Dream Journal

[Phoebe]

The other night I had the best dream and apparently was laughing like a crazy person throughout, thus waking up my husband who then woke me up like, Why Are You Laughing In Your Sleep?! Normally he would not be pleased to be woken in the wee hours but apparently it was so funny to witness that when I woke up he was cracking up just because I was cracking up. Anyway, the root cause:

It was spring/summer 2019 and my son had finally gathered his team-sports wits enough to play baseball for the first time, so obviously I was helping to coach his team. I was sitting back there as catcher while the main coach was working on batting skills with each kid, and my son, being like me obviously, was the pitcher. He is just blazing the pitches past, so they had to tell him to tone it down a little for batting practice purposes, as this poor kid was up there trying to get a hit. My son, being sulky like that, decided to take a bite out of the baseball to express his displeasure. I was like, damn, that cannot be either good or good for you, stop it! Then he threw the ball and the batter missed, I caught it, extracted it from my glove, and suddenly realized it was a giant compressed chick-fil-a chicken nugget baseball with one bite taken out of it. That fucker was Delicious. I am cackling just thinking of it again.

[Phoebe]

I was hiking. Thought it was real life. It seemed like real life. We went to the check-in to get our lanyards; these were available at the end of the hiking trail. I was convinced I could find fish if they would just give me more time. They said I did not have a fishing permit so needed to go home. No, I said, I can have one fish, I know it is in these waters and it needs me to come put it in this Ziploc gallon bag. I will find my beautiful fish, sparkling in the stream, and put it in this Ziploc bag. I had to pass various tests to get in; I passed, I did everything quickly, I did sit-ups and push-ups, I won my fish. The outcome remained unclear. Woke up with some kind of insect biting me.

[Phoebe]

An even weirder dream last night, heaven help me. I went to a "biker bar" and was not sure of my reason for being there. Turns out it was a roleplaying tournament of sorts, kind of a giant game in which different committees would be sent on missions. It was the scene of a model UN meeting from my youth, yet still a biker bar. We may have been playing Game of Thrones, not clear. Anyway, I was playing Dwyn in this event and was apologizing to Tahlvin and MrsDarcs because I had asked one of them to do it but then showed up anyway.

[Phoebe]

Paradox OCD style:
If you tell yourself not to think about something, there you are thinking about it! And even worse, the brain becomes belligerent when you tell it not to think about things. It will not only think, but investigate, reflect, and have bad dreams. You will have a dream that starts off quite beautifully, with lovely scenery and an excellent plan, yet you end up asking why there is no fire, why can't we have fire, it's so very humid and mosquitoes are thick in the air! Aaaaagh, you will screech, aaaagh, mosquitoes everywhere and no fire allowed to kill them! Then you will wake up angrily and claw at your own flesh persistently until it bleeds, because for some reason a small amount of this is soothing until you actually die of the painfully infected wounds you've created. You will not claw at your own self, you will not think about bad things. Repeat cycle. One must be willing to let the bad things dwell harmlessly in one's mind. Difficult!

[Phoebe]

Betrayed by own brains again: Dreamed that some specialist doctor told me I needed to drink an ounce of female horse urine each day, for the special hormones, and the horse had to be afraid (the procedure for doing this was also in the dream, involved bringing in a male elk to the paddock). Anyway, I dreamed the whole slow downing of the horse urine, sip by tiny sip, from a shot glass, while trying to eat foods to mask the taste right after. Horrible!

[Tahlvin]

JHC, Phoebe, you have the strangest dreams!

[Phoebe]

I don't know, over the past couple years it has changed as my sleep patterns have changed. I used to have a lot of vivid dreams I would remember and now not so much. Last night I had another weird one though. 1/2 was pretty obviously related to work, and I apparently envisioned myself as some sort of Hobbit den mother to the people I work with. Probably true. The other half was creepier because it involved somebody I don't know at all although I know who they are, and I don't know how to describe, but the whole thing was like a prayer for the safety and well-being of this person, whose safety and well-being I have never had reason to question or even think about before. Odd.

[Phoebe]

Been having recurring dream about being in a grassy park with picnic tables and many large old trees, except that about 8 feet up from the ground is a "ceiling" of wood, as if the entire place is under a giant backyard deck. My job is to go around cutting off/out the tree trunks, which somehow can be done without harming the upper portion of the trees. The rest of the tree stays suspended in midair up there above the deck, while I go around clearing out space below, vaguely worried that the entire edifice above will collapse. What the hell this means, who knows, but why does it linger?

