Valerean

Last week I had a dream about being out and thrifting with another person (maybe a woman) and finding some cool bags of yarn and embroidery thread. It was very vague but happy, and I love shopping dreams that are that way. We left the store and were driving down a road very similar to one by my early childhood home when I looked up and saw a large passenger plane about 500 feet in the air deploy a colorful parachute out of the empennage (the tail end) ala space shuttles when landing. I turned to my companion and told her that plane was going to crash, and we needed to get out of there. She seemed paralyzed, and then the plane looped around and crashed just ahead of us. The world then exploded. I woke up with my heart hammering in my chest, like it had actually happened. I've had crash dreams before now, and they're unsettling. I don't think the FAA is going to start putting parachutes on passenger aircraft, or that I'm psychic and predicting something that...

I had the oddest nightmare last month, one that seemed to last forever. I dreamt that I went shopping, and while at a local market there was an offer to sign up my favorite person for a beauty contest. Since I think she's beautiful I did just that. Some disclaimers before I describe the rest of the nightmare: 1. I don't like beauty pageants. 2. I would never sign up someone else for something without consulting them. 3. I have a budget for everything, and I look at the prices of everything before I buy it. I also calculate my spending while I'm shopping and check the receipt immediately after I've checked out. I never break my budget. Never. Okay. I didn't look at the receipt, which was weird thing #1. I paid for it with my only credit card, which was weird thing #2 (the limit on that credit card would never have allowed me to check out successfully.) I got home, put away the groceries, and then took the receipt to put it in my family box (I save...

Last night (October 11th) I had a very interesting dream. I was in a place like an iphone store with dozens of young people sitting around long tables and talking. The atmosphere had a young, college-age feel to it (even though I never went to college, I have visited them), and everyone was dressed nicely and behaving themselves. At the far end was a Starbucks type coffee shop, where I went I make myself some coffee (I'm not sure but I guess I worked there.) While doing so I came up with an ingenious way to make coffee into delicious edible cubes which had the consistency of cold butter. I began mixing up my coffee to see if I could create them, and ended up with a cup of the cubed coffee. I decided a fine brand name for them would be "Jolts." I took my coffee with me as I went to talk to two of the young people, a boy and girl in their twenties, and we discussed the differences in the intelligence of our generations. I pointed out how much more clever and t...

I had a wonderful dream last week about being part of a group of female guests at a wedding in another country. These were women of all ages and ethnicities (not unusual), and they included me as if I were their sister (very unusual for me.) The wedding was being held soon, so I went with the others to a huge mall, where we purchased the gowns we were going to wear at the ceremony. We went through many, many shops, which seemed to take an entire day, and the other women helped me pick out my gown. These were voluminous layered garments, and the style was sort of a cross between a kimono and a sari with five or six different separate pieces made of vibrant printed organza. I had no idea how to wear mine, so back at our hotel the other women helped me dress, joking and teasing me the entire time. I admired the others's gowns, and one woman added a dark leather bodice with hers that was a kind of signature look. I'm not a group-joiner, but I was happy to be part of ...

One night I dreamt I was hired to write for a hiphop artist, and moved into his home to work for a few months. His mother, who lived with and took care of him, and I hit it off right away and spent a lot of time cooking together. The young man was very nice, and seemed sincere about having me write his songs for him. I spent the entire dream working hard but feeling immensely puzzled, as if I should explain that I've only written one song and as a novelist was probably not the best choice to help him. Can't remember a word of any of the songs I wrote, but there were a bunch, and he was really happy with them. I woke up with a sense of great contentment -- and still a little puzzled. Image Credit: Image by WELC0MEИ0 from Pixabay

One night at the end of April I dreamed all night that I was lost in a huge hotel, and spent hours searching for a tote that I'd put into an employee cubby. I had my wallet and purse, and I seemed to be an employee there who had just gotten off work. A very tall blond woman (never a good sign in my dreams) accompanied me for a while, and paid for some clothes at the hotel boutique for herself and a lady attorney when they discovered I had no credit cards on me -- they were in the tote, presumably. I'm not sure why I offered to pay for the clothes, either. Throughout the dream I was pretty anxious, and yet I took time to stop and talk to the guests. One man had a tall, intellectually disabled son, and while he was struggling for words to introduce him I said, "He must be a wonderful son" and made the man very happy. Another set of parents had two very small, possibly physically disabled twins (paraplegics?) who were constantly crawling around and pulling pranks...

I dreamt last Monday night that I was out buying jewelry for my favorite person (not unusual.) The shop I was in seemed really nice, and had lovely things for quite reasonable prices. When I went to pay for the earrings I chose for her I found a fifty dollar bill folded up in my wallet (I don't fold bills.) As soon as I unfolded it I knew it was counterfeit, and said as much to the shopkeeper as I showed it to him. He said, "I should call the police" and did just that. I left everything on the counter and went in search of an ATM so I could get a real fifty dollar bill. As I walked out I saw I was at a strip mall near my home -- one that doesn't have a jewelry store in it. Then I spotted my mother as she looked when she was in her thirties. She was very slender and wore a pretty A-line navy blue dress. With her was my dad, only in a nice suit and with a full head of hair (he started balding in his forties.) He always looked a bit like Robert DeNiro to me, ...

I had a dream last Saturday night which proves two things I've always known, that you can have too many cats (or dogs, or parrots, or any kind of pet) and that it is possible to read things in dreams. I was sent to a highway rest area to pickup some unwanted cats, all abandoned by the same person (and I think it was my mother, who was highly allergic to cats in real life.) When I got there hundreds of wooden crates had been left haphazardly in the parking lot. Some were labeled with words. I read "Dead" "Mother with Kitten" "Feral" and other labels as I was loading the crates onto the thankfully large pickup truck I'd driven there. All of the cats were afraid and looked starved and neglected. I couldn't believe anyone could have done this, and I wanted to confront them, but the animals were my first priority. I stopped at a pet store to buy some food for the cats, and walked right into a robbery in progress. I was able to duck out of...

I'm having odd (and sometimes very entertaining) dreams again. There was one just after my last doctor's visit where I finally began to lose the weight I need to, but with unforeseen consequences. The flatter my tummy became, the larger my navel grew, until it exposed my insides. I discovered I was made out of delicious chocolate cake. My guy didn't want anyone to attack and eat me, so he tried to cover up my too-big navel with a bandaid. Even in the dream I laughed, it was so ridiculous. In another dream I ended up back in downtown Miami, which had changed quite a bit since I worked there. I was lost, of course. I walked through crowded restaurants and shops as I tried to use my phone to find a map that showed me how to get home. Only I couldn't get the phone to do what I wanted -- it showed me everything but what I needed. Just like real life! Ha. The people I met in the dream were friendly, although not particularly helpful. One older Cuban gentlem...