Some of my most interesting dreams are had during 15 minute naps.

Like today, for instance-
I closed my eyes, and where did I find myself? On a water slide! How awesome is that? Except that actually, I'm pretty sure it was a kiddie water slide... at any rate, it was just like the new slide/playground system at The Hollow, which is a park in the town that I grew up in. The big slide there is now, well, small, for big kids like me... I remember when I thought it was AWESOME, but now I have to scrunch waaaay down to slide down it. Anyway, there was a lot of water going down the slide, almost more than was normal - I think in my dream that I decided this was because I'd been sitting there looking out at everything for a while, but it was good because you know, the more water the better! Except that just as I was about to go, I looked at the actual slide and there was this little kid climbing back up it to a little whirlpool that was attached to and only accessible by the slide, and all of his friends were there. Obviously I couldn't go down the slide while the kid was going up it, so I waited.
The next thing I remember (perhaps the next thing that happened) was I was inside my old high school - doing what, I don't know, but the playground complex with the water slide was just outside, and I'd just come in after playing on that. For some very strange reason, Eric (from band camp?) was there, wearing this bizarre hat. It was like a crown cut-out, but it had all these notes and pictures on it - kind of like my 'senior star' thing where my parents put all these photos of me from earlier years on a big cut out star, and it got hung in the school (with the rest of the senior stars) during gradnight. Anyway, the dominant feature on this hat of Eric's was a HUGE pink feather. Interesting.
I was talking to him about why he was there (I can't remember the reason) when it suddenly started raining - which is all well and good, I love storms... but this storm had this TERRIBLE pressure; it was awful. I could feel it. like a weight in my head - I kept trying to pop my ears, but in vain! And I just started sinking under it - it was really terrible and realistic. I can't really explain it better than that. At this point, I knew there was a tornado outside, and we had to get downstairs, or somewhere safe, but the tornado was too close, and I was too far from anything to grab on to (I don't know what happened to Eric) - but as I turned to run and felt my feet slipping out from under me on the floor, I thought to myself 'it's ok, this is just a dream,' - which is a really unusual thought for my dream self to have. I usually am unaware that I'm dreaming, which sometimes makes for rather traumatic dreams. When I was little I would have 'natural disaster' dreams, and not know they were dreams until a while after I woke up. Those were the WORST. Anyway, woke up, knew where I was and what was happening.
Savored the details!

Random?

With very little interesting plot flow:
I guess it was move-in day at Wellesley, and for some reason, my three best friends from high school all went to school here too (awesome!). So Sara and Kristen had already moved in, and they'd come to help me get my stuff inside when Linnea drove by with her family and all her stuff (but, weirdly, in KP's dad's car) and Sara and KP (this is Kristen) ran after the car to go say hello, and I decided my stuff would be fine where it was and went too. When we caught up with her, Mrs Piel (KP's mom) said that we all had to go see the music building, which was nothing at all like Jewett, which is the real music building at Wellesley. It was interesting, architecturally speaking, but also not made of concrete. It had all of these oddly placed beams that arched across open spaces. Anyway, we walked through a big open room (performance hall, I guess!) and we started to walk through this really narrow room: the room ran perpendicular to the path we were walking on, and it was probably 15 feet long and maybe 5 feet wide, and it was full of chairs. There was a girl all the way at one end playing a violin (I think), and then some guy sitting right next to the door we were walking through. He stopped us and told us that everyone has to learn to play the viola before going any farther (which, now that I think about it, could have meant musically speaking, or literally in terms of passing him), but I thought he was being creepy and just sort of pushed by him. He then whipped out his viola - but it was a viola de gamba - and proceeded to play something. Kp, Nea (Linnea), Sara, and I just kept going though. The next room was just like Dillon Music, with all of the amazing things that could interest me (well, it was the first room of DM - the room with the mutes and the knick-knacks and the CDs and cases. But the rest of it was just beyond! I was looking at something, when someone called that Sara had found a bass flute, and we should come and listen to her play it. Sooo I headed back out (but the room with the viola/violin players was gone) and there was Sara with this gigantic THING on the ground. I think, if anything, it was a contra-flute. If they exist. It had waaay too many curves in it to be a bass flute. So, well, she played something on it. Then I woke up.
Weird, eh?

