Strange, ain't it?

I woke just before 5am because my husband was squirming, so I reached over and gently placed my hand on him to help calm what seemed like a bad dream. He woke up a moment later and told me of his dream, which eerily sounds a lot like one of my recurring dreams: he is driving in a car on a local, busy road when he spots a dark, large Shepard. Suddenly the car is gone and he is faced with the brute dog who begins to charge at him.
Then he woke up, and I was already awake having noticed he was upset in his dream. Weird that it so closely mirrors some of my dreams. I do tend to share my dreams with him, but haven't very recently.

My dreams were weird too. A bit creepy as well. I usually try to write my dreams here chronologically, but today I am just going to try to get them on the screen:

My dead sister is not dead. She and I are holed-up in some messy place. She is quite calm and I am a bit irritated. We are waiting for someone - someone who doesn't actually show up. She is rummaging through her funeral materials; reading through the mass booklet we put together, she tells me she doesn't like it, that it wreaks of guilt. I swallow hard not knowing how to counter that. She asks me if I ever read her eulogy and how she reads it to all of her friends and that they are much impressed with its ability to capture her. I tell her of course I read it, I wrote it. While maybe before her happiness with the eulogy would make me feel better, I don't feel better. I feel trapped in this messy place and expectant for this expected person. She continues rummaging casually, while comfortably nestled on an over-stuffed couch. I pace.
Next I am in the house where we lived while I was in high school. I am in my old bedroom, alone. Someone, a family member, comes in and hands me a mini photo album. I flip through and many of the pictures are of my sister who passed. But then there are photos of me - naked! Not just naked, but SUGGESTIVE naked. My face goes hot and scarlet. I wonder why the hell family has this album. There are pictures of me and an old boyfriend too. Really weird shit, and I can't help wondering "did someone take these pictures, or did we use a tripod?" I take the album and find a place to be alone so I can get a better look at these photos - they seem to have a glaze to them, as though it were foggy in the room where we were during the "shoot". I then somehow fall into bed with a man, and there is a photographer among us.
At some point I am with my mom and younger brother, we are traveling together, but I have no idea where to and don't think to ask. We stop off at a burger joint that one of my older brothers is working at. We wait in line hungrily and then he passes a plate to us with a burger, no bun, and random weird stuff on it. I'm annoyed because I'd like my own burger but say nothing. We walk through a large deserted parking lot, I am still carrying this large beef plate while looking for a place for us to rest and eat. We find a cement park across the street. There are other people there. Everyone just milling about, like an aimless flock of pigeons.

Art, schmart

Surrounded by young women: some are old college classmates, others are friends from high school. We are taking shelter from a rainstorm in a foreign city at the home of a local artist, after traipsing down crooked sidewalks in this city that seems German (Berlin, maybe?). Her walls are scattered with framed work. And while putzing around we ladies begin a conversation on art. (Very lofty.) I notice that some of the frames are merely framing colored/painted paper. I raise the question about whether or not a nearly empty page is art...? One of the young ladies (a friend in real life, a "graduated artist") begins to argue that yes, that blue paper in the frame on the opposite wall is art. Why? I want to know. Meanwhile, the stairs in this woman's home become crowded with feet: people coming and going - a cocktail party is being held on the floor above us. As the others rise to their feet and go get a drink, I remain seated, staring out across the room at the blue framed page. As I stare I begin to see large-petaled flowers on the page. There are other shapes too, but it is the various blue flowers that strike me.
I make my way to the foot of the steps when our "guide" gathers us and tells us it is time to head into the city. We pile into his vehicle and the rain continues. Our guide looks quite competent - a nice suit, no visible drool on his chin - but he seems unable to master the art of driving. The light rain really sends him and the steering wheel into a tizzy. We are stopped on a freeway, attempting to merge, but all the traffic has stopped. We are closer to the city, but it is mentioned that we have been driving for five hours.

Moving? Can barely move

I have woken up stiff for a couple of years now, I deal with it (whine, eat aspirin) but I am recently more annoyed with it because we bought one of those air beds - sleep number, or something - and it's supposed to be excellent for sore muscles and bones, and it costs more than I think a bed should cost, and it helps NOT at ALL. So this morning my dream bits seem displaced - maybe they've slunk down beneath my unhappy muscles:

I am with my mother and younger brother. We are wandering through my eldest sister's neighborhood, though they don't seem aware of where we are. There is a road that my mother is convinced that we need to be on, but no matter how many turns we take the road is nowhere in sight. We are all a little worried, annoyed. We make our way into a development of big, new houses and find ourselves inside the model home. It smells like old people and the decor is gaudy; my mother is working her way toward a grand piano. She doesn't play, but sits on the bench and stares at the keys.

