Bad Ferry Trip

In the last dream of the night, I was getting on a ferry boat of some kind to go on a tour of a city. My family was also going. I was left behind and when it came time to disembark onto some kind of floating island in the harbor, I saw them leaving but was far from the exit. I called but they didn't hear me and left. I somehow managed to get onto the floating island after everybody else, but the others were already loading into a boat to take them to the mainland city for the tour. I yelled after them and they saw I was left behind but they didn't wait or come back. The boat left without me. I had to get back on the ferry, but the passengers weren't supposed to be on it (they should have left for the tour) so I sort of stayed out of sight. I yelled after my family that I would just have to jump in the water then if they wouldn't wait for me, to no effect. I ended up jumping in the water and decided to swim back the way we came, knowing I wouldn't be able to swim that far.

Mountains and Monsters

Mt Hood was erupting throughout the dream. At first we set off down I- road on this long walking hike, and we could see the smoke coming from the top of the mountain (despite the fact that you can't actually see it from there). Then I saw a peculiar flurry of white in the sky near the mountain, like a gigantic monster taller than the hills moved, with snow on its shoulders. It turned out to be just that and it was stalking around, quite enormous. We traveled out to the mountain and were walking along mountain trails. At one point we came to a river which had a log accross it that people were crossing. When I went to cross I came up to an old woman who was also on the log. She said she would let me by and then without warning jumped into the river (to allow me to pass) I was aghast and fell off the other side of the log (but a much shorter distance, onto the bank. She climbed out of the water and was okay, but I was still feeling shocked and guilty. I had to explain what had happened to my family. Later the mountain started to erupt in earnest and I was packing some things to evacuate with my family. I may have had my baby at that time. I also had my cat A- but my other cat was not in the dream and I was concerned about this, wondering if something had happened to her (it was like I landed in the dream and didn't know what had happened in the recent past in my life... had something happened to my other cat that I didn't know about but everybody else knew about?).

Creepy Dogs and Murdering

Tuesday 9/2 (Last night's)

My dreams have been really fragmented lately, can't remember most of them. Judging from what I do remember, thank goodness!

In the first part of this, I was a guy and I worked at a hotel of a bed & breakfast type. One of my jobs was to murder somebody out of each group who stayed there! Then I quickly cleaned up the room and made it all pretty for the next victim so they wouldn't suspect and the rest of the previous group wouldn't't know what happened. I killed at least two people in this dream, and I didn't feel particularly bad about it either. I was thinking in the dream after I killed the first one (I don't remember how I did so, I may have had some ability to kill... it wasn't bloody but was quite fast), well maybe I should have thought about that a little more. Nah, that's my job.

Then in another part of the dream, I'm myself again and swimming across this bay in the middle of the night. Everything is pitch black. There are some other people, friends of mine I guess, who are also swimming across. I can't see a thing and the water is cold but not very deep, I keep running into slime covered sticks and logs with my feet, which is very uncomfortable. Then I see a dog/wolf-like thing swimming in the water, only it's head is out. It has an orangish cast to its fur. It swims toward me and I am trying to get away but I keep running into things underwater. I try to dive under to hide but it grabs my hand, which is still sticking out, in its teeth, and is biting and chewing on it. Then I wake up, and can't shake the image for a long time.

In the next dream after I go back to sleep, my friend H- is visiting me and we are driving around a town (I'm not sure which one) in my vehicle. We are hungry and looking for a place to eat, and I ask her where she'd like to eat. After some discussion we decide to try a place called something like "Kitchen Mama" which is a chain restaurant (not a real one to my knowledge). I have driven here before but am not familiar with the area, but I do remember there is on nearby. After driving around a bit I stop and use my cell phone to look up the restaurant online... there is an application where I can just search for it and it will show me the ones in the area. It asks me to choose which type of Kitchen Mama restaurant I want: Some of them serve chicken as their specialty, some don't serve chicken and some of them serve it sometimes but it's not guaranteed. I ask H- which one she wants and try to search for it. After some issues with getting the results to come up I realize it is just around the corner and we drive to it.

Beach With No Exit

In the first part of the dream I am spending a lot of time at my parents house, and suddenly I realize that I've left everything in my apartment for weeks now... my cats, my plants, etc. I have to go back and take care of them. Then it turns out it's okay because I hadn't really moved into their house after all, it just seemed like it because it was a dream or something... very odd.

Later...

