We need to talk, but first let's make pies!

No one has posted here in a long while, so I thought that I would, and hopefully other people will start to again as well.

My father passed away about 3.5 years ago.  Every now and again, I'll see him in a dream.  He almost never says anything and often seems to just be in the background observing.  This is my most recent dream that included him.  He was wearing the jean jacket and the hat that my mom gave me after his death.

*****

I was in the kitchen doing something (not sure what exactly) when I heard someone knocking on my door from the garage.  I opened the door and found my mom standing there wearing one of my lacy, see through summer shirts and no jacket in the middle of winter.  Her red corvette (that she had Y-E-A-R-S ago) was parked in my garage.  I was wondering where my car was and how she got her car into my garage without the garage door opener.  She pushed her way in and said that we needed to talk, but first she needed to make pies.  

I don't really remember her actually making the pies, mostly I just remember them being almost finished and about ready to bake.  She made about 5 of them.  While she was working, I asked her what was so important that she needed to discuss.  She said she wouldn't get into it until after the pies were done baking.  I looked out the kitchen window and saw my dad sitting on a lawn chair out in the back yard in the snow.  I didn't see his face, just his back, but I knew it was him.  I asked my mom why my dad didn't come into the house.  I don't remember her answer, but that's the last thing I remember before waking up.   

Day Eff-ay

I had a very vivid dream the other night that, on a whim, I decided that we should go on a trip to Mexico city with my mom and grandma (undoubtedly influenced by their impending visit). Accordingly, mom, grandma, myself, and BNB headed off to Mexico City (in the dream I was thinking of it as Distrito Federal (D-F, "day eff-ay").

Upon our arrival, we were ferried to our hotel in a taxi. As we stood around admiring the exterior, which was very lush and tropical with an impressive waterfall, my mom's cell phone rang. It was my grandma, who had apparently mistakenly got back into a taxi and had ended up back at the airport.

I insisted on going to fetch her, pointing out that neither BNB nor my mom had the remotest grasp of Spanish, whereas I could at least stumble along enough to be understood. I snagged a taxi and as we drove away, I decided that the way to get the driver to hurry up would be to tell him the long, involved story of our decision to vacation in Mexico D.F., and how my grandma managed to get lost.

In the dream, I was attempting to do all of this in Spanish, but I noticed that my brain was working very slowly and I was having trouble with words and verbs that I know quite well.

With Grandma rescued, we returned to the hotel. I know there was more after this, included a trip to a rural area and a sojourn in the home of a tall, thin, very intense woman. But those details are hazy.

war of the gender stereotypes

In one part of my dream night before last, I was driving in a nice, leafy urban neighborhood. Suddenly there was a loud explosion not too far in front of me, and I realized it was a car exploding. The explosion was very dramatic, with lots of dark gray smoke, and it completely vaporized the car--no subsequent burning car, practically no debris, nothing. There was an object where the car had been, and I realized with some alarm that it was the woman who had been driving. She was in remarkably good shape seeing that the car had been destroyed, but it was obvious she was seriously injured (although there wasn't really any blood; there hardly ever seems to be any blood in even my most violent dreams). Several passersby ran up to her, and I guess I did too, because I remember looking down at her feebly moving her arms and whispering, "help me!". A couple of proactive types were hovering over her, so I figured the most useful thing for me to do would be to call 911 (not being a proactive type myself). I went back to the car and started dialing, but my hands were shaking so badly that it took about 10 tries to get to the operator; each time I would either mis-dial, accidentally hang up, accidentally press the button for the internet browser, etc. It was very alarming, a new twist on that dream where you can't lock the door against the pursuing Bad Guy.

The next thing I remember, I was in an unfamiliar house where I lived (temporarily, I think) with my parents in addition to my husband. Things are a little hazy here, but there was some yelling between me and my mother and/or my husband--I can't remember who was yelling at who, although I think I was giving as good as I got.

Apart from fighting with family members, I was making some kind of concoction of onions, corn, canned beans, and some other miscellaneous ingredients. I went off to take a break while it was cooking, and ended up watching the ultimate chick flick on a tv in a spare room. Diane Lane, or a reasonable facsimile, was the female lead, and Viggo Mortensen (or, again, a doppelganger) was the male lead. She was falling into his arms (of course), and there was some of that requisite chick-flick music-less slow-dancing around the room. She got very emotional and started talking about how lonely she had been, and he said something totally unrealistic (but very chick-flicky) about how now she would never have to be lonely again because he was there to love her. I was simultaneously enthralled and disgusted, and also a little disgusted at myself because I realized that I wouldn't, in theory, at all mind a world in which people said that kind of thing to me (Viggo's line, not Diane's); although I could do without the slow-dancing-around-the-room stuff.

