Chicago

Last night I dreamed I was in Chicago. Oh Chicago, how I miss you.

At first I was there for a conference, something like the Faith and Scholarship Symposium that I recently attended, at the University of Chicago. In my dream, the University of Chicago was up where the University of Illinois at Chicago was. A guy from my law school class was there with his wife and kids, and I was telling them all the things they could do in Chicago with their kids. Unfortunately that information was not very helpful for them, as they'd already done most of it. I was waiting for my husband to come meet me to go to the dinner for the conference, but I don't know if he ever found me. To get to the conference, you had to go across this bridge, and on one side you had this fabulous view of the skyline (which is one of the most beautiful things). On the other side, you could hear the gunfire from the gang wars going on in the rough neighborhoods on the south side.

There may have been more but I don't remember.

Additionally, I had a dream where Bart Simpson was riding a segue-way around these garages. 

NCIS Eats Out

I had an NCIS dream last night. Everyone on the team, except for Gibbs, was a lot younger, like college age. We were investigating some crime, and for some reason we couldn't continue, so Gibbs took the team out to lunch at some Asian food restaurant and told us we were going to take a break until August. I was at the restaurant, and had a lot of gum in my mouth that I had to take out before I could eat.

I also had a dream with one of my brothers and my sister in it, but I can't remember what we were doing.

Pre-Babysitting in a Strange House

I was with my mom in California, and she drove me to this family's house so I could babysit their children. This family resembles a family in Utah. My dad was going to meet my mom and they were going to go out to lunch. For some reason, we drove around and parked in the back of the house, then I went through the house and my mom went through the back yard for us to get to the front. I called my dad, and he was still at work, which confused me, because his work is a commute away, and I thought he was taking my mom out to lunch. Inside the house, there were a lot of open areas for the kids to play, but the ceilings were so low, even I couldn't stand up straight inside. The house had a basement, but I never went down there. It also had a second story. I didn't spend much time with the kids. I felt tired, so I curled up on a chair with a towel over me to keep warm to take a nap. I awoke to my dad telling a story about me to the couple who lived there, and it was a story that is totally likely to happen - me waiting for him to pay for something instead of getting it myself. My mom said something about me never winning anything, about how this other young married couple had won some great prize that was going to make life easier. I remembered how my husband and I actually had won an extra set of movie tickets, I just hadn't told her. My finger was injured and crooked (though I think this was because I was sleeping on it funny, and it hurt in real life and so it had to hurt in my dream too)*. More and more kids kept coming over from the neighborhood, and I wondered how many kids I would have to babysit, and how many of the neighborhood kids had asked their parents before coming over. I was on the stairs (or in a loft just at the top of the stairs) watching all of these kids come in, and went down to ask how many kids I'd be watching. I was wearing long, billowing sleeves, and twice they caught on something, once a light switch, once a corner, and it tugged me back so I couldn't move forward until I unhooked the sleeve. There were a lot of TVs in the house, and I was told to go turn a certain one on to a kids show that the little boy wanted to watch, but I was going through the TV guide and couldn't find it. I was watching some great movie about a woman who was trying to get a man to do something by reminding him of his love of books, and it was supposed to be this great movie, while I was scrolling through the guide looking for this kids show.

*A lot of the time my physical state influences my dreams. The other night I fell asleep with my head on my husband's shoulder, with the end if the bone in his arm right on my cheek. In my dream my mouth was stuck a certain way open - I couldn't close my mouth to talk normally, and I couldn't open my mouth any further. Moving my head slightly so that I didn't have the pressure on my cheek resolved the problem in my dream. Also, a lot of the time when I need to pee, I'll dream I'm pregnant.

Beach, Protest, and Cruise Ship

I had a dream that I had gone to the beach with a few friends, and we happened to be on the east coast. While driving home in a mini-van, some girls in the back seat were using my Star Wars blanket, and so I used my friend's comforter from her bed. Apparently we were all cold. While getting on a free-way ramp, we saw that there was a protest, and hundreds of people were walking on the free-way, so we couldn't drive anymore. Some of us got out and walked, and figured we'd meet up with the van again later. We ended up walking into this coastal town that was in a harbor and there was so little land that the houses were floating. I ran into my little brother there, and was excited to see him, but confused as to why he was there.

After waking up and falling back asleep, I had another dream. This time I was on a cruise with my husband. I didn't realize we were nearing a port until I looked out the window and saw us speeding by all these houses. It made sense to me, since it was sunrise, and in my mind cruise ships get into port at sunrise. The cruise ship was part submarine - it couldn't go all the way under the water, but it could raise and lower itself so the deck was higher or lower to the sea.

Burn Notice and Camping

I had another Burn Notice dream. Mike had run off to keep everyone else in his life from getting hurt by all the mega villains that kept showing up in this dream. (They made it pretty violent.) Fi and Sam kept trying to find him to help him. They stopped by Madeline's house, and found that he had been there quite often in the time that they hadn't seen him. This of course made Fi mad.

The night before, I had a dream that I was camping with my parents and little brother and a few families from their ward (except that in real life one of the families is from my current ward) a week before I was to get married. (The week before my wedding I was at my sister's college graduation and helping my sister and brother-in-law move.) We were having this family home evening, and one of the moms said something about how wonderful it is that I am getting married because I am so good with toddlers. I started giving a lesson out of a sports magazine, and the article we were reading was not appropriate for kids. So we switched to another article in the magazine, about a black couple who got married in the temple. (Yeah, I have no idea what that has to do with sports.)

Batman Suit

So, when I was a freshman in college, I had a friend with a Batman suit. He wore it to football games and snowball fights and stuff. Pretty fun.

In my dream, I was with my husband in some high-rise apartment where we apparently lived. And the mail-man actually came all the way up to deliver our mail right to us. One day he showed up to deliver mail wearing a Batman suit. So cool, especially since my husband LOVES Batman. I told my husband about my friend from freshman year who had one. The mail-man overheard me, and came in and took off the mask, and guess what? He was my friend from freshman year. We hugged, I said "didn't your wife just have a baby?" (thanks to a little Facebook stalking) and he asked about me getting married this year. After that it was super awkward.

Missing Coat, Intruder, and Assembly

So many dreams last night. Let's see if I can remember half of them.

In one dream, I was in a big school that had two gymnasiums. (Gymnasii?) They were huge. You could remove the wood panel floor, and underneath there was a foam pit. I think I was supposed to be cleaning the gym. But I was also coming up with interpretive dances. It was really cold outside, so I had wore two coats. When it came time to leave, I could only find one of the coats. My parents and my little brother appeared, and my mom and brother were wearing coats that looked exactly like the one I couldn't find. My mom was going to give me hers, and I got really upset, because I didn't want her to be cold for my sake. Really upset. Like I was still mad when I woke up.

I also had a dream that our neighbor got into our apartment in the early morning to use our shower, because hers wasn't working. Awkward. Because there we are in bed, and somehow she manages to get through the locked and chained door into our bedroom to get to our bathroom. Hasn't she ever heard of knocking? (I'm sure she would in real life, but this was weird.)

I had a dream that there was a big law school assembly. All of the clubs and organizations got to perform skits or songs representative of the kind of things they did. We were also going to announce the new board members for the next year for each club. In one club, we decided to do away with externships in our club. (Not that externships have ever had anything to do with clubs, but it was a big deal in the dream.) We figured it would allow us to concentrate our efforts elsewhere, and people could still get externship credit through other school programs.