The Labrynth of the Mind

Michelle Bachman

I am visiting my grandparents. I have been spending a few nights at their place, and it is time for me to head home. My brother is going to do something first, and my grandfather (who is a retired pastor) is going to visit someone in the hospital. Apparently, Michelle Bachman has been visiting friends at my Uncle's church, and has had an accident. My grandfather explains that he is going to visit her.

I debate whether I should go with my brother or my grandfather, and decide that it would be neat to meet Michelle Bachman on such informal terms. I decide that since the hospital is not far out of the way for me, I should follow my grandfather there and then go home from the hospital.

There is a whole scene involving me and the GPS, looking for the power cord etc., which is too boring to try and recall right now. Cut to the hospital.

As we are driving I wonder if they will let us in to visit. After all, she is a presidential candidate, and it seems unlikely that people can just wander in when they want to. I worry about secret service people. But it seems that clergy has a special priveledge, and my grandfather says nobody will mind if my grandmother and I come along.

We arrive at the hospital. My grandparents and I sit in the waiting room. Ms. Bachman apparently has a few visitors already. I run over in my mind how to address her, realizing that I can't remember if she is a senator or a congresswoman. I decide to just say "hey".

Eventually, the nurse calls us back. Someone opens the hospital room door, and my grandfather ushers my grandmother and I in. I walk in behind my grandmother, and find that there is nobody in the room. There is some nice furniture, and it is set up almost like a living room. There are some chairs and a couch in front of a fireplace, and a sort of hospital bed in one corner. But apparently this is not the hospital room. It is kind of a waiting room that is part of a hospital room suite. Michelle is in another section, and once again we have to wait our turn.

I notice that there are some other people in the room waiting to see her as well. There are some kids in their late teens or early twenties with a trifold poster board, pracitcing a presentation on injuries. They figure that they can get Michelle Bachman to work on something to protect kids from sports injuries, counting on her recent experience in the hospital to give them traction.

My mother calls me back to the original waiting room for a second. I forget why. I tell her we are about to go back to see Ms. Bachman, and I try to show her the way back. But as we walk, the hospital seems to become confusing. It used to just be a short hallway and a door, but now there is a huge area set up like the inside of an airport. The more I walk, the more confusing it gets. I try to jog, but it is that frustrating kind of movement I always get when I try to move quickly in a dream. I retrace my steps, thinking I have overshot the original hallway that leads to the hospital room.

"Argh!" I think. "Of all times for Mom to show up and pull me away." Somehow I know that my grandfather is now visiting with Michelle, and I am missing the chance to visit. "This kind of thing is always happening to me. Why is it always like this? As soon as I get the chance of a lifetime, something happens to take me away, and then I can't find my way back. It's like one of those frustrating dreams I am always having!"

More out of frustration than anything, I decide to do a reality check. "Maybe this is a dream," I think. But I only think it in a frustrated way. I don't really think it is a dream, I'm just annoyed. I quickly count my fingers, and there are 5 of them. Nothing unusual there. I don't do any other reality check, because I "know" this is reality and I only did the RC to make a statement anyway. "I guess I'm awake," I say.

Then I wake up.

Sweet Shop

I get a job working in a candy store. This dream goes on for a while, but much of it seems to center around all the tasty things that I keep wanting to eat. There are sick kids too, who keep coughing near me. There is a dish of some kind of candy that I sneak bites of every once in a while. I think I am working with my brother.

Pathetically missed dreamsign

I go to use a public restroom. I am trying to find one with decent privacy. I wander into a men's room, and find a stall. The lights don't seem to work well in there, and part of the restroom is dark. Even where I am it is dimly lit. I have some uneasy thoughts about "things" lurking in the darkness. I comfort myself by thinking that I am in a light place, but I know that "the things can look at me out of the darkness"

I took 100mg of vitamin b-6 before bed. I also took some cough medication before bed, which may or may not have had an effect.

Job interview

I have an event going on on the same day as a job interview. The interview is at 3:30, and I want to be sure to leave the event (archaeology dig?) by 2:30 to get there. It is just across town, but it will take about a half an hour to get to where the interview will be.

When I arrive at the place where we are having the event, I find my grandmother baking something. Or at least mixing something in a big bowl. She tells me that what she is making required $1000 worth of maple syrup. She points to the bowl.

