DanLog the ramblings of Daniel Pettit

[First a quick background, last night my sister and mother did go to the Michael Buble concert and there was a bit of anxiety in the air as my mother suffers from panic attacks. I haven't spoken to anyone so I don't know how they made out.]

So the dream starts out with me accompanying my mom and sister Robbie to the Michael Buble concert at The Pond. I was only seeing them off a bit of moral support for my mom as I didn’t have a ticket. I got them to their seat. Getting to the seats couldn’t have been easier. We walked up a short set of entrance stairs, like you’d see out front of a county courthouse and entered into a large foyer, then you went past a short ticket check-in line. You then went through a set of glass doors along a glass wall running the length of the back wall of the foyer area, they let me go in with them. There was a step down or two and the first row of seats started.

There were only three rows total. The last row had a space of 8 or 10 missing seats in the center of the section. My moms seat was in the second row just off center a few seats so that Robbie’s seat that was to her left had a seat behind her but my mother’s seat was in front of the first open space from the third (last) row. There was a small open buffer zone in front of the first row and then the flat stage started. So it was a rather intimate space only three rows of seats no more than 90 seats in total.

I pondered how they managed to section off such a small section of the arena. It seemed that the stage area must be suspended over seating area and I had the vague feeling that other event(s) were being held at the same time, though I doubt a hockey game. [It's too bad my dream version of the venue wasn't reality. It would have really taken down the stress level for my mom][I've never been in The Pond or is the Honda Center now - whatever, so everything is purely fictional obviously, we seemed to enter at the very top like a movie theater and all the seats were tiered below] So with my mom and sister seated I thought this is a great seat for mom, clear view and open space behind her. They were seated and a friend of Robbie that had the third ticket arrived and sat to the left of Robbie.

Then music started to play, there were banquet tables lined up on the stage and there was a projection screen hanging in the background. Many people started to file out from off stage, they were all wearing suits. They started to announce something, They were doing some charity award ceremony first that Michael Buble was involved in first before the show. Having the ladies seated I said my good byes and left.

I get outside and see my sister Renee at the bottom of the stairs. I guess she came to see them off as well but was late. I had just started to fill her in on the details when my mom appears. She greets Renee and then Renee and I exasperatedly ask her what she is doing there. It was the same feeling as when you are walking with Mike and you take your eyes off him for a second and he has veered off in the wrong direction. My mom obviously got nervous and was trying to “chicken out” though she said well it hadn’t really started yet. Renee and I wasn’t having any of that.

I grab my moms arm and start walking her back to her seat. As we start to climb back up the outside stairs I see that it is completely congested with people for some other event. This direction is not going to work, no way am I going to get mom through that mob without her coming unglued. So I start off down the street to take her in the side way. It is a fairly good distance and I’m thinking she is missing the beginning of the show and am getting a bit peeved at her. As we near the area where we need to make a right turn to head along the side of the building I see that that courtyard/walkway area is filled with a group of rowdy men in their early twenties. I had a feeling that they were waiting for a wedding reception to start across the street but it had more of a feeling that they were having the bachelor party immediately after the wedding ceremony. Anyway the group of wedding crasher type guys are drinking and spouting off vulgarities at a loud and heavy pace. Now I’m thinking great my 80 year old mother has to her these neanderthals carrying on and I get even madder at mom cause it’s her fault – if she’d just stayed in her seat. So I get her in the side door and back to her seat and I once again am on my way.

I get to the bottom of the main stairs of the venue and turn left down this narrow street filled with gift-shops and cafe snack shop type stores. Kind of a poor-mans version of Disneyland’s Main Street but in a cannery row kind of flair. The sidewalk and street were littered with seashells and mussels, and squessy worm-like things. The debris which crunched and squished under foot was heavily concentrated under the power lines above. I look up expecting to see a scene out of Hitchcock’s The Birds, but at this moment in time there are hardly any birds sitting on the wires chowing down.

That short street opened up into a larger courtyard area with a fountain and some mining equipment, there is some sort of amusement park ride queuing up there like a log ride or something. (the scene now is definitely not a public street but I inside some unidentified theme park) I continue on barring left, I’m now in a more open area kind of like New Orleans square off the river in Disneyland. I’m walking along and hear a woman’s voice from behind me say, “I still say the second one is a different shade”. Somehow I knew she was speaking to me but had no idea what she was referring to. I stop walking and start to turn around I spot a large flatbed wagon of sorts off to my right in front of a barn which is on the banks of the river. The flatbed of the wagon is made up of 2×6 boards and appears to have been replaced recently. This sight triggers a memory [actually two memories, this dream sequence seems very familiar I believe I've dreamed it before but cannot recall any other details] as I finish my turn and see the woman. Yes, I had a discussion with this woman about these boards about a year ago when I had first met her and haven’t seen her since. She has a familiar way about her kind of like she is the sister of my real friend Yvonne, but this woman is definitely not Yvonne, just Yvonne-like in demeanor.

Anyway as my mind is ramping up to speed, as it actually does on occasion with the real Yvonne, I stall and say that she has some memory as we’d only met once and that was a year ago. We rehash our little “argument” over the shade of the boards which is especially moot at this point as all the boards have been restrained with a heavy solid oil stain. And poorly done if I might say so. I then spot the paint tray holding the stain and it looks like coagulated hardened chocolate pudding. No wonder the job looks so bad. I ponder to my self how they could have hired someone to do such a bad job.

