Zoo Attack

I'm at my mom's place. For some reason we get into a religious argument about walking slower in the kitchen because God is there and forces it. Also, leaving the kitchen should be on your right foot. The argument escalates and Susan gets into it with me. She offers up tradition as a reason and I find that to be a much better reason than ghosts of Jesus forcing her to walk slow. My mom has remarried a total jerk. He is abusive and crude. He threatens to kill me more than once and gets violent when people disagree with him.

For some reason my mom has a lot of animals in her place. It's very much like a zoo. There are lions and tigers and cheetahs and even a saber-toothed tiger. I witnessed earlier a tiger jump into the pen with the saber-toothed tiger. He got ripped into shreds very quickly. The saber-toothed tiger is very close to being able to jump the fence. I am quite worried he will. For some reason he is okay living with the cheetahs in the pen with him. We are having dinner and things are going pretty bad. I have pissed off the father badly. There can be no resolution to our conflict. I try to shake hands with him and sort of agree to disagree on the point, but he's not interested in any reconcilliation. I have no idea why my mom is interested in him. Then a cheetah walks in. He comes over to me and tries to bite me. I can handle the cheetah which is somewhat odd. I get Erich to assist me in bringing him back to his pen. Of course this is of great concern to me. He escaped once, what will stop him from doing it again? And will the saber-toothed tiger figure out he can escape too? This concern soon becomes secondary. I notice there are some lions primed to escape. Someone has left the cage open and they have no problem getting out.

Now I'm at some medical complex of sorts. I am there to see my dad's body (or so I wrote. I have no recollection of this part of the dream, but I wrote it down immediately after the dream as a note). There are animals loose in the complex. We are being chased around. They have even broken through doors to get to us. We enter into a swimming pool area and I have the bright idea that no animals will go into the pool to get me. I'll just hang out in the middle of the pool and I'll be safe. Then I notice there are alligators coming after me. They are surprisingly easy to deal with, though. In fact, it turns out they are robotic alligators and not very powerful at all. I take care of them and think a bit further about my pool idea. I begin to think it won't work so well. Bears have no problem going in water. Then I hear banging at the door. We run down a hall and up some stairs. We think if we go into a room with a steel reinforced door we'll be safe. We get into the room and hear the animals outside sniffing around for us. Then they find out where we are. The steel reinforced door doesn't help at all. They break through and glass sprays out. I guess what was once a reinforced steel door turns into a glass door when they break through. I look around for an exit and see a window. I climb out the window and am walking around on the roof. I see some ladders which would allow me to escape to the ground. And then, I wake up.

Driving Backwards and Garbage Disposals

We're driving down the road, about to get on the interstate. For some reason, my wife is driving backwards as we take a loop on-ramp. I mention to her that she's driving backwards, and she becomes upset, realizing she has to pull over and turn the car around on the side of the interstate. As we pull off, there are other people there who are either stranded or trying to load their car and flagging people down to help. They think we stopped to help them. I tell them we only stopped to turn the car around, but would be glad to help them.

I assist as they load cargo onto a platform, and they suddenly become my next door neighbors whom I don't know, and we're in front of our houses. He mentions how we know eachother and used to hang around, although I don't remember him.

Later, his wife appears and has a dozen or so garbage disposals and asks which one I would like to install in their sink for them, or would I like to build a new one from spare parts. Then she selects what she claims is a good brand for garbage disposals, and walks off with it.

Sorry, not much dreaming going on lately...this is all I seemed to have been alloted.

Snake Mansion

This dream is mostly fuzzy to me. It is actually composed of at least two dreams. The first dream is set in a mansion in the English country side. There is a very "Godsford Park" feel to the place. There is a grand parent type figure there, who is very ill. Whether he or she is already dead or dying, I cannot remember. I am the favorite of this relative and stand to inheirit the entire estate. There are lots of people about that feel like relatives. They are all hoping that they get the fortune. I am the only one worried about the person that is dying. The grandparent figure does die and I do inherit the place. I feel very safe and comforted that I own the family home but I am very lonely that someone I loved passed away.

