Nightmares

It's funny how as an adult & a parent your nightmares can differ greatly from that of a young child.

I had two bad dreams last night, neither of which should have been particularly scary but for me, they were.

In the first "nightmare" my wife and I were at a party. I was sitting on one side of the room while my wife was sitting on the other next to one of my coworkers, when my wife approached me and told me she was leaving.

"Okay," I replied, "I'll come home as well."

"Oh, I'm not going home," my wife told me, "I'm just not staying here." And she left the party with my coworker.

In the second "nightmare" my family had fallen on hard times and we'd had to move, which meant pulling my son out of his current school and enrolling him in a new school in our new neighborhood. My son's current RL school is a very good school; his new school in my dream was not, and could best be described as (I think) a stereotypical "inner-city school". We walked my son to his new school and classroom where we watched his teacher introduce him to the class, then, as he took his seat, the door on the other side of the classroom opened and four students walked in. All were dressed in identical clothes and exhibited an attitude that screamed "street gang". I walked away, fearful for both my son and his education.

But I do dream of work

We got back from San Francisco late last night, and when my alarm went off at 4:30 this morning I thought, "Bugger it, I'm staying home."

So I got up, emailed my boss that I was extending my vacation by one day, then went back to bed.

I began dreaming. I dreamed that I'd got up and gone to work. I really did.

I even dreamed that I laughingly told my boss he could disregard my email from that morning, seeing as I'd made it in after all. Of course that was when I woke up, and realized I'd only dreamed I'd gone to work.

And it's only right now that it occurs to me that perhaps I'd dreamed I'd emailed him as well. Phew. My Sent folder shows that part of my morning was real :)

I don't dream of WoW

One of today's WoW Insider articles asks readers to describe any WoW dreams they've had. For as much time as I've put into the game you'd think I would constantly dream about playing, especially as it's one of the last things I do (often for several hours) right before going to bed, but I don't recall ever having any dreams that featured WoW, and I'd know because I can remember my dreams.

So I've never dreamed about WoW (that I can recall) but I have dreamed about work before.

One of my strangest work-related dreams was related to a 3-week job I got shortly after returning to Australia in '97, where I was part of crew distributing Wheelie Bins.

In the morning we'd arrive at the storage yard and load up the back of the truck with Wheelie Bins. They came with lids on but no wheels, so they were able to be stacked on top of each other, much like giant, green plastic cups, and once the truck was loaded we'd set off to make our deliveries.

A couple of guys would start on the back of the truck and it was their job to assemble the Wheelie Bins. They'd take down down a Wheelie Bin from one of the stacks, grab a wheel one from one tub and an axle from another and snap them together. Then they'd slide the axle through the two plastic sockets on the base of the Wheelie Bin, grab another wheel and snap it onto the other end of the axle, and there you have it, a Wheelie Bin, which they'd toss off the back of the truck to the guys running along behind.

The runners' job was to catch the bin, run to a house and drop the bin off in the correct orientation (facing the street), then run back to the truck to catch another bin. Rinse & repeat. Following behind the runners was a guy with a handheld computer which had a database with every single address on our route. His job was to key in the ID number on the side of the bin with the corresponding address, as proof we'd made the delivery; he needed the bin facing the correct way so he could read the number at a glance and key it in to his computer while heading to the next house and Wheelie Bin.

As tough as it sounds, it was actually a fun job. There was only 5 or 6 of us on the crew, so there was no room for people who didn't get along or for people who didn't pull their weight. We got up early, we worked hard all day, and if someone called it quits the Foreman would go to his list and when we'd turn up at the yard the next morning there'd be a new face. This only actually happened twice during the 3-week job, which apparently was a record. The Foreman said it was not unusual to begin a job with one crew, and by the start of the second week have a completely different crew. We also set another record in that our 3-week job was actually a 4-week job, we just completed it with a week to spare. Possibly because we didn't have the turnover of other crews.

