stressful heist

I had a very stressful dream last night. My husband was working for some industrial company (mining? petroleum refinery? chemicals?) in a lower/middle management and/or possibly security capacity. For some reason I was there with him at the main office. No one else was around, so it was just the two of us. I'm not sure where the office people were, but it was clear that they would be gone for a while.

In the middle of our uneventful office visit, there was a loud explosion from the direction of the factory/mine/refinery. From the sound of it, no one was going to make it out of there alive. I asked him what it was and he replied "kryptonite" (??). He then sprang into action, although I couldn't determine whether this action was premeditated or a spur-of-the-moment idea. Apparently there was a huge amount of the company's capital just stored in cash in the office (??). He filled up two or three paper Whole Foods bags (again, ??) with what supposedly amounted to 400 million (billion?) dollars.

I found this sudden turn of events disturbing in the extreme. First of all, the idea that he was going to try to make off with this enormous amount of money was alarming both on an ethical and a practical level. How did he think we would ever get away with such a thing? And then there was the disturbing question of whether he had known about or somehow been involved in the explosion, which was such a terrible idea that I didn't want to dwell on it.

I guess my hesitation and nay-saying cost us some time, and we didn't end up leaving right away (I also argued that skipping the country at the exact time of the explosion and disappearance of the cash would make us look way too suspect and that it was better to stick around for a while to lessen suspicion on us; I think I was also hoping to talk him out of his scheme). I also pointed out that any business who kept large quantities of cash would be foolish not to mark the bills somehow, and that the first bill we attempted to spend would get us caught.

I woke up around the time that the police were starting to swarm around the place (amazingly, they didn't nab us immediately; I don't know what became of the paper bags full of cash, but they were still somehow in our possession). Then I kept drifting in and out of sleep, anxiously concocting strategies to keep us from getting arrested--plant a bill or two on an unsuspecting passerby? Drop a bill in a place where it was likely to be picked up and spent by someone else (I was very preoccupied with the whole marked-bill scenario)? I was afraid we were condemned to a fugitive life and would never actually be able to spend any of the money--so it was obviously better to just abandon the whole idea while we were still somewhat uninvolved.

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.

snippets

I had a weird assortment of dreams last night, but I only remember a few bits. I was crawling on my stomach with a few other people into a cave-like space under a concrete traffic underpass construction. I wasn't too excited about it and was starting to feel pretty claustrophobic, which led to a realization that I had never really liked caving. I announced that to my companions with a feeling of relief, as if I had been obliged to do a lot of caving (??) and this was finally going to free me of having to do an activity I didn't enjoy.

While we were crawling around, I was gathering dirt in addition to some other unclear objective (there was a reason we were under there). The next snippet I remember was a contest involving making a concoction with an inedible substance that would resemble as closely as possible a food or personal care product (??). My item was a skin cream simulacrum, made by whipping up the collected dirt with some store-bought lotion (apparently we could use a certain amount of ready-made product). I whipped it up until it looked like light-colored chocolate mousse (which begs the question of why I didn't call it chocolate mousse) and labeled it as a beauty product.

The judging involved normal consumers looking at the products (not knowing about the inedible ingredients) and choosing which they were most interested in buying. There was a lady who was very excited about my skin cream and wanted to buy some and use it immediately. I wasn't sure what the procedures were going to be for the rest of the contest, but I was very concerned that she was actually going to try to use some--I kept picturing her applying what was basically mud to her arms. I dropped several broad hints, but she wasn't taking them and I got more and more panicked about how to stop her from trying the cream.

After that I was stuck in traffic, which is a frustrating thing to dream about, since I spent about an hour stuck in terrible traffic on my way home yesterday. I was able to drive at almost full speed for a while in the dream, although traffic ahead was slowing drastically. Suddenly one of the tires on my car blew out, but I managed to calmly brake and pull over without rear-ending the car in front of me. When the insurance people showed up (insurance people show up to accidents?), they knew me already because apparently we had been ordering a lot of miscellaneous car parts and they had a lot of dealings with the parts people. What a boring snippet....

ugh

I seem to either be only having unpleasant dreams lately or only remembering the unpleasant parts. Last night I dreamed that I was driving somewhere on an important work-related errand. I was coming up to a place where the two lanes merged, with concrete barriers on each side, and I was behind one of those large Old People cars, driven by a man in his late 60s or early 70s, accompanied by his wife and a somewhat younger woman. I was in a hurry and supposing that they were driving at around the speed limit, but it turned out that they were going about 10 mph. As I approached the spot where the lane ended, I realized that my speed/distance calculations had been way off. They were going so slow that I slid into both their car (on the left) and the concrete wall (on the right). It was a terrible, slow-motion, sinking feeling.

Of course we all got out of the cars, and the guy was furious. He was yelling and going on and on about what an awful person I was, what a reckless, selfish driver, etc., and he of course went on to some blanket indictments of almost all drivers (apparently everyone who dared hope to drive over 10 mph). Of course I felt both terrible and stupid about the accident, but got more irritated as he kept on railing. His wife seemed to share his opinion, although she didn't really vocalize, but the younger woman (sister-in-law was my impression) was more sympathetic.

