Batch

01-06-2013 -- [What fragments I had earlier in the night didn't seem worth remembering, but I know there was something about mom being around, and dad being dead, stuff at the Church of the Nazarene, and something about Anne and I being friendly with each other. I don't get why she is in my dreams so much, recently. I haven't seen her in years, haven't thought about her except in my dreams, and have no desire to have anything to do with her anymore. But the last few nights she keeps popping into my dreams.]

I find myself at college, sitting for finals on two classes that I have never once attended through the year. This is my last chance to do something which might be able to salvage my grades. I think one class is a civics class, and the other may be a math class.

Anyway, for the Civics final, I have to write a paper on what I would consider the perfect form of government, if money were no issue. I know what my beliefs are on government, and I think this ought to be easy, but every time I am about to write something, I think of more things to consider.

I am planning on writing something in favor of a Rand-ist, Objectivism pro-business government and system, which is what I believe in, both in my dreams, and in real life, but I also keep coming back to the issue of big corporations with CEOs who make billions while they try to pay their workers minimum wage (or less), and while the system allows this, it still isn't right.

[This could lead to a big argument on how no government system could ever work, because people quite simply suck! Communism is a good system in theory but can't work in practice because of human nature. Some are going to take charge and abuse the system while making others do all the work. Capitalism is the best system, but still the exact same thing happens. Our current liberal system with all the welfare and things fails for the same reasons, and in the same way as communism. All systems fail, and for the same reasons. Humans suck! So ends the soap box.]

By this time, three fourths of the testing period is over, and I still haven't written anything, and the teacher is trying to talk me into just giving up, taking an F for the class, and leaving. But I am still convinced I can write something good enough to salvage my grade. Meanwhile, time keeps passing, and I think I am now in the middle of the testing period for the second class, still trying to write the paper for the first class.

In some odd was that makes no sense, I soon find myself picking up and throwing down either a bust, or a broken bit of statue, again and again. I am kind of doing weight lifting with it, and must have been doing so for a while, because I have really built up my strength and stamina, and have some pretty serious muscles.

Then I find myself in what seems to be a bar, but I am with the choir, and they are doing a concert. I haven't been around for rehearsals, and am not a part of it, but as they start singing, I find it is all Gaither songs, and I can't help but sing along. We're now several songs in, and one has just finished, and somebody is on a bar stool next to me. I think it is Laura S., and she leans to me and very nastily tells me to either quit singing, or get out! Even though I've been singing great because I know all the Gaither songs perfectly. [Don't think I have ever exchanged a cross word with her, no idea where this dream bit came from.]

Without a word, I bend to pick up my backpack, and start to leave. She calls after me that Carl has things to do, so can't give me a ride home, and something about being ready on time on Sunday if I want a ride to church? She didn't think so! And I really don't have a clue why she is upset with me, but I must not have a car, currently, from all she is saying.

I walk out of the church, and it turns out to be the church in Buena Park, and I start to walk home. It's only a couple of miles, not all that far. I pass through Servant's Heart, where they are talking about one of the people now constantly visiting or living at Rosemary's (the tall guy with curly black hair) and they are saying something about how they gave him some money and he went out and got sloshed on it ... never again money for him.

By this point, I have walked through the flower neighborhood down to Dale, and have reached La Palma, and am preparing to jaywalk across to Food King, but the traffic is really heavy. Right about when I am going to bolt across, a car pulls up. It has nothing to do with me, but since I know the person, I stop and say hi. It is Tracey M (also from choir) who is either picking up or dropping off somebody.

Soon I make it across the street, and soon make it home to the Hickory house, where I head into the house and move to my first bedroom, where I plan to go to sleep. I am remembering just a tiny bit about whatever the earlier bit here at the Hickory house was about, and how at least dad wasn't alive in the dream, so it is catching up with reality. Meanwhile, there is a cat in my room, and I am trying to pet it, but it seems to be a stray, so it is skittish, probably has fleas, and it isn't one I know.

[When my dad died, I kept having weird dreams that he came back to help me with my mom's death. Once mom died too, then either parent might show up in my dreams, dead, alive, as a ghost, as having faked their own death, or back in time, before they died, so none of the above applied. Oddly, by the end of this dream I was a little kid, so they would have both been alive, yet I was glad my dreams were catching up enough to remember dad was dead.]

01-02-2013 -- This one seems to start almost as a gas station mystery shop. I am at the pumps at a gas station, getting ready to maybe pump some gas, and also looking around at outside displays, thinking to maybe get some oil. I suddenly realize I brought oil with me, and it is already mine, even as I am pulling it off the display, and am hoping I don't get in trouble for using my own oil, because it sure doesn't look right, the way it is going down.

Soon I stumble into a sort of meeting of an organization that seems to be kind of a get-rich-quick thing. You know ... the various real estate gurus who advertise buying property with no money down and making a fortune. There is a sort of feeling of some kind of scam going on, and though no characters appear, there is a strong feeling of something connected to Psych. The guy leading things seems to be Alexandre O., a pastor I knew from my days at Hosanna Printing.

My cell phone rings, and I am asked to turn it off, as they want no recording of the meeting. My phone quickly turns into a small hand-held cassette recorder, and though I try to turn it off, the wheels keep turning and the tape keeps moving, so I think it is still recording. They don't think it is a problem, though, since that is what everybody else's recorders are doing. (Just how many people are recording this thing when they aren't supposed to?)