The second dream centers around building a waterfall. My dad, his crew and I were going to build a waterfall for some rich lady. My dad's crew is mostly Mexican and cannot speak very much English. I try to talk to them with the Spanish I know, but they look at me with puzzled eyes. I take them down to a natural waterfall that is in a nearby river. We walk in the river up to the waterfall and I point to it. As I point to the waterfall I notice a triangular head in the mud. It moves. It is a snake. I panic and look at the Mexicans they are pointing at a hundred snakes sunning themselves on the rocks. I panic and run, but the snakes bit me in the water. I do not die and do not feel the bites. I am worried that I will.

Mr. Puffins

I purchased some item (I can't remember what) and there was a special deal associated with it. Buy this item and get a dog free. It's a very odd marketing ploy. That's how I got Mr. Puffins. He's a small dog and not very active. Very cute, though. Throughout the dream I sort of lose track of Mr. Puffins. He's still around, but I'm not sure where. Well the dream continues and another deal crops up. Buy something else and get another free dog. How can I resist? This time I get a larger dog. He's a lazy type dog who doesn't have a problem just laying there with you. I decide it's best to keep him locked up in my room. But before I can do that, I need to do some serious cleaning. There's stuff around that he might decide to chew on. I do an excellent job cleaning and spend a bit of time with the new dog. Susan and some other relatives come over for a visit and I show them my new dog. Susan is shocked that I got a dog and seems somewhat concerned about the whole thing. Then I remember that I've forgotten about Mr. Puffins! I search around the house looking for him and I find him in the laundry room hiding. I pick up Mr. Puffins and bring him around to show my relatives. They find Mr. Puffins to be very cute.

Now the dream switches to an air drop scenario. Apparently I'm with a group of people in the direct path of a hurricane. We've been transported away from the danger zone to some tiny islands in the pacific. Tiny really is too large a term. They're about big enough to fit 2 or 3 people on each. Because of this, we have to jump to other islands so there will be enough room for people. Someone comments that the islands are meteors and have craters on them. This does appear to be the case. We pause to think about the devestation they might have caused. Things are pretty crowded and I'm just following the group. I'm a bit skeptical about swimming to other islands, especially when I can't really tell if there is one, but I follow anyway. Eventually we hit an island that is fairly sizeable. We hang out there. Some big Russian guy follows us out to the island and joins us. He's a little weird at first, staring at people, but he turns out to be nice. At some point is becomes apparent that these "islands" are floating. The Russian guy seems to enjoy rocking the boat which I'm not very happy about. My concern is that we'll start drifting away from the "island" group and be lost. I pull us close to the nearest "island" and try to keep us close together. That's about all I remember.

SWAT

I'm on a SWAT team. The mission is an odd one. There are people held hostage on the second floor and the demand is for soap or perfume (maybe both). The team commander is convinced we need to go in there and take him out, but I believe negotiation will work. I have some brilliant idea on how we can resolve the situation, although I have forgotten what it was (or perhaps it wasn't a solution at all). The team made it to the room before me, so I'm rushing over there to try to help out. When I arrive, the team leader is trying to figure out what to do. There's a classroom full of people and it isn't clear who the suspect is. I'm surprised that we don't have the soap with us that the guy is demanding. It would've been a small task to actually fulfill his demands. Some guy gets up and says he can make the soap if we give him some ingredients. We are ill prepared to offer any soap or ingredients to anyone. Then a woman gets up and says she's the one responsible and she wants to surrender. The SWAT team seems very relieved at this, but I am certain it's a ruse. My suspicion is that the woman is looking for any way out of this situation, even if it means helping the guy responsible escape. On her way out, though, she stops by a man and begs him to let her leave. Now it's obvious who the suspect is. He starts beating up the hostages. The SWAT team is just watching this going on. I'm yelling at the SWAT leader that he's beating people up and we should get in there, but I suppose the fact that he has a gun deters this action given the number of hostages in there. I'm holding a very slim camera (which I had been using to take pictures of the scene) that doubles as a gun. I have no idea how it works, but the delay on firing is long. I'm holding this up at the gunman, thinking about shooting him. Unfortunately, hostages keep entering the line of fire and the odds of hitting one of them seem pretty great. The SWAT team is still very cautious about whether or not to go in. I decide I'm going to have to try and take this guy out myself. I take a shot at him and hit him in the shoulder or upper chest region. Then the SWAT team moves in. My decision to shoot really wasn't authorized by anyone, I sort of went rogue on the team. But, the results were probably good. A SWAT guy grabs a hold of the gunman, but the last thing he's able to do is to lift his arm and shoot me in the head. His aim is incredible. So while I hit the guy and was responsible for his capture, I paid the ultimate price and was killed. After the fact, I was congratulating the gunman on his accuracy and ability to take a bullet without losing composure. It was almost as though this was some sort of game and I had failed.

