Sleep, but Never Rest

Don’t know what inspired it, but the little I remember of my dreams last night is as follows:

I remember being in a game show-esque game that was part of some kind of physical job training. I think I was the only girl at that portion of the game and I was competing against some nice, fit (looked like dancers/parkour/rock climbers) guys.

I remember I had to grab buoyant rubber balls (around 6 in. in diameter) and dive down in a large pool of water and under a thick plastic barrier to get to a center round platform that was about 6 ft. above the water with a hole in the center. We had to get the most balls in the hole, but the catch was we had to answer trivia questions, do math, and perform memory tasks each time we got a ball in.

I was kicking the guys’ asses at the trivia and was keeping up somehow with the number of balls. Of course, mine actually counted because I was answering all the questions correctly. The guys focused more on the physical aspect and exhausted themselves too much to be able to focus on the mental tasks.

—————-

In another dream, it was a story about some fat kid (a boy) who decided to start eating better. He had a large plastic/rubber anatomic representation of a human heart in his room beating and he awoke within a dream and saw that it stopped and it worried him.

I remember walking up High Street once with, once without my crutches, I remember thinking “why am I using these?” I ended up using them to pick up plastic bags from the sidewalk.

I was running late for work in the dream, but I wanted to grab some Chipotle before an 8-hour workday. Not sure why Chipotle was open so early and why there was a long line. The place didn’t look like a Chpotle, either.

The line went quick and I started talking to some good-looking bearded guy that was sitting against the wall. He was inspecting my left knee like a doctor and compared it with my right knee. I explained I pulled something in my knee a few years ago and it still gives me issues. The way he inspected my bad knee was like a massage on the joint that made my knee feel a lot better.

I eventually went up to get food, but the only options was pulled beef and cubed chicken and there were soggy spring rolls.

I remember thinking someday I’d tell someone, “Chipotle was different back then…”

I really need to get back into the habit of writing my dreams down in the morning.

What I can still remember:

I remember being in a hotel for some conference and I remember thinking about how the hotel had that “hotel carpet” that was red/maroon with square designs. I think it was from a memory from a Phi Theta Kappa conference back in 2007(?) at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. (See this picture, that’s as close to it as I could find.) There was also a white railing on my left with a ceiling area made of windows over the stairs that went down.

I was walking on my knees for some reason. I felt I could walk faster this way and it was fun, so I kept doing it. As I walked, I talked with Dwayne*, who had a really weird foreign accent. I kept asking questions about what has he been up to lately and what he does for a living and why he was at the hotel. We entered an elevator and he avoided talking about his current life, almost as if he wasn’t allowed to talk about it and looked at me suspiciously as if I was trying to gather information about him.

I remember being frustrated that I had an early-morning appointment that involved the swimming pool. I like swimming, but it was going to be a 4-hour event/training/something that was supposed to start at 9 a.m. I don’t like having to actually BE somewhere sometimes, especially on road trips.

In another scene, I remember being in a chair - not sure if I was tied into it or not, but I remember looking at large boards (like the chalkboards that flip and have wheels) with blueprints of a building. There were small rooms near the entrance, then a very large room in the back labeled “Tesnor Enterprises”. It reminded me of “Ticnor” in waking life while in the dream, but now that I’m awake, both “Tesnor” and “Ticnor” do not show up in Google searches as anything I would have seen or heard, so it’s probably just my brain making up words. lol

After I glanced at it, one of the guys in lab coats in the room rolled away the boards. I remember thinking, “If you really want me to remember the blueprint, you’d let me look at it longer.”

* Name was changed.

This was a weird dream, but the longest and most vivid in days. Helped improve my mood a lot. Probably should have written this this morning…

I remember waking up within the dream (false awakening) and remembering the feel of the sheets and the pillow and questioning whether I could ever tell the difference between dreaming and being awake. I thought the bed felt like I was in a dream, but thought I was awake. It was in a bare bedroom with off-white walls.

