True Story.

The nightmare I experienced in Kroger today:



"Inconvenience" is clearly an understatement...

...Or because it takes a "latte" time to make...

I chuckled a little this morning as I recalled last night's dreams. Because they are all a little stranger than normal, I considered not blogging today, but then I figured, what the heck?

The first is, in my opinion, the funniest of the bunch. I was back in my 12th grade physics class (this came from seeing Miss McGlinchey, who is married and has a new last name now, at the Y last night!! It was very exciting.) Class had not started yet, so people were talking and wandering around the room. Okay, I am legitimately a little embarrassed to write this: apparently there was a tampon dispenser in the projector which was located in the front of the classroom. I approached with my 50 cents, and as I put the money in the slot, the projector turned on, and everyone in the class stopped talking and looked at me. I thought, "This is kind of an awkward place for a tampon dispenser..." (I am laughing out loud right now; I hope you are too.)

In the second dream I was sitting in my nutrionist (Trish)'s office, and she was making lattes on a fancy espresso machine. (Talking about healthy eating while drinking lattes sounds like a dream to me!) It was a recent addition to her practice :) Then the dream shifted; I entered a room and saw lots of lattes sitting on the floor under a coffee table. I knelt down and began inspecting the drinks to determine which was mine. The peppermint white mocha with blue whipped cream tempted me, but then I saw a cup with my name written in black Sharpie: a tall, 4 pump hazelnut, nonfat, no foam latte. I wanted it, but I was a little miffed that it had 4 pumps of hazelnut syrup rather than 2. What was she trying to do to me?? Written on the cup was also a note that said, "I want to discuss this more with you on Friday. -Trish." Again... laughing.

I planned to write about a third dream, but as I think about it now, it doesn't seem blog-appropriate. Sorry.

You Are Cordially Invited

In typical style of my psyche, I still had at least one trippy dream last night. In the one I remember, some friends and I were cleaning floors as a fundraiser to supplement the money raised by the youth auction. We knocked on a door, and a cranky, 30-something man answered. When we offered to clean his floor, he responded in a vague, wishy-washy (pun intended :)) manor, and started to close the door. One of my friends called his bluff-- he secretly, desperately wanted us to wash his floor-- and we entered the house. Before we could begin mopping we had to sweep away inch-thick layers of dust, beginning on the second floor and moving down the stairs.

When I reached the bottom stair, I swept something roughly the size of a ping pong ball across the room. I moved towards it and upon inspection recognized it as a cherry cordial (Grandma Riddle's favorite thing to give, but not receive, at Christmas.) I then looked around the room and saw LOTS of cherry cordials! Some sat in plain view in the middle of the floor while others hid behind chair legs, small appliances, and shoes. I began sweeping as many as possible--not for the sake of cleaning, but more as a game. My friends joined me. In the dream I knew that I had left the cherry cordials around this house the last time I cleaned it. Sorry 'bout that, sir.

I'm not sure how cherry cordials entered the dream, but I can identify some of the other players. To do so I'll have to confess how dirty my apartment is, so don't judge me. Yesterday evening I swept the bathroom...I don't know if it's possible for any two girls to shed as much as Mallory and I do. We probably could have made a wig with the hair I swept off the floor (Gross, I know. Sorry.) This is most likely the source of the inches of dust in my dream. Also yesterday while sitting at the kitchen table, I noticed a lemon on the floor, far under the table, almost under the heater. I ducked my head under the table for a better look and saw a second (uh, older) lemon even deeper. LEMONS EVERYWHERE! Just kidding. It was only two. Or I guess I should say, it IS only two, since they are both still there :-D Not sure how they turned into cherry cordials, though. ("When life gives you lemons..." Maybe like that :))

Giant Leaf Piles and Hot Apple Cider

For most of my life I have been a summer girl, but in the last few years I have switched my allegiance to autumn. I can't get enough of the season. The smell of leaves and cool air, the sight of red, orange, and yellow foliage, the sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot as I walk down the sidewalk...even the lighting is a little more beautiful. The five senses aren't enough to take it all in; I want it to be a part of me.

