Batch

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.

11-11-2012 -- [This one seems to be all over the place.] I am sitting around playing with my cellular phone, and find myself almost making a call to R.A. Herring by dialing R.A. Herring, before I realize that is probably a really bad idea. Instead, maybe I ought to get BC to do that ... no, probably not.

As I am thinking about this, I find that MetroPCS is going to change their phone plans again in a couple of weeks, adding more features and raising the prices. The nice thing is, their old customers will be grandfathered in at the same old price. Since I was already grandfathered in the last time, this means I will be keeping the same really low price for any number of years, which seems like I am getting a really good deal, so maybe life is good.

Somehow I find myself being given a puppy by Bynner D., but that means I need to move it to a larger, more roomy crate with a roof to protect it from the weather. I find that I seem to be doing this in the Heinz house on Holly Way, and I can't wait to get home for the day and start playing with it and cuddling it. As I get home, I find a strange cross between Betty McBride and Betty Taylor singing Home, I'm Home. I start to belt it out, and do a great job.

I find myself outside the steps of the sort of farmhouse I once visited my grandparents in, and two little babies seem to be falling down the stairs. I manage to catch one, and deflect the other, so it at least doesn't fall as far. Somehow in regards to this, Dale is kind of getting too religious, blaming things on sin or something, when in reality, kids wander, and sometimes do fall down. There is something about considering having a meal at Ohana or perhaps a Chinese restaurant, but the details aren't too clear.

Soon I find there seems to be some sort of construction going on at the house next to the Goodwins, and I am about to ask some police about it, but just before I get the chance, they move a heavy manhole cover, and something large jumps out of it and starts to scurry away. Yuck! Is it a giant roach? No, its a four foot long lizard, which is scary, but much better than an equally large roach! There are also a bunch of spider webs, and I find that Dale is playing music from some soundtracks.

11-10-2012 -- I'm working somewhere (restaurant, I think) right at the shift change, counting out a cash drawer. I somehow have to pay out $40 for a last-minute transaction, and while it is perfectly correct and accurate, it makes me look bad, so I am not happy about it. Don't know why, but at first there are some of the female performers from the Adventurers Club around. Anne is here, as is Susan, and even the small redhead (whose name I have forgotten for some reason.)

The place seems to at least partly be a very large bookstore, though I am not sure where it is. As I wander around, I find myself also running into childhood friends who I now see on Facebook, including David D. and Brian W. I find a large box of gems connected to Runescape that I've taken in, and am keeping track of, and there are hints of Babylon 5 and Captain Sinclair, but nothing detailed enough to note.

The bookstore (or is it a library) is getting bigger and bigger, and as I go through the shelves I am finding lots of great books I am interested in. I know I come across some Mad Libs books, and some of those maze collections I was interested in as a kid. I think I saw a couple of the superhero books I was trying to get from the Anaheim Public Library, and an omnibus collection of PG Wodehouse books that includes Do Butlers Burgle Banks? But even as I am looking through all these great shelves of books, more and more of the bookcases are starting to disappear.

As more and more of the shelves and books are just kind of disappearing, I find myself worrying that the store is going out of business, which would mean much less chance for me to get the books I want. Somehow in the middle of all this, Anne is there, trying to perform as the maid. Susan and 'Red' are also here, and Susan seems to be really trying to build me up. She is talking about what a great friend I am and how I am brave and loyal (and possibly valiant to the end, though I didn't register it at the time). I think she is trying to set me up with somebody.

She is trying to calm my fears of the bookstore closing, figuring since she works there she would know about it if it were really happening, but she can't come up with any reason why so many shelves of books are disappearing. One of us makes some sort of comments about a dream and the redhead or something, and with Anne also in the picture, I find myself worried about absurd stalking charges or something, and decide to change my story slightly by saying "Oops ... wrong dream."

Soon Susan is leading me through almost flea market stalls to reach another big used bookstore, but to get there we pass right through 'Red's stall, which I fear could lead to even more misunderstandings. By this point, I am almost kind of flying around, and while I have kind of known without knowing (if you get what I mean) that I have been dreaming, by this point I am kind of consciously starting to realize it.

I can see the Magic Kingdom and some of its rides a short distance away (probably some of the mountain rides), and since I look around and find nobody good looking in the area, I decide I'll fly to the park to try and find somebody for sex. The problem is, I suddenly can't fly very well, and find myself getting tangled in trees and wires and stuff.

I find myself remembering the dream where I flew across the whole country in a matter of minutes by flying really high in the sky so the nation was spread before me like a map, then just plunging to the ground where I wanted to be at, but I can't seem to do that in this dream. Instead I find myself listening to rock music while arguing with locals who wonder why I don't want to be their best buddy!

[OK, so I've made a decision here. At least occasionally, on days when I haven't had any really great dreams, I'll post an older dream on here from my personal dream journal. Most of these will be my more major Harry Potter dreams, but this one had no Harry Potter that I remember, just mostly sci-fi stuff. Just so there is something more interesting in my dream journal for the day.]

4-23-2012 -- I am out doing courier work (not sure where) when I find Jeff Goodwin has just joined the company, and I am asked to give him a hand with one delivery. We're traveling a little bit on this one, something like 150 or 200 miles, and it seems to be a fairly smooth journey.

We get where we are going, and deliver one package to a construction site that is along the lines of an OPC plant, then Jeff explains they gave him another package to deliver right down the block at a school. He goes to deliver that, while I wait for him before we can go back.

As I am waiting, an attractive young lady comes along on a golf cart and is accusing me of being where I don't belong. I explain the delivery and waiting for Jeff, and she tells me to get on the golf cart, indicating that I can either take a seat, or drive it. I lift her up, take the driver's seat, and sit her in my lap. This doesn't seem to bother her. Then I wrap my arms around her, holding her close, but nothing really improper, and she warns me "Now you're starting to push it." and we drive off a short distance, back to the construction site, which has now changed.

