side notes

(Note: My dad is alive and in good health IRL. I have no idea why I would dream that he was dead.)

Last night, I had a dream that my mom and I went to the cemetery where my dad was. Well, it wasn't really a cemetery, it was more of a futuristic-looking room with the walls lined with freezers filled with containers holding the ashes of dead people. Anyway, we came in, and we were greeted by a strange man with three black-and-white cats. He starts explaining to us how he decides where everyone goes, who goes next to who (something to do with English and French people, that's all I remember), etc. There really wasn't much organization to his system.

I get bored of listening to his explanation and decide to go find my dad myself. I end up finding the pieces of some board game and tell my mom. She helped me put the pieces back in the box, which happened to be next to the container that supposedly held my dad's ashes.

Suddenly, my dad was there in the room with us. He said something about not knowing what's going on. I asked him what happened. He told me that, before he "died", he had concluded that he wasn't in Australia and, therefore, must have been on some alien planet. I don't remember if he told us any more about that.

I started to think he might still be alive (as well as also getting the suspicion that he was just acting and this was all staged or something). I checked his pulse and exclaimed, "They're buried you alive!" Then, I woke up.

I can recall four creams from last night! You know, it's weird; my dream recall's been lower than average lately, and it's suddenly shot way up!

I made notes on my iPod about the first dream, saved at 3:48 AM. The notes go as follows:

Neopets
washing hair
scanning, expired

Okay, so I had a dream that I could dress my Neopets up. I had different costumes for them. there was a hippie costume and a prisoner costume. There were more, but I can't remember what they were.

Later - still in the same dream, apparently - I had this thing for scanning barcodes to send a copy of the item onto some website I liked (Neopets, I assume). (I forgot to write this next part down in my regular dream journal (which I'm copying this from), but I tried to scan something - a ketchup bottle, I think - and it told me that that barcode had expired in 2008.)

I'm not sure how "washing hair" is relevant. Oh well. I should've added a little context there, I suppose.

I'm kinda tempted to skip over the second dream because I can hardly remember it and the notes aren't much help. I shouldn't, but... writing three dreams is enough, right?

(I need to explain a couple terms before this next one. A poomsae is a solo technique that has to be memorized and demonstrated at testing. It doesn't really serve much practical purpose aside from practicing good form. It's a bit hard to explain what it looks like, but, for those of you who have watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, it looks kinda like bending, just without the control over the elements, obviously. One-step sparring is a defensive technique; contrary to the name, one-step sparring is not at all like free sparring.)

Okay, on to the third! I was at belt testing (taekwondo). I was surprised it was so soon (it's scheduled for next month IRL). Oh, and my friend Autumn was there for some reason - yes, as a student. Anyway, since testing was so soon, I wasn't prepared for it, as I didn't know my poomsae yet (actually, I do know it in real life, but I was supposed to know a different one in the dream). Luckily, we were given some time to practice first, so I tried to learn it by watching the other orange belt students.

I managed to learn the first three steps in time - step forward and down block (left), step forward and body punch (right), turn around and down block (right).

Soon, it was class time (I'm not sure what happened to testing; perhaps they just forgot about it). However, instead of Master Lim, one of the testing judges was the instructor. I wondered why she was teaching the class, but then I remembered it was Wednesday, which seemed like a reasonable answer at the time.

I decided not to join that class, so I left. Just outside, one of the adult students decided to test me on my one-step sparring. I demonstrated that I knew mine well, using the same techniques as in real life this time.

In my fourth dream last night, I was watching TV at home. It was some weird show about this guy and this girl who went down a rabbit hole - kind of like in Alice in Wonderland, except they hadn't followed a rabbit there. It reminded me of the Deathly Hallows for some reason, even though the only thing it had in common with any of the Harry Potter movies was that one of the main characters was played by Rupert Grint.

Anyway, they fell down the rabbit hole and ended up in this little meadow with a big tree. There was a sudden flashback to their childhood, when they used to play there together. When it cut back to the present, the show decided to break the fourth wall by making a big deal of the fact that the actress playing the girl was in some famous band I'd never heard of (and that her sister was the bassist in her band). Then, she turned into a man. I turned off the TV.

My mom asked if I'd slept okay because she'd heard my bed creaking at around four in the morning. I told her I'd slept find but had woken up in the night and had probably rolled over onto my side while I was half-asleep. I asked for a tuna sandwich for lunch and then woke up.