Dream: Leftover Pizza Toss

WL¹ shows up at my home unannounced, a surprise visit.  He walks toward the backyard.  I ask out of politeness if he'd like a tour of the house, dreading a yes answer.  He declines and says that he's just here to get rid of the pizza they had at work.

He flings the pizza toward the far end of the backyard.  It's a small, whole pizza, and it flies like a Frisbee.  But wind from the West gets under it, so it tilts and then circles around.  It's acting almost like a boomerang, but it loses momentum, falls to the ground and breaks into a couple of pieces.

I suddenly realize it would've been neat to get a video.  I wish I'd known he would do that so I could video record it and maybe have him toss it into the pond.

I pick up the pieces and walk toward the pond.  I have the cellphone in my left hand and the pizza pieces in my right.  It's hard for me to start the video, so I throw it first and then start the recording.  However, te pieces fall to the ground before the recording starts.

---

WL is the recruiter my employer retained several years ago and who died a couple of years ago.  He once commented on a photo of my wife (admiring my wife's legs) while visiting my office one day, prompting me to reposition the photo and angle it away from the entrance. He'd bring in birthday cake every month and pizza occasionally.  I was always polite to him and thanked him several times for his effort, yet I preferred to avoid him.

In this dream, I'm no longer employed at the company.

Dream: School Worksheet

I’m standing in a classroom with my math teacher/professor.  He asks me, “Shouldn’t you be studying for the mid term?”  I say, “No, I’m done.  I’m ready.”  He leaves the room.

A student volunteer errand boy enters.  I’m still standing in the same location. I’m deeply engrossed in reading something.  The boy starts saying that he has a paper to give to the professor.  I shush the boy.  I hold out my hand, still looking at my reading.  Then I look at the paper, and the boy says that it’s an old graded [quiz / homework / worksheet] that needs to be returned to the student.  I read SK’s son’s name written at the top in child-like penmanship. “Indeed it’s old,” I think to myself.  SK’s son graduated 10 years ago, and this isn’t even high school-level work!  Then I realize that name isn’t SK’s son’s name, it’s S himself.  SK is about my age, a sexagenarian(1)!  “I’ll take care of it,” I say, and the boy leaves.

I leave the classroom and walk toward the main office.  There are a few students in the hallways.  As I approach a staircase, one student is in front of me.  He’s walking a bit slowly, and he’s got a buddy nearby.  That buddy is on another staircase, and he’s showing off how he can slide down a few steps at a time.  Now I’m on the stairs stuck behind this slow student.  My impatience is building.  “I can do better than that,” I say, referring to the buddy, and I slide down the entire set of stairs, which is about twelve steps.  And I feel relieved to be moving at a decent pace again.

(1) A sexagenarian is a person between the ages of 60 to 69 years old. https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/Age-by-Decade

Dream: Urinal Cakes

I'm visiting my former workplace.  I've entered the building via an entrance other than the main entrance, and I encounter a few former coworkers.  As I hang out with them, I realize that I should check in at the front desk, and I tell the guys that.  One of them, JJ, looks me straight in the eye and says, "I'll go with you.  HR wants me to replace the urinal cake in the men's room."

JJ and the gang walk in the general direction that I go in, but their path is meandering.  In going up flights of stairs they switch between stairwells, for example.  So I dawdle a bit as I watch and wait for them to catch up.

---

Commentary:

JJ is a talented process engineer.  The main idea with this is that the woman in Human Resources (HR) has given him a "lowly" task befitting a janitor.  JJ is not happy with it.  This representation of HR calling the shots mirrors my opinion that HR in large companies, acting as the company "bouncer," is getting out-of-control.  Or, they don't really know what engineers do or are capable of.

Dream: Hawk Jumps on Me

I'm outside at a sort of Dude Ranch / Farm / Park area. I notice that there is a hawk caught in a barbed wire about ten yards away from me. My urge is to free the bird. But instead I point out the situation to a girl nearby, and she goes and frees the hawk.

