Day Eff-ay

I had a very vivid dream the other night that, on a whim, I decided that we should go on a trip to Mexico city with my mom and grandma (undoubtedly influenced by their impending visit). Accordingly, mom, grandma, myself, and BNB headed off to Mexico City (in the dream I was thinking of it as Distrito Federal (D-F, "day eff-ay").

Upon our arrival, we were ferried to our hotel in a taxi. As we stood around admiring the exterior, which was very lush and tropical with an impressive waterfall, my mom's cell phone rang. It was my grandma, who had apparently mistakenly got back into a taxi and had ended up back at the airport.

I insisted on going to fetch her, pointing out that neither BNB nor my mom had the remotest grasp of Spanish, whereas I could at least stumble along enough to be understood. I snagged a taxi and as we drove away, I decided that the way to get the driver to hurry up would be to tell him the long, involved story of our decision to vacation in Mexico D.F., and how my grandma managed to get lost.

In the dream, I was attempting to do all of this in Spanish, but I noticed that my brain was working very slowly and I was having trouble with words and verbs that I know quite well.

With Grandma rescued, we returned to the hotel. I know there was more after this, included a trip to a rural area and a sojourn in the home of a tall, thin, very intense woman. But those details are hazy.

creepy and out of character

I haven't been remembering a lot of my dreams lately, but I had a very unsettling one the other night. I was sitting around with my mom and grandma, and my mother had some old photos out. She started getting very agitated and talking about how my grandmother had tried to drown her when she was little. She had some photos of herself as a toddler and some other kids, playing in an irrigation canal*. At first glance they looked like cute old pictures of little kids having fun, but then she pointed to one that showed her lying face down in the water.

I had thought that she was just being ravingly paranoid, but the photo was pretty creepy. Even creepier was my grandma's reaction. She just sat there looking cold and scheming while my mom freaked out. [At this point I should interject that in real life my grandma is the nicest person in the world. She is almost 90, though, and in real life she has quite a bit of memory loss--but still an extremely nice, pleasant person. I've a few of these very disturbing dreams, though, where her real-life memory loss morphs into something weird and scary and she becomes a rather creepy figure. Which of course is disturbing in itself during the dream; and the fact that I'm even dreaming it is disturbing and a bit guilt-inducing.]


*I think she's mentioned playing in irrigation canals in her real-life childhood, but definitely no mention of near-drowning incidents.

High School Flashback

I dreamed last night that I was at work on a normal day. As I was walking through the building, I noticed a girl that I'd gone to high school with (odd enough, since my entire workplace is ID-access only...no strangers CAN wander around). I recognized her at once because she looked exactly the same, but I pretended I didn't see her. Later that day, she cornered me and started quizzing me: "You're so familiar...don't I know you?" I said something non-committal and she recognized me. I had to pretend that I finally recognized her too.

Suddenly, I was in the position of dragging her all around, showing her the place, as she talked non-stop about high school and all the people we used to know. I asked her where she lived and she said, as though I should have known, "Dallas!"

At some point, the dream shifted to a performance in a big concert hall. It was a Christmas concert (undoubtedly influenced by the Christmas carols !!! playing in the car rental place yesterday). The hip-hop artist Jay Z performed Oh Holy Night. Everyone, including myself, was skeptical about his ability to actually sing, but he did quite a nice job. His performance combined this huge orchestra and choir with some really interesting electronically-modified sound effects, which came off quite nicely. I was very impressed. At the point in the song where it goes really high--oh niiiiiight di-VIIIIINNNEEEE--the orchestra and his pre-recorded soundsd created this whip-like effect that seemed to lash all around the room.

I walked up the long, sloping aisle to use the restroom, and came across my mom and grandma sitting on a park bench outside. At first I was going to avoid them, but I had to walk right past them. They were looking at a tree that was shedding thousands of tiny, white blossoms and petals, so that it looked like snow. I decided to joke around, and I started tossing the petals around and striking poses like a supermodel.

Physics

A dad, his daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend were preparing breakfast. Grandma wandered in to say hello. Boyfriend asked if she was going to stick around. She couldn't. He wanted to impress her so he started talking about how he was getting his PhD in Physics. He didn't want to confuse her though, so in explaining his thesis he watered it down a lot, into laymen's speak. Grandma left.

Then the dad, daughter, and boyfriend went into the other room to eat breakfast. Boyfriend, still trying to suck up, said how wonderful the grandma was. The dad started rattling off everything the grandma had done in her life, ending with "she won the nobel prize in physics."

The boyfriend's face crumpled in embarrassment, and then there was canned laughter.

Canned Laughter. I dreamt a really terrible sitcom.

Also, the family was African American. It's the first time I can remember that I noticed the skin color of my dream characters.

Wet

I was driving in downtown Portland--I think I was trying to get to my grandma's old house--and I was lost. I had just gotten off the freeway, but traffic was crawling. When I finally reached the front of the line, I realized that it was a pedestrian area and cars weren't allowed through. There was also some sort of demonstration or celebration; one of the people allowed me to go around, which involved squeezing the car (my parents' blue Toyota) through an area that was too narrow. But I realized I could just float it up and over. Then I was pulling the car through waist deep water (I haven't had one in several years, but pulling/driving cars through water used to be a recurring theme in my dreams). I realized I didn't want to "flood" the engine (yeah), so I lifted it higher.

But then the car was my laptop, which was worrisome, as it had then been dragged through the water. Still, it turned on, although the graphics seemed a bit... watery. I thought I'd go online and figure out how to get to my destination. I was also going to change my clothes. I don't remember what happened next, but at some point the dream shifted and I was in one of those group-training retreat weekend deals. To get to the bathroom, one had to walk through multiple rooms furnished with comfortable chairs and one bedroom. When I got there, I realized I was wearing light blue denim overalls over a really large graphic T-shirt, which later turned into a red and white striped bustier of sorts. Part of the bathroom also included a sort of maintenance shed, where tools were spread out on a brick counter with a view out the large window.

For some reason, I'd only had two minutes for my bathroom trip, but realized, predictably, that I was running later and later, due to the long trip there and then fussing with my costume. On the way out, there was a woman unpacking on the bed in the bedroom, and I apologized for trespassing, but she assured me it was the only way to and from the restroom.

alternate reality

i had one of those dreams where you suddenly realize/remember that your life is completely different than what you've thought...

last night it was me suddenly "remembering" that my little brother was not my brother but, in fact, my son. that i had given birth to him when i was 13 years old and my parents raised him as my brother. weird, yes? and so as i "remembered" this fact, everything came rushing back like memories of how shocked i was to find out that i was pregnant at 13 - because i was quite sure i had not been involved in any baby making activities. and then i felt disappointment in myself because i never wanted to upset my parents and have a child at such a young age and i then thought about how what everyone knew about me (including what i thought about myself) was actually a lie.

so strange.

the dream then morphed into me sitting at the kitchen table with my mom and grandmother and they were reminiscing about when my mom realized she was pregnant with me (my mom really did have me as a teenager) and then my mom got angry with my grandmother because my grandmother was telling stories about how "wild" my mom was and my mom didn't want me to hear those stories. and so my mom retaliated by telling me that my grandmother was on drugs. and then it was my grandmother's turn to get mad.

and the dream ended with me laughing at them and saying "i feel like such a saint compared to you two".

and i literally woke up laughing out loud.