I am not, therefore, the least bit surprised that I dreamed about fall last night. I drove west on Patterson, as I do many days to go to work, with Jonathan Dreiling. The trees towered into a canopy over us, and as the wind blew we drove through a shower of leaves. And we smiled. Then we discovered that we both love the season, and began saying things ecstatically like, "I LOVE... Richmond! I love God! I love fall!" Over and over and over... We couldn't adequately express our joy.

Milk Drunk

I was recently responsible for an entire-passenger-side-of-the-car-scratcher-denter. It's like a fender-bender except... well, you can probably figure it out. When I picked my car up from the body shop it looked like new, which would have been far more exciting if it wasn't actually new. Yes, I did $1800 worth of body damage to my 2010 Corolla that I've had for three months. Ouch. In another dream last night, my car was still at the body shop; it had been ready for weeks, but I neglected to pick it up. Forrest urged me to go that day to get it... and then he unlocked a closet at church and wheeled out two mopeds. He was insistent that I needed to ride one of the mopeds to the body shop to get my car. A few nights ago in waking life I had a conversation with some friends about scooters. This conversation carried into my dream, and I thought, "Mopeds are cool until you pull up beside someone you went to high school with..." so I told Forrest I would just ask someone for a ride. Then I remembered that I'd had my car back for weeks, but I had no memory of going to get it, and I was very bothered by that. Weird.

On a completely different brain-wave, many of you know that I have a *slight* fear of elevators. There was an elevator in one of my dreams last night, and it was the third time that I can recall dreaming about this particular elevator. I don't know what type of building it was in last night, but in the other dreams it was in a hospital and a sky-scraper hotel (beach front.) In the dream last night the doors to the elevator opened, and as I stepped in I saw Erica, a 4-year-old from church, laying on the floor, surrounded by cookie crumbs. At first glance I thought she was just sleeping, but when I noticed the cookie crumbs I did the math and realized that she was in fact "cookie drunk." She'd consumed so many cookies that she'd fallen asleep right there on the elevator floor. My niece Lauren, who I saw this weekend, is 3 months old, and my sister describes the baby's state immediately post-nursing as "milk drunk. " Erica was cookie drunk :)

More to come... Africa, cell phone, bike carousel (a late arrival to my memory.)

Violin Hero

We recently shortened the large group portion of youth group from one hour to 45 minutes, and it's killing me. At least in my dreams. I have had three separate dreams about running out of time at youth group, usually before I even start the lesson. Last night I told the middle schoolers that I dream about them almost every night... and they thought it was kind of weird. Just kidding. Their response was a chorus of, "Did you dream about ME? I KNOW I was in your dreams!"

In my youth group dream last night I planned a game in which each youth played a song of their choice on a violin (which was actually an electric guitar,) and they were eliminated as soon as they missed a note. Cool game, Catherine. A few youth took their turns before Anthony--a friend from when I was in youth group-- stepped in and dominated the game with a violin-electric-guitar rendition of some country song. I looked at the clock and saw that we only had five minutes remaining; I felt torn between quickly beginning the lesson and continuing the game so that every youth could have a turn.

In what I think was a separate but related dream, I lay in the guest bedroom at my mom's house. It was the middle of the night, and I had my acoustic guitar resting on my stomach. I practiced playing songs so that the instrument sounded like a violin, just as Anthony had done. Then I noticed lights on downstairs, and I heard water running; I knew it was time for my mom to wake up and go for her way-too-early run. Whitney opened the door to her room and went to the bathroom. When she came out, we pow-wowed in the dark and arrived at the conclusion that we were being tricked by our mother: it was actually only 8 p.m. (rather than 4:30 a.m...) I'm not sure the purpose of the trick-- or why we were asleep long enough before 8 p.m. that we could be tricked-- but darn it, the lady was tricking us.

More dreams to come: rental car, cell phone, Africa <--(so I will remember)