Mezzanine

I'm in some sort of underground cavern, in a bathing suit, in shallow water with two other people, a man and a woman. Only the lower half of our bodies are in the water. I'm playing footsie with the woman and then the man sticks his foot in between ours. I can feel the silt on the bottom of this body of water. It's gross. I'm starting to feel pretty grossed out and stand up to get out of the water and onto some smooth, flat rocks. I look down at my legs and there are tiny slugs all over me!!!! I start just running and freaking out and pulling these slugs off myself. Then it's as if the underground cavern was attached to a building, and I've run into that building and now I'm in some sort of strange never ending hallway of dressing rooms. I am zig zagging through these dressing rooms, all of which are different and have different themes, like, Japanese, one of them was blue, one had a lot of mirrors, one was red. I'm not frantically running anymore, but it feels important to get out of this maze. When I finally do, I am met with.... a giant seemingly holographic black and white and gray face, with eyes closed talking at me extremely loudly in a language I do not understand. It is subtitled. I can't remember all of it, but it's saying something along the lines of it's God, and I met the challenge, or there's a task for me, or something. I don't remember much of what was said, or if I talked back to it, I was honestly so freaked out by the loudness of it all.

Second part of my dream, I'm in a parking lot and someone comes up to me saying there's a half off sale at this store. I go in and it's kind of a dispensary/drugstore. There are candy edibles - just rows and rows of them, neon colors or gummies and hard candies. I look at the expiration dates and they are five years away. So I start grabbing handfuls of them. Then I go down a toy aisle and look for something for my youngest nephew. I thought he might want an action figure or something. There are a lot of Lego sets and some other toys. There was one action figure with a face that kind of reminded me of the face from the previous dream. Then I look a little further and it's a balcony up ahead. Over the edge there seems to be some sort of situation with air blowing up from underneath so that everything over the edge is floating. A guy with skis jumps over the edge and floats down to the bottom very gently.

I was visiting my most recent old job, leaving notes on people's desks and meeting with old friends I see someone is there from two jobs ago, the one who was in my hiring interview who later because my boss and almost a mentor. She and a couple other people and I exit the building and walk across the street, talking about someone's kid that needs to go to this private religious school.

Across the street is a beautiful church! It's many stories high with beautiful trees with flowers dangling in chains from the highest branches. Like a sanctuary. It was so beautiful it moved me to tears. My old boss walks through the door at the "reception" area and the person at the desk asks something about digital photography and my old boss gives some sort of snarky answer and a man there was not too pleased with that, but lets us enter anyway.

Not sure what happened once inside - cut to being outside. There is a median in the street outside and on it are tons of suitcases. I walk down to the end and now I'm in a gross downtown area. There are steel barrels with fires in them and it's like homeless city. I don't remember much else because this dream happened a couple months ago, just needed to finish up writing about it.

House Guest

It feels like I'm in my old room at my parents' house. I'm in the room to start off, and there are string lights strung across the ceiling, but only over the bed. The walls are white, and I think all my furniture is there, like my two dressers. There's someone in my bed and they're waking up. It's Lane that I worked with at my last job. I told him that I needed the bed linens to wash them, and I'll get him a different set of sheets. I sit down on the edge of the bed and start talking to him, but what about I don't remember. I laid down and got comfortable and looked up and said that I think I could use more lights in the ceiling as I'm staring up at them and talking. They're doing a nice criss-cross across the ceiling. I notice that I don't have the ceiling fan anymore.

Blockbuster Video

I'm at my old job at Blockbuster Video. Could have been Hollywood Video, but I don't see any logos pointing my in either direction. I feel like the rental boxes may have been black and white, though, which would indicate Hollywood, but there is someone working there in a bright yellow polo shirt, which would indicate Blockbuster. I suppose I'm at work and not just renting a movie. There is a counter in the center of the store, kind of circular, with people in the center checking people out. There is someone at the front entrance asking people if they need help and greeting them on the way in and saying goodbye as they leave. There are some people that want to get checked out that somehow made their way to the inside of the checkout area. I ask them to get out and stand on the other side. They have five videos. I start opening them each up one by one to make sure the right one was inside. Go figure, there's one that isn't correct. I told them, "that's why we check when they come in and check when they go out!" Someone must not have checked this one on the way in. The outside said Aladdin and the movie inside was The Coin which I'd never heard of. I start to look for where it is on the shelf so that I can see if Aladdin is in one of The Coin's boxes. Everything is alphabetical, so it was easy to find. But all the movies were gone from behind the boxes for The Coin. Julia Roberts stars in it, her picture is on the cover box. There was one row of regular movie, and one row of a special edition, two tape version, but they were all checked out.

