cameo appearances

I had forgotten until just now, but over the weekend I had a dream that Ewan McGregor was besotted with me [these so-and-so-is-in-love-with-me dreams are embarrassing]. He apparently had a well-documented, rather severe drug problem and was promising me, in the presence of some other people (assistant[s]?) to clean up his act and give up drugs for me. I said something noncommittal about how he needed to get his act together because he wanted to and not for someone else. Then I worried that maybe it came across as unkind, and I was glad that I had been mumbling and he hadn't heard me. So I came up with another, even vaguer and more noncommittal response--"umm...okay".

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Then last night I dreamed that I was reading one of my favorite street fashion blogs. In real life, the guy who runs the blog was married, but now is dating the creator of another fashion blog I enjoy. In real life I was a little bit disturbed by this, even though they both seem like nice people as far as you can tell from their blogs. In the dream, I considered that he had gone overboard by posting some photos with some accompanying suggestive text*. The text was an allusion to really enjoying a hotel they had stayed at, if you get my drift. I can't remember what the photos were; I don't think they were actually nudes of his girlfriend, but I think they may have featured an unmade bed, or her lounging in a men's pajama top, or something like that. I saddled my high horse to post a reproachful comment about it, but I ended up paring it down to the succinct "poor taste".


*I should make it clear that he has not, to date, posted photos/text like that in real life.

co-worker dream

In addition to a lot of other stuff that I can't remember, I dreamed that I was at a doctor's office for some minor ailment. They sent in a nurse for my preliminary check-up, and I guess she had looked at my employment information because she said--very excitedly--"you work with Such-and-Such Male, right?" I said yes, and then she asked, "has he been around lately?", to which I replied that he had. She said, "oh, because he hasn't returned any of my calls. I keep trying to get ahold of him and leaving messages, and I haven't heard anything back." At that point I thought maybe I shouldn't have said that he'd been around. She finished up her exam, and before she left said, very insistently and enthusiastically, "tell So-and-So that if he wants to get together and do anything, go out or anything, I'm totally up for it".

Poor thing.

I related it to the coworker in question this morning, and he asked if I had been withholding any messages from him.

cougar?!*

Oh boy. I toyed with not reporting this dream, but I suspect it will be more amusing seeing it written out--when I woke up this morning I was just tired and disgusted with my subconscious for the night's selection.

Anyway. I don't remember the first part of the dream, but I had learned that a boy who was a few years behind me in elementary school had a big crush on me. In real life he was probably 2 years behind me; in this dream, I was my actual age (although, I think, unmarried) but he was only about 15.

There was some church event that I was supposed to be going to, at my parents' church. Actually, it wasn't in the church, but in a room in the elementary school building--my old elementary school building, although it didn't look anything like my actual old school. I arrived with my mother, and for some reason I had it in my head that I needed to indulge this schoolboy crush by sitting somewhere near the boy and his friends. It turned out that my mother didn't need much maneuvering to get us to sit right in front of the row with him, his mother (!) and his friends. He started playing with my hair, which was a little annoying, but I told myself it was part and parcel of indulging his crush. Then my mother decided to move up a couple of rows, to my annoyance. I somehow found a logical and unobtrusive way to end up seated between him and his friends.

Being seated in the middle of a group of 15-year-olds really drove it home that there was a huge age gap. He seemed thrilled, and kept trying to paw me in both odd and inappropriate places, and I was getting annoyed and starting to feel like I had gone far enough with my charitable action and I should be able to hang it up now. The other boys seemed impressed that he had bagged an Older Woman, and I wondered if there had been some bet as to whether or not he would be able to get me to go out with him.

In addition to being hemmed in by youngsters and pawed at, the program was really boring. At one point I looked up at the ceiling and, inspired by the fact that I had spent my elementary-school years there, said, "I'm so glad I'm not in elementary school anymore". Then I realized I was speaking to an audience of entering high-school freshman. I tried to quickly throw in something about high school being much better and completely different from elementary school, so as not to damage their little egos. At the same time I felt very foolish about the not-in-elementary-school-anymore comment, wondering if--horrors--I might be trying to impress them and at the same time appear young enough to be in their age group. [Seriously, when you're over 30 you can be happy to be out of college, or even still happy to be out of adolescence--but out of elementary school? That's something you progress past at age 16 at the latest.]

By this time I was thoroughly disgusted with myself and the situation and wondering why I had even thought I needed to go on a pity date with a minor--and then I wondered, even more alarmed, if that technically made me a pedophile.

