The One With The Liver Cancer

Last night I had a dream that I had a tumor on my liver that had metastasized.  The dream occurred on a Friday and a dentist was due to remove my liver on the following day, in the evening.  It wasn't a transplant - they were just going to remove the liver, but it meant I was going to die - they essentially were going to put me down.

So the whole dream, I knew that I had about a day and a half to live and most of the dream was trying to get everything in order.

I wrapped up work where I'm currently employed and went to the place where I worked previously and returned a folder of work that I had kept with me for many years for some reason.  I was trying to make sure that all the loose ends of my life were tied up.  Mxxx, a lady I worked with was still there and I returned the work to her and updated her with what needed to be done.  Outside her office was Kxxx, I guy I worked for at my current employer and he was sitting at the desk in his office, but the desk was pushed against the door frame, with him facing out.

Next, I remember being in a house with a little African American girl that I don't think I knew in the dream, but I was telling her about stuff.  She was probably about 8 or 9 and she said, "Do you know what you're doing?  You're saying goodbye."  I said that I knew, and I started crying.

Then I was outside in her yard and the kids from her large family were walking in a line, single file, toward the house.  There were probably 10 or 12 kids.

I went to my parents' house next, and my mother and father were doing some work in the garage.  I asked my mom to call the dentist and ask for another week so I could have more time to get my life in order.  I wanted to sit down with my parents and let them know how my stuff and money needed to be allocated out.  My mom said that they wouldn't do it, but I remember telling her that it doesn't hurt to ask.

While my mom was making the call, I left the garage and stood in the driveway with my sister.  The little girl down the street was playing in the road near her house and I hid behind a tree so that she wouldn't see me and come over.  But the little girl's mother threw a frisbee into a large bush in my parents' yard, so the little girl headed over.  While I was in the driveway waiting, I heard my mom tell the doctor's office that the little girl had said that she was upset because Uncle Dan had pouty lips and looked confused.  She made that up to try to convince them to move the appointment.

My mom finished the call, and the administrative assistant named Joanne told her that the doctor wouldn't or couldn't move the appointment and that I'd just have to resent it.

I woke up in real life, recorded my dream on my phone, and when I went back to sleep I re-entered the dream.  The only thing I remember from the second round was that Jxxx was ignoring me even though I was dying.  He said that he had other stuff to do.

The One with Deborah Henson-Conant

The details of this dream are vague for me - I got paged for work at 2:00 and realized I had been dreaming...

I dreamed that I was a big outside music festival with a female friend I can't identify now.  It was night and it was one of those festivals with multiple stages with one large main stage.

We walked by Deborah Henson-Conant who was either in transition with her equipment or she was setting up to do her show just on the side of the sidewalk, similar to what she does in real life sometimes.  I stopped to say "hi" and take a photo with her.

My friend took the camera and I went to Deborah's left and we put an arm around each other like you normally do in a photo, but she kept leaning really far to the right, making us fall to the ground.  We tried a couple of times but I don't think we ever got the photo.

The One with the Tornado and Plane

Background:  I had this dream exactly a week after the tornado that went by work, after talking about it with friends and after driving home in a crazy lighting storm.  There was another really LOUD storm the night I had the dream but I'm not sure if the dream was before, after, or during that storm.  I believe it was before.

 

I had a dream that a tornado was heading toward me - I was outside but don't recall the exact location.  I know other people were around.  We were looking up into the funnel cloud and saw the tail of an airplane that had been caught into the tornado and it was swinging around from the right to left.  It was moving pretty slowly (assuming because the plane was HUGE). 

 

It started coming down toward me and I knew it was going to fall on me, but it was not falling quickly.  So, I watched the plane as it came down and I positioned myself so I wouldn't get smooshed.  I ended up crouching down between the fuselage and the wing - kind of the left armpit of the plane. 

 

Once the tornado passed, we looked at the plane and noticed that although the doors were shut and the windows were not broken, there was no one inside and we assumed that they had someone gotten sucked out while up in the air.

The One with the Tobiko In My Nose

I was talking with someone from work and they commented that my nostrils looked strange - they were closed like if you pinch your nose shut.  I thought it was weird that I didn't notice a change in my breathing and looked in a mirror.

My nose did feel a bit clogged, so I stuck my finger in one nostril and felt something, so I kind scooped and some tobiko came out.

I was very concerned in the dream and went to a doctor and they said that I had a disease.  That's all I remember.

The One with the Dream Within a Dream

I had a dream within a dream this morning, and what was strange was that the second dream was more normal than the first.  In the first, the only thing I really remember was being in a parking lot outside, and a group of kids with a couple of adults doing some activity with dolls and all of a sudden they took all the clothes off the dolls, but the dolls had realistic breasts and that was really funny in the dream.

At that point, I remembered I had a dream and started writing about it.  In the second dream, my friends Meredith and Greg were in California stuck on highway 1 (which they are in real life, and were in "real life" in the 1st level dream).  While they were stuck in the 2nd level dream, they went to some restaurant and were taking a ton of photos and videos of them doing funny things.

There were about 7 people and they had 4 people in a booth and 3 in a small table and they kept moving the small table around - close to the booth, further, and taking all kinds of pictures of them laughing.

