Sunshine in Spain

Last night, I dreamt I was in Spain with my new manager. I walked down a long flight of shallow wooden stairs to the beach, the sunset was beautiful it was purple and pink the whole sky was lit up that way, with the palm trees as a backdrop. I took a photo and posted it on Facebook, then I remembered nobody knew I was there. I thought that was a bad idea. I put my phone back in my pocket and forgot about it. 

We were walking through sand and I remember thinking this is why I don't go to the beach alone, because I wouldn't be able to run away if something happened. We were discussing what to do next, I said I wanted lunch. He said he refused to eat octopus, and that was all they served. An older lady overheard us, we were walking up the stairs and she was walking down. She had painted on eyebrows, but they were so small and short I just remember staring at them as she talked. She said "they serve more than just octopus, it's like a seaside soiree. They do serve only seafood, but there's more than octopus." As we were walking away, my manager said "we only just ate a half hour ago." I asked him what time it was, I said I was hungry when I really was not. He said it was only 10am. I asked "what does it matter, the company is paying for our lunch anyway?" He was silent, which made me wonder if that was not the case. 

I remembered I only had a few dollars in my purse. We walked by a display with a cooler full of octopus and squid. They were all bright green in color, but otherwise looked normal. There were also larger pieces that were just round octopus heads. I just remember there were flies all over it and that made me feel sick. We tried to shoo the flies away so I could take a picture. 

We kept walking and saw these beautiful cats everywhere. They were just wandering around. I distinctly remember one that jumped up near us was all black and looked like a panther. It had a beautiful black coat and jumped with elegance and grace. I walked out of a door and said out loud  "this cat does not have a collar, should I not let her out the door? I don't want her to get away." A stranger, an Indian man, said "we don't do ouchies here." I looked at him puzzled and asked what he meant. He said "we do not allow collars they are outlawed" and made a gesture like his finger going across his neck and hanging himself. I let the cat out next to me, she was black and white and very clean. I was petting her when the panther came back. I noticed that the panther had a little bit of white on her chest, so I convinced myself that it wasn't really a panther just a neat looking cat. I started to walk down the same steps again, and the sun was shining. I asked what happened as the sun had just set. I asked a stranger if it was like Alaska where there's a constant light period. The woman laughed at me and said "of course. The sun only sets for a short time here." I remember thinking that I didn't understand why I never knew that. Then I woke up. 

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.

very weird miscellany

It seemed like I woke up every 20 minutes or so last night thinking, "that was so weird. I have to remember that." Of course I forgot most of it, but I think the few I do remember are representative of the rest in weirdness.

• My husband was going to do some interplanetary travel. I'm not sure if I was going too, but at any rate I wasn't concerned or worried, just excited for him and the other two people who would be traveling in his little "pod". It was a very rudimentary metal construction divided into three stall-like compartments, almost like a flat-topped horse trailer, minus the wheels. Each stall had a round porthole-like window that the traveler could look out while en route. He and the other two travelers were getting inside the pod to accustom themselves, but not yet leaving. Oddly, I don't think there was even any glass on the windows. Apparently there had been such great advances in space travel that things like pressure and oxygen were no longer a concern.

• I was staying in a largeish cabin with my parents and sister in the woods somewhere, on a family vacation. I'm not sure who else might have been there, but I had the impression of more people there than just my nuclear family. At one point when we were all sitting around in the living room, I began to talk to the cat. It was a large, mottled gray cat with a slightly cartoonish air. I asked it some question of little consequence, and it answered me immediately as if to have a spoken interspecies conversation was completely normal. I looked around at my human companions and said, "See, that's why I like cats so much. They're so much more intelligent than dogs."*