After the chick flick, I saw an iphone-like cell phone lying around and started messing with it (I think it belonged to my husband, who was off at work). There was an animated movie on it, and I guess I figured it would be a palate-cleanser after the extreme romance-novel thing I'd just watched. The drawing style was interesting, very stylized and a little more hand-drawn and raw than typical anime style. I don't remember the story line at all, but Calvin and Hobbes made a cameo appearance.

scary rednecks

I may be having another run of unpleasant dreams, because I had one last night that was really scary, although it probably won't sound scary. Trust me, it was terrifying.

I was out somewhere in the country with some members of my family. I don't remember exactly who was there other than my mother, but I think my sister, grandmother, and some other random people were with us (yeah, I guess it counts as a group trip). I was walking by myself down a very narrow, deserted country road. It was very pretty, running between wide fields on one side and a hillside on the other, and I was completely relaxed (I think I was even picking wildflowers).

I wasn't expecting a car to come along, so when one did I was completely taken off guard. I didn't even see it until it was level with me, and the road was so narrow that it brushed me as it went past (very slowly). I wasn't too alarmed until I noticed that not only had they slowed way down when they passed me, but they were coming to a complete stop. The driver and passenger got out, and I saw that they were a couple. Normally this would reassure me, but they were horrifying, very Menacing-Redneck-from-a-horror-movie*. The man was tall and skinny with stringy blond hair and a trucker cap, and the woman was one of those skinny, withered long-term smokers/drinkers/druggers of indeterminate age. They were both very weathered, but the woman was a bit more horrifying, with big, buggy, glassy gray eyes.

I couldn't figure out why they were after me or what they intended to do with me, but they were clearly on the hunt. They chased me around the car several times, although how they didn't catch me I don't know, since I was doing that extreme slow-motion heavy-limb running that always happens in scary dreams.

I don't remember how I managed to elude them, but the next thing I can remember is being in a car with my various family members and still being terrified and traumatized. They didn't really take it seriously, since they hadn't been there to face the redneck specters. One interesting detail of this car ride is that I was in the passenger's seat, but my mother, who had previously been driving, was in the back seat. She said, "oh, it's no big deal, just steer from the passenger's seat"**. I wondered how I was supposed to deal with braking and shifting from the passenger's seat, but I think the car just rolled to a stop without any problems.

The next thing I remember is arriving at a house, still with assorted family members in tow. We were all hungry and needed to eat, but for some reason a restaurant wasn't a consideration. We had uncooked food, so we just entered a house (inhabited) and I went straight to the kitchen and started heating water***. Some of my party voiced misgivings with this, but I waved it off like taking over someone's kitchen without permission was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. I think I was still under the impression that my trauma with the rednecks gave me carte blanche to do whatever necessary for survival.


*It probably sounds from these dreams like I watch a lot of horror movies; I don't, but the ones I have tend to stick around in my subconscious. And at least 75% of them seem to feature Scary Rednecks.
**I've had this dream before, realizing that I'm in the passenger's seat of a moving vehicle with no one in the driver's seat. It's pretty obvious what that means, although I don't like the sounds of it. But frankly, I'm not sure I want to dig too deep into this new twist (my mother vacating the driver's seat). Seems a bit too Freudian for comfort.
***Wait a minute, I've dreamed this before too, except that my parents were the ones advocating breaking and entering, and I was the voice of reason.

pop culture reference extravaganza!

I was in the middle of a very detailed and tiring dream when I woke up this morning, the sort that makes me intermittently raise my eyebrows in bemusement for the next half hour or so.

The dream began with--what else?--a group trip. I was traveling with my parents, sister, and some assorted people who popped up fuzzily in the periphery and then disappeared. We were staying at my ex-boyfriend's parents' house (not their real-life house, but an apartment influenced by some extended family members' apartments in Canada). I was sharing a bedroom (with whom, I can't remember; either my husband or my sister, I think) that I realized belonged to the parents, with a very large white bed and a setup including about three fans. The fans kept turning themselves on, even after being unplugged, which really freaked me out. I didn't want them on because I was cold, but it took me quite a while to work out how to get them completely off.