"$1000 worth, and this is all I got for it," she says. I look at all the bottles next to her.

"How many bottles did you get for $1000?" I ask.

"Twelve," she says. I see that there is some syrup left in some of the bottles, and suggest that she add some more, but she explains that the syrup has to be specially prepared in order to be used. You can't just pour it straight from a bottle. And apparently she doesn't use all of the syrup in each bottle. She asks me to pick up a new bottle from the store though.

I go out to do something with the other people there. One of the people is my former supervisor/co-worker. After we are working for a while, I remember that I have the job interview. I look at the clock, which I think says it is just after 2:00, but it really is after 3:00. I work for a bit longer until I realize it is about 3:30. I have 10 minutes until the interview, and I hop into the car and start driving.

I don't exactly know where I am headed, but I have a GPS. I try setting the GPS while I am driving, but I can't see what I am doing very well so I pull over. I still can't see what I am doing very well (because it involves reading and entering words and numbers in a dream, but I don't realize that). I think that perhaps I should call the place I am going to try to set up a different interview time, or push it ahead to 4:30. I look for the telephone number of the company, but I have a hard time finding that as well.

Light up night

The small town that my cousin lives in is having a light up night. They were lighting up a Christmas tree, which only had one or two bulbs on it. They light up other things, but in the end only a few bulbs are lit for light up night. I am talking to my cousin about this later.

Grandfather's Ph.D.

We are at my grandparents' house. My mother and I are discussing my Grandfather's attempt to get a Ph.D. "Why not?" we say, "he has already published 8 books." I look at a bookshelf of books, all written by my grandfather.

Yeah, that's it. What kind of dream recall was that?!

I have a vague memory of doing a reality check during a dream, and counting only 9 fingers. I can't remember anything else about that one.

The Fashion Show

I am at my old high school. This building is a lot bigger though. There is a fashion show going on, in which there are a lot of nice looking girls. I spend some time hanging out with them, and it becomes some kind of computer program where I complete certain tasks to get points. For example, I talk to a girl and get an amount of points, then I take her out and get some more points. Eventually I have enough points to "buy" a girlfriend. Oh yeah, the "points" are also pickled jalapeno peppers, if that makes any sense at all.

After the flirting/dating/computer game/ jalapenos/ experience, I go to find a bathroom. There is one down the hall on my left. I look at the sign to see if it is the men's or women's, but it is difficult to read. I can see the word "men's" I think. I walk in, and enter the area with stalls. An older woman comes walking out, and looks at me funny. Realizing my mistake, I quickly leave. Examining the sign on my way out, I see that it actually says "women's" but the "wo" part is wearing off.

Smoking Grandfather

We go to visit my grandfather. He has a lung ailment, but has taken up smoking. He seems to think that chain smoking will help him feel better. We try to convince him that it is suicidal for him to do this, but he claims the cigarettes are harmless. He offers my brother and myself a smoke.

Walking around the top of some mall, my mother and I discuss why my grandfather thinks smoking would make him feel better. I say it is becuase nicotine numbs the nerve endings in his lungs, making them feel better.

I try to convince my grandfather to stop, but instead he just stops taking his pills.

The Drinking Contest

I am in a Dairy Queen. They are having an advertizement for new treats in their freezer (I mean the advertizement is in the freezer; it's a live action commercial).

"You've seen all these old treats" says the narrator. "Remember when this was new?" They show some things like an ice cream cake and a Dilly Bar, as well as some frozen canned whipped cream I have never seen before. "But now it's just the same old same old. Well, there's a new treat in town!" The other things are pushed aside, and a giant cake is dropped down, taking their place. It is green, and covered in lots of icing. Upon it's being sliced open, it is found to be filled with frozen coconut filling.

"Just in time for the Super Bowl, it's a -- Day Cake! [the -- was some name like McNabb, I don't think it was him but it was a celtic name famous in football] It is now being offered at a great price. Or, you can win this cake for free! All you have to do is be here on McNabb's Day (I guess it is some sort of holiday) and drink beer! That's right, you drink beer for 13 hours. Here's the thing - you have to be drinking beer the whole time, and no bathroom breaks can be taken. If you're still here at the end, you get the cake for free!"

A few people seem to be interested in this deal. Next to me is a table of really good looking girls.