She looks vaguely like Olga from the show 7 Days, and she is here investigating something, trying to figure out what kind of deliveries they are getting here. It seems nothing matches the labels. There are boxes marked food that seem to contain several live cats (which are being referred to as dogs) and stuff like that. The cats are cute, and there are lots of little girls that want to play with them.

She grabs the box I just delivered, which is marked bandages, and is filled with, yes, bandages. First box she has found that is properly marked. As we are checking on things, stuff shifts to where we are actually in some sort of alien camp, trying to learn what we can, but having to avoid drawing notice to ourselves. Seems like kind of a cross between 'They Live,' 'V,' and the Tripod books.

We're wearing sunglasses that are supposed to control what we see, and how we react to things, but one of our people has tampered with them so they only half-work. They affect what we are seeing enough that we can keep from reacting unexpectedly, but they keep us from being controlled. Most of the aliens are mostly human-size, but do not act like humans ... except for a few.

There is a very huge alien that acts a little different, and a short human who acts much the same way, and we discover they are the result of a cross-breeding experiment where the more human offspring are short and the alien ones are roughly Hagrid-sized. But both offspring are too easy going and laid back to be of any use to the aliens. They are free, and tolerated, but will never be a part of the alien civilization.

We're in a small box-like area doing our research, and I still have been keeping an eye out for Jeff's return, but I realize I haven't been paying enough attention, and don't know if he is still at the school or not. A couple of the aliens come by, and the Olga character doesn't see them and talks about something she shouldn't, which has them examining us more closely. One person reacts badly, and they pick him up and find his glasses have been tampered with, and fix them. He is now under their control.

They start picking up a couple of others, and eventually reach for me. I try to dodge, and they tell me to stand still. I don't, but that tells them I am not under their control, and they manage to grab me and pick me up by the hair. To me, the aliens look identical, and they are commenting on how we can't tell them apart while looking at them directly. They take my glasses, and somehow as I glance at them, one is obviously male while the other is female, and I never noticed it before. I comment on it.

With the glasses removed, I have lost all volition. I just don't care what is going on, and am just hanging by my hair. One of them tells me that for fooling them with the fake glasses, he is going to kill me, and he carries me over to a display that is roped off that has a kind of strange, small, square furnace in it, and starts swinging me by my hair, preparing to toss me in it. I finally start to care, and grab him by the hand and fight my way free.

As I struggle with him, my hand lands on the mask he is holding, and I tear it off his face. It turns out on his face under the mask he has a ton of spots, and all the aliens are horribly racist, and hate those with more or less spots then themselves. This is why they wear the masks, to allow them to function. I start to call out about how spotty he is, and the other aliens grab him and start to tear him apart. They forget all about me.

So I run back to the small box-like encampment, and start gathering my people together. It is hard to interest a couple who have already had their glasses fixed, and there is no sign of Jeff. The Olga character has disappeared, and I am trying to find her. There is another young woman, nude, and fairly attractive, who is moaning about how horrible she looks, and I am trying to convince her she looks lovely, her mind is just being messed with by the glasses.

I am looking for a way out, and in an intuitive leap, I think that the strange sort of eye-looking organic things I have seen in a couple of hatches in the floor might be a sort of exit. I can't seem to find any of them now, but I spot a closed hatch on the ground and get the others to help me open it. The space underneath looks organic, with a kind of an alien-green skin surrounding what almost looks like a bright yellow eye area. I gather my nerves and drop myself into the hatch, and the 'eye' opens like a sort of iris, and I fall through into some sort of slime.

I hold my breath and move through a sort of slime-filled underworld, where I can see a few others moving around, before I fall through entirely, and find myself back in the exterior area where I made my original delivery, then I wake up.

10-15-2012 -- When this dream begins (or at least the first part I can remember) I am Harry Potter. I have somehow been captured by somebody who is not one of Voldemort's followers, but is somehow being forced to cooperate with them. Not sure how, but they are sympathetic, and wish they didn't have to lock me up. They lock me in a back bedroom in a house to wait five or ten minutes until Voldy or some of his Death Eaters show up to take me.

I am perfectly happy with this, because as soon as they leave, I open the window, remove the screen, and climb right out of captivity. As soon as I have climbed out the window, I find myself at the First Church of the Nazarene, behind Shamlin Hall, and I plan to escape the area by running along the building, through the church parking lot, and climbing the wall into the (non-existent) area with the apartment complexes I've run into in past dreams involving climbing the church wall.

Problem is, they've found I am missing almost immediately, so I can hear pursuit beginning behind me. Also, the buildings are arranged slightly differently than in real life, and I find myself being forced to go through a door into the kitchen and pass through it on my way, instead of being behind all the buildings. When I get inside, I find some of the Death Eaters meeting with some of the church leaders, hiding who and what they are.

They recognize me, and try to grab me, and one of the bad guys is somebody really small, like a goblin or a house elf, and I grab them and start slamming them around. Since they are hiding who they are, the church folks are kind of shocked, and think that I've gone crazy. As soon as I've killed the being that was trying to grab me, I just sprint out the other door and toward the wall.

I am still being pursued, but they are now a little further behind me, and I find that the person who is closer to me is Tom Drick. He isn't sure what is going on, but he knows me pretty well, and is willing to trust that I have not gone crazy or evil. He sees I am about to climb the fence, and tries to save me some trouble. He points to the back of his house along a sort of alleyway, and tells me the door is unlocked, and just to run through his house, rather than climb fences.

I do so, and the entire location changes. Now instead of behind the church in Buena Park, I am in the streets surrounding Lake Jessamine in Orlando. Somehow there is somebody else with me. I don't know who, and sometimes they are there, sometimes they aren't. Its really weird, and makes it hard to keep track of everything. I know there are still people chasing me, but they are far enough behind me that I don't have to worry about them for now. There are also punks in front of me. And them I do still have to worry about.