• [Same setting, cabin in the woods, raised up on a very high foundation/stilts; on the front porch this time.] I was just loafing on the front porch when a redneck-ish man with a junior-high-age redneck-ish son sauntered onto the porch. I wasn't at all alarmed, because it felt like they had some business being there. I just kept reading my book, until I started to feel like the son was infringing a bit on my personal space by staring at me (the father was completely absorbed in the view of the woods and not paying any attention at all). The son said, a propos of nothing, "I'm kweeping!" which in this alternate dream universe meant, I knew, that he was *ahem* very excited**. I was pretty offended by his forward declaration and also didn't want to encourage his attentions, so I went back in the house without really saying anything. On one hand I didn't want to hurt his tender young feelings, but really! A few minutes later a [very corny] rejoinder came to me: "You're kweeping me out! I'm mawwied." [Get it? Think "mawwiage" from The Princess Bride.] I don't know where my brain comes up with these things, and I find it even more alarming that in the dream I considered it a brilliant example of l'esprit de l'escalier.

• Then there was a very brief vignette, maybe a movie, in which a bimbo-ish blonde woman was threatening a used-car-salesmanly man*** with a ludicrously tiny gun, cocking it and holding it to his head. It was some kind of revenge thing for his ostensible past mistreatment of her, and I never did see what actually happened. I had the impression that she was all just hot air (and whether such a tiny gun could do any damage was another legitimate question).
  

*This coming from a person who in real life very much likes both cats and dogs.
**What can possibly be with this recurring theme of inappropriately young boys expressing interest in me?
***Although I know that there are many exceptions to this, my stock impression (based on extensive experience being dragged to car dealerships) is a stout man with a greasy, bloated face and moist, meaty hands with one or two large rings jammed on to his fat fingers.

Cats and Chickens

I dreamed that I was walking home from work/school, but not in this town, nor in any town I've lived in. I was walking through the neighborhood streets, looking at houses, when I noticed a sign on a street corner. It was like a "For Rent" sign, but it said "Piano for Sale" at the top in large, black letters. Underneath, however, was a long-ish paragraph of smaller writing. I stopped and read it, but all I can remember now is that the author(s) made a point of saying that they'd "been up for three days straight."

I was intrigued by the piano sale, but I continued on home because I knew that there were visitors waiting for me. A relative (in the dream, no one in real life) and her two small daughters were there: one girl about 6 or 7 and a toddler, about 2. I decided to take the girls on a walk and go back and see about this piano sale. For some reason we decided to take a chicken with us on the walk.

As we arrived at the piano sale house, we found three young, tall, thin guys lounging in the yard, as though resting after working hard. One was a tall black guy with dreadlocks and the other two were white. They nodded as we walked up to the door. An older, rounder, balding white man let us in. As we explained that we were interested in the piano, he showed it to us. It was an electronic, Clavinova-type piano and was, rather than the usual black, a wood-grained brown. I commented, "at least it's not black."

He asked us what we would be willing to pay, and at this point the six-year-old turned out to be a shrewd bargainer. She was signaling to me when to name prices and when to shut up. He mentioned $3000 and I regretfully responded that all I had to spend was $1200, when in fact me and the little girl both knew it was $1500.

During the negotiations, however, I became aware that the chicken had at some point turned into an extremely ill-tempered cat, which was trying to claw and bite everyone within reach. I was trying to hold this cat down by the scruff of its neck while continuing to bargain with the bald guy, but the cat was writhing and growling, clawing at my arms and hands. A few times it slipped from my grasp, but the tall, thin, young guy with dreadlocks would capture it each time and return it to me. It was very distracting, painful, and frustrating.

Yes! With three-inch heels!

Another recurring dream theme I have is a scenario in which I discover that I've grossly neglected a pet (or pets). This hasn't happened for a while, but I had one last night. I was staying in a dorm that alarmingly resembled my high school dorm (which I fortunately didn't have to live in at the time). I had just realized that I had a pile of overdue books and dvds for the library (a recurring real-life theme), and I was agitated about going to return them. I think I was making pointless and confused trips up the stairs to my room and down to my car.