By the time I got the fan situation resolved it was almost time to get up and around, so I took a shower and was trying to figure out when and where would be best to do the rest of my morning remedial work (what is with this constant issue in dreams of trying to put myself together?). The other guests were starting to gather for breakfast, and there were a few minutes of that annoying back-and-forth about the best way to schedule breakfast and bathroom for all parties. There was that cumbersome feeling of too many people trying to move together.

I guess everyone managed to get ready, because we got to church (based on my parents' actual church, except with uneven, too-close-together rows of metal folding chairs instead of actual pews). I sat down next to a real-life coworker and my sister, but my sister got up at some point to sit with friends, and I was left with the coworker to my left and several empty seats between me and my mother. For some reason I was annoyed with her and wanted to ignore her for the duration of the service, but she kept talking to me about various things (notably whether I had a kleenex). I was uncharacteristically empty-handed in the dream, so I didn't have a kleenex, but she had sidled over in the kleenex search and was sitting next to me. I couldn't get rid of her, but wished she would go away because in the dream I was developing a bit of a mutual crush on the coworker* (sitting progressively closer together in a G-rated way, as is the usual pattern in my "crush" dreams).

The church service finally started, and a group of about 7-8 high school students got up to sing. It started out with an almost unbearable solo by the girl in the center: that almost-inaudible, reedy, breathy voice of a teenager who thinks she can sing because she sings along to music in her room. Soon the others joined in, which made it more bearable and added a bit more volume. They were all swaying and dancing to various degrees, which I found kind of charming ("aw, youthful exuberance"). I knew that my mother was going to freak out, though, and possibly get up and walk out. Their dancing soon coalesced into a routine, and when the group turned around I was startled to see that one of the girls was wearing a dress that amounted basically to an apron, so that her hot-pantsed backside was completely exposed when she turned around. She did a not-quite-expert version of a jiggling "booty dance". The whole effect was extremely jarring, although all I could think was, "that poor girl, why didn't anyone advise her against this?"

When the song ended, the entire audience booed, and a short, stocky, Chuck-D.-esque man in a military uniform took the stage. He began to rail against the dance piece, which he clearly hadn't appreciated either. And he had really not appreciated getting what amounted to a (very short) lap dance by Miss Hotpants/Apron.

Things didn't get a lot better after that. They started running a video showing a Jessica Alba lookalike clothed in a sort of leotard over a printed, almost-transparent full-body catsuit. The catsuit had a really beautiful pattern to it, a kind of leaves/flowers/wheat thing. The girl had water (rain?) running down over her, which was slowly dissolving the print/material of the catsuit (but not the leotard). I gradually caught on that it was an American Apparel ad, for a water-soluble catsuit (??). From what I could understand, it would dissolve and then reconstitute itself. They were hinting that this feature would be useful when one needed to pee, since you could just leave it on (?? yuck). The video ended with what I finally realized was a closeup of the model's (clothed, but barely) crotch.

The dubious church service being finally over, several members of the party went to a flea market. I love these flea-market dreams because they're always so detailed, but I can't remember many of the items I looked at. The thing that sticks out most was a beautiful, elaborately hand-embroidered pillowcase. One side was white embroidery on white, and the other side was a mixture of white, printed border, and white embroidery. The fabric was a loosely woven linen, which didn't seem either all that comfortable or very durable, and there were a couple of holes toward one end of it. What was really noteworthy about it, though, was its former owner: Anne Heche (??)**. While the completely white side had an elaborate embroidery saying "amor", the other side had "Anne Heche" embroidered on it. There was a note pinned to it saying, "soon to be Leah Anne Somebody-or-Other", from which I deduced that the pillowcase was part of the spoils of her relationship with Ellen Degeneres. There was another pillowcase-like object next to it, and I thought it might be Ellen's, and might be similarly beautiful (although I did think it might be a bit freaky to have a set of Ellen-and-Anne pillowcases on my bed). On closer inspection the object turned out to be not a pillowcase but a red Chinese towel. I first looked at the back side, and was thinking of buying it. On turning it over, though, I found that what had looked like two plain panels were actually two photorealistic renderings (in terrycloth?!) of a couple of celebrities in the style of mid-80s Glamour Shots (tm)***.

