Guitar

I was supposed to be playing classical guitar in a quartet performance of the Nutcracker,* along with a cellist, pianist, and... other musician? In real life, I haven't played my guitar in ages and can't really sightread.

In the dream I knew it was a bad idea to be sucked into this performance without having practiced with the group--let alone looked at the music--beforehand, but I hoped maybe it wouldn't be too noticeable. I didn't even have the music, so I had to read off the copy of the woman beside me, who was singing as a member of either the choir or the audience.

Naturally, I was terrible. Weirdly, it didn't bother me as much as it should have.

*Or perhaps the Messiah; it shifted.

Tsunami

I'm pretty sure I was reading some Lacan-esque French theory, something about a sea lion/regular lion and a polar bear, and recognizing the Other or some such business. I'm not sure if I was studying this while at the beach, or if the elaborate literary metaphor sort of just came alive for me, but at some point I was definitely being rocked by the waves.

The tide on this U-shaped beach was coming in, though, and I decided I was done with the water. When the waves pulled back, a whitish pebbly beach was revealed at the bottom of the U, and I ran across to get the backpack(s) and corkscrew (?!) that I'd left there on a ledge. Back on the other side, the door to the hotel/apartment/dorm was locked, so a beach employee (?!) kindly let me in. It was an odd sort of industrial-looking stairwell, so as she was in there with me, I asked her whether I'd be able to get out on my floor. She was assuring me that I would, just as she received a message, which I couldn't decipher, on her radio.

"Up!" she said to me. "Up! Run!"

"What happened?" I asked, as I started up the stairs. "What is it?"

"Up, up!" she shouted, pushing me. "Go!"

I was struck by the realization that we were trying to make it to higher ground, because a tsunami was coming. I tried to run faster, taking two steps at a time, but my legs were tired and then we started to run into crowds in the stairwell, also trying to get up to higher ground. They were quite orderly and not pushing or shoving--primarily just polite and a bit bemused.

Suddenly it got darker in the stairwell, and I realized the wave was coming. There was a window in the stairwell, separated by a gap of several feet from where I stood on the stairs. As I looked out, I saw a wall of water rising, in incredible colors--glowing sage-y green, then golden, then red. It reached up to a few inches above the window, and then sank, and I thought, with relief, that we were all going to be fine. But then came what I instantly knew was the Second Wave, higher than the first, and I could feel the foundations of the building shaking. This wave filled the window with incredible sparkling droplets of water, glowing red. I thought to myself that I might well die, but even if it did, it would be after seeing the most beautiful scene of my life--and that it would be okay.

On a Boat

Of a series of varied and complicated dreams the other night, the one scene that stands out relatively vividly is this one:

I was on a boat--some sort of covered, but otherwise open, deck--with a bunch of other people. A thunderstorm came up suddenly and the lightning was beautiful against the dark clouds. The waves picked up and tossed us around a bit, but it wasn't a problem. What was a problem was that when a particularly big wave receded, it revealed that we were about to tumble over a narrow ledge that hadn't been visible under the large waves, and were going to fall maybe 60 feet to the surf below.

I crouched down into what I thought of as an emergency impact kind of pose, with my head between my knees, as we went over the ledge. We fell for several seconds--longer than I'd anticipated--and landed a bit jarringly, but safely, in the waves below. Then I woke up.

Mascara

I was supposed to go somewhere--breakfast, I think--with a cute boy, but I wasn't quite ready, so we came back to my place so that I could freshen up. I was just going to put on some mascara, but for some reason it ended up taking me forever. I felt awful, because not only was I making us late, I has lost my sort of fresh-faced charm, both by appearing to be super high-maintenance by spending so long on my makeup, and for actually putting on too much. I knew I had disappointed him and felt like a total failure.

Unrelatedly, in the dream I had straight, dark brown hair that reached to my shoulders, and longish bangs. In real life, my hair is much shorter, curlier, and multicolored.

