Dream - My mother and grandmother are at the store, my mother, though dead, has been eating too much, then I'm a child running across the water of the lake

On Saturday January 29, 2011, around 9:40 AM-1:20 PM, I dreamed I was driving. It was a rural area, partly developed, mostly undeveloped. It was daytime. I kept going by a place that had horses, some out by the road even, that came out by the road. The hooves of one was even making cloppity noises, as it raised up on its hind legs and was waving its front hooves, bouncing them along something, making the noises. Though I really only saw air, it seemed sometimes it might be hitting the car side window. It had a worried, upset expression on its face. It was being urged to do it by the owner or trainer. It seemed to be on Miller Rd., a little south of where the shopping center at Camelback Rd. would be, though in the dream it was much less developed, with a lot of open space and occasional trees, seeming to have a rural, small town, out in the country feel.

My grandmother and mother were nearby in something that was like a large Woolco. It was near where the shopping center on Camelback and Miller would be, just south of it. It seemed they were staying there too for a while somehow. My grandmother, near the entrance, wanted me to go get my mother, they had to leave soon for some reason. I don't remember anymore just what it was, but it was some event they had to be at I think. I went back further in the store to find her. She was basically straight in, maybe 50 feet or so, from where my grandmother was, off to the north side of the store, like my grandmother, but maybe 10 or 15 feet out from the wall, among some short aisles. She seemed young, maybe in her thirties. She had a partial smile on her face, and her eyes looked back and forth a little. She was trying to get dressed, but couldn't get her blouse, a flannel-like affair, down over her stomach. She had gotten very fat, and her stomach and sides stuck out a lot. I pulled on it and finally got it down. I cautioned her about it, mentioning that since she was dead she evidently decided to eat a lot, that she thought it didn't matter, but though it didn't affect her health, it did have an effect. I thought that it might be partly because she expected it to.

Later, I went back to the house with the path to the lake, the one in the previous dream, written about in the previous post, but I was a little kid, maybe 8-10 years old. I ran down the slope. People, a lot or most of them kids, were cheering and hooting and urging me to run into the water. Though uncertain about it, I continued running, and ran out into the lake. The water was shallow at first. I hoped it would continue to be, but I didn't know if it would. I continued running, while the shouts continued, having turned more to ones of amazement, that I was actually doing it, while continuing encouragement, though with less certainty than before. The water had only been a couple of feet deep at first, and I was running through it, splashing through it as fast as I could. I started going so fast, in combination with my power, that I was able to run then partly on the water, only going a couple or so feet down even though the water got deeper. I kept running all the way to the other side, where it had a much sharper slope and somewhat deeper bottom, and threw myself into the thick trees and brush there, which caught me like a wall and bounced me back some. I landed on my feet near it, on the sharp slope in the shallow water near the shore. The people on the other side were still shouting, in amazement. I went around the lake back to the other side then, back to where I started.

Back on the other side, I went up the broad aisle with the strange, smooth, grayish brown dirt surface, back up to the top, and then along a lane back toward the back of my house. It was different than in the other dream, though, the surface of the side lane was flat and seemed to be similar to the broad one, though in large segments, with close seams. Some other people went with me, tagging along, some little kids, and an older teen. I might have been following the older teen.

Then we were going back, back toward the broad aisle. He had some large cloths or paper towels or something, I think he had a large whisk broom too, and I and some some other kids were helping him to clear the broad path. It had gotten some sand along the edges, creeping in in irregular ways. Now it also had broad flat railings, and I was also rubbing them, cleaning them, though I started worrying about marring the surface, rubbing at it with the cloths, getting the fine sand off it. In a few areas it did seem marred a bit, the shine muted. I kept polishing it, hoping to make it better. As I made my way down, the railing started to change too, into strange elongated car fenders in places, that also had to be cleaned, and some of them went off into the side aisles, and I worried about marring them too. Some kind of event was going to happen here soon, tonight. It was already night now, though it had been light when I arrived, though not very bright. Some people were already filling the rows. I think my father was going to be there tonight, too.

The dream had a lot more earlier in it I think, back when I was driving back and forth.

