dream fragment

In which I fail to stay lucid...

I'm cleaing out my closet and I come across a box of books. I open the first book I see and try to read a page. The words are all real words and they follow a basic sense of English grammar, but they don't make any sense. It said something very similar (maybe not exactly) to this:

The numerous trawling sofas affix zealots in the blind.

I leaned back, touched by the poetry of the words. How pretty "affix zealots in the blind" sounds! Then I started to wonder at the meaning and realized that I didn't actually understand the line. I looked at it again, but this time it said (again, close but not exactly):

Battered and flourescent utilities of ionic compounds lull banners.

I thought that maybe they were talking about the properties of ionic compounds and the banners of zealots. It didn't seem as pretty this time, and I was aware that the words had changed. Some of the phrases kept repeating over and over again in my mind, especially the "affix zealots in the blind" part and the "utilities of ionic compounds" part. I kept hearing them, loud, and finally realized that it wasn't my poor reading skills- these words simply did not make sense.

I realized I was dreaming. I got very excited and stood up to do a reality check. Instead of pinching my nose or rubbing my hands (which is really what I'm supposed to do), I walked over to my window and opened the blinds. I could see my bird feeders and bird bath, but the image was frozen. All the birds were still frolicking and eating, but they were frozen as if in a picture. There was a hawk frozen in mid-flight.

I'm dreaming! I thought excitedly. Then I woke up.

A bunch of fragments...

In which a man in a top hat is conducting Christmas carols...

A man wearing a tattered burgundy top hat is conducting a choir as they sing Christmas carols. He holds the conductor's stick in his hands, and ruffled cuffs stick out of his coat sleeves.

In which Bob Dylan is cooking pasta...

I really don't know what is up with Bob Dylan popping up in my dreams all the time lately. It's weird. The only thing I can figure is that it happened once, I wrote about it here and told people about it, so it was on my mind enough that it happened again, so I wrote about it again, it's on my mind more, etc...

Bob Dylan is in my kitchen making pasta. I ask him what he's doing, and he ignores me and keeps cooking. He has a pasta maker that looks like the plastic toy meat grinders that kids use with their Play Dough. I ask him how he got into the house, and he tells me to stop asking questions and learn something. "You never know, you may have to cook for 20 guys someday," he tells me.

In which I'm teaching a college class...

I'm teaching a college class, but the room is the same as where I used to teach 8th grade. The students are all sitting in desks arranged just like they were then. I'm calling roll, and I realize that one of the young women is my former student MG. She's looking very healthy and pretty, and I'm actually happy to see her. I ask her if she remembers me and she sasses at me and sucks her lips. I laugh and tell her that I'm glad to see that she has graduated high school and gone on to college and that it looks like she hasn't lost any of her attitude. She responds sarcastically and says that she's happy to see that I still haven't learned to fix my hair.

I walk over to her desk and tell her that I was at a carnival last week and thought I saw her. I called "Patricia!" but as that is not her name, she did not turn around. We laughed hysterically at this. Somehow, this was a very funny joke. I told her that I'm going to call her "Patricia" all semester. She got serious and sassy again and said, "OK, Ms. B- it was funny the first time, but now you're just beating a dead horse."

(I have no idea what the carnival or the Patricia thing is about. Dream nonsense.)

Then I started to teach the class, but the students kept throwing paper balls across the room at each other. I was really annoyed because they were adults and I couldn't understand why they were acting like children. I started to feel really stressed about the fact that I'd started the semester off on the wrong foot. Why did I try to jump right into a lesson? I should've spent the day going over classroom routines and my discipline system. I told them that we were going to start over and that I'd explain about detention and time out, etc. The students responded that this was college and they were adults and that I couldn't punish them. I said that if they were adults and this is college, that I'd simply throw them out if they kept disrupting the class. They laughed, and I kept thinking how strange it was that college kids were acting like this.

Then I realized that I was dreaming and that I'd already quit teaching and that I didn't have to worry about any obnoxious students ever again. I simply walked out the room and into another dream but I don't remember it.

After several days of not remembering my dreams, I had an active dreaming night last night. Unfortunately, I had to rush out the door this morning and did not have time to write them down or tell my husband about them which makes them harder to recall. Instead, I lay in bed an extra five minutes or so and recounted them in my head so that I could record them tonight. There were four dreams that I seemed to remember vividly this morning, but only one has stuck with me through the day- and I don't remember it as well now as I did this morning. That's how it goes! I really need to just get back to writing down key words. But this one dream was really weird so it is worth recording even though I don't remember it all.