The person who is with me, but isn't, guides me to a house and starts to steer me into a side yard and then a back yard. It is supposed to be the Moran house (or perhaps Uncle Jim's or a cross between the two, which is a combination I've dreamed of before) with just a hint of the Broden residence thrown in ... but whichever house it is supposed to be, it isn't. It is just kind of similar.

By this point we've got the hints of Runescape thrown in, because the reason I am running toward this house is because in their back yard they have one of the very few remaining blisterwood trees in the world, and I need to get to the tree and be able to make weapons from it that can actually help kill Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

Unfortunately the punks who have been blocking the way forward have caught up with us as we try to make it into the back yard of this wrong house, and coming out of the house are two girls I knew from high school. I know one was SN, the other might have been MJ, since they often hung out together. I try to talk with the girls to hopefully keep the guys from doing anything, but they aren't that afraid of a couple of young ladies finding out what is going on, so they end up shooting MJ, which of course causes SN to freak out.

In some way, being shot has turned MJ into some sort of animal. Possibly a cat, possibly something more wild, but still shot, and very likely dying. I am not confident that it will work in this situation, with all else that is going on, but I have to do something, so I lay hands on her and start to pray for her. She is not instantly healed, but she does seem to be doing better, and is now not likely to die.

By this point we had reached the back yard of the wrong house, and it is on a sandy beach on the shore of the lake. I take off running down the sand, and manage to get a little distance. A few houses down, I actually reach the Moran house, but the punks are too close to allow me to stop and try to cut any wood, and I don't want to let them find the tree, itself, so I keep running. As I run past, Keffer and Tucker are is the yard, and give me a friendly bark.

I think about the idea of calling Tom Drick on my cell phone and explaining what I was looking for, figuring I can lead off all the pursuit while he goes to the Moran house and cuts a few logs off the blisterwood tree, but the pursuit has gotten too close for me to call without being overheard, so I have no real choice left but to keep running, now heading further and further away from my goal!

Last couple of days, some great, detailed dreams. For several days before then, closer to dream bits. So I'm going to post them here, where it will make for a long post, instead of in a bunch of short threads.

10-11-2012 -- Very short bit where I am meeting Dale at Walt Disney World, with his whole family, including his mom, who has died. Problem is, they are only here for 24 hours, which leads me to asking why he would spend so much money to fly the entire family all the way across the country for a single day?!?

---

10-06-2012 -- I am at May Company, riding up and down on the elevator in the back corner of the store like I often did as a kid. For most of the dream I am not being chased by managers or security, which is what almost always happened in this kind of dream when I used to have them frequently. At one point I am on the third floor, and somehow the doors open when the elevator is on the second floor, and I almost walk forward and fall.

Somehow at some point I time travel, and I end up in Waldenbooks back in the late 70s, but as an adult, not a kid. I am looking over the kids book section and see an entire couple of shelves of Three Investigators hard covers, and I get so much pleasure in seeing them all sitting there available for purchase. I loved that series so much as a kid! Soon I find myself in one of the larger malls somewhere with B & C. It is near closing time, and there are a lot of very lovely ladies around, and some fun stuff might soon be happening, except that B is furious that I might ever consider letting anything happen while C is anywhere in the area.

There was a lot more to this, but the whole point of dream fragments is that I can't remember the rest.

---

10-07-2012 -- There are hints of offering bones on a gilded alter in Runescape, but not much. Soon I find myself in the Hickory house, and there are ladies everywhere. For some reason it seems there are something like 20 ladies staying here, sleeping everywhere. They have really made a mess, and there are clothes everywhere, too. Three or four are staying in Melody's room and I don't think she knows about it, and I am afraid she is going to be furious.

She calls and I answer the phone in her room, and try not to let her know what is happening. Since there are a couple of the ladies talking about the things they can see in her room in the background, it is kind of difficult. Oddly, during the conversation with Melody I find we are discussing something in the Catholic Bible that isn't in the Protestant Bible. It might have been Bel and the Dragon?

Soon I am off the phone, and Mike G. from high school is here, helping me to clear out the ladies and clean things up. I go to take a drink from a soda bottle, and I see there are all kinds of worms and tiny snakes and things in what I have been drinking, and I am horrified. I glance at the bottle again, and it is perfectly fine. Am I loosing my mind? "No," Mike tells me, "you're just feverish and sick." he tries to hose me down to cool off the fever, and in the process, he ends up ruining my clothes.

So I find myself at Pine Castle, and Tom is the music minister, though I don't see him at first. Cheyanne sings a solo, but she is singing really, really low, and doesn't have a mic, so nobody can hear her. She seems to be almost chatting a song, instead of singing it. Kathy and Grace are here, and seem to have been forgiven, and Tom is even commenting on how nicely the hair is growing back on one of them who had cancer. They reveal that one of the brunettes who had been in my house was Cathy Lee Crosby, and I am amazed that I didn't recognize her at all without the blonde hair.

---

10-08-2012 -- I am working in what almost seems to be the Courier Express warehouse, and they seem to have moved again, because there are hundreds of pallets of stuff on the floor and almost nothing on the racks, and I have no idea where things are supposed to go. I have two packages that have just arrived of small computer parts, and I know they are going to go out soon. I put the proper labels on them, but I don't even know where they are putting the just arrived stuff, and have to ask for help.

One of the forklift drivers is going a little too fast, and manages to tip his forklift over on it's side, but he keeps flooring it, and is now tearing deep groves in the concrete floor. He is trying to get enough speed to flip the thing back up, but I think they are going to need to use another forklift to leverage it back up. Not good, and quite a mess.

The whole place is turning into a kind of computer-related warehouse store, and some guy is buying a huge foam-padded helmet for some reason. Some little girl is going on and on about this place on the turnpike where there are a whole bunch of signs for exit 57, and I'm discussing it with her while Minerva Mcgonagall looks on. I think I am Harry Potter, and I find myself wandering around the warehouse with a bunch of other students, half of them from my real life high school.

