more group trips, and a trompe-l'oeil bird

My brain is back to its old tricks, apparently--I had another group trip dream last night. It was a combination group trip/family reunion. All of the extended family members from my dad's side had met at some location far from where anyone lived. The first part of the dream involved some socializing with older relatives. Then someone tried to do an organized activity, and encouraged us to break up into groups of 3 or 4 (I've never been all that keen on activities involving a structured forming into groups). For some reason, a real-life friend (Curly Sue, as it happens) was also there at the reunion, so we formed a group with two of my younger cousins. In real life, one is my age and one is a few years younger, but in the dream they were teenagers, probably because I haven't seen them for years. We started talking to them, and I was aware that I was feeling happy about being the cool older relative (and simultaneously really annoyed at both the feeling and the awareness of the feeling; my self-analyzer just won't ever leave me alone!).

After that, the group broke up pretty quickly and people started leaving. I guess we had planned to have a "friends" outing after the family reunion, because I was supposed to meet another real-life friend. I did some random wandering around, and then Curly Sue and I met her at a cafe that bore a strange resemblance to a cross between a laundromat and a Chinese restaurant.

This friend recently had a baby in real life, but in the dream she had apparently, in addition to having her real-life baby, had another baby who was still-born. She started talking about how she was looking forward to the second coming (of Christ, that is) because then her baby would "rise first" with a wave of other babies who had been still-born. In real life I'm not quite clear on the various Christian denominations' views on this, but in the dream she held a view that was supposedly the "evangelical view". She said that she and her husband hadn't thought they had any particular religious views, until the birth of the still-born baby, and then, very abruptly, they "saw the light" (she worded it more gracefully than that) and suddenly started subscribing to this mainstream theology. She even had a printout of something referring to the mass resurrection of still-born babies, some sort of liturgical thing printed out on the typical half-page paper with poor copy quality. I think both Curly Sue and I were a bit surprised at this, but she made it clear that she hadn't become a hardcore conservative and was still her old, open-minded self, so we figured it was a good way for her to adjust to and accept the death of the baby.

After that, I went on a hike with the other friend (not Curly Sue), and we ended up on a very steep scaffolding-like section of trail above a boardwalk (almost Coney Island style, but with less people and more nature). There was an odd encounter with a little bird. It was hopping around, and I noticed it looked strange. I realized that the actual bird had been encased in a covering (made from an old sock!) painted to look like a bird. I managed to catch the bird and remove the covering. It was a bit unsettling, but the bird seemed to be happy either way (with or without the trompe-l'oeil covering).

harrowing pet and school dreams

I haven't had one of these dreams in a while (I used to have them fairly often), but last night I dreamed that I had some pet birds. The dream followed the usual scenario: I had gotten them and then sort of forgotten I had them*; of course that meant I had forgotten to check their food and water; out of an original number of 5-6, a couple were dead in the bottom of the cage. Another variation I've had on this dream is that the birds are not dying, but escaping from cages with too much space between the bars. I've also had rather harrowing dreams featuring other pets that I've forgotten to feed/water, usually dogs (I don't recall one where the dog actually died, but there have been some close calls).


*Interestingly, I have a vague memory of also recently having a dream in which I had forgotten about being enrolled in a math class for an entire semester. Except at the end of the dream I realized that I had actually dropped the class and there was no reason to be so frantic.

do pelicans flock?

i was in a car with my parents, brothers, and grandmother. we were driving down I-4 late at night. we passed st. petersburg, which actually looked like st. petersburg... the one in russia, that is. it had all sorts of kremlin-esque buildings that were outlined with thin, blue neon lights. not only did st. petersburg look like russia and not florida, it was located in north florida instead of south-west florida.

after we drove through st. petersburg we began heading south to st. augustine. it was still late at night. as we were driving, we were parallel to the ocean. suddenly i saw the outline of a group of animals moving along the ocean. at first i thought i was seeing into the ocean and that the outlines were of whales swimming. but i soon reasoned that i would not be able to see underwater while we were driving parallel to the ocean. i refocused my eyes and determined it that it was a giant flock of pelicans. there were quite a few of them flying a long distance (and this i don't know - do pelicans flock? do the fly long distances?). it was a breath-taking sight. i remember feeling very privileged to be seeing such an event. i pointed this out to my family and it was decided that we needed to get to the shore to see them up close. so my dad began driving insanely fast so as to get ahead of the flying pelicans, so we could exit and then make it to the shore before they passed us for good.

my dad sped down the interstate, dodging cars and such. i held my breath and thought wow this would suck if we all died right now. we finally made it to an exit in st. augustine and immediately got lost in a mass of traffic and people. it was some sort of late-night street party. we realized we weren't going to make it to see the pelicans so we parked in a large parking garage and then went to a very busy fast food restaurant. while we were in the restaurant, there was a father screaming at his daughter and humiliating her. i felt so sorry for her and was getting worked up to go and confront the father when i got sidetracked by refilling my dr. pepper at the fountain.

after eating we headed back to the car but had to maneuver our way through a hospital first. as we were doing this, i thought about how cute my youngest brother looked and how it reminded me of when my other brother was his age (in the dream my youngest brother was about 6 years old). about that time i realized that my parents and mason and i had gotten separated from mark and my nana. but we soon found our way back to each other and made it to the car.

as we drove back to orlando, the sun came up and i was exhausted and a little sad that i now had one less day back home before returning to california.