…I wake up…

[ Dreams that involve packing up coming or going from/to a trip are a recurring theme for me. This one in the beginning was par for the course but then takes an unusual left turn ]

It is morning in a motel/hotel room I’m trying to get dressed and all packed up as we are checking out today. I don’t have an exact memory of who I was with but the feeling was close family, Like Lauren and her parents and maybe some of my family. Every one else is all packed and ready. Why I am not ready whether I was waiting for the bathroom or for some other reason, I do not know. Many people are in the room now and I haven’t even showered. I’m running around emptying drawers and am getting frustrated as I can’t find one shirt to wear. Where are my shirts, I didn’t pack them – did someone else pack them up and take them. I run across one shirt in a box. It is a brand new black dress shirt, possibly a tuxedo shirt. I figure I guess I can wear that if I have to.

Then I see my mother’s friend Jean Johnson, she gives me a greeting hug. She is there with her husband but not the man I knew as her “real” husband so many years ago. Also in the room now is my childhood friend Ryan. I don’t speak to him as he is way on the other side of the room. I hear Jean talking to someone about the big announcement Ryan is going to make. The people that already know what Ryan is going to say are trying to get everyone together so that he will have a captive audience. I hear someone quietly say to someone that what Ryan is going to say is that he has become a Christian. I think wow good for him, but then have a bit of a conflict. Thinking about it I figure it would be a good idea for me to make a general announcement as well, but that would be kind of crappy to upstage Ryan right now and it would probably be bad form to just pile on to his announcement as well.

Suddenly I’m outside there is a large construction site. The site is an excavation which they are installing storm or sewer drains I guess, the huge concrete pipes you can stand up in. They are using an unusual technique for placing the pipe sections. The new pipe sections are along the ridge of the excavation. They maneuver the next section of the pipe and then give it a push. It rolls down the embankment to the bottom, lining up with the already installed sections. They then do some fine tuning and securing of the new section and get ready to do the next.

….I woke up..

For many months I haven’t had many dreams that I remembered upon awaking and the few that I have, I remember so little there was no point in recording them. Last night’s dream wasn’t much better in the fact that even as dreams go this one hasn’t a real followable story.

The first thing that I remember, though I know there was more before this part, was that it was night time early, late I don’t know. I was “commuting” home. From where I have no idea, but I had a feeling that I had traversed this particular area previously. Earlier in the dream actually but the details have faded other than I think I was on foot earlier. This time I was on some kind of recumbent type vehicle, possibly an electric recumbent bicycle or tricycle. I was moving silently at about 15 MPH. The landscape was a large flat area, I could see about the area of the Los Alamitos weapons field and there was a feeling that it was the Huntington Beach area just West of Newport. I think I was headed to my childhood house. There were no structures or street lamps, but the field was fairly well lit in a Sodium lamp type orange glow. I don’t know what kind of path I was on but the path(s) were laid out in a grid pattern. I could see other “travelers” off in the distance traveling at right angles to myself. I began to overtake two young women and for a second or two I got excited as I had a feeling that they were Brittney and Monica from my church [whom I've been hoping to see again] but it wasn’t them.

Then the dream changes. It is early morning, the landscape coloring is less orange but the sun isn’t up yet. I am now in the desert somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It is some very large flat basin in California, maybe Nevada? I have a slightly elevated overview of the basin and there is a lot of activity. There is a temporary military camp being set up down there. Then I am in the camp with a large group of men. Military aircraft are flying overhead and landing close by at a steady pace. This whole facility is getting ready to setup and observe a nuclear detonation by President G W Bush. This is going to be his one opportunity to unleash a nuke before he leaves office. The detonation is supposed to solve some problem (atmospheric virus, global warming some other environmental concern?). I didn’t know specifically but it wasn’t a military test or have anything to do with any saber rattling. There wasn’t any sense of people being against the detonation other than there was no guarantee that the bomb would do whatever it was supposed to do.

As I was standing in the group, rifle fire was heard. We could then see one individual running between buildings a few hundred yards away. He was shooting at MPs and they began to return fire. We were all pretty calm about this even though the man running didn’t seem to have much regard for who or what he was firing at. We were in a very exposed position but it felt as if we were completely safe, as if the gun fire was part of some demonstration. [I think this part came from a Simpson's episode I watched last night, when the Simpson's go to a Ghost Town and see a mock shootout]. Anyway as the bullets start flying over our heads I at least start to rethink the wisdom of just standing out in the open.

Then a jet fighter made a slow low turn over our heads and as the roar of the engines faded we could then hear bagpipes off in the distance. All our attention was then directed toward the West where the runways were. Marching toward us was the British military contingent. [I'm sure my mind pulled this little scene out of the movie "The Devils Brigade"] The group quickly lost interest and began to talk among themselves.

A black man was speaking to me, I had the feeling that I knew him but could not for the life of me place him. He just kept on talking and was puzzled by my lack of response as he was sure that I knew who he was. I said something that didn’t really go with what he was saying. The man then said to me okay whatever I guess you can’t hear now. The man seemed to just write off my unresponsiveness as for some reason I just couldn’t hear very well today. The man was thin medium build, medium length relaxed wavy hair that was all greased up in Jheri Curls, he was wearing a fitted military type field jacket in an olive shade but it had no military insignia on it.

Then I realized it was my friend Roger. Suddenly I was on the front deck of my mother’s house. Roger and a few other people were down below in the street. There was a black woman among others unloading a vehicle and going into the house next-door. Roger yelled up to me something about me wearing his underwear. I said back to him, well I did buy it when I was with you so are you taking inspirational credit for me buying it. I thought to myself that this was odd as I purchased them several years ago and how did he know what underwear I had on? There was some banter between Roger, the woman and I
….and I woke up…

It’s early morning I’ve just gotten out of bed and head downstairs. As I walk toward the front door to turn off the outside light I think I spot some movement out to the corner of my eye. I instinctively call out Trouble? [our cats name] nothing – and I don’t see anymore movement. I peek out the peep hole and see that there is a giant crane and big machinery outside the front of the clubhouse directly across the street from our place. The are putting in a new sidewalk/entryway [this work actually had been done a few weeks ago but without all the heavy machinery]. You can feel the ground vibrating from the the heavy equipment and the early morning air is filled with dew and dust.

