OpalCat's Dream Journal

Wedding Replay on TV

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:35:12 GMT

I had this really odd dream that we were re-doing our wedding. We were on some kind of show that was all about weddings, and it was filmed in this huge auditorium. You could bring your own guests, but there was also this vast "studio audience" consisting of other peoples' guests and just folks who wanted to watch. The weddings were done back to back, one after the other. There were big monitors around so that the audience could see closeups of what was happening on stage.

I was in the back dressing area trying to get ready, but I couldn't find my bridesmaids, except for one. I kept forgetting parts of what I was supposed to be wearing, and at one point I grabbed a black bodice and was confused why it didn't fit, when I realized "my dress isn't black! This is from someone else's wedding!" There were many other brides and their bridesmaids all getting ready at the same time. We had a monitor in the dressing area (it was kind of like a locker room, but without the lockers) so we could see what was happening on the stage.

The wedding before ours had trapeze set up but I couldn't tell if it was the bride and groom doing the trapeze act or if it was someone else.

We kept having to sew things back together on my dress because things kept tearing, and we couldn't remember how the skirt fit on [my actual wedding dress had no detachable skirt, so who knows where this came from]. I remembered that I hadn't brought the rubber ducky that I'd had under my skirt at the real wedding, but couldn't remember if it mattered, because I didn't remember if the show had you redo the whole garter/bouquet part or not.

Then I looked at the monitor and the host guy, who has a microphone and provides some narration, background, introductions, etc. during the show, was standing next to the bag that had all of my clothes in it. I had several days' worth of dirty clothes, because I guess we'd been traveling? Anyway he was going through my clothes and picking out my dirty underwear and showing them to the camera while making jokes at my expense. Fortunately I woke up soon after that.

Terrible dream

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:32:15 GMT

I had an awful dream that went on it felt like all night. I was telling people goodbye, that I was going away to die (to kill myself) and everyone was just sort of "ok, whatever" and nobody seemed to care. Not Dan, not my mom... not anybody. I said goodbye to the cats but obviously couldn't explain it to them. I sat down with Dominic and asked him if he could be ok with it--with me going away to die, and he was obviously upset but he was trying to be brave and he obviously thought I really wanted him to be brave and accept it, so he nodded...

As I was leaving I tried one more time to talk to Dan but he didn't really want to talk, he was interested in something else he was doing. Rob was there, too, but had dyed his hair blonde and was strangely unable or unwilling to talk about anything substantial, all he would talk about was shallow gossipy things.

I left, not really wanting to die but feeling like since nobody cared, and since I'd told them all that I would, that I might as well just do it. Fortunately I woke up.

I think this is related to my finding out a few days ago that a friend of mine killed himself last month.

Tornadoes and Trains

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:49:44 GMT

While on the cruise ship on our honeymoon, I had a bad dream. It is kind of funny because it contained not one but TWO of my weird things-I-always-dream-about-but-don't-know-why elements: trains and tornadoes.

Dan and I were on a train traveling across some sort of odd countryside... it was sort of deserty, but there were rocky outcroppings (not quite mountains) here and there. I looked out the window and saw that head in the near-distance were storm clouds, and that dipping down out of the clouds, snaking around through the air, were probably at least a dozen funnel clouds. I could see the debris where they touched the ground and I remember feeling oddly detached as I considered that we were heading directly toward them.

I told Dan that I would be right back, and walked to the back of the train. Somehow I was thinking I would find some way to get off the train back there, I think. Failing to find anything helpful, I came forward again, but my way was blocked. Everyone was running around shouting all of a sudden. I found myself outside the train looking at it... the front half of the train had crashed into something and many of the cars had derailed and overturned... some were on fire. We had been about halfway along the length of the train and I started to panic because I couldn't tell if the car I'd left Dan in was one of the destroyed ones or one of the ones still on the track.

I started getting really scared as people started carrying bodies out of the train... fortunately I woke up shortly after that.

Really strange dream

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:06:28 GMT

So I had this dream last night where at first we were watching an episode of "My Name Is Earl" where they go to a strip club. Earl's brother Randy is getting kind of grossed out by the act on stage, and I was surprised to see what they were showing on TV... the dancer was wearing a thong, and proceeded to sit on a bicycle seat, pointy side facing back. She slid off the seat, kind of giving herself a cameltoe with the seat... Randy is chattering in the background saying things like "do they think things like that look good?" and I find myself agreeing with him. When she's slid all the way off the seat, she starts licking it, which grosses me out, and you can hear Randy in the background getting grossed out as well.

Then I'm sitting in a room in a circle of people, and I guess that's who I was watching the show with. One of the guys says that a stripper's job is "to be skanky" which I was going to call him out on but didn't get a chance.

Then somehow I'm in a store of some kind, possibly a very understocked shoe store. I'm working there but not really. It's somehow a fake job, me and one other person. Then some woman comes in and she's reenacting the stripper's performance and we realize it's the same woman. She's just sort of miming it on a chair, though, and when she comes back up we realize that she's actually an undercover federal agent. She is assigned to work with us at the store and she fills us in very sparsely on the details of what we're supposed to do.

She says "I'll need you to wear these boots and sweaters" and hands us some stuff. It's more like a big jacket than a sweater, and I half-jokingly ask "why, are they bulletproof?" but I never get an answer. I start to put on the jacket and that's when I realize that instead of pants, I'm wearing a lime green one-piece ski suit (the kind that's pants and jacket all in one) with the jacket part unzipped and hanging down behind me. (That's what you do when you're in the lodge for a food break or something and you're too hot.) I realize I don't have any other pants and that I'm going to look very silly with this other jacket on in addition to this.