In which I travel through the woods and meet an authoritarian blob who tells me I'm dreaming but I stay non-lucid anyway...

I'm in a dark, thick and slightly scary forest. It's a fairy tale type of forest, like in Hansel and Gretel, where the trees are so dense that they don't let in much light. The ground is moss-covered dirt, tangled with roots. I'm not me, but a dark haired woman with bobbed hair. An atheletic woman with curly shoulder-length hair is with me. I have to dig a box out of the hard ground.

After a lot of labour, I pull up a soiled old red box about the size of a shoe box. I open the box and there are some objects inside that aren't very valuable, but I can't remember what they were. The athletic woman and I are happy because these objects are necessary for us to enter the clearing.

We come out of the forest and into a clearing. We are standing in front of a cabin or a house that has a large, covered side patio with a few tables and chairs. There are a few people sitting out on the patio. The "man" who owns the house comes out. He is sort of a Jabba-The-Hut type character though I can't remember exactly if he was a man or another kind of creature. He rules over this area, and we are allowed to enter since we have these objects. He is an authority figure and we are under his control, but we are somehow grateful to him.

We are in the woods again and now having the objects from the box is not enough. To enter the house, we have to also agree to be naked. I strip off my clothes and am walking through the woods naked. I get up to the house and the authoritarian blobby man tells me that the objects are enough and that I don't have to be naked. I can put my clothes back on.

I argue with him and tell him that he required us to come naked or else we'd have to stay in the woods. He argues back and says that I'm trying to change the course of the dream by inserting this naked requirement into it when really we are welcome to enter the house anytime. At that point, I notice that I am me again, not the bobbed haired lady. The bobbed haired lady is sitting on the patio with the curly-haried lady. I tell the bobbed-haired lady that I was dreaming that I was her. She told me that I'd been there the whole time, but that I didn't realize I was dreaming.

All of this makes sense to me in my dream, and I even think about how I need to remember to write this down in the morning. But I never really become lucid. For example, I stayed naked even though everyone else had clothes on. I sat at the patio with the rest of them feeling insecure and embarrassed. The authoritarian blob guy seemed really irritated with me. The two ladies were nice, but disinterested.

This is the closest I've come to a lucid dream in a long time, but I haven't actually ever tried to have one. It was such a strange dream that I think I might actively try to induce a lucid dream when I get a chance.

In which silent movie stars make an Apple-type ad...

Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino are standing side by side in a white room like the two guys in the Mac vs PC ads. Each is arguing the merits of his product over the other's, but I can't remember what they were pitching.

In which I'm working at my old job...

I'm back at the job that I quit in September. I'm sitting behind a computer in E's classroom reading a non-work related blog. The students are coming in, and E says that I need to walk around and assist them with their work. I feel a little guilty that I had to be redirected. I know better than to waste time at work like that. But when I get up to help the kids, I remember the conflict I had with them and I'm embarrassed to be around them. I start to think about how much I hate the job, and I remember that I've already quit. I ask E why I'm there, and she tells me that I'm dreaming. I become lucid and decide that if I'm dreaming, I can just leave and go somewhere else. But when I walk out the door of the classroom, the dream ends.

In which my uncle and I carve up a dead cow...

I'm at my grandmother's house and my uncle and I are in the kitchen carving up a dead cow for dinner. It's really messy and we are wearing butcher's clothes, including the long, heavy black plastic apron.

In which there is a ghost in my great-grandmother's house...

I'm at my great-grandmother's house, though in the dream she is already dead. I'm in her living room sleeping on the couch, and my uncle is in the armchair nearby, reading. (I think this dream is a continuation of the previous one about the cow carcass though we are at my great-grandmother's house and not my grandma's.) My brother comes into the living room and wakes me up. He tells us that there is a ghost in the back of the house.

We go to the back bedroom which used to be my great-grandmother's bedroom. My brother and uncle ask me if I remember a ghost ever haunting the house before. They want my opinion on the matter because when I was a child, they tell me, I was a spirit-medium and frequently communicated with ghosts. (This is not true in real life, by the way, but in the dream I accepted it as true.) I told them that I did sense a presence of a hostile male ghost.

The bed is pushed up against the middle of the wall of the square room. The wall containing the door to the hall is on the left of the bed. The wall containing two windows facing the street is on the right. The wall containing the closet door is directly in front of the bed, and my great-grandfather's hospital bed is in front of it. On the closet door are stickers of drumming soldiers, partially faded with time. The way the room is set up is accurate to real life, but the stickers are actually in the guest room in real life- not in my great- grandmother's bedroom. I point them out to my uncle and brother.

