Caved In

Last night I dreamed I was at a Divine Comedy show (kind of like SNL for BYU). I somehow got to be part of one of the skits, and so I went down in the basement of the building where the show was to prepare for it. While I was down there, the building caved in, and I was trapped in the basement with a few people. It seemed like there was a way out by climbing up this hill, so they were sending people who were trapped in other parts of the building down to escape that way, but those of us who were already in the basement couldn't escape that way. We did have working cell phones though, I guess we had phones that had two modes of getting service, since a lot of phones normally don't work in the basement.

One guy trapped in the basement with me was super quiet and introverted at first, yet later on in the dream we were flirting. He managed to take and develop a picture of the room as the cave in happened, and captured right there in picture it was caused by an alien coming through the ceiling. Even with the picture no one would believe us and we couldn't prove it.

Spoiled Milk

Last night I had a lot of random little dreams, most of which I don't remember. But I do remember one.

I went grocery shopping, and upon returning to my apartment my friend help me put groceries away. Much later that day, I realized that the milk was put on top of the fridge with the cereal, not inside the fridge to keep it cold. I was furious.

Princess Leia

Last night I was Princess Leia. I didn't look like her, I looked like me, but that's who I was. I was getting on a cruise ship with Han, Luke, Luke's wife Mara, and a couple of my kids, when we realized that the secret service who were supposed to be protecting us were going to try and kidnap us. (That happens a lot in the Star Wars books, just so you know, the attempted (or actual) kidnappings.)

Luke and Han went one way, while the rest of us went another. We went up and down the cruise ship on a couple of levels, and finally I climbed down the outside of the ship and took off running toward a secret service guy who was in a mini van. I guess he didn't recognize me, because he threw me the keys so I could take off driving all over town, leaving my family behind.

When I returned, there had been a hotel built up around the ship in an L shape, which was where we were supposed to live. We (me and my family) walked around it for a while, then I climbed down the back again.

It was weird, that's all I have to say.

Fake Diamonds and Stairs

I dreamed I was going to get engaged, and my boyfriend got me a ring with fake diamonds, and not in the style I like. I was like "what is going on?"

Also, it seemed that I was living in a hotel with everyone else in my ward, and I was going up and down stairs a lot.

Sorry, that's all I remember. But thought it was worth blogging anyways.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

In my dream last night, I was a missionary again. At one point I was with some of my companions from my real mission, and I got a couple of packages from my mom's old college roommates, and at first I thought they were a mistake, like they should have gone to my mom but somehow the names and addresses got mixed up. I later figured they were supposed to come to me. Both packages had a book in them, published by the same publisher. I think one of the books was to prepare someone for marriage, the other I don't remember.

Then I was with a little Asian companion (I don't think it was Sister Jung, my real Korean companion). We were actually at my house back in California, I'm not sure why, and we had a really nice dark wood banister, but it was broken at the top, and I felt so bad about it, like it was somehow my fault, even though I had no idea how it broke. This little Asian sister had seen me hit another sister with a shoe once, so when she was upset with me and we were packing to go somewhere (back to our mission president, perhaps?) she gathered up a lot of shoes and was going to hit me with them. I had to almost wrestle her to get my arms around her and tell her I was sorry that she'd seen me do that to the other missionary but it really isn't appropriate behavior, and that I wouldn't ever do that to her and so she shouldn't do that to me. She gave in, almost crying that she'd never had a tangerine. (Was that why she was mad at me, because she'd never had a tangerine?)

One other note. From my house in California, you could see across a body of water to see Salt Lake City. Like the temple was right on the water, and my house was right on the other side of it. It was beautiful, but doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons.

Vampires

Last night's dream was very vivid and beautiful and eerie at the same time.

I went to see two movies in one day, and they were like the Twilight movies in that there were Vampires, and Edward Cullen was one of them, and the Volturi, but there the similarities ended. (OK, the titles of the movies might have had been similar to the Twilight titles, but I can't remember them exactly.)

Also, I may have been going to see movies, but part of the time, especially in the second one, I was in the movie, part of the action, my life in danger just as much as any of the human characters.

There were several well-known actors in the movies. Orlando Bloom was in the first one, either as the leader of the Vampires or the leader of the militia that fought the vampires, I don't remember exactly. Miley Cyrus was one of the three evil women vampires that hung out around the evil vampire leader in the second one, who looked just like one of the Volturi leaders in the second Twilight movie. Robert Pattinson was Edward Cullen, but he wasn't in the dream all that much.