I end up talking with Steve K., Calvin D., Julie Davie, and Neville Longbottom, who is known by the nickname of The-Other-Boy-Who-Lived. Somehow the area we're walking around seems to be the lowest part of the vampire city in the Runescape Darkmeyer quest.

---

10-04-2012 -- Visiting with Dale and his mom in a hotel room somewhere around the world, right at the end of our trip, preparing to go out and have some fun. Then suddenly we are at the airport, getting ready to fly home. I have been at this airport before in my dreams, several times, but it keeps changing.

They are getting more invasive this time, and they are opening and searching every piece of luggage. I find for some reason I don't really mind. My laptop is in my main suitcase, which for some reason looks like a dish washer rack with all the prongs to hold dishes in place. I don't know why there are two large gallon bottles of urine in there. Amazingly enough, nobody asks about them. I seem to have very little stuff, and actually fold up my big backpack and stick it inside the suitcase.

Suddenly they change our gate, and heading to the other gate we find we have to go through the security screening again. By this time I am getting hot, sweaty and tired, and I comment on how I can't wait to get through security and reach one of the bathrooms with a shower you can rent the use of, which I can remember from one of the previous dreams at this airport. The screener tells me that they got rid of those about two years ago, and I am very disappointed.

10-03-2012 -- [In both dreams tonight I have had the odd situation of a single scene that connects to nothing in the middle of my dream, interrupting the flow of the main dream. I have decided to start making note of these little bits, though I have no idea why they are there. They are like an incredibly short micro dream just plopped in the middle of another dream, willy nilly.]

I've stepped outside at the Hickory house about mid-evening (perhaps 9:30 PM or so) and am walking toward Crescent, though I only get as far as David's house. Somehow there are flashes in the corner of my eye, almost like little gnats buzzing around me, except every once in a while I catch a glimpse of one, and they are tiny, hail-sized, pale little meteors dropping to Earth.

I turn around to head back to my house, but right in front of my house there is a small, short road divider that has never been there before, and is half-invisible that won't allow me to turn into my drive way. (I was walking, but suddenly I am in a vehicle.) When I reach the house next door, I find I can turn here, but it is a rough, home-made turn lane that Conrad has made because he doesn't like the divider in the road. [These are tiny residential streets where there has never been a divider, and one wouldn't fit.]

As I turn in, I glance over at the Goodwin's house, and they are standing on the lawn with a bunch of people. They seem to be having a Christmas party or something. Suddenly my car is gone, and I am in their garage, where I am talking to their flying demon maid. She is slim, slightly attractive, and constantly hovering about a foot off the ground. She wants to give me something, and is trying to find it, but there is a bicycle that is moving along side her and keeping her from reaching the part of the garage she wants to look at. She is starting to get mad at it.

Soon she moves far enough forward that she can see everybody in the front yard and they can see her, so she has to give up on finding whatever it is, and go help with the party. I just walk back to my house and head inside. I am soon sitting at the kitchen table and trying to get something to eat. It is difficult though, as mom is screaming at me. I have no idea why, or what about, but she is going on and on. I've had enough, and walk back outside, hoping to get away from her, but she follows me into the front yard.

I have had enough, and tell her so. I tell her I have enough to deal with right now, including dodging meteorites that seem to be trying to hit me (as I shift to avoid a three inch one that burns a hole in the screen door). She doesn't believe me at first, but several more stones drop around me, including one that is three feet thick, which after I dodge it, it hits the house twice before landing in the flower bed.

I run off next door to the Conrad yard, and I see that the Goodwins' guests are leaving. The first to leave looks exactly like George Jefferson, though I somehow know he is the Reverend Philadelphia Thrower [a decidedly white character from the Orson Scott Card Alvin Maker series]. He's been thrown out, and is very mad about it. Unfortunately, he starts to bubble and dissolve before me. All of the other guests that I can see slowly start to do the same thing. Some of them, about the time they start to smell the fumes from the other dissolving people. Something is wrong here! I hold my breath and run toward the Goodwins'.

Somewhere around here is where I have the brief non-connected scene. I am in a gas station that I am pretty sure I have done a few dream mystery shops in, it the past few months. It is late at night, there is almost no business, and I am trying to find a box of chewy Lemonheads candy, but they seem to be temporarily sold out.

I make my way into the Goodwin's kitchen, where Marv & Barbara are standing around talking about how successful the party was, and snacking on plates of leftover food. I rush in and explain how their guests are all dying and melting away, and I don't think they believe me at first. Marv adds a dollop of sour cream to his plate, and it starts to bubble and hiss, and his face starts going pale and blotchy. I scream out a warning for him to hold his breath, and thankfully he listens to me as he throws away the plate.

I have no idea why this has happened or just what is going on, but they are now telling me I have saved them, and they want to reward me. Somehow I have just taken a pee in a very open, un-private restroom in the front hall, but I really need to take a poop, and for that I need more privacy. I tell them I need no reward, but I could really use a bathroom. They point me to the guest bathroom, and I comment that in the old days when I was here all the time, I would have remembered where it was.

[Don't know why it was a problem remembering ... except for my second bedroom being a pantry in their house, the layout was the exact same as mine. At least until they added on the den.]

I walk to the bathroom, and Jeff has just exited it with the demon maid. She is putting him to bed, but tells me she'll be right back to give me what she wanted to give me. I walk into the bathroom, and oddly enough, the door is a pair of swinging saloon doors that leave the top and bottom open. Still not very private.

The toilet is kind of odd, too. It looks very futuristic, and it turns out there is a pile of feces already in the toilet. It seems to be firing jets of water at it to try and break it up and dissolve it, but it isn't working very well. The entire seat is wet, and soon it splashes a bit and the front of my pants are wet, and I just give up. I'll have to take a dump later!