Dream - My mother, the old food, the monkey, the sandwich cookies, and the lake with people around it

On Saturday, January 29, 2011, around 4:15-5:30 AM, I dreamed I was driving the 1970 Cadillac, doing pick up and delivery for the radiator shop on Scottsdale Rd. It was a little after noon now, maybe a little after one. The temperature was pleasant, perhaps a little cool, and the light wasn't very bright, like it was a little cloudy. I had had to make a few pick up and delivery runs that day, but it wasn't too busy, enough to get a reasonable amount of work.

I stopped at the house, after going further, into the Tempe area, maybe past the river bottom, and then coming back. I wanted to get something to eat, some lunch. My mother wasn't there, she was out somewhere. I got some food out of the refrigerator, and put it on a plate and was eating it. I went in the living room to eat and watch a soap opera, Guiding Light I think, something with Kim Zimmer in it anyway, the actress who played Reva, though it may have been another soap. She had resumed an old role on one on another network, but I don't think it was that. It was supposed to be a regular one hour show, plus they were doing a special thing of an additional one and a half hours of the show, showing deeper insights into the characters and situations, but not adding to the storyline, so that the next day would pick up where the regular show left off. I didn't have enough time to watch all of it, but hoped I could see part of it. Even staying for the regular show was a little long, because Chuey, the man in charge at the shop while I was gone, didn't know where I was, and we might get something else that needed picking up.

While I was eating, my mother came back, and we talked for a while. She seemed to be in her forties. She was chewing something after a while, and then I noticed that the side of a bookcase, about four feet high, had a splatter on the side of it, kind of gray-violet, with the splatter pointing at an angle away from her. She was grinning, occasionally talking to me. I was looking from it to her and back again. I finally asked her if she did it. She was grinning, and I don't think she ever said directly that she did, but she said something about her getting something to eat. I think she finally agreed that she did it, without actually saying much.

I was tired, and wanted to take a small nap, though I really didn't have time for that either. I hadn't seen all the extra part of the show either, just a little bit, and would miss the rest or at least part of it. I was concerned about being away from the shop for so long, and wondered if I should call Chuey, but I didn't want him to know where I was, I didn't want to admit that I was at home.

I went into my bedroom and lay down. My mother came in after a while, and I got up and talked to her. She was still chewing something, evidently she was still eating, or snacking. She spit again. It was kind of involuntary, accidental, it just squirted out of her mouth. though I don't think I actually saw it happening. It got on the floor a few feet inside the room, I had been concerned that it might get on a bookcase or other furniture there, or even on me. She said she had been looking through the refrigerator and started cleaning it out some. She found some food that had been there a long time, and said I should see it, or maybe said that I shouldn't. I looked at her grinning and chewing, and I got the impression that she was actually eating it, or part of it. I pictured in my mind, something like a large rectangular glass pan with some kind of gelatin dish, or jelly dish, though it wasn't only that, something else was on the bottom, some kind of cake or maybe brownies, that and some other smaller things. She was getting rid of it but still eating it, even though it had been in there a long time. I was surprised and somewhat dismayed. She seemed to be enjoying it, though.


I was still tired, and wanted to get some more sleep. I tried to go back to bed, but didn't get to stay there very long it seemed. I was still concerned about the time, too. Then other people started showing up, including the girls, my sisters, who were still children, and my brother. It seemed to be in the early 1970s I guess, maybe even earlier. My father also came home. It somehow seemed to be the next morning. A lot of other people had come, too. We seemed to have somehow merged with another, larger family, and a lot of little kids were around. There were also some people, another family, who just seemed to be staying with us. A few of the kids, including one or more of my sisters, came down the hallway to my bedroom and talked to me briefly. I tiredly got up and talked to them. There weren't many, generally one or two at a time, but my sleep, or my attempting to sleep, was interrupted.

