Snowbound ~ 9/30/2017

I dreamed I was traveling to a national park in Missouri with my boys and their Nanny. We were on our way home, and needed to catch a fight in Little Rock. Dylan was driving, and  the rest of us were in the back seat, when Debbie noticed the road ahead was white. I got into the passenger seat, which also had pedals and a steering wheel, and sent Dylan to the back.

There was snow on the road, and I decided to get off the highway. I pulled over to a left hand exit, and was stopped in a line of cars. I turned left into a narrow lane that led off the highway, and began to drive along a row of warehouses. The lane turned into a gravel road, then just a gravelly field, but I could see a paved street up ahead, and along it an empty paved lot for semis, with long, diagonal parking spaces, behind what looked like a garden store.

I pulled into one of the spaces and we got out. We needed to figure out how to return our rental car and how to get to the airport. I pulled out my phone and went to Google Maps to figure out where we were, so the rental car people could just come get the car. The little street was Ivyshield, and we were actually behind a tiny, old hospital. Debbie left to confirm when our flights were and how best to get to the airport. The boys stayed with me, and kept talking about the snow and asking so many questions, that I couldn't focus on my phone long enough to figure out where we were.

We walked down a ramp, along a parking area beneath the hospital second floor, where the ambulances could turn in as drop people at the emergency room. Everything in the hospital was quiet, but people were starting to gather along the bigger road out in front. We walked out so I could find a street sign. There were streetcar tracks, and I stopped and confirmed with a police officer that we could take the streetcar straight to the airport.

I continued to try to pinpoint our location for the rental car company. We were on Irene St., and the elevated boulevard overhead was Sageshields, one man told us. He said we were in the Shields district, and the big cross street I could see over to the right was Braeshields. We were parked behind the Ivyshields Charity Hospital.

I pulled my phone out to call the rental car company, when suddenly we were surrounded by five very old Chinese women, all talking at once, to the boys, not me. The boys could understand just enough Mandarin to answer them, and they seemed so pleased. Kieran told me they were wishing each boy good fortune, individually, and the boys were saying thank you.

They finally walked away, and I couldn't find the hospital anywhere! We were still on Irene St., with Sageshields overhead, but the street was lined with very old apartment buildings. Each had obviously once been luxurious, but the were now faded and dingy, though still dignified. There were old Chinese people at the windows and doors here and there. There was The Grand Ivyshields, and The Sage, and then a small neon sign above an old public library, then, oh thank goodness, the hospital.

More people had parked in the back lot, and an orderly was telling everyone we couldn't park there for more than 30 minutes or we'd be towed, by then another orderly called down to her that the mayor had suspended restrictions at city buildings and hospitals because of the snow, as long as we weren't blocking essential services.

I finally got in touch with the rental car company and told them where we were leaving the car. They said they'd send someone to get it. When he arrived, he'd brought us a big pepperoni pizza. Debbie came back then, and said she'd gotten in touch with the mayor's office, and we could catch the streetcar on Irene and take it straight to the airport.

She helped us finish the pizza, then went to the hospital desk to talk to the intake nurse to confirm the mayor's name, so she could donate to his campaign website, because he'd been that helpful. I decided to use the restroom and get the boys to go, too, before we set off for the airport. I asked another nurse where we could find it, and he told me to go through the doors to the library, and the women's room would be down the stairs to the right. The boys and I had just found it when I woke up.

An X-Files Wedding ~ 9/20/2017

Last night I dreamed I was Dana Scully, and I was marrying Fox Mulder in St. Louis Catholic Church in Castroville, Texas. We were staying in a sort of greenhouse room, with big windows and wood and glass construction, and it was the day before the wedding.

That's when I learned that a serial killer who was stalking me had found out where we were, and where we were going to live, and was coming to get me, and there was nothing I could do because I had no proof.

The killer showed up, and he was a twelve year old boy who was being groomed by his grandfather. We got the police to kick them both out of the church where the wedding was about to start, but instead of going away, the kid slipped into the reception hall, then came out with an oyster knife and ran at me to stab me. Then I woke up.

