Random Images and Scenes N+1

       Last two nights have been so warm I have hardly been able to sleep. When I do, I sleep just a short amount of time at a stretch. My dreams have been similarly broken, mostly snatches of being at work, visiting friends, the little brat from the other night re-appeared. Sparrow Morgan, who I met at the SD Comic Convention appeared in one, with a couple of little white dogs.
       I was at M&Ss for one scene, I was eating M&Ms out of a frying pan, swirling them around and allowing the peanut and almond ones to escape over the edge of the pan back into the dish. I later tried that at work with the lid of the programmers M&M jar. It actually works way better than I thought it would.
       One image sort of stuck with me throughout the day. Purple sky, scattered plumes of indigo smoke with lightning bolts that shot through the pillar and played on the underside of the expanding plume.
       Dark almost walnut brown orange haze in the distance. Something large and triangular drifted silently overhead, lightning rippled over its surface and arced to the ground nearby, starting another plume of nearly black smoke rising towards the sky.
       I had the feeling that I was supposed to do something about it, but I had no tools and no weapons other than half a red silk shirt and a dark green canvas bag that had seen better days. There were some items in the canvas bag, an old 16mm movie reel (empty) and some other scraps of terry cloth towels. I didn't even pull them out of the bag. I think this is the dream where I didn't have any shoes on, either.
       I couldn't find my cell phone in one dream, even though I could see it sitting right on top of the book case where I plug it in every few days to charge up. I kept looking for it, even though I knew it was right there. Somehow I couldn't stop looking for it. I even stopped myself and said "Look, there's the cell phone."
       Then I would look at it, and immediately start looking for it again. Stubborn or stupid, I just can't tell sometimes.
       I woke feeling lest rested than I did when I piled into bed the night before.
       Oh, and cars, there was a dream with a pile of Matchbox sized cars, but more cheaply made, that I kept trying to move around without toppling any of them. I wanted to take them out and line them up and sort them out, but I didn't dare, they weren't mine.

Brat Discipline, My Way

I dreamed this morning that I was visiting someone I hadn't seen in several years, and was surprised to find that they had a two year old brat. The brat was really being a brat.
When mom and dad left the room I leaned over to the brat, took away my lego dune buggy and handed him some more age appropriate lego toys. He started to screw up his face to wail and cry about it.
I leaned in "I ate the last child they had because he was a whining ninny who didn't mind, don't you imagine I'd be just as happy to do the same to you."
"What!"
"You don't see an older brother around here do you? And where do you think all those clothes came from that are too big for you?"
He started to wrench up his face again.
"Yum." I said staring at him.
He stopped. Took the larger legos and sat down to play with them. "Much better, you just might make it to three."
Mom and Dad came back in. "I might not have to eat this one," I said. The kid turned white, looking at Mom and Dad.
Dad was confused, but Mom jumped right in. "Whew! that's a relief."
"Just let me know if he gets out of line," I said.

I only wish it could be that easy. I didn't like having to lie to the brat, but it sure was fun.

Long Road Dream

        I dreamed a whole couple of days worth of travel and driving around, in a couple of different cars. The level of detail is such that I am looking forward to work today being an opportunity to relax some.

        The dream started with N and I looking at Cecil, returned to us without his engine, and his paint and body much worse for wear. The front yard had been turned into a three car parking lot, still hedged in by the juniper bushes, but much thinner layer of them. Little Red was parked next to Cecil, and she wasn’t looking much better.

        N and I took Cecil up to the gas station, a good trick when you don’t have an engine. I guess it’s ok that the gas just pumped out of the top of the (old fashioned round top) gas pump and not into the car. I was upset, not only at the waste of money but of fuel.

        Someone came up behind us and demanded we move away from the pump, we’d been there long enough. I tried to explain that I hadn’t paid yet, but they insisted. We moved up to the next pump where I filled up a furry brown dog whose gas cap was a fur covered plug right between his shoulder blades. The dog gave a shaggy yelp of thanks and trotted off. “I should be disturbed by that, but I’m not.” I said to no one in particular. I filled up our motorcycle, paid my twelve bucks or so, and we towed Cecil home. (That’s one heck of a motorcycle.) N rode in Cecil to help steer. I would have helped pay for the car that took our spot at the pumps, but the combination of they being so unpleasant, and me being too slow made that impossible. I wondered that they even paid attention to the total cost.

        We popped into little red and drove up to Long Beach for dinner with S and M. They wanted to know about what R was doing these days, and I thought it odd that they didn’t have a better idea than I did. “We put gas in her dog this morning.” I don’t remember R being around during the dog incident, but I believed that I was telling the truth.

        It was dark when we drove home and I was tired. So tired that I missed my exit and we ended up in Poway. We decided to stop at my parent’s house to grab a nap before trying to get home.

        The road was blocked off at the bottom of their hill. I went around the long way. I was stunned to see that all of the houses from Tobiasson down to Pomerado were now three story tall mansions. There was a small shopping plaza in the cul-de-sac at the bottom of the hill. I parked at my parents and N went inside to take a nap. I walked down to check out the changes in the old neighborhood.