I try to remember why I was wearing it. I remembered having worn it several weeks ago but not since. Then I asked "when are we filming this? Because I remember wearing this but it was weeks ago! Are we filming this part back on the first day?" as if I was somehow in a movie or something where they film things out of sequence as a rule. Why I would be remembering the time as it was in the script and not as it was in real time...well...it was a dream after all.

Amiens in the snow

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:18:55 GMT

I had a dream last night that I was at Amiens Cathedral (France) at night. At first it was like I was using this nifty 360° viewer to pan around and zoom in on things, but then I was actually walking around. (Funny how in dreams transitions like that don't seem strange at all...) It was night time and I was alone, but for some reason I seemed to be narrating what I was seeing out loud, like I was showing it to someone. Anyway, I was on some upper level, not down at floor level, and I started to hear footsteps. They were below me and off to the left, behind a bunch of columns. I called out the standard "who's there?" stuff and it quickly became me being very scared and trying to get away from whatever mystery person was clearly following me yet not wanting to be seen. There was a very distinct sense of danger.

Somehow I got outside, but I was still way up high. Not sure if I was on the roof, or what. There was an enourmous amount of snow on the ground--like ten feet at least, if not more. It was night, but there was a lot of light from street lamps and stuff, and there were a decent number of people within sight, though they were a little ways off. I wanted to go to them for safety. Then I looked down closer and there was a man swimming along the surface of the snow. He saw me and told me to jump down, that it was easy to swim in the snow. So I jumped down and landed in the snow, and started to swim across it. It was a really neat sensation, and I don't remember feeling particularly cold. It was almost as much fun as a flying dream, but not quite.

I also had a dream that I was walking to class with my friend Justin. This dream was completely based on an experience the other day when he and I were actually walking to class, and I noted that this one really big building had no entrance from the street side, and wondered why. You have to walk up the street and go around to get into the building, and when it's 15° outside, you really wish the door was closer. Anyway, in the dream, we were walking along and came to a break in that street-fronting wall, so we turned in. There were steps or a ramp and we went up, expecting to find doors, but it just led to a little courtyard area (which seemed to serve no purpose as it had no features whatsoever, like tables or chairs or anything, and which had very high walls so there was no view at all). We turned around and went back down and went around the next corner, but found ourselves in the same courtyard. The rest of that dream involved crossing a lot of intersections and having to wait for traffic lights to change. Excitement-wise, the cathedral dream was way better. I'd give this one about a .1 on a scale of 1-10.

Magnetic math

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:59:22 GMT

I had a lot of convoluted dreams last night, and I only remember a few bits. I know that I was in a different town at one point, and there was a lot of shopping going on, but mostly it was little old ladies selling crocheted things, and me trying to return stuff to shops through the mail. And there was something about where to eat and me feeling glad that I actually knew the area well enough to recommend a restaurant. And there was some art stuff as well--I had a few actually rather neat ideas that I may work on in the future.

But the really weird part was the surreal segment of the dream where we were playing some sort of game. I guess my brain forgot about things like "gravity" because in this game these geometric objects would come floating at you and they had numbers on the sides, and you had a strong magnet in your hand that you held with a little handle. You had to add up two sides and then hold out the magnet on the side that represented the sum. It was really confusing because some of the time I think you had to figure it out and then other times I think the magnet was how it showed you the right answer, and then when my brain started questioning "hey, how are these metal objects just drifting around in the air?" all of the rules went away entirely and it became total jumbed nonsense. It was rather pleasant, though.

vampires, mouse surgery, hippos

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:42:29 GMT

I don't actually remember the part about the vampires except that they were being launched very high into the air.

I remember driving somewhere to drop something off but I couldn't find parking, so I pulled up onto the sidewalk, hoping I would not get a ticket just running in really quick. Then I realized we were right before a bridge over a stream. The stream had a series of short waterfalls. Someone said "look! A hippo!" and I looked... and there were several hippos in the stream. Then we saw a huge eel, probably at least 10 feet long. There were other unexpected creatures, too, which led me to speculate it was a park of some sort.

Sure enough, there was some sort of ride that you could get in that would carry you down the stream. My ex husband was with me and we got in and rode down to the end. Then it turned around, sort of like a chair lift does, but the area it turned around in was extremely small--we barely fit inside. They apologized and said it was made for children and that nobody had thought to make it big enough for adults.

When we got to the top we were meeting some people in a special area. We were allowed through a locked gate, but not allowed up a certain stairway. We had to go out onto a special patio, where we sat and chatted with a lot of friends. (Most of these were "dream friends" and not real people.) Several of them were podiatry students who went to school with Dan. They were talkinga bout what they were going to do after they graduated. I was confused because several of them said things like "I want to be an anesthesiologist" which would require them to start over again at a whole new school. They didn't seem to understand why I thought it was strange.

There was a mouse who had had surgery. Don't know why, but it was recovering very well. They let it loose on the ground, and I was worried that my cat would accidentally hurt it. My cat who suddenly I had with me, in my lap.

Then I realized that I had an old 11" x 14" black and white photo from 20 years ago that showed a lot of us dressed up for "goth prom" back in high school. In the photo, I recongnized several of the people who were there with us, but realized I hadn't known them at the time the photo was taken, and we were talking about how funny it was that we were all in the same place at the same time back then. Several of the girls in the photo were wearing corsets that showed their breasts, and had bandaids over their nipples. I didn't want anybody to see the photo because I was embarrassed about what I had been wearing, which was essentially a Dorothy costume from the Wizard of Oz, except it was red. How I knew it was red in a black and white photo, I can't explain. Anyway, it wasn't gothic at all, or sexy, or anything, and I stood out so much in the photo that I tried to not let anyone else see it.

