What an Honor!

In my most recent dream...

I received an official certificate to notify me that my friend Irene had nicknamed her minivan in my honor.  Her family was heading off on a trip to visit me and they visited the website: 

nicknamyouraminivan.com 

So, now her van is called Bethany.  How thoughtful of her and her family.  

I don't actually think that she drives a van in real life.  Also, I checked and that url isn't taken yet, so you may want to jump on this great opportunity! 

These eyes are moving rapidly again

My body apparently didn't get the memo that it's Fall Break right now.  It kept trying to wake me up this morning and I kept resisting.  The only plus to all of this is that I had a dream! I used to have good dreams all the time, but that has not been the case lately and my dream blog has been suffering because of it.

Alright, here is what happened.  I was living in a house that we were renting  from the synchronized swimmer aunts in the show "Pushing Daisies."  One of their nieces was a friend and another niece was living in the house with me.  I had done something small to upset the niece who was a friend and she said that her aunts were probably going to kick me out of the house because of it.

These are the aunts:

I had to drive to some special event where there wasn't much parking.  To take care of this, they had us all park in a different lot and then shuttled us up a hill in little golf carts.  When I got to the top, I walked into the building and I was in Costco.  I was there to meet a girl who I was selling something to.  The only problem was that I couldn't remember what I was selling and the price we had agreed on since I was selling so many products online.  She gave me about $400 in cash.  I started holding them up to the light to check it they were real.  It was legit money and I was totally mesmerized by the images that appeared in the light.  They were so fancy.  I wanted to give major kudos to whoever had designed them.

I kept running into people I knew at Costco (weird , huh?).  It was funny because the girl who just gave me all this fancy money knew all my friends.  Her husband was done with his shopping and came to join her.  I started  to panic a bit because I now had hundreds of dollars and nothing to give her back in return.  I lost track of the lady and her husband, but figured they wouldn't leave without receiving their purchase.  I ran out to the parking lot to find my car and remembered that it was down in the other lot that I needed to get shuttled back to.

That was about the end of that.  Next, I was back in my house.  It was a really nice, cabin-looking house.  One roommate came home and announced, "My aunts are going to kick you out, you know?"  Yes, I know.  Now, I felt all crummy again.  My friend Sarah was living there and she noticed my glum mood.  To get my mind on other things, she started video taping me.  She was asking me questions about love. "Which part of a woman's body falls in love with a man first?"  I was trying to come up with an answer and then we were watching an old video of all of us working in our backyard garden.  It was a very uplifting video and a great way to end my dream.

(Tim will be so happy to find out that my dream ended with gardening.  He's a little passionate about it right now).

Not your average Sunday experience

I took a nap before church today (we don't meet until 2:00).  I'm hoping that our actual Sacrament Meeting service turns out nothing like my dream.

Before church began, word was spreading that something was going to be different today.  As one of our leaders began the meeting, we were all asked to turn around and face the stage behind us.  I had a nervous feeling about this and as I turned, my feeling was confirmed.

A large screen had been pulled down and some inappropriate images popped up on it that were part of some music video.  Then Dustin* and his buddies started dancing for everyone.  I quickly turned my attention back to the bishopric to see how they were going to handle the situation at hand.  It was more than apparent on their faces that they were uncomfortable, but they didn't know what to do. They had sort of given the ok for this without realizing what they were agreeing to.  While they were debating, I went into the hallway and talked with some of my friends.

I know that several churches have dancing and singing incorporated into their worship services.   Just to clear things up for you, this was nothing like that.  

Once the dancing ended, I re-entered the chapel for our real Sacrament services.  As I went back to my seat, I saw that Dustin and his girlfriend had sat down right next to me.  Actually, they sat one apart from each other, so that I was in the middle of them. She asked me if I was mad at him.  "No, I am not mad.  I just don't think that this was the time/right place for that. Do you want to switch seats with me so that you can sit next to Dustin?"  We switched seats and that was that.





*Name has been changed

Mix Tape

Mr. Sandman was my bff last night.  He brought me some crazy vivid dreams.  It really is quite unfortunate for the rest of you that you weren't there and also that I was unable to write them down before spelling rules and the Judicial Branch and the order of operations and my fly being down for 1.5 hours started to fog up my memory.

So, here's what's left:

I walked up to my bedroom door to discover that someone had decorated the whole thing with red butcher paper and coded messages.  I followed a series of clues that lead me to my collection of cassette tapes.  I had to find a specific tape called "Mix Tape" and a certain song.  The song that was originally there had been dubbed over my whoever sent me on this chase.  Through the song, I learned that this person wanted to take me to a Valentine's dance.

