squalid group living

I guess this dream was prompted by our recent housekeeping woes (as in, lack of) and our attempts to find a leather couch that the dogs won't dirty up so much. We (my husband and I) were sharing a house with some other people, a couple of different parties consisting of two or three people. All of them were Asian (I think one party was Indian and the other, with more members, was Korean). All were either students or had "knowledge economy" type jobs*.

Anyway, my husband and I had the living room as our area, and we had never properly moved in so everything was a huge mess (you know what happens when you've run out of steam in the end stages of a move and haven't found a proper place for everything). To make things worse, we had our two dogs with us--I think they were in an indoor-outdoor living situation, and the doberman had been inside.

[At some point in the middle of this dream, the dwelling curiously transitioned into a huge construction-parts warehouse; even while dreaming I was aware that this was my subconscious's way of voicing its displeasure/overwhelm at our real-life messy house.]

Back in the actual house (not warehouse), I was trying to tidy up while my husband, who had a cold, was lying on the couch watching TV. I wasn't really upset by his lack of help because he was sick**, but I was completely overwhelmed and questioning the utility of my endeavor. I had just discovered that the dog had thrown up in several places after chewing on a rawhide (so it was that whitish, milky post-rawhide throw-up that will be familiar to dog owners).

I was trying to find something to clean up the mess (and not finding a rag, of course). In the adjacent kitchen, a couple of the Koreans were eating their breakfast, like perfect little robots: get out the food, dish it into one dish, eat it all quickly in a focused manner, quickly rinse single dish and single glass. This only increased my feelings of inferiority, since I have never been able to eat so neatly and with such little production of dirty dishes.

Breakfast tidily put away, one of the Koreans grabbed his backpack (without fumbling, of course) and started to very quickly navigate the piles of junk on his way out the front door. I panicked and tried to warn him about the dog-vomit piles, but couldn't get it out fast enough. He landed in the biggest one with his clean be-socked foot***. He was too polite to register more than the briefest expression of surprise and discomfit before he whooshed out the door, sweeping up his shoes in one smooth motion.

I never did find a rag to clean up the vomit, I just sunk into self-recrimination and amazement that the tidy Asians hadn't already kicked us out, then woke up.


*Yeah, my subconscious hews closely to racial stereotypes.
**This does at least show a departure from the trope where I start yelling at assorted family members because I'm doing all the housework.
***Because, being clean, he didn't wear shoes in the house.

saving ewan mcgregor's relationship

I had a dream the other night that I was somewhere in a big group setting (surprise!). There were tables in a cavernous gym-like building, and people were milling around or sitting at the tables, although I don't remember what they were actually doing. I was observing Ewan McGregor (?!) and his girlfriend, who was a fairly nondescript girl with short-ish blond-ish hair, who gave off a faintly desperate vibe like the least-attractive member of a popular clique. Ewan had a very large, loutish friend who kept obnoxiously coming on to his girlfriend. The problem was that Ewan didn't seem to notice, and kept urging his girlfriend to go do whatever it was that the lout was inviting her to do. She was clearly upset about the whole thing.

I could see that bad things were going to happen if he didn't get a clue, but I didn't want to be that meddlesome, so I called his girlfriend over (I also didn't want to talk to him because I knew that would make her think I was coming on to him). I told her that I saw what was going on, and urged her to talk to Ewan about it and let him know how she felt and that she needed him to be more protective of her, because she was feeling insecure and unwanted at his apparent indifference.

The girlfriend completely, willfully didn't get that I was just trying to help, and she started yelling at me that I was a terrible person, I was just trying to ruin her relationship and steal her boyfriend, I didn't know anything about anything, I needed to stay away from her, etc. etc*. It was very embarassing and maddening, but I think I just slunk off instead of trying to justify my intentions.