School Anxiety Dream

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:31:52 GMT

I am taking 5 classes this semester, one of which is an online class. I had a dream the other day that I suddenly realized I was taking an additional class (online) that I'd totally forgotten about and hadn't paid attention to essentially since the start of the semester. I started panicking wondering if I even had the text book and trying to figure out if there was any way to get the teacher to let me make up the assignments and tests and things.

Very glad when I woke up from that one :X

Kitten dreams

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:19:46 GMT

Very weird dreams last night. There was a lot more to it but the parts I remember...

I was petting our kitten Ronon, who is tiny and orange and fluffy, when I noticed some puffs of fur in the air. They weren't tangled little tufts of pulled out hair, though. They looked more like spores or something. They were little spheres, about a centimeter across, with all of the fur radiating straight out from the center. They were the same color as Ronon.

I caught one on my hand and looked at it more closely. As I looked it got denser, and in a few seconds I could make out a little kitten face on it. It kept forming until I had a tiny half-inch long kitten in my hand. This kitten grew within a couple of hours to the same size as Ronon. I caught two more of the fuzzy spores and two more kittens developed.

Then there was a part in the dream where I was looking for a shirt to wear and I went out into the front yard for some reason, and I wasn't wearing anything but pants. So I hurried back indoors with my arms crossed over my chest because a bunch of my neighbors were out. After I got a shirt on, I went across the street to say hi to the elderly widow who lives there. She had been sick last time I saw her and so I wanted to see how she was doing.

We socialized briefly, then I told her about the kitten thing. She wanted to see, so I invited her over. We went out onto the screened porch and I brought Ronon out and we started petting him. I had come up with a hypothesis about what was happening. The kittens waited until they were in a safe environment, and then if they were being fed and pet and loved, they would release these spores to create new kittens in the safe environment. They wouldn't release these spores unless they were in a good home. And the spores wouldn't develop unless someone caught them and they felt safe. Otherwise they just stayed fur puffs and never became anything.

So anyway, eventually we saw one of the spores and I caught it. We watched it together but it turned into a tiny peacock instead of a kitten. Somehow this didn't confuse me. I said it would turn into a kitten later. However, it ran away and I lost track of it, which worried me. Then I started noticing a lot of spiders and bugs on the porch. Our cat Cory started trying to play with a huge spider that looked a lot like a tarantula. It was about the size of my hand.

I hurriedly got the woman inside and got the cats inside and closed the door to the porch.

The next part of my dream was completely unrelated. I was at home alone and I had to pee really bad. For some reason I started to pee in one of the folding/spring-open nylon laundry baskets. I realized this was wrong right away and stopped, then went in and finished in the bathroom... then I had to clean up the basket and the carpet underneath it before anybody got home. I was very embarrassed.

Elephants, stranger danger, newfangled cell phones, too much food

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:29:26 GMT

The first thing I remember from my dreams is Dominic and I watching our back yard out the window in the study. A baby elephant came out of the bushes over on the right and walk/jogged across the yard and disappeared off to the left. It was adorable. We knew that it wouldn't be alone so we sat quietly and waited. A few minutes later a bull elephant came out of the bushes on the right. He noticed us and, apparently fearful for the baby, he charged us, ears flapping. I grabbed Dominic's arm and we ran back through the house, hoping the elephant wouldn't come crashing through the wall.

Another dream seemed to be while out traveling. I believe I was traveling with a group, and Dominic was with me. We were staying at a hotel. There was something across the street that we were doing and coming back from, and we came into the lobby of the hotel through a set of glass doors. I had just been talking about safety and how I was glad the hotel required a key to get into because I didn't feel the area was safe. I had a memory (completely false, might I add--the real person in the memory never did anything bad to me or seemed dangerous in real life) of something happening back in high school that involved a fellow drama student named Jordan being let into some place he shouldn't and it being scary or dangerous. Someone was approaching and just out of habit, Dominic held the door for him. I was horrified--this was exactly the kind of thing that allowed in dangerous people who would otherwise not be able to get into the hotel.

Then I looked up and realized that it was Jordan! He's a very distinctive looking guy, being part albino (or so he always told us. He was white as a sheet with white-blonde hair and extremely light colored blue eyes--not pink). What are the chances of randomly meeting someone from high school who you had just been thinking about, in a similar situation, in a totally different state, 20 years later? Just about zero, but this was a dream. Anyway, everybody was getting into the elevator. I had pulled Dominic back and scolded him for letting someone in, and Jordan had gotten on the elevator ahead of us. I decided not to get on the elevator.

Then there was a bunch of stuff with my cell phone and texting people. I was texting with current friends and with people I knew in high school (though how I knew their numbers is a mystery) and somehow the phone technology was way better. One of the people I messaged said that he was DJing and would be available in just a minute. I looked at the phone and there was a little video of him working in the dj booth somewhere. Then he finished changing songs or whatever and turned back to the phone. It was a live video feed somehow. I don't remember what we chatted about other than that somehow it came out that I no longer had any interest in finding out what was going on with people I used to know in high school (which isn't really true, either).

The last thing I remember from the dream involved ordering food. I had ordered some broccoli quiche and somehow it was supposed to spell somethinig out? I don't remember how or why that was possible. But anyway when I got there to pick it up they were still assembling the order and rather than slices of quiche, or even whole quiches, they had lined up about 6 or 7 huge casserole things. They were in those disposable aluminum lasagna pans and were really deep. They were about to go get some more when I stopped them and said that actually, that would be enough right there. Then it came out that they had beef in them, which hadn't been mentioned in the description. I said that I was a vegetarian and would not be able to eat any of it.

They were actually fairly gracious about it, but then it looked like they were going to throw them away. I started trying to talk them into giving them to homeless people (there were plenty around) but woke up before I found out if they were going to do it.