Then they were trying to catch bubbles in their mouths in the parking lot and there was one video where the bubble popped and got soap into a girl's mouth and she gagged (well more like dry heaved) and it was the most hilarious thing to watch in the 1st level dream.

Dream Themes: Loose/Missing Teeth

I had a friend ask me about dreams where your teeth are loose or falling out and I knew that I had several dreams with this theme, and have even heard references to it on shows like 30 Rock.  So, let's look that one up:

"Lose a tooth and you are afraid of losing a loved one.  Lose all of them and you are full of anxieties about the future." (1)

"Dreaming of teeth falling out may represent insecurity. These dreams often occur at a time of transition... When you lost your milk teeth, you also gradually lost your childhood innocence. Losing your teeth today therefore shows that today you have similar feelings of uncertainty and self-consciousness as you did in childhood. The dream could also highlight your worries about getting older or your sexual attractiveness." (2)

"Im Tofeeq, a Palestinian woman, told me that among the Arabs it is believed that if you dream of losing teeth it means your brother or son is in trouble. She had a dream in which three of her teeth fell out. The next day she received a call from America to say her son had been shot in the head three times by a gunman." (3)

In my own experience, I always had a sense of fear during these dreams that I would be ugly, so I'm guessing in my case it's insecurity about how I look.  My other insecurities tend to play out in my dreams in other ways, I guess, like being chased or being in perilous situations.

(1) Grant, Russell. The Illustrated Dream Dictionary.

(2) Hamilton-Parker, Craig. Remembering & Understanding Your Dreams.

(3) Crisp, Tony. Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your Unconscious Mind

The One With the Movie About Violent Sleep Disorders

I was in a large department store in the men's department looking at some sandals that were just basically regular black shoes with lots of the leather cut out to make them strappy - there were lots of straps.

I was trying to find a pair that was 1/2 a size smaller than the ones I tried on but I was surprised that the size 31's fit me as well as they did - they ran small obviously because I normally wore a 29 or so.

Being in a department store in a normal situation turned into it being night, after closing, and instead of being the retail sales floor, it was the warehouse or storage area of the store.

It was after closing, but there were a number of people in there looking around.  I remember a girl and a blond guy in addition to me.  I think the girl either had a bike or was looking for one.

I had a weird role in the dream.  The idea of the dream was that it was actually a movie.  I was kind of at the same time just a 3rd party observer and one of the main characters, it seemed.

The premise of the movie was some people that had sleep disorders so when something in life bothered them (say, being touched by other people), they would react in their sleep (like sleepwalking).

One guy with dark hair (I couldn't really tell if he was me or not) didn't like to be touched and would kick people in the head (I think he explained it that he would kick you in the eye) in his sleep.

But, I also remember "being" a different person (feeling like what it was to be inside them, kind of) and his reaction was just less-specific violence.  I remember the feeling picking someone up by the neck and holding them against a wall.

There were two other guys looking for shoes (sneakers) but they were moving stuff around.  They put stuff really high up on a fixture in the middle of the floor, and I remember while looking around some of the shoe boxes fell on me.

These two guys were up to no good, unlike the rest of us who were just looking around.  Once the boxes fell, the bad guys got agitated and wanted our contact information.  We questioned that and the blond kid explained that they wanted our e-mail addresses, etc. so they could place us in the warehouse to prevent us from snitching on them.

While the bad guys were agitated, they were pushing us around and grabbing our arms and stuff and at least one of us warned them not to touch us because of the disorders.

Next thing I remember was being "inside" another guy - a black guy - who was walking home.  I think he was in the warehouse (good guy - one of a total of 4 good people in the warehouse who were the main characters in the movie with sleep disorders) but don't remember seeing him beforehand.  He walked by this hooker who was lying on the sidewalk and people were pouring gas on her and set her on fire.  She was strung out on heroine so she didn't know what was going on.

They tried to lay another hooker (not as strung out) next to her and do the same and they snuggled up to each other, as if to protect each other from sleeping on the sidewalk.  They were both on fire, but it took a while for the first hooker to exhibit some distress - she was waving her arms around and the second wrapped her in a the foil lined blanket they were lying on.

The first hooker died, but the second was fine (even though she was exposed to the flames), so one of the bad people (I think it was a short woman that reminded me to Snookie) stabbed her in the stomach with a really big kitchen knife - shaped like chef's knife but much wider.

It seems as those the bad guys in the warehouse were in a gang or something and were killing people to establish a serial killer or something - maybe as something to implicate us in?  I think they wanted to find six people to kill.

The dude I was inside kept walking toward home, up a hill, when some guy jumped him from behind, pulled his hoodie over his head and tried to tie the strings.  I remember thinking this was a normal risk in his neighborhood - to get mugged this way.  The guy/me ended up throwing the guy over his shoulder, Judo style, kind of down the hill.

The guy left because there was a cop car whose dash camera was filming the whole thing.  The car belonged to the guy's uncle or dad, who he lived with.

He got to the porch where his aunt or mom was with his dad, and they were like "What the hell's going on?"  In his head he knew these bad people were trying to get something or had something on him.