Ok the plot. The first movie, my sister married Edward Cullen, but we didn't know that he and his family were vampires, though not the evil vampires. There was a big battle between the militia and the evil vampires, who liked to just sweep through the countryside and kill all of the humans who lived in their way. It was set mostly in an older time period, with most of the vampires and militia wearing Revolutionary War era clothes (my sister and Edward did not seem to be in this time period, and wore normal clothes of today). Most of the buildings were rural wooden farm buildings and stuff too. The vampires looked a lot like they do in the Twilight movies, except they didn't get sparkly in the sun, and they were more blue (making them zombie-ish?). Both sides of the conflict, the militia and the vampires, were trying to prevent the common folk from figuring out that the bad guys were vampires, probably to keep us from freaking out. I'm not sure how we escaped in this one, but we did.

The second movie was a lot more intricate and long. At the beginning, we were starting to figure out that my sister's in-laws were not normal humans. The setting for this one was more medieval, with stone cities in some areas (and still rural wooden ones in others). One of the elders from my mission, who just got home and who I have not yet had the chance to talk to, was in this part of the dream. At one point we (we being the group of people I was with the whole time, I'm not sure who they all were) were fleeing from the evil vampires, and somehow one of the streets we were running down was all of a sudden a river, and we had a boat, and this elder turned into a mermaid (ok, a merman) and so he was able to swim and pull the boat faster. Then we found out we had apparently been fleeing the wrong direction, and ended up running into the evil vampires. Once during the movie, Edward was able to step in and say "they are under my protection" and so the evil vampires couldn't get us while he was there. Another time we were in battle in some wooden structure, and this elder was on top of this tower (at tower in a barn like thing? whatever, that's how it was) and managed to fight off the vampires all night, which earned him a lot of respect from the vampires, so they didn't want to kill us right away now, because they were afraid he had some sort of super power. This is the part where I got to walk around and see the inner workings of the evil vampires, like the three evil ladies with the leader. There was also a little girl with them, and I don't remember if she was an evil vampire too or just kept hostage by them to turn into whatever they wanted her to be.

So despite being part of the action, they were still movies, because I remember going home afterward and telling my parents about them.

Death and Dating Hayden

Definitely strange dreams last night. I wasn't sleeping well, which means my dreams were very jumpy and it's hard to tell what order the dreams came in and which were thoughts I had when I was awake.

I had a dream that my brother Joel was dead. It was completely an accident, but it was my fault. Like some sort of strange car accident where he was decapitated, and I had been the driver or something. It could have happened when anyone was driving, but it happened when I was, so of course I was blaming myself, but nobody else really was (which was a good thing). I did go out to a car and for some reason the windows and locks had the same control so I was having a hard time locking the doors and keeping the windows rolled up at the same time. My dad came out to help me and I started crying that I missed Joel.

I then woke up and remembered that he's not dead, just on a mission.

Then I went back into a feverish sleep (I didn't really have a fever, but it was the kind of sleep you have when you have a fever, where you're back and forth between hot and cold the whole time and are generally tossing and turning and frustrated). I dreamed I was dating Hayden Christensen. Sort of. Or he was trying to date me. Or something. I wasn't opposed to dating him, but it seemed like he talked more to everyone else in my family than me, so we never got around to discussing it and I had no idea what was really going on with our relationship. My family would be like "Is Hayden coming over?" and I was like "I guess so, I don't know, haven't you talked to him more than I have?" I did kind of like the part of the dream when someone (maybe my dad) asked him what he's doing (like with his life, school, job, etc.) and Hayden replied "Have you ever seen Star Wars Episode III?" but not in a prideful way, he was really humble the whole dream. I think he was a member of the church, and had tried acting onstage in theaters in several cities and hadn't been too successful with it, and that's how we ended up in the same city. Like I said, he was really nice, I just didn't ever know him that well.

Burn Notice

So I had dream about another one of my favorite TV shows, Burn Notice. It's the show that came to mind when I first heard the song "Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions" because the show has plenty of explosions, and Michael Weston is one cool guy.

Anyways, the dream. I was at some event (like some big outdoor dinner or something) with all the people in the show, and they were doing a job. I think they were trying to do surveillance on someone who would be there, but it ended up that at the event someone blew our cover and we found out that we were under surveillance by some other method. So we had to scatter and meet up later.

