Dream - Presents for my father, and then strange gnomes or leprechauns and animal people

In the middle of the night on October 17, 2008, I had a dream about wrapping presents for my father and carrying them around, and seeing gnomes or leprechauns and strange animal-people along the way.

In the dream, I went out to a huge, mostly empty parking and driving area that was dirt with a faint mixture of thin asphalty dirt and gravel on top. I think it had something to do with the military. It seemed to be around the middle of the day, maybe around noon.

A low building, possibly bluish gray, was associated with the parking lot. There wasn't much else around, maybe some isolated small buildings beyond the road and not part of where we were. It seemed like a rural area, but I'm not sure where it was or even what state it was in. Later in the dream, though, I was definitely in Nevada.

I went to where my car was parked, probably the dark blue 1987 Oldsmobile. There was a crude wooden table in front of it. I think I sat in the air for a while, but at some point I went over to the table. I had a legal pad, but it might have had white paper instead of yellow.

I had a lot of strange words written down in heavy dark block letters, several paragraphs on at least one page and part of another. I think they were in pencil. They were things that were partially or wholly in a different language. Even the characters were odd, possibly like Russian, but it also had odd symbols that weren't part of an alphabet. I think it was supposed to be in a code of some kind. I was puzzling over it and I think sometimes writing some. I might have even been adding to it.

Then I started to wrap a present for my father. The other members of the family were back in the building also wrapping things. It might have been for my father's birthday, which in real life was near. It doesn't seem to have been for Christmas.

There were two items that I had to wrap. I had some slightly greenish blue, shiny heavy wrapping paper with a slight iridescence. I was out at the old table and had the legal pad. It had only a couple of pages or so now. I was using it as something to set the present on. It had some lines drawn down the left side along the margin and across the top a similar distance from the edge. I drew some more as I worked. Maybe I was trying to keep the present a certain distance from the edge. I finally tore the remaining pages out. I guess I decided to use the cardboard back of the tablet as a backing for the present. I got the first present wrapped. It was fairly flat, perhaps half an inch or an inch thick, whatever the present was.

Then I had the second present to wrap. It was a small yellow-orangish tan bowl with almost vertical pleated edges. I wanted to make it more attractive and put something in it. I put some small red beans in it from a can, filling the bowl perhaps two thirds of the way. I didn't know if he liked red beans. I wasn't even sure how much I liked them. They looked good as a demonstration of what could be done though, and it wasn't going to be long till we opened the presents, maybe a couple of hours, so they were unlikely to spoil. I put some wrapping paper along the sides and then somehow attached it to the middle of the other present. I then wrapped some thin red ribbon around it and made a bow, though I kept the ribbon away from the top of the bowl. The others back in the building were getting anxious to go. I went back to the building and we left. I think my father was with us.

We stopped at what was apparently a drugstore, though sometimes it seemed more like a small grocery store. We went around in it and back and forth down some of the aisles looking at things. I think I was still carrying the present. My mother and at least one or maybe both of my sisters were in the group. I'm not sure whether my brother was there. I looked at some other things that I might buy to go with the present.

At one side of the store were some little things, including some kind of white figurines, elves or gnomes maybe. The others had gone off to a different area and left me behind. They had gone toward the cash registers and one or maybe two came back and were asking me to hurry up so we could go, then most or all of them came back and we started quickly going partially down the aisles and through the middle of the store looking at things. There was an area with a lot of wrapping paper and some tape. It was getting toward Christmas and they had a big display of it that ran around the end of an aisle or two there at the middle of the store.

I found there also a bunch of white or pale elves or leprechauns, larger than the ones I saw before and evidently intended to be hung like ornaments. They seemed to be made of some kind of thin glass. I considered getting one or more, but finally decided not to at this time. The others were in a hurry to leave and we left. I think the others or maybe just my mother bought something, but I'm not sure what, possibly food, possibly something to do with the gifts.

We were coming in toward Fallon, Nevada then from the east, from the direction of work. We were in at least two cars, going along in the section of road that ran near the Navy base. I'm under the impression that we had come from some kind of picnic. It was getting late in the afternoon now.

I decided that I needed to unwrap the present and took the wrapping paper off. I let the wrapping go and fall by the road a little ways after we turned the corner where the service station was. I was slightly concerned about doing that but it didn't seem to matter too much. At least my father had a chance to see it wrapped up, though it may not have been a close look. It still bothered me a little, but I felt it needed to be done, that we needed to move the process along quickly.

Still outside of town, I noticed off to the left in a big yard two or three people, including someone from work, maybe the short older man who had retired a while back, and I was trying to point him out to my mother, so she could see who I worked with. I saw some other people too as we went along, but they changed to some kind of largish leprechauns or gnomes the height of a small human. The car I was in was also changing, becoming more of a platform with me on it face down and then shrinking to hardly anything before coming at least partially back.

I parked it in someone's yard a short way into town. I was alone now and had been that way for a little while, since just before coming into town. I parked along where the yard dipped down near the street and then sloped back up some. Apparently the dip was used for drainage and so I hoped they wouldn't mind too much me parking there.

Some people were in the yard near the house. They had bone-white ramlike horns on the sides of their heads and goatlike faces. Other people were out around in the general area that were also strange, at least a couple of others also having horns on the sides of their heads, but darker and a little differently shaped. Some of the people seemed to be gnomes or elves or leprechauns or some type of partly animal person. It was very strange, but I felt that this was how they actually looked, that the human disguises they had previously used had faded away or been abandoned, purposely so.

I was walking quickly and looking out for somewhere I might get a newspaper, though I wasn't sure if I should try to get one now. I was still carrying the present.

I went past the street that leads to the south, toward Arizona, and wandered around. The people in this area looked more normal I think. There was a lot of redevelopment going on because of some military thing. The light was getting dimmer like it was around sundown or a little after. It felt more like early morning, though. I think I might have found and talked to my father briefly, or at least saw him.

I walked back toward the street that leads toward Arizona. The grocery store at the corner had the raised parking lot cut back some along the sides, with an angle cut at the corner, leaving sloping walls of dirt and crumbly asphalt. It looked like they were preparing to widen the street there.

I met a military person, apparently someone in intelligence, who talked to me in serious, earnest terms about the differences in prices between here and Indiana, giving a couple of items as examples, gas and some food item I think, where the prices on those items here were around half what they were in Indiana. I think the gas was 5 something in Indiana and 2 something here. He seemed to be expecting a lot of people to move out here and cause a boom in the area, or at least he was hinting at it. I wasn't sure if the low prices would continue if the demand picked up enormously, like it would if a whole bunch of people moved out here, but I didn't say so. (In real life I was probably listening to the Wall Street Journal news hour on the radio at that point.)