I got up to leave and tried to distract myself with some flyers at the entrance. One of them had a black background and looked like someone's idea of a sophisticated layout. It was a p.r.-ish flyer for a nebulous company/service headed by a girl I knew from college. I wasn't sure whether she was peddling publicity services or group travel services. [Yes, even when I'm not on a group trip, group travel still rears its ugly head in my dreams.] There were some stock-looking photos of young, attractive people happily on some kind of cruise, and a phrase that said, "Be seen naked...leaning into the naked sea", with emphasis on naked. I understood the leaning part to refer to the cruise, and to imply something like exultantly leaning off a ship railing a la Titanic, and I wondered who on earth she thought that was going to appeal to as advertising, other than exhibitionists. Then I re-read it and realized that it actually said, "Be seen in black dresses", which was also puzzling but in a different way. Now I was really freaked out about possibly being some kind of perverse maniac.

And now you see why I woke up in a bad mood.

*I now realize that this dream was probably inspired by someone telling me he had actually narrowly escaped a "cougar" when he was younger (cougar as in rapacious older woman, not as in feline).

unsuitable boy toy

One thing I dreamed last night was that I had an iPhone. I liked it, but I felt a little bit silly thinking I was part of a Great Community of iPhone users. I think there was an iPhone users' club having a convention somewhere, although I wasn't part of it.

The other part of the dream started at the end of a story line that I can't remember at all. In the previous story line I had met a very young guy, a babyfaced black teenager. I think I had met him in a professional context, and was surprised when he kept hanging around. It was time for me to leave wherever it was that I had been, and he proposed that I give him a ride somewhere. There was a certain amount of waiting around in the car, but I can't remember whether I was waiting for him or he was waiting for me. After a while I realized that all along he had been asking me out on a date. That realization horrified me on several levels: he was way too young for me, and I wasn't attracted to him anyway; it had taken an embarassingly long time to realize what his intentions were; I had probably acted unprofessionally by accepting his invitation; I was now "leading him on", etc.. I tried to think of a way to extricate myself without creating an awkward situation, but couldn't, so I just kept thinking of lame excuses and things I had to stop and do, hoping that he would get bored and go on home by himself. It was pretty excruciating. Also, embarrassingly*, he was dabbling in very small-time drug dealing, and I knew I should try to dissuade him from it but wasn't sure how.

[I don't know what's up with these dreams wherein some unsuitable guy is pursuing me or I'm "supposed" to be dating him. It was kind of fun to be able to say this morning that I had dreamed I had a "boy toy", though.]

*embarrassing because it's so racial-profiling-y.

i'm dating a mac

I had three wildly different dreams last night. I'll get the gross one out of the way first. WARNING: I'm not kidding when I say it's gross, so you might want to skip down to the second one if you're squeamish or eating. Really.

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There's not much of a story line to the gross one. I was standing in front of a toilet trying to get it to flush. I had tried a couple of times and it was sort of flushing, so I thought I'd risk it being clogged and try again. It started roiling around and suddenly (ack! I don't even want to type this.) erupted like a geyser. Not just the contents of the toilet, but what seemed like the contents of the entire municipal sewage system were spewing out in a 6-foot-high fountain, as if the toilet were projectile vomiting.

It was by far the grossest dream I've ever had, and I had mercifully forgotten about it until the local NPR station saw fit to mention a local sewage leak this morning and it all came flooding (har!) back.

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On to a more pleasant one now. I was in a group setting with an assortment of random dream people and a few former classmates (what is with this?). It was some sort of summer-camp-like environment (except it was winter), and I didn't really feel like being there but was obligated. I was a little sick or maybe just tired and depressed, and sitting next to my mother in a row of folding chairs, watching people getting ready to put on a skit. My mother started talking about some kind of show that a former classmate of mine was in, involving profanity. My mother said, "yes, he says, 'mmmmmghsfsajhgmmmmm' [mumbling]". I asked her to repeat herself and she mumbled again, only this time I made out that she was repeating a punch line containing The F-Word, and that she was mumbling it because she was embarassed to say it out loud. She said, "yes, it's vulgar, but it's so funny!" Which was completely out of character for my mother, who upbraided me once as a youngster for calling someone a brown-noser (which, in light of the previous dream, I can't blame her for).

By that time the performers were ready to perform their skit. I don't know who else was there, but it was a whole row of people seated on chairs on the stage, and in the middle was Justin Long (aka "I'm a Mac"). He kept looking at me during the performance, and when it was over he immediately came over and made it clear (how, I don't know; there wasn't much of an exchange of communication) that he was madly in love with me and that we were going to be dating. I was flattered, of course, especially since I thought I was looking pretty mediocre due to being tired and sick, but I wasn't quite sure how to feel about it.

I'm not sure whether I brought it up directly, but I was rather concerned about the fact that I was married and yet I was clearly supposed to be dating this person. He was cute, and quite persuasive, and completely dismissive of the idea that my being married was a problem. The only thing I could really think of to say as he put his arms around me was, "I was wondering how tall you were" (because he had always struck me as being rather short, which he was indeed in the dream, albeit a little taller than me). I was also confused by the fact that, to the extent that they noticed it, everyone seemed to think this little fling was really cute--even my mother seemed approving of it.