        The houses were immense, lots of heavy greenery in front of each of them, balconies and patios around the second and third floors. I had no idea what they had a view of, other than the road and the neighbors across the street, but they were beautiful houses.

        At the bottom of the hill I walked into a blanket store. While I was wondering how a store that just sold blankets could possible survive I spotted a green felt that would be a perfect color for N. I went over to check it out. I also saw a great fleece in green and white plaid.

        “That would make a great liner for the green felt blanket.”

        “Yes, it would,” I agreed with the sales lady. I asked about the stitching they used to put them together.

        “There’s a Lifetime guarantee on the stitching and the blanket materials.”

        “Wow! How is that possible?”

        “The blanket maker is sixty five, so we figure about 30 more years of her life.”

        “Ah, I see, lifetime of the maker. Don’t you think she’ll stop being able to fix the blankets at some time before then?”

        “Well, we grandkids will keep going as long as she does.”

        “OK. Not longer, though?”

        “No, we’re doing this for her, she pays us to keep the store open, and we live up above, so it’s a good deal.”

        Before I knew it I was being measured for a blanket. I tried to explain that it was for my wife. They assured me that they knew what they were doing. I asked if I could get one for me in scarlet and gold, with the fall leaf quilting. They measured around my head, saying I wasn’t as big as they thought. I wanted to tell them my head wasn’t the big part of me, it was my belly. “I’m shaped like Santa Clause,” is what came out. They chuckled.

        They started putting things together and soon there were two blankets being made. I wanted to stop them, as there were no prices anywhere in the store and I know from experience that if you have to ask, then you can’t afford it. N’s blanket was finished first. The green plaid effectively disguised the quilting, but when you turned it over you could see the silver leaves plainly against the dark green felt. It was gorgeous. I resolved to pay whatever it was they were charging for the blankets, knowing that N would love them.

        I am not surprised that I woke up freezing, with a cat draped over my head. (No wonder I dreamed they were measuring my head and perhaps Little John was the idea for the red and gold blanket for myself.)

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Surf Nation Map, Warehouse, Soul Store

       Dreams were as scattered as sleep last night. Thunderstorm rolled in making it difficult to sleep more than an hour or so at a time. Still, I managed to have at least three dreams that I remember at least part of them.
       The first dream found me looking at a map on parchment, it was in the proportion of a legal sheet of paper, or even a little bit narrower. There were huge mountain ranges on the side of a large nearly rectangular bay. (The cartographer/creator trying to get the most usable territory out of their paper, perhaps.) Inside the large bay was a number of islands arranged in several bands across the bay in such a way as to make traveling from the anchorages on the continent to the open ocean anything but a straight line. (strait line?) The islands were, I was told, the Surf Nations. Because they had long beaches and waves that travelled both inland and out towards the sea. Many of the inhabitants had taken to using long boards to move from island to island, even carrying cargo in some of them. Some of the best sailors were rumored to be able to make the trip from island to island without ever having to raise a sail. A good portion of the population is water logged from the knees down due to this mode of transportation. (That from a few notes on the lower right corner of the map.)

       In the second dream I found myself in the back storage units behind the warehouse at work. There were dozens of old lawn mowers, lots of damaged trash cans, we weren't allowed to throw out trash cans, apparently. and hanging on the side of one of the sheds were a bunch of paper cutters, they varied in size from the little 12 inch ones like I have in my office to a giant 32 inch flat bed cutter. I asked why they were sitting out here where their blades could get dull and rusty.
       "We aren't allowed to throw them away, either, they have dangerous parts in them. We would have to pay a services contract to sharpen them (which we don't have a budget for) or we would have to pay to have them disposed of (not something we were allowed to do.) Instead, we did have an equipment budget to replace them, so that is what we did."
       I looked at a couple of the larger cutters and realized that I could take the blade from one and put it on the other, and put the nicked parts on one item. At first they didn't want me to do that, but I said I would take the paper cutter back to my office. "Oh, you would have to take it home, it's off of our inventory."
       "OK." I fixed it up and then realized that it was so large I might not be able to get it into the back of Little Red. (It seems to have grown from a 32 inch cutter to a 48 inch cutter.) By the time I had driven my car back around to the storage units, the inventory gal had come and found my repaired unit, reactivated it in inventory and sent it out on the truck to a school. She said I could take any of the dull ones, though. So I grabbed all of the 24 inch cutters, which were actually the size I needed. I didn't do any repairs on them, instead deciding to take them home and fix them up there. The smaller cutters didn't have a property tag on them, so were really just considered office supplies. The warehouse guys seemed glad to have them out of their storage shed, and tried to talk me into taking all of the abused paper cutters. I thought about it, but then decided that I really didn't have a way to get rid of them once I did get them sharpened. The 24 inch ones I would keep one for me, R could use one and I figured I would bring the other two back to work and put them in both IT offices, no one would have to know they'd ever been anywhere else.
       "Hey, I found our paper cutters, and had them sharpened."
       That worked.

