Whine and Cheese

I don't remember many of the details of this dream, just the bit toward the end.

I was driving a truck in the snow, heading to see a psychologist for a session. I pulled off the highway into the driveway of the counselor's house, which was a large home. Not quite a mansion, but it had a large front foyer with two defined wings of the house. In the front, outside the main house, was a small "island" of sorts, which was covered with benches so people could it down.

I was originally going to park my truck in front of the house, but decided to park near a small gate house like structure further up the driveway entrance, believing the walk in the snow would be fun. There was already a car parked there and I had pulled behind it. Thinking that it was her current patient, I backed up and parked to the side as to not block them in.

Taking a moment to wipe the snow from my windows, I turned and walked toward the house, passing two men along the way.

In the island was the counselor, who turned out to be Angela Lansbury. I said hello to her, she smiled at me, gave me a brief hug, and told me to go on inside, that she'd be along in a moment. I don't remember if she was just getting some air or was smoking a cigarette, but there was a reason why she was out there.

And then I rolled over and woke up.

Softball was last night. We played well, but I'm sore. I had a great dream and woke up (I think) due to Milo the Cat head-butting me. It's 5:30 AM, but I didn't want to forget the details. Sleepy, I rubbed the bruise on my left shin from last night's bounce that hit me while catching, climbed out of bed, and stumbled past the cats to my desktop in my comic book room.

I think I was in college and had been sent on an assignment to my hometown of Corbin, KY to interview an author, a humorist who had written three books. I had never read any of this books and stopped by Barnes & Noble (which my hometown doesn't have) with a friend and the author himself to buy his books, so I could read them first.

The author, whose name I don't recall, looked an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut, an older gent with thick, curly gray hair, a wrinkled face with sunken eyes and a thick mustache, and a good sense of humor. While the author wasn't Kurt Vonnegut, I'll refer to him as Kurt. Having not read his books, I thought I was giving the author a great first impression. Luckily, the bookstore had his three books together in a compendium at a discount price. I'm sure he enjoyed that as well.

While I'm trying to steamroll through his book, we were giving him a tour of my hometown and all of the local characters that it seems to have. One of the stops was a small market across the street from my Mom's house, a white building with white bars on the teller's window. Like all local small markets, it had odds and ends.

At some point, we ended up in a beat up Ford Pinto with my Mom driving. The floor of the car was littered with various trash. A neighbor was there in front of the house and was either drunk or crazy, likely both. She was yelling at my mom for something, so I immediate took the offensive and told her to f-off and called her "crazy bitch" several times as she shouted obscenities back at me while readjusting her bra strap that had crept out of her sleeveless shirt. The insults from her tapered off as she walked away. Again, I was embarrassed as this was not the best second impression I could make.

"We should get out before she comes back with a gun," I said to Kurt the author.

Kurt got out with me before Mom parked the car. As I shut the door, the door slammed shut on a cinnamon coffee cake in the door frame, unleashing a cloud of powdered cinnamon in the air. I was shocked at first, reopened the car door, moved the cake, and slammed the door shut again, releasing a second cloud for the remainder that I missed.

We went into the house and Mom gave me a mini-recorder, which had her copy of the Kurt's book on audiotape to help me and so I could record the interview. I looked at my copy of the book and I was already near the end of the second book of the three, but it looks like Kurt had tabbed the rest of the book in the lower corner with dates for me. Causing more of a delay, we ran into a few locals on our front porch who had invited the author to a drag show downtown.

Kurt and I went to a small office in the building behind Mom's house to do the interview. The office was full of various papers, stacked high and falling over, and a small TV set that seemed to enamour Kurt with some 1980's television shows. We sat down at a desk. I had about 20 minutes to get this interview as it was getting close to dinner time and Kurt wanted Skyline Chili.

I grabbed the tape recorder, thinking this would be the fastest, then realized the only tape I had was the one inside and it had Mom's bootleg recording of his audiobook. I excused myself from the author and left him continue watching the TV show while I ran back to Mom to get a fresh tape. She handed me the remainder of a thee-piece candy bar, which stated that it came with two mini-audio cassettes on the front wrapper. Excited, I thanked her and ran back toward the office, unwrapping the last chunk for the fresh cassette, only to find that this was the last bit of the candy bar itself. Groaning, I chucked the candy into my mouth and ran across the street to a small market we had gone into earlier to see if they had them.

