Batch

01-27-2014 -- [Poor sleeping, constant waking, weird night and weird dreams.] I'm in a place of mom's, but not one that I recognize from real life (or indeed, from specific past dreams, either.) Somehow I am standing in front of a small metal sink, trying to fill a pot of dried red beans and rice with some water, so I can cook it up. The problem is, something is wrong with the taps, and though I have turned the water on, I can't manage to turn it off. There seems to be one small place which is off, and turning it to either side from that tiny position is on, but I can't find the sweet spot, and the sink is just about to overflow. I finally manage to get it off, but now the pot is also overflowing, so I have to drain a lot of the water, and in the process, find that almost all the red beans and rice have also overflowed, so I don't have anything to cook. What a mess.

I think there was a tiny bit of Kevin B somewhere (possibly a comic book convention), but soon things shift to where I am instead wandering around Indiana Wesleyan University with Dale, attending another FCM convention. The thing is, I know they have moved the convention away from the college, but in this dream they have specifically returned to IWU, and it is kind of nice to be back. We are passing some stalls and approaching a hall where we may be having some sort of lecture or business meeting, and things start pretty quickly.

I almost immediately find that I am bored out of my mind, and just can't manage to stay there. I stand up in the middle of the thing and just walk out. Soon I am wandering around through the building, looking for somewhere to relax and maybe read or something, but everywhere I find students with books spread all over the tables doing homework and stuff, and I know we're supposed to stay out of the students' way.

At one point I end up kind of jumping over a couple of chairs that have been knocked over (reminds me of a scene out of an old Bing Crosby musical I just watched) and am amazed I have the agility to do so at my size, and kind of half-realize I am dreaming, and do a slight bit of hovering, but I soon lose track of the fact, and wander back toward the hall where Dale is.

I find a large metal sign that needs to be separated into parts, and start carving it apart with my fingernails in a rather impressive way, and find myself interacting with Bridget B. from choir. For some reason, she needs the sign parts I am disassembling, but her much more impressive fingernails can't manage what mine can. So I start handing her the sign parts as I get them separated, and we walk along, chatting, exchanging one-liners, and I throw out one about the Middle East that just takes things too far, so I have to kind of apologize for that one.

Meanwhile, our discussion has been fun enough that she asks me about texting more comments back and forth. I am trying to remember what information I need to give her, whether e-mail addresses or other things, before I finally realize oh yeah, just the phone number, idiot! As I start looking for the phone number so I can give it to her, I realize I've lost the darn phone. Nuts! By this point we are in a room, and she is starting to remove the fancy dress she was wearing (a nice powdery blue number with black trim) and I realize I have followed her into her bedroom, and I really don't belong here. She doesn't seem to be worried about me, but her husband Brian is looking at me a little strange. I start to apologize profusely, explain I wasn't paying attention, and ... uh ... I gotta go! Problem is, I haven't been paying enough attention to know how to get out of the quarters they are sharing, either, so go the wrong way at first, but then I spot a door with several locks on it, and realize it must be the exit. As I hurry out, I see their son and daughter. I think he is playing a video game, and she is reading a book or something.

There is another teen there (probably a friend) wearing a really strange hat that seems to be a cross between an odd multi-colored fez and a lampshade, and I find myself trying to turn a nob to turn the light on or off, except there isn't one, of course, since it is a hat. I apologize, and make it out the exit, and kind of stumble back to the hall from earlier, just as the meeting is about to get out. I get to listen to them saying the Pledge of Allegiance (at the end instead of the start?) and then they finally start exiting. As I meet up with Dale and we start discussing whether or not I am coming back to California for a bit of a visit once the convention ends, we overhear them debating about whether or not they should open up the organization to Mormons. Odd bits.

05-27-2013 -- I'm in a room somewhere with a guy who is asking me to make him some floaty fliers, a balloon design I sort of adapted from somebody else's design. At first I think the guy wants me to teach him how to make the (extremely simple) design, but no, he wants me to make him a bunch of them. For free. I try to ask him why he doesn't just want to learn to make it, and he explains that he is out of black balloons. And there is now a shortage on them, so they cost too much. So he wants me to use mine, instead. Problem is, I have no balloons with me. But I point out we are in a big room with lots of bags of balloons, including several black bags. But he says they all belong to someone rich, who would charge him for them. I'm starting to get very mad at the guy, but suddenly find myself wondering if the big professionals feel the same way about me, and my limitations of money and skill ....