Later on in my dreaming, I went over to my parents' house.   I was there for about an hour and when I left, I couldn't find my car anywhere.  I concluded that someone had stolen it.  I decided that the best way to get my car back was to walk around the neighborhood until I saw my car (because when people steal cars, they stay within walking distance).  There was not a single car parked in the entire neighborhood.  Why not? Well, it's because all the youth from my parents' church were having a sleepover in the neighborhood streets.  There were teenagers lined up for several blocks in sleeping bags on the asphalt.  I never found my car.



The first part makes more sense if you know these 2 things about my life:

1) I have this super cool sister who knows how to throw a shindig.  It was her birthday a few weeks ago and she had a super sweet 90s party.  Among all the radness, one of my favorite things was the super fly invitation I received that was patterned after a Walkman with a cassette tape inside.

2) I drove back from a quick trip to Vegas last night.  I was there with my amazing coworkers for a literacy conference.  I learned a lot and I had such a great time with them.  During the car ride home, we talked about almost everything-including how we had asked boys out to dances in high school.

I've got nothing to explain the 2nd part of my dream.

Sunday Morning Dreams

My church time changed to 2:00 pm today.  As feared, I slept in way longer than I should have.  Fortunately though, I got some good dreams out of that extra sleep time.

Dream 1:

It was my birthday, so I invited all of the third graders to my party (who would do that?).  One of their parents agreed to host it at her house.  I had a lot to do that day and was way behind schedule.  I stopped at the mall to fulfill another obligation first.  I soon realized that I had no idea where the party was located.  The mother hosting my party called and asked how much longer she should hold the kids there.  I never made it to the party.

Dream 2:

I went to New York City with my fam.  The hotel lobby TVs warned us that another big storm was coming.  I thought to myself, "Why did we think it would be okay to come here right after Hurricane Sandy?"  A hotel employee gave us a copy of their emergency evacuation plan. The atmosphere was starting to get a little tense.  I continued to check the TV monitors and then a credit card commercial came on.  At the bottom of their credit card, there was a quote.  It read, "This storm will not be as bad as Sandy. -Dieter F. Uchtdorf" 

That's when I knew we'd be okay.  I had been walking around with a toothbrush in my mouth.  I went to return it to the medicine cabinet and discovered that my toothbrush was already in it's place. I was using someone else's toothbrush. Hope they don't find out! 

Dream 3:

I lived in a very nice home and had invited my students over (perhaps I felt bad for missing my own birthday party earlier).  Everything went well and then their parents came to pick them up.  I went in the backyard to get them and discovered that they had all jumped in our lake. How was I going to explain this to their parents? How did they even get in there? I tried asking my husband (yes, I had a husband) what had happened, but everything was a bit chaotic and I never got an answer.  

Helicopters and Heat

Recently, my middle-of-the-night activity mostly includes me waking up and thinking that it's morning. It's rather confusing and getting kind of old.  Last night, though, I slept all the way until morning!  Awesome! Plus, Mr. Sandman brought me a dream! Double awesome! So many exclamation points!!

I logged into facebook (or faceboard, as my mom would say) and opened a message.  I've received dream texts and dream emails, but this was my first dream fb message. 

The lengthy message was from some kid that I knew in high school.  He told me about how I had totally missed out on seeing a helicopter landing. It was so cool.  I really should have been there.  Why didn't I go?  Everyone there loved it.   

While reading, I thought, "I wasn't invited to the event where this took place, so how could I have been there?" and "I've already seen a helicopter land.  It was pretty neat, but it got dirt all over the place."

Basically, I wasn't very enthusiastic about the message. However, there was one line in there about how I was as "hot as magma." That's 1300 °F to 2400 °F, people.  I was hoping to provide a super cool hot picture of magma for you, but since magma is below the Earth's surface, there only seem to be pictures of lava, which is not as hot and would be a false representation. 

Single

In my dream last night, I was called up to the front office of the school to redo some paperwork that I had filled out incorrectly the first time.  One of the questions was about my marital status.   After marking "Single," the principal's secretary started hounding me.  She told me that I better stop slacking and start dating more often.  It was rather comical when I woke up.  I told her about my dream this morning and she promised to never bug me about my dating life. I'm glad that people are nicer to me in person than they are while I'm sleeping.

I feel like a lot of my recent posts have centered on the fact that I am man-less and childless.  I promise that I am really not as concerned/obsessed with these two facts as it may appear.

Baby Hungry

Ever since my sweet little nephew arrived, I have been thinking about babies a lot.  I had a dream that I was adopting a baby earlier this week.  The problem is that every day I wake up, I am still having a hard time knowing what's real and what isn't.  It's happened before with several other supposed middle-of-the- night deliveries (including rabbits), but now it's a baby. My thoughts as I'm getting up have included, "I really need to clean my room or the adoption agency won't think I'm a suitable mom" and "Today is baby day!"  I really hope that my half-conscious self will start realizing that there won't be any newborns delivered to my house at 3:00 or 5:00a.m.  It's hard to go back to sleep after such a rush of emotions.

