Visit the kelpforest....

Dream:

We were all in the park at the end of my street, flying kites, late in the afternoon (note:in real life, this park is not all that great a place to fly kites; there are too many trees, and a couple of buildings for them to get stuck on the roof of). I think even my dad had come. Instead of flying them from west to east, the normal wind dirction, we were flying them from north to south, so we were actually standing in the street and the kites were in the air in front of the scout cabin. Our kite was pretty small and plain. Another man showed up and began setting up a series of figures in a semicircle on the grass in front of the scout cabin. The may have been cartoon characters or political figures or flowers, I don't remember, but we wondered why he was taking such care with how they were arranged. Then he came back to where we were standing and began sending a black kite up in the air. By this time, it was after sunset and it was getting fairly dark, so the rest of us were working on reeling our kites in. Once we had gotten them down and put away, we heard a BANG BANG BANG, and look up to see the man had set off series of fireworks along the string of his kite. They traveled up the string, and when the sparks reached the kite, it burst into a fan-shaped fountain, which burned for a few seconds. This of course burned up the kite as well, and it turned over and nosedived to the ground, crashing right in front of the figures set up on the ground in a shower of sparks. This set off lines of incendiary to each of the figures, of which the outlines flashed into flame from top to bottom. Wow. We all stood and clapped, as he smiled quietly and began to pick up all the remnants of his display.

This may have been triggered by commercials for Making Fiends running on Nickelodeon lately. where evil Vendetta brings a kite to fly alongside her would-be friend Charlotte's kite.

Charlotte: "Oh, you have a kite too Vendetta?
Vendetta: "Oh yes, it's a very special kite!

And then her black kite sprouts tentacles and teeth, growls, and grabs Charlotte's kite and eats it.

(I actually started watching these as web videos a couple of years ago before Nick started airing the series)

I was thinking about this dream when first got up (actually I was ( TMI! )), and it segued in my head to the the little kite I'd gotten once as a prize on the bottom of a Slurpee cup, and how free prizes in kids products used to be so much better than they are now. Cracker Jacks (a brand of carmel popcorn snack) used to have actual toys in them; I remember when I was about five, getting a tiny plastic elephant (assembly required) that had some kind of rider (a monkey or a mahout, I don't remember) that fit into a slot on its back. You pushed down the elephants tail, or maybe its trunk, and the rider went flying off somewhere (and you were lucky if you ever found it again). Nowadays, you get a sticker or a temporary tattoo. My father used to save Planters Peanut wrappers for me because you could send away for free stuff with them. I think I still have a Mr. Peanut bank out in the garage somewhere. Nothing on the backs of their wrappers now. I notice the Dums-Dums suckers my kids got in their Halloween candy have a "save wrappers for stuff" thing, but you order from a website and the wrappers only get you a discount.

An exception lately was the alarm clock from a box of Poptarts, which you needed to have several coupons from a box to able to purchase. It has pictures of a the little dinosaur from the commercial on the hands, and when the alarm goes off, it says:

"Get up. One of us has to get up, and it ain't gonna be me. Get up or I tell all your friends you wear jammies!"

It also runs backwards, so it takes a bit of squinting to tell what time it actually is.

I should make a pattern for that kite. It always amazed me that it actually flew. What do you remember getting out of a box or sending away for when you were a kid?

Everyone's sick again, although I'm not sure whether Dad is or not. He's decided to either actually grow a beard or just not shave. Maybe he decided to get a job as a mall Santa this year or something. I don't think it's doing much for his appearance - it's making him look his age. I took a couple of pictures of him at the Aquarium last week that I was thinking I would send to my brothers, but yeesh!

Had to run home to pick the boys up at school; John wasn't up to walking there. I was digging around for the keys and remembered he had dropped me off this morning, so I had to borrow a work vehicle.

Tired. Not only was he having night sweats and thrashing around, he was having a nightmare about once an hour. Before I came to bed, he sat bolt upright and asked me in a panicky rush, "Canyougetmesomethingtoeatanythingbutpeople!!"

"What?!"

He flopped back down and said, "I dreamed you gave me people for a snack!"

Honestly. Can the guy have normal dreams about everyday things? It's always something catastrophic.

This morning I was dreaming there was a mockingbird outside my window, doing that awful screechy noise they do when they're nesting and think something is threatening them. The noise they make when they're about to dive bomb your cat. It kept getting louder and louder, and I was thinking, "Man, what is bugging that bird?!"

Then I opened my eyes and it was my alarm clock.

Between the hours of 2:45 am, when I was awakened to 1) let cat out, 2) get drink of water for 4 year old, 3) help sleepy, sick six year old find the bathroom, and 4) get Tums for sick husband, and 4:50 am, when I got up to go to work, I had a dream about being in an indoor swimming pool with a mermaid, a little girl and Alan Rickman. We were trying to teach someone to swim, although for the life of me I can't remember who. I was swimming, the child swam like a porpoise, and the mermaid, of course, said she had learned while still in her mother's arms. She had the most gorgeous pastel-colored fins, and a matching bikini top, because I'm subconsciously a prude, I suspect. I don't think we were teaching Mr. Rickman, although I don't recall him actually swimming. He was sort of standing there, waist-deep, with a smirk on his face.