I didn't have Michael Weston's real name programed into my phone with his cell number, I think because the first time he met me he was using an alias.

My dream didn't take place just in Miami, like the show, but rather all over the country.

I was then doing a job with them where I was driving a boat, and Fi was in a white bikini.

At the end of my dream, I decided to leave their team, to marry someone else who had been working with them. It might have been Jesse, but it didn't look like the Jesse from the show. There was also an older married couple who had been working with us too, but they were also leaving. We were meeting up at some restaurant that had been instrumental in my last job, and saying goodbye. The restaurant was definitely not in Miami. I remember something about San Diego in my dream, but it looked more like a mountain/woodsy area, so I'm not sure where it was.

All in all a pretty awesome dream.

Old House and Cake

We were living in our old house again, even though Mark was old enough to be writing things. I was in law school and living there, I remember going into the bedroom Mandy and I shared and having my laptop set up and stuff. I had some kind of oral surgery done. I walked into a classroom full of 1Ls (first year law students) and realized I was in the wrong place. Mark was mad at Mom for something, and instead of just writing her a note like he used to in sacrament meeting, he wrote on a cake. The cake was beautifully decorated, but had Mark's less than neat handwriting on it, saying something not nice to Mom. (I don't remember exactly what it was.)

Sorry, I'm Taken

For the past two nights I've had a dream with a similar element: there has been a guy interested in me, but I had a boyfriend. These occurred in the midst of other elements of the dream that don't seem similar at all.

Two nights ago, I remember Mandy and Josh and Joel doing something with me, but I don't really remember what. Then I was with Danny, and he looked like he did back in high school, not like what he looks like now. He was acting like he did in high school, too, always wanting to put his arm around me or hand on my back or arm or something. I was a little shocked, saying "Aren't you engaged? I have a boyfriend!" and not wanting any of his physical contact. (He is engaged, and I do have a boyfriend, btw.) Then Nick was there, and of course I was letting Nick put his arm around me and stuff, and once he came and sat right between Danny and me and Danny got jealous.

Last night, I was with my flag football team at some sort of football camp. We were also having some sort of church meeting. I was outside talking to one of our coaches about relationships and stuff, he was sort of dating a girl, but was also interested in me. He kept texting me and asking me to do things (even though we were standing right there talking to each other) and I would text back that I was really busy, and he was like "you have a boyfriend, don't you" because if I didn't I would have made time for him no matter how busy I was.

The Office and Garbage

I haven't yet watched this week's episode of "The Office." Yesterday a friend was asking me if I had, maybe that's what prompted this dream.

"The Office" now had a cafeteria lunch room, with people serving what you asked for as you saw it behind the glass bar. This was to be the new central setting of the show, and the show was exactly like it was originally, except it was taking place in a lunch room and the focus was not Pam and Jim's relationship, but Dwight and Angela having a child.

Apparently Angela did get pregnant with Dwight's child, but didn't want to tell him because she now had another boyfriend. The child was actually a wookiee, but somehow she hid it and got pregnant with her new boyfriend's child.

Fast forward about 3 years, and somehow the new boyfriend is out of the picture, and Dwight knows about his child, and it is a child, not a wookiee. The child was standing on one of the tables in the cafeteria. I don't remember a ton of details beyond that.

I remember at one point I was in the cafeteria, I'm not sure if I was one of the characters or myself, if I was a character I think I was Pam, but I really don't know. Anyways, I could tell that one of the cafeteria workers was going to fall in love with a worker from the office, and apparently it was me. I was going through the line, and I wanted more salad, and the lunch guy didn't want to give me more because the onions in the salad had caffeine in them, and he knew I didn't drink caffeine. I told him it was negligible amounts, I would be fine.

Jim had for some reason taken the LSAT. Dwight was looking over the records and was mad because he thought Jim had cheated or taken it when he was too young or something.

Oh, "The Office" now took place in Utah, as Angela was referencing Bountiful, and I think I walked out of the lunchroom into downtown Provo.

After the office, Nick gave me a piggyback ride and we walked over to one of my old roommate's apartments. We met her as she was leaving, she was going to go visit a friend, but said we could go in anyways. I was concerned there would be drama, since the person she was going to go visit was the sister of Nick's old girlfriend, but then I remembered he was still on good terms with the sister. We went into the apartment, and there were several stacks of garbage sitting there. I decided we should be nice and take them out for her. Then I realized they were sorted into plastic bottles and aluminum cans, and there wasn't any other type of trash, so she must have been about to recycle them and get money for them. I didn't know where the recycling place was, so we couldn't do anything.