       In the third dream, much interrupted by thunder and lightning, I remember being at the counter of some sort of store. It appeared that the store carried a wide assortment of painted eggshells. Most were whole, but some had been made into intricate boxes with silver, gold and velvet details. Some had been carved into intricate scenes and then nested, smaller eggs tucked into larger, so the carved scenes had a sort of multiplaned dimensional effect. Underneath the glass case were the really expensive eggshells, all of which had glowing material tucked into them. The glow was obvious in the jewel box style eggs, and in the carved eggs. The painted ones just had a needle thin shaft of light coming from the two holes that had been poked in them to blow them out.
       The counter woman allowed me to look around without harassing me. I didn't really know what I was looking for. After looking at dozens of eggshells, I walked over to the counter and asked, "Do you have any sort of 'do it yourself' kits?"
       She smiled, the smile lit up her face, I noticed a dusting a freckles across her nose and that there were two lighter bluish streaks in her almost straight black hair. The streaks in her hair started just behind her bangs, which were cut sharply mid forehead. Even though the iris of her eyes was so dark a brown as to be almost black, there was a light inside, much like the glow that came from the eggshells in the cabinet in front of her, but slightly more disturbing.
       I realized that I had my own painted egg, and all I could do here was trade one for another, or trade for something else. I know I didn't want to trade my painted eggshell for anything else, and figured that anyone who'd traded one of these for something else, well, there must have been something wrong with the eggs, every one of them had been turned in by their owner in exchange for something, something that I am not sure I was even willing to ask after.
       I thought about asking the counter woman out, but didn't get the chance. (Thunder)

       Although I fell back to sleep, I couldn't find my way

Over Crowded Dream Page

       Random video segments spread throughout the dream image. Like a web page with five or six Flash movies running all at once. The dream had three different scenes in it, all running at the same time.
       One was of a bunch of leotard clad heavy women doing some sort of aerobic exercise routine. (Sweating to the Oldies?) None of the women were really unattractive, but all were heavy, or at least well rounded.
       The second set of two screens was a WOW environment (Started playing for the first time last night, no surprise to find it cropping up in my dreams.) The scene was of a marble floored temple and an Ox-like Shaman had wandered in (my character, perhaps, although the 'video' wasn't following me) and there were a bunch of gnomes and dwarves being tossed around by a large snake. As the gnomes landed, severely injured, the Shaman would hit them with a healing wave, and they would rise and rejoin the battle.
       The third moving image was of exercising women again, this time, though, they were so thin the Spandex looked loose on them. It had sort of an 80s feel to it judging by the big hair, wide belts, headbands and leg warmers. I actually found the heavy women to be far more attractive.
       As the dream began to dissolve I was trying to right click on the WOW movies to save them, but a copyright notice kept popping up instead. As the dream faded I realized they were flash images and I could copy them out of my cache if I just didn't close the page first. My brain was running so sluggish from the five movies at once that I didn't know if I could even open a window to allow me to browse my cache at the same time as the page was open.
       I think the point of this dream is that I spend way too much time on the computer.

Visitor Pawns, New House

        I dreamed I was at home when the doorbell rang. I had visitors. I didn’t really feel social, but these were friends of N’s that she hadn’t seen in awhile. The main thing I noticed about them is that they were colored like the pawns in a board game, Red, Green, Blue, Orange, Purple, Yellow, and had almost no facial features.

As the afternoon progressed they became even more pawn-like. Their faces almost completely vanished and their heads turned into tinted cylinders with wigs on top. N didn’t seem to notice, but I was starting to get very worried.

I was worried that their heads should have been spheres instead of cylinders, for some reason that really bothered me.

Later I dreamed we had moved into a narrow three story house. The third story really only consisted of a smallish sitting room and a bathroom that ran the length of the house. It had both a tub and a separate shower stall, as well as two toilets.  One toilet had its own little room between the clothes chute and the shower stall.  There was a set of stairs between the bathroom and the sitting room, and another set of small stairs at the back of the shower stall next to the clothes chute.

I wondered how useful the bathroom would be as we got older, I doubted that we would want to climb up the stairs to go take a bath, and the sitting room really wasn’t big enough to entertain more than a few people (I think we only had places for five people to sit.) I found myself wondering what had possessed me to buy this place, other than it was on a nice bit of property with several fruit and nut trees as well as a large spring fed stream that turned a water wheel that generated power. I guess being off the electric grid was a big bonus, that and the reduced water bill. 

I wandered down into the large front room and, although it was a bit narrower than our current front room, I figured that without bookcases I could hold games in there without too much squeezing around the table.  That made me feel better about the house. The kitchen was on the second floor, as were most of the bedrooms. There was a large bedroom on the ground floor, just on the other side of the guest bathroom. (Tub only, it was sort of an older building.) I believe N and I were using that as a guest room as we had the master bedroom and our offices on the second floor with the kitchen. There was only a small dining room off of the kitchen, but a huge patio that was enclosed ran the entire length of the house. The patio was two floors, both the ground and the second floor. There was a balcony, narrow, on the top floor outside the sitting room. But I don’t remember there being a way onto the balcony, just regular windows there. Odd.

From the front of the house I could see a door leading into the third floor balcony, but the door wasn’t visible from the sitting room. I walked around, pacing out the location. There apparently was a hidden room on the top floor, it would be almost thirty feet long and 15 feet wide, but with one part only about 5 foot high, as the roof line would cut through it on one end.