TBTT#31 Into the Light ~ 6/28/2018

I discovered I was in charge of fighting a hideous reptilian swamp monster that was guaranteed to show up if we all gathered in the swamps and marshes of the West Bank. Until some random dude showed up, patted me on the shoulder where I sat curled up and crying with fear, and said he'd take care of it. Then we learned that a woman who sort of acted like a switchboard operator over CB radio and reported all the town charitable events and gossip had died suddenly, and I joined CSI Nick Stokes to investigate the crime. But the thing that stands out most in my memory still is the little ghost girl. One of the female CSIs had come into the lab, and Nick said, in a high, gentle voice, "Well hi, honey!" And we'd looked at him weird, because it seemed out of place as they weren't dating, but when I looked back at the woman, there was a little girl in a velvet dress and little patent leather shoes, almost victorian in style, with long brown curls and big brown eyes. The other woman couldn't see her. As the little girl looked up at me, she vanished from Nick's sight. We must have connected in some strange way, because after that she followed me, and only I and a few people very close to me could see her. She loved us, and captivated us, but she was restless and unhappy and frightened. She needed to go into the light, but she was afraid to go alone. She was only four or five, and she never spoke, but when we made it clear she had to leave, she began to cry and throw a fit, beating little empty fists against my friend who held her. I reached to take her hands, and we were so close in spirit that I could feel them and stop them. I held her little hands in mine and looked into her eyes. I told her not to be afraid, that I'd go with her as far as I could. I'd keep her safe and show her the way, and while I was almost certain I could lead her to the light and still come back myself, seeing her eyes fill with tears and loving her as much as I did, I didn't care if I came back, as long as she was safe and at rest.  I took her hand and we turned to the light, while my friends tried to stop me.  And then I woke up.

TBTT#30 Tree Talker ~ 6/26/2013

I dreamed I was on the side of a forested mountain, roughly in the Bywater, where I could look upriver and see the bridge.  I was surrounded by enormous trees veined with living silver.  If you were of elvin kind, you could place your hands on the tree and communicate with it, and it would grow however you desired.  Many elves had created large homes for themselves in the hollows of these trees.  Under the moonlight, I placed my palms on one tree, sank my fingers into the crevices of the slate gray, rough bark, and let my mind flow into the camber and the veins of silver and sap, and learned I was part elven as the tree shifted and swelled and grew according to my thought.

Close Encounters of the Bat Shit Crazy Kind ~ 6/22/2017

Part of my dream was a mash-up of Bambi and Harry Potter. I dreamed people could be born animagi, and that it ran in families, so of course Harry could turn into a dear at will. A fawn when he was little, and as he grew up, a stag. Animagus Harry was charged with clearing out a forest that had been invaded by aliens.

The aliens were books from outer space. There were 10 books in the series, and they had been sent to Earth to spawn because they needed iron, and Earth is such an iron-rich planet. They couldn't take over until all 10 books were brought together, and so far there had only been a number of copies of the first book, one copy each of several others, and two of the eight book. The books all communicated with each other wirelessly, and I wasn't sure what they'd do to the planet, but I just knew it wouldn't be good.

The numbers of books were controlled by the cream-colored cat that had been sent to manage them. The cat had these little round iron tokens, about the size of pennies, each painted the color of one of the book covers. If the cat had all the tokens, he could command new copies of the books into being. If any tokens were out of the cat's reach, none of the books could spawn.  So of course, to help Harry, I stole a few of the tokens.

We were able to round up the books, and most of them we could just burn. But the eighth in the series was dense and not flammable. We only found the two copies of it after we thought we had it all taken care of. So we packed them up in a metal lined box and shipped them back to Amazon. Then the cat said the joke was on us because there was so much wireless traffic on earth that the books couldn't have talked to each other anyway, so they never could have fulfilled their plan, even if they'd spawned.

