DREAM THREAD Part Pi.Pi!

[Volpone]

Military and/or school is a pretty common theme in my dreams. Don't remember the Big Picture from last night, but I was in some kind of military/school environment (with maybe a sci-fi hint thrown in, I dunno). And some buddy's wife was trying to set me up with with a girl. For some reason I was hesitant. She was enlisted and I was an officer? Or just because I never get laid in dreams. Well to prove a point, buddy's wife decides to strip naked and stand there in my face. I'm trying my best to ignore it because--buddy's wife and all. But she was nice. Little perky apple boobs and a Pat Benatar haircut. And Buddy seemed more amused than annoyed. Then there was some scenario with the girl she was trying to set me up with. By this point I was starting to wake up. I was awake enough to say "you know what? Fuck it, I'm going for it. I'll even fuck Buddy's wife too if I can get away with it" but it was too late. I was too awake. I dozed and slumbered and tried to make the lucid dream work, but it wasn't the same.

 

[whisky]

I was in a clothes shop, not sure if it was meant to be abroad, or some where else in the UK, I kept trying to buy this green leather jacket, and they kept doing things to prevent me, including trying to get me a green shirt instead.

I never got the jacket.

 

[Volpone]

Gah. Got to try to get this one down before all the details fade. I think I'm already too late, but maybe some of it will come back as I type: I was at some kind of...what's the word? Retreat? Convention? Boot Camp? A weekend thing where they put you up in a hotel and you to seminars and team building activities and stuff; maybe fill out some paperwork. But of course this was all hinky dream stuff instead of "trust-falls" or whatever. And it was an extended dream, where there were, like, 4 or 5 things that were a nice broad representation of the kind of things you do at those sorts of functions--it was stuff like herding cats (that wasn't one, just an example, because I can't remember any of them). Only literally.

Dang. Nope, it's all gone. I think the retreat setting was ret-conned into the dream towards the end to link all these seemingly unrelated but kind of similar dreams together. And because that was about the last part of the dream, just before I woke up, that's the thing I remember. I think we had to build something out of a selection of stuff at hand for one. There was probably one where it was a discussion/focus group.

 

[Volpone]

Gah. Lots of trippy dream segments lately. Many are pretty boring to anyone but me, some are surreal but I don't remember enough to make a coherent narrative. I will mention one bit that is about as close to a nightmare as I ever get:

I'm driving my car. Not fast, just pulling into/out of a parking spot speed, but somehow the steering isn't working and it's going to crash into something. Brakes aren't working, reverse isn't working. I wind up crashed and pinned into the driver's seat. Not injured, just trapped almost completely immobile in the seat. I'm trying not to panic when I realize I'm dreaming. But even after I realized I was dreaming, I couldn't free myself in the dream so I decided to wake up. And just like that I was back in my bed.

Oh, and the occasion tonight/this morning was that I woke up at 4am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I eventually got back to sleep and dreamed that I couldn't get back to sleep, so then the weird dream events were happening as I was dream battling my dream insomnia. At one point we were breaking into a house by cutting a hole in the wall at the exact location that a framed display of a large rifle was hanging. The rifle dropped to the floor and we stuck a ladder through the hole. For some reason the ladder was decorated to look like Optimus Prime.

 

[Volpone]

Gah. Another night with at least a semi-interesting dream narrative--that I've almost totally forgotten. But at on point I was driving in a neighborhood where a girl I'm attracted to lived in an apartment/condo structure (in the dream world, no idea where she lives IRL, anyway, she's married). The place had an insanely steep ramp down to the parking area and on Google Maps it looked like a way through to another street that was on the way to where I was going. There were better ways to get to where I was going, but I wanted to see if Maps was right.

Got down into to the parking area. Thought I saw my friend hurrying past and was kind of glad she didn't seem to see me so I didn't have to explain what I was doing driving around her house. But I drove around and up to the end of all the parking without finding the opening through to the next block. Probably a moot point because it looked like a lot of new construction was going on so the way probably wasn't passable even if I found it. But on the way back down I missed my turn and was about to drive off the top of the building. Of course I couldn't find the brakes or reverse because--dream. But managed to get the car stopped with the back 2 wheels still on solid ground and the driver's side front wheel on top of some kind of dumpster or something that was level with the edge of the cliff/roof. Then for a moment my car was my old Plymouth Horizon from over 25 years ago, with front wheel drive, and I realized I'd definitely started the dream driving my current Ford Mustang, which made me wake up.