I am going to the beach with my husband and brother. We park our car at the top of a wooded cliff and make our way down to the water, I am carrying my purse and my canvas bag with a wide variety of stuff in it. I have on some kind of swimsuit thing under a very long (past my knees) white and greens striped button-up shirt. We clamber down the hill to the bottom but the water is covering most of the beach. I'm going kind of slowly and awkwardly and dropping things, so the others end up going ahead. My husband walks down in one direction and comes back, saying that they have that part of the beach closed off because the waves are too high (there are a lot of people in the small part we are at, so it's kind of crowded).

The dream pans out to a view of the dangerous part of the beach as seen from the ocean, there are numerous huge rock pillars close together, and lots of big waves crashing up against and between them. The water is definitely high and dangerous.

So, we decided to go back up and go to a different part of the beach. While we are standing htere another family comes past with some small children, also returning to their vehicle, They open a tiny door in a culvert and go through that way. When we climb back up (another slippery part of the hill), I realize we are not in the same place. My husband clears a small hole in the cliff for my to crawl through, but I don't want to. It looks like I could just squeeze through, but it will be all muddy. I say, "This isn't where we came down before! let's go back that way." Everyone is annoyed with me. My brother goes back that way to wait in the car, and we climb back down to find another way up.

But every time we climb up , it's a different situation and it's not the right place. Also, I keep dropping and spilling my purse and the bag I'm carrying and having to stop and pick them up. At one point we climb up a very narrow area, my husband is behind me. I say there is not enough room, the rock edge is very steep and I'm afraid I'll fall off into the water (which is quite close, but it's kind of brackish and it would still be unpleasant). He goes ahead of me to show me and then he ends up falling into the water. I jump in a split second later to rescue him, and dive down to where he went down and pull him up. Then I start to go down myself but kick to the top. We both drag out on the bank (the other beach-goers there don't seem to pay much attention).

Then we start climbing up a different way. This time, FINALLY, we see the parking lot with the car. My husband asks me, "you left the Honda at work, right?" I say no, I left it at my apartment. He says this is okay. This is rather odd since it's my car in the parking lot above, and we don't have a Honda anyway. Just when we get to the top I suddenly realize I don't have my purse. I don't know if I lost in the water or what, but i Have to go back for it. He complains but I insist I am not leaving it here to get lost or stolen. So I climb back down the hill. Luckily it's just sitting where I dropped it at the bank. When I go to get it, I spill my canvas bag and so I have to stop and pick up all that stuff. He comes down to help me. There are tons of things in there, a whole set of knives (dirty), Strange flat water bottles, etc. All our supplies for the trip I guess. Finally we get everything picked up, under the impassive eyes of the other beach goers, and head back up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking News Interrupted

Wednesday night's dream 6/12/2008

There were two dreams or two parts to this dream. The second part was very realistic and I actually thought I'd told my husband about it after the dream (as an actual happening), but that part turned out to be part of the dream too!

In the first dream, I am back at H- Valley visiting my family. There's an indian or pakistani couple setting up a business (possibly a small restaurant or food cart) nearby in G. Mound, and there is a guy related to them who keeps talking to me. When he finds out I'm married, he's all annoyed. There's a confusing part with a small airplane or glider, which I think my sister is flying (I'm with her). She takes off near G. Mound. But each time she takes off, she has second thoughts right away and brings the plane down right away (it doesn't crash, I think it has a parachute attached), and we bail out. Then there's a part where I am standing where the creek goes under the road near my grandma's driveway. I have a bunch of flat flagstone-like rocks and I am stacking them in a row at the end of the road above the creek culvert (it was very important in the dream but I cannot remember what it was for), while the Indian guy hangs about and talks to me, before he finds out I'm married. I don't really care for him, although I like his relatives running the food stand, so I'm kind of relieved when he goes away.


In the second dream, I was visiting family this upcoming weekend. I was pregnant and planned to tell them about it. I went over to visit at my Grandma's, and my aunt and uncle were there as usual along with the rest of the family who already knew. I decided to wait until just before it was time to go home to break the news. I went got up and went to the bathroom or something, and when I came back, my Cousin K- was there on the couch. I was surprised as I thought she was out of the state and not expected back any time soon. I said something to the room at large like, "I have some news to tell everybody!" But then my cousin, who was sort of stroking her belly, said that she ALSO had some news to share with everybody, but she wanted to wait a bit! I realized she wanted to tell them that SHE was pregnant. I felt mad that this had come up at the same time, but she then asked me somehow not to say anything about my news yet, and I didn't want to "steal her thunder" so I decided to wait. After all, it didn't seem like it would really do for us both to announce at the same time and undermine each other. But I was still kind of pissed off. So then I waiting and the visit ended and we all got up to leave. When we were outside, I said, "weren't you going to tell them something before you left?" and she goes, "Oh, actually I decided to wait on sharing my news." At this point I don't know if she did this on purpose to ruin my news, or if she's even pregnant at all or just pretending! Either it was very annoying and I didn't end up telling anybody as a result, and repeated the incident to my husband later in the dream, indignant about it.