The most unfair series of dreams

Seriously. Every once in a while I'll beg my subconscious for a dream about a particular subject, because usually what I dream clues me in to how I really feel about things. Last night my quest for sleep was thwarted by incessant thoughts of a particular person whom we shall call 'Bob', because I don't feel like embarrassing myself (or him). Not that he reads this, but, well, you never know.
Anyway, I decided then that perhaps the solution was to think specific thoughts about Bob, and hope that I would drift slowly off to sleep and also dream about him, which would possibly be fun, unless in my subconscious I actually don't like him at all. Then it would probably be kind of miserable.
For example: once, I dreamt that I got married to my (now ex) boyfriend, and I cried the entire dream because I did NOT want it to happen - and when I woke up, it took me a few minutes to realize it had just been a dream. (I'm recounting this here because I don't believe I recorded it - it was before the start of this bog.) Anyway, the point is that the dream forced me to start thinking about why I was so absolutely averse to marrying the fellow - and well, it turned out that when I thought about it, I realized that I wasn't really in love with him.
So... while asking my subconscious for dreams CAN be fun, it can also lead to unpleasant truths.
Get on with the dream! Ok. There isn't much to this dream - it was very rich, but in detail, not in plot. I was sleeping in the Captain's room (guest room with a name) with Luna (my dog) - in both reality and the dream - and I was woken up by Bob, who I had invited to visit but hadn't expected him to come quite so early. Nevertheless, I was really happy about the visit so I leapt out of bed and ran to my room (which is a disaster as I pack for school, hence the sleeping in the captain's room) to find some clothes. My mom was in there for some reason, laughing at me. I guess because I was so happy, but had somehow managed to let him get here while I was still in my PJs (interesting point: I was wearing my kokopelli PJs, which I was not wearing in real life). So I grab some things and realize that I've forgotten my glasses in the captain's room, so I go to run back to get them, and for whatever reason, Mick arrives and starts talking to me, but I'm not really paying attention because Bob's in the other room, and I'd like to get back to him.
Then, suddenly, I wake up again. And I sigh, because the Bob visit was apparently all a dream. But! amazingly, his voice comes from behind me and says something along the lines of 'Hooray! You're awake again!' and I leap out of bed to see that he's sitting on the far edge of the bed with Luna, and I'm so confused because I could have sworn it was all a dream - but he says that he came in to say hello the first time, and I fell back asleep. So THIS time, I try to force myself to check and make sure that I'm really awake - but what it really does is make me actually wake up.
So, I wake up for a third time (or really, the first time), to a house empty except for mah animals. Fail.

Sigh.

I've been remiss!

I have - surprise, surprise! - still been dreaming, whilst not writing in this blog, and unfortunately for all of you (but also myself) I can't remember all of the dreams that I've had. I do have a few fragments that I'd like to record though, and I'll do what I can to keep it in order.

Some time ago, I dreamt that I got to go see the gymnastics part of the olympics! But it was being held in a theater, oddly enough. I don't remember the finer details, but what I do remember is that my family had these excellent seats in a balcony, and somehow we got separated. I was trying to find the correct balcony, but I kept taking the wrong staircase - at one point coming out at the very top of the theater, where I saw the guy I'd met at the prow of the cruise ship I went on with my girl scout troop (long story short, I was wandering around the boat at night alone, and chatted with some nice guy at the very top, very front of the boat - where you could lean into the wind and not fall over!), but I didn't talk to him in my dream; I turned around and went down to try another staircase.
Somewhere along the way, this very fancily dressed gentleman (who I knew in my dream, but I have no idea who he is/if he's anyone in real life) saw me and said that he had really great seats - would I do him the honor of joining him? How could I refuse? I really wanted to find my family, but I couldn't say no to this guy (because of his stature). I'm pretty sure he was wearing a top hat and tails. He led me to this row of about 5 seats on the first floor of the theater - the expensive seats, for sure, but we were just under the lip of a balcony, so we couldn't see any of the elements the gymnasts did on the high bar that went above the bar. Anyway, as I said, there were 5 seats - he took the second seat from the end to the left, and there were two women next to him (I think they were 'with' him, but not WITH him, if that makes sense), and the last seat on the right was empty. I really wanted to see what was going on up on stage, so I went around to take that seat, but there was a little girl sitting there, which was annoying because she was too young to appreciate what was going on, but I couldn't kick her out of the seat. So, I went back and sat next to the man, even though I didn't really want to. There was a woman's jacket folded on the back of the chair, and I was really nervous because in normal life, that means the chair is taken - but he was convinced the jacket came with the chair (I really have no idea which was correct).
At any rate, Brendan suddenly appeared, and said he could take me to our seats, so I jumped up, told the man I'd divide my time, and bolted. He ran much faster than me though, and when we got the the key staircase, I didn't know where to go! Ugh! I ran past some security guards and hoped really hard that they wouldn't stop me (the competition was about to start!) but they just watched, bemused. Finally, I ran up this tiny spiral staircase that I had taken out of the which-staircase-should-I-run-up? competition because it was so small. Amazingly enough, at the top of it, there was a glass atrium sort of thing where all the widows were playing poker! (I don't know why.) Just outside of that was the balcony, and, hooray! My family! So, win.

Sometime after this dream, whether it was days or minutes or hours or seconds, I don't know, but I dreamt that I was once again with the Widows, and we were heading back through the wilderness to Wellesley. Through an obstacle course. I know where this dream came from: my difficulties with the wellesley financial aid services! No mystery there.