As I exit the bathroom again, the maid meets up with me and hands me a cupcake cake. I don't know if this is a real life thing or a dream thing, but it is a tray of cupcakes with this odd sort of printed sheet of frosting on top, at least kind of like the frosting on a real cake. Printed on the frosting sheet is the cover of an Irma Bombeck book. [Bombeck is a housewife who wrote a slightly humorous newspaper column about kids and family. She occasionally combined columns together and published books of them.] As I am walking out of the house to walk home, the cake is turning into the actual book.

10-03-2012 -- [Two dreams tonight, and no idea why when last few days have been so bad ... especially since 1st one was clear, detailed, and made internal sense, even though I dreamed it in first 2 hours of sleep, which is usually short, choppy, and impossible to make sense of. Can't fathom why unless imitation apple soda is as good as apple juice before bed, even though no real apple in it. Don't know.]

I'm in my 1st bedroom in the Hickory House. Kevin B and I are sitting around writing stuff, except very unusually, Kevin is not trying to write stories, but is trying to write a love song. Suddenly he bursts into two lines of song, and they flow, they sound quite musical ... he may well be on to something. The lines are something along the lines of 'thinking about you, thinking about you' and I think he may be on his way to a great song. [Didn't note it in the dream, but the fact I woke with the words "I can't live with or without you" running through my mind tells me my mind probably stole the tune.]

It does sound amazingly familiar, and I don't want to encourage him on trying to rewrite an already published song, so I am really trying to think of where I might know the words from, and I find myself thinking of a New York public service thing that was supposed to make New Yorkers think about making a good impression on the tourists or something. I even find myself remembering a red and blue circular sign with the wording on it from a New York trip ... and no reason why that shouldn't work, is there?

In trying to remember this and research it, I have somehow stepped into an office somewhere, and started looking at some books. One of the books I have somehow come across is a digest-sized book of Spider-Man comics, except it is about 6" thick and claims to contain all the cross-over stories or some such thing. I am flipping through it and seeing sections labeled Spider-Man and Superman and others, while the person whose office I am in is talking some sort of business deal on the phone.

When he finishes up, he turns his attention to me, and I am talking about the book, and wondering where he got it. Though nothing is said about how I got there or why I am in his office, he is very friendly and helpful. Somehow as we're talking, I reveal I am out of work and need a job. He is asking about my skills and encouraging me to talk about what I am good at, and I mention my computer skills and on the computer nearly every waking hour, but then admit I don't have a computer science degree because of the math requirements, and he doesn't seem to think that is a bar, though it will require a different angle of attack.

Then he is on the phone again, this time with a woman from Minnesota. Somehow she knows me, and he is wondering if I sent her an application sometime. I am trying to figure out where I know the person from, whether it be something Disney or some sort of balloon gig, or a research letter for a story or song or something connected with church. Whatever the reason, he has come across another person who thinks highly of me, even though I don't know them, which only increases his interest in helping me regarding job.

But suddenly there is a huge snake (about 4" around and perhaps 10-15 feet long) that slithers out of a bag on the floor by his desk and heads in my direction. It seems to pause, lifts itself off the ground like a king cobra preparing to strike and sort of sniffs the air, then drops to the ground and slithers at me remarkably fast. I kind of scream, bolt out of my chair as fast as I can move, and start running out of the office. The snake is right behind me, and I keep screaming and running, but oddly I almost seem to be composing an incident report or something in my mind, calmly, at the same time, noting that if I am running at top speed, the snake falls behind.

I run past an elevator and down a hallway, into a reception area, and the person sitting there is Joy (in charge of hiring for Mears, hired me for my original job there, and will not rehire me now). I am still screaming about the snake, and she is instantly on the phone to animal control or something. She knows it is the guy's pet, and harmless, but she's been wanting a reason to get rid of it, and she is jumping on the opportunity. The guy might have every reason to now hate me, but he understands that I was scared and surprised and doesn't hold it against me. Instead he just gathers up his snake and his stuff and takes it to his car to go home before they can come for the snake. I go with him to the parking lot to continue our conversation.

As we are talking in the parking lot and he opens the door to his car, it turns out he has a lot of other pets, mostly much smaller snakes, and one tiny little dog (was it a dog? It might have been a prairie dog or something odder like that, instead), all running around the area. I am sitting on the ground, and a small snake (perhaps a centimeter around and about 10 inches long) seems to be cuddling against the bottom of my bare foot. While I am slightly uncomfortable with this, it is nothing to being chased around by the huge snake, so I can manage to ignore it. Thing is slightly cute, after all.

We walk past some ladies in the parking lot, and seem to be heading for another building, when for a for seconds the scene changes completely, and it's almost like an entire different dream. I am in an apartment or hotel with Bonnie C., and somehow the key for the door lock is in the door kind of like a locker key. I take the key and somehow make a duplicate of it so I have one to keep. Bonnie is asking me about it, and says I have taken three keys, when I think I have only taken two. I feel in my pockets, and do find three keys, but one is from earlier, and has nothing to do with here. Weird and out of place.

So now we're in a parking lot on the other side of the building, and there is a landscaping guy blowing leaves with a blower. The guy I am with (looks like a thinner version of Christopher Bean) is determined to know if it is a gas blower or an electric blower, because in the dream an electric blower would be much better for the environment. So he unplugs a cord for an instant, and the blower starts to die. He plugs it back in, it starts to blow again, and he has his answer. Meanwhile, I seem to be glancing at a book by Rush Limbaugh about buying wholesale to save money or something odd like that (business, rather than politics.)

As we start to walk to the building again, I oddly find myself humming 'Jolly Holiday' from Mary Poppins, and the guy instantly starts to sing along with me. So we're both walking down the sidewalk singing "Ain't it a glorious day, bright as a morning in May; I feel like I could fly ...." But as we reach the point where the penguins start calling out ladies names, the names he is calling out are completely wrong, and don't fit at all. I am correcting him with names that are still wrong, but much closer in sound and cadence to the correct names. We're laughing, as others are just staring at us.