Demon Cat

My psyche totally made up for the last thoroughly uncharacteristic, but lovely and affirming, dream I posted here by waking me up this morning screaming. In the dream, if was a full-throttled anguished wail, but what actually woke me in real life was my own pitiful whimper.

A couple of my best friends were in town for my wedding (what?!)*, and he brought their daughter and cat to my apartment so that I could watch them for a while; I think his wife was sick. Almost immediately, though, this cat (which in real life is lovely) revealed itself to be an absolute demon. It went behind the TV and there was a theatrical flash of light blue light and a powering-down sound that indicated that the cat had chewed through the TV wires. The same thing happened and the computer went down. As I tried to catch and contain the cat, it chomped down hard on my left wrist and latched on. I tried blowing in its face, swatting it, flinging it off, and prying its jaws open, but it held on, and although I knew it was inflicting a pretty serious injury that would hurt a lot, I also didn't want to hurt the cat.

But then, then! It let go, only to dart into a large cage that had appeared on the floor and contained another couple of best friends' kitties. These kitties were somehow much smaller and more fragile, and the demon cat killed them almost instantly.**

This time I picked up the demon cat and sort of flung it to the floor. Even though it was nothing compared to the shaking that completely failed to loosen it when it had its teeth in my wrist, this time it, of course, suddenly died.

It was the realization that I was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of basically all of my best friends' cats (though thank goodness my subconscious forgot the toddler in my care and thus allowed her to escape unscathed!), and the fear that David wouldn't love me any more after I'd killed all those animals, that woke me up howling. What an awful dream.

*This getting-married-oh-no! themed dream broke with convention, as the potential groom was my current boyfriend, it was a day or two before the wedding, and before my brain could totally freak out over the idea of getting married, it was interrupted by the antics of a demon cat.

**In real life, one of these kitties really is kind of demonic.

Baby

Somehow, I had a baby. Theoretically I had given birth to it, although that part didn’t figure into the dream at all. In fact, although my baby had apparently just been born, it was beautiful in the way that few, if any, newborns are: it had creamy ivory skin, downy hair, bright eyes, and a perfect little mouth. Oh, and it spoke in complete sentences. That part was especially impressive. Even in the dream, that seemed a particularly unusual feature.

I marveled at the baby’s beauty and intelligence and I loved it intensely—I just wanted to hold it and stare at it and kiss it. And I could tell it loved me back! It would affectionately snuggle up to me, and since it could speak, it also told me as much, although I can’t remember now exactly what it said. I liked the way it would put its head on my shoulder when I carried it on my back.

At one point in the dream I was carrying it on my back while I attended to other business, and suddenly realized I was missing it. I remember thinking something along the lines of, “Awwww, man! I KNEW I wasn’t responsible enough for this!” But then I discovered that one of the women I work with had taken my baby and another friend’s baby to put them in a double-cradle for a nap, so that was okay.

There were several of us with babies, actually, including a grad school friend whose baby looked rather like the Renaissance baby Jesuses she studies, and I think my aunt Teri. I was thankful to have them to ask for advice. Near the end of the dream, I realized I’d never had my baby weighed, measured, or in any other way tested after it was born, and wondered if I should find a doctor to do that. “No,” one of the other mothers assured me, “it’s better this way!” The reasoning was something about not buying in to the idea of comparing with others, or false progress, or something like that.

In real life, I do not want a baby, although I do enjoy other people’s. But this dream was kind of amazing, particularly for the mutual adoration between the baby and me, an emotional sensation that has lingered since I woke up. In the past I’ve had very anxious dreams about caring for someone else’s child and something going terribly wrong, but in this case, even though the baby was (yikes!) mine, it was all very positive and generally affirming.

Watery

I dreamed all night, but the most vivid images--and sadly the only part I can remember now--were this morning, just before I woke up.

I was climbing steep sand hills with some other people, trying to get somewhere. I was worried about two of the people with me, and how they'd make it up. One of them said it was no problem, because they had a sled and could just slide down. For some reason, this comforted me, even though it clearly wouldn't have helped them get up the hills.