 

[Volpone]

Good dreams this morning. Gonna get them down while still fresh. I work 2 nights a week, which makes it hard to be on a regular sleep schedule the rest of the week. I also drink too much so The Plan last night was to only have 1 cocktail and be in bed by midnight so I could be up and about by 7:30. I managed to only have 3 cocktails and get to bed before 1. I did wake up at 7 enough to hit the snooze. Part of the problem is that I also woke up a little before 5 to use the bathroom and then spent the next hour and a half or so pondering all my doubts and fears before eventually slipping back to sleep without entirely realizing I'd gone back to sleep.

Anyway I hit the snooze a few more times than I should've [both in the dream and IRL]--which was bad because the big military/police academy test was today and everyone else was studying furiously for it. But for some reason I wasn't terribly worried. I'd read all the material and it would be good to review before the test, but I felt like I could probably get through it. So I was working on other little chores that needed doing. Around this point the alarm went off again so I realized I was still dreaming. Also, I was somewhat aware of a freakin' monsoon outside but the weather in my dream was fairly sunny and dry. I'm talking with various people about the test and where they are supposed to be stationed after. One student was fairly important or had a fairly important assignment or both.

Of late I've had a theory that, if I'm having dreams, my brain is working through things and needs more sleep, so I kept hitting snooze. Finally I had to get up for real (only I didn't really). I bumped into the sheriff who's supposed to be giving the VIP student her(?) first assignment and mentioning that that's gotta be on his mind. He points out that he's putting her in a Super Cobra patrol car (which, apparently in the dream world is the safest, fanciest police car there is). But about that time it turns into an '80s action drama because some guys are running across the parking lot, being chased by a gold colored early '80s sedan that is fishtailing all over. So I give everyone a heads-up and shout to "grab your shotguns!" As this is happening I'm wondering if I should've said something else because not everyone had shotguns but I decided it got the point across and sounded cool. At least one guy's got a shotgun but some other guy is lugging around a .50 cal machinegun. And it's idiotic because it doesn't look like the barrel is on right, he doesn't have any ammo, really, and the thing is just too heavy to effectively use in this situation. Really, any situation. You can't shoot a .50cal from the hip. At this point the real cop puts a stop to it all. Apparently "grab your shotguns" isn't the textbook response to a scenario like this, which makes me worry a bit more about how I'm going to do on the upcoming test.

Eventually I got up at 9--for real this time.

 

[Volpone]

Had an amazing (and unconventional) dream yesterday morning (unconventional in that I wasn't in it, I was just watching it). Back in the 70s, there was a "Star Trek" comic. It wasn't DC or Marvel. It was some weird old company like Key or Charlton [Google reveals that it was Gold Key]. Because it was illustrated, they could do all the things you couldn't do with 60s TV FX. The only one I remember was Kirk and Spock, riding giant ostriches or something.

Anyhow, that's basically what this was. A Star Trek: TOS dream, only with production values and budget beyond Star Wars. They land on some desert planet, following a tricorder reading. It is decided that they need a big sled/wagon thing, so they beam it down, assemble it, and start pulling it in the direction the tricorder indicates. At some point, while Spock is intent on the tricorder, Worf(?!) (I dunno, I'm pretty sure it was Worf in a classic uniform) points dramatically and says something to the effect of "I think I know where we're headed." Cut to a huge white ziggurat thing with 2 big columns of black smoke billowing from it. And I mean, it was apparently big enough for an Aztec Mexico City to be inside it. They get there and there's a huge parade of outlandish aliens and their outlandish conveyances. And one of them was Santa Claus. I mean, not the Coke bottle/Thomas Nast Santa, but a spectacled chunky bearded caucasian humanoid in red clothes with white trim and black leather boots and belt. But not being pulled by reindeer. Just onscreen for a split second for no reason that advances the plot.