Confused and Confusing Grandparents

4/9/2008
Wednesday morning's dream

It had to do with my paternal grandparents (my grandfather died 14 years ago tomorrow, which I didn't realize until just now). In the dream they weren't entirely like my paternal grandparents, sort of a mix with my other grandparents some of the time, but mainly they were my paternal ones. One of them died, but which one it was changed and there were sort of two versions of the dream based on that. It was not linear. Both grandparents were going a little crazy due to some kind of age related-condition, like Alzheimer's (also not the case in real life).

At one point, I was at the house with my father. My grandfather was there, and my father told me to go down to the bottom of the hill and move my truck, becuase it was blocking in my grandfather's vehicle and we didn't want him to know this. I'm not sure what the logic was behind it, but if he'd found out he would have thought we were treating him differently (because of his condition, which we were, but he wasn't aware of how it affected his faculties) and would be mad. He was disoriented and not in full grasp of his mind. Whichever one lived was affected severely by the death of the other.

At another point I was walking down along the old railroad grade beside the river, with my grandmother I think, talking about my grandfather. It was clear that she wasn't all there. There were vehicles along the way, and she was talking about riding on a boat, and wanted to get on it. Possibly to go see my grandfather (who I think had died at this point and version of the dream), but it seemed like she was mixed up with that and arriving somewhere on a boat in a memory of the past.

Seemingly Random Snippets

Tuesday/Wednesday night?

I've been having really disjointed dreams lately. There was another the day before this one but I don't really remember enough to go on, except that I was at home and was a teenager, and was involved romantically with a guy that my father wanted me to break up with, and I was upset and defiant about it. My brother was also in the dream.

The dream the following night was even more disjointed. I remember: Poplar trees. Me as a small child, possibly a boy, running away from somewhere (maybe home) and crawling down into a secret camp I had under a bridge. Someone else was with me who had not been to the place before. There was a trap door leading down to it, and a slow moving river. There were some brightly colored things, maybe jewels. I planned to subsist on my own for a while after the escape.

Also in this dream I read a news article about somebody like Halle Berry, who was a celebrity, but NOT Halle Berry, who had just given birth to a daughter. The baby was named something that sounded Indian, and contained letters like S, A, N, D (the name was not in that order though, and it was longer. It was not sand :P). I had read about this before, but in this article, it said that in addition to the Indian name, she was being brought up to that religion (maybe Hinduism?). I thought this was very strange, as the family was actually not of that religion and they had no cultural connection either, aside from the name they had chosen. I wondered if it would be another crazy celebrity trend that other people would start doing as well.

Captured by terrifying omniscient kidnappers

Saturday 3/08/2008
2nd dream (2 of 3)

I was at home. Our house was sort of like our current apartment, but the bedroom was in line with the living room, and the sliding glass doors were in the bedroom instead of in the living room. It was on the ground floor. Also, I'm fairly sure it was a free standing house, not part of an apartment complex. I got a sense that the dream was set slightly in the future, but not by much.

At first, my sister, mother were there visiting and my husband was home. I took a shower but didn't finish it. I had some kind of dye and was planning to streak my hair in some way to make patches of lighter blond. I hadn't told anybody this but wanted to try something different. I started to apply a little bit of it, (it could go on in the shower, or dry, and then take a shower), but ended up stopping in the middle, with little effect. I kept planning to go back and finish taking a shower.

After everybody left, in the late afternoon, I was alone in the house and I decided I should go back and finish taking a shower and finish my hair. I noticed that there was a pickup truck parked sort of outside the living room window, with an old guy in it. I guess there was a road there or something because I didn't think this was too terrible strange, so I went back in and took a shower. I didn't put any more dye on my hair at the time, possibly forgetting. I was sitting on the bed in the bedroom, it was dusk and I noticed that there were headlights shining at an angle through the sliding glass door in the bedroom. I got up and went to the door, and then I saw that the truck was STILL there. I became alarmed by this, and I started to lock the door. It has this little lock (that frankly is probably ineffective) but it doesn't catch every time, as I fumbled with it, the guy who had been in the truck came up on the outside and pushed the door open, as I was trying to lock it. He had been waiting for me to come to the door. He grabbed me with his arm around the neck and dragged me outside. I started hitting him and screaming, but our house was in a remote location and nobody was around.