I knew that N would love trying to figure out the mystery. I figured I would just climb out of the sitting room windows and into the balcony door, then find the way into the rest of the house from there, but would let N search inside a couple of days, first.

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Cat Powered Go Cart

        I dreamed that I was with N and Giles on a little dune buggy like go cart. It didn’t have an engine, though, just a little harness for the cat to pull it. I didn’t think it was fair that Giles had to pull both of us, so I added foot pegs and handles on the back of the go cart, making it more like a dog sled. That way I could push from behind. I picked Giles up and put him in the front of the cart and then pushed the cart from behind, jumping on the pegs to coast when we were running downhill or coast on the flats.

        At one of our rest stops a woman said that the two other cats N took with her were not John and Chloe, they were both dead, it was Marvin and Ember. I had no idea what she was talking about, but when I went to start running again, the go cart only had Ginger (acting very old) and Teddy in it.

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Science Fiction Night.

       Last night was Science Fiction Night in my head. The first dream out of the chute was an exploration of a large space station. It was inhabited and the population was under some sort of crazy martial law. The laws determined who could stay in what sections of the station and who could move from section to section. I had taken one of the ships enhanced intelligence cats and wandered off to explore. Unfortunately, I had wandered out of the docking bay section into one of the restricted inhabitant sections. Plenty easy to get in to, there were no movement restrictions during the day time, but at night, that was a different story.
       I realized that I was in trouble as everyone packed up their little shops and raced to get back to their sleeping quarters. For some reason, I decided to try something that I'd had a character in one of my stories do. I found a white sheet and wound it around me like a shroud, doing the same for the ship's cat with a pillow case. I spotted an area where there were other shrouded bodies and let us in and found an empty spot on the floor.
       The inspectors opened up the room, scanned us, since neither the cat nor I had station ID, we didn't even scan. There were so many shrouded figures in the room that they didn't even bother to count to make sure the numbers matched.
       After the inspectors left the shrouds came off and everyone started chatting about Nova 11, and guessing what might be in Nova 12. I just happened to have my reader's copies of Nova 12 (two of them anyway.) It didn't take long for the people to put together that I was the creator of Stella Nova, the main character of the Nova series of books, 12 being the latest. I agreed to read from Nova 12 (Nova Surprise) for them, since they had kept me out of trouble. I pulled out the reader's copy, showed them the cover, Nova, chin length black hair with evenly spaced red and blue highlights, looked out of a porthole over the reflected explosions of a space battle, her almost anime style chocolate brown eyes reflecting a mixture of surprise and determination. On the back cover was a photo of me and the ship's cat, who, when they realized it was the same animal, was suddenly a minor celebrity. We were looking through a porthole at the reverse side of explosions (Thus setting us on the other side of the battle for anyone who was paying attention.) We also wore looks of surprise, not so much with the determination. Of course, the ship's cat almost always looked surprised, it was just the shape of his face and the size of his eyes. The cat looked remarkably like Little John.
       I began reading the book to the assembled 'fan club' signed their charter, took holo images with them and then after a couple of chapters of the adventures of Stella Nova everyone drifted off to sleep.
       In the morning the group helped smuggle us back to the docking station, leaving me copies of all of our photos and holographs. I had taken all of their names, and promised that they would appear in Nova 14 (as Nova 13 was almost ready to go to the editor.) I did get in a little trouble, but when I explained that I attended a fan club meeting, the port authority waived the fines (I did leave the other advanced readers copy with the inspector after I made sure she wouldn't consider it a bribe.)
       That night I scheduled a fan club meeting of a different sort, this time with all the proper travel permits filled out ahead of time. By the time the evening was finished I'd gotten a great deal of the plot of Nova 14 worked out, and was looking forward finishing my book tour and getting back aboard my ship and writing and drawing again. (The drawings weren't really for publication, they were a way of me keeping the stories and characters strait in my head. I may have to try that in real life.)

       Later, I was in a space fighter craft, defending a neighboring world from invaders. The fighter was like a Star Wars X-Wing, but quite a bit larger. The cockpit was filled with fluid and everything I could see was enhanced by some sort of optical or brain implants. I really wasn't flying the ship as much as directing its strategy, I simply wasn't fast enough to keep up with the actual tactics of a space battle. I did manage to break the shields of an invader's capitol ship, and stripped it of its weapons systems.
       I called for them to put themselves in a stable orbit or to withdraw. The chose to orbit, perhaps thinking that they would get reinforcements. I hit them with ion pulses until they had no working sensors or communication other than LOS lasers. I then hid in a debris field and waited for their support ships to arrive. Four repair tenders jumped in from the edges of the battle.
       When the four tenders were docked, I dove out of cover and rendered their weapons useless, and took out several of their drive units for good measure. I left two working enough to evacuate, and they did take that option. I escorted them away from the battle zone, protecting them from friendly and enemy fire both. I was hit by mines on the way back to the battle area, and had to make an emergency landing on the invader capitol ship. I radioed that I was OK and was bringing the ship in. My fighter was scrap. I watched it drift away from the hold to join the floating debris field, then set about landing the large ship. (The effects of the ion cannon being relatively easy to repair. I don't think the invaders were aware of the ion cannon technology.)
       The dream started again almost where I left off, but, having been disturbed by rampaging kittens, it didn't have the same plot any longer.
       I was still landing a giant three story tall mansion of a ship, but now it was exactly that, a sort of space-going mansion. (Inside it looked quite a bit like the bread and breakfast N and I stayed in in Hollywood.) I managed to wrestle the starhouse to the ground, finding a recently leveled lot with an open basement large enough to nestle the engines into. When I finished, it almost looked like we belonged there, except the styling was completely off from the rest of the neighborhood.
       The property owner showed up, stunned, not knowing what to make of the house that had sprung up over night on his property. I offered to pay him rent for the week or so I would need to make repairs. He accepted, since I'd somehow appeared over night, not believing that I would be leaving with the whole starhouse in just a week. I gave him a quick tour, and I could see that he was a little bit disappointed that the place looked just like a three story house on the inside. Only the book cases being glassed in and rails around all the hallways gave any indication that the place could move. The control center was situated in the bay window in the front room, and when stowed looked like a cozy window bench.
       I did show him the very science fiction looking repair tenders in the bay, and that somewhat convinced him that I was on the up and up. I gave him an audio call code in case he wanted to ask any questions. He came back to the door a few seconds later. Told me I didn't have to pay rent. He was writing the property off as a total loss and selling it anyway, he just had stopped by to make sure the basement were posted as unsafe.