As I turn around to walk away from the front door I again perceive movement, now I start to look around more closely as I am more awake at this point. Then I spot a black and white cat the size of a cougar. The cat hops up on a large upholstered chair and I cautiously greet and pet it all the while wondering how did this cat get in the house and who does it belong to. The cat is friendly enough though caution remains the word [while I'm a cat person now I am reserved with strange cats (not to mention 70 lbs cats)]. I try to see if there is a collar as I drag my fingers through the medium fur around it’s neck I discover a few collars, a flea collar and a chain collar that is like a charm bracelet. It is silver metal with many disc shaped pendants hanging off it. Some have symbols or letters. I finally spot one that looks like it has identification but as I try to flip it over the cat moves and thwarts my actions. I now try to restrain the cats head movement as try to locate that particular disc again. The chain collar now have morphed a bit and has multiple strands with multiple pendents on each strand and short hanging strands from each of the multiple loops of chain. the chain hangs down so much in some places it is below halfway down the between the animal’s (I say animal because the “cat” is more dog-like now the shape of a small great Dane) shoulder and elbow. I finally can read the tag it has an address on Georgetown. [one of the streets in my community] As I look up from the tag I see Lauren is in the house. She says
something about the animal, I ask her about it, she doesn’t know how it got inside. I tell her the tag info and she says right away oh that is one of those grandma one-story townhouses on the far side of the complex with one of those banner flags.

She walks out of the room and toward the garage. (the setting is more like my mother’s house than ours but not exactly.) As I follow her around the corner I spot our hide-abed couch sitting there. I simultaneously wonder how she moved that in by herself, why did she bring it back from her apartment and how did I not hear or notice her doing that. I am about to ask her why she brought it back (hoping that she is moving back in) as I turn and face back toward where I had just walked i notice that our dining table is back as well with all the chairs (it’s not actually our table but the glass table my mom has in her kitchen). It flashes to me that the animal obviously came in the house while Lauren had the door open to move all this stuff back in and that the animal was probably scared from all the construction and saw a safe haven. I still was wondering why she was moving these things back to the house as I had no notice of this. I ask her and she says the couch mattress gave out in a poof. I said well why bring it back, she said I’m going to buy a round bed. I didn’t understand how the mattress could be fine ad then just poof and I then spot it rolled and standing on it’s side in the garage. The garage where we were now standing with the animal and two neighborhood children who were petting the animal [they did not seem familiar to me in real life or my dream]. I was thinking out loud to Lauren that she could just buy a new mattress for the couch.

—woke up. [Two other interesting points from the real world: Last night when I arrived home from work, I perceived movement in my living room and instinctively looked for Trouble I even called out. the feeling continued as I walked to the kitchen as I looked around I thought to myself, What did Lauren drop Trouble off for a visit so she could crap on the carpet? Well turns out I really didn't have a visitor. I've had sensations like this before, I'd say more of a habit of expecting something than anything else, but this time the feeling persisted more than just a fleeting notion. Shortly after I went upstairs and saw the library door open, which I keep closed. Inside was one of the side chairs Lauren had taken to her apartment and now had returned unbeknownst to me.]

Second dream tonight.

There was more of a beginning but I don’t remember know. So we’ll JIP it here.

I was told by our corporate office facilities director (Old Spaghetti Factory) to disconnect and ship a particular spa pump to him in Portland. [ the pump location was not in a real place nor is the fact that OSF has a spa pump anywhere or any such facility or equipment, but in the dream it all seemed quite normal other than I was curious as to why they wanted the pump as I had replaced it only a few years ago and it was working fine to my knowledge. ]  Once I disconnected the pump and then removed the innards from the housing I could see that there was quite a bit of corrosion and that I wouldn’t be able to reinstall it. It was one of those things that would work for years provided it wasn’t bothered but one you touched it would never work again.

So I have the rusty damp pump in a brown paper bag from Wrights Hardware. I now find myself in the side yard of a house. In the dream it was a familiar house to me [ not in reality though ] I enter the house through a sliding patio screen door. The house is my friends Steve & James’s I put the bag down on the kitchen table.

Then James is there with a woman and man that I didn’t know. They said they were attorneys working for OSF and asked if I had the pump. I said yes and they stated they wanted the pump. I asked why, and said that I was told to ship it to Portland. The woman was friendly enough and said something about it involving a legal case but didn give any particulars. I then asked her if she knew the history of the spa that the pump came out of. She didn’t or at least didn’t admit. I told her that that was the famous spa that OJ Simpson had used. [ that had some aura/legend to it though the dream provided no background or details. Maybe OJ used it as an alibi, or to try to wash off the blood? ]

Unlike the woman the male lawyer was not friendly and in fact was a bit cocky, rude and demanding. He made some demand of me and started to walk toward me. As he was within arms length I grabbed his outstretched arm [ as in his walking stride ] and proceeded to twist and flip him over and onto his back on the floor in some effortless martial arts maneuver. That put him in his place and shut him up.

I then looked into the paper bag with the pump. The pump was actually in a bag within a bag, though both bags were torn and tearing more. Both bags had also been stapled together. I began looking in the kitchen drawers for a ziplock bag as that would be the best to package the pump in to give to the nice attorney. I couldn’t find any and asked James where they kept them.

The dream now shifts gears and is actually a new and unrelated dream.