Lastly, that I can recall, the other night I dreamt that I had one of my friends over (this dream took place at my old house; I moved a few years ago), and for whatever reason, I blurted out that I loved him - then I turned tail and ran. He followed me out onto the porch, but by the time he got there, I was already at the driveway (porch had a staircase to the driveway) and luckily for me, another friend was sitting there, waiting to kidnap me. Not kidnap as in 'rawr! pay the ransom or else!', just kidnap in the way that friends do. It was very well timed, and she drove me away before he could catch up. This one I know all about too - I do like this guy, a lot, but it really isn't the best time for me to go blurting out anything about love.
Thanks, subconscious. (heavy sarcasm)

Well, that's all I can recall at the moment! Perhaps tonight I shall dream - and if that is the case, I will most certainly endeavor to record said dream in a timely fashion!

Stargate makes my dreams richer

I had this fascinating series of events in my dreams last night... it started out with an escape, in a helicopter. I was there with two other people, a man and a woman - the man was piloting. I don't know who we were running from, but whoever they were, they were shooting at us. They killed the man piloting, and I had to fly the helicopter.

A brief aside, in all of my flying dreams, I have the most difficulty in going up. I sink slowly, and then I come to an obstacle and I have to fight tooth and nail to bring myself back up.

Anyway, flying the helicopter was rather Gary Paulsen describes flying the biplane in his books about Brian - even though I'm almost certain that flying a helicopter is nothing like flying an airplane. Somehow we got to a city (pretty sure it was Boston), and I was weaving through the buildings, trying to keep us from crashing. The helicopter kept sinking, and I would have to practically do battle with it to get it to pull up again - a couple of times we nearly crashed into a lower building because of it, but somehow I managed to keep us from dying.

Somehow, I managed to land - surprise! - at Wellesley. It didn't look anything like Wellesley... more like a blend of Wellesley and Haverford, I guess. I thought I was safe there, so I took my bike to the library (don't ask me why). While in the elevator, elevator music suddenly came on, which was my cue that I was still being chased - I took off through the library. At some point, I was in close jungle, and at the intersection of two highways, I stopped to visit my alligators/crocodiles (I can't remember which they were anymore) which were kept in the triangle of the intersection of the roads, fenced to keep people out. For some reason, the animals liked me.

I'm not sure how this all ended; my dog woke me up - but I don't think I ever got caught, and overall, it was a very satisfying chase.

The Meaning of Love

Something I've been wondering about for a while... what is love? What makes what you feel for someone love? What's 'true love', and when will/how can I find it? Also the fact that once you get married, people generally have a family... and then your life is wrapped up in your work and your children for the next however many years, until finally your children have families of their own, and you retire. Then you get to come back to your spouse and learn who they are now. What could that possibly feel like?
So, of course, my wonderful subconsciousness tried to help out - but I only remember a few fragments of this dream, the basis of which was this:
I fell in love with this guy, and then later found out that he was born a girl - but that didn't affect how I felt about him.
When I woke up, I felt a sense of relief that I am capable of loving someone for who they are without worrying about who they were.

Exams and my Dogs

So, I haven't been updating this as religiously as I thought I would, but oh well. This one should make up for it:

First I dreamt that I was in my physics exam, and I found out that because things were going so slowly in the registrars office, if I did really poorly on my final I could still drop the class. Then I took the final, which, for some strange reason, was open notebook - which was AWESOME. I kept having to go places and come back though, so I feel like it took me a really long time. But it was fine.

I can't remember the exact order of things, but it would make sense for this bit to happen first:
Brendan and I found this awesome castle place, and we went inside, but it was all charred from a fire - caused by a fire-wielding person! So we went around cleaning it all, and we got to the outside of a tower and there was a tree, and our mom was in the tree, fighting some thing, and she set the tree on fire and burned it down, and Brendan and I helped take care of the thing she was fighting (we all could wield fire). Then we went back into the castle and showed her what we had been doing, and she helped.

Later, I guess my family lived in the castle, and our dogs were tethered outside (I don't know why) and all of these people kept driving by looking at them. I was looking out a bay window - I had a cap and a mask on for some reason - watching the people watching them. A silver limo drove up, stopped in front of the dogs, kept going, then someone in the car saw me watching and jumped out of the car and ran up to the dogs, unclipping them from their leads.

I bolted to go after them, and I ran outside to confront the man, who now had two goons standing next to him. He was still standing there with my dogs, and he goes "Choose." I was like YEAH RIGHT am I going to CHOOSE between my two dogs, who are you to tell me I have to choose?!?! But I noticed that I was standing on the edge of Luna's leash, which the man was holding, and I knew I could trust Lucky, so I picked Lucky - the man dropped both of the leashes, and let them go, and they both took off. Luna's leash got pulled out from under my foot, and I don't know why, but I just got so furious that I set the man's goons on fire. They weren't injured at all, but it scared them, and they brought the dogs back.

Then they promised to go back to carving pumpkins, which is what they had done before becoming the man's goons. I don't know what was up with the man. I think he just wanted to reveal my fire power. Or something.

Later, I was out with my family (we had to replace a doberman's tooth?? I have no idea why) and we drove by splash mountain, which we had all agreed we would go on soon. We were very excited.

Then someone came into my room, and I woke up.