That's about when I woke up, but it had the feel of one of them episodes where they uncover what appears to be a utopian paradise but turns out to have a darker secret.

 

[Volpone]

And this morning it was...I dunno...a painting? It was photorealistic and later something was happening in the otherwise static image. I dunno. Anyway, you know them paintings of epic battles? Generally ones from before repeating firearms, where you've got a bayonet charge or a cavalry charge or something and everyone is in heated hand-to-hand combat? It was that. Only it was like, the people of suburbia. Two blocs of civilians, armed with assorted gardening implements, entangled in mortal combat. People being speared with tree pruning saws. Stabbed through the throat with gardening trowels. Very odd. And there really wasn't any context or narrative or anything. Just my brain going "Here. I whipped this up. What do you think?" "Um...It's nice, I guess, brain."

 

[CaptainWacky]

Had a dream where I saw @SAUSAGEMAN's name (his real name) in a Nintendo magazine and showed it to him. I then told him my name was in it it too and pointed out a review that featured the word "wacky" as if that was my name. Then I was in school and there were keys to toilet, and I got a different key to my friends and was worried. There was a complex hierarchical structure amongst the students and I understood it perfectly in the dream. Somehow the kids who ran the school accepted me entering their special toilet and we did drugs together.

 

[Volpone]

Had a good one this morning, but I forget most of it. I think it's a recurring theme I mentioned here in other dreams. Basically it was trying (and failing) to account for people. There was this Thing. Zombie Apocalypse, nuclear war, Hawaiian vacation, I dunno. And there was some revolutionary alternative modes of travel--like Star Trek transporters, only without all the bugs worked out. And at some point we realize "Oh, shit! Do we have everybody? It seems like we're missing some people. We need to figure out if we've got everybody and/or who we're missing and try to track them down." And the rest of the dream is a handful of us trying to retroactively cobble together some kind of roster and cross-check it against the people we know are still here.

 

[Volpone]

Entertaining but exhausting night. Can't remember all the transitions but there were common themes and revelations to me, so I'll touch on the disjointed bit after the narrative.

I'm in a town for some convention or seminar. I'm not in the main hotel so I drop my stuff off and head over. One thing leads to another and I wind up staying up all night. Just about the time I'm thinking about getting to bed some people round me up to go do some event-related thing. When I finally get back to my hotel, I've forgotten what room I'm in. It's a funny old hotel so it's very hard to find your way around and the rooms are impractically laid out. Eventually I wind up down in the lobby and decide to take the main elevator. Now the main elevator interior doubles as a revolving restaurant and the decor looks like a cross between an Apple Store and a Playland McDonald's. The elevator is very jerky and spins very fast. Additionally, all the tables and chairs spin independently of the floor. But no one seems to mind.

I was also back at my parents' farm, showing someone around. I'd discovered some water damage to a room I'd fixed up. I was explaining to the person why this was a big problem and how it was likely coming from a junction on the roof where about 3 different roof angles come together. I think it was near the upstairs bathroom. The interesting thing to me is that I haven't fixed up any rooms or buildings on my parents' farm and there is no upstairs bathroom; this is one of those "dream places" that I used to have a lot more commonly when I was younger, where I am thoroughly familiar with a place, have visited it repeatedly, and know everything about it--even though it doesn't actually occur in the real world and if I tried to drive to where I know it is, I wouldn't be able to find it.

 

[Volpone]

This morning's were fairly boring and straightforward. Right now I'm doing a consulting gig that I don't particularly feel qualified to do but I'm told I'm valuable. And I met a girl online that is going really well and we're supposed to meet this week. Woke up around 5:30, after maybe 5 hours of sleep. Layed there until 7-ish and decided to just set the 15 minute recurring snooze and get up in a half hour. At which point I, of course, promptly fell asleep until after 9.