The guy took me in the truck to a waiting van, where there were several more guys (younger). They put me in the back with 3 other people who were part of the capture party. The back of the van actually had no seats, so we were all just sitting around inside. I kept hitting the people and making trouble and they eventually let go of me, although they kept trying to grab me. I debated smashing out one of the van windows and jumping out, but the van was going fast and I didn't think I'd be able to smash it out all the way and jump before somebody inside grabbed me.

We drove along through an unfamiliar part of a city. It was light outside again, possible the next day. I watched out the window, hoping to see and then seeing my husband driving in his car! He came up beside the van from behind. I banged on the window and waved my arms and he looked up at the noise (somehow) and saw me, and so he started following the van to help me escape. The van went into some kind of industrial area and made a lot of turns, and lost him. I kept watching but I didn't see his car behind us any more.

Then the van backed up to a big warehouse with a garage door, which was open. As we pulled in, one of the people in the back kicked an inside handle on the van door and the hatchback opened. I had been wondering if this handle would work, but hadn't dared to try. I don't know why he opened it early, but the van had slowed down and I took my chance and leapt out, jumping to the side so I wouldn't be trapped in the garage. The people started after me and I ran pell mell across the yard and city, jumping over small barriers and fences and anything in my way. We were in some part of a city which was up on a hill, with lots of warehouses. I came to a road going down the hill. When I looked back, they were not behind me, but I didn't go down the road. Instead, I crossed it and ran into the trees, which were adjoining. I didn't really know where I was or how far away my home was (or in which direction), but I figured I had a better chance of eluding my captors in the forest. I scrambled through the trees and came to a forest road running downhill, which was wide and paved with fir needles and such, and ran full speed down it, preparing to duck off to the side if they followed me.

A deer crashed through the trees behind me and started running down the road too. I was startled but told myself this was nothing to worry about. The deer ran fast toward me but when it got to me it turned around and ran back up the road. I kept going, leaping over small trees that had fallen across the road. I adjusted my stride, trying to figure out if great leaping jumps or shorter running steps would make me go faster.

Then a raccoon came tearing down the road from behind me. It ran close to where I was, stopped, and turned around and ran back up the road. A terrible fear gripped my insides. Somehow, I didn't know how, the animals were working for the kidnappers and seeing where I had gone. As I ran on, a white poodle and a couple of other animals, in succession (the rest wild), ran down the trail after me, stopped, and ran back. I was petrified. I didn't know who I was up against or how they were doing this.

Then I heard a huge booming voice coming from above. I stopped and looked up but saw only the trees above me, I couldn't tell where it was coming from. The voice said something like, "You cannot escape us. We can track you wherever you go, and find you wherever you hide. We are everywhere."

I was absolutely terrified, but I kept running again, I wasn't sure what else to do. After I followed the woods for a long time, I cut back out to the city. I was trying to find my husband again, since I knew he was out there looking for me, but I had absolutely no idea where he was. Then I found him. We climbed between a barrier and down through a planting above a restaurant to his car. We'd hardly gotten going again when a policeman or sheriff stopped the car.

I was frightened that he might be working for them, but I decided to take a chance. I told him I needed help, people were trying to kidnap me, and I told the whole story from the beginning. But then he said, actually he was pulling us over for something else, and named some minor thing on my record (I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't something I knew about and it also was not important). He wasn't interested in helping me with the kidnapping people and I was very frightened because it meant he was in on it. He didn't try to arrest me for them though, we kept going.

I don't remember what happened next... it faded away into another dream or I woke up. This dream was a lot scarier than most of my capture/escape dreams, and was actually the most frightening dream I've had in a long time. I still feel anxious thinking about it.

Swimming With Manta Rays

Thursday, 3/6/2008 (Last night's dream)

Okay, I know I haven't written any dreams for a while. I've had some, but I've just been so sick lately that they were for the most part totally fragmented by the time I woke up, and I was in bed all day anyway.

All I remember of last night, is what happened right before I woke up.

I was swimming in the ocean, completely underwater. It was dark and murky, although there was a little light filtering down so I could sort of see. I was swimming around with manta rays, and swimming down deeper to look at them. Most of the rays were not that big (so they probably weren't really mantas, rather the smaller rays that wash up here).

I guess I was holding my breath becuase I was not near the surface but I didn't need to come up to breathe. Although it was very dark it was not scary, in fact it felt wonderful to be swimming again, with my entire body submerged and supported by the water. The water must have been about body temperature, it didn't feel warm or cold.