Sigh. I knew this one was going to go over the character limit for tags....

*Alert Readers should be assured that this is not a real-life development, although I do enjoy this person as a coworker because he tends toward a benign grumpiness that I find soothing.
**Where DO these random celebrities come from? They're never anyone I've actually been thinking about.
***Research reveals they're still in business!

in which i caricature my real-life tastes and interests

This dream was really neat visually. It started with me on a visit to a Hindu "worship center". I refer to it as that because it was more than just a temple. It was a whole complex including a temple and some other community-outreach sort of areas (which I'll get into later).

I was in a small group, and we were there to visit the temple on what amounted to a guided tour. The lady in charge of the tour was one of the founders of the temple, and her thing was outreach to non-Hindus. She wasn't trying to convert outsiders, just to educate them on what Hinduism was all about and create positive impressions.

The temple itself was beautiful, a big open room with elaborate Indian decorations (I think the ceiling was highly decorated, and there may have been an upstairs balcony running along at least one side of the room). There were some people there engaged in some sort of worship, and although we didn't stay long and I didn't really understand what was going on I found it inspiring.

After the main room, we were led into a side room with a low ceiling. It was also highly decorated, and full of rows of raised tables with shallow tanks on top, almost like clear, shallow bathtubs on platforms. They were about half full of water, and all connected by a complicated network of piping. Most of the tubs had someone in them, lying flat, fully clothed, and completely, if barely, submerged by water that was running while staying at the same level (through the network of pipes, I suppose).

The tubs nearest us were occupied by very old Indian women, all motionless and with their eyes closed. They were apparently deep in some kind of advanced meditation in which one didn't have to breathe. There was another section on the other side of the room with somewhat younger Indian men, all bald. I found it very interesting, but then when I turned to the right I saw that there was a section full of deformed, premature babies. They had uneven, buggy eyes, large bulgy heads, and were kind of greenish and purplish. It was extremely, extremely unsettling. Apparently they had been taken in as orphans, but their prognosis couldn't have been too good.

After that I was with my mom, getting ready to go into a grocery store. I had a National Geographic, and I discovered that there was a whole article on knitting (across a spectrum of time and cultures, etc.). I was really fascinated, and so slow getting out of the car that when I finally tore myself away and went in the store my mother was already checking out. I looked in her cart and saw that there were only a couple of bags of vegetables and a few more miscellaneous things--not the whole week's worth of food that we needed. I got really angry and started yelling at her about how I thought that for once she could be responsible and buy the week's groceries because I had been doing it ALL THE TIME, and why should I have to do everything just because she found it easier to let me*. She just shrugged and pointed out that I could have come in earlier and gotten more things instead of staying in the car with the National Geographic.

****************************************

Another night I had a tidbit that fits in with the multicultural theme. I was in a library somewhere and found a very small softcover, staple-bound book. It had been self-published by an Ethiopian lady, and looked at first like it was a cookbook. I wasn't sure if it was handwritten or if it was just a unique font, but I absolutely loved the writing and was determined to find a place to buy my own copy of it.

On looking more at it, I discovered that it contained not only recipes (I like Ethiopian food in real life), but very cute line drawings and somewhat 1950s tips on how to manage a home while remaining glamorous and interesting. There was one little drawing of the author involving her two small children in cutting up carrots. The caption pointed out that involving small children in household tasks like cooking would keep them entertained and teach them, make them less picky in their eating habits, etc. etc. The whole aura was very idyllic, and the author photograph showed a very beautiful, flawless, serene-looking Ethiopian woman. The book was in English and Amharic, although of course the writing in the dream didn't look anything at all like Amharic does in real life. I was intrigued to see that there were a lot of "x"-like characters, and remarked that some characters showed up a lot in some languages while being rare in others (??). Anyway, I was completely obsessed with the book and its author, and determined to find it to buy and become perfect, well-groomed, immaculate, interesting, glamorous, etc.



*I have this dream every so often where I'm living with my parents (and sometimes sister and/or husband) and filling this Cinderella role where I do ALL the housework. Then I blow up and start yelling at everyone while they look on bemused and unconvinced.

creepy and out of character

I haven't been remembering a lot of my dreams lately, but I had a very unsettling one the other night. I was sitting around with my mom and grandma, and my mother had some old photos out. She started getting very agitated and talking about how my grandmother had tried to drown her when she was little. She had some photos of herself as a toddler and some other kids, playing in an irrigation canal*. At first glance they looked like cute old pictures of little kids having fun, but then she pointed to one that showed her lying face down in the water.