At the top of the hill, though, everything changed. Suddenly, instead of golden sand, there was a lot of water. To my left was a glassy looking lake, and the colors were so bright and sharp that the overwhelming sense was Alpine. As I looked, I could see traces of bright white ice clinging to the surface in places. Then I noticed ice around long branches of what I assumed was some sort of seaweed, and my view was almost as if I were looking at the water from below its surface. Underwater vegetation usually massively creeps me out, but these, which increased into a veritable forest as I moved along, were bright red and bright yellow, and it looked like woods in their full autumnal splendor--stunningly beautiful.

Then I was in the road, but the road was water, as clear and crisp at the lake to my left, but moving with a quick current. I was fully clothed, but got in and discovered it was definitely refreshing, but not too cold. I was hesitant to put my head under, but tipped it back and was delighted with the sensation. The person I was with started swimming, and although I'm not at all a fast swimmer in real life, I discovered that with the current and my suddenly powerful strokes, I could keep up with him easily. It was elating!

He decided that we should get out and go to an indoor pool, where all of us could swim together. I was disappointed about this, but went in. There was a heated indoor pool, where quite a few people were swimming, and then, beyond a window, but perhaps contiguous with the indoor pool, was another, uncovered pool. As I watched, a few people were swimming, but then the water began to get choppy with motorboats. Two of them seemed to be having a competition, and one cut suddenly to the side of the indoor pool as I watched. But then the entire pool was moving! We were on a massive boat that contained the indoor pool, and started traveling down the river.

Sadly, I woke up before I could go swimming again.

Snippets

This morning I have a nasty cold--curse distance-run-induced immune-drop, coupled with sleeping only on planes/in airports the next day! Anyway, I ended up sleeping about 11 hours last night, and here are a few of the fragments of dreams I remember:

• I was at the beach with my nuclear family. I had a bunch of stuff on the sand by the shore, including a rolling suitcase, and as the tide came in, my stuff started to get wet. My sister and I went to clean up and change our clothes. There was a little shower up from the water; I remember thinking of it as a "freshwater" shower. We walked down a long hallway to the bathroom, where I waited for her while she got ready.
• At some point, my brother came back down the long hallway, with a new haircut. It was pretty strange--kind of like what you might get if you crossed maybe 90s-era Elton John with Edward the Vampire--but I thought it was cute. I asked who had done it, and he said "Guess." I realized that my sister must have cut it for him in the bathroom. He wasn't exactly thrilled with it, but it had a lot of product in it, so I encouraged him that it would all work out and be attractive.
• I went to my friends' house, and when I got there she was trying to get the baby (much smaller than she is in real life) to sleep. She motioned for me to be quiet and said that she needed me to help, and that I should sit down on the couch. I did, and she put the nearly-sleeping baby into my arms, where she did fall asleep.
• I was online, looking at some sort of strange uber-Facebook/Myspace/iGoogle/blog/chat thing. I was surfing through people's very elaborate, visually overstimulating pages, and realized that my ex-boyfriend was online, too. I could tell this by posts he'd made in the past few minutes, or by the stat counter on my blog, or by comments he'd left on other people's walls. I was online, too, so he could see that. I was thinking about how I maybe felt ready to talk to him again, though I wasn't sure I wanted to take the initiative. I just wanted him to contact me. Then I heard him say, over some strange voice-chat thing, my name, and something to the effect that he knew I was online. I woke up before I had fully decided whether or not I wanted to talk to him.
  

Bugs

For some reason, I was trying to ignite a yellow chair in my living room, which in reality I like quite well. I was using either a candle or a lighter, and there were some charred spots, but I really wasn't making any headway. Then I looked down and saw that some cinders had fallen onto the floor. As I watched, there was movement amongst them, and tiny black bugs, and horrible spiders whose filament-like legs were almost transparent, started moving out from under the chair toward me.

I freaked out and started this full-on, ululating screaming as I attacked them with a broom (which I decided I would also burn when I was done).