Then as I left the manta rays, the water was even darker and I couldn't see anything. I felt something underneath me and I reached down and touched it. It was rougher and lumpier, it was not a manta ray, and had a small hole. I thought it might be a small whale. Then (still in the dream mind you!) I woke up and was talking to my husband about swimming in the water and touching the manta rays. I had actually been touching him, not a whale, and I was amused by this and the fact that I'd thought that's what I was feeling. I was still asleep really, I didn't wake up and say this! Actually I think it unlikely that I was actually even poking him, based on the position I was lying in when I really woke up, but maybe I was and he moved away. I may have even gone back into the water at that point becuase I was really enjoying the sensation of floating underwater.

Then I woke up for real.

A Detached College Girl, a Tsunami, and a Magic House

Wednesday 2/20/2008 - Last night's dream

I was at college, whether back to school or originally I'm not sure. There was an auction being held for airplanes, and my sister and cousin K- were both there. My sister wanted to buy a particular plane, and wanted us both to pitch in some of the money. When my sister stepped away to bid, I said to my cousin that I wondered why my sister was getting a plane, when she gets height sick. She laughed and I got the impression that the plane was really for my cousin. I didn't put in any money in the pool, and when my sister bid, she ended up accidentally buying a different plane than the one she wanted (there were four or five small planes available, the one she wanted was I think yellow but she ended up with a black and red one, or vice versa).

Next, I was hanging out with some other girls, who I thought were muslim, trying to make some friends. I eagerly tried to converse with them. One of the girls who I initially kind of liked had two white dots on her forehead, slightly overlapping (somewhat like the mark that some hindu women wear). She looked vaguely Indian. I wanted to ask her about the dot, since I had thought she was muslim, but I couldn't figure out quite how to phrase it without seeming rude or accusatory. I talked with many of them about various things, but now I can't remember the details; I felt very detached from them although I was trying not to be. We may have arranged to go somewhere.

I went to the beach where all the college kids were going to hang out that afternoon. Shortly beforehand, I had realized from the weather or the TV report or something that there was going to be a tsunami, but I decided to go anyway since everybody else was going. I parked my car with some difficulty in a large parking garage on the beach, and walked out. Lots of people were hanging out. There was a long stretch of hilly dunes between me at the parking garage and the water. Somebody said let's go down to the water, and I replied that I thought the water would come up here, or something along those lines. The others didn't take it seriously. I wondered how they could not have noticed that it was coming.

The tsunami waves started coming up, but we were so far up the beach that they weren't that high when they got there, just water flowing all the way up through the dunes to the garage. The others were surprised but I was not. I watched it with interest. By the time the first wave reached where I was at the entrance to the garage, the water was gentle and only about a foot high, but I could see higher water further down the beach between the dunes. Another wave came, higher, this one had a jello-like consistency. People ran out playing in it and exclaiming over it and its strange texture; I just watched. Then the bigger waves came and we took cover inside the parking garage. The water washed up against the outside, preventing going out on the beach side. People discussed how we were going to get out in our cars. A large grid was brought and attached to the inside of the wall, and I understood that they were going to bash a huge hole in the wall to drive out through, and the webbing would hold the pieces of concrete together when they fell, sort of like the safety glass in a car windshield. I was not riled up during any of this, just interested in a detached way. The others were excited and scared by turns.

I went back to an old house in town and climbed up inside, it had several stories. By this time it was dark. The house belonged to one of my former bosses, C-. He was happy to see me and decided to give me the grand tour, showing me around. I don't think we'd run into each other for a long time (although in real life, I didn't work for him until many years after college, but I think I was younger in the dream... time was twisted up anyway). Anyway, in the dream he was also my former boss and we hadn't seen each other for a long time. He took me up to the third floor, up slanty stairways. There were lots of old knickknacks, and big windows and skylights and telescopes and a kitchen with lots of stuff laying out. He showed me a way to walk up the middle of a messy, sloping counter. This put us into a secret part of the building, another dimension sort of. It looked the same, but nobody else could see us. There were tours of people constantly being led through the house, because it was of historical interest, but when we did this, we could see them but they didn't know we were there. They flowed in and out. When they would come in, he would turn on the kitchen faucet under one of the big windows, and run water over an apple as if washing it. Something about this kept us in the hidden dimension of the room.