Musical Interludes, Lost Wild Child

       I only spent a little time, when I was younger, on learning the instruments my brother and sister played, trumpet and clarinet. In my dream this morning I was trying to play the trumpet, but could not maintain the proper 'buzz' with my lips to make the sound ring true for any length of time. (I had never really progressed much past the bugle stage any way.)
       My ability with the clarinet was slightly better, and my sister was there to coach. I tried combining the trumpet buzz with the clarinet reed, resulting in a weird alien sound. I had somewhere found an electronic clarinet, in addition to the normal buttons and studs, it had a set of electric buttons that changed several of the sound characteristics. It still needed the reed mouthpiece to work properly, but seemed to be a little bit more forgiving than the traditional instrument. When I started playing with the various electronic settings my sister said "You're on your own here, I never had anything like that."
       I played around a bit, added some rhythm elements and a chanter like found on bagpipes. It was exciting, but I kept having trouble keeping the mouthpiece of the clarinet in front of my teeth, I kept pulling it in and chewing on it, making it nearly impossible to play correctly.

       In an other dream I woke up with a small kid curled up against my sleeping bag. I was camped in a forested area, a small stone bound fire was just embers a few feet from me. The kid was not someone I recognized, and seemed unnaturally small for the size of its head. I rummaged around in my bags for breakfast, pulling enough out for both of us. My pack was actually up a tree several yards away from where I was sleeping. I knew there were bears and wolves around.
       The kid woke up when I stoked the fire, making it large enough to cook with. (The watch fire was really to keep a low level of smoke going, to keep the animals away.) For a moment she looked like she was going to run away, she looked out into the forest, sighed and settled in, pulling the sleeping bag around her tattered and too small pink clothing. At one time it may have had a 'Hello Kitty' design on the bib of the overalls.
       I gave her some water and dried fruit. She ate, watching me with almost totally black eyes. I shared my bacon and eggs with her and had some orange juice (from concentrate) which she turned down.
       I spoke to her, but she never responded, except in that she would help when I mentioned I was going to do something, and seemed to listen intently, no matter what I said. When I picked up and broke camp, she helped roll up the bag, and then helped move the stones back down to the creek bed. She washed in the creek. I gave her one of my plaid shirts and she changed into it, rolling up the sleeves and wrapping the shirt around her twice. She used some of her previous clothing as a belt, a strip torn from her too short pink pants. I took the rest of her old clothing, wrung the muddy water out of it and put it in one of my spare bags, just in case someone might be able to use it to identify her later.
       I flipped open my phone, but only the GPS portion was working. (I wish I could remember the coordinates.) I plugged in the charger to the solar array on top of my backpack and set out to work my way uphill, hoping to come into range of a cell tower so I could call someone to come a get the girl.
       As we climbed the game trail to the top of a nearby hill, she invented a game where she would race along with my walking stick, jumping to the spot where I planted it, and then she would wait until I swung it forward again, running to catch up to me, and then leaping to the new spot. Every time she landed she would grab the walking stick and turn and smile at me. Her grip on the walking stick encouraging me forward a little faster. I found myself wondering how long she could keep that up. As I watched her run and jump I realized that she was older than I had initially thought, more like ten or eleven rather than six or seven. She was humming some sort of tune, I didn't recognize it at first, but then realized that it was "Happy Birthday" with lots of odd little flourishes and improvisations.
       I sang the birthday song to her, and then, to my surprise, she sang it back to me, again with lots of odd little improvisations and animal sound flourishes. Some of the animal sounds seemed to be echoed in the forest around us. I began to feel like we were being followed, or paced, really.
       We came to a part of the trail that led into an open meadow and the top of a hill. We were on the edge of a couple of acres that had been clear cut some time ago. There were small trees getting started amongst the ferns and grasses. She looked nervously at the forest edge and then followed me out into the meadow. She barked "Happy birthday" back out to the forest.
       There were echoing barks, and a couple of whines from the shadows of the forest. We had been followed, but I suspect from her behavior, they were friendly, almost a body guard. I believe the forest animals, wolves I suspected, had actually delivered her to me, and were keeping on eye on us to make sure nothing bad happened to her.
       I smiled and said "happy birthday." to the shadows in the forest. I tried to keep us as close to the edge of the forest as I could, taking a little bit of a longer path to reach the top of the hill. The girl didn't seem to mind. By the time we climbed up to the top of the hill I was able to make a cell call, and to give them my position. The local sheriff was sending a helicopter, although they seemed mystified because there were no reports of a lost little girl in the area. If it weren't for the bag of too small clothing, I would have been worried that her family might be lost out there, but I suspected that she was lost out here a very long time, at least three or four years.
       I pulled out my camping lights and began to charge them up (hand cranked), she sat and charged up the flashlight, then while playing with the dials discovered that it was a radio. She eagerly tuned it to a music station and began humming, and occasionally singing along with the music.