I eventually got up and I was wearing my Edge Walk gray T-shirt (a small that fits like a large - WTF Canadians?) and black night shorts. In waking life, I wasn’t wearing anything near that.

I remember my dad had to work, but already scheduled a vacation (reserved a condo) down in Florida so my mom, my aunt, and I were going to go. My mom wanted me to invite a guy to go down with us. I didn’t know who to invite, but she told me about this smart guy and wanted me to meet him.

I agreed, thinking at least he’s intelligent. Yeah….he was a douchbag. He was smart, but liked to make others feel dumb and not in that “You’re wrong, this is why…isn’t that cool?” way, but a more “You’re wrong and stupid” kind of way.

So my mom, this smart guy, and I were eating at a picnic-style table and he even had a spiral notebook out with random mathematical diagrams. I got a text and a Facebook tag in a post by Sean about a local Science Festival. I received the text around 2:38 p.m. I spent a good portion of the dream trying to find time to fit in an hour of looking around at this Science Festival.

While eating, in comes Dwayne* and he sits to my right. I’m like, Dwayne! He’d be great to go on vacation with. He’s funny, confident, creative, and smart. (I think he’s gotten a law degree since high school.) So I was talking with him for awhile, hoping he’d show the D-bag how someone can be smart, but not rude. I brought up the Science Festival and, although Dwayne isn’t “nerdy” per se, I thought he’d like to go. He asked me why and what was so interesting about science. I was like, excuse me? I came up with something about science being all around us and isn’t he interested in how things worked?

Sometime during this scene, another guy was there. He was a hot guy that I haven’t met before, but looked familiar. He was a good height, body type, nice face, etc. He had lighter hair than I’m normally attracted to, but I thought he was so good-looking in the dream that it became semi-lucid and I was trying to decide on a fake name for him and could only come up with “Hot Guy.” lol He had a great personality, as well.

Him and I think the D-bag guy turned into small animals of some sort within the dream and I semi-lucidly came up with a way to turn them back into humans. I found an orange/peach D20 and rolled it with the notion that any number would work. That worked except for the time I rolled a 1 twice.

I decided no to go to the Science Festival, partly because I wasn’t dressed for it.

I remember all of this happening in a small town and knew we had to get supplies for the trip in a small town about 15-20 miles away.

Somehow my mom and I were sitting in lawnchairs in the middle of the main street outside of the supply shop.Random people and families started setting up lawn chairs and coolers as if they were getting ready for a parade. One of the chairs a man set up had Charlie’s* last name in waking life. The chairs around had different colors and college and professional sports teams (Ohio State, Ohio University, Penn State, etc.) . The chair with Charlie’s last name was black with a Steelers logo.

My dad walked around the corner telling us to get out of the street. We got up and I heard the firetruck about to begin the parade. I think it was a Fourth of July parade. I suggested we get supplies, but I wasn’t dressed to go into the store. I followed my parents back around the corner. As we went around, the Hot Guy went around going the other direction. He looked back and smiled and started singing a verse from some Disney song. I smiled and finished the verse as the scene turned into a locker room.

This turned into a whole other dream where I was dressed in a neat futuristic slate gray uniform. I walked to a slate gray 5-story building that had odd Nickelodeon-like features. As I walked across a street toward the entrance, a young person dressed in a doctor’s jacket and mask saw me. Their eyes got big and he motioned to others who ran off as if I was arriving sooner than expected. 

I walked in and all the employees were children (age 6-16?) dressed in lab coats. They were really smart kids - like the ones you see competing at FIRST LEGO League - and all had mannerisms and facial features of adults. I must have looked like someone else who was mean or dictatorial because the employees at this place looked at me as if I was going to bite their heads off. They lined up into two lines and avoided eye-contact and answered with short sentences ending in ma’am or sir. One of the more assertive employees (long black hair, age of 13 ish?) had me follow her. She led me into a room with Nickelodeon-like machinery.