Cruise, Board Game, and Aliens

So last night I was on a cruise ship with my family for at least part of the dream, maybe all of it, I'm not sure. By family I mean my immediate family, a couple of aunts, and a cousin or two. We were on a raft out in the ocean for one of our excursions, and had to fight to stay on the raft as we went through the waves back to the ship. It seemed like Joel was being honored for something, for getting his Eagle or leaving on his mission or something, and I was too, but I was late because I was doing something in our cabin. The whole time we were in swim suits, in the water, even through the honoring, we were just standing in circles in two feet of water.

Part of the dream, it seemed like everyone was put under some kind of spell, and for some reason we were the ones who could get people out of it, by playing this board game that looked like Monopoly, except you only went around the board once, because half way through we somehow got people to take this potion or drug or something that made it so they weren't under the spell anymore. Yeah, not sure what was going on there.

The other part of the dream was kind of like an alien or zombie invasion or something, and we had to figure out who was a zombie/alien and who wasn't, and then it ended up that we were aliens and some of the people who we thought weren't aliens actually were, and we teleported back to hour spaceship and tried to figure the whole thing out, and it kind of felt like we were the family on Wizards of Waverly Place or something.

NCIS, Disney Channel, and Inception

A pretty good dream last night.

So at first I was in a secret relationship with Tony from NCIS. I think we used him investigating things as a cover for us to meet up. Of course in the show they rarely go do stuff alone, they usually have another agent with them, so maybe I was working for NCIS too. I don't remember for sure.

After he came to my house one morning, the scene morphed into a locker room scene from a Disney Channel movie. A Disney Channel movie has a locker room scene seems kind of sketchy, but it seemed to have Disney Channel type stars/characters in it. They seemed to either be in on my routine for meeting up with Tony or we were hiding it from them too.

Here's where the dream morphed into Inception, with one girl dying and us going to a dream within a dream to bring her back. Not sure on the details, but that's definitely what seemed to be happening.

The Great and Spacious House

So one of my friends has just moved into a new house with her husband and two little boys. I have yet to visit them, but last night in my dream I did.

The house had 4 bedrooms upstairs, and 4 bedrooms downstairs. I spent most of the dream upstairs, admiring the spacious yet strange bathrooms - one of the toilets didn't have an upper tank, and one of the bathtubs had a door in the side of it, the kind you see that are built specially for old people who can't lift their legs high enough to step into one.

My friend and her husband are just renting until they can build a house that they have a lot for, and I remember asking in my dream when they think they'll move, and why they would move when they have such an amazing house right now. Granted, they are renting, but why not just buy it?

Disneyland with Nick

I used to have dreams all the time on my mission about going to Disneyland, often with other missionaries for zone activity or something. Well, last night was the first dream I've had about Disneyland in a while, and Nick was there. Not bad.

We somehow had extra tickets, so we were going to use them to get lots of fast passes at once. We didn't have a lot of time. Splash Mountain and Space Mountain were a lot closer together in my dream than they are in real life. Nick had the tickets, but wasn't sure we could pull this off, so I took the tickets up to the ticket booth in the front of the park and asked if we could print out all of our fast passes there. Sure enough we could, but at first I was confused because the times on them were in military time, and noon was when they started counting over at 00:00 and not midnight, so the fast passes read something like "valid from 22:00 to 2:00." It seemed like the window of time we had to redeem the fast passes was really big, but once again we weren't complaining. We'd somehow just managed to get several fast passes for several rides at once, and if we had a longer time to use them, the better for us.

Between Splash Mountain (which looked more like a wooden roller coaster in my dream) and the ticket booth was one of those water slides where you ride down in rafts, like Yosemite Sam Sierra Falls at Magic Mountain. This ride has appeared in other Disneyland dreams.

Flirt to Convert

I dreamed that Nick was living in another country for a little while, so I started dating this other guy. He was cute and nice and I liked him, but not as much as I like Nick. I think both this guy and Nick were ok with the fact that I was doing this. He wasn't a member of the church, so then I was dating him as a missionary opportunity. At first when I asked him about learning more about the church and meeting with the missionaries, he was ok with it and kind of excited, but as the dream went on, more and more people from the church were around and he felt pressured. He doubted that he would receive an answer.