"Heck," says one of them, "We'll just wait here until McNabb's Day starts. It's just an hour or so."

I sit down next to her, and put my arm around her. For some reason my mother shows up and sits on the other side of her. The girls begin talking about how much they like to drink, and how great it will be to have free beer all day long. They seem to think drinking constantly for 13 hours is easy.

I start talking to my mother, loud enough so that they can overhear. "What do you think would happen to someone who drank beer constantly for 13 hours?" I say.

"I don't know," says my mother, "but it can't be good".

"I would think you'd get alcohol poisoning," I say. The girls seem to take no heed. I pull the girl next to me a little closer, and give her a hug. I am honestly worried about her. "Here is my prediction. By this time tomorrow night there will be at least one alcohol related death because of this contest."

"I think you're right," says my mother.

I now see in my mind's eye the scene of an accident, and someone being loaded into an airplane.

Strange Goings-on at my Grandparents'

We are having a family get together at my grandparents' house. It is getting to be late at night, and my brother goes back to bed. My aunt decides to play a trick on him, and changes into a bikini top. She undoes the strings at the bottom, so it looks as though she is in the process of taking it off. Then she goes into my brother's bedroom, pretending to be a strange woman who wandered in from the street.

Fixing the Computer

(This may have been a continuation of the last dream, or not. I don't quiet remember. It's one of those that isn't so coherent.)

Bobcats never let go once they have hold of you. My little cat thinks it's a bobcat at times, but at other times it is just like a kitten. I pet it, but then someone makes it think it's a bobcat. It grabs my hand with it's teeth and claws, getting a wild look in its eyes. I start singing to it, treating it like a little kitten again. It let's go of my hand.

Now somebody has the cat on his shoulder, and is climbing and running along the top of a moving train. It is a daredevil.

Now I am in a room somewhere. There are lots of children walking by on a field trip. They have to line up at the door, and they set their books down in front of me. I look at them, and see they are doing the same thing I did when I was their age.

A telephone rings in the room I am in. A woman answers the phone. "It's for you," she says, "it's Client #9".

"Client #9?" I say, "uh, that doesn't sound right." I pick up the telephone. I should have known. It's my uncle, who likes to pretend he is weird people when calling family and freinds. He asks if I'm busy, and if I can help work on my Grandfather's computer.

Now I am at my Grandfather's house with his computer. It has a small problem, but Dell wants over $1,000 to fix it.

"$1,000?!" I say, "at the most, you'll just have to get a new CPU, or maybe just a new motherboard."

Now my brother goes to bed. I have my laptop running, and it's been running all day. I decide I had better shut it down.

Working for Rush

I get a new job, working for Rush Limbaugh. He is explaining how the job works.

"When I'm on the mic," he says, "I don't know whether someone is doing their job or not. I don't go around and see how much or how well people are working. What I do is look at their desk. If your desk is clean, you are a good employee."

I look around the office. Everybody has a nice, perfectly clean desk. I sit down at my desk, and try to organize my things to look nice as well.

I took about 200mg of valerian before bed last night. As often happens, the valerian caused me to have some rather wierd and disturbing dreams.

Weddings and cruiseships

I am in the auditorium of my old high school. My brother and I are discussing people that were at my cousin's wedding. To help us remember who these people are, we take turns with a clamp holding pieces of a bench together. At times we break off pieces of it, too.

My grandparents are there also. The place is no longer the auditorium, but my grandparents' house. They are talking with my aunt about how nobody my age wants to be a sailor anymore. I happen to have been looking for jobs on board a cruise ship, so I tell them that I want to be a sailor. They are reading the requirements for various positions. Meanwhile, I log into my account with a cruise ship job website.

Flea markets and torture

I am at a fair. It is also D'ni. It is also a flea market. I am walking with a guy I used to know from a former workplace, who is also the father from "All in the Family" (which is ironic, because the guy I used to know is black). He is telling me that I don't know much about "smokin'", which in this dream is a slang term for buying and selling junk at flea markets for a profit. I imitate the Mask for no reason and say "sssmokin!"

We enter a junk shop, which is located about where Kadish Gallery should be. It is kind of dark in there, but we browse for a while. I see an old bottle of wine from the 1920's. After a while I see a bottle of something else with the date 1919 on it, and the wine bottle is apparently gone. My friend considers buying this bottle to resell. He tries to give me tips on finding antiques.