I’m relieved to see that the hawk is unharmed. It flies away in the opposite direction a bit low to the ground. But then it turns and comes toward me. I turn away and crouch down. It lands on my neck and head, and it pinches my right ear with its beak, gently, not drawing blood, but just holding it. I remain very still so as not to alarm it, and to prevent it from acting more aggressively. I stay like this for a minute or two. I’m not sure what to do. Maybe someone will notice and remove it.

I’m reminded of a time when I played with a cat and it suddenly grabbed my hand with its claws. Whenever I tried to pull away, it would dig its claws in deeper to hold on tighter.

Dream: A Trilogy of Dreams

Dream: A Stairwell I Dislike

I’m in an apartment building; maybe I live there, or maybe I’m touring it to perhaps live there.

I enter a stairwell, expecting that I can get out on an upper level (higher level).  However, the only way out is on the ground floor where I entered it.  I express a dislike of the stairwell.

I leave the building, holding a 32 ounce box container of soup and pulling a piece of carry-on luggage on wheels.  The ground has patches of ice due to snow left over from earlier in the year.  I decide to walk from this city to my town that’s two towns to the West.  The luggage is a bit difficult to pull, and the box of soup is leaking slightly.

Dream: In the Backyard With Canines and Snakes

Now I’m in the backyard of the place where I grew up.  There are wolves and wild dogs that are injured, so I’m not concerned that they’d attack me.  Instead I see one climb a large bush, while another climbs to the very top of a medium-sized, dead pine tree.  It has draped its body over the trunk that has broken off.  How can it tolerate the pressure of that broken wood on its stomach / chest, I wonder.

I turn to face the back of the house and start to walk toward it.  However there are large snakes in the branches of other trees that I have to walk under.  Again, I’m not concerned that the snakes will attack me.  They’re watching me but not moving.  It’s almost as if they’re movie props.  And these are not the biting venomous kind; rather they are a large, constricting type of snake, like a python.

Dream: My Familiar Wooded Hiking Area

I’ve been hiking my usual wooded hiking area that’s also slightly hilly.  There is a pond in the center that’s iced over and snow-covered.  I was with a group of people, including my wife, but now I’m leaving the area alone.  My cellphone distracts me with live coverage of this area, showing that someone or a dog was on the ice, which has broken, so the person or dog is in the water.  My impulse is to run back to the area.  But I hesitate because I don’t think the story is true.  If it were true, my wife would call me on the phone and tell me to come back. 

Dream: Yellow Jackets

I'm on the narrow path that leads to the parking lot behind the restaurant that used to be a train station. I look down at my feet and see yellow jackets on the path. They take flight as I pass through. I am shirtless -- I hope they do not attack me, and amazingly they do not.

Now I am inside in the basement of my home.  Paul B is in there and I show him the nest. There's a clump of artificial flowers in the spot on the floor, and they spring up as I step on them. He sprays the Bees (as he did before ). At first the spray isn't too effective, but eventually the Bees stop moving.

We pick up a small clump of the plastic flowers, which have several bees attached to it. I marvel at them because their wings are like butterfly wings, colorful with different patterns.

Dream: Debate at the Camp

I'm at a camp in a large cabin. One of the camp counselors, from behind the counter, shouts "who wants to do a debate?" I've got nothing much to do, so I say "I'll do it" and go over to the table where the debate will take place.

The place is just a table that seats four and there are six of us. So we start walking around the table widdershins. I'm carrying a shovel, a spade. The number of people around the table has lessened gradually and now there's just me and another guy. But I've lost interest, so I tell him so and I walk away.

Another activity is starting outside on the deck. I walk to the exit, but it is just a narrow seam between a wall on the left and a huge flat screen TV on the right. Somehow I'm supposed to pry it open.  I still have the spade, so I consider using this, but it's curved, whereas the seam is straight. Besides, with the flat screen TV so close, one slip of the spade could destroy it. So I hesitate, and I hesitate...

Dream: Auditorium Christmas Party

I'm at the place where the company Christmas party will take place. I have a plant stand made of heavy wire that's painted white. There are folks still setting up the venue, bustling about, and I'm in the way. So I put down the plant stand in an out-of-the-way place so that no one will trip on it. Perhaps it will be used as a decoration.