Cheers and Mediation

Last night I had a dream that was like being in the TV show Cheers. Not that too many of the main characters from Cheers were there, but we were a group of friends, and by the end of the dream we had ended up in a place that could have been a bar. I was a guy in this dream, and at the beginning of the dream I was on a date with a girl from the group of friends. We enjoyed it, but had to absolutely keep it a secret from everyone else. I amazingly was able to keep a straight face the next time I saw her when we were around all of our friends, or when any of them were talking about her. I guess I was having problems with my health, because I got some supplements that came in a powder and pill form. One of my friends from the bar, a fat guy whose tongue was stuck out like he was licking his upper lip, warned me to not get into drugs. That's what happened to him, he started out with a supplement, went onto drugs, and as a result his tongue was permanently damaged to be in that position. Somehow then I was myself, in this same setting, and the guy who I had been earlier in the dream somehow got some extra money and was using it to throw a karaoke party for his friends, and invited me to join. I didn't recognize any of the songs that others had chosen, and am not sure what I ultimately ended up choosing, or if I ever did choose (I'm also pretty sure it wouldn't have been something that I would choose in real life).

My next dream was brief, but needs a little preface. I'm in a mediation class at school, where we are learning how to help people negotiate and problem-solve disputes. Yesterday we were working on a hypothetical where this old lady lived in this house where she'd lived for 60 years, and this law firm wanted to buy the property to build a new office building. The old lady wasn't sure she wanted to sell it, she'd put it on the market a few times but had never accepted any options. We brainstormed lots of different ideas, everything from leveling the house but letting her keep her gardens, moving the house, building a monument to her in our new building, giving her an apartment in our new office building, etc. So in my dream last night I came up with what I thought would be the perfect solution: start building office buildings above the existing house and letting her live there until she was ready to move out, at which point we would redo her house to fit better with the floors we had built above the house. Of course, now that I'm awake it seems less likely to work. Also, the point of mediation is not to have one party unilaterally come up with "the best agreement" but to have both parties work together to find a solution that is satisfactory to both parties.

Running Away and the Mexican Attack

It seemed like in my dream last night I had returned to my mission. I was in a threesome with one of my old companions and one of my friends from law school. For some reason we were driving outside the city and trying to find a place to live or camp out in the country along the side of a road. Our car was filled with our stuff, like maybe we were running away. I think I remember being worried about the elders in our district, but mostly only one of them. On our first attempt, we didn't find any running/clean water that we would be able to use. On our second attempt, we did find a stream on the side of the road, along with a lot of snow, so that we wouldn't be able to get out of the car to the water without getting our feet soaked in icy water (we of course didn't have snow clothes or shoes).

Somehow, the Lexis rep from law school found us and told us that Mexico had threatened to invade California, specifically by digging a tunnel under California and blowing it up from beneath. This got us worried, since my family and one of my companion's family were in California. We called the mission president and admitted that we had run away and were clear out in the country on the north side. (It wasn't as bad as if I had actually done this while I was on my mission, because now the north and south missions are combined, so at least we hadn't left the mission boundaries.) I also received a call from my Dad. He was driving with Joel and Mandy back from Laguna, or wherever they had gone for the night, because it was closer to the beach and therefore safer from the Mexican attack (I don't get that logic, but in the dream that made sense). He told me they were driving back because the just couldn't live in fear all the time. My mom wasn't with them, but was going to be joining them soon.

Then all of a sudden I was with them in California, in my grandparents' house (my grandparents don't live in California in real life, just in this dream). I was comparing that house to the house they lived in when I was little. I was close, but not exactly the same. The Mexican threat was still going on, and we were living off of food in the garden. My dad was going to make juice out of water, a package of Kool-aid, and the most rotten fruit he could find in the garden, because it would be the sweetest.

Boyfriends and moving

In one part of the dream, I was seeing a friend that I haven't seen in over a year, and for some reason I put my arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. This of course gives him the impression that I really like him and am interested in him, so he starts asking me what I like about him. I then have to tell him that I've been dating someone else all summer (and the person I tell him I've been dating is not the person that in non-dream world that I really have been dating all summer). I'm not quite sure why I did it to the poor kid, or my boyfriend (dream world or real world one).