After that I was on--wait for it!--a group trip. I don't remember who else was there, whether it was mostly people from my distant past or just stock dream characters, but the boy I had a crush on in elementary school was there, adult but otherwise pretty much the same. He was trying to get a coffee maker to work. He thought it was a French press, but it turned out it was a drip machine tricked out to look like a big, complicated French press. Then we were all getting ready to go on a group outing (church, maybe; something similarly institutional) and I was trying to find something to wear [here we go again with the repeated themes]. I was thinking about a dark-grey long-sleeved t-shirt under a mustard-print dress, but I wasn't sure if I had the shoes and accessories to pull it together, I wasn't sure if it was weather-appropriate, and I was stressed about getting ready in time.

At some point in the latter part of the dream I remembered being bawled out by E. McGregor's girlfriend and congratulated myself on having forgotten about it, seeing that as a sign of good mental health.


*An interesting variation on the dreams where people are berating me, since it's usually family members doing it.

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.

kook-kook-a-choo, mrs. robinson!

I'm loath to report this dream because I find it a little embarrassing, but it's kind of funny too.

All I remember is a little snippet in the middle of a lot of other plotlines. I was in a room with a couple of other people that I can't really remember. There was a teenage kid (18-ish or so) sitting on a desk in the corner of the room. He was kind of arty looking and seemed neither particularly smart nor particularly stupid--an overall likeable-but-not-exceptional type. When I walked in he seemed to take a particular interest in me, and at that point I realized that I was wearing a nurse's outfit (I was also younger, prettier, and skinnier than I actually am). The nurse's outfit was neither a realistic ugly set of scrubs nor a Slutty Nurse outfit; it was a nice fitted white dress with white fishnet stockings (I know, I know, but these were not Slutty Nurse fishnet stockings, they were very tasteful) and a classic Nurse Cap. I was apparently in some nurse training program that required participants to wear this uniform.

Anyway (here comes the embarassing part), Teenager was instantly gaga over me. I realized it and tried to deflect his attentions, but he rather went on about how beautiful I was (he said something like "You're so pretty, aren't you?"). I think the other people in the room encouraged me to respond to his advances in a manner appropriate to his age, and I think we ended up leaving to go on a rather Victorian walk or something similarly chaste. Although I find it embarassing to have dreamed it [I don't think I'm actually hungry for the attention of teenage boys], it still left a much more pleasant aftertaste than being berated by someone for all my character flaws.

Teaching

I was supposed to be teaching, and I was running late. (I think I also had long hair and was wearing a skirt--maybe fuschia.) On my way into the classroom, I saw someone important--an administrator type--who then knew I was late. I was a little embarrassed, but it didn't seem to be a big deal.

I wasn't prepared as I started teaching, but my students seemed to really love me--they smiled and nodded enthusiastically at pretty much everything I said. I realized I was kind of a spaz as a teacher, though, but couldn't really convince myself to care much. I wondered briefly whether I could just drop out, since I didn't care.

Peeping Neighbors..

Yesterday night I dreamt that I was looking out my apartment window and I caught a former neighbor looking at me in my window from a white ford focus (her car was red before). She had a intense look oh her face as she looked at me. Feeling shocked she was looking at me, I remember feeling embarrassed all of a sudden. I looked down and I was half naked! I ran away from the window trying to cover myself and then I woke up and reminded myself quickly that this was just a dream.

Talking In Your Sleep

So last night I had a very disturbing dream which I don't want to talk about, but let's just say it had to do with an incest rape. It was really random, and bothersome, and that's enough of that. But when I woke up, the boyfriend was all, "what were you dreaming about?" and I was all, "uh, nothing." because I was suspicious of why he was asking.
"You kept talking about yarn." Is how he followed up.
"Yarn? Like knitting?"
"Yep."
...
"Weird"

So I have no idea where that came from. But I do talk in my sleep very often, so that part isn't surprising.

And as I'm blogging away, he's passed out on my bed, and just muttered to me, "I'm glad it's on your bed. See you later." and earlier, right after I sneezed he said, "It wasn't me!"