Then a small animal, a tiny one, jumped off the narrow bookcase by the door, jumped off onto the floor, screeching a little. It was a tiny monkey. It jumped on things in the hall a bit. Then I finally started walking down the hall, softly talking to it, including asking if it wanted some food, while it occasionally screeched a little, and went down the hallway, too. I saw that someone had already gotten it some, and had put it on the floor near the other end of the hallway. It was a line of soft sticky-looking meatball-like things with gravy, lined up at an angle, directly on the floor, with some other stuff in front of it, maybe on a little dish, though it didn't seem to be shaped like it was, just a jumble of stuff in a rounded triangle against the line of meatball things. The monkey went to it and picked up one of the meatball things and started eating. I didn't really like it to have its food directly on the floor that way, but I thought, oh well, it'll get it all eaten up anyway, and went on into the kitchen.

The house was a little different now, bigger. The kitchen was larger, and the dining area was much larger, and now seemed to extend all the way behind the kitchen and behind the bathrooms, and I had the impression that we had an extra bedroom or two. My mother was at the kitchen table, which was now in the extended dining area behind the kitchen, even further back, actually behind the bathrooms, though when I initially came in from the hallway it was still where it normally was, beside the kitchen. A lot of kids were around.

My mother had the stuff she had taken out of the refrigerator on the table, and was eating it a little as she worked. Some of the kids were snacking on it, too. She was evidently going to serve it as a means of getting rid of it. I guessed that even though it was pretty old it must still be alright. The table was still where it normally was at this point. She was talking, and the kids were also saying things.

She had a very large cellophane package of cookies, sandwich cookies with one side vanilla and the other side chocolate, not a major brand. It was probably four or five pounds, and was partly eaten. She was going to put it somewhere, I think in a different package, to try to seal it up and preserve it. She went toward the cupboards to get something I think, then the table was in the new position in the now expanded kitchen/dining room. She got another package of the cookies, again partly eaten, from somewhere, maybe the refrigerator, and was looking around for something to seal it with or to put it in. I was saying please, please, don't put it in the refrigerator, remembering how things ended up there, damp and soft. She paused and looked distracted and uncertain, and a little flustered. I suggested I think that she just dump them in a plastic bag and then seal that.


I went out back then. It seemed to be afternoon again, somehow. It was raining. The house, where we were living, was located somewhere else now. It seemed we had recently moved there, and it felt like it was the mid to late 1960s. The house now had a long metal overhang out back, and the water was hitting it and running off the metal in a small stream. The surface of the roof was wavy, at least on top, though it had panels underneath. It didn't seem to fit together very well, and the seams were crooked. Ahead, there was a slope, though it had paths winding back and forth, and bushes. Other houses were around to the sides and below. We seemed to be in a big basin, with sharply slanting sides heading down to a lake. Some other people came out, kids in their teens I think, and we talked a bit.

I was still concerned about the time, and getting back to the shop, even though a whole day had passed now. I guessed I would have to brush my teeth too, though I was still tired and it seemed like a lot of effort. I could feel with my tongue that I was getting a film on them, though. I was concerned about the rain some too, but then it didn't seem to be coming down as hard as it initially seemed, then it was stopping. It felt like it was a place we had only stayed at for a week or so, and then had to move on, that it was, in the dream, another place we had been. I seemed to be looking back at it from a perspective of much later in the future.


My brother came out, smiling, and we started walking down the paths, going to the right because it led that direction. We got to a main aisle that led straight down toward the lake. A lot of people were out now, including a lot of children. The main aisle had an odd surface, a kind of grayish brown dirt that was very smooth and even, and spongy feeling. I had been concerned about it after the rain, and I felt that I was leaving footprints behind, with small ridges of muck sticking up around them, but it didn't feel bad to walk on. I stepped briefly on a small section that felt that it had a broad board, maybe a foot and a half wide, just under the surface. It was very stiff and hard there.

We continued on, going downward toward the lake, talking. My brother seemed very happy. The area was crowded with people and especially kids, to both sides, though not many were on the broad path, and those on it were mostly to the sides. On both sides small aisles met the path, like for rows of seating in a movie theater, and they did seem to have some kind of low seats in them, maybe like folding lawn chairs, with the seats almost on the ground. They were crowded with people, on them and around them, a lot a of them talking. Some of the little kids had pails and toy shovels, and were digging. All around us, in the distance, houses were on the slopes, vegetation around them. Some of the houses weren't too far away, but the area we were walking down now had mostly the broad path with narrow aisles going off it. Eventually we turned around and went back toward the house. We needed to get back for something. Maybe lunch was supposed to be ready by then, or maybe my brother thought that it should be.