I was living at home with my parents, only we were living in the house we lived in when I was 6 years to 12 years old, not the house we've lived in since (that happens a lot in my dreams, does that mean anything?). They had put in new carpet in the family room - blue shag. Beautiful, I know. We were planning on moving somewhere else, I'm not quite sure why. But I was telling everyone, my friends, everyone at church, that we were moving, and even giving our new address out to several people. Then, the day we were supposed to move, we hadn't packed much, and my parents were hesitating about whether or not we were going to move. I was upset, because I had told so many people. My dad was upset that I had given our new address to my boyfriend (who, in this part of the dream at least had the same name as my real life boyfriend, even if dream boyfriend didn't look like real life boyfriend) because he all of a sudden didn't approve of me dating him because he was friends with someone who worked serving lunch at the law school. I didn't get it - he knew where we lived now, so why would him knowing where we were moving make any difference. And what's so terrible about being friends with someone who serves lunch at the law school? And since when has my dad ever objected to someone I've dated?

The Water-slide and the Alligator

Last night the dream was about a water slide. Not a water park, because there was only one slide. We were having a ward party there, with lots of ward members lined up on the stairs of the tower leading up to the slide. Several of us girls were in mermaid suits - by mermaid suits, I mean these things that you stepped into and pulled up and put your arms through, leaving you looking like you were wearing a long sleeved shirt and had a mermaid tail. We went down the slide in this. Throughout the dream I slowly took off more and more of it, until I was in just a tankini (perfectly normal wear for a water slide), which I kept tying tighter and tighter.

Later in the dream more people were there besides just ward members. I took a little black boy on the slide with me. (Don't be offended, I'm not racist, that's just the easiest way to describe it.) On one bend of the slide, there was an alligator, which I had seen before when I went down the slide, and I thought it was a real alligator, although it hadn't ever tried to bite me. This time, however, it did bite my hand, and follow us along down the slide, though it didn't bite me hard enough to draw blood. It wasn't until after we were at the bottom of the slide that I realized it was a fake alligator, part of the ride.

The Hotel Utah

In my dream last night, I was living in Salt Lake City. I know I was living in Salt Lake City because 1. it was cold and snowy in the winter and 2. the Hotel Utah was part of it. Now I know that the Hotel Utah is now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, but in my dream it was still a hotel, as you will see.

In the beginning of my dream, I was walking outside in the cold/snow with a guy I am dating, and our seminary teacher. (I have no idea who the seminary teacher is, but she was our seminary teacher.) We were talking about the seminary class, and the distractions and disruptions that occur there. I felt bad, and hoped that my boyfriend occasionally putting his arm around me in class wasn't one of the distractions, so I asked our seminary teacher if us dating was a distraction, or if anything I did was a distraction. She said, no, I was one of the least distracting things in the class, even with a boyfriend. This made me feel better. I left them outside and entered the Hotel Utah.

Inside was very narrow, with lots of people trying to get rooms at the front desk. Everyone, myself included, was wearing clothes from the late 1800s. I met up with one of my cousins, who was trying to get us a room. I asked him if we would need two rooms, and he said he didn't know, but if there was only one bed in the room I could have it and he'd just sleep on something on the floor. I thought that was very nice of him. I remember walking up a narrow set of stairs to another landing to try and find our room.

Later, for whatever reason that I'm not sure of, we ended up not needing the room. We still decided to eat dinner at the restaurant that is in the hotel. (This restaurant was nothing like the actual restaurants that are now in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on the top level - everything was still narrow and old fashioned.) I was looking forward to eating a Caesar salad, a real one with anchovies in the dressing. (That's what makes it real, in case you didn't know. And not just in my dream - look it up.) I don't know if I ever got to eat it in the dream.

Swimming Pools and City Living

So my dreams were pretty intense last night, and I woke up and tried to keep dwelling on them so that I'd remember them long enough to write here, but still a lot of it has slipped away.

I know at one point there were three swimming pools in my back yard - ok, maybe they weren't all swimming pools, they may have been more like hot tubs, but whatever. One was under the picnic table, like you took the glass table top off and underneath there was water that you could sit in. I'm pretty sure that my siblings and I all had friends over and were trying to be quiet because our parents were upstairs asleep.

Another dream involved my parents discussing the possibility of us moving downtown L.A. for the summer since everyone in the family would be working there, and how expensive that would be, and the burden of living in an apartment as opposed to a house. I was excited, I've lived in small apartments in Chicago and knew we could handle it.