I must have gotten distracted from finding the right movie. I see some folks heading out the door. It's a breezeway entrance, where there are two sets of doors. The greeter was saying goodbye to three people. Two guys have small skateboards sort of attached to one foot, held on by a rubber band. On the outside of each of their one foot strapped on by the rubber band is a pack of Wrigley's Doublemint gum. Not just one pack, but a whole box. I pointed it out to them and they said, "well, it's hard to carry this in one pocket, so this works." I figured they stole them from the store, and didn't think anyone would either see it on their feet, or would see it and just not say anything about it. I didn't do anything about it. Whatever. Take the gum if you need gum so bad.

Outer Space

I'm floating in space, and it seems like I'm on a mission. I'm with a guy, and he's in a suit like Starlord from Guardians of the Galaxy. There's something up ahead and it's ever so gradually shooting pulses of energy at us. I can feel it coming on waves. There are three silver orbs about the size of a basketball with different color lights in a ring around the center. All I have to do is think about where I want to be and my body floats over there. I float over to one of the orbs and it has green lights. The others are orange and yellow. I start talking to it, like, "hey what are you?" and I can feel what it's trying to say to me, not hear it. Or I hear it in my head, but it's not out loud. I feel like this could have been really cool, but I woke up. Ugh.

Just real quick bc I have to get ready for work -

I'm standing in what seems like some part of VCU (again, wth) and I'm with one of my coworkers, Maggie. I have a small, about the size of my fingertip, purple stone. I hold it in front of me and it levitates. I blow on it and it starts spinning in mid air. Nothing else happens. Maggie stands facing me and we try again. She blows and I blow, and then all these clouds start forming and it starts drizzling. We run around the corner and leave the stone there in midair spinning. We peek around the corner and see that it's thunderstorming. So somehow I lose Maggie and I run to some apartments. I think one of them is my boss, Mario's. I don't even knock, I just go right in. It's your typical college apartment, but it's real sparse. Just some chairs, and some stoned guy sitting in a recliner. I go to another room somewhere and there are people playing Dungeons and Dragons. My wife's there playing. Somewhere in this scene, my dogs, who do not play together bc the bigger one is a little aggressive, are actually getting along and playing nicely.

We walk out the back door and Ryan asks me to shave her arm. I have electric clippers, like real small ones that you use on your pubes. So I start shaving her arm for her. She's suddenly got way more hair on her arm than usual. No wonder she wanted me to shave it. There's a crazy guy talking to himself in the alley.

Now I'm in my mom's living room. There's some people over and they want to do fireworks in the living room. I say, no way, do it on the deck. So they take it outside and light it, nothing really happens, it's like a sparkler sticking out of what looks like a soup can. Then the sparkler is all done and the can rolls on its side and a baby's head starts coming out of the soup can. WTF. Then there's not even a whole baby that comes out, I look away, and it's a REPLICA of my dog Elle. She's trying to get in the house at a screened in part of a window. She's like scratching underneath it to come in. Real Elle is confused and looking at Replica Elle trying to figure it all out. I feel fearful. Replica Elle gets in and turns into a human person, a guy I used to work with, Ben.

So freaking weird.