Anyway, the place seems to be slowly turning into a convention hotel or something, and it is starting to feel like I am at Twist and Shout, though it almost feels like it expanded out of a basic alley meeting. Another guy walks in, and starts to twist something, trying to demonstrate a technique or something, in almost a jam room sort of setting, but there is a young lady there who is being really obnoxious about it not being in the program, and there not being any announcement about it, and how was she supposed to know about it. She doesn't seem to understand it is not a class or something, but just a quick spur-of-the-moment thing.

Andrew McDonald shows up and starts doing something, then I think Greg Schuerman is there, as well. Soon Laura Caldwell shows up, and more and more people are gathering, even though it is still two hours before the official class is supposed to take place. Soon a grumpy security guard walks in, and everybody fears he is going to tell us to get out until time for the class, but he tells us the group has rented the room for the entire week, and we can use it whenever we want to. So somebody decides they might as well set up a bounce house there. I think Mark Byrne is also setting up for a show or presentation or something.

Time seems to jump, and it is now two hours later, and they are starting up a business meeting or something, but I am trying to do some writing, putting this dream into my notebook as it is happening (yet not managing to go lucid, even though I obviously know I am dreaming in at least one sense) and the meeting is kind of distracting me, so I walk outside. But it turns out to be even more noisy and distracting there, because Don Caldwell and Billy Damon are putting on some sort of show. They explain they are sort of ADD, and don't do all that well with the business meeting portion of the convention, so they are waiting until that finishes, and things get a little more interesting, before they go in. That ought to be about ... say ... now. So they head back inside, and I decide to follow.

As I walk in, Don (or possibly Mark) is giving some sort of demonstration where he is pretending to be a plane, and several members from the audience are supposed to be his landing strip, unfortunately, they keep running away when he flies at them! It's a very strange thing. Meanwhile, I have this strange feeling of anticipation, and somehow know something I have no way of knowing. Deep underground, far beneath us, is the inescapable prison of Hathor, which recently had it's first ever breakout. The long-trapped hero has been slowly making his way toward the Panarch's Palace, and will be joining us shortly ... then things will really start to happen. Somehow this balloon convention is turning into some sort of Brandon Sanderson novel.

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05-27-2013 -- Hints of some kind of office work, maybe at Hewitt, or maybe at a new, slightly twisted version of the Hornet newspaper. First bit is, as usual, not all there and rather limited. Anyway, we seem to be moving desks and computers and things to a new room, and we're pushing desks and computer parts and things together in some weird angles, joining them all together, but we really don;t know if they are likely to work like that. Somehow I manage to knock over a glass of orange juice that is sitting there, but manage to grab it so fast that only a couple of drops manage to spill. We are so busy with moving everything that there is no time to clean everything up properly, but we just drop an old newspaper on the tiny bit of spilled juice, and hope it will absorb it.

The computers are now all hooked up, and two lovely women are working with me here. One, I think, is Chloe from Smallville. The other might be a slightly younger version of BC. Somehow though it mostly seems to be the Hornet at the moment, there is also a hint of the 3M Dental warehouse. For some reason there is a tub in the middle of the office, and I am kind of embarrassed about stripping down and climbing in, but a few seconds later I am trying to coax either or both of the lovely women into the tub with me. No luck at the moment, because they both have work to get done, but indications are good for both of them at some later time, so I am still fairly happy. Problem is, as I move around in the tub, which I seem to have over-filled, water is splashing over the side, and I am hoping it doesn't do any damage. Luckily, it seems to room was designed for it, so it all seems to be good.

[At this point, things shift slightly, and this may be a different dream, but it seems to fit, so I am not sure.] I step out of the shower, instead of a bath, and find myself in mom's bathroom in the Hickory house. I am thinking about using the toilet, but these days it is always broken, damaged, and jammed up in my dreams, so I am worried to do so. The good news is mom knows this, too, and has bought some gadget to attach to the toilet that is supposed to keep it working better. The bad news is, it doesn't seem to be up to the job, and is bubbling wildly like it is about to explode.