10-02-2012 -- [Am out of work, broke, and have no money to buy bananas or apple juice or anything else that sometimes helps with recall, so for several days I haven't remembered much from my dreams. But last night I remembered lots of fragments. Most of the stuff is gone, but the bits that still remain a little in my mind are fun, and worth writing down. The first bit is actually from a couple of weeks ago, but hasn't been entered yet, and since I again couldn't remember most of it, just decided to add it to the bits here.]

Am out fishing in streams outside a nice apartment complex. Inside the complex itself, I run into a friend (Joel K.?) who is being seduced by some sort of Femme Fatale. I manage to grab his attention, and we rush off by car to some sort of parking warehouse where I can pick up my own car. As I am getting my car, the femme fatale has again found Joel, and is giving him her car. It has key-less entry, and for some reason she is really enjoying telling him the code is 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... KABOOM! For some reason I find this very funny.

Anyway, Joel has taken to the road in her car, and we're trying to catch his attention. I soon find myself driving down a damaged and under construction freeway on the wrong side of the road with traffic flooding towards me. I manage to drive onto the shoulder and turn around, just to find there is a sports stadium on the other side of the freeway, and somebody is shooting at me from the top of the stands. I manage to escape that, but now have cops chasing me, until I drive to a police station to talk to them about all that has been going on.

---

Incredibly little from this one. Something about watching a police chase on TV that spreads to three screens (ala Impressions de France at EPCOT) before somehow turning live, and I'm the one being chased by cops. Not sure, but think I was in a dark green, big, powerful, older car.

---

Again, mostly missing. At some sort of event taking place at some sort of grade school with little kids, except the physical campus is Brookhurst Junior High. Parts of this refer back to, and directly connect to a dream I once had that involved a job feeding a dog in a mobile home park while the owners were on vacation (or simply working further back in the area). While it was a real dream, I do not know if I ever wrote it down or posted it, and since it was possibly three or four years ago, too many dreams to go through to try and find it.

There are hints of Christmas decorations and perhaps Knott's Berry farm, and I think there is some dancing in the quad. Strange stuff. At one point, I walk into an office. Am thinking about speaking to somebody about something, but it is crowded, busy, and I have forgotten what I want to speak about, anyway. So I just stand around for a couple minutes, then leave.

I soon find myself at home in the Hickory house, where I am heading to my second bedroom to maybe get some sleep. The door is missing to the front hall, but the space is partly blocked by a bookcase so there is no access, but also no privacy. The kitchen door is the one used to access the room. I go in and am going to try to take a nap, but Percy Weasley comes in and says they are worried about me, and he is going to take my blood pressure.

Cheryl (daughter of my landlord) comes in after that, and it turns out Percy is her son. The blood pressure cuff they have seems small and frail, and I think it isn't going to fit on my arm, but it does. Percy gives the bulb very weak squeezes, and there is almost no pressure, and they get a reading of about 140/xx, which isn't too bad for me. But I don't trust it because they pumped it up so little. So I take the thing, and am holding the pump in the hand of the arm which I'm taking the reading from, while trying to hold the stethoscope in the other hand, and start to pump myself up. It is very uncomfortable, and the pressure on my arm is really bad, and it is kind of cramping up.

[Woke to find I had somehow gotten into a position where my arm was jammed between the headboard of my bed and my head in a very tight position, and it had gone completely to sleep in such a way that it was quite painful, and took me about two minutes to get the blood flowing properly again ... likely causing the entire last bit of the dream.]

---

[I wish most of this wasn't gone ... it was great stuff, but I can remember almost none of it.] I am Harry Potter, and I am involved in some sort of war, but it is not a magical war. It seems to be a muggle war, but against alien invaders. Many of the women in this dream are not aliens, but were just kidnapped by them, or affected by them. Though one was certainly an alien, a very light green tint to her skin, and very light fur all over her body, though still attractive.

As we're wandering around the barracks, these women are just appearing, either on the ground, or in mid-air a few feet above the ground, and just dropping. They're all nude, and very horny, and the kinds of things you would kind of expect to happen in such a dream are happening. Frequently.

Thing is, this leads to a very relaxed, happy, and determined unit. We've got a bunch of bright, sexy women supporting us, and we have no desire to lose them, so we become a very productive group of soldiers who are accomplishing a heck of a lot. And who follow none of the regular protocols or procedures. So the higher-ups hate us, but can't get rid of us. It doesn't hurt that the Weasley twins spend a lot of time developing both pranks and weapons for us, the pranks of which they frequently test out on us, to our combined amusement and annoyance.

I'm not sure, but I am pretty sure a lot of this involved chases through mazes of dark, foreboding buildings and collapsing ruins based on the Darkmeyer quests I have been doing in Runescape over the last couple of days.

---

Another dream after a brief awakening, taking place in the same universe as the last one, though now I am just myself, not Harry Potter. It is now several years later, the war is over, and a lot of us involved are just thinking about writing, both fiction and non-fiction about the war.

I run across Radar O'Reilly, who is one of the upper ranks, but still one of the guys. He is nowhere near in charge, of course, but he is pretty high up by this point. He is writing fond reminiscence about attractive alien ladies running around in outfits that *gasp* actually let their belly buttons show. I don't know if he is just ignoring the nudity, or his mind just refused to show him more than belly buttons, but it comes across kind of sweet.

I wander into Kevin B's living room to try and speak to him about a couple of plot ideas, but he is trying to chat up two lovely (no longer nude) aliens, trying to get some action, and tries to distract me by handing me a couple of TV series script treatments he has written up. I just sit them on a stack of such that he is getting ready to send off to try and interest people, and wander off to try and find my own sweet alien ladies.

[Been around a week or more since I last posted. Have had very little dream recall for some reason, and the last couple of dreams I had before this morning were over a week ago and haven't been posted yet. I will try and get that corrected. Also remember a fragment from earlier this morning that I will post below this whole dream.]