Bonnaroo

I have to be at Bonnaroo. I'm walking around outside in a huge open space and there are tons of people. I'm looking for a bathroom. I think I'm with some other girl who is not my wife. I get to a bathroom and it's not like at real Bonnaroo where it's just portapotties. Well, there was a nice actual bathroom there, maybe that's where I was. So I go into a stall and there was something weird about it that I can't remember. Not like there was no toilet paper, because that was a real thing. Man I wish I could remember what was going on in that stall. Anyway, I leave the bathroom and walk out and there are people putting down like... one inch wide by maybe three inch long strips of green... construction paper looking stuff.... all over the dirt ground. Putting it down and raking it all over the ground with rakes. I think it is supposed to grow grass for next year. Feels like the festival is over at this point. I run into a couple of girls and one of them grabs my nose and shakes my face around! I am AGHAST that some stranger would do this to me. I swat her hand away and she says don't you remember me? And she says her name is not like... something... and then I say, yeah! YASMINE! (no idea how I come up with that!) Next thing I know I'm walking around like this museum like exhibition hall that has huge LED displays advertising some new movie that's coming soon. I'm with my Dad and I'm telling him, yeah, this is Bonnaroo, well the post-Bonnaroo exhibit. And I'm looking around, and it's a merch shop. There's a section selling replicas of the belts that wrestlers win. Side note - totally NOT into wrestling. So I walk out of that area and see like a concession stand, and everything's fuzzy and I wake up.

Dump Truck

There's a dump truck with lots of like... grainy gray material in it like sand but bigger particles and someone's stuck in it. I look around for help and see that it must be some bad guys, they're trying to stop me from saving the guy that's trapped in the truck. So I steal a car that was sitting there with the keys in it. It's hard to steer, but I finally get it going. Then I crash it somehow, get out, but before I'm out, I take anything of value that I can find including a pair of steampunk like sunglasses and a pair of like Disney Finding Nemo sunglasses. So weird. I think I catch up to some people as I flee the scene and give away both pairs of sunglasses to people.

Started this a couple days ago and now I don't remember much about it. I feel like a flood of some sort is a dream sign for me, though, it happens pretty frequently.

So on to the real life video game. What I remember is I was trying to open some sort of hatch in the ground. It was huge and had maybe ten locking devices all around the circular perimeter. Kind of like when you step out of the vault for the first time in Fallout 76. After I successfully get all the locks undone, no idea how I did it, I look up and there's a scoreboard showing video of me doing what I just did. Then it rewinds to where I was just prior to this, I think it was a parking garage, and it's showing all these coins like in Super Mario Brothers that I failed to pick up. Well that's great, I didn't even know I was in a video game, didn't see the coins there when I was just there, and so I run back to try to pick them up. Never made it back down there, woke up instead.

I was downtown at the VCU campus and I drove up to an empty parking lot to park the car. I got out of the car and started walking up to a building. There was a fenced in area that I didn't notice until someone called my name. Behind the fence were people and dogs, like it was my doggie daycare that I drop Elle off at a few times a week. I think Elle might have been there but I remember thinking that Ryan is going to pick her up later. I say hello to the people and keep walking.

I end up at a 7-11 and there is a display with Valentine's day candy that's on sale. There are chocolate roses in boxes and other small chocolates. I grab a ton of it and put it up on the counter and check out. I pay for it, then look at the receipt and see that it was $90!! I told the cashier that she didn't discount the candy and she said that it was shift change and she couldn't help me. Also there was a rush of people suddenly standing in line to check out. I'm patient, so I walk around waiting my turn to get my money back. I walk to the back of the store and look down and see that it's wood floors and one of the floor boards is loose. I pick it up and it's all loose and some of the floor turns into little blocks of pine wood and I keep pulling them out and finally I uncover a secret underground stairway. I think "nope, nope, nope! lord knows what's down there!" so I cover everything up, put the floor back and go back to the register where the lady says that the mayor has left to do his mayoring job and I won't be able to get my money back. I guess the mayor owns the 7-11?

I leave 7-11 and somehow I end up at a fast food place trying to get some food, obvi. No idea what was going on in this part of the dream, but then I end up at someone's house and there is weed buds on the floor in front of the couch. I think that's weird and hazardous to any dogs that might be around, but I realize that we're not in any danger of any dogs eating the weed bc there's no dogs where I'm at.

Then my alarm went off and I start thinking about everything I just dreamed and "Ms. New Booty" by Bubba Sparxx came into my head. I told it to go away because I'm trying to concentrate on remembering my dream! Every morning lately I've been waking up with a song in my head! Yesterday it was "Love it if We Made It" by The 1975 and the day before it was "Social Cues" by Cage the Elephant. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS??? So I went back to sleep for a couple minutes and then "Bad Day" by Daniel Powter was in my head!

So for my birthday present, Ryan got me the sleep mask that I've been wanting for the last three or so years. Sleeping with it the first few nights took some getting used to, but I sleep with it every night now.