"Those stickers shouldn't be here," I tell them. "They belong in the front bedroom." We go into the front bedroom to see if the stickers are where they should be, but they are not. I explain that I have only recently found out that our elder uncle B did not put the stickers there. They were there when our great-grandmother bought the house and belonged to the boy who lived here before. I told them that I think that boy's ghost is haunting the house.

They ask me if I think it could be the ghost of either of our great-grandparents, both of whom died in that house. I tell them that this is not possible because they are at peace, not wandering the earth like ghosts. I tell them that I remember feeling the ghost's presence before. That boy is now an angry young man. I explain that this is why my great-grandmother's secret bathroom has been locked up for years. He killed himself in there.

My uncle and my brother seem surprised that I know about a secret bathroom. They ask where it is, and I show them a panel on the wall which can be removed to reveal a door. We open the door and find a tiny little bathroom, so small that a large person could not fit inside. It's a scary place, and we immediately close the door and replace the panel.

Afterwards, I walk over to the two windows and turn the blinds up so that people outside cannot see in. I explain that this will prevent the ghost from entering the house again. Then I notice that there are American flags hung up on the wall between the windows. The flags are mirror image to the way they should be.

"I guess Grandmother couldn't tell that they were backwards," my uncle explains.

Two nights- don't remember any dreams except one tiny fragment. We are holidaying out of town- different eat and sleep patterns so that's probably why I don't remember anything.

In which I cook Thanksgiving dinner...

I'm rolling out dough for a pie. When I get a nice, flat layer, I pull out a basket of tin cookie cutters. They are shaped like zoo animals, and I cut the pie dough up into animal shapes.

I had a little to drink last night (in real life) and therefore my dream recall was poor. A bunch of fragments.

In which I build a house with slides instead of stairs...

I'm building a cabin on our family land in Louisiana. I add a second story loft which has two doors. One leads to a second story patio and the other leads to a slide that exits on the ground level. I forget to add stairs, so the only way to enter the loft is to climb up the slide.

In which I show up for a family dinner half-naked...

I'm at my in-laws house in their guest bedroom. My mother-in-law calls me to dinner. I'm wearing only a pair of pajama pants and no shirt. I'm comfortable so I casually decide not to put on a shirt. I walk into the dining room and sit down at the table, naked from the waist up. My in-laws look at me with shock. I realize I've made a very big mistake and that there is no way to take it back. From now on, they will think I'm crazy.

In which Bob Dylan babysits my forgotten child...

I’m walking around downtown when I suddenly remember that I’ve had a baby and I don’t know where it is. I can’t remember the last time I’d seen it. There begins a long and boring stress dream in which I first must find some quarters then find a payphone, then remember phone numbers to call various friends and family members. Then I had trouble reading the numbers on the phone and my fingers were like Jello and couldn’t press the buttons. I called my mom and a few friends and no one had any idea that I’d had a baby.

I decide to walk home and of course my legs will not work properly. I spend a lot of time dragging myself down sidewalks and trying to run. Eventually, I get to my house. I live in a small cottage with a picket fence around an overgrown garden. There are weeds and vines growing over the walkway and the patio. As I step onto the front porch, I can hear a baby crying through the screened door.

I enter a dark living room with the curtains drawn. In the corner, a ray of light shines in from a crack in the wall to reveal dust particles in the air and an old, pencil-mustached Bob Dylan sitting in a kitchen chair in his performance jacket and cowboy hat with one steel-toed boot rocking a crib in which a baby cries. He looks at me disapprovingly. I apologize for forgetting about my child. Bob Dylan shrugs his shoulders and leaves without saying a word.

I had several dreams last night but I can't remember any of them except these two short ones. This is frustrating because I remember waking up from one and thinking that I needed to remember it. Then it was lost.

In which I'm rescued from a desert isle but my mom isn't happy to see me...

I'm stranded on an isolated jungle island with my dog Lucy and my mother's dog Mott. The first year is the hardest but eventually I build a straw hut and learn to fish and hunt. Lucy and Mott start spending more and more time with a pack of wild dogs. By the second year they come to visit me rarely, and by the third they've gone completely wild. I give up any hope of being rescued and succumb to loneliness. I sit down to die, staring out into the blue sea.

Suddenly, a helicopter drops a rope ladder right in front of my face. They've come to rescue me and fly me back to civilization. First I search the island looking for Mott and Lucy. I see them in the distance running happily with their dog pack. I call to them, but they do not come. I return to the helicopter and climb the ladder, leaving them behind forever.