I had thought that she was just being ravingly paranoid, but the photo was pretty creepy. Even creepier was my grandma's reaction. She just sat there looking cold and scheming while my mom freaked out. [At this point I should interject that in real life my grandma is the nicest person in the world. She is almost 90, though, and in real life she has quite a bit of memory loss--but still an extremely nice, pleasant person. I've a few of these very disturbing dreams, though, where her real-life memory loss morphs into something weird and scary and she becomes a rather creepy figure. Which of course is disturbing in itself during the dream; and the fact that I'm even dreaming it is disturbing and a bit guilt-inducing.]


*I think she's mentioned playing in irrigation canals in her real-life childhood, but definitely no mention of near-drowning incidents.

Parental Stress

I had a really harrowing dream last night that made me feel exhausted upon waking. This dream is RIFE with Freudian issues, so beware!

I dreamed that my boyfriend and I were going on a Romantic Getaway to the same place near Seattle where a friend of mine got married last summer (in real life, which I attended). It was (is) a really neat bed and breakfast on an island overlooking the water and I was really looking forward to this weekend, especially since somewhere buried in the dream was the knowledge (suspicion??) that my boyfriend was either going to propose or we were actually going to get married (?!).

We had to take a bus to the B n' B, and the grizzled driver dropped us off in front of the building, complaining that he had to drive all the way back to the ferry and then to the mainland. We tried to give him directions, but he just kept complaining.

As we walked up toward the inn, I saw a person getting out a car in the parking lot and as we drew closer, I realized it was my mother. I was so angry that she had somehow figured out where we were going, and went so far as to track us down. I swallowed my anger, though, and we decided to try to have a nice weekend, even when several other family members showed up.

My mom ended up taking over the whole show, organizing outings, dominating conversations (quite unlike her in real life, btw). I was just seething that she'd ruined my romantic weekend, and presumably my chances at having The Talk with my boyfriend.

There was a lot of confusion about bathrooms, like who was showering when. Apparently there was only one shower, which was just a little enclosure in the center of the house. I also ended up sleeping in the strange alcove that was reached by climbing a ladder. It was just a sort of narrow shelf in the wall near the ceiling, and I was using it as a refuge from my mom.

Eventually, during a meal, I ended up losing my temper with my mom, though I'm not sure what event precipitated the actual loss of temper. I ended up screaming and crying at her in the dining room with a roomful of people, with my sister and boyfriend trying to calm me, or at least remove me from the room. I kept screaming something like, "Goddamn it, just stop it!!! Just stop it!!! Everyone gets your point, goddamn it!!!"

That's when I woke up, and it took me awhile to get back to sleep. Eek!

jumping on the snippet bandwagon

Here are some of my recent snippets (no full-scale plotlines for me lately):

• I was staying in my aunt and uncle's house with my parents (aunt and uncle weren't there). My dog (the giant, hyperactive one) was there too, and my mother had stayed up all night with him in the living room watching tv. To the average layperson, this wouldn't sound so funny, but the idea of my mother staying up all night watching random tv movies with my large dog is so unlikely as to be hilarious. I had woken up early and wanted to go out to do some sightseeing (apparently my aunt and uncle's house was in Italy!). My mother wasn't ready to leave the house after her all-nighter, and I was a little impatient. While waiting to see if she was going to accompany me I noticed that the bathroom shower stall was all dirty and scuzzy, and was self-righteously scandalized that they hadn't cleaned it for incoming guests*. I tried to use some Scrubbing Bubbles product on it, but was frustrated because it didn't foam properly. Then I gave up waiting for her and went out, where I bought some overpriced and weird-looking (orange?!) Spanish tortilla and some similarly overpriced coffee from a streetside stall manned by an old man.

• Then another night I had a dream in which I missed a train due to poor time management and ended up having to spend the night at a nearby anarchist commune. In the dream, I knew a lot of the people there from past periods of my life, although I'm not sure, apart from one or two, whether these were dream people or actual real-life acquaintances. I was just getting settled in and over my frustration at having missed my train when people started saying that I guy I do know in real life had come back from a long trip (the implication was that this had been some sort of meaningful quest). They were saying that he was going to rest up and decompress before coming out to mingle, and the implication was that he was some sort of returning hero.