'Twas all rather pleasant, until I jerked awake and realized my alarm hadn't gone off and I was 45 minutes late getting up. Rats.

(crossposted to alanrickman and mermaid_lagoon - why anyone cares is beyond me, but it seems to be the convention)

edit: a few more details because someone in one of the aforementioned communties asked: It was a largish pool, although I don't think Olympic sized - I don't remember any lane lines. The only light came from the pool lamps under the water. Rickman was not wearing any jewelery, maybe an earring. I can't remember whether he had a mustache or not, but his hair looked blowdried and feathered - a somewhat younger version than he is now. The mermaid's fins, and the fish part of her body were mostly pink and orange (strange because they're not my favorite colors) with hints of purple, green and blue. All her fins and the edges of her scales were fringed and rippled in the water as she swam.

Well, they have every other part of my life, so they were bound to show up there sooner or later...

I had a dream last night where I met my brother Dave at a bus stop, and when he appeared he was dressed up like Vash the Stampede. He had bleached his hair and spiked it up, had yellow sunglasses and a long red coat. Except it had a pair of zippers instead of buttons.

Where the heck did that come from? He doesn't even watch anime. He's too short to be Vash anyway, a couple of inches shorter than I am.

Awhile ago, I had one where I was still in college, and Vegeta was my roommate. We shared an apartment. No, unfortunately, nothing more than that. He was a decent guy, if easily pissed off. I think he actually cleaned and did the dishes. For some reason, there was a crane on our street (which was the street in front my parent's house) for removing trees or something; it pissed him off for some reason and he knocked it over with a gesture from half a block away. That's about all I remember from that one. Funny thing was I dreamed him as a real person, not an animated one. But if you asked me now, I couldn't tell you the difference.

Maybe if I had more dreams like that, I'd remember them more often.

I dreamed I was visiting my mother-in-law's other house, which seemed to be in the Pacific Northwest somewhere. The back porch opened out onto the ocean so you could sit on the deck and watch the surf, while the front porch was on a lake front, that was simultaneously in a city and also looked out snow-covered mountainsides; occasionally an avalanche tumbled down into the lake. This being a dream, that was a totally believable situation - although I may have borrowed it from a science fiction story (probably Dan Simmon's Hyperion), where people had windows and doors that were time or distance portals.

I believe I was there to help her pack up because she was moving, although when I looked around, I couldn't understand why. It was a charming place, painted a cheerful royal blue and bright yellow (sometimes in stripes), and had the neatest little built in cabinets and shelves for knick-knacks. I guess it was a bit small, but her real place is one of those drab mobile homes with fake wood-paneling everywhere. She was out running errands and I stepped out front to watch the snow falling into the lake, not realizing I had left the back door open, and waves were coming in as the tide rose. I looked back in side to see the water coming in the door, screeched a bit, and ran back to shut the door, whereupon the six inches of water on the floor quickly dried up. At least, the next time I looked it was gone.

My ML came back and said we were going out to lunch. Between the kitchen and the bedroom, there was a spiral staircase that went down to a lower level where there was a tram that would take us directly to a 50's style diner. Now that I try to remember, it was more like one of those boat things with several rows of seats at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Dismalland. But we never got there, somehow I wound up standing on the street, waiting for a bus.

I had been thinking I don't remember many dreams lately, and then this morning I had one.

Some friend of mine had signed me up to join the army. I definitely hadn't done it myself or I would have picked the the Navy or the Coast Guard. Not much happened except they put a bunch of us on a bus and took us to a motel where 15 of us were assigned to a room. The only problem was that there were only three beds. Most everyone took off for a last night on the town before boot camp, but I was tired and stayed behind with one or two other girls. I looked at the beds; two of them were king-sized, and the other was really an oversized patio lounger - a metal frame with plastic strip across it. I really wanted to go to sleep, but I knew I would have to leave room for everyone who was coming back. For some reason I picked the patio lounger, and settled down onto the very edge of it. Later I opened my eyes, and noticed my feet were in the middle of the bed, so I moved back over to the edge.

Unfortunately in the real world, John had wanted to snuggle, and got upset with me when I moved over. I was just trying to make more room.

I don't know why I dreamed about joining the military - maybe because John was watching "Private Benjamin" yesterday. I toyed with the idea of applying to the Coast Guard Academy when I was in high school, but when I found out most of the classes were geared towards engineering, I gave up on the idea. I was hoping they had more in the way of oceanography. They also had some policy at the time that you could not have any large scars. I have a large bald patch on the top of my head where I was burned very badlly as an infant - I guess I thought that would have disqualified me. I do remember that one disqualifier was "acne so bad as to be disfiguring." Guess we can only have hansome unscarred people as officers in the military.

When you keep having recurring dreams about sitting on the pot, and suddenly the walls disappear and you're sitting in some public place with people walking all around, maybe it's time to actually wake up and head to the bathroom.