Thursday, December 10, 2009

Warning: Rated R for Violence

(No, really.)

When this nightmare opened I was standing in line at the movie theater, waiting to see New Moon by myself. Immediately after buying a ticket for the 10:24 a.m. show, a friend walked up and told me that a bunch of people were hanging out and that I should join. The next thing I remember is a group of about ten people sitting around the perimeter of a small room. A friend--to disguise his identity due to the content of this dream we will call him "Dan"-- who was sitting to my left, pulled out a handgun, turned to his left, and began shooting everyone in the head one by one moving clockwise around the room. No one seemed scared, and no one appeared to be angry at him. Before he reached me I stood up and walked into another room thinking, "This is obnoxious, but I don't think he plans to shoot me." I poked my head back in the room and casually said, "Dan, why are you doing this?" He said, "It's just what we do," as he pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into my head. I fell backwards, and everything faded to black. I didn't bleed, but I was aware that my head was in excruciating pain. All of a sudden I could see again; I wasn't dead. I stood up and walked back into the room, still in a lot of pain, and looked at Dan as if to say, "What the heck?" He looked confused, then raised the gun again and shot me in the chest. Again I fell and blacked out. This process repeated, and I was shot again in the head, and then once in the gall bladder (yeah, I have no idea.) At that point I became aware that, with four bullets still in my body (still no blood though,) I might be dying. I felt like I had a terrible migraine, and it hurt my chest to breathe. At that point I wanted to die. (Interesting note though: when I realized how much pain I was in I felt annoyed because I knew I wouldn't be able to run in the morning :))

I begged him to shoot me again, to just end it, but then I realized there were people supporting me; I then felt embarrassed that I had been so ready to give up. Suddenly I was sitting on my back deck, and my dad and some other man were loading guns that were much bigger than Dan's. Apparently others had survived because my friend that invited me to the gathering yelled at Dan saying, "This is not a joke! I don't care if it's just what you do... people are DEAD. Kevin is DEAD. It's not funny!"

Then we were inside again, and it was night. I hobbled out the door alone, still in severe pain, but still not bleeding, and began walking down an alley. I reached a point where the light from the street lamp no longer reached, and there was only darkness ahead of me. I sensed something in the darkness and knew I shouldn't go any further. I turned around and hobbled as quickly as I could back to the door, afraid that whatever was lurking in the darkness was right behind me. I made it safely back inside and found a friend (not someone I actually know, but a friend in the dream), crying on the floor by the back door which was wide open. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "While you were gone he came back, and I shot him... I got him..."

I became aware that it was 10:30 a.m., and thus too late to be let into New Moon. Ten bucks down the drain. The dream ended when I said, "Not to be dramatic, but I think I might need to go to the hospital... I have four bullets in my body."

I was glad when I woke up this morning not in excruciating pain, although I opted for blogging instead of running anyway.

FaLaLaLaLa, Santa, Ho! Ho! Ho! (Target Commercial? Anybody?)

I don't eat weird things before bed...usually. Sometimes I'll watch an episode or four of my latest show on hulu.com. Still, when I mentally replay my dreams as soon as I wake up, I often wonder how the heck all those things got in my head. I haven't yet looked into whether dreams cause sleep to be less restful, but I have been needing a good ten hours a night in order to feel rested in the morning. My dreams from last night may require multiple entries:

1. Actually, I can't share this one just yet because it involves Ross's Christmas present. I bought it yesterday and laughed all the way to the register. The dream about it makes me laugh as well, which is why I even bother sharing this: because it's good... real good. I will write about it and post it after Christmas :)

2. I can't always discern the order of my dreams in a given night, but this one definitely occurred just minutes before I woke up. I dreamed that I opened my gmail and received a comment from a complete stranger on my last blog entry. The comment said this: "Your writing is very choppy, and all your sentences are the same. They sound like, 'duh-da-duh-da-duh-da-duh.' Still, your blog is one of my favorites... probably top 10... because your dreams are so vivid." Or something like that. Despite the compliment, I couldn't see past her criticism of my writing. I think I have great sentence variety. Needless to say, I felt relieved when I did check my gmail and saw that I received no such comment.

