lucyoncolorado

This is the first time that I’ve written down keywords for dreams as I remembered them in the morning. These are all dreams that I had between snooze hits on my alarm clock. I've been wanting to do that since I started this journal but I either kept forgetting or I didn't have time. It has significantly helped the recall of my early morning parade of dreams, but I can’t remember any of the night-time dreams. Anyway, that’s a start! Just for kicks, here is what my sheet of paper says:
work, posters, shredded Chemistry
boy in linen closet
5 cats
14 shots
my stool
pilgrim hockey
“colorado”

In which I destroy work property, quit my job and almost watch Star Wars…

I’m at work and I have a bunch of butcher paper on which is written everything I need to learn to pass my Chemistry exam. I’m in a work room by myself but the fourth wall is a window through which I can see people walking up and down a hall. My husband is in the next room, also working.

I pull out a razor blade and start slashing the butcher paper into shapes. I’m going to make a jig-saw puzzle out of all the Chemistry notes. I decide that putting this puzzle back together will be the best way for me to study. As I’m slashing it up, my supervisor comes to the door. I step outside in the hall to talk to her. She asks me how much longer I’ll be using the butcher paper posters because she needs them for a meeting. I realize that I was not supposed to destroy them, so I make an excuse to use them for a little longer and keep her out of the room.

After she leaves, I return to the room and stack the pieces up so that people walking around in the hall don’t see that I’ve destroyed the posters. I then go to the room nextdoor where my husband is working to ask him what he thinks I should do. He is in the middle of a presentation and I don’t want to disturb him, so I go back to my own work room.

I realize that it is hopeless. There is no way that I can put the posters back together and I will probably lose my job. I decide to leave the workplace forever before I’m identified. I step out into the hall and hear the theme song for Star Wars. I stop and listen for a minute and realize that it is the first one, Episode 4, and that it is being played in a theater. I walk around in the halls until I find a theater and I look through the window in the door to see Darth Vader and the storm troopers boarding the rebel ship, looking for Leah. I’ve never seen Star Wars in the theater before. I go in to watch, but then I see my supervisor in the audience so I decide to leave.

In which I find a boy in my linen closet…

I’m in my childhood home, walking down the main hall which has bedrooms on the right and left and ends at a linen closet. I open the door to the linen closet and tangled up among the tall pile of folded and stacked blankets is a young boy, maybe six or seven years old. He favors my brother with pale skin and blonde hair, but I know he is a different boy. His head is resting on the top blanket while his arms and legs are folded between the blankets below. He is sleeping peacefully.

I glance away, and when I look back, the boy is deformed. His limbs and neck are twisted around the blankets because he has muscular dystrophy and can’t straighten himself out. I realize with some horror that he has been stuffed in the closet to hide him. I reach in to help him out and touch his arm: he is dead. I panic. There is a dead body in my linen closet and I start to worry that the police will blame me for murdering someone. Then in a flash, I fear that I’ve put the boy’s body there. He resembles my brother so much that I start to worry that it is my brother. I force myself to look at his face carefully, and he opens his eyes and grimaces.

In which I have five cats that are mostly reincarnations of cats I‘ve had in the past…

My husband and I are in our bedroom unpacking our suitcase and five cats jump out. Three are large, fluffy adult cats and two are small adolescents, not quite kittens but not adults either. Our dog immediately tries to chase one of the cats, but we tell her no and make her sit on her bed. Then we explain to her that the cats are “puppies” and that she has to be friends with them. She decides to sit in her bed and observe for a while before trying to play with them.

Two of the cats look just like pets from my childhood. One looked like my childhood cat, Dusty, a large Siamese who my parents already had when I was born and who died the year I started high school. I was very close to this cat. The other cat looked like Doofus who was my grandmother’s old blind grey cat. The two similar cats who popped out of my husband’s suitcase were newer versions of the older cats. I explained to my husband that when I was a baby, I had a stuffed Snoopy doll that I loved very much and carried with me everywhere. I couldn’t say “Snoopy” so I called it “Poopy”. By the time I was three years old, it was torn and dirty. My parents bought me a new stuffed Snoopy doll to replace it but I loved the old one so much I wouldn’t let it go. Instead, I started carrying around both the old and the new dolls and loved them both. One was called Poopy and the other was Snoopy. These cats were just like those dolls. They were not Dusty and Doofus but were newer versions of them. Their names are Gusty and Goofus. When I petted Gusty, she curled up in my lap, dignified, and wanted to be petted over the top of the head and under the neck just like Dusty. Goofus wanted to explore the room by herself and be left alone.