Large Bedrooms and More Legos

So now that I've waited so long once again most of my dream is forgotten.

I do remember that my family and I were living in a house where my sister and I had to share a room, but it was a big room with a walk in closet, its own bathroom, and a fireplace. Mark (my youngest brother) was a lot younger in the dream than he is now, he was probably 2 or 3, because I could pick him up and carry him when he fell asleep on the carpet. Once again Legos were everywhere (what is it with me and Lego dreams lately? It seems they happen a lot...). My cousins were there, and I think we were throwing a party, at least we were getting out plastic silverware like we were.

Little Tidbits

All I remember from last night's dreams are little tidbits here and there.

I was driving to a YSA event... I managed to sit between two guys that were interested in me, and of course the one that I liked more ignored me, while the other guy talked to me a lot...

My family was living in some warehouse or something. We had lots of Legos everywhere. I had a couple of Star Wars Lego sets (what else?) and one giant Star Wars Lego set...

Then I was at our stake center with a bunch of people from the mission, and a lot of other people too, it seemed like we were waiting for something. We weren't missionaries anymore... One guy had a haircut that made him look like a little boy... One of the families that one of my companions was really close with was there and she was excited to see them...

Yeah, not much, is there?

You're Getting Married Instead of What?

So last night I had a dream that my brother, who just turned his mission papers in, got married before he got his mission call. I was so upset. I couldn't believe that after all the preparation for a mission he's done that he wouldn't go, especially when he was so close. No one else in my dream seemed particularly happy about it, but I was the only one who was so distraught over it. I was so upset that when I woke up from the dream, I still felt tense and tired, like I hadn't slept well at all.

Now I know that I said that I wasn't going to post my interpretations in this blog, but I posted a ton of thoughts yesterday, and am going to do so again today.

I was thinking about the dream while getting myself breakfast (a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, what else?), and it hit me. What if the dream isn't about my brother at all, but about me? Is somewhere deep inside me afraid that if I get married and decide not to practice law but have kids that I'll have wasted an education?

I don't think the dream is saying that I shouldn't get married and have kids instead of practice law, and I don't think it's saying that I shouldn't practice law instead of getting married and having kids, I think it was letting me know that this is still a topic that I am unsure about, that I should think a lot more about before making either decision.

Standards for Morality

Last night in my dream I was on a second date with a boy. We decided to watch a movie, and before the opening credits were done we were cuddling and kissing and so on. We decided we should set some limits to keep things from going further than they should. His idea? Just make sure we sleep in separate beds every night. While this is obviously something we should do, I was more concerned with all that could happen before we got anywhere near a bed. I stated my rules: no tongue, and no kissing while lying down. (I might have suggested another rule, but I can't remember it right now.) After saying this, he got really sad. Even me trying to kiss him didn't cheer him up. Pretty soon he wasn't even sitting next to me, and there were plenty of people (siblings, parents, friends) wandering in and out of the room. I walked out wondering how me setting limits like that could make someone so sad, wondering if there wasn't someone out there who respects both me and the commandments of God enough to have standards and set rules to ensure that we live by them.

I often wonder the same thing when I'm awake. I do think it's a good idea to have rules to make it easier to keep the law of chastity. I like the rules I suggested to my date in the dream, and additionally, to always be in a place that's public enough that other people could be there (other people don't necessarily need to be there, but just the fact that they could walk in on you at any moment should be enough to keep one from doing too much). Sometimes I think I should even have more rules than that, but I'm undecided as to what exactly they should be.

The question then becomes do I want those rules because I do not trust myself, or because I do not trust whoever boy I am with to respect me. Is it the lack of trust that made the boy in my dream so sad? I remember a stake conference where the stake president forcefully told the young men that any girl they date should have no fear of being disrespected by what physical affection is shown, because of the control that comes from the inside, and that the same goes for the girls, we should have enough control from within to not make anyone else fear or be uncomfortable to be with us. I felt that come to me like a reprimand. I don't know if this answers my question of who I don't trust though. Either way, surely there is someone somewhere that feels the same as me.

Giant Rooms, Star Wars, Climbing, and Other Things That Don't Make Sense

I don't even know where to begin with last night's dream. Perhaps by saying that yesterday I had ice cream (which supposedly makes dreams more strange) and finished reading a Star Wars book.

I don't remember exactly everything that happened, or the order of everything that happened, but here's what I do remember.