Next to the bottle of wine is a bottle of acetic acid, and some laboratory glassware. My friend asks me what acetic acid is, and I say "It's pretty much vinegar". Then I laugh and say "if we poured some of that into the wine bottle, there would be a nice explosion."

We leave the junk store, and cross the street. Things begin to change somehow into a laboratory where a mad scientist is operating on living people with no anesthetic. He hacks them up, mutilates them, pulls out their organs and intestines, while they lay on the operating table screaming. He pulls out one guy's eyeball. He slices open the arm of one guy, and puts something in to intentionally infect it. Someone explains that his plan is to let it swell up, and then hit his arms with something. This will both cause the victim pain, and somehow turn him into a zombie.

Now I see a whole bunch of zombies from the mad scientist's lab, all dancing together like some scene from Hell.

I'm a Toys-R-Us Kid

I am at Toys-R-Us with my mother, father, and brother. We are looking around, and split up. We are supposed to meet up again in a few minutes, but I get lost. Some type of adventure befalls me, though I don't quite remember what. Finally, I meet up with my family again.

In this dream, Toys-R-Us looks like a greenhouse. There are many rooms in it, connected to other rooms. There are tropical plants around. (And fireplaces?)

Letters to Lincoln

We are talking about Abraham Lincoln. Our family (in the dream) has letters that were written by Abraham Lincoln's wife. We don't know exactly where they are, but apparently we were descended from her. We have a bunch of her old stuff, actually. I wonder if it is worth anything.

The Church

I am visiting a new church. It starts out with me listening to the church on the radio, but then I actually end up there. At first I think it is a good church, and well founded in scripture. But then the pastor begins to talk. He is dressed in some odd uniform, and his whole message seems to be about how he doesn't think Christ is the only way to heaven. He hints that Christ may actually not be God. "What kind of a church is this?" I think to myself.

The preacher decides to show a movie to the congregation. It is about Barak Obama. As soon as Obama appears on the screen everyone stands up as though they were going to sing the Doxology. I am a little disgusted by this seeming idolatry. I had been standing out in the hallway watching through a door. I sit on the floor in a sort of a protest. People in the sanctuary decide to sit, too.

Grandparents (fragment)

I seem to remember something about going to my Grandparents' house.

A Series of FA's

Have fun sorting this one out:

I wake up and check the clock. It is 8:45. I usually do a RC upon waking up, but I always assumed looking at the clock was good enough. Then I wake up. Not to be made a fool of again, I look at my hands. I rub them together. Nothing looks odd, so I must be awake. Then I wake up. I look at the clock again. It is a little hard to make out, but it looks like it's 1:45. Good, plenty of time to do a DEILD (I'm pretty sure this was a FA too. This set of dreams took place around 8:00am). I enter into a dream about Toys-R-Us. I pinch my nose and can still breathe. But then the dream changes so that this is actually not occurring, but is a memory of me doing a nose-pinch reality check in the past.

I am walking down an aisle in Toys-R-Us. There are characters from Star Trek there. They seem to be advertizing a sale on Star Trek merchandise. There is also food and apple cider. I stock shelves a while, and see Angela Lansbury. She seems to know me. I try to think of how I know her.

An announcement comes over the loudspeaker system, referring to the town we are in. I am reminded that I work in Wintersville, Ohio (I don't in real life. I don't even live near there). That is hard to believe for me that I actually work there.

Another experiment with valerian, B-6, and melatonin. Did not seem to work overly well this time.

Hired Back

I am going to be hired back to my former job. This time, however, the job seems to involve working underwater. This does not seem unusual to me, but the office is now in a town that is about an hour away from the old office. This is actually not bad, because it may be a shorter commute for me...

...A lot of things having to do with water. Now my cousin's relatives are coming to our family reunion. That seems odd to me.

Band in the Desert

There is a big tent in the desert. There is a band playing in the tent. There are also camels, but most people are driving cars.

Marker Quest

I am at my grandparents' house. I am with my brother. We are walking in front of my grandparent's car. Their car doesn't have very good brakes, and I try to convince my brother to walk faster (we are going down hill). We reach the bottom of the hill and I am doing a marker quest (as in Uru). The markers lead out into the main road that this road intersects. I try to dash out quickly to pick up the markers, but as in dreams it is difficult to dash quickly. I eventually get to the other side.