LAST NIGHT I dreamed that I was clothes shopping with Ryan, but I think we were picking out outfits for someone's kid. We were in a store and we just liked everything in there except ONE thing that had too many ruffles. It was blue and yellow with a pattern of tiny flowers on it. I immediately rejected it. Ryan mentioned that she liked that most of the clothes were not "transitional" clothes, which at the time I took to mean that they were for one specific season, I think all these clothes were warm winter clothes. But now that I think of it, she could have meant that they were specifically gendered clothes, not for people who are deciding that they want to change their gender from one to another. I'm clearly getting hung up on that word "transitional." I have been thinking a lot lately about why in society as a whole we feel the need to separate masculine and feminine things. Like men's vs. women's golf clubs. (We were at Drive Shack a couple of Saturdays ago.) Like, what's the point of calling it a man's golf club? What is the real difference there? It's heavier? Longer? Just call it a long vs. short club then. It's perfectly fine if a shorter man wants to use a shorter, "woman's" club. Or if a tall woman needs to use a "man's" club. Whatever, SOCIETY! I DO WHAT I WANT!

Clothes Shopping

I was in some store talking to the manager who was working. We were talking about how the previous manager just up and quit and she was filling in from another location. I think my mom was there shopping with me, and I ended up finding a sweatshirt... that zipped all the way from the sleeve to the collar and from the bottom hem up to the bottom of the sleeve... Like, that's how you would put the shirt on, unzip like the whole half of the shirt and get into it sideways.

Dogs Getting Along

I have two dogs in my waking life, and they do not get along. We keep them separated all the time. In my dream I had three dogs, and the two that do not get along were put together, accidentally, and the one that doesn't like the other one went at her, but all she did was sniff her, and then they got along. Just fine. It was like a miracle. I woke up so happy.

November 9, 2018

Grocery Store

I was in the grocery store with my mom and dad. I think we were on vacation though. One of them wanted some special chocolate candy that we could only get there, but when I went to look for more because we already had some, there was no more. Then I had an idea that I wanted some double stuff oreos. They had some of those but they also had chocolate dipped ones. I don't think I got any oreos because then I was looking at Italian frozen food. I looked at some pizzas but they weren't what I wanted, so I settled for some baked ziti.

Escape

I don't remember a whole lot that happened last night... makes me sad. My recall blows lately. I couldn't even remember anything from the last few nights at all. But I have to tell myself it's fine, maybe just wasn't meant to be. Better to accept it than be mad about it.

So, all I remember about this first one is that I'm underground, like Lord of the Rings where all the goblins are. There's fires lit everywhere for light and heat. I stumble upon a section of this underground cave where there are a couple of people working on mining zinc. I have no idea how I know it's zinc, it's like in a huge pile on the ground. It's silver, like granular. The pile is probably as tall as I am. There's a guy with a clipboard taking notes.

I woke up because the dog jumped off the bed and then fell back asleep.

Now I'm in my parents' bedroom. My friend Stephanie and her husband Ken are there. I guess they're sleeping over because they're trying to get into the bed. Stephanie runs her hand over the fitted sheet and says that it's rough. Too rough to sleep in. I'm embarrassed because I didn't fix the bed for them. I see the sheets that I had wanted to put on the bed on the nightstand. I start to take the sheets off the bed and Ken says not to worry, it's ok, they'll put the sheets on the bed.

I'm on a balcony of a beach house looking out into the ocean. There's a girl with me; when I woke up I realized who she was, a friend from maybe ten years or more ago named Mona. I told her I wanted to take a romantic walk on the beach when it got darker out. She wasn't having it. I didn't understand why. I went into the house and there are a few people hanging out. I was kind of upset about being rejected, so I went into my bedroom. Mona came in and whispered to me that I can't just ask her to go on a walk - people might have heard us talking. I got a little offended and asked her if she thought that everyone in the house had supersonic hearing - we weren't that loud when we were talking. Then she tells me I'm married. I suppose I didn't realize it? Or maybe in my dream I was in denial? Mona left the room.