I find myself in an automobile driving I believe but I might be in the suicide seat. I am with someone else. We are driving along a coast road. Elevated some above sea level. with rolling hills rising up on the inland side after a small flat area with varying developments with a fair amount of oak trees. A house here or there, a park, a hotel and the like. There is very heavy traffic in both directions but extra heavy coming towards us. Ahead are numerous police officers parked, driving and standing in the highway directing traffic. The on coming traffic seems to be taking up all the lanes, there is a funeral procession traveling towards us and that is the source of the traffic and confusion as the police try to coordinate things. There are several different roads that seem to merge and divide at this point. I found that I made the best progress driving on the far left of the road. The wrong side of the road. Then I’d have to cut through merging opposing traffic to the correct side of the road. A police officer spots me and waves me through with no concern as to my having been driving on the wrong side of the highway. We are now making steady progress down the highway.

The dream shifts again and I find myself inside some sort of very large store. It is very organized but seems to be a store carrying commercial supplies, kind of like a Walmart for businesses or more like a functioning retail store with the entire content of a Grainger catalog displayed in an efficient German or Swedish manner. I was getting a European flavor to the the display colors and fonts more than anything else, well there were also quite a few European industrial products as well [ maybe I was thinking of my new German hand planer ] Any way it was quite cool being able to browse through all the new products. I then exited what was a department of cleaners and sorts to more of a convention floor area. Here was equipment and machinery with display booths and ongoing demonstrations [ like the Carnival of Products at the OC Fair, which yesterday Lauren killed a few hours by herself at ] There was a booth showcasing the entire Unger line of maintenance equipment as well as all the vacuuming machinery from Nilfisk-Advance. I continued through the room while trying not to get sucked in my a salesperson.

the dream faded away.

From what I remember starts out on a residential street outside some house, I think it is ours [ however it isn't any house in reality ]. There is a young man say twenty years old that needs some assistance in repairing his car. This involves him hooking up some cable to his car to my car my old trusty Plymouth Volare. He isn’t jump starting it but using some other control/computer access cables to reprogram? his car. Like it needed something reset but his interface wasn’t working so he jerryrigged it so my interface would control his car. While he was doing this, Lauren was with us by the way, he was saying how you can reprogram the car to perform better. He was quite insistent that I should do it on my Volare as it had a lot of unused potential. I said I wasn’t interested, didn’t desire a hot rod nor want to put any undue stress on the engine. He finished with his car and then proceeded to reprogram my car insisting that I’ll like it and that he can always return it to normal. He accessed the reprogramming function by doing several things at once and or in a particular order- something like: parking lights on, transmission in neutral, gas pedal on the floor and three quick taps on the brake. This changed my normal looking dashboard into an LCD display that scrolled through hundreds of car/engine type setting combos. He finally picked one, the engine was suddenly reving very highly, but in an undulating fashion, without any input on the gas pedal. He set a few other things and the car seemed to have a life of its own as it continued to rev up and down the car seemed to lurch as if on a starting line anxious to leap into action, all the while standing still. Lauren was in the drivers seat and suddenly took off down the street with my “new” machine. The young man seemed pleased with himself as we watched Lauren race down the street, still with that ready to be unleashed tigerlike reving and lurching regards of the cars forward velocity.

Lauren disappeared around a corner and then came back, it seemed that she was not able to control the car as it just keep going in that jerky yet smooth motion all the time rev, rev, reving. She now was driving through the halls of the house, then out side, upstairs every where, but would not or could not stop. I had been running along trying to get her to turn it off, but again she either was ignoring me or couldn’t comply.

I ‘m now yelling at our weekend warrior mechanic about what he did and how do we stop it.

I arrive at a lakefront house with several other people I’m friends with, we are going to stay the week at this mansion that someone is letting us use. As we pull into the driveway I see an beaten old pickup truck like a farmer would have in Iowa that his daddy bought new in 1938.

The sight of that truck starts a flashback:

(as if my dream was a sequel to a movie and we are going back to the first movie) anyway the flashback has four people sitting at a picnic table about to eat some slices of pie(s) the pie(s) were provided by the man that owns the pickup truck, he is wearing overalls. As the people bite into the cherry pies holding the slices by hand, they revel in how tasty they are until they notice that there is a profuse amount of filling running off the bitten slice and out of their mouths and realize that it is actually blood.

[ back to the present ]

I had gone ahead and entered the house we were going to occupy inside was a realtor or local person of some kind that was there to hand over the keys and show us around. The house had a airy lodge feeling. Floor to ceiling glass windows facing the lake. A high timber frame interior with a Douglas fir floor, the sun was glaring in – late afternoon. I spotted this old beaten up leather satchel actually an over-sized doctors bag ( same age as the pickup ). The sight of the bag sent a shiver up my spine worse than the sight of the old pickup truck. I then spot what I feared. The old man owner of the pickup was in the house. As I spotted him coming around a corner from the interior of the house I ran up to him and demanded that he get the hell out of here now! I grab his shirt sleeve and proceed to hurry him out of the house and take his bag with him. As we reached the front door the remainder of my group was just entering and were quite perplexed by my manhandling of this sweet looking old frail man. I ignored them other than to say I’d explain.

We now jump ahead a few minutes, we are all outside in a courtyard that is behind the house but adjacent to the circular parking area/driveway. There is another house here smaller in scale but comparable in style to the main house. It is at this point that I warn the group to stay away from that old man at all cost and under no circumstances eat any pie they might come across. They question why when I spot the old man suddenly appears from behind a bush behind my friends in the courtyard he jabs a giant knife towards me. While the man is standing a good twenty feet behind my friends and it is another 8 to 10 feet to me the knife magically extends in length towards me. I sidestep the blade and it shrinks back to the man in an upwards arc. The blade missed me and all my friends but as it arced away I could see that it was dripping thick blood from it.