Now I'm again on the SWAT team. We've got a new situation. I'm not exactly clear what that situation is, but there are people with guns appearing out of doors. I find that getting killed makes me extremely cautious. I'm telling other SWAT members of threats so they can take care of them. I don't want any of them coming after me. Well we're in this hallway and the bad guys keep coming at us from alternating directions. First from the left, then from the right, then the left again. I'm doing my best at pointing out the threats to my teammates, but it's obvious I'm going to have to start taking shots at these guys. We begin to get overwhelmed. I take a few shots at this one guy, but he doesn't fall. He pulls out his two pistols and takes some shots at me. I go down, but I'm still alive. I do my best from the ground to try and get my SWAT teammates to cover me. Unfortunately there are too many gunmen and the SWAT team begins to fall one by one. I know I'm going to get killed soon enough. I think at this point I try to quit the game. I don't want the feeling of death again. I've already died quite a few times before this and something about this death scares me more than the others. I manage to flee the game.

I think a bit about death before awakening. Is death the end? From my SWAT experiences, death simply was the end of that game. I could play again. It wasn't a fun experience to die in the game. In fact, it was always a very scary experience. Every time it happened, I wondered whether that was the end of everything. So when I die in my dream, is that something I can relate to reality? Or is it all just a dream brought on by playing too many video games? Probably the latter.

Party Naked

There was some kind of party, it was catered, and they picked a place that hadn't been used in a while. Dust was everywhere. It was a clothing optional party, and I was naked. I'm naked in so many of my dreams. Others were naked too, a few good looking ladies were naked as well. A friend from tpf was there, he was a groomsman in my wedding and we fish together a lot, used to before I got married. He seemed to be split into two people, one tpf and the other a pc programmer. I introduced the two and told them they have a lot in common, since they both like to fish. I mentioned that I really like fly fishing. One of them liked fly fishing and the other didn't.

Now I was tired of being naked and wanted to find my clothes. Most of the other naked people had by now gotten dressed. My clothes were in my friends car that I came with. I went out to find it but there were some guys changing a tire or something and I didn't want them to see me naked. I went back inside. Now I was getting very upset that I was still naked. I started to cover up with a towel but it wasn't big enough, plus everyone had been seeing me dangling out all evening and it seemed silly to cover up now. I took the towel outside and went to find that car, covering up what I could. I snuck around the parking garage but couldn't find it. It was gone. I went up to a balcony to look around, some girl was there, she had an apartment there. We talked about where my friends car might have gone. Then I noticed in her apartment was a box of photos from my friends car, she said she'd found it on the ground along with some wires, which she showed me. It looked like the car had been hotwired, and these wires were what was taken out. At the end of one of the wires was an ignition switch, I put the key in and it fit. So the car WAS stolen.

Then I'm with my friend outside and the police are returning the car, which is all blackened and burnt out. Now he's a friend from college and the car is his pride and joy, a 1965 mustang convertible. Now my friend has become Seinfeld and says meekly to the cops that the car seems a little blacker than before. Now the cop has become the librarian cop from an episode of Seinfeld and he's telling him that the car looks fine. My friend seems content and we sit in the blackened out shell and drive away.

Now I flash to another scene where I'm in a campground, still naked of course, and I have to go to the bathroom. I head off and find men's and women's facilities that open into eachother. I start using a toilet but then realize it's in the women's side and I'm afraid some woman might come in and get mad. I stop in mid-stream and go into the men's side and start up again but it's confusing where the actual toilet or urinal is and some guy is running water for a bath. I accidentally pee on several of them and they get mad, so I decide to leave and go back to the women's side to finish. Then some women see me and I believe they are getting turned on because I'm naked and they want to have sex with me.

The whole thing is just too much and I wake up.