Zombie Outbreak, Convention Parking, Ex-Girlfriend/s

       The dream last night (no pain meds) was much more like the sort of dreams I like to have. It started out with me and several friends stuck in the elevator of a hospital. An outbreak of Zombiism was occurring and we had to escape from the hospital. (I am seriously thinking of using this as a convention game scenerio.) I noticed that the zombies, where they were still 'fresh' were fairly fast, less so when they were more damaged and bled out.
       Another aspect, while they didn't seem too smart, they did seem to have extremely acute senses, both hearing and smell. Oddly, they really didn't seem to be able to operate any machinery, so pushing the elevator buttons, something that would have probably doomed us, was beyond their ability. They were, however, very infectious, not airborne, but any sort of body fluid ingested or introduced into a wound (say by biting) would result in an infection. We rounded up all the fire extinguishers on the floor and found that they made the floor slick, and a cooled zombie was very slow and not very sensitive. We managed to lure or slide the zombies away from the elevator, then took the elevator down to a nearly empty maintenance level. From there we lured the zombies in the parking level up the stairs and then locked them in the stair well. One of us stayed behind (me) to keep them from turning back down the stairs. The orderly that had joined us locked the bottom stairwell door, called me on the cell phone, and I raced to the elevator, taking it down to the parking level.
       I found myself wishing the zombies were like old fashioned Daleks, and couldn't climb stairs. At the same time, I realized that if that had been the case, we wouldn't have been able to get clear of the zombie hoard. The Orderly drove us to our cars, as there were still some zombies wandering the parking lot. We managed to drive out in a caravan of half a dozen cars or so, a big SUV in front if the way needed to be cleared. The Zombies really didn't seem to be interested in the vehicles as long as we kept the windows up.
       I think smell and sound were their primary senses, the vision portion seemed very limited, they didn't seem to be able to recognize that there were people in the vehicles that were driving by them. Although they did register "big moving thing," followed by "Is it consumable?"
       Thump.
       "No, not consumable."
       You would think that the human brain would still be providing something other than motor services, but apparently not.
       The group of us drove out into traffic and carried the infection away from the hospital. I was concerned about that so washed my car down with bleach water and used bleach in my shower. I also bleached all of my clothing including my shoes. I didn't want to take any chances there was infectious material on me. The bleach really took the color out of my hood and roof of the car. The tires ended up a funky brown grey color.
       I realized I was late to the convention center, so got back in the car, I used an old shirt for a seat cover as I had bleached and discarded my old seat cover. I put the car in gear and drove downtown. The convention center in Dream City is actually agains the east side of some mountains that the town cradles on three sides. I made my way down out of the hills and into the city, noticing there were zombie inspection stations we had to go through. My car scanned clean and I was allowed to go into the auto repair garage (the convention garage was already full.)
       When I pulled up to pay the outrageous parking fee, the garage manager stopped the ticket taker and asked if I knew anything about the wiring harness on the car I was driving.
       I did, so I told him so. He validated my parking and told me he would have one of his mechanics drop me off at the front door of the convention if I would only help them go through the catalog of parts and pull out the correct one for a customer who had dropped of a car like mine.
       I was a little suspicious, until I saw the car, and realized that they were not going to be able to take out my flux capacitor for the other car. It was a slightly different model. I showed the mechanic where the bad part was and how to find the correct replacement on line. They then shuttled me to the convention center. The mechanic gave me his cell phone number, in case I didn't want to walk the three quarters of a mile back. I thanked him and he thanked me. Apparently whatever I was driving was fairly rare here, and the mechanic had literally no idea of where anything was inside the engine compartment, the online resources were also not really available.
       I found myself wondering how I knew so much about the thing, then, but shrugged it off as I was met in front of the convention by an old girlfriend.
       This was one of those true dream moments. The woman was a compilation of every petite blonde I have ever dated. Her image and voice slid easily around all of them, never quite settling on one or the other. We walked into the convention, then out onto the dealers floor after checking in.
       She/they were afraid that I would try to convince them that I loved them.
       I explained that I did love them, always had, we just weren't a match at the time we broke apart, and probably still weren't. It didn't mean that I didn't love her, just that I knew we weren't right to be together.
       She wanted to know if I thought we would ever be right.
       I admitted that it could be possible. I put my arm around her/them and hugged her close. I really did feel the same love I'd always felt for her/them, along with all of the emotions, good and bad from our relationships mixed in, and I knew that it still wouldn't be a match, but was still good, and there really was still a great deal of love and affection there. I told her that and she seemed resigned, but didn't let go of my waist.
       We continued around the convention, visiting old friends, and introducing one another to the friends the other didn't know. It was quite an enjoyable convention and I knew that I wouldn't be calling the mechanic to bring me back to my car when the festivities closed late tonight. I invited my former GF to come stay with me at my house, suggesting that we could carpool down tomorrow. We should also be safer if the zombie plague should get out of control as I lived in a home with a fenced and gated property.
       One of the GFs said that if she'd known I would be so rich she would never have dumped me. Odd, I had thought the breakup, in this case, had really been mutual.