I yell for everyone to get in the house. I throw open the door and run inside followed by a few others then as I’ve made it more than halfway across the moderate sized living room I hear a knife wiz by my head, I drop to the floor while turning towards the front door in the direction that the knife had been thrown to see Jack ( one of my friends ) about to throw another knife in my direction. I also notice that he had a thick line of blood running down the side of his face, it wasn’t an injury one of the thick strings had fallen on him from the old mans failed attempt at me moments earlier. I yell no Jack! to no avail and he lets fly another knife which misses. As Jack’s second knife was flying through the air, from which Jack’s supply was just magically appearing as he had no knives with him, I realize that the old man didn’t even need to cut someone or get them to ingest his blood to gain control over them, that even superficial contact was enough to gain control of that person to do his homicidal biddings. That is a bad development and I fear that I won’t escape this demon-man a second time. I wonder who will be the lone survivor this time?

I WOKE UP AT THIS POINT 4:45AM  – MIGHT AS WELL START THE DAY

NOTE TO CLIVE BARKER: I’D BETTER GET MY DUE CREDIT IF I SEE THIS STORYLINE SHOWUP ON THE NEXT LIONSGATE OR NEWLINE RELEASE!

I arrived at my brother Mike’s apartment/room. It wasn’t his real room, but his situation was similar. The rest of the family, along with Mike were going to arrive later, for some reason I got there early – very early. I was very tired so I was going to lay down and rest. His room wasn’t very clean so I was a bit leery of just plopping myself down and feeling at home on his bed. I then noticed that there was a very small dog on his bed. Didn’t know he had a dog. I wondered if the staff knew and if they were just looking the other way. I carefully lied down on my side on the edge of his bed. Staring at the opposite wall I noticed on the floor under a shelf or bookcase there was a pile of dirt on the floor. No it wasn’t dirt but dog poop and some litter material heaped on some kind of absorbent pad. It hadn’t been cleaned/changed lately. I then noticed another litter “box” under a table on the other side of the room. It seemed to be a lot of waste for just one small dog. At this point, for some reason, I was worried that there were rats in the room. I then spotted something else moving in the room and to my relief it was another very small dog. I guess I felt more at ease of the room being rat free and drifted off to sleep. While I was drifting in and out of consciousness one of the dogs nestled up against the top of my head. I stirred again and realized that Lauren had shown up and was spooning me. I drifted off again.

Then with a shriek of pain I jolted upright on the bed wincing at my bleeding hand. A third unseen dog had bitten my hand and bitten it good – in no way a love bite. I was now standing looking at my bleeding hand and the snarling little dog. Lauren was sitting up on the bed with the snarling dog near her. The dog was just plain crazy or mean or both. The dog continued behave in a threatening manner. Lauren jabbed a pencil into the dog and quickly yanked it out of the dog in a flick of the wrist kung fu movement. She was now holding the pencil point up, on the end of the pencil was the dogs tiny liver. I guess that will be one obedience lesson that will not be ignored. Neither one of us were remores3eful for the demise of he demon dog, other than worrying about Mike’s reaction. Lauren wasn’t too worried, she thought he’d never notice as there were still two other dogs in the room, I agreed. BTW the other dogs were unfazed by these events.

Now we just needed to get rid of the evidence. His room now was expanded to more of an apartment. It was like one large square room with a wall divider down the middle but open on both ends. So the living space flowed around the center wall like a circle. The bed/living area was on one side a kitchen on the other side. I had just enough time to toss the carcass into the waste can in the kitchen area, the can however was empty. The can was lined with a grocery store bag so from a distance it concealed the dog from view but anyone standing over the can or about to use it would spot it for sure. Just then the whole family arrived, people were setting down packages, bags, fast food bags, and milling about. Lauren was trying to keep the focus of people in the living area, while I ran interference in front of the trash can. His living area had now expended into more of a real living room, there were two couches facing each other with a coffee table between. Mike was on one couch and was opening up some presents. Bruce was standing in the kitchen area near the front door, so I couldn’t safely dash out to take “the trash” out. With the layout of the place people could see in from two different angles, so Lauren was having a hard time getting everyone’s attention focused completely away from the kitchen. Mike was now pawing over my change of clothes I had left in the room. He was saying something like, I don’t remember these, are they mine? Are they for me? There was a pair of dark green trousers and a light green button down shirt. I think I had changed out of these when I had arrived at Mike’s.

[woke up]

Okay it has been a long time since I’ve recalled a dream for some reason – anyway here we go:

The dream starts out during daylight in a golf shop/starter for some small [fictional] golf course somewhere in Huntington Beach or Westminster. I’m with Brent Gilman [former coworker haven't spoken with him in over 5 years] I’m somewhat surprised that we are going to play a round, but I’m willing. Even though I haven’t played in years: its a short course, I know I suck so I’m in no danger of bruising my ego, and my sister Robbie might get a kick out of my retelling of my round. My main concern was how stiff my back was [I strained my back right before I went to bed last night, moving some furniture] but what the hell. Brent has paid his fees and walks out of the shop. I finish at the counter and the clerk/starter hands me a set of motel room keys.

As I leave the shop the setting evolves from a golf course to motel grounds. I’m still following Brent, but he is nowhere to be seen. I glance at the keys for the room number. I knew we would meet up at the room before continuing. I didn’t know where the room was and I hadn’t paid attention or the clerk hadn’t told me. I start walking toward some buildings on the opposite side of a driveway. I look again at the key. It looks more like a modern American auto key. The number is part of the key handle. It reads something like 9Kb7. The room numbers I find are just as confusing and there doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern other than all the rooms of each building are similar. This building doesn’t match so I continue on to the next. I wander around for a while without success. I then come across a set of numbers that seem to be close. I then decide the room must be the one at the top of these stairs. The staircase is more of an fire escape than a main staircase. It only goes to the one room. As I reach the top of the stairs, I see that the room number doesn’t match. It is like 9Kb but had no fourth digit. In my mind I determine that it is close enough and this is/will be the room. The room doesn’t even have a door. I can see inside the entire area. No lights are on, the room is illuminated by shady daylight like it was a giant tree house no one was inside.

