Batch

12-27-2013 -- The first thing I can remember of this one, I am driving down a highway, possibly with Ron and Mary. We're in separate cars, but driving right next to each other, and though it feels like we're driving down the middle of the state, we're also approaching the whole Palm Beach / Fort Lauderdale area, which may mean we were driving down the turnpike, though we may have eventually changed to I-95. I think I am delivering a package down to Lauderdale.

As we continue driving along (what is now looking like a fairly busy surface street), we are suddenly facing a car heading straight at us on the wrong side of the street. We swerve around it, just to find ourselves viewing a couple more cars crashing into each other. Then another car on the wrong side of the road, followed by two or three more cars in a wreck, then two or three more going the wrong way. There are police everywhere, and we can't figure out exactly what is happening, though it very well may be cars exiting a freeway the wrong way to avoid a big pile-up or something. All I know is they are creating an even bigger mess out here.

Suddenly there is a greenish station wagon like the one I used to drive flying through the air, turning end over end as it crashes to the ground, followed by a line of 10 or 12 cars going the wrong way at high speed, sending everybody insane. As we swerve every which way to avoid them all, Ron and I look across at each other, and can see we agree. We swerve into a parking lot, and park our cars next to each other, both pulling forward to the second space in the row we're in. We climb out of our cars, and are now walking forward, trying to find out what is going on. I find I was driving a compact red sedan.

As we walk back toward the street, the cars continue in their crazy patterns, and we spot one guy running away from the cars on the wrong side of the road, but unfortunately he runs right in front of a diesel truck and it is horribly messy. The shoulder we are walking on sort of drifts away from the road for a few yards, and suddenly we find ourselves in almost a sort of concrete tunnel, looking up at a short ladder (four to five feet tall) that lets us climb up to a gate that we can open to step back on to the street. Ron and Mary decide they have had enough, and just turn around to walk back to the car, while I decide to continue on. Because of my size and shape, I am having a difficult time climbing the ladder, and first have to put down the painting that I seem to be carrying.

I hand it to somebody standing there, manage to climb up, and then ask him to hand it back to me. He refuses, instead asking me why I think I should go out there. I try to explain it is OK, I have a professional drivers license, and he demands to know exactly what kind of license, where was it issued, and more. I say after I get off the ladder, I will show him the license. He asks more and more questions, getting ruder all the time, and I decide I am not showing him anything. He has no right to know, anyway. I demand he hands the painting to me, and he complies with poor grace. I then point to a large bottle of multi-vitamins that also belongs to me, and is sitting on the ground, and ask him to hand me that, as well, and he refuses. He is being a real ass, and I am severely ticked off, and I finally pronounce a nasty curse against him in the name of Jesus, and stalk off, though a few seconds later I am feeling more and more bad about it.

I find myself thinking, and realize that God is not bound by space and time, and start to realize that, though unlikely, it is possible that all these accidents and car wrecks could possibly have been caused by my curse against the guy. I am thinking of trying to get to the Cheeburger Cheeburger location in Boca or Lauderdale, since they closed the one in Orlando, but as I continue walking along, I realize I am not going to get very far walking barefoot through all this wreckage, and decide I better turn around and get back to my car. I am going to need it to get very far.

As I am walking back, I find a very long Doctor Who-style scarf that I know is mine, though it is closer to the colors of the one Tom Baker wore than either of the ones I made. As I make it back to the strange little concrete tunnel and the ladder, I find everybody has left, and as I climb back down I find my bottle of vitamins, but the nasty guy opened it and pooped in it, so that bottle is now wasted. Ick! I continue back to the spot where Ron and I had parked, just to find both cars are missing. I expected Ron and Mary would have driven off, but I am wondering where my car is, and am annoyed to fear that my car has been stolen yet again. But I notice a nearby police station in the parking lot, and wonder if it may have just been improperly towed away. I walk inside, gingerly stepping over all the broken glass from the accident in my bare feet. Inside the police station, I find a long line, including a lot of very tough looking guys, including a big black guy who threatens to kill me if I don't wait my turn in the line. While I am griping, he tells me to shut up as he doubts I have any problems worth complaining about, and I suddenly tear into him about how often (in my dreams) my car gets stolen, and how sick I am of it!

01-23-2013 -- I'm on some sort of church camping trip with Mike Sullins and the gang. I'm not sure, but I think I was an adult for the whole dream, kind of helping to oversee the trip, and it has been an OK trip, but not fabulous. We're loading up the bus to head back to the church, and I find myself trying to half claim one of the front seats. I am given the front bench on the passenger side, which is fine. Some little kid who may be the pastor's son is given the spot just under the bar that I used to love as a kid, but it doesn't bother me as I couldn't fit there as an adult, anyway.

Mike is driving, and the trip home from the usual camp (from dreams, didn't go camping with this church in real life) seems very short, only taking around 45 minutes, when it always seemed the trip used to take 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Soon we're pulling into the church parking lot, and starting to unload the bus, while waiting for parents to come and pick their kids up. I'm probably waiting for everybody else to be picked up, before I get a ride home on the bus.