So I just exit the bathroom wrapped in a towel, into mom and dad's bedroom. Dad is laying there asleep, but mom is not there. It is late at night, and mom has been really unstable recently (all the dreams of her beating up on me) so I am afraid she is going to yell at me for taking a shower so late, and I just want to get out of there. I sneak out of their room, but am horrified to see mom is sitting in my room. Thankfully she has fallen asleep, so I quietly sneak down the hall and into the living room, where I find the couch is still warm, and I realize Melody must have just left again, after napping there. I realize mom was in my room hoping to catch Melody when she came in so late, but she fell asleep, and never heard Melody, since she decided to just nap on the sofa. I curl up in the warm spot she left and drift off to sleep, myself.

01-16-2013 -- [Two dreams, one night, at least slightly connected, so I am going to list them both in one post.] For some reason I am in Melody's room in the Hickory house, and trying to go to sleep, but really having some problems with insomnia. My body just doesn't want to sleep, though it is the middle of the night, and I am afraid mom is going to come in and give me problems.

There is some very strange evil-Harry fan fiction that seems to be hanging on the walls, and near the ceiling, there is all kinds of stuff lining the walls like my room at the Moran house. Mom walks by and asks how I am doing, and I try and indicate I am all right. There are huge yearbooks from Melody's time in school that are about the size of the bound volumes of the Hornet, so the yearbooks are full-sheet newspaper size, which seems quite large for yearbooks.

Suddenly I find myself in Knott's Berry Farm, walking from the wild west section into the Roaring Twenties section over by the Knott's Berry Tales area, and walking back along toward the Good Time Theatre. The area is completely deserted, and there is nobody around, but that doesn't seem to stop them from doing a scheduled show.

I am outside, and though it is in the Roaring 20s section, the buildings seem to be very Wild West area, with balconies and such. I hear a voice call "Hello!" in a very familiar way, and a can-can girl opens a door, steps out onto a balcony, and hangs a leg over the railing. "Hello!" and there is another one doing the same thing. "Hello!" and again. This is seeming very familiar. Especially since as I look, the can-can girls look like Lana, Arlene, and Jill. Band members start to play, and I recognize Vince and Chris. The main performers come out and it is Jay Meyer and Betty Taylor.

It is suddenly looking like when Disneyland closed the Golden Horseshoe Revue, the entire cast just picked up and moved over to Knott's Berry Farm. They even seem to be singing Hello Everybody, though they fall silent or whisper every time they have to say the name Golden Horseshoe, and I am thinking it is probably because Disney owns the copyright to the name of the place ... but I am getting to listen to the show I love, performed by the people I love, even if it is at Knott's, and I am suddenly very, very happy.

I have a soda, which kind of gets knocked over, and I am running to grab the cup before it manages to roll on stage, and I manage to succeed, so I'm doubly happy.

Suddenly I find myself waking up again, back in Melody's bedroom. The lights are off, and I can barely move. Feels kind of like what I would guess sleep paralysis might feel like. It is dark, the lights are off, and my eyes are closed, but I can see almost a sort of after-image like the light was just turned off the second before I started to wake up. I'm struggling to my feet, and find myself standing between two beds. There is stuff dangling from the ceiling, like Christmas tree ornaments or something.

The shirt that the Harry Potter fan fiction was written on is now a weirdly folded envelope that I am starting to write down the Horseshoe dream on, and time is starting to go all over the place. I went to bed at two, and it is now five, or maybe three, or one (yes, before I even went to bed) and it is all very strange. And then I really wake up.

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01-16-2013 -- Starts with hints of the last dream, sleeping in Melody's room, then starts to turn in to a sort of a roommates in the house dream (even though it is still taking place in the Hickory House), and then shifts even further to a dream where we are still in the Hickory House, but we are the Simpsons, who live here, but film the Simpsons TV show on the set for Evergreen Terrace.

So I'm in the Hickory living room, kind of watching the last episode, and Russi Taylor (voice of Minnie Mouse) was a recent guest star, but has never gotten to see the episode she helped us film, and since it is just about to come on the TV, we call her to come out from Melody's room, and come watch it.