3. In another dream I had to give Elizabeth a set of questions by Friday. The questions were typed on a strip of paper that was about an eighth of a full page, and the strip was folded twice. I slipped it in my back pocket, climbed on my bike (which I do not actually own), and rode to her apartment. In waking life, there is a somewhat funny story that relates to Elizabeth's apartment. The first time I picked her up, she directed me to the parking lot in the back of the complex, so the next few times I visited her, that is where I parked. I had never seen the front of the complex and didn't even know where it was because there is no cut-through from front to back... they are on completely different streets. It became sort of a joke when groups of us hung out there--when it came time to leave, most everyone walked out the front door together, and I left through the back.

Well, that isn't entirely relevant to my dream, except that when I biked to her apartment I did go to the back parking lot (even though I have since found the front :)) The dream took place during the day, and because I have never been there during the day, all of a sudden there were parking attendants and fees. I decided to park my bike by a parking meter, and I inserted a dime which bought me 20 minutes. Plenty of time to run up the back stairs, slip the questions under Elizabeth's door, and return to my bike. Then it occurred to me that I didn't have a lock for my bike. I panicked. Surely someone would steal my bike in that time. I saw a guy parking his bike by the meter next to mine, also without a lock, and I felt a little comforted; perhaps if I made a run for it, no one would take my bike. I ran--initially the wrong way--found her apartment, went up the stairs, slipped the paper under her door, and ran back down. I could feel and smell the sweat. Thankfully my bike was still there. Mission accomplished.

That'll do for now. But stay tuned... plenty more to come!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Calm the Storms That Drench My Eyes

Last night while watching an episode of What About Brian (my new Hulu indulegence now that I have seen every episode of Greek and The Secret Life of the American Teenager,) I saw a public service announcement from the EPA featuring babies in green socks crawling around a house. The "go green" message (though not the babies) crept into my dream, which was sort of November 22nd T-rexish in nature.

When the dream opened I was standing in a crowd beside two tall buildings. People had been warned against doing something (eco-UNfriendly, I assume) to the foundation of the buildings, but for whatever reason the warning had been ignored. As we stood there the ground began to shake, and I knew the buildings were about to explode, which would then cause a natural disaster. I ran to my car, turned the key in the ignition, and listened to the radio as I tried to back out into the mass exodus of cars. Someone on the radio said, "One out of every three people trying to escape by car will die." Shoot.

I drove until I reached a familiar building, at which point I parked my car and went inside. The hallways were empty and the lighting looked dark blue--reminiscent of Titanic when the ship is sinking and Rose runs back below deck to rescue Jack. Silent except for the sound of impending doom outside. I walked up the inclined hallway and saw two people through a half-open door at the end of the hall. I opened the door and saw that it was William--our media specialist at church--and... his mom? They said the building would only be safe for a few more minutes, and even as we spoke I turned around and saw water rising in the hall. I don't know if prior to this I knew what kind of natural disaster was going to take place, but at this point I knew it was a flood. Interesting though, it never rained in the dream; water was just rising from the ground where the two tall buildings had been.

I ran out of the building, trying to find higher ground, and realized I was standing at a fork in the dirt road. I looked down the right path and saw water rising; left still appeared dry, so I ran. Up ahead I saw a few kids from the youth group, all aware that something serious was happening, but lacking the appropriate urgency. I took one 6th grade girl (Emily) by the hand, and we all ran. I thought, "We are all going to be so close when this is over!" We saw people sitting in boats, waiting, and knew we needed to find a boat.

At some point the group evolved into me, Emily, Ross, Donnie, and Selina, our contemporary worship leader. We decided to go to the bay, figuring there would be plenty of boats. I have no idea how far away the bay was or how we got there, but all of a sudden we were there standing on a dock. It was almost night, and we knew the water was continuing to rise (apparently not at the bay) and destroy things. We waited in a boat house until finally we received word that the flood had ended! Although we were taling about a flood, the news came more with the attitude of, "The war has ended." We jumped and cheered and hugged each other.

The next morning--though we never slept... the scene just skipped ahead-- there was a celebration gathering of all the boats. We (six of us at this point) paddled into a crowd of hundreds of boats wearing white ninja masks and cheering for our ninja team. (Last night during youth praise team practice I walked out of the balcony, singing to myself, and as I turned the corner to go down the dark stairs, Donnie was standing right in front of me. If you've ever spent an hour with me you know that I am very easily startled, so when I saw Donnie I gasped and flailed my arms, hitting my hand on the wall. Without cracking a smile Donnie said, "Sorry... I'm training to be a ninja." :) Hence Donne and the boat of ninjas... I don't know about the rest of it though.)

Is sleep less restful when you dream a lot? If so, I guess this saga of a dream explains why I often need 9-10 hours of sleep at night!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Like A Million Parachutes...