Two very different dreams

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:17:21 GMT

My first dream was very chaotic. I don't remember what the main point of it was, but it involved a ton of people coming through the place where I lived, and some sort of danger situation. I think we were hiding out and there was a war going on or something, and our house (not our real house--this was in a place more like NYC) was sort of a base of operations for some sort of resistance. I dont' remember much about it. I know that at one point I met Jon Stewart and we ended up kissing. Yeah, that was random. I even asked him why at the time, and he said "I just think it's something we should do," as if we'd been friends with some sort of sexual tension built up for many years and were trying to diffuse it once and for all. Dunno.

The other dream, which was somehow connected to the first, but separate enough that I'll call it its own dream, involved me and a four year old girl and a creepy man. He was holding us hostage on the roof of a long building, and was going to rape the little girl (later, in some other location). This wasn't as horrific as it sounds, though, because apparently it was a movie or something. I say this because I remember sometimes, after the terrible, threatening things he would say to her, I would think "wow, not all actors would be willing to take a role like this, I hope it doesn't hurt his career" and having respect for him, rather than being horrified and hating him. We were planning an escape by having the little girl run down the roof behind a row of air conditioners and climb down some trees on the other end. I would make a diversion if necessary. I woke up before we got to try out the plan.

Edited to add: I just remembered part of another dream! I was trying to use a kayak. I've never used one before, but we have two of them up here at the lake house. This was more like waterskiing: you start out totally submerged in the kayak and start paddling. As you gain speed, you pop up to to the surface. I eventually got it to work, but it was really hard because there were all these old ladies in canoes all over the place getting in my way so I couldn't go fast enough.

Not a fun contest

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:10:26 GMT

In this dream I was with Dan at some event. I think it started out as a juggling event but I'm not sure. Anyway there was some sort of contest, and we were in it. It was a timed thing, where you had to go as a team (of two people) to different tables and finish a task, then go to the next table, etc., and the team with the fastest time would win. I was doing something else (like working at the registration table or something) for part of it and Dan was talking to someone. Then it was our turn.

The first table was some written thing. I had the impression from watching other people do it from afar that it was sort of like a mad libs kind of thing. What it appeared to be at the beginning was a sort of story with blanks in it, and the one doing the writing had two spaces after each line to write two alternate words that might fit the space. Then at the end the other person was to choose which one to use, or something. There were no instructions. Anyway it looked a lot harder when we got there. There were multiple pieces of paper and it was not at all clear what we were supposed to do. There was a place to put our names but only one line, so I didn't know how to put both of our names. Also there was a box to check to verify that our name (pre-printed) was correct, but it was wrong.

We had agreed that I would be the one writing and so I started. I wrote in one word that would fit in the sentence and was thinking of a second when I looked down and there was a second word already written in. It had nothing to do with the sentence. I erased it and put in the one I'd thought of. This happened a few more times. Finally I turned to Dan and said that by joking around and randomly writing in words he was making the whole thing take much longer since I had to erase what he'd written to put in a real answer. Then it became unclear if he'd been the one writing or not.

Then it changed. It was no longer a single sheet but rather a booklet, and when I turned the page there was some sort of riddle type thing that you were supposed to use the first letters from some of your previous answers to find the solution to the riddle. This suddenly meant that your previous answers had to be correct in some way. When I started flipping back there were more pages than before and I'd missed a lot of other sections. They were harder and also rather vague as to what you were supposed to do.

Also, they had started to become about some species of lizard and some type of mushroom and various other stuff like that and I got the feeling that you were supposed to have been to a class in order to know these answers. I started wondering how the teams before us had gotten through this step as quickly as they had. I was getting extremely frustrated. Then somehow there was a live-action thing with caveman-costumed actors miming out something, in a set that looked like the inside of a cave. This was supposed to be a hint about one of the questions.

Then they called a time out because there was something happening (some announcements or something?) and they said they'd resume our turn in a moment. During this time Dan wandered off and started talking to somebody and ignoring me. I got mad about that because I felt we needed to talk about how to get through this test thing.

I woke up and realized that I was still trying to solve he puzzles that my dream-brain had made up about topics I didn't know anything about and that therefore, logically, couldn't possibly have real solutions, so I got up and stopped thinking about it.

Back in a strange school

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:25:13 GMT

My dream last night was a bit scattered. The new school semester had started and I had gone to school, but it wasn't where my school really is. Also, I'd flown there. It was one of those flying dreams I have where gaining height is the hard part, but then gliding distance is relatively easy. Once I got to the classroom, I realized that I didn't have my schedule with me and had no idea what I needed withe me or where I should be. I decided to run back home quickly.

In the meantime there was something about working in an office at the school and folding things and packaging them, but I can't remember what.

Anyway I left to go home but could not remember where I lived. I overshot my turn by quite a ways and had to turn around and go back, which sucked because it was uphill and required constant climbing in altitude. At one point I ended up in a bad neighborhood but I recognized an Indian restaurant. Funnily enough, I recognized this from a dream I had a few months ago, not from real life.

Anyway, there was a bit where I thought I might get mugged, and a bit where I really didn't know which way to go, but then I felt myself lifted up. It was like I was being carried high above the rooftops. "Jenn?" I asked. Because she was the only invisible giant I knew. "Yes. Hi," I heard her say.

So that was weird.

Then there was the part where I was flying along a street waving around a little sign and putting up stickers to advertise the children's book I'd apparently written. There were more strange parts but they've faded. I do remember having to use karate at some point.

Night dream, nap dream

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:15:13 GMT

I had a dream in the night that involved a lot of people in some sort of hotel/convention center setting (no doubt because of my attendance at the IJA juggling festival last week). At one point near the end I learned that a guy I'd been hanging out and made friends with had implanted something in my head that would explode in 30 minutes, killing me. (I think this part is because of the Dateline show I saw the other night where some guy injected a girl with something to kill her.) The rest of the dream was me trying to figure out a way to get the thing out of my head or, failing that, make it not explode. I wish I could remember more of the dream because it was quite exciting. It wasn't even scary--it was more like watching a suspense movie.