Wish I could remember more just now... perhaps later something will slip into my consciousness.

Eww.

I have written here, at times, censoring my self: I've kept my weird erotic dreams to myself. No more.
****

I am dressed in black and my hair is white blond. I am in a large apartment, it kind of reminds me of a sitcom apartment: light fixtures stuck to walls, boring neutral colors, and lots of space (so the camera can zoom around). Waiting for my date I play around in front of the mirror. I look like and feel like Paris Hilton, or any other boring, sleazy blond. The bell rings and I answer it. The guy/boy on the other side is sickly skinny. He has no shirt on, a long greasy black ponytail and his shorts (yeah, SHORTS) are black pleather. His tall boots reach their hem. We are supposed to go out, but apparently we are so taken with one another that we decide to stay in... he speaks with what seems to be a German accent. I take him by the hand and lead him through the spacious apartment to a couch settled in a cluttered corner, and we go at it.
Writing that makes me want to shower, and I didn't even go explicit.

In the next scene I am house-hunting with my husband and we are looking into buying the house of a pseudo-friend from high school. It's huge and surrounded by large, rusting wrought iron gates. Ivy grows all over. The owners of the house have left so that we can look around. They have left the house a mess. Clothing on stairs, dirty dishes on end tables. Nothing is kept up. As we begin to climb a skinny set of curved stairs, a black slender dog comes growling our way. I am suddenly alone and the dog is coming for me. I an effort to fend off a full attack I offer him my left arm. His teeth sink into my skin and I am trying to fight back a shriek. I begin to switch arms, I tear one arm from his mouth only to offer him the other, and there is no help in sight. I fear that I may be stuck with this tireless dog for a very, very long time.

Thinking over this last scene, this is some weird recurring dream bit for me: animal attack and me literally offering myself up and handing off one body part in an attempt to satiate animal. Hmmm. Wonder what that indicates?

Weeding

In the time that I have neglected this blog, I have seen spectacular highs (we got married) and harsh lows (family, friends - weeding through the diseased, emotionally).
Late January, my Guy and I said "I do" and we've been loving the days a little more genuinely since. We also do worry a little more too. Having both lost close loved ones at young ages we are both, understandably, becoming more aware of our life spans. I finally convinced him to get to a doctor (after about 15 years) and have a physical. High cholesterol. And so we are mapping out our new lifestyle and diet. It seems morbid, I guess, that a newlywed thinks of death, but really the closer we get the more it haunts me and I tease him that if one of us dies the other should commit suicide soon after. The idea of my life without him is unbearable. It's been a great (nearly) two years with him, and it seems to get better and better as we grow closer and become best friends forever.
And while we've been weeding through our habits that don't promise us silver hair and bingo, I've been weeding through people. It's deflating. It makes me weak with hurt, but it's self-preservation, I am believing. I have family members and friends who don't seem to know how to perform the opposite end of a relationship, and rather than list that kind of stuff - that's it: if you can't be good to the people around you, I don't want to be around you.

And then this is a "dream blog" --- no big surprise I dreamed of death quite a bit. Well, with my sister I actually have been dreaming her alive. Her death, a year and a half ago, is still one of my darkest spots in this life. It hurts most because I have completely lost my faith in the last few years and thinking that I won't ever again see her face in the flesh, or hear her voice, or mischievous laugh knocks my insides out; I feel empty and very sad. In the dreams I have she is alive again and I spend my time worrying about waking, because I know I am dreaming and that the morning only will rob me of this temporary time with her.
Two nights ago I had a dream that my father died. I was inconsolable, eyes swollen big with grief and my voice shattered. The dream began that our family was holding a picnic/festival of sorts behind a big brick building at the top of a hill. I was busy getting lost on a fire escape, and surveying the scene while the others were laughing and picnic-ing. I caught sight of my Dad and automatically longed to walk with him. He was with his wife and they were wandering around, unaware of my watchful eye. And then poof: he was dead. And my siblings and I were going through a photo album I had put together where many of the photos had our father, and various family and friends, dressing up in clothing/costumes from previous decades. We stared longingly. I was to write and read his eulogy and when I rose and approached the podium I could barely breathe and heavy tears were riding the rims of my eyes, and in real life I woke a little and pressed my hand to the wet at my eyes and on the pillow. I awoke fully at that point and lay in bed sobbing softly.
Then I sprung from bed, dialed my Dad's number and left him a voicemail. He called back, alive. I didn't tell him of my dream.