In the dream I've been hired for an important part of building this big pipeline--even though I'm not with the company and know nothing about building pipelines. I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing so instead I'm just screwing around on some other thing. But no one is complaining. Someone starts goofing on me during a meeting--like tickling the back of my neck and then pretending nothing is going on--and I know I need to go address it. Some of the people who'll be doing the build are sitting around talking so I go over to be part of the discussion but then I have to go to meet a woman I used to know for coffee. I've got a little time so I start doing something and suddenly realize I'm 6 minutes late and haven't even left the garage. On top of that, the car is full of junk and a few stray kittens. While I'm cleaning all that out, it winds up in gear and rolling. For some reason I'm too busy to shut the engine off or hit the brakes and it amazingly misses any major damage although I think it winds up bumping into something enough to scrape some paint.

So basically what's happening in my life right now. That's about when I woke up.

 

[Volpone]

Usually have the memorable dreams in between snooze alarms. But this one was before the 5am "have to pee" wakeup. Alien invasion/zombie apocalypse with a strong hint of 'rona thrown in. There's some...thing...going on. I can help fight it, but I can't do it alone. I manage to find some stuff I can put on to pretend I'm a doctor in order to win over the local law enforcement (who is largely Sheriff Andy Griffith with maybe a hint of Marshal Matt Dillon thrown in). But he apparently isn't buying my "credentials" and won't let me in...his office? So I'm on my own. Later we do wind up joining forces and I give him a little bit of a hard time for not trusting me in the first place (although I can't help thinking he had a point, since I'd been pretending to be an authority figure). Whatever is affecting people affects their breathing but somehow a few of us are resistant to it. So we need to track down where it is coming from and stop it. We've got these kind of filters that we can breathe through but they're bulky and only partly effective. Toward the end of the dream someone has developed a small wearable filter that is effective, but when I try one out I realized it is harder for me to breathe than just being exposed to the...thing, so I just go without.

 

[Volpone]

Woke up around 5 and had a hard time getting back to sleep. Figured when I finally got back to sleep I'd dream that I was still trying to get to sleep and I was right. Then the dream transitioned into my parents (who are dead IRL) were having some kind of BBQ/get together. My aunt (who is also dead) was there. Sadly, my dog wasn't but the friend who owned the dog and cat before me was. I'd built some kind of cool gun rack for the shotgun in the A-Team van that I was going to show him. We went out to the parking lot but I'd forgotten I was still working on the rack. Then I remembered I'd come straight from work so I'd driven the car. I didn't even bring the cool shotgun. Then something bit me inside my shoe. There was a little white triangle that, when touched, revealed to be a kind of butterfly. And my shoe was full of them. It was like a magic trick. They kept coming out and coming out. I realized most of them were flying into this bag that was laying next to the chair my aunt was sitting in. I told her and she quickly held the bag closed. It wasn't her bag, she was just helping. It turned out it was a bag my friend had brought and it was kind of like a shaving kit. We cautiously opened the bag but there were no butterflies. Lots of spiders and spider eggs, but no butterflies. My friend left so my aunt and I started smashing spiders and eggs. Ordinarily I like spiders, but they don't belong setting up a colony in a shaving bag. I made a note to get on Google when we got done to see if butterflies could turn into spiders and that's around when I woke up.

 

[Volpone]

Quick dead of the night post: Lately I've been waking up after about 4 hours and being unable to get back to sleep. In the past I kept a journal and it helped to get whatever was in my head out and onto paper. Haven't done that in over a decade, but maybe if this continues....

Anyway, had a dream with my cat in it. And my parents. The interesting thing is, in the dream, I knew the cat wasn't supposed to be alive--but it was completely natural for my parents to be. I was visiting the farm and my cat had turned up. Dad said she'd been hiding in the couch cushions. And she didn't look 100% healthy, but she was doing OK. And I told my Dad that this didn't make any sense because I had to take her to the vet and put her to sleep.