So in the Star Wars book that I just finished reading, Jedi are going crazy. Like literally insane. Cilghal is a Mon Calamari Jedi Healer who is trying to figure out what is causing the insanity and how to cure it. (Mon Calamari are a fish-like species. Remember Admiral Ackbar, the guy with a fish head who yelled "It's a trap!" during Return of the Jedi? Yeah, that's a Mon Calamari.) Well in my dream, Cilghal also goes crazy. What are we going to do now? What any normal person would do. That's right, my family would live on a spaceship and be chased by Sith. One time, after I had been chased down this ship to my family's living quarters (a giant room on the ship), I opened the doors and found the room filled with not just my family, but a bunch of middle eastern men in turbans, playing board and card games in small groups.

At another point in the dream I was in some place that reminded me a lot of the clubhouse of the King Henry apartments that I lived in a few years ago. Of course, I couldn't find the bathrooms here, only a giant room with a toilet that wouldn't empty of people to give me any privacy.

It seemed like twice in the dream I managed to get soaked, but I can't quite remember how or why, once may have been when a giant room filled with water (what is it with me and giant rooms in this dream?), I just remember thinking something like "wow, this has happened two days in a row."

I think my singles ward here in Santa Clarita had ward prayer in some really small three story high room. I knew it was three stories high because there were entrances at three levels, but it was so cramped. So not a giant room area wise, but tall still.

At one point in the dream I met and became best friends with this kid that must have been terminally ill, as he had tubes coming out of his stomach, and I think he died. But then later in the dream he was alive and it was me who had tubes coming out of my stomach, and I was trying to explain what happened to my friend Gary. I don't remember this part very clearly.

Towards the end of the dream, my family was living back in our house, but so were a lot of other people. I think we had a school here or something, and everyone who went to school here or taught here lived here with us too. In one part here I was either up really early in the morning on the couch (still with tubes coming out of my stomach) or I had been on the couch all night, and I heard people out in our garage. The music teacher was out holding a music class in the garage so early in the morning that it was still dark. I didn't have a problem with this, but I was so confused as to how she and the students had managed to get into the garage - they hadn't passed me as I was on the couch.

I think the end of my dream involved me in some sort of class where we had to climb the side of a building. None of us had any safety equipment, we were just finding hand and foot holds in the side of this building somehow. I had no idea how we'd made it almost to the top, and was pretty certain I couldn't make it the last few feet. The teacher was already at the top, looking down at us, and giving out M&Ms for encouragement. (I didn't get any M&Ms here though.) I somehow made it to the top of the building, where there were somehow rolling hills. The teacher had a jar of M&Ms left, and was just giving it to students. Once I explained that I hadn't gotten any during the climb, I did get a handful.

Crazy, huh?

Babies, Cars, and Cakes

I had 2 dreams last night.

The first one involved a group of friends from high school. One of the girls had a baby, and me, wanting to make sure that everything is right for that baby, wanted to have it given a name and a blessing. I knew this probably wouldn't mean anything to these girls, but the missionary in me figured it would still be good to have them see the priesthood in action, and somehow, they agreed. I also figured that the mother (and I can't even remember which of the girls actually was the mother of the baby) should get married, for the baby's sake. (I don't remember if she agreed to this one or not.) I then was walking around the Santa Clarita Public Library looking for a friend who had the priesthood who could give the baby a name and a blessing. I didn't recognize the two people I asked, but apparently they were friends who had the priesthood, and one of them agreed.

So then we had to get to where we were going to give the baby a name and a blessing. It wasn't in a chapel, but some conference room in some building. We were running late. I was in my car and everyone else was following me in their car. Even though we were running late and several blocks away, all of a sudden I had to get my car washed and fill it up with gas. (I actually do need to wash my car today...) I stopped at several gas stations looking for which would be the cheapest.

Next dream, I was with a group of girls from a lot of different law schools. We were outside in some garden of some type. I was explaining to them my almost contradictory convictions about feminism and child rearing - I firmly believe in equality of women and their value in the workplace, yet also fiercely think most mothers are the best ones to raise their children, and as I certainly don't want someone else raising my children, don't want to work when they are little. Next to us was a woman holding a little baby boy, he was maybe one year old or so. I could make him smile wider than anyone or anything else. She set out a table with what at first was 10 different kinds of delicious looking bread. When we went over to sample them, they were cakes, with huge layers of nasty frosting.