Record interesting dreams

My SO and I were on one side of this bridge with someone else (maybe my younger daughter, not sure). Suddenly he jumps way down into the water below. Though this surprises me, I am not alarmed. Leaving the third person behind I saunter across the bridge, stroll into this Italian restaurant and look around. I note that there is a back room. I snatch up a bottle of their table oil and walk into the back room where my SO sits calmly ordering up his meal. He is floored to see me. I plop the bottle down on his table and turn to go. He stand, plants a kiss on me that reverberates and tells me to join him. I tell him, no, that he clearly wants to be alone and I leave. I wake up.

I was back working for the census, driving around, doing my GPS thing. Before I tell you what was funny, you should know I have broadcast only TV, you know, with one of those new converter boxes? Anyway, in my dream the surroundings kept pixelating! I was aware that this was a dream and not TV and I was by turns incensed and tickled. Modern life.

have been about work and about teaching my classes . . . normal dreams for the start of a new semester.

Nothing too remarkable, except for the one in which I went to class in full clown makeup and a black-and-white clown suit. It was great makeup, too, beautifully applied. I think that part of the dream came from having just read my student evaluations. One student said I was “always professional, always prepared, and always on time” and that she (just guessing here, I don’t know who wrote it) wished all her teachers were like that. I was just wondering what kind of teacher would not at least put on a facade of professionalism, when it was so easy to do. I think the perfect clown makeup represents my professonal facade. It certainly has nothing to do with actual makeup, since I barely wear any.

Let me start by saying I am in no way suicidal. So that’s why this dream is so interesting. It was very brief, or at least what I remember is short. I am observing someone else who is looking at two plastic bags (I spent some time yesterday in my studio where all my clay is encased in such bags.) Somehow I know that someone else is thinking of putting a plastic bag of her head. Then I woke up and thought it was stupid, curious, but stupid. It’s these drugs. And yes, I am getting off this drug, but I have to do so slowly or risk rebound effects.

They are filled with trouble and discomfort and worry.

Here’s an example:

I dreamed I was in an unfamiliar mall. Place dreams, for me, are always an exploration of self. I was lost and confused and looking for a hotel where I knew Nick would be. I finally turned down the right branch of the mall and asked for Nick’s room.

When I reached it, everyone I knew and many people I didn’t were crammed into it. There were shelves with people sleeping on them. There were wooden platforms with people sleeping on them. I finally found Nick on one of the platforms and decided to sleep myself. But I got worried about a coworker and went looking for her. Finally, I found her and climbed onto a just-vacated platform to sleep.

Chaos, worry, and too damn many people were the theme of this dream, and that’s pretty much my life right now. I am discovering that as I finish major projects, many other unfinished things are waiting. I have too much to do and too many people to care for. With my father-in-law’s fading memory and oncoming need for care haunting me, I am realizing that I just cannot take him in to our house, that I cannot care for him and Nic too, and that bothers me, because I know he will not want to move here for assisted care.

As for the too many people, I am a private person, but I cannot function now without someone to help me care for Nick. That means a loss of privacy, and I hate that. But the phrase of the day is “suck it up,” and that’s just what I must do.

I know it was long and interesting but all I can recall is asking someone if there was a full-length mirror anywhere.

I don’t think this is symbolic because I’ve been a little frustrated recently at not having one. I guess it was just on my mind.

All my friends gave me shoes! Truckloads of shoes. What’s that about?

No details, but dreams filled with regret, I think.

The most interesting dream was a short one. I was somewhere with my daughter and there were deep pits dug in the ground. There was a kind of scaffolding erected around and above these. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to straddle one of these pits. I lay down across one with my arms and legs spread so that my hands and feet rested on the edge of the scaffolding. I looked down. It was incredibly deep. Then one of the boards slipped out from under one of my feet. I called to my daughter for help and she rushed to me and helped me up.

I hurry to add here that I have no suicidal tendencies, though I do believe the pit was a grave. And I must add that I feel in no great danger from anything right now. I do think I know what it was all about.

I spent an hour and a half talking to my friend V. on the phone. She is a wonderful woman and in many ways similar to me but in one important way she is very different: I have family and she has none. We saw each other through the deaths of our mothers and we each know how hard that caretaking and death was. What I don’t know is how much harder it would have been when Mom died had I not had two daughters, a grandchild, a supportive SO and one caring sibling. V. has not one relative who cares a whit about her. Not one.

Our talk yesterday has me very worried. It is clear that she is deeply depressed. I urged her to go for treatment but she said it could cost her her job. She is on thin ice there. When we both were laid off she was able to find another job (she’s in the medical field) but it requires that she pursue her Ph.D. And now the place where she works is cutting costs and has already cut her salary severely. If she loses the job she loses her health insurance and she has a chronic and expensive condition for which there is no cure. She has no one to help her but me. I am the one listed as her emergency contact. She has no one. She literally has no one to call her back from that pit. No one but me and I feel so helpless.

I am going to the beach with my daughter. I make sure we have all the ID we need! Just about every kind of ID and credit card and license one could imagine I’ve inserted into a huge plastic sleeve like the kind you find in wallets but it’s blanket size!

Then in another dream I am working at a toy store and a little girl comes in. Her mother is in another part of the store and she is bored. I take her into an adjoining room because I know she will find my dog there drinking water from a leaky shower. Instead we find him standing under the shower enjoying the pounding water.

In the first dream all I can come up with is that I seem to feel it necessary that I prove that I deserve, have earned, am entitled to my leisure.

In the second I think it’s just brain junk about the various jobs I have facing me, worry about my dog and fondness for kids.