I walked back to the first room and an adult guy (mid-20s) entered and two kid employees were helping to remove his black leather jacket. He had that “observer” feeling so I instantly felt that I needed to pretend to know what the hell I was doing. Before walking back into the testing room, I looked at the guy - it was Stephen*, but with a nice beard. I left the room and talked with the leader girl with black hair.

I looked out the window and it turned into a helicopter view of a giant Nickelodeon factory/mill/whatever you wanna call it that had tall striped tubes that sprayed water upward, turning into waterfalls. I found out that it was a machine that cleaned the air and water.

Weird dream, but nicely vivid and got to explore a little.

* Names have been changed

I can’t remember much…just something about being in a class and the task was to stab someone and no one had the guts. I stabbed someone easily and the person was OK, but everyone looked at me like I was insane and a terrible person. I said, “What? It’s a dream! Stabbing someone isn’t going to hurt them in waking life.”

Then, I was taken aside and basically told that our actions “ripple” outward in a 3D sphere. That all actions against someone directly affects those around them indirectly or something weird like that.

I had four Visual Basic labs due yesterday, so I dreamed about making a Visual Basic program.

This also reinforced a project idea that I’ve wanted to do for almost a decade.

I wish I remembered more of this movie in my dream because I remember really liking it in the end.

The basic plot was about an alien invasion and the aliens even used biological warfare against us.

The first scene I remember was where I was playing a mother character in a car. Someone was driving and we were on the highway. I had a 18-month-old daughter with light hair. I held her with her back to the windshield, facing me.

A good-looking guy on my right, my husband in the dream, was wearing camo clothing with pockets, utility belt, knives, water bottle, and a large handgun. He said he didn’t see any aliens and that we might have outrun them. He looked all around. I told him, “above!” and our baby was so smart, she even looked up. I gently angled her head back down and smiled. I didn’t want her to be afraid.

There was a large alien spaceship flying over our vehicle. It almost resembled a “teddy bear” face with the way the elements were designed on it.

To keep her from freaking out, I started singing, “The Wheels on the Bus.” Part way through, I nudged my husband and he tried to smile and sing along. The driver had trouble controlling the car. After running out of lyrics, I started singing, “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.”

It cut to me in my dream looking at artistic renditions of the next scene where the whole family gets killed by the aliens. People were mad that the writers didn’t even spare the baby and I said it was to make us hate the aliens even more.

There was a part of the dream where I was part of the groups trying to survive and considered being part of a team to help my friend, Dwayne*, move to the east coast. My mom tried to talk me out of it. I remember a long field of some pretty bush with leaves similar to poison ivy and it was night time.

Later, I was a leader of a survivor group that ended up getting bad press or something and a lot of other survivors didn’t like me. I remember checking mail in a classroom with my survivor group and found a letter from someone who didn’t like what I was doing and it had the biological agent we were avoiding. It was put on/in these neon green packets and boiled at room temperature. I knew that was it. We were all exposed and most likely would die within hours.

I told the group, “Do whatever the hell you want.” And told those with food rations that they were saving to eat them and enjoy them. I remember using my last moments hugging people and getting to know them. One guy (big muscles, tall) I kept saying that it was weird we didn’t cross paths sooner.

One girl said she knew how to get the antidote and that the sender was the guy who created the neon green felt lining of the trunk of the car in the dream.

One character in the movie committed suicide by leaving the classroom and getting an alien to impale her with its scorpion-like pincher. The alien was neon green.

I thought that it was a lame ending to the story and couldn’t understand why so many people liked this story.

I found out that there was alternate endings.

Throughout the movie, there were cutaways of people recording music and CDs being made and distributed.

The better ending showed the evil aliens and the humans working with them were overthrown by the suffering humans and how this weird movie was an allegory about civil rights.

The ending sounds confusing and crappy when I explain it here, but OMG I loved the alternate ending so much, I cried. (This only happens in real life with REALLY well-told stories.)