After I woke up, I lay in bed for a long time thinking about the dream. Oddly, sometimes I heard and felt little shifts in my mattress, near my head, sometimes feeling it. It was kind of a deep abrupt sound, like cloth moving under a weight and stress. It was alarming at first, as I wasn't sure what was happening, and even when I realized what it was, it bothered me because I didn't know why it was happening, and why it was suddenly happening now.

I eventually drifted back to the dream at least a couple of times, without actually going back to sleep. In one of them, I was out front, with several other people from the house, and we had a very large broad wheelbarrow that was filled to the brim with the odd dirt from the broad aisle. I don't know where we actually got the dirt from, it may have even come from a place out front, or perhaps we got it for a place out front somewhere. It was a surprise to me, though. My brother might have been out there too, I'm not sure. Most of the people were kids, some in their teens. We were talking about it, among other things. We were near the bedrooms, with a line of tall bushes separating us from the main portion of the yard, which was still largely gravel. Like the dirt in the aisle, this dirt too was flattened and very smooth, and was very slightly rounded and curving down slightly at the edges, to the inner surface of the wheelbarrow bin. It filled it, the middle of it going a little higher than the top of it I think.

I had gone around behind it and was holding onto the handles. I now picked it up and started to slowly wheel it toward the other side of the house, intending to put it somewhere else, where it wasn't setting out in the yard. It was evidently something my mother had done, getting the special dirt and then leaving it out there, for some thing she had in mind. It was a little awkward wheeling it through the dirt and small rocks, though the area had narrow places where the rocks had been swept to the sides, leaving little irregular lanes maybe ten or twelve inches wide, almost like ruts, though they were mostly level. I stopped a time or two along the way and rested. The kids continued to talk, sometimes to me and sometimes to each other, and sometimes just making comments in general.

Later, I had another continuation of the dream, where a person like the woman in the movie "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" showed up, dressed like her even, with a short wide skirt that barely went beyond her hips. She came inside and was talking to some of the people there. She talked rapidly, and was apparently one of the people staying there now, even apparently a relative.

My mother died on November 8, 2010. The part of the dream about my mother finding food in the refrigerator that had been there a long time and needed to be thrown out, but then eating it, apparently refers to the food she had that I saved there, a little tub of partly eaten mashed potatoes from a fast food place, and the paper plate with her fish sandwich from Burger King, with a few french fries and onion rings. She has a few other things in there too. It may be her way of saying that it's time to throw them out, that it's okay. I had finally thrown out a few things, long ago now, and though I thought about what remained frequently, I couldn't quite bring myself to throw any more out yet. Maybe it's time now. I had been intending to throw some out soon, maybe even today. (It didn't happen, though. I kept the food in there.)

Dream - The strange visitor, the march of the dinosaurs, the rejected loan, and the company picnic

On Wednesday, December 30, 2009, around late morning, I dreamed I traveled to the Midwest. I lived in street apartments maybe, though they seemed like homes crammed together. I went around a curve and saw my home, my home in the dream, not in real life. It was multistory, part of it used by other people, crammed next to similar houses/apartments. The street was a residential one, large enough for cars to park on both sides and for a car to go between them. The cars that were occasionally parked there were very narrow, with a squeezed look.

There was some kind of trouble with parking, though. It seemed important to park right against the sidewalk, and close to the other cars. Although I evidently walked there, I had to park the 1970 Cadillac, which was both shorter and narrower than in real life, and also had a squeezed look. I managed to get it between two other cars, evidently by picking it up and putting it there, first on one side of the street and then the other. A skinny little old man, a neighbor, came out and cheerfully helped me. He still had dark hair, and resembled Pete, the man who used to live next to us before he died. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was low in the sky and gave things an orangish cast.