The small market was now FULL of stacks of tax forms and papers. I'm literally stepping over them to get to the register. As I poke my head through the white bars between us, a black and white spaniel pushed his head against me wanting to be petted. Several people were in the office, dressed like postal workers and carrying more forms. One of them saw me struggling with the attention-wanting puppy and asked what I needed. I asked if he had any blank mini-cassettes. He said no and held up regular-sized cassettes, asking me if they would do. I said no and must have looked disappointed. One of the other postal guys said that I had six minutes to get the cassette. I asked why six minutes and he said that was how long it takes to get to the store that has them.

Realizing how short a time I had left, I resigned myself to just taping over Mom's audiobook and that I'd have to buy her the actual audiobook to replace it. I ran back to the office to find Kurt still sitting there watching TV.

Apologizing profusely, I hit rewind on the tape recorder, suddenly remembering that I had no questions prepared and was going to have to wing it with what little I could recall from trying to power-read his books throughout the day. Instead of hitting him with all the usual questions whose answers I could get from the book jacket, I landed on one that I thought might get him at ease.

At that moment, I woke up, which ended my chances of getting the interview.

For those curious, the question was "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

My dream last night had me in Europe somewhere, promoting a book (possibly a comic book) that I had written. I left a building and decided to go for a flight to my hotel. So I grabbed a large fallen tree branch with a curved end, started running, and I took off into the air flying, like a witch on a broomstick.

That part was fun. It was a pretty common thing for me apparently, because I wasn't freaked out by it and it didn't seem to freak out anyone else.

At my hotel, I went back into my room. The hotel was weird in that some parts were very posh and other were a bit creepy. I had checked out of the hotel to walk back to the conference center I had left before, but left my riding branch in the room. As I was I trying to find another, a group of guys walked by. They appeared to be a popular singing group staying at the hotel too and were complaining that one of their brothers (they were siblings) loved to try to fly with a tree branch.

I was not deterred as I had flown to the hotel. Not finding a good branch, I just started walking.

I stopped at an outdoor cafe near the center, where someone who worked there handed me a bunch of fliers, which include a photo of Patrick Stewart and also had a section about my book. He told me that these were like "comment cards" and fans had left me several.

I read through a bunch of handwritten comments, all seemed positive, but the only one I remember was:

"Turtles don't have nipples."

I saw a group of teens sitting at a picnic table among a row of them. A lady who worked there, a short, stout woman with a blonde pixie cut and glasses, went up to the table and politely told them there were too many congregating at one table and made them split up due to social distancing. Grumbling, the teenagers divided themselves among three tables together.

I guess my dreams are concerned about Corona too. And then I woke up.

I slept twelve hours last night. I really have no idea why I was so tired last night, but I needed the rest apparently. The dream last night/this morning is odd enough.

I was a groomsman in a wedding, along with Brian (cincycub) and a coworker of mine from Chicago named Eric. I have no idea who was getting married. It seemed like I was in a constant state of trying to get ready. Brian had put in my boutonniere and I had put in Eric's. Everyone was sitting around in a fancy hotel ballroom waiting for the wedding to begin.

In a side room, I was trying to get my hair under control and it was very unruly for some reason. I had taken my jacket off and, through the open door, everyone was starring at me. I thought the wedding was starting and so I jumped, grabbed my jacket, and rushed back to the main ballroom, only to find everyone still waiting.

I left the wedding, thinking I had time to rush to my home to get my hair tamed. When I arrived at my apartment that I apparently shared with the twin, there was a party being thrown. Rooms of people just roaming about the place. I was furious that he'd do this while I was gone as I'm wondering how much of my stuff was being stolen by these gaggles of complete strangers.

I got to my room, which I shared with my twin college-style, as a group of party-goers were leaving. One guy, a younger, clean-shaven man, stayed behind and started talking with me.

"Where is my brother?" I asked.

"Who is your brother?" He asked back.

"The other guy who lives in this room," I said sternly, "I'm the first guy."

He stated that he didn't know, which made me realize that he was just dragged into the party. I remembered the wedding and grabbed a brush to try to get my hair fixed. I looked in the mirror and my hair was wild. Unable to get it under control, I decided to wet my hair down in the shower and removed my jacket.

The guy in the room was chatting with me still. Telling me that he was in college, majoring in chemistry, which struck a chord with me as that was my degree as well. However, in this dream, I was not in college, but had my career as I do now.

