I’m not certain if this was all the same dream or several strewn together throughout the course of the night. I was at my brother’s mother-in-law’s (S) house, but it was not any house that I have ever been at (his in-laws change houses often). I was anxious to leave and get back home (when traveling I am always waiting endlessly for returning home as I don’t like being away at all) and I think everyone was mad at me for wanting to rush things and be over with whatever was happening. The MIL was in a particularly foul mood, I thought I would be nice and do something special and so I reorganized her silverware drawer. She didn’t say anything and I think my mom had said, “A thank you would be nice.” I remember walking around the outside of the house at night.

Then Mom and I were driving on an endless highway. It was sort of sandy or snowy or both and the road and trip was never-ending.

Next I was in my sister-in-law’s old apartment building that she lived in while at college before she and my brother got married. However it wasn’t the one I remember. It was more of something out of a dark alley straight from Dickens’. I think I was helping her pack or something and then I was sitting in my living room watch this on a video tape. My mom was on the sofa dozing off. The scene moved from the apartment building to a gymnasium and now my father was part of the group and he began talking about something. (He died over 25 years ago and I have never dreamed about him since childhood.) I worried that the sound of his voice would freak Mom out but she was still sleeping.

Now, I was back in the apartment organizing and he came out of the bathroom, but not as I remember him from childhood (middle-aged and sickly). He appeared as I’ve seen him in old photos when he was in his 20s, a polished and dapper young man. He smiled at me and walked out the apartment door.

Back at the MIL’s house, although I think now it was my aunt’s house. Her nephew – whom I had spent some summers with at a beach house in my teen years and haven’t seen in 10 years) was there and a bunch of other people. I’m not sure who they all were, but I knew them all. He was leaving out the laundry room door and I was on the other end of the kitchen in the hall to the front. Someone yelled for me that he was leaving, but I turned rather nonchalantly and just gave a small wave.

He did the same and we both egressed in our separate ways.

It’s been awhile since my last entry. I’ve had an allergic reaction to too much sun which resulted in a horrible rash in what is called polymorphic photosensitivity and I’ve been drugged up on Benadryl and usually stay away from all medication. I’ve had many bizarre dreams, but none that I can really remember… possible because of my fog but now my mind is clear once again.

My mom and I had gone to my aunt’s house for something and we were just going to go on the back porch to get it and leave unnoticed. (We have not been there for several years as a result of my cousin carefully manuevering a separation, though my aunt, who was more of a grandmother figure while I was growing up, and I continue to speak weekly on the phone.) There was a large freezer there and I opened it and started scratching at a frozen ham. My cousin (pyscho does describes her best) was in the kitchen and I didn’t want to be noticed by her and thought she did see me and mom and we quickly ran off the porch and back out to the car.

When we got out front, my aunt came out on the front porch. She was dressed up (usually is extremely dressed down) and then my cousin came out the door and gave a cool greeting and we walked up the steps. She bent forward in gesture for me to greet her with a kiss (she always
presented her nose, which I hated, until after she came back from living in Europe and then we started doing the cheek-cheek-cheek air kissing, still didn’t care for that because I am not a touchy-feely person that needs to greet or be greeted by personal contact every time I see someone) but I maneuvered to kiss her on the cheek instead.

I said I came to borrow a book but didn’t want to disturb them, knowing that my aunt was getting ready to go away the next day and didn’t want her to walk the stairs.

Later in the kitchen I was alone for a moment and quickly made up a note which was sort of like a library due back card and stuck it in my aunt’s recipe book and my cousin came in. She was at the sink and I was now at the stove. I don’t remember exactly what she said but it was
harsh and hateful, I think I replied, “That was your choice.” She replied with something and stormed out. (We have been on the outs for several years.)

I had had enough of it and letting her have the last word and so I went after her and passed my mom and aunt in the back hall. I came screaming my cousin’s name out in the stair hall and the house boy was there (don’t know where he came from since they don’t have one or even a
maid) and told him to get her but he just kept walking up and down the stairs ignoring me, almost as if he were a ghost. Finally, after one deep guttural yelling of her name she appeared on the third floor balcony cold and freaky and camly replied, “Yes, my love?” (something she used
to occasionally call me.)