After breakfast I lay down to read and ended up falling asleep. I do that a lot when I'm here in New Hampshire at the lake. Anyway the only real part I remember about this dream was my cousins and other family members showing up (no doubt because my dad, etc., drove up to the juggling festival last week to see me) here at the cottage. I went out to see them and for some reason I decided it would be funny if I did it in slow motion. So I "ran" out in slow-mo and was waving hello, but my cousins walked right past me and into the house. In slow-mo I made a confused face, which at least my aunt laughed at.

Then for some reason I was doing pull-ups on something in the ceiling at what I think must have been the airport. Some guys were very impressed at how strong my arms were. This is something that happens a lot in my dreams--I end up being very strong or very skilled at something (such as ice skating) that in real life is just exactly not the case.

A competition

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:37:19 GMT

I was somewhere that had a lot of different... bars? I can't properly recall most of the details at this point. But we were trying to figure out which one to go to. There was a whole group of us, and by us I mean dream people--I don't think any of them were real people I know. There was some dancing involved, but I don't remember what else. Perhaps gambling?

Anyway, then there was some sort of competition, sort of like a talent show. (This couldn't possibly be because I watched America's Got Talent right before I went to bed, could it? Heh.) I don't remember what I did for the first round, but I didn't place. While the others were doing the second round I was trying to think of something new for the third round. I started talking to someone and found out that only people who placed in the first round made it to the second, and only people who placed in the second round made it to the third. I said this was different from previous years where all three rounds were done by everyone, with different judges, and then the scores were tallied up. We decided that they were so disorganized that they probably wouldn't notice who had or hadn't been where and that I should just do something anyway. (The whole thing was very informal and unofficial anyway.)

I had decided to do a big picture and went to the little shop they had there. At this point it was more like a school or something with lots of rooms and a little store. I had bought something at the store earlier and we'd been concerned they'd try to charge us again if they saw it, but we had the receipt in the car or something. Anyway, I went in looking for butcher paper and a huge marker. They didn't have the markers but they had these big things about the size of a spray paint can that were paint with a sponge tip. I got one of those. I was irritated when I got back to the counter because they'd folded up the butcher paper and now it woul dhave creases in it.

That's about when I woke up.

Well that was an odd one

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:07:39 GMT

Today we are supposed to meet up with our friends Dusty and Sara and go to the lake with the dogs. So my dream involved Dan and I along with Dusty and Sara, but we were going to a NovaLash training seminar instead, because Sara had decided to get into doing that (I'm already certified). It was some further thing beyond what I had done. Anyway we got to the place and the lady asked the group if everyone had their insurance papers. Neither Sara nor I did (we didn't know what they meant) and so we were told to go to this different building first. We walked over to the bottom level of the parking garage and Dan said he'd meet us back at the other place.

So the three of us continued on (Dusty, Sara, and I) and began to make our way through the parking garage. We had to go up several levels and it was very hard because not only were there cars in the way, but there was all kinds of other stuff. We were climbing over piles of chairs and construction debris and all sorts of stuff. We were joking around about how hard it was to find, and then we all sort of at the same time said "gosh I hope we can find our way back!"

We finally got where we were going and somehow Sara did have some type of paperwork and it checked out. The lady said I was supposed to at some future date give Sara $5 for some reason and then I'd be fine, too. I didn't totally understand but we started back anyway. We were in the street and walking back to where we needed to be. I accidentally cut someone off while walking, because I was trying to keep with Dusty and Sara and some other people had sort of walked in between us. I'd thought I had room to dart over but I bumped some guy. I made a joke about how I was trying to catch my friends and sorry I bumped him, and then somehow it turned into a playful chase. I was running after Dusty and Sara, and the other guy was running behind just to watch and sort of cheer. Finally I caught them and grabbed their arms and we were laughing.

Then Dan was there and he had an embarrassed look on his face and apologized. Dusty seemed to already know what was going on, but when Dan turned his head I saw that his eye was swollen and there was a cut in his eyebrow. I asked what happened and he looked sheepish like he didn't want to tell me. He was just about to explain when I woke up.

Strange dreams about water and elephants

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:23:52 GMT

I don't remember a lot of the details, but at first my dream seemed to be some sort of large party/event at a place with a large pool. I was in the pool along with a few other people, but most people were out of the pool and socializing. Suddenly, a mist started to come out of the air and people started to fall over. It was some kind of poison! I dove under the water and held my breath. When I came up I was the only person still moving. Not sure if the others were dead or merely unconscious.

At that point it became a chase dream. It was "them" trying to get me, because the poison hadn't. I tried to stay under water as much as possible. There were canals around and stuff, and I was making my way toward some large body of water (really big lake such as one of the Great Lakes kind of thing). I was trying to use various straws and tubing to breathe through and not put my head above water as much as possible.

Then there was something about building an underground tunnel and a little room that I could hide in, with the only entrance being under water. It was very strange.

For some reason then the dream was some sort of talent show. Someone was doing a performance with an elephant and it was really quite good. Then there was a thing with three elephants and some people that was bothering me because I felt it was unkind to the elephants. It involved them standing on each other's backs one on top of another, with the people on the very top. Then the bottom elephant went up on his front legs, then he lifted his trunk as a counter balance... it was very impressive and people were cheering, but I just kept thinking about how that must be very uncomfortable, and what sort of terrible things it took to train them to do that.

Then they went back to the person with just one elephant. That one seemed a much more natural thing... manipulating something and I think walking around obstacles or something--can't remember... but then suddenly the elephant tripped and fell down hard on its face. I was horrified and very worried that she had hurt herself. Everyone else, however, thought it was hilarious and was laughing. I was mad at people for laughing. Then they showed the people trying to get the elephant back up on her feet, but she just kept falling over. I was very worried about her.