As I was towel-drying my head, I told him that I obviously didn't have time to chat as I was in a wedding, but gave him some advice. The advice was that it was a good degree to have as it opened doors to jobs that may not be lab-related that were just as satisfying and well-paying (obviously the path I had taken).

At this point, the dream ended, but I'm wondering if I'd have made it back to the wedding in time and what kind of fight I'd have had with the twin over the party when the wedding was over.

In this dream, I was back in college, roaming around Draper Hall, which is one of those older buildings with the hardwood floors that make footsteps echo. I had dropped my books off in the classroom, but, in the few minutes I had before class started, decided to run up to the third floor to see if the professor was actually in.

Draper Hall was never as maze-like as the dream made it out to be, but I climbed up dozens of stairs to get up to the floor and ended up on the opposite end of the building. So I quickly walked my way across the hall, my shoes clacking noisily the whole way. I passed what seemed like a 1950's secretarial pool of women typing away, complete with hairdos and clothes from the era.

I found his department office, which listed "Carol Burnett" as the chair. I did a quick glance and saw his name "Randy..." marked as being in the office. I probably pulled this idea from real life, as I had a professor named Randy Osbourne, who was often absent because his wife was ill. Knowing he was going to be in class, I looked at the time had two minutes to get to the classroom.

This end of the building had an escalator, which was out of place in this building. On my way, I ran into Mr. Mitchell, the principal of my old junior high, whose daughter was my age and going to college as well. Mr. Mitchell looked a bit stressed and out of sorts. I wanted to say hi, but I knew I'd be late, so I tried to avoid him. However, he saw me and immediately launched into a tirade about how expensive college was, telling me about the cheap food his daughter had to buy to stay in budget.

I yelled an apology for not being able to talk as I was late for class, and ran down the escalator only to be stalled by a young lady who parked her ass in the middle of the escalator. The escalator suddenly lurched forward in speed and I made it to class with seconds to spare.

As I sat down with friends in the class, I told them about my former junior high principal who was raving like a crazy person in the hallway upstairs.

In this dream, I had just moved and taken a new position at work. My boss was the director of compliance who actually had retired over a decade ago. I was sorting things in my office, dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, which was not proper work attire. My new boss walked in and told me that I had a training to go to that day and had to memorize a line of dialogue for the class. There was a folder for this training on my desk.

I kept procrastinating on it, but finally opened the folder. In it was a flip book of sorts and other paperwork. As I started looking through the flip book, the pictures started moving on their own like a movie and came with sound. The man's voice stated that they weren't informed that I had moved. The photos was of my old home/apartment, but full of stuff that wasn't mine, as they belonged to the current occupant. The video showed them going through the house, waking up the new occupant. Then the man who was speaking was nude and standing behind a different older man with a blank stare who seemed unaware of what was happening. He put his balls on top of the bald man's head, but the guy didn't react. I was disturbed that the trainer had meant to go to my home while I was asleep.

When I went to the meeting, everyone was on edge for some reason, reacting very aggressively to anything. It then became something of a battle royale with another department I think. No one had been hurt, but it was clear it was one team versus the team I was on. One of the ladies on the opposing side had a propane tank, so I was not having this.

I went back to my office and found one of my coworkers who looked like Carol Kane on the floor with a rubber stamp. The stamp was of a paw print and she was stamping out in the carpet a perimeter of paw prints, claiming it as her territory. She'd clearly lost it.

I grabbed my leather backpack and started heading out when I woke up.

I have no idea what was going on last night in my brain.

The first segment that I remember is being on a Canadian television show about a family of red-heads. The only American actor on the show was Diane Lane. It seemed to be part comedy-part drama. There was a huge altercation outside where Diane's character was dealing with her little girl who was being a total brat in front of the entire family. I turned to see how the rest of the family was reacting. The rest of the family was just watching, with two of them filming the spectacle on their phones.

I was looking up who Diane Lane's husband was on IMDB, but kept typing in Dianne Wiest instead for some reason.

The next segment had me in high school, standing in line to vote for student offices. I stood there with four other kids. The three ahead of me were obvious ne'er-do-wells. The person in charge of voting, I think was the counselor, was the typical sniveling manipulator, played by actor David Palmer. The counselor dismissed the three ahead of me, stating that they didn't even go to school there.

When he got to me and the kid behind me, he told me that we couldn't vote, but wouldn't tell me why. So I kept hammering at him, stating that as a student at this school and had the right to vote. I climbed up on his table and demanded my ballot, or a provisional ballot which he had to give me. Visible shaken and aggravated at my demand, he went to get the "ballot." His assistant had to give him a separate shirt to change into as he had sweated through the one he was wearing.