09-27-2012 -- I'm working late in the Hickory House on something for some sort of 4 page newspaper supplement, I think, but it is something like 3 or 4 am, and I finally drift off to sleep. I eventually wake up again to find mom sleeping at her desk. I am glancing around at the stuff I have been working on, and I spot a newspaper clipping that mom had clipped for me, and start to read it. Glancing at it, it was some kind of report about a major football game, and yet there was a picture of 'Hulk' Hogan watching it. Somehow, reading the clipping allows me to hear the broadcast of it, and as people start cheering a big touchdown or something, it wakes mom up. She soon heads out the door, going somewhere.

As I glance around the living room, I see a small red scooter like the one I used to ride before I got my first car, and I find myself thinking I might be able to use it to start up the Circle K mystery shops again, though it wouldn't do for the APEC ones because of the tiny gas tank. [Real life jumping in for a second. When my car broke down and a friend gave me another one, I still had to quit all my driving work because of how poor of gas mileage and no A/C, including the mystery shops.]

I wander to the kitchen, looking for something to eat. Oddly, there are several platters of ribs and things sitting half on the stove, half in the refrigerator. The dream just can't seem to make up its mind. I grab a bit of meat, and wander outside. As I grabbed it, it was just a small slice of meat, off the bone. By the time I reached Jeff's house, I find myself laying on the ground underneath the tree in their front yard eating several ribs right off the bone.

His parents come wandering by, and either don't see me, or don't speak to me at first. They are discussing getting a letter from him, and he is mentioning something about how if the Sorting Hat is getting too lonely, it is friendly with me, and they may want to have me visit with it for a bit. This gets me to the point of gently getting their attention and asking if I can ask them something. They agree, and I ask if they always knew they were magical, as I only learned after I grew up. They tell me, yes, they've always been a part of the magical world.

All this has taken place on the front lawn, but as I turn to leave, I am suddenly inside the house exiting an odd front door that points the wrong way compared to real life. I open the front door and almost fall down the large set of front steps, but don't manage to shut the door behind me properly, and an alarm starts to go off. I am trying to climb the steps to finish closing the door when Barbara closes it for me. I start to walk back toward my house, using a sort of accio charm to summon all the rib bones so I don't leave any on their lawn to make them mad at me.

As I am approaching the Hickory House, there are some people in costumes and floats as Ringling Bros is running a parade through town today. They don't usually parade on Hickory because it is such a small street, but they do sometimes stage there. In trying to turn around the animals and floats, they somehow end up circling around up onto the sidewalk and even the yards, where they are weaving through all the cars parked there. [More reminiscent of my current address than Hickory.]

There are lots of people starting to line up, and some local clowns who are entertaining the crowds. I don't know what is being celebrated, but it is something big. There is also stuff here related to the space program, even though this is CA and not FL. [May tie in to the shuttle being shown off in CA within the last week, and Posner posting about it on Facebook.] I see somebody who I am almost sure is Kluts, but I ignore her, and just head for the front door. To get there, I have to excuse my way through some others, and overhear a black clown (but not one I knew from the alley) asking if there was any way to get rid of all the American flag decorations. Not likely, I'm thinking.

I make it in the front door, and find that in the short time I have been gone, mom has decorated the house for Halloween, and I somehow stumble into a balloon decoration, and end up with a balloon hat on my head. I'm just tired, and head straight for my first bedroom, wanting to lay down and sleep. I open the door to find the room is even tinier than I remember, and mom has completely rearranged it, without asking me. I am annoyed at the invasion of privacy, and am considering moving out because of it. Meanwhile, in the process of rearranging, she somehow opened the partition between my room and Melody's, so there is even less privacy. On the other hand, Melody and one of her girlfriends are asleep in her bed.

[This is really starting to muddle a lot of things together. This is obviously the Hickory House, but the curtain-ish partition between two bedrooms was in the Moran house, and it is Rosemary in my current house who has threatened to come in and rearrange the furniture in my room.]

I sit down on my bed and start to get undressed, which seems to make enough noise to start waking people in Melody's room. I find that I can see right into the shower in Melody's room, and two of her girlfriends are taking a shower. At first they seem to be showering in their clothes, but soon it may just be very noticeable tan lines. The shower sections just keep growing, because soon there are at least two showers on the left, the bedroom section of her room, and then three bathtubs on the right. All of this in a small bedroom that really has no baths or showers, those are in the restrooms.

More and more people who have been staying with Melody overnight are starting to shower and bathe, including entire families with parents and kids. It is very weird. Half-dressed women start wandering into my room because for some reason all the shoes are in here. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to undress to take a nap. Soon there is a big, threatening-looking black tough in my room, though he is friendly enough. He explains that they stay here overnight once a year, and have for ages. This surprises me because I have never seen this before. He explains they are visiting for one day from Springfield, CA, and I explain we're originally from CA as well, and start commenting on how much I want to move back there. Nevermind that until this moment, this house was in CA.

---

A fragment from an earlier dream that I can't much remember. I was working on a really small notebook computer (but it folded and had a keyboard, so it wasn't a pad) in some sort of print shop trying to print something important out when suddenly the computer lost everything. The data I was working on, all search links, all clues to everything I was interested in ... it became impossible to get the computer to pull up anything I was interested in. Somehow there were also chases with people firing guns at me or something.

09-14-2012 -- I'm in my room setting up some sort of computer link that will allow me to broadcast some sort of video from my computer to others in the same room. People or making fun of me and insulting me, but I carry on. Soon I find I am not doing this is my room somewhere, but in the street right by Peter Marshall Elementary. In my dream I think I am on La Reina, but actually I am at the corner where Glencrest turns into Nancita.

It is dark, late in the evening, and I am just about to start the 'broadcast' when a young teen comes out of the house next to the school. He is very slim, but athletic, and seems to look like a cross between Kevin B. and Steve K. He has a bit of an attitude, but I ignore it, and peacefully invite him to join us. He is unsure, but does so.