Then I woke up.

It was a dark and stormy night...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:11:50 GMT

My dream kept switching around. At first it was a party with a lot of my friends from the art department coming over, but I lived in some big building that was partially like a hotel or a convention center or something and the guests kept getting sidetracked and stopping on other floors instead of making it to my place. Finally people were at our place, though, and I was giving everyone drinks. We had apparently made all the drinks ahead of time, in glasses with ice and everything, and stacked them up in a cupboard.

I went into the gust room to use the bathroom at one point because someone else was in the main bathroom and I came out mad. "Damn it!" I said. "We've lived here a year and I totally forgot that bathroom has a full jaccuzi in it! I've never even used it once!"

The weather outside was getting very bad--heavy winds and rain. I went downstairs to check for leaks, since flooding was being reported in a lot of places. By now there were only a couple of people left at our house (and it was a house again, not part of a larger building.) I was in the basement and found water in the corner on the floor, and the walls felt mushy. A girl came down and was trying to tell me not to get so upset (apparently I was being a little short with people because I was stressed about the weather) but I told her not to worry about me, but when she went upstairs could she please send Dan down so he could see the damage.

A while later he still hadn't come down so I went up. They were sitting around the table eating cupcakes. She hadn't told him there was water damage downstairs or anything. I got mad and yelled.

Cory got out of the house and I lured him back in with kitty treats. Then I realized that I hadn't seen my cat Sidel in a very long time*. She was very old and I was worried. I asked Dan when the last time he had seen her was, and then asked Rob (who was also there) and neither could remember. I thought about it and decided that if I couldn't even remember the last time I saw her, she was probably dead somewhere and asked the guys if they would look for her since I didn't want to be the one to find her.

Then Dan's brother and another guest said that they had to leave because the weather reports on the TV were listing emergency conditions. They said their work required them to come in. This would have made sense if they had jobs like policemen or EMTs or firemen, but Steve works in a technology-related job at the headquarters of a national restaurant chain. I couldn't figure out why they would need him so urgently.

There are other bits and pieces that I remember, but not in enough context to write them down. It was a rather frustrating dream--very stressful.

*In real life Sidel died a few years before Dominic was born.

A huge fire

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:46:40 GMT

In this dream I was down in Cleveland, I think at some school-related function. There were a lot of people and it was very festive. Then something happened but I can't remember what, and we started hearing reports that there was a fire raging in another part of the city. Multiple fires, actually, and spreading. I joined some people with these very weird hoses with very complicated nozzles. We started wetting down everything, to prevent the fire from getting to the building we were in. I found a setting on mine that sprayed water out very far, and I was wetting down a lot of stuff when suddenly the water pressure dropped off and my hose was just a trickle.

The others' hoses were doing the same thing. We immediately thought something was up--that it had intentionally been turned off and there was something sinister going on. We decided to leave. We split up to get back to where our cars were. Mine was in a parking garage in the same building. I got nearly to my car and then remembered my mom was there, and called her cell phone. I told her where I was and she started heading to meet me.

I saw her headed toward the glass doors that led into the garage, but some security guy started to turn her away. He was going to make her take some other entrance because she didn't have a school id or some sort of pass or something. I ran up to the door and held it open and told her to ignore him and come in and yelled at the security guy that she was with me. Just as we got to the car I remembered that my friend's kids were in the childcare area, and that my friend was not there to pick them up. The fire would definitely have gotten to the building by the time my friend could get there, so we ran back in to find the girls.

The are where the kids were was labyrinthine. It was labeled in all sorts of strange ways and the kids were "sorted out" in very nonintuitive groups. We didn't know where to find the two sisters. A man who worked there helped us, and led us down some corridors. We got to an unmarked door and he opened it and gestured for us to go in. I had a bad feeling about it. Looking through the door I saw two toilet stalls. It was a bathroom? He said there was another door on the other side. I then noticed the tiny plaque next to the door that referred to a section number and said something about "naughty girls"... so this was some sort of punishment area? Or a ward for troublesome kids? I didn't feel that these girls probably belonged there, and suddenly realized that he intended to lock us in if we went through the door. I had him go first, and open the door on the other side. Then I called through for the girls without going through the door myself.

Then somehow I realized that my own daughter (huh?? Yeah somehow I acquired a daughter in the course of the dream) was in there and was going to call for her too, but I couldn't remember her name (not surprisingly, since she didn't exist until that moment!)

We finally did get out of there with the kids and made it back to the car. We were leaving, racing back to the house to save the cats before the fire reached there. We kept looking back over the city and seeing the multiple huge columns of smoke billowing out of buildings all across the city.

My mom said something about needing to go pick up Sonia, but my dream managed to sort out and then ignore that part, seeing how Sonia has been dead for over a decade.

I woke up then, but seriously considered trying to go back to sleep to see how the story ended. Except I was hungry and had to go to the bathroom, so I just got up.

Disturbing zebra dream

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:29:35 GMT

I had a long series of disconnected dreams last night. In one, a classmate of mine lived next door and her dog kept getting out. In another I was trying to get comfortable in a hammock but was too cold. Nothing especially interesting, and nothing with any real plot.