Back outside and downstairs I continue to walk the grounds [looking for Brent I assume] I’m walking some winding landscaped paths that are either inside a building or covered by a large overhang. It is one of those indoor/outdoor decors like at a resort or a Polynesian Seafood restaurant. The setting does transition into a sort of restaurant setting. I come across tables with fresh meals on the tables, each table had a different creature on the plate some were crab like but more alien looking. This disturbed me as I tried to make my way outside each succeeding dish I spotted way more disturbing than the last. The last one I saw, for some reason I waved my hand several inches above the food , sort of like a magician and the meal/creature flinched. Well that was enough to send me running for the exit. Safely outside I started to relax.

I was now out in the open, a mostly paved area it felt like a playground of sorts [that is all I remember]

forgive the grammer stream of mind working here:

We started off in some essence private compound/resort. Myself, a woman 25-35 years old, and two children- a girl about 6 and a boy around 4.(they could have been a bit older). We were trying to escape from the compound, I don’t know why we were “captives”. We had managed to get away from our “guards” and were in a utility building for the waterfront area. (The compound had a large artificial lake and a stream system that wound around some of the landscape) We found some electric water craft, sort of like what divers use to cover large distances underwater, but these only pulled you along the surface. I got the others setup with their craft and I opened the hatch allowing us to enter the lake. We calmly proceeded to follow the edge of the lake taking great care not to bring attention to our selves, until we reached a stream that branched of into an isolated area near an exit. The stream dead-ended within a concrete type culvert. I hopped out and quickly ran back to help the children. The girl had already started to climb up the small embankment, and I picked up the boy and hoisted him out of the culvert and onto the paved walking path that bordered the stream.

It seemed that we had managed to successfully evade our captors.

[Flash to somewhere else in the compound: our protagonist yelling at his guards who have just informed him of our disappearance. The guards reported that we weren't anywhere in our permitted area, and were last seen in the waterfront area, but were now nowhere to be seen. {the only way to escape our secure area was by water and they felt that we could only have tried to swim it which the guards felt was very unlikely that we could successfully do that. The children could not swim and it was too far for the adults to hold them and swim. They began assuming that we all drowned. However there were no bodies as of yet. One guard commented that they should go check the filtration screens for our bodies as that is where they had found the missing kittens in the past. The current is very strong in the water system so no one swims in it they just use small electric boats and bicycle type pedal craft. The guards were told to expand their search to all areas of the complex.

The complex at this point is shown to expand immensely from the area previously displayed. It now appears to be a Disneyland like complex only larger. The area we had just escaped is like the resorthotel area and we are now on a pathway along the border of the hotel and the amusement park. I continue ahead alone trying to get out of the complex undetected. I get to a large open area. I can see back looking North into the "A" park and see a very wide main boulevard that seems to loop around a large oval parkland, on the outside of the boulevard it is buildup much like Disneyland's Main street only on a larger scale much longer and the buildings are as high as 6 stories. Coming down one side of the boulevard is a dirigible shaped like the Hindenburg. It is more stylized with an intricate (turn of the century style ala Time Machine 60's) exterior support structure (bands) it is close to the size of the Hindenburg, not like the Goodyear blimp. The dirigible cabled to a track and it floating slowly along about 50 feet in the air.

The park perimeter is directly south however I can see that it is heavily guarded and guards are sweeping in my direction.

I have to continue toward the East across this vast paved open area towards what seems to be a replica of some large city in the 1920's. As I get closer there are many open wheeled cars like SpeedRacer whipping around the open area, they seem to be part of some attraction. As they round one corner they appear to get hooked up on some track and then proceed down on the the main boulevards of the 20's city. Suddenly I'm dodging these vehicles on the street and as I zig left (North) I notice the ground underneath my feet is moving as I'm being moved along buildings are closing in on me and suddenly I'm in front of a building in fact I'm now inside a three sided building as it slides itself into the fourth side that is located in the beginning of the 20's area. I can see more cars in front being "caught" and carried down the 20's street ahead of my building. I seem to be standing in a safe place (not going to be crushed) and decide to stay put until the building completes its assembly. And with a boom/snap/slam it stops and the sky has turned to night and I can see nothing other than the 20's city. It is as if I had just traveled back in time. In fact my clothes are suddenly period appropriate.

Now being quite disoriented, not knowing what the hell just happened and still quite aware of my pursuers, I find myself in a small room that appears to be part of some office, I can see/hear through a service window like a payroll department a gruff man in his late forties is barking at some one in the lobby. I then hear a soft voice in the room I'm in. An attractive woman in her mid twenties tells me that I had better get to work or I won't last long working here. Despite being immersed in this new world for a whole 20 seconds I sense that the woman is sincere in her concern and that I should go along with the program. For some reason I have a feeling that the woman is playing a role, but she doesn't outwardly state that or really show it in any way, just some of here choice of words I think. She quickly shows me what I need to be doing, so that I at least appear to be performing my job duties. We work together for an hour or so. We hand out wages and checks to people. The front side of the room has a glass window with a pass-through cut in it on the back wall is a built-in cabinet with compartments and individual doors containing stacks of paychecks and cash. The gruff man that was in the lobby on my arrival reappears and says to close up for the night. The woman and I neatly stack the paychecks and money back into the appropriate compartments. I try to close the compartment doors but some don't cover the entire cubbyhole. I then notice that the outer lobby has no exterior wall it is just open to the street. I also see that our room is not securable. I'm thinking well how do we keep people from just walking in and reaching through the window and taking things. While I thinking this the woman proclaims that we are done and lets go. I start to protest but stop myself as she thinks that everything is A okay and normal, so I guess I should too. (this is a strange place).