Turns out what I am about to show is a documentary I made about a mean old guy (who turns out to have been the teen's grandpa) who lived in the house until he died. Though everybody in the neighborhood hated him (and he seemed to hate everybody) I tried to get to know him and understand him, and then documented the odd things that happened when he died.

Problem is, Hollywood came in at the same time and made a horror film 'based on a true story' that was truly horrifying. My documentary was very, very different. Because of all the attention Hollywood directed their way, the family just wants to be left alone to forget, but the neighbors remain up in arms. Which is why I am going to broadcast the thing here in the neighborhood on this night, to hopefully help everybody understand and quit freaking out.

As the documentary plays, you see little kids from the neighborhood talking about how mean and crazy and scary the old guy is. I try to approach the teen when he is several years younger, as he is walking from the house to the gate of the school. I am being very gentle as I ask if he will talk to me for a few minutes and answer some questions.

Where Hollywood produced a dark horror film, I recorded a tale of redemption and understand. I got to know the old guy, learned his history and why he got to be so mean, and slowly helped to reason him back to where he was willing to start being a nice guy again. As he was just starting to turn around, though, he died. And either God or an angel came for him, though Hollywood portrayed it as the Devil.

We're about halfway through the film when there is a brilliant flash of light, and a somewhat younger looking version of the old guy appears in the yard and walks into the house. The teen tells me he's got to go, and starts walking toward the house. I tell him we'll pause the film for a minute, and he glares at me. I wasn't trying to rush him, it was just an expression. I tell him we'll pause the film for as long as we need to.

As I stand there, a voice in my head suddenly tells me I need to enter the house, too. I'm kind of nervous, but I fold up my laptop and carry it to the house. I enter the house (where the family is having a family reunion) and kind of shrug my shoulders at the mother, who shrugs back.

There is a brilliant white figure standing there who is God. He looks like a cross between George Burns (hence the title of this dream) and Henry Fonda in Gideon's Trumpet. Most of the family doesn't want me around getting into their business, but they do appreciate that I took the trouble to learn the truth, and then tried to tell others that truth. God makes it clear that he called me in to witness his visit, so they pretty much have to accept me.

He is here to help them heal, and put the whole situation behind them. While he is too mild and 'understanding' to be the real God (who is an awesome and scary presence), he is very impressive. This is his second visit to this house. The first was right after the guy died, when he brought his spirit back to say goodbye. Tonight he is going to bring another spirit back for a few minutes, this time Tom D., who died a week or two ago. [To the best of my knowledge Tom is still alive and well.]

Tom appears before us, and seems to know the people and situations (how that is when he has spent most his life in Florida and this is in California I don't know) but he's calming people and soothing nerves and helping everyone to relax. I am very embarrassed and shy when he reminds me that I can't shut myself away, and I need friends and family, too. Wish they'd leave me out of it, but I am not going to argue with Tom or God, so I just kind of nod.

09-04-12 -- I noted there was something about Railroad Tycoon bits in the dream, but I don't see anything in my notes to say what. I am on Hickory Drive, and am doing weird bird calls down near the end of the block. No idea why, but I am. The ground is shifting under my feet, and for some reason a couple of times birds have flown up my pants, which are very loose. Strange. Very strange.

I end up on the phone talking to Pat Q., and as we talk I find she is there with me and we are grabbing a bite of lunch. We're at some sort of snack stand and Pat has turned into Carolyn S. I'm trying to tell her about the weird bird calling bits, but she doesn't want to listen. I am given a bird whistle, but I can't seem to make it work, because it is slightly torn. I try even harder, starts to work very poorly.

The guy working at the snack stand in kind of insulted, though I try to compliment him on his stand. Carolyn has turned into an unidentified brunette movie star, and we're swimming in a swimming pool. They are trying to close the pool, but she refuses to get out of it. She is starting to come on to me, and wants us both to play with the shark cage that is in the water. As long as she wants me to, I'll swim with her.

The people trying to clear the pool remind me of my cancer [I have never had cancer], tell me she has had it too, and blame me for putting her in danger. They start to drain the pool while we are under the shark cage (which is also partly a giant mat), tipping it this way and that over our heads. They are trying to throw buckets of mud on us or worse, but we mostly manage to avoid them. I am near one guy and gal who are making comments, and I try to be nice to them, but I am still not getting out.

Another one starts to tell me that she hears the movie star left 15 minutes ago, and was being very smarmy about it. I start checking around the pool and find I am now alone, the sole one in trouble, and am starting to get quite ticked at the star. I get out and apologize to the staff for making it take longer than it had to, and leave.

08-22-2012 -- At school? Convention? Work? I'm just not sure. It's kind of a muddle. I stop by the office to check on something, and they're giving me paperwork for all the students who are somehow different in some way that is related to me. Have no idea how, that part doesn't stick.

Anyway, Tammy from Courier Express is working in the office, and she is the one who has been setting this stuff aside for me, but somebody new has just taken over, and I fear they may object. They don't seem to, though. Meanwhile, more records are being printed out for me, but they are out of paper, and I am trying to find some more to keep things going smoothly. Isn't working very well.

I am heading into a hall where we are going to watch some sort of movie, and as I am entering, I run into Carolyn wearing Petey's costume, but not the make-up. I'm hoping I haven't offended her by coming to this movie without here. There are a bunch of other clowns here, too (also in costume, but not make-up) which is why I wonder if it is a convention. The movie turns into some sort of show, and for just a minute or two it turns very political. I think Rush Limbaugh is there, and perhaps Mitt Romney. But the politics vanish very quickly, thankfully.

Soon I exit that building, and soon find myself entering a stadium-like seating area that I've visited in a bunch of dreams. There are people trying to get us seated and organized before whatever we are here for is ready to begin. One of these is an attractive brunette who I am thinking of getting together with, but Steve Koffroth gets there first. Darn!

[Overall, this was a huge, involved dream, but I just couldn't manage to remember much in the way of details, so it makes a pretty small dream post.]