By the time I woke up I still hadn't come to any conclusion about how to deal with the fling with the Mac guy, and we had moved on to such racy activities as sliding across the gym floor on our stomachs. Oh, and there was a lot of hand-holding. Basically it was a 5th-grade level relationship, but it was a pretty self-esteem-boosting dream, what with the instant infatuation (I kept reminding myself that he probably had many attractive choices when it came to dating, including, of course, Drew Barrymore).

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The last dream was boring but extremely vivid and detailed visually. I was on my way to run an errand for work and had to stop and eat somewhere. I was so hungry I had gotten confused, and I couldn't decide whether to actually eat something or to get something at a juice/smoothie place. I parked my scooter (?!), with some difficulty, and went inside. It was a two-story building with the entrance on the second story because it was built on a hill. The side facing the street was full of frosted glass windows, and the rest of the walls that weren't frosted glass were covered with license plates. I thought it was an interesting look, but was frustrated because it would have been more interesting to look at the street activity than to stare at the milky whiteness of the windows. I finally decided to have a cherry/banana/chocolate smoothie, but I was having a terrible time getting any of the people at the counter to come take my order. I surmised that this was because they were all gay and didn't think women were worthy of their attention (?). The whole dream had a really stressful, confused feeling.

yakuza boss

I don't remember the rest of the dream, but the other night in the middle of a presumably longer story I dreamed that I was dating an old yakuza boss (Japanese gangster, for those whose significant others don't watch a lot of Japanese movies). I was confused about why I was dating him, and a little grossed-out because I didn't really want to be dating someone that old, not to mention not really wanting to get involved with the criminal underbelly of Japan. At the same time, I felt like since I had somehow ended up with him I had an obligation to try to use my influence with him. I don't know what I needed to influence him to do or not do, I just remember a very vivid picture of opening the door to the room he was in, seeing an old man in the fetal position on the floor, and wishing mightily that I hadn't somehow gotten myself into this.

midwestern girls

I dreamed last night that I had started dating a boy I had an obsessive but fruitless crush on in elementary school (the one who was messing with the coffeemaker in the other night's dream)*. [Obviously I wasn't married in this dream.] I was at my parents' house getting to ready to go to their church; it was going to be our public "coming out" as a couple and I was stressed out about it, not least because I wasn't sure how I had come to be half a couple with him and because I wasn't sure I wanted to be. Also, he had two small children, and it occurred to me that maybe he just wanted a nursemaid for them. And at some point I saw a picture of his ex-wife and she was really beautiful, which further stressed me out (I was sure he must not be over her and anxious about being compared to her). Oh, and I didn't like his hair very much, but it occurred to me that since he had worn it that way since age 7 chances were very slim that he would be convinced to change it now.

Of course I was trying to pick out something to wear, and at first I thought I had a lot of great choices. The closet was full of similar printed silk dresses, some of which had really beautiful patterns and colors. I was feeling optimistic and planning to wear my red shoes when I noticed that only one dress was wearable--the others were very wrinkled, as if they had been hand-washed and drip-dried, all crinkled and crispy. Also, they had alarming huge 80s-style collars, and the red shoes turned out not to be my actual red shoes but patent-leather things with chrome buckles, which didn't really go with the dresses.

Then to my further annoyance my brain woke me up blasting "California Girls" to itself, repeating the part about midwestern girls over and over**.



*Random people tend to appear a few times in a row in my dreams, then disappear again. I think it's because I'm so puzzled as to why they appeared that they stay in my head and pop in again.
**Apart from "The Sloop John B", I am not a Beach Boys fan.

Christian

I dreamed that I went on a date with Christian Bale. And because this was my dream, he was quiet and a little shy, intelligent and even a bit scholarly, and he liked me! I just wish I could remember more details.

I'd had this week's Entertainment Weekly on my floor, and had vaguely wondered whether Heath Ledger as the Joker would give me nightmares. I'm glad it worked the other way around! (Also thanks, probably, to yesterday's Christian Bale image search. Oh my goodness.)

roller skates and russia

i was on a day-long date. he carried me around on roller skates. it took forever for us to get to this show that he was very excited to take me to see. we climbed up the bleachers and sat at the very top. it was here that i realized that the show would not start for another three hours and that i had forgotten all about my 11pm flight to russia. i apologized profusely as i told him he needed to take me back to my parents house immediately because i had not yet packed. he was irritated though he was trying to hide it. i began to worry about finding a warm enough coat to take with me and became frustrated with myself that i hadn't packed earlier. i also got nervous because i would be going to russia on a space shuttle and i really wanted to spend time with my family before i left. my date used a combination of roller skates and a car to get me back home. i felt bad that our date had not turned out as he had hoped and i rushed out of the car so as to avoid an awkward kiss.