There's a fragile-looking glass sphere, multicolored, the size of a volleyball, next to the place where I set down down the stand. It has holes in it and rods stick out of some of the holes like a Fancy Pencil Holder. Perhaps it can go on the plant stand, but I dare not do that lest I break it.

I move away from all the activity and look around to see what's in the many rooms at this place. They all have tables in them; most have white tablecloths but few have place settings, and no food has been set out. There are no people in those rooms.

I'm sitting in a chair that I brought and I have a stainless steel fork that I also brought. I decide to sit and relax. A young slender woman is nearby wearing black tights. I like that she's nearby. I decide to stay here for a while. Then when I get to the room that has the food, I'll take the last remaining spot so I don't have to decide where to sit.

I'm in the party room. I'm seated with people I don't know. We're all in Auditorium seating. As the food comes out, I'm dismayed -- how can anyone eat in these chairs? There's not even a table to place our meals on! Folks nearby have their plates of food. But someone directly in front of me gets up to walk to a place to get food, and folks in my row do too,  including another young woman that's next to me.

As we stand in line in the aisle of the auditorium, I wonder if we will eat somewhere else or bring the food back here.

Dream: Clumsy at the Convention

I’m in a convention center, making my way from a reception area to where the main event will take place. I realize that I need to put my mask¹ on, so I slow my pace while I pull the mask out of my right front pants pocket. I get the feeling that some other stuff fell out of the pocket, so I stop and turn to look on the floor behind me. And while I do so, someone who was walking behind me tells me that I’ve dropped something and stoops to pick it up. Seeing that it’s one of my used hankies, I tell the person that I’ll get it and thank him.

So, I’ve picked up the hanky and put it back in my pocket. And now I’m standing while trying to hold all kinds of stuff, which includes my mask, a small notebook and pen, another hanky and perhaps a pamphlet about the event. It’s really hard for me to put the mask on without both my hands being free.

---

¹ Face covering to prevent the spread of COVID-19

Dream: Yellow Legged Bugs

I’m outside at a lakeside picnic area.  There are people, picnic tables & benches and flora.

I’m supposed to interact with the wildlife.  There is a bug that’s numerous.  It has four yellowish legs that stick out the front.  It’s about an inch long by ½ inch wide, mostly shiny brown wing covering.

I see one stuck somewhere in a web not of its own making, and sometimes it sticks to my shirt front.  So then I gently blow it off onto a bush.  I say “hi” to them.

Dream: Custom Calendar / Priest in the Pew

I’m looking for blank calendar paper that I can write the numbers into for a month of days, but all I find are calligraphy paper.  The calendar page that I find online on the computer doesn’t accept large numbers like 620.

I’m in a church.  The priest sits with us in the pews.  I have a drill bit.  When the priest is at my seat, he puts his white-gloved hand on it and then pulls back because of how sharp it is.

He goes to the last pew that’s against the brick wall.  Everyone’s sitting backwards facing the wall instead of facing the altar.  I’m worried about how disrespectful that appears.  But the priest doesn’t seem to mind.

Dream: Neighbor's Backyard Construction

I'm in the house. I hear an helicopter flying low and close by to the West, so I look out my window. I don't see the helicopter, but I do see lots of signs of change on the property of the neighbor and his neighbor, in their backyards.

Then I look out the living room window at our backyard. My attention is captured by a very large Hawk that flies East from the neighbor's backyard to ours and alights on a tree branch. It's missing feathers in a band around its entire midsection. Then I notice the beginnings of a driveway on our neighbor's back lawn.  The grass was removed and filled with a layer of sand or fine gravel ready for paving. It ends abruptly as it abuts our yard. My wife is going to freak.

Dream: Outpost

I'm viewing an Outpost in a wilderness. So I'm sort of there, but I'm really just watching as if separate from the place. Some dangerous, evil creatures have invaded. We don't see them, but we know they're there because they build structures on the land -- huge, skeletal pieces. Someone realized that the creatures could be defeated if the structures are toppled, and so that's what the men are doing. It starts slow with a girder coming down every so often. But then a huge structure is detonated and collapses, which turns the tide. The last structures to be removed are wooden scaffolding and shutters, like saloon doors, that are attached to the concrete Outpost building itself. These are easily removed, and all is back to normal.