Dream Within A Dream?

I was so excited that I remembered my dream the other day.  

I jotted down a few notes so that I could blog about it later on.

Since that day, I have not seen those "notes."

My only explanation:

I wrote my notes down in another dream :(

Back to School

I had my first back to school dream this week. Only this time, it wasn't the students that made it frightening.  An old friend of mine showed up right before the first day was to begin and explained the sticky situation she had gotten herself in with one several past relationships.  She asked me to watch her daughter while she took care of some things and for some reason, I agreed to do so.  Watching the little girl proved to be trickier than anticipated.  By the end of the day, I didn't even know what I had taught students.   They probably all went home to complain about what a lame teacher they had.  

Glass House

I dreamed about staying in a house made completely out of glass. You couldn't get any privacy anywhere.  This made the process of taking a shower especially awkward for me.  It's not like the house was out in some secluded area either; there were tons of people outside looking in.  It was pretty much a nightmare for someone who isn't even comfortable in her own bedroom without clothes on.

Julie Andrews has the Solution

In this dream, I moved into a large house with my friends and a bunch of Emo kids.  I was up on a ladder, using an electric drill to help my friend hang up President Hinckley's Six Be's.  I did a terrible job at using the drill and ended up losing my balance and hanging from a board in an unfinished part of the house. If I fell, I would have gone all the way from the attic to the ground floor.  Since I was very clever and strong in this dream, I made it to safety. Phew.

The Emos had set up easels everywhere since they were really into painting.  They were also really into drinking, so Coors beer could be found all over the place. I needed to step outside for a moment. As I was exiting the house, it turned into this strange mall where nannies would watch all the children on one level and parents could do whatever they wanted on another.  The children were so heartbroken that they couldn't see their parents.

Once I got outside and away from the craziness, I sang "The Hills are Alive" while walking down a crowded street.  It made everything better.

Mafia and Motorboats

Remember how I found that note yesterday? Well in my dream last night, there was a series of numbers written at the bottom.  It came to my attention that these numbers meant something very important to the mafia.  I immediately regretted blogging about the note and did everything I could to keep the mafia from getting it from me. I blame this intense dream on the the mafia movie that I watched last night.

I had second dream where I was hanging out at a cabin with my friends.  A few of them were going somewhere, so I decided to go along for the ride.  We got to our destination in a motorboat.  As I was climbing out, I realized that I was barefoot.  My friend soon said, "Look what I found for you!" and then he handed me a pair of really nice sandals that were exactly my size.  Awesome.  We walked into a store and it dawned on me that I didn't have a suitable shirt on.  I was barely covered.  We looked in the store for one (even though I had no money with me), but they only had children's clothing.  My friends kept reassuring me that nobody would notice what I was wearing not wearing.  I still don't believe them.  In part, I'm going to attribute this dream to an episode of Phineas and Ferb that we watched last night to lighten our spirits after the mafia movie crushed them down.

Inception

I'm not really sure why I resisted watching Inception for so long, but it's probably because nobody could tell me what it was about.  Anyway, I saw it for the first time yesterday and really enjoyed it 

(and the burrito from the Burrito Shack I devoured while watching it).  

Then last night as I was dreaming, I totally had a dream within a dream.

I was a little weirded out when I woke up (or did I?), 

but I found comfort in knowing that I hadn't gotten down to the third level. 

The Aftermath

Going on a vacation to Europe was great, don't get me wrong. But, coming home has been harder than expected.  Not only am I daydreaming of being back where the thermostat doesn't comprehend 100 degrees or higher, but I'm also nightdreaming of sleeping in past 6am. I'm not getting back into this whole Arizona time zone thing very well.

According to this picture, it should have been easier for me to adjust traveling west.  I don't believe it.

Today I couldn't fight 4:30am.  I've been all over the internet, trying to pass the time until I can go get started with my day.  I'm not a big fan of people complaining about things online, but I can't help it much when I am denied my precious sleep time (complaining again).

During the time that I have slept, I have managed to have a few dreams.  Two of them were short and involved being back in Austria. Here is the other one:

I was up in P-town visiting my friend Lydia, who apparently wasn't married to her husband yet. We went over to her guy friend's house. The tall, strapping, young lad escorted us with me on one arm and Lydia on the other.  His married brother showed up and we walked into a Sunday School class together.  My uncle was there and saw me with the two fine-looking men and commented, "If only your dad were here to see this."  Then, sure enough, my dad was there.  He gave the opening prayer.  The whole prayer was about me and how glad that he was for his daughter to be in the presence of the opposite sex.  Beyond embarrassed. The class started and we had a great lesson.  Then the teacher explained that he had scheduled for us to watch a movie at a certain time, but we had to wait about 20 minutes.  In the meantime, I busted out a game for us to play.  It was one of my favorite games-Likewise.