Some of the spiders had sprung very thin bubbles on top of/around themselves, like tiny parachutes. When I looked at the havoc I'd wrought with my broom, what I saw were some of those collapsed bubbles (though larger now, and more like plastic cling film), and not insect corpses, but tiny, grotesque doll figurines.

I think this was a fairly direct response to the box elder bug invasion that's been taking place in my apartment over the past few weeks. And, no joke, as I was writing that last paragraph, I discovered one crawling on my toe. Ewwww.

Marathon

Last night's marathon dream was atypical, in that I had apparently started on time and knew the route (there was an out-and-back stretch that I seemed to remember from other marathon dreams, apparently in a skyway of some sort). For some reason, however, I was running all by myself. It was only when I saw another runner on that out-and-back stretch that I knew for certain I was on the right course.

At some point, I ran into David and bummed money off him to buy some Sport Beans, as I'd forgotten to buy any of my own. He had started later and/or was running a shorter race, and said he was "taking a lunch break."

A Rough Transcript

When I woke up this morning, I tried to describe last night's dreams to David. It went something like this:

We were being chased by someone like the Dollhouse people, because I had helped free some of the other people and I had pulled my own Matrix jack-thing out of the back of my head, but had been faking it. They discovered that I didn't have it, and I ran away and they started chasing us. You and I went to the Riverview to hide and watch a movie. (David: "Hiding and watching a movie sounds like a great idea!")

And there were zombies at some point. (David: "Dreams are always better with zombies.")

...And... I was going to get married! (David: "Hmmmmm.") But to a girl. The wedding was going to be in three weeks, and we were experimenting with how my hair was going to look. It was going to look pretty awesome, actually. But I was already thinking, "Okay, I can just go ahead with this, because clearly I've thought out this decision, and it will probably be fine. And divorce is not that big a deal, anyway, if it doesn't work out. Or I could call the whole thing off... I still have three weeks..."

Camping Dreams

I was camping this weekend, and had extremely vivid dreams all Sunday night. Here are a few of the highlights:

• I somehow managed to break big chunks off my molars, possibly exposing the nerves. I spit a mouthful of chunks into my palm, and when I touched the broken spots in my mouth with my tongue, it had that iron-y taste and sent pain radiating through my bones.
• I noticed this while I was brushing my teeth, getting ready to leave. It seemed to be late at night, and I needed a ride home. My ex-boyfriend agreed to take me home, but then my sister rode with us and he was flirting with her.
• My aunt and Small Cousin (in the dream, about three years old, with a very round face) were walking at night in a warm city. My cousin sat down happily in a mud puddle and then insisted that she would not take a bath.
• In this city, we saw a Mexican wedding taking place. There was a live mariachi band, and people were dancing. Food was being cooked, and one of the women recognized my aunt and held up a piece of cake for her to take. Later, we made our way down there and she got her cake.
• As we were walking home, we passed some beautiful architectural elements, including an elaborately carved door. It was very windy, though, and I almost got blown away--a very similar sensation to this dream.
• People were coming to my aunt and uncle's house. At first, it had something to do with some sort of Easter egg hunt--we had hidden objects for them, apparently--but then it became that they were coming to fight us. There were only two of us, to defend two doors. A heavyset woman was the first person to come to my door. I gave her a speech about how I didn't want to fight her, and that she could just surrender and join us. She wanted to fight me, though, so I fought her. In the dream, I was plenty clumsy, but my blows somehow still struck home. I injured her--and felt terrible about it--and she joined us. I had to fight another couple of people later, although some who showed up were willing to surrender without a fight. Eventually, we either beat or converted everyone and celebrated in the empty house.
  

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!

Gravity and Obama

I was with my aunt in a domed white building. Apparently we were in Rome, and the building was Catholic (at some point I had a little a-ha! moment when I realized it was Roman Catholic, though I'm not sure whether the Roman or the Catholic was the revelation). The interior was completely white, and benches of some sort wrapped the entire perimeter of the building, essentially floor to ceiling. Other people were also touring the building, and when I looked up I saw that people appeared to be walking, in some sort of gravity-defying illusion, on the ceiling. This was somehow explained, in bizarre dream-logic, by the fact that although we generally think of gravity as merely "down," it of course refers to the pull of a smaller object toward a much more massive one.