The third adult cat was a really fluffy fat long-haired cat that looked like a Persian. He was a lover, and I told my husband that he had the same personality as McKenzie, the cat I got in high school and had through college when I met my husband. The new cat looked nothing like McKenzie except that he was just as fat, but he acted just like him. He playfully batted at our hands and rubbed his body against our legs and arms. I named him Lover Boy.

The two younger cats confused me. They ran around together as a pair playing and bouncing off one another and were not very interested in us. I told my husband that one of them must be a reincarnation of KittyCat who was McKenzie’s companion and lived until very old age. But neither of the kittens looked or acted like KittyCat. And I had no idea who the second young cat was. We wondered at this for a while and then decided to name them Kip and Kiddo.

I played with the cats for a while and woke up.

In which I still have five cats and a crazy lady tries to give me 13 injections…

Even though I woke up for a while, I fell right back into the cat dream.

The five cats now had a really bad case of fleas that was affecting our dog too. We figured it was because they’d been in the suitcase for a while and hadn’t had any flea treatment. But we didn’t want to double dose them with Frontline if they’d already had flea treatment as too much Ivermectin can cause problems in some animals. We called a veterinary nurse practitioner who makes house calls.

A fat brown haired woman in a purple sweater arrives at our house. She smells of dogs and cigarettes. She looks at the cats and says she will have to take them in for testing. We help her round them up with a butterfly net. Only Goofus seems distressed. I’m worried about the cats while they are away and make the woman promise that she will not give them any treatment until she consults me first.

She comes back the next day with two large duffle bags. She unzips the first bag, and dozens of cats jump out. There are cats of all shapes, sizes and colors running around the house. I tell the lady that we’ve become cat women. I’m happy to have all the cats running around, but the lady speaks to me accusingly. She says that these are all the kittens of my five cats. She said that I’ve been an irresponsible owner and didn’t neuter and spay them. I argue with her because this is untrue. Gusty, Goofus and Lover Boy have all been neutered and spayed, and Kip and Kiddo are too young to have babies. The veterinary nurse practitioner admits that I’m correct and explains that she had me confused with someone else. We then run around looking for my five cats to separate from the others which she will have to take back to someone else’s house. Lover Boy is easy to find because he comes when I call him. Goofus is anti-social but wise. She has already figured out what is going on and she is waiting by the bedroom door. We put them both in the bedroom and herd the other cats into the living room. Gusty then rubs herself on my legs. I tell her that she can stay out in the living room but that she has to stay close to me so that she doesn’t get lost in the crowd of cats. The fat lady and I are left searching for Kip and Kiddo. They are lost in the mass of cats. She pulls out her butterfly net again and starts gathering up cats, inspecting each scoop for Kip and Kiddo, and then dropping the other cats into her bag. Finally, we find my two adolescent cats and put them in the bedroom with Lover Boy and Goofus.

The fat veterinary nurse and I sit down at my kitchen table. My dog Lucy sits under the table at my feet and Gusty sits on the table near my hand. The lady opens her second bag and pulls out a bunch of syringes. She drops one on the floor and my dog picks it up with her mouth. I take it from her and notice that it is a giant needle - the sort that doctors use for spinal taps. I hand it to her and notice how chaotic and unhygienic her practice is.

The lady explains that fleas are a super organism like ants or bees. The live in colonies and share a large consciousness. She says that the fleas that have inhabited the cats are the same as the ones who live in the carpet and on my dog and even on my own skin. She says that we can kill any of them and this will eventually kill them all because they all must stay alive for the super organism to function. The tests she ran on my five cats reveal that they’ve already had a recent dose of Ivermectin so she doesn’t want to give it to them again. Instead, she wants to inject me and my dog with some flea treatments, and it will eventually spread to the cats.