I decided fuck this, I'm leaving. I start looking around the room to gather my stuff up and the room is a disaster, there's stuff everywhere. I look around for my things and find a folding chair that's mine, a couple of fishing rods, and a couple of other bags that are long like the folding chair bag, but I don't think there were any chairs in them, they were filled with other things. I set all that stuff in a pile and I look around and find a closet. In the closet is all sorts of boxes of stuffed animals. I see a box full of Pikachu stuffed toys, and then behind that box there are some plaster grecian busts. I felt like I was in the backroom of a store at Disney. I remember having the thought in my dream that Pikachu isn't a Disney character, though.

I get out of the closet and go back into the room where everyone is hanging out and it's a mess, too. I don't know how long we've been there, but I'm mad that it's so messy. It's like a bag of potato chips exploded all over the floor. Then I look around and see a machine for popsicles. It's like a touch screen version of the food-o-matic from Fallout. There are several popsicles to choose from - chocolate, and a couple of different styles of bomb pop. I chose the bomb pop and I was instructed to go outside and get the popsicle out of the machine. I go outside and the lid to the cooler outside was unlocked and I reached in and got a bomb pop out. I unwrapped it and instead of being red white and blue, it was solid teal. It was a very vivid teal color. When I was on my way back inside, I noticed a sign on the door that said that we got 12 free popsicles with our vacation. Now I'm inside and I'm uninterested in the popsicle, so I put it into another freezer that's inside the house. Then I gather up all my stuff and start going out to pack everything in the car.

I walk out and it's dark. I'm going down a long flight of stairs broken up by landings, like I'm walking out the back of a beach house onto the decking that takes you to the oceanfront. I see my in-laws and my nephews hanging out with some people they must have met on the beach. They have these super long fishing rods. I have mine in my hand, but it doesn't have any line. A woman comes up to me and takes my rod and starts to fix it up with some line for me. There's a bonfire, and I remember thinking - I wonder if everyone out here knows what a disaster it is in that house? Are they out here because we kicked them out? Are they staying in another house?

I'm at the mall. I am in the back hallway where all the shipments arrive and where the maintenance workers take the trash. There are doors along the hall for the different stores. I see some people up ahead, and there's an open door for Lucky Jeans. I walk in and start looking around, there are jeans all neatly folded in a wall. Then there's a curtain blocking out half the store. The store is skinny, with maybe room for a table full of clothes and then all the jeans in the wall. More like a boutique. I pull the curtain back to try to go see what's behind it when I hear some other people coming in, being kind of loud and rowdy. The person working at the door lets in a couple of younger girls who have little bunnies in little bunny sized purses. You can see their little bunny heads poking out the top. All I could think was how amazing it would be to carry a bunny around the mall and just pet it all day. I woke up wondering if someone had already invented the bunny purse.

I'm in a hotel hallway in front of what I suspect is my hotel room door. I see the door next to where I was planning on going is ajar. I enter the room, and there is a giant decorated Christmas tree in the center, a bed on either side of it, and behind it, there are risers like from a chorus concert in elementary school. I see Lauren, my ex girlfriend, and she has short red hair like from when we were dating, natural red, not like burgundy or dyed red. She tells me that we have to take down the Christmas tree and put the room back to normal. I walk up to the tree but now instead of decorations, it has things from a craft fair all stuck into it... like yard signs, like "Santa Stop Here" and stuff like that, reindeer, etc. Everything is very sparkly and glittery. I start taking the signs out and placing them in piles according to design. Everything in the tree is grouped into bunches of three or four. I look over to the risers, and they're all covered with white cloth, I guess for decoration, or maybe to make it look like snow. It seems like something is moving underneath it, and I want to check it out, but something tells me it's not a good idea.

- Uncle Mike - I'm standing at the end of the driveway of a giant house. A mansion if you will. My mom and dad are with me. Down the driveway comes my grandfather's friend Mike Ruben. My dad tole me that I had to let him know that he has to bail out of some stock that he's in, keep the $2B, or else he's going to lose it all. So Mike gets to me finally and he's smoking a cigarette (I don't think he even smokes). I bum cigarette from him. I feel like I'm now sitting in a bean bag chair. I think Uncle Mike is in a robe and slippers, but I think it's also very cold out.

- Ashley Seal - Somewhat fragmented - I remember being in a guest house. I also remember looking at an aerial view of a neighborhood and seeing main houses and their guest houses mapped out in a way that would distinguish which guest house went with what main house.