little nemo’s adventures in slumberland

i have been having so many bad or uncomfortable dreams in the past few weeks. i have been playing that silly World of Warcraft game, and almost every night for the past month i’ve been dreaming about it. i wake up exhausted. they’re not good dreams. maybe i’ve been running all night, or out on futile quests.

and last night, while thankfully i did NOT dream of WoW, I had some really bizarre and upsetting dreams.

in the first one, i was with Doc in a strange city, which somehow was Seattle but now that I’m awake it was nothing like Seattle. we were someplace that was next to a field, and we decided to walk to target, which was about 3 to 4 miles away and on the waterfront. we could see the giant target sign from where we were, but it was a long way off. doc and i each had a huge balloon tied to our wrists. they were red with some sort of white logo on them, and they weren’t typically balloon-shaped but rather shaped like an M&M. They were probably ten feet in diameter and floating a couple hundred feet above our heads. i have no idea what the point of the balloons was. adam and stan were also with us, and one of our other friends but i don’t remember who that was now.

doc and adam were walking waaaay up ahead, and stan and the other friend were some distance ahead, and i was in the rear. i decided that it would be so much easier to take our car up to target rather than walk four miles through fields and city, and conveniently enough the car was in a parking lot that i was just passing by. doc was far out of earshot so i yelled to stan that we should all get in the car, but he kept walking. i hoped that he’d heard me and made a quick decision to go get the car myself and drive over to target and meet them there. i figured that with city traffic it would take me about the same amount of time, and we’d meet up and everything would be great.

but something terrible happened, and i found myself wandering in the city with no idea where they were, and no way to contact doc. i think that the car broke down or something. i had no cell phone with me; it was with doc. i had no balloon anymore; i’d let it go. i knew that doc would be worried sick because i was no longer following them, and if he tried to call me he’d find out that he had my phone, too. if he went back for the car he’d find it gone. and, what if he saw my balloon floating over the city, sans me? i felt absolutely horrible at what i’d done. i walked back down the street closest to the waterfront, hoping against hope that i’d find them, feeling worse by the minute at how panicked doc must be, when suddenly i saw him hauling ass up the same street i was on. i yelled his name across the street, and he put his hand to his ear like he was having a hard time hearing and spun around a couple of times like he was looking for the source of the sound. he had a very animated epxression on his face so i knew he saw me and was just exaggerating, and then he calmly came across the street and smiled at me and hugged me. i thought that was very strange because he should have been furious …

… and then i dreamed that i woke up and told him the entire thing. i’m convinced that is the only way i’m actually remembering it …

… and then the dream switched, in that weird way that they do …

… and i was in some old wooden building, in a series of rooms in a straight line that all interconned with doors in the midddle. they were almost like old classrooms, except that i think that it was my office building. somebody had been painting everything white, and i found myself tearing little bits of masking tape off of the brass parts of the doors, except that it hadn’t seemed to help keep the paint where it was supposed to be. the guy who had done the painting asked me if he should paint this bannister railing in the middle of the last room, or the wooden sofa frame. he was very insistent and acted like this was part of the contract and he needed to finish up so he could get paid. i told him that i couldn’t authorize it, that he’d have to talk to lisa, but if it was up to me i’d have him sand and stain the sofa frame and paint the scratched-up railing white. in another room, one of the computer guys was there and i saw him dismantling one of the computers, i think it was a server. he told me that we weren’t allowed to have this, that it was his computer and he was taking it away.

then i was eating lunch with brittney at little restaurant/diner in the downtown waterfront part of a strange city… all these dreams might have taken place in this same dreamSeattle; the feel of them all is kind of similar. anyway, she ordered some blue cheese sausage dish in a hollowed out potato skin, which was something that the diner was known for; i wanted something lighter but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t fried that sounded good that i could also afford; she’d already ordered and it felt like everyone was staring at me and waiting on me, because i’d told them i was ready but wasn’t, and kept walking back and forth looking at the various menus in indecision. i finally just asked if they had a plain chicken sandwich. the waiter said yes, and that our lunch would be ready in about 20-40 minutes which meant we’d be super late getting back to work. this worried me but we’d already ordered; what could we do?

then i was somewhere else, it might have been in that wooden office building, and there were a bunch of people there, and ginger had handed out stacks of her old clothing on hangers to everyone, along with huge amounts of pipe cleaners. each pipe cleaner was individually packaged in very nice packaging, and she was explaining to everyone how they were part of her therapy and were helping her work through issues, and she wanted us all to have them too. i’m not sure what purpose they served except maybe they were supposed to help us help her. anyway, i unwrapped them all and ended up with a huge bundle of various pipe cleaners in various sizes and colors, some were as big as an inch in diameter, some had sparkles on them, and i could barely hold the whole bundle. i really didn’t want them, had no idea what to do with them, and i wanted to return them to her like most of the other people were doing, but i was afraid that it would hurt her feelings. so i pulled out one magenta colored one that was kind of nice and decided to keep this one and give her back the others, along with all of the old clothing on hangers, which i also didn’t want. i was having a hard time gathering it all up in my arms, there was so much of it.

in the same vein of returning things, i was also charged with the task of returning a basket of fried fish and chips to a vendor. this was out in a field where there were lot of other vendors; it was almost like a fair (or “faire” if you get my drift). i took the little cardboard basket back and said that we’d ordered too many, and no one wanted this one. the girl behind the counter looked at me for a while without saying anything and then said “i can’t give you your money back.” i looked at her for a minute and it dawned on me that of COURSE i couldn’t get my money back for food we’d ordered but not eaten, and i told her that it was cool, i understood. then she explained to me how it had something to do with insurance, why she couldn’t give me my money back, and the funny thing was that it made sense in the dream. so i just asked her if she could please throw it out for me.

all of this i dreamed this morning, after i woke up at 7 to feed the cats and then went back to bed.