He showed me stars out two of the windows, something was significant about them. As we looked around, and he pointed at things, he stood behind me closely and gradually put his hand on my back. It was intimate, but I was not put off by it. Rather, I was excited about what might happen next and anticipatory. It felt as if when I was young and very nervous, and interested, but also comforted. I wasn't afraid, but felt good. (I was not married yet in the dream, it seemed like many years ago, and I didn't get the impression he was either as he lived here alone, at any rate I felt no guilt). I leaned back into him and he put his arms around me, and we stood like this several times, talking quietly and still showing me the stars and sights, in between washing the apple to keep the other people in the dark. I started having some problem with my contacts, and took them out and tried to rinse them with my small eyedrop bottle, but when I tried to put them back in, it was like the contacts were the size of dinner plates and wouldn't fit. One in particular gave me a lot of trouble. He suggested I take them out (we both had at some point agreed that I would spend the night rather than heading back to campus tonight, it was discussed innocently enough), but I didn't have my carrying case to put them in or any actual contact solution. Finally I managed to get it back in and it went back to normal size. We continued looking around and hiding from the tour groups, touching and talking quietly.

In the past, say a year or more ago, I had a series of tsunami dreams, it was one of the recurrent themes. I'm not sure what triggered that repetitive theme, but I haven't had one for a while. In those ones I was always excited, electrified by the power of the wave, high with an adrenalines rush that comes of catastrophe. It didn't really have that effect in this dream, although as usual I wasn't scared, but I was more emotionally detached than excited by it. I was detached like this through the whole dream, in fact, seeing and being interested in the goings on around me but unable to connect to them somehow. That is until the last part, where I was no longer emotionally detached, but rather getting butterflies in a good way. Which also surprised me when I woke up (I wouldn't want to imagine such a thing happening with C- in real life, I think it would have creeped me out).

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.

Invasion by squirrel (amusing) and messy roommates (not)

This morning's dream (well, it was well after midnight anyway)

We are in bed in the morning and a large black clock or radio of some kind goes off. I pick it up off the nightstand and turn off the alarm. It's still making some kind of noise. When I turn it over, I almost jump out of my skin because a tiny reddish brown hand, very much like a human's but miniature, reaches out of an opening in the back. I exclaim about this to my husband, but he's still sort of asleep. I get up and pry the clock open partway, and discover there is a squirrel inside. It's somehow crawled in there, although how it managed this is impossible to know. My cats are very interested. I shoo them away and go over to a large sliding window. The apartment is like our real apartment, but one side which has regular windows and a couch against the wall instead has another sliding glass door with a screen. Then there's sort of a slanting roof, not really a porch. In the trees immediately outside, there is black plastic rigged up to be sort of a roof or awning, but it's blown aside and looks fairly messy, and also isn't stopping the water. There's random bits of garbage underneath it as well. I think about how this should be cleaned up and the awning fixed, but recall talking with the landlady when we moved in and she didn't want to angle the plastic differently, because it would look ugly from the driveway (this is not the actual landlady, it seems our apartment is in a different building than in the waking world). I plan to fix it later anyway, she probably won't notice now.

I open the sliding door and try to put the squirrel out past the screen, but it is scared and runs back inside. I spend some time rounding it up again, with little help from the cats, whose interest is not purely altruistic. Finally I get the squirrel put outside, for which I am quite pleased, and report to my husband, whose still in bed and still partially asleep. I might have a baby in the apartment too (of mine), that part is rather vague.

Later, we learn that two people are being installed in our apartment to rent along with us, courtesy of the landlady. Apparently she is allowed to do this. We are not too keen on the idea, less so when the people arrive. I come home from work and find them moved in. They are from another country, but I'm not sure where (perhaps pakistan or india?), and neither speak English especially well. Both are men probably around my age, with dark hair and somewhat dark skin, and beards. They are friendly, but they have made a total mess. They are cooking with something orange and it is splattered everywhere, all over the kitchen and bathroom (the guest bathroom). I am shocked. It looks like paint has been painted in orange dots over everything, including the counters, floor, wall, toilet, sinks. One of them appears to be making some kind of sauce, which is orange and the source of the splatters. There are tiny jars and beakers everywhere piled on windowsills, including chemistry-style ones with tubes leading from jar to jar, like he is distilling something. There's a strong smell of vinegar. The thought crosses my mind that he might be doing drugs, but upon smelling it, I decided that it really is some kind of sauce for food. They talk to me and ask a lot of questions and seem to be leading up to trying to get me to help them with getting settled into the area, which I am not at all interested in doing.

I gather up some things of ours, including our paper towels, and put them away so they can't use them. I am intending for them to get kicked out of the apartment because of the mess. When my husband gets home, I tell him this and question if we should go to the landlady and show her the mess, but after looking around, he advises that we should wait a few days if we really want her to deal with it by kicking them out. We also walk through the hall, possibly with our new roommates, and talk about the other apartments. There are two other in the building, one is larger than ours with 3 bedrooms, which I considered getting when we moved here but decided against. I'm not sure if we're trying to get them to move out on their own or what, but it doesn't appear that they have enough money to rent on their own.