One of these little vignettes was very disturbing, though. I don't think I was with these people, I was either observing them directly or on tv or something, but two women were eating zebra meat off the bone. I could tell it was zebra because it still had the stripes on it. I wondered how and why they had zebra meat, and then I saw a sort of flashback of the following scene: They're in Africa, on a plane--it's just the two of them and the plane is having trouble and doesn't have enough power to get up to speed and take off, apparently, and so this zebra is pushing it from behind. It's running as fast as it can. Just as the plane is about to take off, it jumps into the cargo hold. The feeling was definitely that this was their zebra, in a mutually agreeable relationship (i.e. they weren't kidnapping the zebra against its will or something). As the plane began to rise, the angle of the floor of the cargo hold increased and the zebra began to lose its footing and slide backward. I watched in horror as it scrambled for purchase against the metal floor before finally tumbling backward out of the still-open door of the cargo hold. I saw the zebra tumbling through the air toward the ground, already quite far away.

That's all there was but it was horrible and left me feeling quite shaken :(

Tornados and Death

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:20:50 GMT

The first part of my dream I don't remember well at all, but it involved a road trip somehow. We were headed to Africa, I think. I was on the phone with someone and they asked me where we were, and I said "it feels lik we should be in about France by now, but since we've only been on the road for about four hours, it's probably Pennsylvania." Don't know how we were going to drive to Africa, especially via France, but hey, it's a dream.

There was a middle part that was very confusing and involved mixing up cell phones with several people, but I don't remember much of it other than the confusion.

The part I remember best was the tornado. It came and tore our house apart, and our neighbors' house. We were in the basement frantically trying to find a safer place. We could see the neighbors walking around in their yard looking at the wreckage of their house. The tornado was still in the neighborhood, just meandering around. I was afraid it would come back so I said to Dan to grab Dominic and let's get in the car and get out of the area.

While we were trying to get that organized, the tornado came back. It was very small at the bottom, only a few feet across. It was coming right at us and so I yelled to run, and I started running. It was following me. Every time I changed direction, it did too. I kept running and after a block or two I came to Lake Erie. I started to run into the water, but realized quickly that I wouldn't make it far. I turned to face the tornado.

It was sort of like a person, and sort of like a tornado. I asked it why it was chasing me. It said that it wasn't making the choice, it was just doing its job. I asked who had made it chase me, and it said "Death." Sort of like in the Discworld novels, Death was a personified character in my dream, but not a nice one like in those books. In fact the person whose job it had just become to be Death was someone who really didn't like me and wanted me dead.

There was some strangeness after that where I was trying to find someone else willing to take over the job of being Death, and thus save my life, but my cat woke me up by playing with the door really loudly at that point.

Drama dream

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:09:09 GMT

This dream was in two parts and they were connected but I can't remember how. In one part we were trying to move to a different planet, because the sun or something on this one had gotten really strange. In this dream, the sun orbited the planet, by the way. It started orbiting so fast that a whole day and night would go by as you watched, in the course of about 5 minutes. There was something menacing and sentient about either the planet or the sun, also, and so all of the plans for leaving had to be done very discretely lest it find out and put a stop to it.

The other part of the dream involved a theater production at a school. I believe it was college level but the department was very amateurish. I kept giving them advice on things that hadn't ocurred to them. Like using costumes or having a program. I offered to make the program and they said they'd always sort of made a little list of the cast and put it on an iPod and whoever wanted to see it could come over and look at it. The idea of having a printed program seemed amazingly fancy to them, especially one that had little one-paragraph bios of the cast and crew.

There was also something menacing happening at the school. I was trying to investigate. I went into another room, but I went by swimming underwater, because the entire theater area was about 3 feet deep in water. I found some strange tube things dribbling some unknown liquid into it which I thought was suspicious, but before I could examine it, someone came in, so I had to duck underwater and swim carefully out of the room (which was dark, so it was a little easier to do.) There were various other activities and clues around that I kept finding. One kid was carried off and I think he was dead, but it was covered up and not talked about. I think there was a plot to kill everybody, but I woke up before I could find out for sure what was going on.

Juggling Dream

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 17:02:00 GMT

Well, considering how much I enjoy juggling, it's about time I had a juggling dream (that I remembered well enough to write down)!

Before that dream I had another dream, though, that involved walking around some city with a small group of people. Among them were Dan's parents. We were walking along a covered sidewalk toward a building--perhaps a restaurant? It looked like the first floor of a big office building. The covered walkway reminded me of a bus station, though.

There was a big semi truck making a very sharp turn, but it was too close to the curb* and I could tell it was going to hit it. Then I saw that the trailer part was probably going to hit the metal roof of the covered sidewalk and I started to walk faster. I sort of pushed Dan's parents a little to make them go faster, and hurried them into the doors of the building. My mind was racing with how to explain my rude behavior--that I was concerned about our safety--when a tearing metal noise made the point for me. The truck didn't just bump or graze the roof of the sidewalk, it hit it and then kept going, bending and tearing it as it went. It bent one of the support poles holding up the roof as well. Then it continued along, scraping the edge of the overhand on the building. Some bits of stuff did fall down into the sidewalk, but the roof structure didn't collapse.

So then the juggling dream! Ok for some reason a lot of the dream took place in what was supposed to be the art building of Cleveland State University where I take classes. It wasn't quite right but it was similar enough. Irena, my sculpture teacher, was talking to several of the students in my sculpture class. It was mostly just social chatting and not any kind of lecture or demonstration. I was practicing something in the corner. Then someone said something about wanting to listen to Jethro Tull, and went and got a disc and put it into the system. I didn't recognize the music, which I found strange because I'm a huge Jethro Tull fan.

I looked at the TV (dunno why there was a TV hooked up to all of this) and it was a video of some strange room with all sorts of weird stuff in it. I pointed it out to someone and she turned to Irena and said "oh this is the music from [some male name]'s show. The fabric one." From this I gathered that a previous student had had an art exhibit that was some sort of installation incorporating a lot of fabric, and somehow a disc of this had gotten mixed in with the music CDs.