(Don't be fooled by the picture.  The game no longer comes with erasers or cute faces on the paddles.  Very disappointing, I know.  Still, it's a great game.)

We had a great time playing and someone pointed out that the two brothers that I had arrived with were gone.  It turned out that they thought they were too cool for games.  Which means that they were not cool enough for me.  I guess my uncle and dad got all worked up over nobody special. 

Workin' in a coal mine

Now that summer is finally here (yay!), I have been getting more sleep.  More sleeep=More Dreams=More Blog Entries. It's a win, win, win.

I should have written this earlier today when it was more clear, but you'll just have to deal with what is still in my head.

I was preparing to enter a mine shaft.  I had to get all geared up.  We needed special clothes and head lamps and all that jazz. My favorite part now that I'm awake was a tight material that covered my hair.  It was very similar to one of those things you use to cover your own hair before putting on a wig.

Later we were being trained on safety procedures.  To warn us about the dangers of using a certain drug, this guy started eating this nasty green stuff and then ended up puking it up all over the place.  I was beyond disgusted (as I would imagine you are right now).

I never actually got to go down into the mine.

I was probably worried about getting the black lung, like this guy:

Long Lines and Gooey Gum

Last night, I was on some sort of ward activity during my dream.  We all drove out of town to some fancy big cabin out of town.  Since we had been driving for a while, we all had to go to the bathroom as soon as we got there (bathrooms are in my dreams more than 50% of the time if you haven't caught on yet).  I rushed to the restroom and found the line to be too long for my liking so I went in search of another one. The next bathroom I found was more like a public restroom.  It had a sign for women and a long line (naturally).  I decided to wait in this line, but when I got in there, I discovered there were men in the restroom as well.  This made me extremely uncomfortable as we didn't have stall walls for privacy (another common occurrence in my dreams).

After making it through that horrible ordeal, I went to spit out my gum. This proved to be easier said than done. I had to keep grabbing more and more chunks of gum out of my mouth with my hands. Very unladylike. Plus, there seemed to be a never-ending supply of it. It didn't really even have the consistency of gum.  It was more like I had been chewing wheat.  Have you ever chewed wheat before?  They say it's like chewing gum, but it's totally not.  It's gross and I definitely wouldn't recommend having large chunks of it stuck in your mouth.

There was a class being held at a nearby meeting.  I hopped in my car and drove over there.  I parked on a steep street and put my emergency brake on for added safety.  It didn't make a difference.  My car started rolling down the hill backwards! I was doing everything I could to keep my car on the road and not hit any bicyclists or pedestrians.  I decided the only thing to do was flip my car around and right before attempting to do so, I woke up.

Do you lye crytol gel?

Now that the weather is warming up, I've been wearing my flip-flops much more frequently.  Which means that I've been looking at my plain, unpolished toes.  I'm so ready for a pedicure, but trying to hold out 'til the annual mother's day pedicure with my mama. In my dream last night, I couldn't wait any longer.

I walked into the salon and the main thing that I noticed that nobody working there was Asian.  Definitely a dream.  That consumed pretty much all of my thoughts while I was dreaming.  There was also this woman who kept coming up to me to shave my neck and the part in my hair. First of all, this is not a hair salon.  Secondly, who brings a razor anywhere near a hair part?

Needless to say, my toes were never painted.  Those ladies need to take some lessons from the Vietnamese.

Clean Hands

Last night I had a dream that a whole bunch of guests were staying at my parents' house.  I was in my sisters room and it was a total mess.  I was trying to get all of my electronics together and I ended up dropping them in the toilet.  Yes, the toilet was in the bedroom.  I fished them all out quickly with my hands.  Amazingly, my cell phone still worked (and it was a huge upgrade from the phone that I actually have).

My favorite part was that when I woke up, my first thought was, "I need to go wash my hands really well."  You never know if those dream germs are still there or not.

Look in the Clown's Mouth

In my most recent dream, I was attending a performance at BYU with a friend.  We walked out to our car afterwards and I realized that I didn't have my keys with me.  We quickly rushed back to the outdoor amphitheater and started searching for the missing keys.  We came across a man who said he had seen them.  His cousin had taken the keys with him to his work at Fuller Automotive.  I contacted the cousin, who sent me a text message explaining how he was only able to keep my keys at work until closing time since they didn't belong to a Fuller car.  So once the workday was over, he had dropped the keys into the mouth of a ceramic clown statue (the only logical place to deposit lost keys).  He included a picture of the statue and directions to where I could find it.  By the time I made it to the clown statue, he no longer had anything in his mouth.  After fretting a bit about what would happen next, I woke up.