cuff on the outside and stuck them into the shoes, feeling ashamed. My teacher came up and we bowed several times, she seemed happy to see me (although not ecstatic). Then she told my sister some kind of joke about God (I think it involved God's gender) which they both laughed about. I did not think it was funny and felt uncomfortable.


In the second dream, which sort of overlapped, I was a young man about my age who was addicted to (and on) drugs. My girlfriend was also addicted to drugs, including cocaine and heroine, and she disappeared and was found in the woods... dead in one version, and alive in another. In the ending in which she died, I did not feel sad or shocked, just sort of complacent and accepting of it. This faded back into the end of the other dream, with the pouring rain.

It was not pouring rain at all when I woke up, which was a little disappointing, although it's probably what allowed me to still get to work on time.

Death of an Orange Tree and a Mocker Reappears (to mock the Death of the Orange Tree?)

Tuesday Night, 8/21

I'm getting ready to go to a Taekwon-do demo somewhere a ways away, which requires driving. I'm actually planning to work out and participate, and am trying to get my old suit together and ready to go. I'm kind of frustrated about something having to do with getting the suit ready (or perhaps the impending demo), and then out of nowhere, B-, shows up.

He's huge when he first appears, maybe 14 feet tall. I see him from a distance standing beside a tree. He shrinks up to his normal, still tall, size as I get closer. I try to act friendly and happy to see him at first, but quickly he starts to grate on my nerves. He distracts me from getting ready to go and I lose track of what I'm doing (time is short before I have to get in the car to leave).

He somehow draws my attention to the fact that my orange tree has been cut down. He is somewhat amused about this, as he acts about all things, and I pretty much lose all pretense of pretending I was ever not annoyed by him. We are in the chicken yard looking at the cut tree. It was planted along the fence, and somehow got cut down when my father drove the tractor discing a thin link along the inside of the fence. The path of torn up ground made by the disc is only about a foot wide, although this does not seem odd at the time. I am very upset about the death of the tree, which I had nurtured for 10 to 15 years, but mostly this is directed at B-, who is being annoying about it, and not at my father who cut it by accident. I count the rings on the large tree trunk which is the size of a dinner plate. Each ring is over an inch wide.

B- also makes reference to his "wife," which might have been hypothetical, and it causes me to stop and look at him suspiciously (he's gay). He follows up with something joking like, "or maybe I should say husband." It leaves me wondering if he is no longer gay? Or what the heck is going on?

In the waking world, I have an orange tree, but it's in a pot and safe, although not spectacularly healthy. It is the same age as in the dream, but the stem is smaller around than my wrist. The level of upset if something happened to it is probably quite like in the waking world. Although when I was moving away, he said we should "get together" sometime here, B- has never followed through on this plan, for which I am grateful. In the waking world I was recently working on a TKD site for someone, but I end up inserted back into TKD in my dreams with surprising frequency, considering how long it's been since I've attended a class.

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.

Rhododendron Forests - Epistle to Dippy?

Last night, I went to bed with an excruciating headache, almost as bad as a migraine. Somehow I got to sleep, but it stayed even in my dream, and was still there when I woke up.
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It was the Fourth of July weekend (I'm aware that it doesn't fall on the weekend this year, but in the dream it purported to be this year). My husband and I were on a vacation of some sort. We were walking along a sandy road near a coast. The area was very beautiful, with pale golden sand, brilliant blue water, and a low forest of rhododendrons in many, many colors: blue and unrealistic multicolors among the more normal pinks and purples. I realize now that in words, it sounds much like the southern Oregon coast dune area we visited recently, with mountains of sand and rhododendrons growing wild in the woods by the hundreds (pink ones), but it actually didn't look at all the same. For one thing, there was nothing growing in this deserty forest except the rhododendrons, and they were growing in the sand right beside the water.

We walked back up to some kind of guest house where my family was staying. It was white and airy inside. My mother showed us (my husband mainly, because in the dream I had already seen them) a collection of taekwon-do trophy's that my brother had won over the years. In addition to traditional trophies, there was a collection of larger statues that looked like they were made of painted wood or paper mache, sort of like saints. My brother acted typically bored and dismissive about them.

Then, my husband and I were driving through Lincoln Creek Valley, trying to decide where to go to see the fireworks display. We were discussing if we would go all the way to the reservation (where I used to go to see them in real life, near my parent's house), although this would be a pretty long drive for us from where we live now, so I don't know why we didn't find anything closer. On the way, we saw a group of taekwon-doists performing outside of a church or barn. We almost stopped, but when we slowed down I saw that it wasn't a group that I knew, so we kept driving.

Throughout the dream, I had a very large bruise on my forehead, above my left eye, which was extremely painful. I couldn't remember how I had gotten it (not too unusual in real life, I end up with bruises quite often whose origin I can't remember), although in the dream several people expressed concern about it. It was exactly where my real-life headache was centered. When I woke up the headache was still killing me and I couldn't imagine how I'd actually managed to sleep with it.