I go out to my car. The outside of the apartment building and yard looks like my parents' house, yard, and driveway. When I get into my car, one of the guys comes down after me, and asks me if I am interested in selling my car. He needs one right away, he says. I don't want to talk to him, or sell my car, and try to answer politely but shortly while leaving. He keeps walking alongside, and pulls on my scarf to prevent me from going away, but then lets go immediately. I talk to him through the car window, trying to get rid of him. My husband comes out of the house and stands on the porch, and the guy eventually stops trying to talk to me and I pull off down the driveway. I don't particularly like these people. They act friendly but make me feel suspicious of their motives.

In another part of the same dream, I'm not sure if it's earlier or later, or it might be in the middle, my husband and I are reading about a park somewhere in town, which is pictured in a newspaper or magazine. I want to go there, perhaps at a better time of year. We also drive to a park we know, which is very dreary and damp at this time of year, and I get out and go for a walk. It has paved walkways along a steep hillside with bigleaf maple and a creek at the bottom. When I get down close to the creek, I realize that parts are flooded and some of the bridges are slippery with water. There are several other people walking down there who warn me to be careful, in a cheerful way that people do when they meet in a park.

Kids plan a trip to Rainbow Falls, which ends as usual

Last night's dream (or what I can remember of it).

My cousin asks me in the course of some other conversation if I would like to go to a waterfall (in a park), Rainbow Falls. She mentions she's been wanting to go for a while. I am surprised that she would ask me, but I kind of like the idea. I say that I haven't been there since I was just starting college (which is actually true). Then I tell her how we used to jump into the water there when we would go, which was icy cold.

We repair to my parent's house. Despite the fact that I'm apparently in the current day based on my previous comment, we are all very young now, I'm probably 9 or so and everyone else is proportionally aged. A childhood friend of ours is visiting, A- (now deceased, a couple months ago). I have the idea that he's visiting me, but likely it's my sister. We are preparing to set off for Rainbow Falls, but my mother tells me that A- was tired and has gone to sleep, and said he didn't want to be disturbed. I'm a bit perturbed by this, and debate whether we should wait for him to wake up so he can go with us, or leave without him.

I walk into the living room to ask my cousin how we are getting there, anyway. Are we riding horses, walking? She is there with my sister and they say that they are going to ride 4-wheelers (they have them there). I'm somewhat annoyed becuase my sister is now going with my cousin and both of them have transportation, while I don't (it's beginning to look like I'm going to be excluded from the trip, again, probably by design). My brother says he's going to take his big wheel (a giant plastic trike thing he had when he was a few years old, which he is again in the dream as we've all shrunk age-wise), and I can ride on it too. I'm touched by his generosity but obviously this isn't a practical solution, and he's probably not really going anyway because of his age.

My father is on a ladder painting and/or patching a small hole in the wall in the living room, and he asks me to hand him a metal trowel of some kind. He gives me the one he was using, which is of the normal sort, and I hand him one with some kind of rotating wheel, like a super-fancy pizza cutter. He's sort of in a short temper, tired, maybe becuase of the repair. I'm kind of bummed about the whole state of affairs, the fact I've been excluded from an excursion again, and that A- has gone off to sleep, which seems strange.

Horse Handling

Thursday night/Friday morning's dream

Once again, I can only remember the part right before I woke up.

I came into my parents' yard. My mother had three horses there that she had been keeping just recently. I asked her if she had fed them grain and she said no, she hadn't fed them anything extra. I told her you have to feed them grain in the winter and also give them hay to graze on, and I went and got some grain and gave it to them. When I came back she was putting up hay for them in hay nets, tied to the cedar tree. I led one of the horses and was down on the road and she was doing something with the other horses. The horse I was leading was a foal, small enough that I could put my arm over his back easily. She was doing something ahead that was spooking and scaring the foal, and he went behind me, hiding, and was pulling back. I held him steady and kept pressing my back to his side, and he curved around me; it felt very secure although he was nervous and I was calming him. I woke up with this feeling around me.

Earlier in the dream there was this part where one of my coworkers, B- had turned out to be a distant relative of mine. It was like I'd learned this in a previous dream and had only now remembered it. I was programming a cell phone address book that was very complicated. I spent a long time categorizing people as family or friends, and then I realized there was this little triangular symbol that would do it for me, and I needn't have spent all that time. It was then that I saw him categorized as family, and I thought it was a mistake, but then I remembered that he was in fact a relative, as I'd found out previously. The cell phonehad a lot of different options that were confusing. There was a flood that we were navigating at this time as well, but I don't remember all the other details, although there was a lot going on.