At home, my husband and parents rush to embrace me. Television reporters put cameras in my face and ask me to talk about my ordeal. My mom asks how the dogs died. I explain that they didn't die. They are still alive and happy, but they've gone wild. Suddenly her face changes. They're alive and you left them on that island? She looks at me accusingly. I try to explain. I called to them, but they did not come. They aren't pets anymore. They are wild dogs. But she won't have it. She shouts that she never wants to see me again and runs off crying.

In which there is a toilet connected to my bed...

I dream that our bed (which is pushed up against a window) is connected to an Asian style squat toilet in the window. I need to go to the bathroom, so I get up and squat at the window. Theoretically, the waste will then flush out into the yard. I'm having trouble balancing myself over the toilet, and I fall back into the bed. The falling sensation wakes me up and I realize my bladder really is full. Luckily, I wake up enough that I go to the real bathroom.

Three short dreams that I remember, but I'm sure I had an active dreaming night. I did not sleep well and woke up many times feeling like I'd been dreaming.

In which I discuss politics with my step-mother...

I'm in a swimming pool with my step-mother having a political debate. It involves discussion of the relative importance of environmental concerns and economic growth. The discussion is too boring to relate here.


In which my cousin grows an afro...

Cousin C moved to Colorado. I went there to visit. When he answered the door, I saw that he'd decided to grow his hair long, only since his hair is very curly, it grew into a bushy afro.

"You look like Jimi Hendrix," I tell him.

"It keeps my brains warm in these cold winters," he answers.


In which I babysit K's children (one of whom is an elf), reveal that I'm an action star, and get hassled by the man...

K goes on vacation and asks me to look after her kids. G is a two year old boy with a big vocabulary and E is a tiny elf girl. I loaded them up in my car and we headed to my late Grandma B's house in Dallas. Along the way, we stopped to visit a water park with lots of slides and wave pools. I turned the kids loose and started chatting with a man. G came up to ask a question, and this man suddenly snatched us up and threw the two of us in the back of his van where we spent a long stressful time riding around the baffllingly crowded and complicated Dallas freeways. All the while I'm asking him to please let me call the water park people to gather up E since a tiny elf could easily get lost if no one is watching for her.

Eventually we manage to bonk the guy over the head with a lead pipe and gain control of the van because secretly I'm an action movie star. I drove us to the airport where we planned to fly back to the waterpark but naturally we were detained by immigration officials who wanted proof of my citizenship. I begged them to call the waterpark so that an employee would look for E, but they also refused. I was worried that the little elf had gotten distracted by now and flown away.

Hours later, I'd finally convinced the immigration officials that I am a citizen, but the customs people were still harassing us. G asked them if we were being "customized" and everyone thought this was very witty and cute so that they let us go. We hopped back in the van and rushed to the waterpark where I was relieved to find E sleeping in a giant red flower, Thumbelina-like. We plucked her up without disturbing her and the stress dream had a very happy, though psychedelic ending.

Three dreams last night- one long and vivid, one stress dream, and one short funny dream about my dog. Actually, my dog appears in all three dreams.

In which a rich elderly man is frustrated by his unrequited love for Cameron Diaz...

I'm not actually in this first dream. Sometimes I felt the experience from a third-person observer point of view. Sometimes I was the old man and sometimes I was Cameron Diaz. In the morning, my hubby told me that next time I'm Cameron Diaz, I should wake him up.

Cameron Diaz and a friend are on her private island. (She is Cameron Diaz, but in my dream she is not an actress but an heiress.) They are sitting in beach chairs wearing one-piece 50s style swimsuits and broad-rimmed shades. Between them, a black lab sleeps in the sand. The two women are drinking martinis and facing the sea.

Suddenly a yatch appears and an old man, in his late 70s or early 80s, walks up to the sunbathing women. He is wrinkled and balding but in good health. He's dressed in a white Polo sports shirt and white slacks. He and Cameron know one another from some time in the past. She recognizes him but seems neither pleased nor unhappy to see him.

The old man doesn't mince words. All at once, he asks Cameron Diaz to marry him. She smiles, sips her martini, and declines. It's apparent that they've had this conversation before. She tells him that she doesn't love him. He pleads that he can make her happy. They are perfect for each other- they both love the sea. She prefers it from her island, she argues, while he prefers it from his boat. He flirts and smiles nonchalantly, but inside his heart is breaking. He gets back on his yatch and leaves.