Two dreams stand out from last night. In the first, a lot of my friends were at Nags Head. When I realized so many people were gone, I decided to just pack up and go for a few days. I was in my room at my mom's house rather than my apartment, and I threw four or five string bikinis (which I do not actually own) in a suitcase. As I zipped the suitcase it dawned on me that it was Sunday, and I work on Sunday... I couldn't just leave! I thought, "I will wait until after youth group tonight, and then I will drive down to the beach," but then I remembered that I work on Mondays too. This dream likely came about because last Thursday (also a work day) I did just leave and drive to the mountains to hike because it was a beautiful day. Was it worth it? You be the judge:





In my second dream last night I was skydiving with some friends. Sort of. A group of us stood in a plane which flew fairly low to the ground--maybe three stories high-- and we each held a helium balloon. One by one we jumped out of the plane, and our single balloons slowed us down like parachutes as we floated to the ground. Spotts and I couldn't stop laughing when we landed. Who knew you could actually do that?? We decided, considering our "parachutes" were just plain balloons, that we could do it ourselves, and we planned to buy ten balloons each and take turns jumping off roofs.

What if...

Yesterday's Dreams

I did not write down my dreams yesterday morning because I was busy eating breakfast and drinking coffee with Mallory while half-watching That's So Raven. As you might guess, neither of us are really interested in that show, but we had designated Saturday as our "deep clean the apartment" day, so I suppose it was a form of procrastination. I did have a few pretty good dreams though:

1. I parked my car and walked up the sidewalk towards my apartment. When I reached the door, I turned around and saw that Mallory was pulling onto the street, so I decided to wait for her inside the door. I watched as she parked across the street, stepped out of her car, looked around her, and casually walked towards a building across the street and to the right of our apartment. As she approached, the face of the building opened into a brick archway leading to an alley, which led into a building, and she entered. Through our glass door I could see shelves of books in the alley, and I was intrigued. What was this place, and why had I never seen it before? And what was Mallory doing? I think she was spy, but I didn't follow her.

2. I think this was a separate dream, but I can't be positive. I walked up a flight of stairs to my apartment, except it wasn't my apartment. The building was on stilts--like a beach house-- and had multiple sets of stairs. I climbed the set that I thought led to my apartment, but didn't recognize any of the doors on that floor. I walked back down and tried another set of stairs. At the top I bumped into Rebecca Logan (see my November 5th entry if you have no idea who this is...) and asked her to help me find my apartment. As we walked we were suddenly on a college campus... that looked just like Short Pump Mall. And we definitely couldn't find my apartment at that point.

3. I wish I could recall more of this dream, but what I do have is decent material. It was dark outside, and a guy friend (I don't know who it was) and I stood in the back of someone's house by their sliding glass door. We knew the people who lived there, and we must have knocked because they came to the door, but the man and woman refused to open it. We were confused, and the people explained that we were vampires, and they could not invite us into their home (for obvious reasons.) My friend and I felt sad; we had no idea until that point that we were the enemy. Somehow we did enter the house, but I can't remember anything that happened inside. When we left out the back door I almost forgot my purse, which I had set down on the grill, but turned around and picked it up before we left. We-ird.

4. I was back in Kenya, walking alone (actually, I might have been riding a camel at one point) at night on a dirt road. I suddenly became aware that what I was doing was definitely not safe. A man was walking towards me on the other side of the road, and I thought, "This is why women do not walk alone at night in Kenya..." Then I realized I was wearing my Birkenstocks (which I've had for seven years, by the way,) and they were clomping loudly on the ground with every step I took. They looked like clown shoes. The man walking towards me, and now others who were on the road, criticized my shoes... laughing and saying how no one wears Birkenstocks anymore. Whatever. I love my shoes.

I reached my destination safely, and for some reason I was making a quick trip back to the states, then returning to Kenya a few days later. I thought, "This is going to get expensive if I keep doing this..." I was in the hall at church where my office is located (still in Kenya though), and there were about a dozen other people--American citizens-- sitting on the floor. They were hungry, so I volunteered whatever food was in my office. As I walked into my office to gather food I told them that I thought I had turkey to make sandwiches, but when I opened my refridgerator (which I do NOT have in my office), there was only one carton of milk. Oops. I found some other food in my cabinets, and walked back into the hall and reported that they could have milk, granola bars, or pretzels, but no turkey.

Stay tuned for Saturday night's dreams...