I stole the rest of the cat's tokens, and the cat ran off into the woods. I tried to chase it down, but as I got close, it dove into a group of cats and kittens that were hunting a flock of mother and baby birds. The birds were about the size of pigeons, but they were a soft brown, and had long curved bills and long, stilt-like legs. The mother cats were trying to teach their kittens to hunt, so no birds were actually getting very hurt, but I couldn't find the alien cat in all the confusion.

So Harry took some of the tokens and I took the rest, since we found we couldn't melt any of them down, except the one for the eight book, funny enough. We each swore to keep our tokens safe. Over the years, mine turned into clear, smooth, brightly colored stones. I kept them in a plastic bag with a bunch of polished quartz.

I was trying to learn a new Sousa march with my community band when I noticed that the stones were shrinking. The band director came and showed me how the problems I was having were because I wasn't blinking my eyelashes at the right times, and after we got that sorted out, I left rehearsal.

Outside, some teen-aged girls were giggling and whispering in a scandalized sort of way. I gathered they'd seen a dark, handsome, but heavily tattooed young man coming out of the edge of the forest, and for just a second it looked like he had antlers. I figured it was Harry, and he might be having trouble with the tokens he'd taken, too. We agreed to meet after I went to watch the ice skaters who had come up from Rice to compete in a national championship.

I went into the darkened rink and sat to watch the graceful skaters glide over the ice. The family sitting next to me saw that I was wearing a Rice shirt, and their kids started asking me questions, since they wanted to go to Rice some day. Then I woke up.

TBTT#29 Of Pets and Vampires ~ 6/10/2013

I dreamed that my mother's dog (my dog in my dream) kept dimensionally shifting to become a talking koala bear, and that this would cause an additional reflexive shift that made my cat completely disappear, only to reappear when the dog was once more a dog.

Then I began to wander an art museum featuring portraits of famous vampires, before and after their change.  When I found the painting of Armand as described by Anne Rice, I managed to also find the real Armand, along with Lestat and Louis, skulking around the museum.  They changed two of the museum's bartenders (of COURSE the museum had a bar!) into vampires, and somehow I changed to.

And then I could fly! A group of people began hunting me (I hadn't even DONE anything yet!), and my car couldn't go fast enough, so I pulled it off into the woods, began to fly, and had to dodge helicopters. Then I woke up.

Nell deGrasse Tyson ~ 6/13/2017

I dreamed I was Nell deGrasse Tyson, a black, female astrophysicist with enough gravitas to fill a galaxy. I had been asked to consult with a science magnet boarding school to help modernize their culture and curriculum.

I was on a break, and watching the rehearsals for the graduation ceremonies. They had a singing and dancing troupe that was going to do a performance themed with all the things the graduates had to look forward to. One of these things was falling in love.

I went to talk to the song and dance teacher, because all of the couples in this montage were male-female, and I asked if it was too late for them to have one male-male and one female-female couple, to give at least a little representation to the students that might not be heterosexual.

The troupe leader was a sandy-haired, pock-marked man with reddish-gold eyes, and he very politely told me that my idea was completely counter to the Christian values of the school. I pointed out that the school was a completely secular institution, and that given the size of his troupe, at least one or two of those talented young people would probably really appreciate this innovation.

He challenged me to spend more time with his group and see that I was completely wrong. While I was observing, the students who weren't graduating began planning for the summer trip the group would take the next month. Their leader went over all the sorts of snacks they should pack, then dismissed the younger students, but held the rising seniors back.

That was when this guy reminded the oldest kids of the troupe tradition where, on the first day of the trip, they could raid the snack stashes of the youngest kids and have whatever they wanted. I stood up and said I was just about done involving myself in their troupe business, because that wasn't what I was at their school for, but I challenged the oldest kids to really ponder how fair this was, and if it was a thing they really wanted to do to their younger peers. They all agreed it was bullshit, and they were going to break that tradition this year.

All I remember about the graduation ceremony was a bunch of kids coming up to me and thanking me for everything I'd done for them that year. Then I woke up.