Tragic Night at Work

This dream felt very scattered and blurry. Well, what I should say is that it feels very scattered and blurry now.

I am at work. Bad news has been received by Paula at her last doctor's appointment. She has been diagnosed with some dread disease and has little time left to live. This alone would be sad news, but I've also learned that my grandmother on my father's side is in a coma. I am interestingly distraught by this. We are not very close and in general I don't like associating with her. Perhaps for this reason I feel as though I haven't been as close as I should have and feel some guilt. Strangely enough, my mom brings her over to my work. She's laying in a bed with a sheet over her. I think the fact that the sheet is over her entire body adds to a sense of hopelessness about her condition. I walk over to her and pull the sheet down. She ahs her eyes shut and seems fairly peaceful laying there. I say some things to her that I cannot now remember. Somehow I know what is going to happen before it does, but I am amazed by it nonetheless. My grandmother's eyes open and she looks about. She squeezes my hand to let me know she's there. I call to my mom to come over. She is surprised and arranges to take her back to the hospital. I follow them down to the lobby and bid them farewell.

It is late now. I don't recall whether I was planning to stay the night in the lobby or not at this point, but I head to the restroom on the ground floor. The bathroom is pretty large and I look for a stall to use. Most of the ones near the front are in use so I head towards the back. The toilets back there are all pretty dirty. I'm not comfortable using any of them so I head back to the front. Two people have just finished next to each other so I head in that direction. The first guy neglected to flush the toilet so I move to the next one. I walk in and the guy who was in it steps up behind me. He tells me that if I can get out he'll give me some amount of money. I decline. At this point he moves a bit to the side and I decide it's probably best if I get out of there. I try to get by, but he pushes me back. I call for help from the other people in the bathroom, but nobody is willing to help. Then he lets me leave. But when I start to head out, I notice that he's holding my wallet in my hand. The wallet is connected by a chain, so I'm confused how he got it, but then I see the chain has been broken. I ask him to give me the wallet back, and he roughs me up a bit. I am very distraught at having just been mugged, but I Have a "tough luck" feel about it. I get myself comfortable on the couch and lay there for a bit. After awhile I realize I need to use the restroom again. I walk over to the restroom and open the door. I quickly back out again because the guy who mugged me is still in there. On the way back I pass by a security guard. I tell her about the mugger and she tells me she'll call 911. I wait around anxiously and the police finally arrive and bring three guys out of the bathroom. I identify two of them as the muggers and tell the police that the third guy had nothing to do with it. The muggers inform me they threw my wallet in the trash. Then the police take them away. I retrieve my wallet and notice that it is now the next day. I am very tired, but I need to attend a meeting.

The meeting has a few people in it, but the only person I recognize is Judy. I end up getting very annoyed in the meeting and I throw a pencil across the room in anger. I yell a few things at Judy and it's clear my anger is directed at her. Then I regain control of myself and appologize to everyone. I'm on the verge of tears as I sit on the ground. Judy asks me if it's because of Paula and I say partly, but also because of my grandmother and getting mugged. I recall some people being shocked at the mugging, but it fades out from there.

Funny Dream

I was travelling someplace, I don't know where. For the first time in my life, I was buying an airline ticket. I wasn't sure how to go about it. I think I had purchased it over the internet. At the airport, there were different places to go to get to the plane, but they all required a ticket or boarding pass or something, and I didn't have anything. Finally I figured out I had to go to the ticket counter and give them my name. I had an urge to tell her that the reason I didn't know the procedure is that until a few days before I had always flown for free as a non-rev, but I kept quiet. I felt good, though, because I knew I would get on the plane because I was a paying passenger.

Finally at my destination, I had a bag of camping equipment because I had planned to camp, but for some reason ended up at a hotel. I think it was because I had my daughter with me, but she wanted to camp and I was afraid she would run off or get hurt or something.

My parents and brother and sister were there, and they wanted to walk around and sightsee, but wanted to carry my bag. I had to dump out all the camping stuff so I could use it as a backpack to carry cameras. Then I realized the only backpack I had brought was a novelty backpack that had two dummies on it to look like you were carrying two people on your back. Then suddenly I had another novelty backpack that looked like it had an animal tail and legs hanging out the back, as if you had a dead wolf or something in the backpack that was hanging out.

That's all.