I totally wanted to climb on the ceiling, so my aunt and I went out to a narrow passageway where there was a staircase with a red wooden banister. At first it was easy to climb the stairs, but then I felt a strong pull back down the stairs, like I was losing my balance and the stairs were being pulled out from under me. It was a very unpleasant, vertiginous feeling, and I realized I just didn't have the fortitude to climb on the ceiling.

So we sort of slid back down the stairs, holding on to the banister, and then went outside to continue our tour of Rome.

Later I dreamed that there was a cute little boy in a highchair, who was rocking back and forth so that if I hadn't stepped in and caught him, he would have fallen over backward. He pointed down and said "Floor!" so I undid his little safety belt so that he could play on the floor. Then I noticed that Barack Obama was giving some sort of speech in the other corner of the room. He left, and I knew that he was going to come back in the entrance right beside us. He did, and I said to the little boy, "There he is!" and he waved at us.

Auburn

I was at the Auburn house, and I was headed to church. My mom had given me permission to drive her car, which in the dream was still silver, but even sportier than in real life. I don't know why I was driving; when we lived there, we almost always walked, as it was so close.

Still, I got in the car, elaborately backing out and turning around, getting used again to the manual transmission and avoiding hitting anyone on the active street (which, on church mornings in Auburn, it never actually was: everyone was at church!). As I pulled up to the intersection, where I would turn left, an aqua VW beetle swerved past me on the left and hung a left turn without stopping. Jerk.

When I got to the church, there were orange traffic cones in the parking lot and I realized they were doing valet parking. As I got my keys together and got out of the car, I realized that I had put on a nice skirt, but was still wearing a rather sloppy tank top (which I wore under another shirt yesterday, and which I sometimes sleep in). Then I looked down and saw that I was also wearing my black down booties: apparently the only dressing I'd done was to put on the skirt.

As I pondered whether to walk home and change, or drive home, or try to just pull off this odd combination and pretend it was fashion-forward, the kid doing the valet parking had gotten into a cooler in the backseat. He was concerned that the ice would melt while I was inside. In particular, he was worried about a container of milk. I told him it was really old and that we didn't care about it.

Around Town

Once again I was hanging out with my parents, and this time with my boyfriend. We were going to some sort of college sporting event--maybe football. It was fairly raucous and involved a lot of undergraduates. There were a few sort of closet-structures around, and I took a chair from one labeled "Communications."

As we were leaving the event (about which I don't remember anything), I realized that I hadn't returned the Communications chair, and I felt terrible. I had the impression that different departments sponsored these chairs as a fundraising opportunity at the games.

We strolled happily through a very nice downtown-type area, which I realized, upon later analysis, was an amalgamation of all my generic dream cities. I think it was mostly supposed to be Minneapolis, though, and I was pointing out various areas of town and businesses.

And then we stopped at a laundromat near a thrift store. For some reason, my parents (or were they my grandparents by then?) needed to use a laundromat. I started poking around the thrift store, having been enticed by shirts in the window that were on sale for $0.50. I picked up a lime green polo, and was going to get it for fifty cents, when I looked at it more closely, realized it was pilled, and decided I didn't want it even for that price.

At some point, I realized the store was actually closed and that I couldn't buy anything. The two women who ran it were rearranging and pricing things, but weren't willing to ring up any purchases. They had apparently just opened the store, and I thought it was pretty cool that they were privately running a thrift store to help the community, and not to have some chichi boutique.

Disturbingly, however, now it was my ex-boyfriend who was hanging around in the store. We seemed to be attempting to mutually avoid each other, but then he was lingering closer and started to talk to me. I turned and walked away. I woke up with one of those lingering gross feelings.

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.