I've only had 2 or 3 dreams with my dog and now maybe 2 with my cat. And in pretty much all of them the pet's role is fairly small and always noteworthy because she is supposed to be dead. I've had many, many dreams with my parents and my favorite Aunt and in all those, it is perfectly normal for them to be alive. In fact when I was having a lot of dreams with my Mom it was very confusing because I'd wake up with very vivid memories of hanging out with her--to the point of doubting that she was dead--that I had to reconcile with having been at her funeral and inheriting my portion of her money and knowing my brother is living on her farm. And that's to say nothing of the logistics of how I was just 13 hours away and now I'm at my place. I'm no psychologist, but I'm guessing this is because pets are a lot simpler--and a lot different than humans--so there's a lot less to work out and a lot less that can be worked out. I've had a fair number of conversations with my pets but they were always fairly simple conversations--and very one-sided. So there's a not there for my subconscious to work with. I know my parents and Aunt pretty well and know how they talked and acted and my subconscious can give them lines to say to me in dreams. I can't really do that with my cat or dog. Because as a human I only understood a small portion of what they were thinking so I can't really create them very well in dreams and even if I could, they can't talk so there's not very much for them to do in dreams.

Well, I should get going. I think I've worked out as much as I can here and I'm hopefully feeling a bit tired again.

 

[whisky]

Had a bit of a gay one the other night, they reopened theme parks, but you had to give the staff hand jobs to get in. Don't think it was me in the dream, more like one of those that plays out like you are watching a film.

 

[CaptainWacky]

It's not gay if it's for a theme park.

 

[whisky]

Random batch last night, was at a party at someone's house, sang Elvis on kareoke, then needed a wee, so rang upstairs, a female house guest pushed in with me and demanded to watch. Woke up shortly after needing toilet for real, fortunately with no audience.

Later on I was at a bar, and some tough army lady wanted to demonstrate her roundhouse kick by just missing my head, while a freind from work showed me a set of 3D printed models he had made.

 

[Volpone]

Had a dream where I actually shot a gun--and it worked.

So in the dream, I'm at my grandparents' farm (on my Dad's side). I've got this little pocket binocular and I'm looking at a nearby disturbance. Someone (my uncle? Grandpa?) says "Oh, that's just the local jail, trying to make people nervous" or something to that effect. But then I realize some of the people start heading our direction. I arm myself and one of the guys shows up there. He seems rational and calm but he wants to see my gun because "it looks just like one I used to have." I mention it is a replacement for a gun I lost in a burglary, at which point I realize I somehow got the wrong model and this one looks a bit like a Glock--only made of wood instead of polymer. So it looks a lot like a gun made out of 2 pieces of 2x4, screwed together at right angles (only in beautiful walnut finish).

At some point I decide there's no harm in showing the guy the gun, but at the last second I have the sense to take the clip out and clear the chamber. As soon as the guy has the gun, he pulls a clip out of his pocket and basically calls me stupid, but he can't get the clip inserted so I try to get the gun away from him but I'm failing. Luckily I have a second concealed carry pistol on me and I jam it into his ribs and give him 2 shots, ending the problem.

This is interesting for a few reasons: 1) As mentioned, if I have a dream involving me having a gun, the gun NEVER works when I need it to. It's gotten to the point where I *know* this, so in my dreams I'll double and triple check everything, but still, when it comes time to pull the trigger, something goes wrong. 2) I never have true lucid dreams. I'll have dreams where I realize I'm dreaming, but I still basically stick to the script. In this dream I *know* I didn't have a second gun on me at the start of the confrontation. But I decided it was plausible and it was what I wanted, so there it was. And it worked like a charm.

***

Had one a couple days ago that I forgot most of, but it basically involved moving to a place to foster/adopt someone. The place wasn't as nice as my place, but we were making do (and fixing the place up). But then we had to move to a place based on my parents' farm, that wasn't as nice as either of the other places so I told the person we'd do our best, get by, and fix things up over time.

 

[whisky]

I was on a plane that had just taken off but even though it was supposed to be climbing we never got higher than tree top height, eventually we landed on a street but still kept slowly moving, at some point I must have got off the plane to go to toilet in my old flat and when I went back into my bedroom, somehow the plane was in there, it lowered the steps so I could get back in, and then it was in the street again. I asked someone how it could have fit through my bedroom door, and she just said Tinkerbell as if that was answer enough.

The plane eventually got to a cliff near the sea, and the pilot must have thought this was a good place to take off again because we went over, and immediately crashed into the sea. We weren't hurt, but I was annoyed we had to leave on a raft when we could have got out on land.