I don't know how the whole thing played out, but somehow the whole driver's side door had come off of my car. I was also stressed about not getting whatever the work-related task was done, stressed about some wardrobe-related issue (I think I had been intending to make a critical outfit change while running the errand). To top things off, as the guy was yelling and waving his arms I realized that I had recently [in the dream] rear-ended someone. The whole thing was extremely unpleasant and insecurity-inducing.

Then, while mulling that over this morning, I remembered an unpleasant dream from last week. I don't remember what was going on, but I was in some social setting when I suddenly realized that my neck was covered with 1/2-inch to 1-inch hair! It was light blond, but that didn't help much. I was mortified, wondering how long I had been hairy-necked without noticing, and mortified when I realized that I was out in public with no good way of getting rid of the hair.

Aunt Pam to the Rescue!

I was driving down a familiar street (looked like Sepulveda Blvd in West LA). I needed to make a left turn onto another street (looked like Venice Blvd). There were two lanes turning left. At first, I was in the outer left turning lane behind a black horse. I looked at the cars in line to turn ahead of me and saw a few other horses in the lane. These horses had riders and were facing in the direction traffic was going; the black horse was riderless and facing backwards - toward my car. The look in the horse's eyes made me nervous. He looked like he could bolt at any minute and I didn't want him trampling my car. So I moved over into the inner left turning lane. It was a better move because there were fewer cars in that lane. As I pulled up to the intersection, I could see there was construction on Sepulveda south of Venice. Cars in the other lane could only go left or right; they couldn't go straight. The light turned green and I made the left turn onto Venice. I drove a little further then wound up at this rec center nearby.

My mother and sister were already there. They had heard on the radio about an accident involving many cars and a school bus. My nephew was on the bus heading to a field trip. The next thing I knew I was talking to him on the cell phone. He told me the bus skidded off the road and was stuck in a ditch. I asked if he were okay; he said yes, but the teacher had passed out. I asked him where he thought the bus was sitting. He didn't know his exact location, but thought the school bus was pretty close to the museum. He remembered passing a sign that said Chapel Hill. I was looking at a map, while he told me this. I found the museum on the map, which was not too far from the Durham-Chapel Hill line. I knew I could drive over there and get him faster than he would be brought back to us. I headed out - my sister was taking her time in getting ready - so I left her behind. I got to the car and thought that I may not be able to take him back since my sister wasn't with me and the people on the bus would only let him go with his mother. Then I remembered the teacher had passed out. I could pretend to be his mom and nobody would know.

Accidental Secret Angel

I was driving on a snowy road following a friend of mine. I had a vantage point of the road from overhead, even though I was still driving my SUV. There were 3 or 4 cars ahead of us. I saw my friends car swerve, go slightly off the road and then get back on. I tried to slow down by taking my foot off the gas, but when I came to the same spot in the road, my SUV did the same. We continued down the road talking to each other on the phone. Then one of the cars in front of us slammed on the brakes. She tried to go around, but skid and flipped her car landing on the roof. I tried to slow down and my car flipped completely over landing on all four wheels. I got out unharmed and tried to rescue my friend who was disoriented. Some strange guy came up to my car and tried to go after her but I pulled a gun to protect myself. I felt like I was just pointing my fingers like a gun, but I could tell to him it looked like a real gun. He didn't think I was going to use it. So I made a sound like I was cocking it back and heard the click. He still didn't believe I was going to shoot, so I said bang bang and he was actually shot. I ran upstairs in the building nearby and ran into a college classmate. At first he didn't believe I had gotten into an accident, then I told him again - sent the thought to his mind - and then he did. He went to help my friend.

Scene switch: Another man was after me, following me, trying to kill me. He said he knew my secret. I made a finger gun. He shot at me but his bullets didn't hit me. I pointed my finger at him and shot him about 5 or 6 times before he went down.

Scene switch: With another guy that I liked. We were trying to have sex in a room where my brother was sleeping. We were on the floor in front of a chest of drawers. The guy reached in for a condom (looked like part of a fishnet stocking). He knew I was an angel or had some special powers and wanted to have sex with me. I clapped my hands above my head and created a force field around us, which blocked sounds and made us invisible to people on the outside. I could see my brother sleeping in the bed (like the one in our childhood bedroom). He kept looking over as if he heard a noise, but I could tell he didn't see us having sex. I was on top and the guy was laying on his back. I pulled him to sit up inside the force field to make sure he was completely inside. Then my brother got out of his bed and walked out the door looking for us. I had to be quick to bring the guy to orgasm before we had to go back. Then I heard other people looking for us, so I clapped my hands again and made the guy disappear. I grabbed his pants and walked out the door throughout the house, pretending I was looking for him and saying he must have gone for a walk.