It is a longish meeting, and there is a lot going on. It goes on for quite a while, but not in any detail I can put down here, except in a few small scenes. At one point they give a small, meek, slightly Oriental girl (think Amy from Futurama) a lot of money, several thousands of dollars that they collected from the rest of us at the meeting, and she is insisting that it is too much. The guy in charge interrupts her, and demands she tell us her name, and this shy girl who has barely spoken to us, and has identified herself as Amy in a whisper speaks out loud and clear, and gives her full name in a forceful manner. His point? Money has a large effect on a person's self confidence.

They bring a pizza in, and ask me to try the first piece, and I could swear it was the pizza that was made in my last dream (see Harry Potter, Voldemort, and the Pizza). It looks like the pizza from Aldi's, as it did, and is also fairly mangled. At one place, the crust has bubbled up, but instead of just a bubble in the crust, it bulges up and almost looks like a small planet on a column rising up from the crust, and I am really not sure about eating it.

Soon the meeting has been thinning out, and I have been asked to do something to show some sort of talent or skill that I will use to make something of myself. I grab a rather basic and simple guitar and start to try and play it (rather badly, as I have no idea how to play the guitar) and one of the other people takes it away from me. They somehow kind of unfold it into a much larger string instrument like a bull fiddle or something, and start to play amazingly on it.

I am embarrassed, but I start to sing along as they play. I have a lovely voice, and sing really well, but very softly because of my throat. [I have had no voice for about five years.] Soon we have moved away from the hotel we were in for this meeting, and Alexandre has turned into what almost looks like Peter David, and I find myself actually kind of whining about how I'm not actually good enough at anything, as we are trying to cross a really busy street to get back to the hotel.

The street crossing was fairly realistic, except for trying to dodge into too small of gaps in the traffic, when we can see much larger gaps a few seconds away, and would have just waited for them in real life. As we finish running across the street, Peter David has turned into Dale, and he has accidentally run behind a fence which separates the street from the sidewalk, so he has to back-track to get around the fence. I expect to beat him to the hotel because of this, but he still gets there first.

We head inside, and I note in passing that it is a nice hotel, but when I push the button for the elevator, and the doors slide open, they don't open onto an actual elevator, but onto a hallway containing the elevators. Weird. I glance at our room number, which is something like 5641 or some such, and hit the button for floor five, but that's not where we want to go. The rooms are not numbered by floor, but sequentially, and we have to read a sort of chart to figure out which floor our room is on.

12-26-2012 -- [This one is interesting to me mostly because of just how much it is all over the place. It goes anywhere and everywhere ... heck of a lot of different scenes for one little dream. Unfortunately as so often, the first part is mostly gone.]

Starts out with a combination of military stuff and Harry Potter bits. I am Harry Potter, fighting off Voldemort with the help of the military. There are bits of military police, chases, guns, and faking my death, while trying to gather weapons to aid with the fighting. Lots of chasing, and some long, neat scenes that are almost entirely gone, unfortunately. And all taking part in what is turning into Boisseranc Park.

Soon I find we are exiting the park on the center road [in real life, there is only one road into the park, on the 'west' side of the property, but the road we're on is one that doesn't exist about midway between the real road and the handball courts.] As we're exiting, we have to pass through a security check point, and I am hoping the guns we have on our persons are hidden well enough to not trigger all the alarms and things. But we go through without problems.

We're in mom's green car [mom never had a green car, nor have I], just about to pass a building and turn out on the road, and mom points it out and mentions that it is Fred and George's new building, and I just lose it. For the last ten days she has pointed this out each time we drive by it [never mind this is the first time I've dreamed this] and I'm tired of it, so I get really insulting and snippy. Really obnoxious, and I feel kind of bad about it even in the dream.

Soon we're in Smith's Food King, doing some shopping, and after how I blew up, I'm afraid to try and add anything to the shopping cart because I think she is still angry at me ... but I can't resist it when I come across a couple of packages of Sanderson Farms chickens wings at .49 cents a pound, and a BOGO deal. Somebody else is commenting on it to me in an insulting way, but I just tell them it is a really good deal, and I am jumping on it!

Soon I am somewhere, probably in Florida, cooking up the wings, and there is no mom here, anymore. I am now an adult, and mom has turned into an attractive young lady who is either a partner or girlfriend. I am deep frying the wings in a fryer, and our boss comes by and is making a lot of comments about not over-cooking the chicken, so I cook it a lot less than I normally would. When I take them out of the fryer, the gal with me carries them over to our bosses car, which seems to be on a stakeout. We soon see them cooking the wings in the car, and griping about their joke backfiring. It seems they told us to cook them less as a joke, not realizing we were going to give the wings to them.

Soon we're walking along a chain-link fence, talking about the national economy, job market, politics, and how it all affects local crime, as I find myself approaching a kind of strip mall with a lot of storefronts in it, and a slight curve to the property. I am walking toward one that seems to be a Doctors office on the side, almost at closing time. There seem to be three other people walking up at the same time, and I am hoping that isn't going to mean I need to wait forever.

Thankfully the wait isn't too long, and I soon find myself buying either some real estate, or a cell phone, I'm not really sure which. They have a long contract which I am going through and reading, and there are several lines where I need to sign, some where I need to initial, and some where I need to enter in a property address or cellular number or something. But I am being given the contract and am supposed to take it home to fill in the last bit, before turning it in.

Soon I find myself at a cross between a restaurant and a nightclub being taught to sing by Mark and Luralee, in a setting that is slightly Karaoke-like, but really more profession. They are singing parts of songs, and expecting me to take over for other parts, and when I reach just the right point, I am belting out the last few lines as well, and as powerfully as Luralee used to do at Preston's. I am amazed, and figure I must have gotten over my voice problem! [Actually, I don't think Luralee sang that one. I think that one was one that Claudia did, later.]