We exit through an interior door and go down a hallway.

[jump to] Her apartment we have finished a quite dinner and the dishes are done. I exit the bathroom after washing my hands and walk down her small hallway the lights are low and I feel very much at home and comfortable. I get to her bedroom doorway, she is sitting in an upholstered chair facing me brushing her hair and has changed into a silk nightgown, she invites me to join her. I tell her I be right in as I need to get a drink of water. My throat was parched. As I continue on to the kitchen and draw a glass of water I’m thinking I going to get lucky tonight, this has to be a dream.

[and it is a dream I wake up at this point, It seems to be a pattern in my dreams when on the rare occasions that I'm going to get lucky I wake up just before also of note is that having been sick the last week I really was parched and needed a drink of water, oh If only I didn't need to make that side trip to the kitchen!]

I was walking home from my mom’s house. Every step was an incredible effort as if I was walking through two feet of molasses. It wasn’t painful, just very slow going. At one point I was along the Santa Ana River and I saw a lear jet taxiing up the concrete channel, In my mind it played as a Viagra commercial “For when you can’t get it up”.

Then I was in a West Costa Mesa residential street and along the sidewalk at one house they had inserted womens underware package labels (the cardboard card) into the ground, almost like a little fence. I then was on a major street and my sister Robbie and mom where there walking alone (without effort) going somewhere. I was very irritated at this point and didn’t really want to hear whatever Robbie was saying to me. I started to complain that next time I’m hiring a limo.

I’m in a hotel room in some unknown city. Actually we have two side by side rooms. It is morning and I am showering and getting dressed. I have been running the shower a long time, but not necessarily in the shower a long time. I seemed to be taking my time getting ready. Lauren is not to be found. The bathroom I’m using is in the extra room area, almost like an addition. Not like a traditional extra room you access via a passthrough door.

I hear someone at the door. It seems like they may have been knocking a long time as I couldn’t hear them from the bathroom. I’m all dressed and ready so I go to the door and open it. There are 3 men. A bellhop, a hotel manager and some kind of detective. The detective is either the “house” detective or an outside private investigator. The first thing that came to mind was that I had used too much hot water. I let them in.

They asked if they could search the room. They didn’t specify why or what they were looking for. I didn’t have anything to hide so I let them begin. The P.I. began to search the room looking around the first room then prceeding to the xtra room. There he made a beeline for the entertainment type cabinet on the back wall. He opened the cabinet doors and looked in. He opened an upper cabinet and spotted a medium sized bag of Chex Mix. He took the bag of Chex Mix and walked away from me as he was opening it and started to eat some. I spotted this and yelled at him, “What do you think you’re doing? Give that back!” He ignored me and continued eating. I went up to him and tried to wrestle the bag away from him. I was pissed. I got hold of the bag and ordered him to not only let go but get the HELL out of my room. I now had a hold of him and was manhandling him out the front door of the extra room, yelling at him, “Just who do you think you are just helping yourself to some elses property?” I “threw” him out of the room. Then started to complain to the hotel manager who was quietly watching the action. He apologized for the mans actions and said that they would leave now. Lauren was sitting on a bench outside our room in the hallway. I went over and repeated my complaints of the P.I. and went back into the room.

I started to cool off and went to finish packing as we were leaving that morning. There was a golf bag and I had some umbrellas and also a gardening hoe leaning against the wall. I was thinking at first how am I going to pack all of this. Then I seemed to remember I normally put that stuff in the golf bag and that I had a cover for the top of it. I slipped in the umbrellas and the hoe. I then spotted parts of a trailer hitch, or more specifically parts of the “truck bed” extender (I have one in real life). These are too large and heavy for a golf bag but they fit nevertheless. The pile of “stuff” I needed to pack into my golf bag seemed to be growing. There were random pieces of broken equipment, plastic panels and other misc stuff you might find in your garage during a spring cleaning. I decided that I didn’t need to take all this crap with me as most of it was broken and server no purpose. Then there came a knock at the door. Now what?

It was the hotel manager with a different man, real detective from the police department. He also wanted to search the room, I was quite friendly and accomodating with him, but I did mention that I needed to continue packing. He said no problem and that he would stay out of my way. He looked around a bit and then started to search through the closet. Now this was one hell of a large closet. If you can picture a hotel room in say a highrise, Long and skinny. Well the closet ran the entire length of the room, it had a clothes pole the entire length and sets of drawers along the bottom for most of the length. He started to go through all the drawers. As he was doing this I was watching him. He found a fair amount of items in the drawers a coral Body by Victoria bra, some socks a belt, even though Lauren had been the only one to use the closet and she was supposedly already packed. There was also quite a bit of clothing still hanging in the closet. The detective asked something about the stuff in the drawers. I said I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if Lauren hadn’t finished or missed those drawers or if that stuff was already there when we got the room. But I was going to find out. I assumed that she just overlooked these items and was mad that she hadn’t finished.

I went out into the hallway to ask Lauren about the closet. She was still in the hallway on that bench. She said that she was leaving those behind as they either didn’t fit her anymore, or that she didn’t wear them anymore. Oh.