The other parts I remember that may or may not be part of this dream:

I remember being in a house with green worn carpet. The owner of the house looked like Robin Williams with weird hair. He pulled out a large pistol and put it down. I remember a scrap of paper on the ground and found it was the City of Canton torn from a map of Ohio. I remembered creating a diagram with cities torn from the same map and wondered where I’d put Canton.

Later, the man talked about some situation and said he’d “use this” to scare something away. He handed me his gun. It was big and heavy, but I was able to pull the slide easily.

There was another part of the dream where I was in a bad neighborhood and was trying to fix my window on my van, but instead somehow made my back windows roll up and down instead. I remember the parking lot cement barriers being torn up and not straight and the shop I parked in front of was brick and elevated a half story from the parking lot. This town had many hills.

* Names were changed.

Note: Neon / lime green shows up when my subconscious is trying to tell me I’m dreaming. It’s the color I change objects to when I do a reality check in lucid dreams.

My dreams were rather random last night due to firearm training on Saturday and writing an idea down before going to bed.

What I remember most:

I remember being frustrated because I was living with someone and they randomly got another roommate. What’s worse, it was a female roommate. She was probably nice, but I prefer male roommates. The girl had long reddish brown hair and was about 5’5” or so. I remember having to get done quickly in the bathroom while I was getting ready for work and remembered in the dream just how much I enjoyed living on my own. I didn’t have to get dressed for everything and didn’t have to close the bathroom door, etc. I questioned why I decided to have roommates again.

I don’t remember the house we shared very well. It was old and…brown? It had that feel of being near woods or a creek. I liked how the sunlight came in through slits in the curtains.

I remember finding a sleeping Rottweiler and thinking about how I like German breeds.

The only thing I can remember from my dreams last night is trying to take broken elevators and complaining that, although I can take the stairs, there are others who can’t.

The elevator was large and full of people and odd-shaped. It had something to do with a hospital.

This probably was influenced from when the elevator in my building stopped working two days ago.

In waking life, a coworker recently died of a heart attack. This turned into a dream that combined with some episode of “The Office.”

It was when Steve Carrell (sp?) was still the manager and his character Michael was being over dramatic about the passing of the coworker. He threw away his mail saying, “What’s the point?”

Some of the mail was a large USPS envelope. The character Jim was in the manager’s office as well. I said, “Could I open your mail then?” Jim said it was trash once he threw it away.

I grabbed the mail and opened the USPS envelope first. It was a large stack of small postcards and notes - most from the head office and some from Channel 6 Good Morning Columbus TV show. I even got the commercial jingle in my head while looking at the front of the cards. The postcards were oxidized, even though they were only a few months old. (I sell century-old postcards in waking life.) I told them, “I love old postcards!”

One of the head office notes talked about congratulating our department with free pie. I remembered in the dream Michael coming in with pie randomly, not knowing why.

There were letters from Channel 6 telling the now dead coworker to get well soon. I was impressed that a news station did that kind of outreach.

Later, I found a scrapbook that belonged to the dead coworker. It had some red pages, but was partly filled with doodles of pomegranates (pomegranates represent life after death or the afterlife in my symbology). I drew an image of a pomegranate in his sketchbook as an acknowledgement / sign of respect.

Later, I found another sketchbook - this one was all red. There were more doodles of pomegranates. I told the character, Pam, about my idea about having everyone draw a pomegranate and sign and date it as a “remembrance” idea.

I flipped to the end because I felt I was waking up and flipped backward through the sketchbook. The coworker had drawn storyboards for a cartoon where the main character was an elephant (in a button up shirt) who worked in an office and dreamed of retirement (chilling on a lawn chair on the beach in swim trunks, holding a martini with an olive). It ended abruptly when the sketchbook ran out of pages.

My coworker was only a couple of years away from retirement.

Elephants generally symbolize “always remember.”