Somewhere in all of this someone made a soup to share and I was asking about the ingredients to find out if it was vegetarian so I would know if I could eat it. It sounded fine until she said "sea shells." This was very odd to me as an ingredient to be eaten... and I wasn't sure how it would qualify vegetarian-wise. I asked how they got the seashells. I said that if they were collected off the beach it would be ok, but if they were a byproduct of the shellfish industry, I wouldn't eat it.

I went back to what I was doing, which was juggling something. The setting changed a bit because now several people were juggling things, and it became clear that we were practicing for some sort of juggling show that was to be performed later that day. I called over a guy who was working on something and said that we should go over our passing routine, which we had apparently just put together the day before and not practiced since. So we started to practice this 6 ball passing pattern (which is weird since I always pass clubs, not balls) but then I got called away.

There was some rope thing with two things attached at the ends and I had to find two people to do whatever it was that it was for. I had to meet them at my car for some reason, and I gave them each an end and told them where to go to find out what they were supposed to do. Then I went back to the guy I was passing with, but he was involved with something else and didn't want to practice. He was doing something with three balls, and I said "This is a 6 ball pattern! Three for each person! Watch out, balls incoming!" and tried to toss him one but it didn't work and suddenly I was distracted by something else anyway.

I'm not sure what it was. I was holding a 4" x 6" index card with seven raisins glued to it. One of them had come off and all of them had gotten a little squishy. There was concern that (whatever it was that they were for) it wasn't going to work now.

Then someone announced that one of the acts wasn't going to make it because they'd been stopped at the airport in some Eastern European country.

Next a group of people in a room nearby started calling out for someone to come help them. They said that they couldn't do their routine, which apparently involved juggling Cornish game hens (like you would buy at a grocery store) but they "wouldn't stay dead!" according to the guy. I could see he had several in his hands and one of them kept wiggling its little featherless stumpy wings and legs. Someone asked where they'd gotten them, and someone else said "they're from Finland."

*this is one of those times when I know what my brain was drawing from: yesterday driving home from school, I saw a large truck make a u-turn in the road, and the front wheel went over the curb. Other things that influenced this dream include the discussion I overheard today in sculpture about the music that was going to be played at the opening of the student art show in March, the recently started practice of playing music during class, and the fact that after sitting around bored one day with time to kill, I now keep three juggling beanbags in my bag with my school stuff.

Fuse

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:23:18 GMT

This was a very strange dream, and I don't remember it all that well. I will try to piece it together from my notes:

There was a lady in the yard using a hose to spray water and melt the snow off of her lawn. Dunno why. Also, my car had a strange "feature" in that it would start backing up automatically when you got in, and you had to quickly turn the key and start it and put it into drive to make it stop going backwards.

Then I was in class but I had all of the wrong stuff: I had a bunch of tools (hammer, screwdriver, etc) in a bag and a strange wooden box with wooden animals and small books in it. This instead of my art supplies and my other school stuff.

Then there was the weird fuse thing. The windows were open and there were candles in the window. There was a fuse near them that led off somewhere. I was afraid the fuse would light and so I blew out the candles, but blowing them out made the fuse light (not because the flame touched it, just the fact of the candles going out made the fuse spontaneously light).

Three dogs jumped in through the window.

I ran outside to escape the explosion, but the fuse didn't make something explode, instead it turned on some weird hose. I saw the guy who opened the window (which in my mind was what ultimately was responsible for the fuse lighting) and I punched him.

Who's that girl?

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:51:05 GMT

Last night I woke up twice to jot down notes about my dreams. My first one, I didn't do a good enough job "telling myself the story" as I wrote the notes, so I don't really remember what all of them mean, which is sad because when I wrote it down I remember thinking it was a really cool dream. The notes start out:
Camping wok/grill [don't remember what that was about]
9-foot corn snake [I do remember the snake, but nothing about it]
Publix sucks [no idea on that one]
About the only part I do remember is that there was a chicken restaurant (like KFC or something) and the owner fired some guy, so since he was leaving and couldn't get in trouble for it, the guy started giving out free soft-serve ice cream to everyone. The flavors were chocolate fudge, nacho cheese, and chicken.

The second time I woke up from a dream I took better notes, and I told myself the dream in words and so I remember it better.
In the dream, I woke up and saw a girl by my window (saw her silhouette). There was something ominous about her. I asked who was there but got no answer. She moved a little and I threw something at her. I got up to walk over and figure out who she was and what she was doing, but when I got to where she had been all there was was a 2-foot-high stack of white squares (about 9 inches wide). I knocked it over and they fell, and seemed kind of like giant Saltines. I heard the girl's voice say that "around here they make you sorry that you--" but I don't remember what it was that you did that "they" made you feel sorry about.

I looked down and there was a white cat who reminded me of my cat Sidel, who died about 15 years ago. I picked the cat up and walked to the closet, which was a large walk-in closet, and checked inside. My cat Ding (who I have now) was in there, as I had expected her to be (though I don't know why). I walked to the other end of the house into my mom's bedroom (because apparently we lived in the same house) but by the time I got there, the cat in my arms was Ding.

I told my mom the story about the girl and the strange pile of cracker-like things, and how the cat had been white but now looked like Ding, even though Ding was in the closet. I put the cat down and it ran off into the kitchen. I followed it and asked it what its name was. It said "Sidel" and I said "no, first off Sidel is dead so you're not her. Second, that's a girl's name." The cat then asked for suggestions on what its name should be.

Then I woke up for real and looked at the window, and the girl really was there! It was just starting to get light out and I could just make out her silhouette against the miniblinds. My heart jumped for a second, and then my brain kicked in and I realized it was just some shelves and a pile of clothes. But it looked exactly like the silhouette in my dream, which makes me think that I had probably sort of woken up and seen it before, then fallen back asleep and dreamed about it.

I took a picture with my phone. Here is what I saw. I drew in what the "girl" might have looked like:

(click to enlarge)