I went to my home briefly. My mother was there and some other people, some of the family I think, maybe including my little sister. I think there was some time before dinner, and I decided to go for a walk or was maybe told to get something. I walked back the way I had come, back toward where there was a section with stores. It was around sundown, perhaps slightly after now. I worried a bit about someone mugging me. I was going somewhere I really didn't have to be going, and it would be one of those accidents of fate, that didn't have to actually happen.

As I approached a place where the road turned right, or perhaps where it joined another road, already walking along beside stores and businesses, somebody gently came at me from behind, putting his arms around me, apparently as a beginning of trying to rob me. I shook him off somehow and went around the corner and down a ways, then crossed the street to a store on the other side. A lot of them were already closing, small town hours I guess. He came after me again, before I crossed the street and again afterwards I think. After a bit of a struggle, starting on the other side of the street, and then picking up again on this side, during which I bashed him against the windows, bending them in temporarily, almost breaking them maybe, trying to break them and shove him at least partly through them, but also concerned about doing so, both because of the damage to the store, which maybe couldn't afford it, and because it might seriously hurt him. He was a soft, gangly figure, maybe around six feet tall, which would make him a little shorter than me.

My brother came partway through the fight and helped me some, and I think another family member or two also eventually showed up. We took him in with us, to the house. I was not entirely happy with this. At first it seemed we were just trying to help him, but then it seemed they actually knew something about him. He was someone who had come out here to visit, some distant friend of some kind evidently, maybe even a distant relative. He appeared to be from some Eastern European country, and looked slightly like the Borat movie character. He was milder and less talkative, but seemed equally clueless.


There was an old fashioned mall, around the middle of town I think. It was laid out like a plus sign, two long streets crossing with a large open area in the middle. It wasn't covered, everything was outside. The small stores and kiosks out in the road may or may not have had any individual coverings, though the stores along the street were normal buildings. There also seemed to be one corner that led to some water, perhaps a small stream that went across it in front of a building, a small stream that nevertheless had a tiny wharf on it, apparently more decorative than actually needed, as the stream was very shallow, maybe a foot or two deep in places, less so in others, though it may have gotten deeper further on.

The mall was blacklisting some people. A tiny open-air bookstore in the center where the aisles crossed was handling it. It was night. The mall was very crowded. I had gone back there again, to talk to them about it.

The person who was being blacklisted this time was evidently the Eastern European person. It seems he had tried to shoplift a few times, mainly because he was clueless, but I think he did know it was stealing. I tried to change the bookstore person's mind, a short, slightly overweight woman around forty or so. She looked a little like the producer on David Letterman, though I didn't realize it at the time. (I realized Thursday night, 12-31-2009, that she also looked like a cashier at the Fry's grocery store, who I had argued with (though she was cheerful about it) the last time I was there, the previous Tuesday.) She didn't seem interested, though, she felt like she gave him enough chances, and she had had complaints from other people. I thought that he was really going to try to do better, but it seemed to be too late.

There was also some trouble with some small dinosaurs that sometimes came out late at night. It was some kind of local legend. I briefly saw them crossing the middle of the mall. They were multicolored and small, in the three to four feet tall area. At least one was on two legs, a long-necked slim one, probably of the egg stealing type. The others were mostly four legged, with short heavy necks, maybe little triceratops and ankylosaurs, perhaps even stegosaurs too. There were not many of the dinosaurs, I saw maybe six or seven, most of them together, different types mixed together.

I left and came back again later. It was late at night, and perhaps a day or two had passed. There was still talk about the little colorful dinosaurs sometimes coming out at night in the mall area. I saw them again, going at an angle across the center of the mall area again, and talked to some people at a store near one of the corners about them. We talked in somewhat hushed tones, watching them with wonder. They didn't seem dangerous, but you never really know.


Sometime later I went along a side aisle and down another to a small business. It seemed to be daytime now, maybe early afternoon. They were wondering how to get around the blacklist. A guy caught me before I got there and gave me something. He was from a nearby town, and had some kind of column he writes on the Internet. He gave me an award for them. It had an arc for the face of a clock, and projecting plastic clock hands, one of which had the award attached, at least the part naming who got it, and a stiff rectangular flap/ribbon sticking out and bent to a particular position, with a short double bend near the end, like a step, with his watch attached to it, the back of it stuck on it somehow, with the straps hanging down. It was a thin black watch. It was supposed to be a symbol of something and show it was really him. He gave the award to the people in the office, or to someone they were representing in the fight. His column, which just came out, was supporting them.