[Phoebe]

In the midst of long stretches of zero-recalled-dreaming, I was having dreams about a person I do not know and do not ever think about, as mentioned above, though technically aware that the person exists. The dreams were weird, vivid, and inexplicable, and I did not like having them, but it is difficult to control one's dreams. Then randomly I am presented with a mote of real life information that in theory would "explain" all this, except only if the universe is so unacceptably weird that I am SHOOK by the prospect. Like a large, somber bat hanging at the top of a dark tower, I wish merely to dangle here undisturbed. I don't want bad dreams, I don't want understanding, I don't want to receive radio signals through my teeth or broadcast any of my own; I want to toss yet another chunk of unexplained coincidence into the bubbling vat of existential anxiety and walk away, never looking back, having conquered ocd and any desire for the world to make sense.

[Mike]

So you're dreaming of Tahlvin's workouts too?

[Phoebe]

I probably would if he made the video of himself doing pullups strapped to a kettlebell, but nobody is rallying in support of this good cause.

[Phoebe]

Dreamed I woke up in the morning, scratched at something on my head, but instead of being some little blip of nothing it turned out to be like peeling dried silly putty out of my hair, and I had to stand in front of the bathroom sink and gingerly pull all these mannny pieces of dried crud off my head and out of my hair. It was... So gross, but so realistic that I was totally confused about whether I had already been awake and up, when I woke up again in bed. Wow brains, thanks.

Just operating at this ocd-limit zone lately, doing my best but people keep springing unwanted, unexpected crap on me. Not feeling up to a challenge, you know? Like I can manage my day to day and try to do better, but I'm not here for the championship trials. Let me live with minimal disturbance for once, just maybe.

[Phoebe]

SUCH a bad dream last night, right before 5 am when I woke in a cold sweat:
Twas my job to give a presentation to a visiting dignitary who turned out to be, dun dun dun, Betsy DeVos. I was all fired up to do the presentation even though various people suggested I shouldn't do it. No, this is my chance to see whether, upon presentation of foundational ethical premises with which she supposedly agrees, she can reason correctly about (various issues, this is too long and boring to recount). My husband took me to lunch before the presentation and I was in panic because we were late and I didn't want anyone to think I was skipping the presentation as a protest or something weird; I was bound and determined to figure out if she had any capacity for human growth, compassion, learning, etc. and would not be denied the opportunity; meanwhile husband is like, chill, I am driving. We had to go through roundabouts and stuff, I don't know, but the overall dream was really bad, like the fate of the educational system depended on success that was unlikely.

[Phoebe]

From the house perched above the forest below I observe that the deer are running from something. Was it a predator? No, a moose? Aurochs? Yak? Something huge and hairier than a deer. Uh-oh, also big enough to injure the car we are in, and here it is. Just sit here and watch, see if it leaves.

Whew! Now we are back home, a house at the end of a circle. We are trying to buy the neighbors' homes so that we can close off the street at the entrance and create a huge gated compound. Odd but let's see if we can get it done.

[Phoebe]

Obtained antidepressants/antianxiety meds for first time. Began taking for a while. No effects (normal until a few weeks in) but do have unusually horrible dreams. Still had not sold previous house; kids' friends trashed it during party; somehow turned into entire sewage leak onto floors.

Husband coughed; it was the bark of some terrifying animal coming into the room; could not get back to sleep for two hours (unprecedented).

General terror; wake up, can't get back to sleep.

[Phoebe]

Dreamed we got a puppy.

Woke up, bummer, no puppy.

Went back to sleep, dreamed we got a kitten...

[mimekiller]

had a series of apocalyptic dreams....scary but the sense of working together or being part of a community with a goal in these dreams are always nice.

[Phoebe]

Retinas and brains registered the un-un-see-able and now here we are. Fretting makes it worse; only patience helps.

[Phoebe]

I lived among the elk, and it turns out, I was an elk. I blame Pathfinder.

[Phoebe]

Why is everyone so fearful of my lovely pet? She's so sweet and loving, and even gets on well with the dog. Oh, I see, you object to me bringing her over because you don't want a "mountain lion" in the house. Not even in the yard. Oh, I see, it is terribly difficult to leash her. She does not like the leash one bit, does she? Oh no, the delivery man is here - oh no! Please let me get my lovely pet inside before you... Oh no.