Oddly, it seems to episode she helped us with, Frick was building large old fashioned computers (the kinds with the huge tape drives) and somehow putting them on human legs so they could run around. Russi's character was a female computer with really sexy legs, but they stuck out at an odd angle, which made her a freak, and nobody wanted anything to do with her, even though both her legs and voice were really, really sexy. Very strange!

Meanwhile, things shift, and I suddenly find I am with a roommate in the dining hall at Indiana Wesleyan University, attending an FCM convention. The roommate is not actually anybody I know, though it kind of looks like Meeks from Dead Poets Society. They are telling us that we have been invited to attend a couple of normal college classes while staying here, as part of the convention (which makes no sense, but hey ... dreams.)

The physical campus looks very much like Brookhurst Junior High, though a slightly larger version. We're standing near room 66, and the class we get to sit in on is in room 33B or something like that. We're walking down corridors, and it seems the room we are looking for is past the office area and further south (we'd actually be in the middle of Brookhurst, the street, except in the dreams there are more classrooms).

We find the right area, and I walk into what I am hoping might be the right room, to find myself facing what looks like a younger version of Ducky (from NCIS ... but looking more like his Man From UNCLE days). The room is along the lines of a huge lecture hall, and the professor looks quite nice, but he turns out to be a rude, insulting nightmare. I walk into the next classroom over, hoping I might have the wrong room, but the next room over seems to be a business class, and every single student is dressed in the exact same business suit, and we sure wouldn't fit in, in that room.

So I come back to the room with Young Ducky, and he is insulting one student on his appearance, telling me to use soap next time, and insisting that a third needs to mess up his dorm room a lot more, just insulting everybody in the room, being miserable, and not teaching us anything. Finally, I just stalk out of the room, deciding I am not going to bother with this 'benefit', trying to make my way back to the cafeteria, and thinking this convention is really going to the dogs.

11-11-12 -- I am attending a class or lecture or something on dreaming, perhaps in London or France, or maybe in Denmark, I'm just not sure where. As we enter the classroom we're told to take our seats and start reading the first chapter of our textbooks, while the instructor is talking about how he has never held a candle before, and how interesting it feels.

They start pouring hot wax into very thin paper containers hanging from the walls in order to make candles for us all, and soon they are spinning around and small bits of hot wax are escaping and splattering against me, but it's no big deal. Problem is, though they keep trying, they can't get the new candles to light! Eventually they realize they have them on the wrong setting. When they switch from the 'cat' setting (no idea!) to the 'dragon' setting, the room is suddenly filled with a nice, cheery glow.

I've finished reading the chapter, and am waiting for everybody else to finish. As I wait, I glance around the room and find there are several people here that I know. I see termite and Anthony, and one of their little ones from the GK forum, and I am pretty sure I also recognize Stephanie W. and Chris T. from high school. I also hear others talking, and discover that Sarah H. from the GK forum is here, and hope there won't be trouble.

I am amazed that so much time has passed and everybody is still reading. I must read even faster than I realized! Somehow my chair to the far left of the second row has disappeared, and I find myself searching for another among the tiny kids chairs stacked up around the corners of the room while the instructor tells jokes and quotes sayings to his various assistants, sometimes even telling dirty stories.

Finally we seem to be ready to move on, and the instructor is preparing to have us make some kind of paper turkeys for thanksgiving, or maybe lunch sack puppets. I don't know what they have to do with dreaming, but maybe it is about the creativity or something. I walk up to the instructor to claim my supplies for making the turkey, and he starts asking me all kinds of questions I don't know the answers to. It turns out I misheard, and we were supposed to read the first seven chapters in the book! D'oh!

I say that I'll catch up, and return to my seat, going back to reading. Anthony is sitting in front of me, working on his project, termite next to him. Then they disappear, wandering around the room and mingling with people. Soon it is lunch time, and I manage to meet Anthony face to face, and we do one of those supposedly cool multi-part handshakes as we introduce ourselves. Unfortunately termite is off talking to other friends, so I still don't get to meet her in person.

Dale shows up, and is also behind in his reading, which is not as big of a surprise, since reading puts him to sleep. We're all feeling utterly exhausted, and since the event now seems to be in Australia, I'm blaming it on the time change, and am not surprised.