Dream: Cow Urine Shampoo

I’m watching a commercial or public service announcement.  It’s saying that cow urine makes an excellent shampoo.  There is a young boy – a big toddler.  He has short light-brown hair cut very short.  He’s suspended horizontally above a bed, although I don’t see who’s holding him.  I’m actually in the room that the commercial is taking place in.

As the male narrator explains the benefits of cow urine, just as I expected, liquid is poured on the boy’s head, spilling onto the bed below him.  The boy is unhappy, but he’s not crying.  Then after a while his expression become neutral.

He is lowered onto the bed.  A young man with hairy arms and dark hair was holding the boy, and now he/s massaging the liquid into the boy’s scalp.

The scene shifts.  The young boy is gone.  The man is lying on the bed, and “Mike” and “Ralph” from the band I was in are sitting in chairs against a wall.  The man pulls something out of his pocket as he lies down, and I recall that Mike told me that he would have a knife on him.  So I realize that the man pulled a knife, but he’s holding it behind his head as if he’s relaxing and resting his head on his head.

The man and M & R are discussing some business that I don’t really follow.  Finally, when it’s over, the man M & R all get up, at which point I whisper to M that the man has a knife in his left hand (even though it’s the right hand).  He nods as if he’s aware of it.

They walk toward the front door, M & R first followed by the man.  He swiftly opens the jack knife and slashes at the legs of M & R and then slashes at R’s upper arms.  He turns to me but makes no attempt to slash at me.  M & R don’t seem to react much.  It was as if this is how they all interact.

And that’s it for the knife attack.

The man is gone.  M & R go into a back room of the house.  I stay near the front, which is more like a store or bar.  There’s a birth certificate posted on the vertical surface of the counter.  But instead of words it has a heart diagram.  At first the diagram looks like two hearts side by side.  But then the heart on the right changes into a schematic / block diagram of a mechanical device.  And I realize that someone in Mike’s family had a heart transplant shortly after birth.


I’m walking around school.  I decide to check out the staircase that’s near the gym.  I go up two flights, I find out it terminates into a very tiny space that a temporary teacher converted into an office.


I’m in the basement of R & E from the Buddhism group.  There are little mud houses and trails on the rafters and ants navigating them.  R takes out a fire hose a sprays along the area where the foundation meets the sill plate.  I think that’s a terrible idea, but I don’t say anything.


I’m outside walking a long a trail.  On going construction has been taking pace alongside the trail up higher up the ridge line.  But it’s not visible – it’s cordoned off by a very tall cloth barrier.  I’m thinking how unsafe the trail is because of the potential for large debris to roll down from the construction site.  The cloth barrier won’t stop the debris and it also makes it impossible to see the danger beforehand.

Dream: Boat Service

I own a boat, and I’m waiting to have it serviced.  I’m standing on what appears to be a curb, like the corner of a street intersection sidewalk, but instead of a street, there is the deep water that my boat is in.    And the sidewalk is also slightly submerged in about two inches of water.

I’m trying to hold lots of stuff, but I can’t seem to carry all of it.  So some falls into the water and floats in front of me.  I notice that all of it floats, but I don’t question the impossibility of it, even though there are green, vinyl-coated hand weights among the floating items.  Another item is my checkbook.

The service guy is approaching.  I ask him if I should dive in and swim to my boat.  He vehemently says not to, otherwise I might get chopped up by the propeller blades.

The boat is now a party boat, and I’m on board.  There is a speaker or entertainer standing in the front, and many seated in the audience facing him.

Dream: Shape-Shifting Sensei

I'm at a martial arts demonstration in a gymnasium.  I'm in one of the many seats arranged in a large circle on the floor.  I facing the bleachers.