Mixed Results

Well, I seem to be sleeping better with the NSAID in me, as my pain is much reduced. Unfortunately, I sleep so well, that I can only remember little snatches of dreams, rather, or perhaps I’m only having little snatches of dreams.

        Last night was a great example. I was awakened three times by kittens, and, in the past, I would have been in the middle of some long convoluted story line with complex sets and large casts. Last night I woke the first time only able to remember a few bars of music. (I didn’t really recognize it, and now couldn’t re-create it to save my life.)  Nothing about the physical or visual part of the dream, if there was any, was rambling about in my brain.

        The second time I woke up I know I was having a conversation with a raven-haired woman with startling blue eyes. We were riding on the back of a camel, the sun was low on the horizon, and there was a muddy river off to our left. A couple of pack camels with colorful bags jingled their bells a few paces behind us. None of the usual dialog or context or dream memories accompanied this scene.

        Finally, when the kittens woke me this morning (about a half hour before N’s alarm went off) I was communicating with a large rectangular sheet of blue with a half twist in it. I don’t know about what, or if the green square in the background was listening in, or just a green background.

Ad astra per technica,

FF

Creepy House Repairs

       I dreamed that I was hired by an elderly woman to fix up her house. I repaired a couple of bannisters, re-hung a couple of interior doors that had been torn from their frames, and even repaired some damaged stairs. It looked like someone had broken in and carried off something very heavy, dropping it at least once on the stairs.
       Mostly I found myself re-hanging shutters, and adding latches so they could be attached and secured from the outside. When I got to the top floor, a single round room with a bed, vanity (sans mirror, the frame was there but there was no mirror) and dressing cabinet in it, I could tell it was a woman's bedroom, but judging by the long dark hair in the hairbrush, not the old woman's room. The door into the room was in the floor, and the room had eight porthole style windows. I put up the shutters, and as I was finishing the last one, the woman who lived in the room entered, or rather was pushed up into the room from below.
       She was lovely, full lipped, long dark hair, dark brown eyes, and a narrow waisted fully rounded traditional hourglass figure. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. I showed her what I was doing, and showed her how the latches worked. She hinted that she was some sort of prisoner in this room.
       I used my drill to drill out the mounting circle for the latch of the last cover all the way through the shutter. I then showed her how to operate the latch from the inside of the shutters. (All it took was a small screw driver or square key.) I left her two keys to the shutters, one I taped to the top of a beam that ran over her vanity, and the other I told her to put in a drawer where her captor could find it. She got all teary eyed and thanked me. I made my way down out of the room and made a show of giving her one of the keys to open the shutters (without pointing out the modifications I had made.)
       I went out onto the roof to finish installing the final shutters, and to make some gutter repairs, I saw the old woman take the key away, and heard the lock being thrown on the trap door in the floor to the upper room. A few minutes later, the shutter I had rigged to open from the inside popped open. The woman waved at me, then closed the shutter and latched it. I went back up to the room and put a card in the shutter with my address and phone number on it. I then eased the shutter open and removed the window stops so the window could be opened far enough for the woman to escape.
       I looked out over the scaffolding that ran around the front and sides of the house. There were crocodiles on the side of the house. On the shore of a little pond there was a wadded up pair of coveralls, muddy, and a couple of chewed up shoes. I had a bad feeling about the rest of the job.
       I made a repair to a gutter that had been damaged by a fallen limb. The tree trimmer was there working also, it was TC. I asked him to leave a couple of thick branches just at the edge of the roof, sort of an escape route for the woman in the tower room. TC agreed and managed to trim the rest of the tree in such a way as to not make them obvious. I taped a few more cards to the roof, making a trail from the window to the tree.
       The two of us tried the tree escape route, found that it worked. We then started jumping across the scaffolding, TC making Sumo Wrestling stamping motions on each level of the scaffolding. Me checking each of my shutters on the second floor. Below the scaffolding, there were crocodiles roaming the back yard, pacing us. I knew they would attack anyone who set foot in the back yard. I found myself wishing we'd started in the back and had worked towards the front.
       The scaffolding that covered the front suddenly collapsed, and the steel pipes that connected it to the scaffolding in the back yard were pulled over the fence. That old lady was stronger than I thought. I heard the front door slam shut and the twisting of metal and creaking of wooden planks continued for a short moment in the front yard. We had to disconnect one of the scaffolding sections and tip it over and use it to make our way out of the back yard. It didn't quite reach to the fence, so I jumped out onto a high backed chair that had been stored outside.
       The chair's fabric had mostly rotted away, so it was pretty light. I was able to hop the chair around the crocodiles, who watched with great interest, but didn't attack. I was glad they were so well trained. I got the chair positioned where TC could reach it, then jumped for the fence.
       I didn't quite make it. As my foot touched the ground the crocodiles reared back to snap at me. I managed to step out after and up on the first one to lunge at me and so launch myself onto the fence by stepping off of its head. The crocodile had been so surprised by my moving towards it that it hadn't even opened its mouth as I approached. I balanced myself and walked along the top of the fence drawing the crocodiles away from TC. He jumped to the chair and then, rather than trying to leap to the fence, hopped the chair over to the fence and climbed out of the back yard.
       "I don't think the old lady is planning on paying us."
       "Shall we go find out?" I asked, more angry now than anything.
       In answer, TC pointed to the now bent and twisted remains of the scaffolding that had been in the front of the house. "Do you think she's going to know we escaped?"
       I hadn't even considered that we might still be in danger. I remembered seeing torn and muddy looking workman's clothing at the edge of the pond in the back yard and had an idea.
       TC was at least wearing a normal shirt and shorts under his coveralls. I was pretty much in a T-shirt and boxer-briefs.
       "I have another couple of overalls in the van," TC offered.
       I took a craft knife off of my belt and Made some shallow cuts on the back of my fore arm. The blood flowed faster than I thought it would, and I soaked it up with TC and my coveralls and shoes, then tossed them over the fence to the snapping crocodiles. There was ripping and growling, that moved away towards the pond in the back, then lots of splashing around.
       "I hope she's not really watching out back there, and that'll be enough to fool her if she is." I knew the house was completely shuttered and there weren't any windows left undone that I knew of.
       We snuck behind the hedge out to where TC's truck was parked. TC grabbed a couple of new coveralls out, and we dressed. I had to roll up the legs, but not the sleeves. A tow truck arrived. The driver was a little confused, he'd been told the van was abandoned. I stopped TC from sending the guy away, and suggested it might be best if the old woman saw the van being towed away. For a couple of extra bucks the tow driver allowed us to stay in the van while he collected his fee from the old woman, and drove us all away.
       I started to wonder if the woman we'd left an escape route for was like the old lady, and then I started to worry that I'd left her my address and phone number....