Wedding

My boyfriend and I were going to a wedding. It was to be held in a mall, and as we walked up a ramp to the upper level, I kept noticing tacky little "venues" for other weddings, some just in food court style eating areas! When we got to the area where my friends were getting married, however, there was a quiet, nicely lit balcony filled with round tables with white linens and gold flatware. He walked me over to a table near the back, and as we sat down I saw that it was by a big screen that was showing a college football game--I think it was EWU vs. OC (whatever those letters stood for; I think at least one of the teams was from the Northwest). There were a lot of players on the field, at first in uniform and then in street clothes. At some point, we were no longer looking at a screen, but over the actual game itself. In the stands, I saw a hand-drawn poster supporting keeping religion out of schools (it featured a large electric guitar, a trap set, and a Bible with the words "lust" and "lush" written on it). A girl with hair down to her waist turned and waved at us.

The couple who I realized were getting married sat at the table with us, and I was thrilled to be surrounded by such good friends. In real life, these two have been married for almost six years and have a baby. The lights went down and we held hands for a blessing. The groom's mother, wearing some sort of cowl, the bride's mother, and a few other women were singing a haunting song for the blessing when my alarm went off.

I hit snooze, naturally, which meant I also got to dream that a squirrel had gotten into my apartment somehow and was tearing around my bedroom.

Overflow

I was in a full public restroom. I went into one of the stalls that had just been vacated, and the woman had left her red baseball cap on the hook, so I handed it back to her. I was putting toilet paper on the seat when the automatic flush went off. It went off again as I tried to arrange the paper, and this time it filled the toilet to the edge of the seat and the water looked murky. At this point, I had a dilemma: did I leave the stall and say that although I hadn't even used the toilet, it was now perilously close to overflowing? Would I be believed, since I'd been in there a minute or two and had apparently already flushed twice?

I decided to stay... but the toilet flushed again and began overflowing. I crammed myself up against the door, as far as possible from the font, which still splashed me a little. It did this a few more times, flooding into the surrounding stalls. I thought I could hear people talking about it. Finally the toilet settled to a normal water level and I decided I could risk using it. Just then, my alarm went off. What a relief!

Before that, I had been in a field in a car with my parents. There was a dog that charged us and that we determined must be "part horse" because it was so big (though friendly). A cow charged us, too, but was thwarted by a patio door, or something like that. And finally, a creepy guy came up to the car to offer us advice, but we only rolled the windows down partway because we couldn't figure out if he was good or evil.

It was once we'd gotten back into civilization that the toilet incident occurred.

Pie, running, polka dots

I woke up dreaming about delicious pie. Upon waking, it struck me as an odd combination: blueberries, apples, and raisins, I think, all in sort of a souffle-like base--maybe something like a shoo fly pie? (I only had that once, about 15 years ago.) I poked "ooh" into the top crust with my fork tines, apparently to show someone my appreciation. Did I mention that it was delicious?

Before that, I dreamed that I had gone running with the African American family across the street--a father and about seven kids of varying ages. The street in question was the one I lived on with my parents in Portland, although the neighbor family has no precedent in reality. Before we went running, I had somehow gotten sucked into some sort of baseball game with them.

And before THAT, there was to be a wedding. I don't remember whose, but we were getting ready. Or, my mom was getting ready and I was entertaining a small girl in a shopping cart who had a volume of Childcraft. I was excited to read to her about Frog and Toad. On the bed, I noticed a strange little leotard garment. It was silky, black with white polka dots and fluttery sleeves. Then, a short-ish teenager who I recognized as a celebrity, and who had long bleached-blond hair, picked up the garment and put it on (or, rather, it materialized on her; I don't remember any dressing involved). In the dream, I thought she might be Ashlee Simpson, although, as is usual when I dream about a celebrity, a Google afterward indicated how wrong I was. On her, the little leotard thing (which apparently she was going to wear to the wedding) also had odd pink ruffles. She said, excitedly, "How do I look?" I replied (quite diplomatically, I thought!), "No one could wear it like you!"