Four years later, Cameron Diaz has had her island repossessed. Something horrible has happened- perhaps a war or a major depression- and she is now a laborer on the island that she once enjoyed. She wears a handkerchief to hold her hair back from her sunburned face while she picks peppers, collecting them in the apron of her hand-made farmer's dress. Her hands are rough, and she thinks of Scarlett O'Hara when she goes to visit Rhett in jail after the war.

The yatch appears again, and the same old man from before disembarks. He's wearing a fine blue suit with a top hat and a monocle. He carries a cane. Seeing Cameron Diaz in her poverty clothes doesn't phase him at all. He drops to one knee in the fruit field and offers her a diamond ring. He tells her that he is a billionaire and can buy back the island for her and make her rich and happy if she will only marry him. He says he loves her now just as before.

Cameron Diaz still declines his proposal. She insists that she can't marry him because she doesn't love him. The old man falls down into the dirt, clutching his heart. Cameron calls for help, and she and her laborer friends carry him into a small hut and put him in bed. There, by candle light, she nurses him back to help. When he is recovered enough to talk, the old man tells Cameron Diaz that he has already purchased the island back from the person who took it from her, and now he will gift it to her with no strings attached. He asks Cameron Diaz why she has always refused to marry him, and she explains again that she just doesn't love him. He asks her why, and she says that she is offended because he never shaves his legs. He pulls back the covers and looks down at his legs: they are my legs only they are very hairy and have many bruises.

The old man has my dog Lucy with him, and Lucy plays with Cameron Diaz's black lab. While the old man recovers in bed, he likes to watch Lucy and the black lab playing out his window. One day, he notices that the black lab has large tumors growing on its back. He worries that Lucy will catch a disease from him. He asks a doctor to check the dog out, and the doctor explains that the lab has ringworm. The old man is relieved because Lucy takes ringworm protection monthly.

In which I walk out to get coffee and end up stressed and left alone...

I walk with my dog Lucy to get some coffee from the local cafe. The cafe keeps moving and I have to walk a few miles just to get the coffee. I get two cups and try to walk back home, but I'm tired and I keep spilling the coffee because my dog keeps pulling on the leash. After a few blocks, I stop at a payphone and call my husband to come get me. He agrees. I keep walking alongside the road. I figure I will see him as he comes towards me. But just as he turns onto the street I'm walking on, an 18 wheeler passes between us and blocks his view of me. He does not see me and keeps driving. I wave at him, but he turns the corner and heads in the direction of the cafe. I try to chase after him, but he is too far down the road.

In which my dog falls into a river but I rescue her...

I’m walking my dog Lucy over a bridge. She starts to chase a fly and runs off the bridge and falls towards the rushing river below. There just happens to be a basket bobbing along at the moment that she falls, and Lucy lands in the basket. I run off the bridge and race along the bank of the river as Lucy floats down it. For a moment I’m hysterical with terror that something is going to happen to her. Then I attain a very fleeting lucidity and realize that this is only a dream and that I would not allow anything bad to happen to Lucy in my dream. There will be a solution.

As I run alongside the river, lucidity lost again, Lucy looks at me with desperate eyes. Her paws are on the rim of the basket. I see another bridge up ahead, and I run fast so that I can get there before she does. I make it just in time. I lean over the side of the bridge with my hands reaching towards the water just as Lucy is rushing underneath. I grab the basket and snatch her out of the water.

In which I'm an epic bad guy...

The first was some sort of epic fantasy type dream. I can't remember much about it except that it involved battles and tricksters. I got the feeling that I was the bad guy.

In which I'm too ethical to snoop...
The second was that I opened by email only to find that my account had been swapped with my husband's cousin HC. At first I was alarmed that someone else must have my account. Then I realized that there was nothing personal or important in my email anyway. So I decided to snoop around in HC's email account. After about a minute of this, I started to feel guilty and logged out. I called him up and told him about it. This was a very boring dream, but I thought that maybe the emotions in it might be linked to the first. In the first dream, I was some sort of bad guy. In the second dream, I first got alarmed when I thought someone else might be reading my emails then realized I don't have anything to hide. I start to snoop and then correct myself like a good girlscout. So I just wondered if the two were related, emotionally anyway.

In which my father and I are in a jail cell with some thugs and my high school boyfriend...