On one of these trips, as I was walking past the movie-set Western Town setup (?what?), I heard clomping footsteps and looked over to see a guy who looked like a 17-year-old Hayden Christensen, walking by in cowboy boots. He was doing that thing where you watch someone to gauge their reaction to you while trying to not appear to be watching. I didn't think that much about it, but he followed my trajectory for a while, gradually starting to walk beside me.

Around the time I realized he was really trying to accompany me I remembered that I had had my childhood cat (still alive, apparently) with me in the dorm, but that I hadn't fed her or even seen her for quite a while. I went back to the dorm and tried to talk to the dean about it. She tried to be reassuring, saying that cats were self-sufficient and she might have just wandered off to find a new home (or, she added, maybe she had just died and that was why I hadn't seen her).

All this time Hayden, Jr. seemed like he really wanted to talk to me. I was a little annoyed because I was already stressed about the library and the cat, and I couldn't figure out why he was so interested in me. Was he really desperate for a friend, or did he have a Thing for Older Women, or what? (Despite the living-in-the-dorm thing, I was my actual age in this dream.) He finally engaged me in conversation and asked if I had noticed him as he walked past the Western Town. I said, "yes, you were wearing cowboy boots", to which he answered triumphantly, "Yes! With three-inch heels!" Bizarre.

Fragments

So last night I had all sorts of crazy dreams, which are coming back to me in bits and pieces. Here are a few of them...

-My sister was making Rice Krispie treats (as we actually did in Hawaii). She had put melted butter and some melted marshmallows in a 9x13 pan, with about half a cup of Rice Krispies. She kept saying, "I don't want them to be soupy! I don't like it when they're soupy!" I asked her if she had put in six cups of Rice Krispies, and she said that she hadn't. I tried to add Rice Krispies to the pan and stir everything together, and it actually went better than it would in real life; the Rice Krispies seemed to sort of inflate and look like bars.

-My sister and I were walking downtown, and stopped at a jewelery store to look at the shiny things. Then she brought over a little ukulele, and I discovered I was able to tune it by ear. Then I played "Pearly Shells." She said the ukulele was $30, which seemed like a really good price, but I didn't want to buy a ukulele.

-We were still walking in the city, and it was dark out, apparently just before dawn. I realized that when we had started walking, everything had been light because the artificial lights were on. However, that meant that we'd been up, and walking in the city, since the middle of the night. I asked her why we'd gotten up so early, but I don't think I got an answer.

-I was tidying the kitchen of the last house I lived in with my parents, in Auburn. My mom had placed towels across the stove top, and there were boxes of fruit on the floor, which I understood to mean that she was going to be doing some canning. Then, somehow, a cat fell down the garbage disposal in the sink. The disposal wasn't on or anything, but it was still alarming. Only the cat's little gray head was poking out! I tried to help it out, but I had to kind of grab it by the head and neck. As I was pulling it out, it slipped and fell back in a little bit, but then it was able to get out.

Bits and Pieces

mostly i have only been remembering bits and pieces of my dreams. like my cat standing on his hind legs and peeing on the room across the wall. i thought to myself that it was "target practice."

a few nights later was another dream where i saw a guy who had his shirt off and covering his entire chest was a tattoo of a big ol' target, like the Target logo. the weird thing is - it was so large, it went beyond his chest and part of the tattoo was on his arms.

today i took a nap and dreamed i was cleaning out the fridge. there was a LOT of food to be thrown out, including a large ham that had never been opened, part of a turkey still in it's original wrapper and cheese. instead of cleaning up the messy mess left behind, i chose to go shopping for more food.

more violence and bangles

I had another violent and disturbing dream last night, although this was just a snippet. I was somewhere with my husband, some store or something that had a cat hanging around. It was a huge (three feet long) light-colored fluffy cat, but the first I saw of it was just after it had apparently scratched my husband. He got really mad because it had scratched him and pinned it against the wall while kicking its throat. It was horrible--I think it was even in slow motion. Fortunately right after that my dream switched to something completely harmless; I was staring at my left arm and wondering why I had four identical very large robin's-egg-blue plastic bangles. They even had little dark flecks like birds' eggs.