• Then last night the only dream bit I remember was that I was supposed to do a science project (you know, like a science-fair/ science-class project). As expected, I didn't have much time left in which to do it, but I wasn't too worried because my plan was to have "Curly Sue" and her sister help me--wait for it--capture a small crocodile. That was going to be my science project, a captive miniature crocodile. I don't really know where the location of the dream was, but it was somewhat exotic and the ground was covered with a swampy groundcover. When you looked closely you could see that at close intervals in the groundcover there were tiny crocodiles in a dormant state. I knew that once I started trying to capture one it would become active, though, which was why I needed help. I figured it wouldn't be too hard with one person to grab and hold the body and the other person to grab the snout (?) and hold it shut; a third person for backup could be nice too. Unfortunately when Curly Sue and sister showed up (with their mother and possibly some other extended family members) they were considerably less enthusiastic about the enterprise than I had expected. Due to their lack of enthusiasm, I decided that I should go with my science project backup plan, an origami model of a double helix (here again, I was somewhat hazy about the actual details involved in its fabrication).

*Ironic considering the squalor in which I usually live.

my subconscious is an overachiever

Think of the creepiest, most icky, bound-to-stick-with-you-and-resurface-when-you-don't-want-it-to dream that you can think of, not involving violence. Now see if it comes close to this:

I dreamed that I found out my mother was a hermaphrodite.

I don't see how it could get much more traumatic than that and not involve violence.

And then the other night I dreamed about being pursued by the mafia. I performed a lot of daring gymnastic stunts that I would never be able to do in real life, including but not limited to climbing down the face of a balconied apartment building. That's really all I remember, but it went on for quite a while and was very scary. Also, food was involved somehow--I think the mafia were pursuing me over some kind of restaurant-business secret.

put this one in your pipe, sigmund....

I had the weirdest [most Freudian?] dream last night, in which, somehow, both I and my mother were married to my husband. Also, in the dream he was prone to picking fights both with random strangers and spouses. The whole thing was very weird, and I could do without having more dreams like it. The only redeeming aspect of the dream was that after my (our?) husband ran off in a snit (because I/we got mad at him for picking fights with random strangers) we consoled ourselves by doing some flea-market shopping.

High School Flashback

I dreamed last night that I was at work on a normal day. As I was walking through the building, I noticed a girl that I'd gone to high school with (odd enough, since my entire workplace is ID-access only...no strangers CAN wander around). I recognized her at once because she looked exactly the same, but I pretended I didn't see her. Later that day, she cornered me and started quizzing me: "You're so familiar...don't I know you?" I said something non-committal and she recognized me. I had to pretend that I finally recognized her too.

Suddenly, I was in the position of dragging her all around, showing her the place, as she talked non-stop about high school and all the people we used to know. I asked her where she lived and she said, as though I should have known, "Dallas!"

At some point, the dream shifted to a performance in a big concert hall. It was a Christmas concert (undoubtedly influenced by the Christmas carols !!! playing in the car rental place yesterday). The hip-hop artist Jay Z performed Oh Holy Night. Everyone, including myself, was skeptical about his ability to actually sing, but he did quite a nice job. His performance combined this huge orchestra and choir with some really interesting electronically-modified sound effects, which came off quite nicely. I was very impressed. At the point in the song where it goes really high--oh niiiiiight di-VIIIIINNNEEEE--the orchestra and his pre-recorded soundsd created this whip-like effect that seemed to lash all around the room.

I walked up the long, sloping aisle to use the restroom, and came across my mom and grandma sitting on a park bench outside. At first I was going to avoid them, but I had to walk right past them. They were looking at a tree that was shedding thousands of tiny, white blossoms and petals, so that it looked like snow. I decided to joke around, and I started tossing the petals around and striking poses like a supermodel.

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).

Marriage

In an unusual twist on the wedding dream, last night I realized that my boyfriend and I had somehow gotten married. Concerningly, however, I couldn't remember having a wedding. When I thought back, I could "remember" some sort of ceremony, but without any of my own friends or family. When I realized that my mom hadn't been at my wedding, I got so sad I almost started crying. I thought that maybe the marriage should be annulled, since we hadn't even had a proper wedding. I was somewhat comforted by the fact that we could have a reception when we got back to Minneapolis, and that I could send cute invitations for that (I was thinking something with black and white stripes, vaguely French).