Crossing Flooded Stairs

11/27/2007 - Saturday Night's Dream

At one point I was walking across the city. When I set out, I put on a very colorful outfit, almost clown-like in its many colors. I was somewhat doubtful about it but I don't think I had any other choices. I crossed a large open plaza with a huge number of steps going down and up hills on either side, and steps across the bottom. It was like a deep gully filled with steps. It was sunny and warm and the stairs were nicely made of cream concrete, like on a college campus. After crossing to the other part of town, I did whatever I'd come to do (I don't remember what) and sometime later, I set out back across. I walked through an area of the neighborhood I hadn't been in before, and I saw a large white sign with red letters. I don't remember all of what it said, but it was calling this area (street, district, etc) with my name. As far as I know it was not named after me, but I thought it was an odd coincidence. I wanted to go back and tell the people I'd just been visiting, but I realized I had to get home. I thought I might come back with a camera and take a picture of the sign.

It had been raining, and possibly the river had also risen in addition to that, but when I came back to the stairs the bottom of the valley was flooded with water for a short distance, several feet deep. There were some people standing on the steps on either side but they weren't crossing. I got the impression that this happened regularly, like a tide, and they were going to wait for it to go down again. I had to get home and there was no other way so I started across the water, walking through it. Partway through it occurred to me that this was probably very dangerous, but oh well... I had to cross at any rate.

Vacation and reunion with an old friend

Saturday 9/15 - Last night's dream (Friday night)
I went to stay in a small town near the shore, at first I thought it was near the ocean, because there was a huge misty bay with lots of waves. I walked down to the shore by myself and watched them roll in. But later in the dream, when I am high on the hill I can see the other side, so maybe it was a river.

We are at a vacation house, I and various unidentified members of my family. My college friend, Il-, who I haven't seen for so long, is coming there too, and I am so excited to see her again. There is a row of hotels/apartments in tall, narrow colorful buildings, sort of like those San Francisco row houses you see pictures of, but more Victorian and slightly less garish looking. They range down the street curving over a hill, facing the water.

When Il- arrives I go next door to see her. She brings her husband with her, whom I have never met before. However, he looks sort of like her fiance that I knew in college (whom we both dislike now), even though I know he doesn't actually look at all like him, and even consider this thought in the dream. We are very happy to see each other again, and spend time going back and forth between the apartments and trying to catch up.

Later, I take her up to the hill above the town, and point across the river. We must have been in W-, because I tell her, "Do you see those hills across the water? That's O- over there." They are very green and it seems amazing that we are looking at another state across the water, like when you cross the straits of Juan de Fuca and see Canada where there was nothing before, and it's another country... for some reason it feels unique even though they're all the same ground with nothing intrinsically different between.

As we watch, the immensely wide river valley in between the bodies of land is filling up with fog and mist settling on the water.

There is a lot of interaction in the dream between us, talking and catching up haltingly, and other family members pop in (I don't know if my husband does), but all that is faded.

The overall feeling was that full, excited, intense, fearful feeling of meeting someone you were close to after a long time, and the joy that keeps full when it goes right. I missed her more when I awoke, and once again puzzled over that mysterious bond of friendship that glues two people together tightly and strongly and almost instantly, even through little shared time together, and really not even knowing that much about each other... while at the same time you can spend day in and out with so many other people in your life and even know them better and it never happens.

In the waking world, I took a vacation for a couple of days to the beach with my family, but it didn't look like this. And no Il-. I haven't seen her in years.

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.

Wet Desert

I haven't been remembering dreams very well for the last couple of weeks, although the faint ghosts of some of them have flitted around the corners of my waking world. I remembered some scraps from last night, though.

I was in Saudi Arabia with my husband. The land was not like I would imagine it to be, instead it was like a very very drizzly fall day at the beach, but humid. The sand was gray like the northern beaches and wet and stretched away in uneven flatness, with trickling water in between. Visibility was very short, and it was hazy and drippy. We walked to an old building with public showers, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. It was very large and made of thick, dark, old wood and stone, and was tall and shadowy with staircases going up and down and rooms sort of like dark, wooden locker rooms. My husband went into the men's part, to shower, and I went to the women's part. Nobody else was there, although when I looked out around the corner of the wall, I could see at least one distant figure in the haze, not coming or going I think. I don't remember if I showered or not, but I fumbled a lot with putting my hair up afterwards. It would not stay, and I had 3 or 4 wooden pokers of different kinds that I was trying to keep it up with.

There was more, including riding in a car before or after, I think, but that was the only part I can remember. The whole dream was very quiet, with sort of a pregnant waiting feeling, but not negative.