So there were two parts to the job. Assembling the Wheelie Bins on the back of the truck, and running behind the truck delivering the Wheelie Bins. As you ran along behind the truck, catching Wheelie Bin after Wheelie Bin, running from truck to house to truck again, the muscles in your legs would start to burn and you'd think, "I wish I was on the back of the truck."

The Foreman was pretty good at his job. He'd switch us up so everyone got a turn on the back of the truck, assembling the bins, and everyone took a turn running behind the truck, delivering the bins. We actually switched around several times each day, because when you were on the back of the truck assembling the bins, you were constantly bending over to get wheels & axles, then standing up to toss bins off the back of the truck, then getting a new bin and bending over to get more wheels & axles, then standing up again. All that bending over and straightening up took its toll, and your lower back started to really fucking hurt, and you'd look at the guys delivering the Wheelie Bins and you'd say to yourself, "I wish I was running along behind the truck."

This was just a 3-week job, and yet in that short three weeks I still managed to dream about work. When I told the Foreman I'd dreamed about making Wheelie Bins he said that wasn't unusual, at least one person on every one of his crews mentions dreaming about the job. I wasn't the only one on our crew, either.

Not only did I dream about making Wheelie Bins, I actually woke myself up reaching for an axle to put the wheels on the Wheelie Bin. I was actually glad I dreamed I was making the Wheelie Bins. I don't think my sleep would have been too restful if I'd dreamed I was running along behind the truck all night ;)

It wasn't scary

until the Zombie showed up with a rifle that he knew how to use. I raised my handgun, intending to put a round through his head but the reloaded rounds I had in the clip were all messed up and the first round I fired came out so slow I could see it. I could have almost caught it, too, because it dropped to the ground between our feet. I adjusted my aim accordingly, aiming several feet over the Zombie's head even though just a few feet separated us and this shot was successful. Well, I was successful in putting a round through his head but he didn't go down. Damn reloads. Then the bloody thing started talking as he chased me up onto the roof of the farmhouse, saying how three weeks ago it wouldn't have been possible to have a Zombie that knew how to use a gun.

I jumped off the roof, using the window awnings to break my fall, but when I knocked on the door my fellow Marines refused to let me in. I guess I couldn't blame them. We'd landed on this planet to investigate why there'd been no communication for some time, only to find ourselves trapped in a farmhouse on a planet overrun by Zombies that had been slowly killing us off. If one of the marines had came to the door and knocked to be let back in, I'm not sure I'd open the door either, after all, he's outside, so he must be a Zombie.

Fortunately (for my brother Marines) Anzac chose that moment to bark at something, prompting Liz to tell him to shut up, which woke me up, otherwise I suspect this dream would have gone the way of almost all of my dreams with this kind of theme. My brother Marines would have been killed to a man, with just me left alive. Yes, I'm the one outside with all the Zombies, but they're the ones that would have been killed. I don't know why these apocalyptic dreams of mine end this way, they just do.

Real Life in dreams

I hit snooze a couple of times this morning. The third time the alarm went off I was dreaming I was in a planetarium with Liz and we were lying back watching the star show but it turned into one of those 3D-rides you go on at Amusement Parks, where you watch the movie as the seats move around and you feel like you really are flying over Antarctica in a helicopter.

When the alarm went off the song on the radio intruded into my dream but it didn't wake me up, it just became the background track for the 3D-movie. Liz eventually had to shove me to wake me up :P

I've turned alarm clocks off in my dreams before. Quite literally picked up the alarm clock in my dream (and in real life, too, I guess) and turned the alarm off, and the dream continued on but without the alarm ringing.

The most bizarre time I did this I was playing soccer (in my dream of course) on the field at my old Primary School and when the alarm went off I noticed a door in the field, like a storm shelter door. I opened the door and went down the steps and sitting on a shelf in this storm shelter was a ringing alarm clock. I picked it up, turned off the alarm, and went back up on to the field and continued my game of soccer.