I decided to go to bed or take a nap, and to listen to my neighbor's "audio logs"--kind of a streaming audio blog, I think, and entirely a dream invention--for comfort. Somehow, though, I ended up at a party she was hosting, with a bunch of people I knew from various lives. One friend was telling me about the single-wide mobile home he'd bought with the help of another friend (she said she'd put in $1200, and when the housing market crashed, that investment had disappeared). My neighbor came over and asked me how I was doing, and I was about to tell her how sad I felt about the wedding debacle. Then I woke up, and was SO relieved that I wasn't married or in the middle of wedding business in real life!

cinderella strikes again

I find it a little embarrassing to admit to my recurring dream themes, but I had another one this morning in which I was the household Cinderella. Anyway, I was living with my parents, and my sister was there, although I think she was more of a long-term visitor than a full-time household member. I think my husband also lived there, but he was absent for some legitimate reason--I think he may have been working extremely long hours at a demanding job, or maybe he was on a trip.

What I can remember started with me coming to the realization that for quite some time I had been doing everything for all the other members of the household. My wrath was directed primarily at my mother, and I started yelling at her: "Don't you think it's grotesque?! I cook EVERY MEAL, I clean up the dishes, I do the laundry, I clean the house--how can you live with yourself?!" I was really steamed up. When I realized how mad I was, I started to analyze how I felt about each member of the household. My dad was more or less exempt from my anger because he was working outside all day on some building project; my grandmother was exempt because she's 89 years old; my husband was exempt because he was always working and never there. I was a little mad at my sister, but she was somewhat exempt because of her guest status--and anyway, she was staying well away and completely ignoring the discussion, puttering around with a stack of art supplies in the corner. My mom refused to acknowledge my tirade in any real way, which made me even more mad.

I should add that the house we were living in was interesting, some kind of 60s-70s split-level thing with a main living area in a sunny half-basement, where the kitchen was. There were quite a lot of tchotchkes to be dealt with in cleaning, too, including macrame plant hangers.

After the outburst I went off in a huff and was rather proud of myself for taking a firm stand and not feeling guilty about it. I felt like I had made a psychological breakthrough. Then I started to think about the fact that my mother was busy taking care of my grandma, and I wondered if maybe I hadn't been a tiny bit hard on her.

That semi-guilty feeling morphed into some sort of depression whose cause I can't remember. I was still in the same house, with my sister and a friend of hers (random dream person). The friend was visiting and they were going to go to some social function scarily reminiscent of a church-high-school "banquet". The friend had showed us a very expensive couture gown that she was planning on wearing. Although I was depressed, I realized that I should make an effort at sociability, so I said, "that sure is a snazzy dress!"

Shortly thereafter I escaped into a bathroom with a laptop computer. I thought I'd distract myself by looking at ravelry (knitting website, for the uninitiated). I started reading a non-knitting-related forum there, and the avatar of one of the posters drew my attention. Instead of being just a photo, it was a video, showing several women frolicking around at an outdoor house party. There was some kind of "party"/dance music, and some of the women were dancing to it on a trampoline while others were dancing around a pool or jumping into the pool (this was more of an interpretational modern dance than a generic party dance). Someone in the discussion said that they wished they were attending the party, and I kind of agreed, which was a little out of character for me since I'm not much of a party person. The setting was certainly attractive, though, a stone house with nice landscaping looking like it should be in Provence.

I guess I clicked on her avatar or something, because suddenly it filled the whole screen. The view was now inside the house, though, and the women were in really elaborate and colorful eastern European costumes, with equally elaborate hairstyles (the one I can remember was a halo of tiny buns all around her head, supplemented with some kind of flowery decoration). They looked like they were warming up when an announcer came on and announced, in French, that they were such-and-such gypsy group and they were going to be doing a show; he also made it clear somehow that this was in Quebec.

The show started when some very animated gypsy music came on. The most interesting thing was that when they moved, their costumes moved with them. The dancer most visible had a couple of huge chrysanthemum-like flowers on the front of her dress, and they opened and closed and revealed different layers of petals, each with its own color and shape, kind of like a kaleidoscope. I thought vaguely that instead of dwelling on the injustices of my Cinderella-hood, maybe I should have just distracted myself with this first instead, because I suddenly felt a lot better.