I took it to them and told them about it, and sat it on the counter, and set it up. The clock hands were moving now, as I pulled them out some from the arc that was the face. The people still didn't know what to do, other than going to nearby towns and trying to get past the boycott there, and hoping to somehow convince the people here to undo it.


I went walking to a different area, back across the main road that leads to and goes through the mall. I reached an office area, and went through a hallway that wound around over a floor that was uneven and slanted, like a forest path, and the walls were also uneven and rounded, this way and that, just some kind of plasterboard evidently, oddly cut and set at odd angles, or maybe possibly something like cubicle dividers, though solid, I'm not sure now, though I lean toward the plasterboard. There were generally no windows, just occasional notices or posters.

There was a room that my father had there. I went in and I think my mother was there, maybe someone else too. My father wasn't there right now, he went somewhere else. I went back along the curved irregular hallway, winding along until I got on a section where the hallway had turned in a U shape from where I had been, well past the short section of hall I had used to connect with this one.

I came to a room where I thought he might be, and somewhat slowly and carefully opened the door. People inside were talking, one in particular, saying something to the effect that "What do you want us to do?" or "What would you have us to do?" and maybe "You can understand." I seemed to be interrupting something, some kind of business meeting. I apologized for interrupting. I was confused initially about what was being discussed, but then I realized that they were actually saying that they have no real choice in the matter. By signs or posters on the wall I saw that it was some kind of MasterCard place. There was a fairly good sized group of people, maybe 12 to 15, mostly men but some women, laying and sitting on the floor in a rough oval, on pillows, bed pillows I think, with my father with them to the right. They were actually telling him that they can't do it anymore, that they can't wait anymore for him to pay them, and can't loan him anything anymore. They have looked at the company and have seen that it was no use, it wasn't going to get any better, and they were going to foreclose and take whatever was left of the company, which wouldn't be much.

My father was saddened, and perhaps a little bitter, but I could see he understood and accepted it. He looked somewhat younger than he does now. The people seemed sympathetic, or gave the appearance of it, but at the same time felt that they were just doing their job, it was something they had to do sometimes, and they had done it before with other people, though I could sense this more than them actually saying it. They continued to talk some though, sympathetically.

They were lounging around, dressed very casually, almost like a pajama party, though it was not a phrase that occurred to me at the time. A lot of them were dressed in sweats, or partial sweats, a lot of them with just sweat shorts, hairy flabby men with legs and stomach and chest and sometimes shoulders showing, though they usually had some kind of soft open shirt, completely unbuttoned and opened up. They looked really unattractive, flabby and with large amounts of hair. The women were better covered up, and generally sitting upright on the pillows, but seemed kind of medium to slim, bookish and with glasses, with unremarkable figures. The people seemed to be generally in their twenties or thirties, perhaps a few in their forties.

One of the men eventually suggested that it was time for their normal Friday afternoon barbecue, that they had every week, and why didn't he join them, attempting to lighten the situation and cheer him up some. He agreed to do so, and they wandered out onto a very large lawn, park-like, that had widely scattered tables and largish barbecue grills on legs and wheels. Other people were there too, from other parts of the company I guess, but also from other companies, and even families that happened to be there on their own. I followed along for a while. My father started doing something with one of the grills. I think some of the family was supposed to show up in a little while.

I wandered off after a while, back to the office where my mother was. I told her what happened. We tried to see if anything of the business was left, we and/or the company had some kind of investments, online I think, in the company itself and in some other things, but when my mother looked, it all seemed to be gone too. Either the investments went bad or they were seized, differently depending on the investment I think, though I think most of them simply went bad. There was something to do with the sea too, some of the investments involved it in some way, and I was seeing old bearded sailors in my mind, in yellow raincoats, holding pipes to their mouths. I think we went off toward the sea then some, partway there. We were going there to see something, to check on the investments personally maybe, going to an old weathered wharf, which was not far away and which the building seemed to slowly blend into.