Ghostbusters!

Last night I took several photographs of the ghost in our house. They came out clear as anything. It was obvious she was a ghost because she was floating around the top of our ceiling. My first thought was "I've got to post these on my Blog!"

Then I woke up!

I can't believe that I took photos of a dream ghost and all I could think of was posting the pictures on my Blog! HA! :D

Two nights in a row

Not the same dream (although I have had dreams repeat themselves, feelings of deja vu when dreaming are common) but a dream in a similar vein.

I was staying in a cabin in the forest with several other families and two nights in a row (yes, time passed in this dream) a pack of wild dogs slipped into the cabin and dragged away some small children (maybe a dingo ate your bay-bee).

I took my dog for a walk yesterday and a couple of the houses we passed have pitbull-variety dogs in the yards so this could have influenced last nights dream.

So we devised a plan (which wasn't much of a plan) to wait for the dogs and kill them when they attacked...but it was pointed out by my brother-in-law (who was in the dream) that the dogs just dragged away the small children so we wouldn't know they were there until it was too late.

See why everyone always dies in my dreams; I'm a terrible planner.

We then decided that all the women and children would sleep in one room and the men would all sleep in the room near the front door, which is where everyone had been sleeping the last two nights when the wild dogs attacked. In our quest for weapons one of the Inspectors from my work (real Inspector from real work) said he had a flame thrower, and he did, but we decided not to use it because the dogs would catch on fire then run out into the forest and set all the trees on fire and that would be bad. Setting trees on fire, not good; setting wild dogs on fire, that's ok.

But we ended up using the flame thrower anyway and killed two of the dogs that night and didn't set fire to the forest. The rest of the dogs ran away and we didn't suffer any more casualties.

Hooray for flame throwers!

I hate dreams like that

I was being hunted by the "Tailies" from Lost, but I've never even seen a single episode.

I think it was related to a quest I was doing on WoW before I went to bed. I had to kill a bunch of pigmen and collect their tusks, 60 of them, for an Orc whose wife they'd killed. The pigmen were about 4 to 5 levels higher than my character, which doesn't sound like much, but in WoW 4 to 5 levels makes a big difference. They also respawned very quickly, meaning the time it took for the game to replace them after I'd killed them was very short, meaning I was sometimes getting ambushed by pigmen appearing out of thin air, and because the pigmen were 4 to 5 levels higher than me that usually ended with my character dying.

So I think that contributed to my "being hunted by Tailies" dream.

What was bizarre about the dream was that the small group of people I was with were taking refuge in the river, usually hiding under lily pads as they floated down the river. The Tailies eventually caught up with us at a wier at the end of the river which was next to a Zoo. I don't know what a Zoo was doing there, but it had been abandoned, although the animals were still alive. We found instructions to feed them, and if you think the dream has been wierd so far, here is where it took not just one but several jumps to the left.

The instuctions indicated that the animals ate Chihuahua puppies, and sure enough, we found an enclosure full of thousands of Chihuahua puppies. So I grabbed a handful of these puppies...and threw some to the wolves, who looked particularly hungry, and they gobbled those Chihuahua puppies right up.

That was when the Tailies saw us but they had to go through the wolf enclosure to get to us, so we had some time to slip down into the river and hide next to the wier. I think at this point there was just me and one other guy left, but I think the Tailies got him, leaving just me.

That's usually the way these dreams of mine end, me and a group of people against another group of people, demons, monsters, etc. Everyone dies but me. You'd think that would be comforting, hey, at least I survived, right? But I don't like the message it sends me. One day everyone is going to depend on me, and they're all going to die. I think when that day comes in real life I'm going to turn to everyone and say "Trust me on this; if you stick with me you're all going to die."

If any of you are with me when that day comes, feel free to back me up by calling out, "He's right, you know. He's going to get us all killed!"

I won't hold it against you at all.