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.

Running Late

I dreamed that my mom, sister, and I were running late. We were leaving for school from her old house, but I don't think we were children...I think I was an adult. There was a lot of rushing around for lost articles of clothing, books, lunches, etc while we were inside the house.

We got into the minivan that she drove in the early 90s and as we started to back out of the garage, a big van/truck zipped up the driveway and blocked us in. Apparently they were some kind of roadside assistance company who were responding to what they thought was a distress call. Mom didn't realize this. The man in charge rolled down his passenger window to talk to her. He was talking and she was nodding, but we couldn't hear him because she hadn't rolled down her window. I said, "How can you hear him? Roll down your window!" She did, but it was too late to explain. They had already opened her gas tank and were trying to refill it. The guy kept talking about how they'd gotten a call from this house. I was trying to shout across mom that they had the wrong address, but he wouldn't listen.

Finally, I turned to mom and said that they were going to charge us a lot of money for this emergency service, and we'd better just leave. Showing uncharacteristic disregard for damages, mom inched the van forward to make room to back up. We heard the gas nozzle rip out of the van, gasoline spraying everywhere, and the men shouting at us. Then she backed up and gunned it out of there.

We drove down the road, and mom made some comment like, "Well, that girl should have known not to call such an expensive service," which implied that the new residents of our old house (flashing forward into reality, I guess) were wimpy for calling roadside services.

As we drove, we noticed that there were lots of people burning piles of leaves, and we realized it was to keep down the mosquitoes.

baby mama

about a week ago i watched "the business of being born" at a friend's request. i'm surprised it took a full week for my dreams to be influenced.

i was pregnant. there really wasn't any back story (like why i was pregnant, who the father was, etc). i was going in for a checkup at the hospital. my mother was with me. i went into labor. i was now in a wheelchair. i felt the contractions (this makes me wonder if i had gas last night? what was it that i was feeling?) i was then in an exam room (doctor office style) and waiting. The contractions kept coming closer. i knew it was time to have the baby, even though my mom was assuring me that i was overly optimistic and that there's no way it was going to be that quick. but i was sure. and then i reached down and felt the head (ewww) and then my mom started to believe me and tried to get the doctor's attention. my response? eh. we can do this. it'll be ok (that totally came from watching that documentary).

i remember thinking this really doesn't hurt that much. i mean, yeah, it hurts. but it's not THAT bad.

and then i woke up.

Catching a Train

This was part of a longer, more complex dream that I can't remember. I remember that I was with my mom, boyfriend, sister, and possibly some more people. We were trying to catch a train together. For some reason, we knew we were going to miss the train at the station we were headed toward. I suggested that we just think ahead and catch the train at a station that it would arrive at later. Somehow I knew that the train would make a bit U shaped circuit and we should just go to the other leg of the U to catch the train. I felt responsible for getting everyone to the station on time, then shepherding everyone through the station, the ticket counters, the corridors, and then onto the correct boarding area.

The whole dream seemed much longer than this, but we finally made it onto the correct train, found our seats, and I discovered I'd have to sit next to a loud, overweight couple. The relief at arriving on the train made me feel better, though.

I woke up soon after this event and was lucid enough to think, "Well, thank god I slept long enough for us to get on the damn train."

Beach Island

I was on some sort of trip with my entire nuclear family. We were on an island that had blindingly white sand. The beach was pretty, but a little bit terrifying, with massive waves that would spring up suddenly and engulf people playing in the surf. The tide was out, so we drove over the sand to where we could see the water in the distance. It was rather barren and disconcerting. The receding tide had left little pools of water, and there were whales beached everywhere. They were shiny and black and not as big as ordinary whales. I saw a smaller fish-like creature (though it was in the air like a bird) trying to pull one of the whales back into the water with his teeth. I don't think he was trying to save it, though; I think he was trying to take it home to eat it.

My family and I decided to head into the interior of the island, where there was jungle. We were in a hotel room--apparently my brother's--putting on sunscreen. My dad sat on the bed and said he wasn't going to go with us. I didn't really feel like venturing out into the wilds, either, but I rubbed in my sunscreen anyway.

The whole dream left me feeling vaguely uneasy. I seemed to know that I should undertake the adventures, but just felt a slight sense of foreboding and disinspiration to leave the comfort of the car or hotel.