I go back to the room the detective has finished looking in the closet and wants to see the bathroom in the primary room. I looked around for it as I didn’t remember if I had actually even seen it as we had been using the bathroom in the extra room. I spotted the bathroom door. It was right behind the front door off to the side. We walked over and I opened the door. The room was a very large square open room about 20 feet by 20 feet. ( In reality it would be impossible for that room to have been where it was) There was a toilet in one corner and a vanity along an opposite wall. The room was semidark and in disrepair. No I definately had not seen this room. Not only was it in disrepair it was dirty. There was debris piled up in the middle of the room, floor tiles were missing, light fixtures hanging half detached. Now I knew why we had the extra room. I was also shocked and puzzled that all through our stay I had never peaked through this door. The detective asked about the room and I explained that I had not been in it and that we had used the other bathroom. The detective didn’t seem too interested and started to leave.

I woke up………

Haven’t been remembering my dreams lately, this one I did. It might have had something to do with the fact that Salma Hayek was in it. She was walking toward me on a wooden pier or dock. As she was walking she pulled her right breast out of her dress and cradled it in her right hand like a crystal ball, a soft, sumptuous, supple crystal ball. There was a undertone of breastfeeding, like she was about to breastfeed a child, however I can’t recall if there was a child anywhere in the dream. (Just before going to sleep last night I happened to be trolling a Salma fan site, I think I might try that more often)

The next part that I remember was seeing, as if watching a TV, a tight shot of a male actors torso. (I think he was either David Duchovny or Chris Evans probably Evans since he was in last night movie.) He had two ORTHO EVRA birth control patches on his abs . The “makeup” department had camoflauged them the to not stand out much, but they made no effort to really hide them. I felt that it was unusual that they had become so mainstream that the studio would allow the display of the patches. What I should have felt was unusual was that a male was wearing a female contraceptive.

I’m walking through the second floor of a house (might be my mom’s) the place is empty with the exception of a few scattered things. The place has been decaying, I’m looking for a place to pee, but there are no fixtures to use but there are drains on the floor in several rooms but they are all backed up for a few feet from the drain. While the place is basically condemned I seem to have a moral problem with just “adding” to the flooding so to speak.

The dream shifts and now I am definately in my mom’s house. I’m still, or was living in it. Most of the houses contents have been moved,. I’m there to take the stuff I want out of my room. The house needs some major repairs, maybe even demo and rebuild. I proceed to got throught my stuff. (I can’t remember the details now, in fact I forgot the dream entirely until something Lauren said triggered it, it’s too bad because I do remember that there were many detailed items that I packed or discarded) The rest of the dream is a blur.

…woke up

This was the second dream of the night (that I remember) it was one of those early morning epics. It starts off at some kind of museum/zoo complex. There are many 1 to 3 story buildings. I’m looking into the lobby of one of the buildings, the entire front wall is glass so I can see everything inside. Many people are inside and most are grouped around a lion with is being displayed, a large live male lion that is. He is on a leash with the crowd in a circle around him. The lion is jerking on the leash kind of lunging about, not exactly trying to eat anyone but doing so with enough gusto to make me nervious. I enter that building through a door off to the side away from the area of the lion. It is very crowded inside the building, suddenly the crowd around the lion gets very loud, I can see over there just enough to see that the lion is loose. Not wanting to be “Lion Chow” I get the hell out of Dodge.

I’m now afew buildings away and things are calm, until I hear more yelling. I think it is about the lion so I run up the closest staircase to the roof of a one story building. Then I hear something about the ants are out. I notice many ants on the deck of the roof. They are the size of bees. (I can’t remember what happens at this point, It seems like I knew what to do or that I worked there or someone that did know was with me, so I’ll continue)

As I get back to the ground area between the ant building and another building I hear more cries. Something else is loose. At this point of the dream I shift into a constant running looking for a way out or a good secure place to hide. It seems that all the creatures in the facility are now loose. I’m inside a hallway with many locked doors I find a room that has a curtain instead of a door and enter. It doesn’t lead anywhere but while I’m there and a really big hedge hog (porcupine size) runs in. He starts to charge me, I grab a broom or mop and fend him off. I manuover him to the interior of the room and run out.

I climb stairs, traverse catwalks – nowhere seems safe, people are running everywhere but I don’t see any animals around. Up on one of the catwalks I can see a picnic area with food carts and a high fence that marks the edge of the grounds. I head over there. The fence is not passable I check out the carts and stands and don’t find any refuge. I continue into a building that looks like a medical facility. Another hallway with lots of office sized rooms off of it. One room is a classroom no security here. I continue on.

Now at this point in the dream the pursuer seems to change to me running from some “bad” people, like I know something or have seen something that I shouldn’t. Now my focus is on getting away instead of hiding. I find myself on a rooftop right next to the perimeter fence. I can’t climb/jump over the fence to high and no way to safely land the jump. The roof is also adjacent to a parking structure. I climb onto the exterior of the structure. The openings of the structure are blocked by these rubber/vinyl strips a couple inches wide and 12 to 20 feet long. They are packed real tightly. There is no way to get inside the structure. I climb along the exterior until I’m along the street side. The fence is gone as the structure is now the perimeter. I’m up a couple stories, but manage to carefully hang on to some semi-loose strips that are hanging out of the “bails” and climb down to street level hoping it will hold me. It does and I’m now on the public sidewalk.

I’m sure they are still after me and will soon be on my tail. I run up the street and duck into an alley and continue on to the towns downtown. I’m heading for a police station. I pull out my cell phone to call the officer in charge of the investigation to get him to come help me but I don’t know his number. I look for his card to no avail. I then try to see if my phone has a call log as I’ve called the officer before, but I can’t find anything and it is difficult to navigate the phone menus with the malfunctioning phone screen (my reallife phone is that way) and run and stay out of sight at the same time.

…wake up