I pick up one marker that says to examine the original scene more carefully. By this I know it means Eder Gira. I look around where I am a while longer, and find another marker under my kitchen table (it is by the road for some reason).

Last night I took 150mg of Ginkgo Biloba, followed by a brief period of exercise (50 pushups). In the past, this has greatly increased the amount of dreams that I either experience, recall, or both. I also attempted to incubate a dream in which I would be in the computer game Myst Uru.

Myst Party

I am at the church that I went to when I was little. My parents are with me, as are a couple of other people. My mother is eating a cookie, or a cupcake, or something like that. She tells me she got it downstairs. I ask someone else about it, and this other lady tells me that she got it "in the room beneath the rooms" or something cryptic like that. I know that by that she means that the cookie came from a room down in the basement near the boiler room, in an interesting set of stairwells and hallways that always fascinated me when I was little.

We sit down in a pew, either towards the back of the sanctuary or up in the balcony. I look over to the end of the pew and see a big sign that has been hand written. It is advertizing a "Myst" party, as in the computer game. According to the sign I am either too late for the party or will not be able to make it.

At the Mall

I get a new job, working as a security gaurd at the mall. I am at home with my family, and we decide to go shopping. When we get to the grocery store we were originally going to go to, it turns out to be the mall. I decide that since I am a security gaurd, I can walk along with them and shop, and still be able to do my job at the same time.

We split up. The rest of my family goes one direction, and I go another direction with a girl that I knew in college. We go into a couple of shops and look around, and somehow I loose my socks. I go into a gift shop where they are selling a pair of socks for $3. I debate for a while whether to get one pair or another. Then I check to make sure they are all $3. I see a sign on the box of socks that says $3, so I am informed of the price.

I go out of the back of this store, and keep on going. The girl is still in the mall, but I walk on down the street until I come to a grocery store. I go in and walk around, and then get a cup of coffee. Then I think maybe my family and the girl will wonder where I went, so I go back.

Back in the mall I meet up with everybody. They aren't too concerned about where I went.

Blue Blotch

I have some kind of a welt on my forehead, and next to this a big blue blotch. I am worried that this blue blotch may be the sign of some disease, so I look it up online. I know that looking up symptoms online is a bad idea, but I go to WebMD anyway and check it out. When I type in "Blue Blotch", I get a page with a terrible illness. It shows a deformed and barely recognizable person who is being killed by a disease that started with a blue blotch. I decide not to trust WebMD.

The Fair

In my old job, I often went to fairs to talk to people. In this dream, I am back at one of the fairs. It is cold and cloudy, and my mother is with me. We set out looking for a certain barn (I think it had model trains in it, but I'm not sure). We walk out to what appears to be the end of the fairgrounds, but I can see that beyond us is more buildings. My mother does not seem interested in looking anymore, so we go back to wherever we started.

Old Mr. cedward1

I'm an old man in this dream. However, I am a powerful old man. I seem to be very skilled at my job (I think I am a lawyer). I am well known and well respected. Some people probably fear me. However, I am all alone. I never wanted to marry anyone or have a family of my own, and now in my sunset years I begin to regret it. I wonder if it is too late to find a wife, but then I think that even now I might not want to give up my freedom.

For a brief period, the dream is about a queen somewhere who is in the same predicament. Then it is back to me as an old man.

I am eating steak and a baked potato. I pur butter on the potato, along with a bit of white cheddar cheese and steak sauce. I mash the potato up and eat. It tastes pretty good for being dream food...

... The dream changes quite a bit. I am no longer an old man, and am walking through the woods. It is late fall or winter, and all the leaves are off the trees. My job is to see if people have been logging near a creek that runs through the woods. I inspect a while, and then my mother's beagle runs away. She can't get it back, so I call it. The beagle come trotting out from behind a tree.

Another Shopping Dream

I am at my Granparents' house. Everyone goes shopping, which is referred to by an odd name like "simple country" shopping, supposedly because they are going bargain hunting. I decide to stay behind, but as they are leaving I change my mind.

We all go in to town. Some things happen that I can't quite remember.