dream dream dream

Since I can’t get any actual work done today because it is ten degrees below zero in my office and my fingers have turned purple, I’m going to do this dream thing I saved so long ago that I have no idea who I got it from.

Incidentally, it’s 81 outside. And I am seriously considering turning my illegal heater on. I’ve worn my jacket all day. I also wore open-toe shoes, against my better judgment. I knew this would happen. But it’s summer. Kind of. Let’s just say that in this place I cling to summer until they rip it screaming away from me. And it’s EIGHTY ONE DEGREES OUTSIDE.

On a positive note, we’re headed for Charleston in the morning! Where word has it the temperature will be in the 90s! Hooray!! Ophelia is currently beating on the Outer Banks, but it doesn’t sound like they’re getting much damage.

Okay. Dreams.

1. Have you ever wished that you were famous? Wait – I thought this was about the other kind of dreams. The SLEEP kind. Well, of course I’ve wished I were famous. Was famous? I can never remember the rule for was/were without thinking of Clive Anderson on the British Whose Line Is It Anyway, reading out a question for Scenes From A Hat. He is very VERY grammatically correct, so when he pulls the paper from the hat and reads “If the planet was made of toothpaste”, he quickly changes it to, “If the planet WERE made of toothpaste”. So I think of that and then I remember that you use “was” for something that could happen and “were” for something that totally could not.

Where were I?

2. When you wake up in the morning, do you remember what you were dreaming about? I do sometimes. I try to remember my dreams. I keep starting dream journals too, that I usually drop after about two entries. Then a few years later I’ll start another one.

3. What would your perfect dream be? Okay, I’m confused again. Is this SLEEP dreams, or daydream-kinds-of dreams? You’re a very inconsistent survey, I’ve got to tell you.

4. Which natural disasters have you experienced in your dreams? I’m guessing we’re talking sleep-dreams here. If you’re daydreaming about natural disasters, that’s a little weird.

Once I had a really scary dream about a tsunami hitting a beach where I was staying. There were a whole bunch of people there, waiting for this wall of water to hit us. We were inside a building, but knew we were going to die. This was way before the tsunami last Christmas, too, and tsunamis aren’t something high on my list of worries so I’m not sure where that came from.

I’ve also had a lifelong tendency towards tornado nightmares. Thank you, Wizard of Oz!

5. What was your worst nightmare ever? You know, many nightmares sound so silly when you talk about them. Like when Baker B woke me up because I was whimpering, and I was having a nightmare about there being an, ummm…. possum in the bathroom. Oooooo, scary!! Or these weird upright fish creatures who were so interesting and I was trying to take their picture and then they started advancing upon me, very slowly. It was scary. Really, it was!

But I think one of the scariest dreams I’ve ever had was a very realistic dream about what I guess was the start of a nuclear war. I dreamed I was sitting on a deck with my cousins, around Washington – I was living in DC when I dreamed it, and several of my cousins lived in the suburbs nearby. It was at one of their houses, on a warm summer night, and we were just sitting and chatting, looking up at the beautiful, bright stars. Then I saw one move, and I looked closer. A bunch of the stars were moving in the sky. And I realized they weren’t stars – they were planes, and the war had started. We all knew it, but for a few more minutes we just kept chatting, trying to act like nothing was happening. Then we had to leave, and suddenly we were slogging through the woods in snow up to our knees, carrying bags. It was scary and upsetting both.

6. What do you daydream about? Oh, make up your mind. Right now I’m daydreaming about being warm. And in Charleston.

7. Do you ever hear your name called out in your dreams? I don’t remember that, oddly. Is that common?

8. Do you believe that demons or anyone from the spirit world can enter your dreams? No.

9. Have you ever dreamt in a foreign language? No – but I don’t really speak a foreign language. Other than really really really bad high-school-level Spanish.

10. Do you have recurring dreams? I did when I was a child, but really don’t anymore. I don’t think. I DO have dreams with the same elements over and over. Like huge houses full of lots and lots of rooms. Or houses/apartments I’m living in, when I find extra rooms I didn’t know I had. (Can’t imagine what THAT could possibly mean.)

11. Have you ever had a precognitive dream? I have had a few, although sadly I don’t recall any right now. Obviously they weren’t that amazing. Well, I recall one, which wasn’t at all amazing – I dreamed my sister-in-law asked if I would babysit my nephew. Ooooooo, Beth predicts the future!!! The odd thing was that I NEVER babysat, I was living in another town and was visiting my parents for the weekend. Then the next morning SIL calls and has some emergency and wanted to see if I could keep the baby. It was kind of weird, really!

OH, here’s another one. This was years ago, when I was in college and I was working for a pizza place. I had this really odd dream where I was at some gathering of a bunch of people (another recurring theme, actually) and my boss, Jerry, from the pizza place was there. There were a bunch of kids around, and several were riding their bikes on the roof of the house. I was quite alarmed, very worried that one of them would fall off – and sure enough, one fell off the roof. The next day Jerry told me one of his friend’s kids fell off their roof and was seriously injured.

So yeah, I DO have precognitive dreams, but they are completely useless as far as averting disasters!

12. Have you ever dreamed that you died? I’ve dreamed that I was about to die, as in the tsunami dream and a number of tornado dreams.

13. Do you believe your dreams mean something? I think they mean something psychologically speaking. Not precognitively, obviously.

14. What have you created that was inspired by a dream? Ummmm….what? I guess..nothing. Although I’ve used some of my own odd dreams in some fiction.

15. Do you ever dream about losing something? I do. I sometimes dream I’ve lost my camera. I use to dream about losing my VW Bug that I loved so. I dreamed once it got taken to the junkyard and crushed, and I found it in a zillion pieces. I was VERY upset.

16. Do you generally dream in the first person or the third person? First, although I have had dreams that were more like movies and I was kind of the main character. So I HAVE dreamed in third person.

17. Are you a lucid dreamer? Like, do I know when I’m dreaming? Once in awhile I do, but not very often. I hear you can train yourself to realize that you’re dreaming.

18. Do you ever dream and wake up with leftover emotions? I do. Especially if I have a Paranoid Dream about Baker B. I used to have those a lot back in the early days of our relationship, when I’d dream he left me for someone else. Or like the memorable dream when he told me I look okay from a distance, but I’m ugly close up. And then he left me for someone else. I’ve woken up very mad at him, and it’s taken me some time to convince myself that it’s a dream, he didn’t really do that.

19. Do you have dreams about school or work? I still dream that I’m back in school and I can’t find my locker or I can’t find the class, or I realize halfway through the semester that there was a class I completely forgot to go to, and we have a test that day. Apparently that’s pretty common – we were talking about that at work the other day and a number of us have that dream.

I also dream about work a lot. Although I don’t usually dream about my current job. I dream about being a waitress. Especially being the ONLY waitress in a restaurant packed full of people, and the menu has changed and I have no idea what’s on it and people have been waiting for hours and I can’t get to them and if I do I can’t figure out what to tell them and nothing works… THAT dream.

20. Do you dream in color or black and white? I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed in black and white.