Mike is going on and all about how good the Boy Scouts are, and how great the trip was, and stuff like that. He seems to be dressed in a scout master uniform, and the pastor's son is in a scout uniform. But something is said that seems to tick the kid off, and he suddenly stalks out of the room, down the driveway, and out to curb on Page Avenue.

He starts angrily calling for his dad, the pastor, who is standing about 20 feet away, but doesn't seem to hear him. This amazes me since I am much further away, and inside the building, but I can hear him just fine. After three loud calls, his father hears him, and walks over and picks him up. He talks to him and comforts him a bit, then puts him back in the room where I am waiting around.

The boy is maybe four or five, and he starts playing with a little girl who is maybe six or seven. Soon they're wrestling a bit, and there seem to be hints of Indian Wrestling in their play, but other forms of wrestling, as well. Somehow it overflows, and I am something of an innocent bystander, as I soon find myself lying on the ground, half-restrained, with them undoing my pants for some reason.

Right at that moment, the assistant pastor busts in, and starts ranting and raving, and wants to know what the Sam Hill is going on! I think he feels something wrong, sexually, is going on, as they are undoing my pants, and I try to defend myself by saying maybe I should have put a stop to things sooner, but I wouldn't have let it go any further if they had tried to pull down my pants, but he seems to blame the kids and feels they are being very evil, and I am only being foolish.

"What if they'd used super glue on you?" He demands. "It could have taken us hours to free you. Or even days if we couldn't get the proper solvent!" He keeps ranting on and on about how bad the kids were, and how could I have allowed this, and it is the story oh Jonah and the Whale all over again! I don't see it as the same thing at all. I don't see how that story ties in, and I don't see any of it as all that bad, but he just won't listen at all.

Finally I have had enough, and like the kid before me, I stalk out of the the room, step over a tiny fence (maybe a foot or a foot and a half tall, more decorative than anything else), and to the curb on Page Avenue, just like the pastor's son, before me. The assistant pastor is calling after me, trying to stop me from going, and not getting why I was so upset with him, but I won't listen, and I keep on my way. I walk down Page to Stanton, then walk under the freeway overpass, before making my way down Calendula and into the flower tract.

I don't know what the big deal is ... I don't agree with the guy, but its not like I don't still plan to attend church next week, or anything. But strange things are happening. People start trying to push me or grab me. The area is turning into a cross between a sort of an old age home and an apartment complex, though the entire neighborhood I am walking through is nothing but single family homes. But somehow I find myself in the apartment complexes behind the church, instead of in the neighborhood I was walking through. [The apartment complexes that aren't there in real life, but have been in lots of dreams.]

In past dreams these apartment complexes have had fun things and nightmare-style things happen in them. In this dream, they are bad things. I find myself arguing religion and politics with people, while going through unpleasant chase bits that seem to go on forever (though I think they really are pretty short.) At one point I am being grabbed an restrained by nurses because they don't agree with my principles, but soon they are turning into attractive-but-old-fashioned school teachers who have a sort of Stepford Wives sort of vibe to them.

I burst out of one apartment complex into a sort of hilly area, where I find myself trying to cross the hills while avoiding dangerous flaming horses. Since they are in groups of four, they just might be the four horses of the apocalypse. Strange and spooky. At first I try to hide from them, but then I find four of them right next to me in a wide open space, so all I can do is ignore them and hope they ignore me, or if they don't, hope I'm powerful enough to survive them.

The entire time, both political and spiritual arguments continue to go on in my head. I manage to get out of the hills and into another of the apartment complexes, but I'm still being chased by the old-fashioned brunettes, who are trying to wrestle me to the ground and restrain me. I don't understand why I find myself saying it, since it still seems to me that he was the nut, and the one in the wrong, but I suddenly speak out loud and say "Fine! I'll apologize to the assistant pastor."

A gap appears in the brick-wall corridor I am in, and I stumble into the lot of the construction supply company directly behind the church, free from all the people chasing me. "On Sunday, after church," I mutter to myself. 50 pound bags of cement start dropping on me. "OK, OK, right now." The cement stops dropping on me, and I claim over the brick wall into the church parking lot.

I approach one of the elders of the church and ask where the assistant pastor is, and he says he left about 15 minutes ago. He looks at me and says something like "You don't look like a process server, but I'm still not going to tell you where he lives or give you his phone number." I end up back in the same room, waiting (perhaps for a day or two) until the assistant pastor shows up again. "Really, God?!?" I kind of announce to the sky.

"Hey Dude! Don't disrespect the Lord!" I find a slightly angry hippie kind of shushing me. "Yeah? Let me tell you a story!" And I proceed to relate the entire dream to him, while he looks more and more flabbergasted as I go on. There are several others here, who also look more and more shocked. As I finish my tale, I look at them, all staring at me in amazement, and ask "Don't tell me the same thing happened to all of you?"

"Oh no, man," the hippie says. "Nothing like that happened to me. Not in the specifics. But in the overall, yeah, man. We're all here to apologize to the assistant pastor because we wouldn't listen to him, man! It's weird!"

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!