First I protest because I’ve never seen flea medication given as an injection. Usually it is topical or in a pill form. She says that we have a serious infestation and this would not be enough. Next I argue that I’m not sure if it is safe for people. She makes me feel guilty for putting something on an animal that I’m not willing to put on myself. I agree to take a shot.

I look at the syringes strewn out across the table and ask her which one she is going to use. I’m really worried about that giant spinal tap syringe. She explains that she is going to use all of them. I count them and see that there are 14. I tell her that this doesn’t make any sense and that I must be dreaming. She argues that I can’t be dreaming because in a dream, I don’t know how to count. I accept that this is true and then get really worried about what to do. She says she is going to put seven shots in one arm and six in the other. I tell her that this is only 13 and she says that the 14th, the spinal tap syringe, will go to my dog.

I’m about to submit, to accept that this woman is a professional and that I should trust her when I remember that I do have free will and that I don’t need to be bullied. I tell her that I’m uncomfortable with her explanations and that I can’t trust her with something so potentially dangerous as injecting substances into my body and my dog’s body. She tries to make me feel guilty and says I just won’t do it because I’m afraid of all the shots. I admit that I am afraid of the shots too, but that I’m more afraid of getting a staph infection or brain damage. I tell her to leave and help her gather up her syringes. She doesn’t even remove the needles from them and she pokes herself once.

In which I rediscover a childhood possession and wake up crying…

I wake up (in my dream) thinking about the little stool that my great grandmother made me when I was a little girl. It was a multi-colored embroidered round seat standing about a foot and a half off the ground on four little wooden legs. She gave it to me when I was only six or seven years old, and by the time I was in high school it was so wobbly that I couldn’t use it to sit or stand on anymore but kept as a sentimental item. I know that I held on to it through college, but I’m not sure what happened to it after that. I lay in bed thinking about it for a long time and then remembered that I planted it in my garden. I realized suddenly that this was foolish since it the exposure to the elements would destroy it, so I ran outside in my robe and started searching my garden for it.

My garden was a multi-layered biosphere. Up above my head was a tree canopy with tall flowers sticking out. At eye level were the tops of rose bushes and tropical plants. Below this were shrubs, holly and nandina. Ground level was ivy and daffodils. Frogs jumped about the garden and I followed them because my great-grandmother loved frogs and I knew they would lead me to her stool.

I found the stool beneath an umbrella of iron plant leaves. I’d planted the wooden legs in the ground and had to dig it up. I carried it inside and got back in bed with it. My husband and I examined it from our bed.

The embroidery on the top had faded completely and the cloth had a small tear from which some of the stool top’s stuffing was visible. I touched this stuffing and was surprised how soft the material was. My husband stuck his hand inside it too, and it expanded. Beneath the embroidered surface cloth were dozens of pieces of fabric including fine silk saris and down quilts. We pulled the fabric out until we were buried in our bed under a mountain of colorful cloth.

My stool appeared to be destroyed. I picked it up by the four legs and set it on the ground, now deflated and without a stool surface. But then I saw that the bottom of the stool was hardwood and that it contained a leaf inside like a dining room table that can be expanded. I pulled it open and my stool became a beautiful hardwood table, about four feet by two feet. Folded down over the table was a delicate metal music stand made of a fine pattern of intertwined roses. I flipped it up and sat in front of it, smiling.

“Look,” I told my husband, “now I can sit on the floor and play my guitar in front of this!”

In which the houses on our street turn into pilgrims and play hockey…

I step outside on my front porch. I look at the houses across the street. They all turn into giant cartoon pilgrims. They have top hats, beards, buckle toe shoes and farmers clothes. They are a long row of identical pilgrims. All at once, they pull out hockey sticks and start playing street hockey.

In which my safety word is “Colorado”…

I was engaged in a relatively tame sex game with two men I didn’t know very well. I don’t think the details are appropriate to explain here! But what I thought was really interesting is that I told the guys that my safety word (which is the word you say to end the sex game) was “Colorado”. Once I woke up, I realized that this is also my name here on this website so I must’ve been thinking about dreaming at some level. I don’t live in Colorado or anything like that so I don’t think it could mean anything else.