Flood

       I dreamed I was with a group and we were in the way of a flood. The end of one of the great lakes had tipped up in a great seismic event. The water was coming at about 80 miles an hour. We had to get out of the way, and get to high ground, only, there didn't seem to be any. I managed to drive most of the way out of the city before the roads were jammed. N found a church on a little hill nearby and decided that she was going to stay there. I advised her to get to the highest point possible, and to take floatation with her. I noticed a forest along a hilly incline about 6 miles away, so decided that I could run to that area before the wall of water arrived here. I was hoping that I could get over the other side of the hills and that the hills would slow the water enough to allow the trees to be a refuge.
       When I had almost reached my destination I came across a school. It was not being abandoned, in fact, they hadn't heard that the flood was imminent. I stopped to help coordinate an evacuation. We emptied several large tubs to use as floats and rounded up all the classroom rope lines and jump ropes so we could keep everyone together. We then moved all of the students to the second floor and were moving them up to the roof when the wall of water appeared in the distance. We didn't look like we were above the height of the wall of water.
       The wall engulfed the end of the city I had just left 20 minutes ago. A few tall buildings stuck up above the water for awhile, then some of them fell, undermined. I could see lots of debris in the water, but at this distance I could make out no people.
       The water reached a river I had crossed earlier, it dipped into the little river valley and seemed to hesitate before rolling across the river plain, if anything, faster than it was before. Myself and some of the teachers took the ropes with us up to the tops of trees that grew over the school building. I really didn't think that was going to do much good, I was pretty sure I couldn't hold on to 10 kids on a rope in 40 mile an hour currents. All we could hope is that the water would be mostly diverted and slowed by the hills between us and the river bed.
       There was a huge turbulent crashing in the distance as the water slammed into the foothills, scouring them away, but I took some heart at the apparent slowing of the water. Some of the water did seem to be flowing south of use rather than directly at us. I was grateful that the school's designers had chosen to build on a hilltop. I didn't think it would be a tall enough hilltop, but it should help.
       The water was churning against the hills and the water behind it was piling up, using the turbulence as lubrication to avoid being turned back. The wave built into a massive curved wall that, cresting the first line of hills I'd already crossed, tumbled down into the intervening valley. The force ground a deep gouge out of the valley floor, houses and rocks flying in front of the wave as it churned up the hills on our side of the new canyon. The water had slowed, like I expected, but not as much. I could see other waves in the distance as the water piled up over now invisible hills in the distance. It looked like it was no longer headed directly at us, but the water began to flow, counter intuitively, until you noticed the waves building in the distance, up the hill towards our little school.
       I figured if the water continued to rise this gently, we just might be able to float out of trouble on the second or third wave through.

Oddly, I did not wake up with a full bladder.