My father and I were arrested. Apparently we'd done something stupid and illegal while drunk, but this took place before the dream plot started so I never knew what it was. The dream starts with us sitting in a holding cell. It's a wide cell like in old Western movies. There are iron bars on one side with a brick wall exactly opposite. The two short sides connecting the bars to the brick wall each have a small wooden bench. We are drunkards, snoozing on the benches. The bars slide open with a loud noise and we wake up, hung-over. We ask the cop if he is going to let us out, but he ignores us as he pushes in three other men. One is a chubby guy with curly hair. One is short and lanky. The third one, I can't see. The chubby guy sits down on the bench next to me, the lanky guy sits next to him and the third guy sits in a shadowed corner on the bench by my dad.

We've never been in jail before so we aren't sure how to talk to new cell mates. I ask what they are in for. They explain that they've beaten someone up and leer at us menacingly. I'm not afraid of them as we are in a jail cell and there are police officers all around. They give us the details of how they jumped a guy and beat and kicked him until he spat blood, broke his ribs and his teeth fell out. They think it is funny. This makes me feel really sad, down deep in my gut- the way I feel when I hear about serial killers or people who torture animals. It's sort of a sick hopelessness. I decide to ignore them and think about something else just to avoid how horrible I feel when I think about their victim. To distract myself, I start looking at the cops who are processing some more people- standing them in front of the camera for the mugshot and taking their fingerprints. I think to myself that I must've been really drunk when I got arrested because I can't remember any of that. With a shock, I notice that one of the new people the police are processing is my ex-boyfriend from high school- a guy I have not seen or thought about for years. We make eye-contact: me behind the bars and him standing for his mugshot. I look away fast and try to pretend that I didn't see him.

Meanwhile my father is telling the violent trio about how if they don't just shut up right now, he will beat each of them until their teeth fall out. They laugh at him and he laughs too, but his laugh is so crazy that it makes them get quiet. Then he stands up and in a maniacal way starts to act out and describe exactly how he will beat them up if they persist in talking about their victim. My father is not a violent guy and I've never seen him fight anyone, so I was really surprised to see this. He told them, "First I'll attack you, Big Curly Man" and then he explained how he'd jump the guy so fast that he wouldn't know what was coming and he'd be kicking in his skull by the time his friends tried to intervene. Then he'd impale the "Creepy Guy" with a piece of pipe he'd found in the cell and squish the "Little Fellow" with his free fist. By the time he'd finished acting this out, all the while shouting and laughing hysterically, the trio were silent. Nobody knew what to think of the display.

The cops pulled open the bars a second time and pushed in my high school boyfriend along with another guy who I didn't get a good look at. My high school boyfriend is a loser and an odd-looking guy, but I have a soft spot for him even though he is a creep. It might be pity. He looked terrible- dirty and haggard with rough skin and wild hair. He obviously hadn't shaved in days. I glanced at my father to see that he did recognize him. At first, my ex just pretended that he didn't recognize me, and I thought that was nice of him. He was giving me the opportunity to ignore him. But I decided to be mature and civil, so I stuck out my hand and shook his and told him that it was really weird to see him here. He agreed and lit a cigarette. I thought that it was really bad for him that he is still smoking since he has asthma, but I didn't say that. He looked sickly and coughed. I have asthma too so I asked him not to light up in the cell. It was a small space and if he smoked, it would make it difficult for me to breathe. Besides, I was pretty sure it was against the rules. He complied and put out his cigarette, but the member of the trio in the corner lit one up almost immediately afterwards as a sign of juvenille defiance. I rolled my eyes and went to stand by the bars to breathe the fresh air. I was going to let it go, but my dad stood up and walked towards him, snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and then stomped it out with his boot. The shadow guy said nothing.

Then the police came over to say that my husband had bailed us out. Things get fuzzy after this. We left the cell and had some discussion about what we had done in our drunken state the night before. We'd have to appear in court. I can't remember this part, but I remember feeling like it was something really stupid and dangerous though not harmful to anyone. My father went home, and my husband and I went to my mom's house. She was having some sort of party and asked us to help her curl the ribbons on the balloons using scissors. We sat on high stools at a tall round table that was full of craft supplies in a room that looked like a school workroom with lots of cabinets. There were a lot of people there, but I couldn't identify any of them. We worked at the ribbon curling and I told the story of what I did while drunk and how I got arrested. People were amused but also disapproved. I can't remember the rest very well- there was more after that but I don't remember it.

Taken with the other two dreams below, there is an obvious emotional link between them all. In all the dreams, I've done something wrong. In this one, I broke a law. In the boring one, I did something unethical. In the mostly forgotten one, I'm a bad guy in a battle.