The Grand Master Sensei is introduced.  He's the one everyone came to see.  I look at him.  He's wearing a red gi and black pants.  He appears to be Italian.  He seems uncomfortable and uneasy as he looks at me.  We know each other, so I smile and nod encouragingly and even give him a quick thumbs up.

He gets up and carefully makes his way to the floor.  Then he goes around to the seated people, one-by-one.

When he gets to me, I see that now he's an older Asian man.  I greet him reverently, with my palms pressed together.  I nod my head in a bow.  He speaks to me.  He tells me that I must get something.  It sounds like it might be an herb.  Goji, perhaps, or maybe Ginko.  I agree, and he moves on to the next person.

He comes back.  Now he's a young boy.  I do not have the herb (or whatever) that he told me to seek.  No matter, we go together to look for it.  I follow his gaze to a dark grey cat lying along a hedge.  It's stretched out, sleeping on its side.  I infer that the cat is the key to our getting the herb.  We approach it slowly.  He's approaching the head end, while I approach its tail end, expecting it to see Sensei and turn and run.  But instead, the cat turns into a small, furry worm or caterpillar, also dark grey.  So I pick it up and hold it in the cupped palm of my right hand, and I present it to Sensei.  Meanwhile, Sensei has also turned into a caterpillar, perhaps twice as large as the cat-caterpillar, and he has dozens of skinny wriggling legs that are about ½ inch long and orange-brown in color.  He begins eating the cat-caterpillar, which is now on the ground.

Dream: Tri-Lingual Squatter

I’m walking in the backyard, carrying a large gray storage bin.  There’s snow on the ground, and I’m walking along the treeline all the way to the back where some branches and pine needles fell due to a recent storm.

Just as I reach a gap in the treeline, the neighbor zooms out of the woods on his snowmobile.  He stops just in time to avoid running me over!  I shake my head angrily and keep walking.  They’re also doing major reconstruction on their property and seem to be intruding into my yard.

Now I’m back at the house.  The owners of the house are selling it, and they’re going away, so I’m house-sitting.  The buyer is there.  He’s from Florida, fit and sun-tanned.  He rode to the house on a racing bicycle.  I’m not sure how someone from Florida will want to live in a place that’s frozen almost half the year, but he seems adventurous.

Now I’m in the house.  I’ve been told that the former owner is still there.  But I’m a bit flabbergasted that he appears to be entrenched there as if he still owns the place.  This is the “complication” I’ve been told about.

He’s talking to himself.  He has a German accent.  So I say, “Hallo, wie geht es ihnen!”  Initially he says nothing.  He’s sitting in the middle of the couch, now.  And he notices that I’m looking at him expecting a response, so he pulls out first one earphone and then a second and explains, apologetically, “I’m listening to German in this ear (his right ear) and Italian in this one (the left).  They’re not quite in synch; the Italian is running a tad faster.”

Someone was in the process of making eggs on the stove.  But everyone has been distracted by this man, so the eggs are ruined, again.  Someone picks up  the large, bowl-shaped pan and turns it up-side-down back onto the burner.

I’m so astounded by this man that…

...I wake up.

Dream: The Big Fake Sneeze

I’m sitting in my car in the middle of a parking lot. It is evening, and an old slushy layer of snow covers the asphalt. There are a few police officers dressed in yellow slickers methodically clearing away the slush using snow shovels. I think to offer to help them, except I realize they’re looking for something in the slush.

The parking lot is for a venue that I’m at to help organize a party. I think I should offer to park the hostess’ car, which is now the car that I’m sitting in. So I start it up a drive over to the edge of the lot and begin to head in to a space facing the street. As I apply the brake, I find that I cannot stop the car entirely. It continues to move forward onto the grass regardless of the extreme pressure I apply to the brake. I figure that the car will stop due to the incline of the grass, but even that has less of a stopping effect than I expect. “Huh,” I think to myself. “This is typical of these Subarus.” Eventually I do stop, and from within the car, I’m able to view the car from outside the driver’s side door. I see that the front wheels have gone beyond the curb and are on the grass. This is strange since I didn’t feel such a large obstacle.

I get the car backed up and somewhat straightened out, and then leave the car to go inside the venue.