He returned in his new shirt and a stack of paper. I looked at him and said, "You will not win this." I started in on his enormous attempt to block me, answering asinine questions about Italian movies and essay questions contrasting actors in different movies. I'm not sure there was an actual ballot in the stack.

While I was filling this out, an elephant with a marching procession paraded through the hallway. The counselor jumped up and excitedly proclaimed, "It's the first president! The first president!"

Another teacher, played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, came up to me and told me that an educator had to sign the bottom of this stack and he told me to bring them to him.

"He already filled out my ballot, didn't he?" I asked. The Rock just winked and nodded at me.

I would have loved to have seen how this was going to end, but Boo the Devil Kitteh started pawing at me and woke me up.

I blame this dream on PF Chang's. Tasty, but it must have fueled the strangeness.

I was driving the Bearmobile (my coffee-colored Kia Soul) down Main Street in my hometown when another car pulled up beside me. The driver, some smiling, clean-shaven kid with awful teeth, pulled what looked like an Uzi and sprayed my car with it. I somehow ended up in the backseat with the car barreling down the road as the shooter drove away. I wasn't hit, but I couldn't seem to get up. My car just seemed to glide down the road, not hitting anything, almost like the car was self-guiding.

The dream shifted then and I was in a motel suite. It was nothing fancy, almost like a long trailer with a front living room, a bathroom with hallway, kitchen, and a bedroom all in a linear fashion with old time furniture from the 1950's. A family was taking care of me after this and one of the family members was spatts5. He had a large comic book collection and it kept both of us occupied. I felt like I was in hiding and was careful not to be seen. Paul's family was large, include several sisters and female cousins and lots of kids running about.

I kept trying to call my sister, wanting to use the hotel phone instead of my cell so it would be obvious who was calling, but I could never seem to get through or things would be too noisy.

Paul's sisters were very excited for the coming evening, as they were going out. In the discussion, they alluded to the fact that they were werewolves (told you it was strange). I was not afraid of them as I seemed to understand that they were hiding and protecting me from whoever tried to bump me off.

Just as the ladies were about to hit the town, I woke up.

I had this dream on Sunday morning and took notes so I could post this later. I was in college and the theme centered around the possession of a specific item. It looks like around stress ball with a folded opening that would leak. It like a piece of ripe fruit, but it wasn't food. If you were the owner of this item, at some point the space you occupied, like a room, with fill up with the dead, zombie like figures that looked like people.

I was a member of the band, playing the guitar, and one of my bandmates was an owner of this item. It appears that there was more than one item, because others also had it. The dead would not attack you or try to eat you, they would just fill up the space you were in until you were overwhelmed and crushed. The dead looked like students with vacant eyes.

When they would appear, you had to get around them and into another room or out of the house. They did not chase you, just appeared and stumbled toward you, so outrunning them was possible. In the dream, there was an older man with them who would speak. He spoke in rhyming riddles with dramatic, preaching tones, each one ending with the indication of a timeframe, i.e. before the next dawn, or as the sun rises again. His proclamations suggested that we had to hurry to do something or this will keep happening.

I was not the owner of this item, but I do remember holding onto it at one point, which may have made me susceptible to being overcome. I was thinking of ways to avoid them, like running outdoors where they could not overwhelm me in a confined space.

I recall the situation playing out like a movie, where these beings would also appear outside, like they were coming towards the house or a school building. They would come up stairs, and with mass flow through a doorway, sometimes spilling onto the floor.

There was not a specific event that woke me, or snapped me awake on Sunday morning, other than heartburn from over-eating the night before.

I believe that last night's dream came from the viewing of last evening's Schitt's Creek, where Johnny and Moira go to a dating service.

A group of us had joined a new church. The group included mikiedoggie and several others. We were at a meeting with a long-haired brunette lady, a "cougar" who were saying now that we have all these new man we need to find ladies to join. She apparently did not realize she was at a table full of gay men.

The lady kept commenting that the church was now full of single Men and that the church was now "man heavy." She was suggesting that we tell coworkers to join and I suggested putting up flyers. Personally, I like the idea of the church being "man heavy" (Halleloo...)

Then we started doing an exercise where we selected "would you rather" scenarios. One of them involve being buried in either gravel or liquid. Several of the few girls in the group had to leave because they had watched a crime show, probably "Criminal Minds," and got upset at the exercise.