The woman who has hired us (my brother is also part of the planning team) is not there. But her three daughters are there. Two of the daughters are twins, and the third, non-twin daughter is the most lovely of the three. But I greet them and tell them how lovely all of them are.

They are emceeing the event, and it turns out to be an event for my birthday. “Gosh, I’m the guest of honor!” I suddenly realize. So now everyone’s attention is focused on me. A great cloud of smoke emanates from the emcee’s area from a large amount of incense that was just lit. As it approaches and I smell it, I begin to have the urge to sneeze. So I decide to exaggerate the sneeze to epic, cartoon-like proportion. I start the “Ahh, ahhh, ahhhh, AHHHH, AHHHHHH...” with dramatic crescendo and fight to keep my eyes from fluttering closed. And I really expect that I will sneeze at the end of all this. But just before the very climax, the urge to sneeze diminishes abruptly, and I expel the most pathetic fake sneeze the world has ever witnessed.

“Drat, I’ve let everyone down,” I think to myself.

Dream: No More Room For Drafting Table

I'm in my new apartment.  It's small, but I can get all my stuff into it.  It will do nicely.

New scene: Now my apartment is a large single room that's partitioned into four separate little apartments, like an office space with cubicles.  Still I'm able to get everything important inside.  I have my bed and my drafting table, plus a little space to prepare meals.  So I'm all set.

But now my neighbor shows up, and he decides that the partition between my apartment and his needs to move to make his apartment bigger.  The move seems fair since his space was smaller than mine.  But now my space is too small to fit everything inside.  I decide that my drafting table will have to move out.  I decide to move it into the common area, and I tell the others about it so that they don't get upset.  There's no objection to my moving the table into the common area.

Dream: Blossoming Oak Trees and Flat Tire Service

I’m in the backyard of the house I grew up in, but now my wife and I live there.  The massive oak trees that tower above the house in the backyard have blossoms, like large, solid-colored pansies in lavender and indigo.

I call to my wife who’s indoors.  She comes out to see it.  I suggest that we take a picture from the front of our house and send it to her mother.  The blossoms are too high to take a cutting for indoors.  But I see one that fell on the ground, so I pick it up.  But it’s not a blossom at all.  It’s a weed that’s on top of a load of dog poop.

I get in the car and start it so I can drive to the front of the house.  But then I realize how silly that is, so I park the car, backing in against the house under the master bedroom window so I can walk around to the front.  But I notice that when I put the car into park, the transmission doesn’t lock.  The car continues to roll.  I point this out to my wife.  As well, I hear a grinding sound from the rear at the end of the maneuver.  So when I get out of the car I circle around to look at the rear passenger side wheel.  A thin rim of rusty metal is sticking out al around where the tire meets the rim.  I try to pound it back into place with the back of my fist.  But I also notice that the tire is flat.  The other rear tire also is flat.

Since it’s Saturday, I decide that I’ll have to hurry and remove both wheels so as to drive with them in the other car to have them repaired at the Honda dealership before it closes.

But as I start to remove the wheels, the car slowly transforms into something a lot smaller and resembling something like a carpet cleaner.

I’m at the Honda dealership now.  The “car” is in a carpeted office rather than a repair bay.  I explain the problem to the manager of the repair department.  He calls in a mechanic who takes a look and then goes away.  [This part is a bit foggy.]

Now a female mechanic has been assigned to the car.  She asks me where the car is, so I point in the direction of the office.  She doesn’t believe me that it's in an office.  So she goes looking in the direction of the repair bays.  I decide to bring the car to her.  Although the car is easily picked up like a consumer-grade carpet cleaner, it’s in several pieces, so I can’t carry all of it in two hands.

I pick up the main part of it as well as the front wheels.  Now the mechanic and I are in a reception area of the dealership.  She’s blonde and wearing a white uniform.  I also see my wife’s best friend Lisa there.  Lisa is talking on a landline telephone that has an extremely long coiled cord.  She’s also wearing white.  She has a small, glittering, heart-shaped sticker on her left check.  She does not see me or acknowledge, and I refrain from saying "hi" because she's on the phone.