I knew something was very wrong and that I probably shouldn’t have pursued following her and started backing my way out of the stair hall and she pulled out a gun and started shooting, but it wasn’t loaded. I started running but slipped on the floor and real bullets started coming out. When I reached my mom and aunt we all ran out the back door and down the drive way as cousin followed, firing over and over again. My mom or aunt slipped in the driveway… don’t remember which and we all just stopped there… I don’t think anyone was shot… and the dream ended.

This was peculiar dream that seemed to ramble on. My mom and I were
sitting in the attic watching TV. It was as if the attic were the
living room, but still retained its waken state appearance of being
covered in years of dust and decaying plaster. The scene changed and I
was now in the real living room. Someone else and I were lining chairs
up along the walls so there would be enough seating for lots of people.
My grandmother was sitting in my chair–the big chair. She has been
dead for 20 years. I think we were arguing about what to watch on TV.

I then found myself in the dinging room, but it was an odd sort of
combination of the living and dining rooms. It was set up for a big
celebration and the Christmas tree was in there where in actuality I
have a life-sized Santa statue that remains year-round.

Moving off into the kitchen, mom and I were discussing going to the
store before everyone arrived and so she went up to get ready. This
role reversal… I am the one that needs to go up and get ready and she
is the one who is ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I see on the
counter the iced tea jar that we used to brew sun tea but in the water
are only three tea bags, a piece of bacon and an unshelled hard-boiled
egg.

The kitchen is now filled with other people, my brother and his family
and our close family friends, the M’s, and someone else… a man. I
know him, but I don’t know him or can’t see his face. It’s
Thanksgiving, or the night before Thanksgiving, and we are still
discussing going to the store, Wegman’s which is a super huge fantastic
market type of place. Instead of leaving with mom, I get ready to leave
with the strange man, who I feel as my partner/boyfriend or some
combination thereof. As we get ready to leave Ted Allen from ‘Queer
Eye’ pops up and says he’ll go along too. I sigh. He and the other guy
leave while I fight to get my shoes on and grab a bottle of water and a
Frappucino and follow them out the door.

Outside it’s Christmas time. There’s snow on the ground, the house is
lit with Christmas lights and the chimes in the arbor are playing
Christmas carols. The sun is setting and I can tell it is Christmas Eve
by the way the light is shining and the orange-red glow of the sunset,
the likes I have only ever seen on Christmas. I forgot my drinks and
one of the family friends, CM, hands them out to me and I yell in the door,
“Listen! The arbor chimes are playing Joy to the Word.” She looks out
at the car, which in addition to Ted and my faceless boyfriend, are my
nieces and their cousins as well and she says how about drinks for
everyone and hands me a cooler bag.

This one is sort of roller coaster ride, bouncing all over the place!
As it started, I was sitting at the kitchen table and my mom and
brother came in. I think we were all getting ready to go somewhere and
nieces and sister-in-law were still getting ready. My brother had his
shirt off and he was getting down on the floor and mom was getting
ready to put a fancy comb in his back hair, but then she had to go do
something else and so I had to do it. So I got on top of him and tried
to wrestle it in. The only thing I can relate it to is trying to tie up
a tuft of hair with a bow on wiry dog that doesn’t like having bows in
their hair.

I then found myself upstairs in a house that was sort of a cross
between my brother’s old house and his new one. I had come up the
stairs and was looking for a room to get ready in and one of my nieces
said to use her room because she was done. Something occured here that
I don’t remember. Now I’ve switched to being an observer of what is
going on around me rather than a participant and was in the room in
their old house that I would sleep in on visits. There was a woman at a
big cauldron in the middle of the room. In the cauldron were Sweedish
meatballs and I think there was a little girl there with a bowl and the
woman was filling it more and more saying she was a wicked girl and her
punishment would be determined by the size of the meatballs which kept
getting larger and larger as she filled the bowl.

The image changes and now I’m observing a tribute demand. There are people lined up, perhaps Celts, and Romans were demanding tribute from them. However it wasn’t real, they were just re-enacting. One of the soldiers was Rosie O’Donnell and she demanded payment from a young woman, but she said something, profane I think. Rosie whispered to her that she should spit on her too. And with that Rosie started crying and pouring cream on the woman. In a kitchen that was a combination of my own and one from colonial times, the woman and her mother who I now
know as Weirs from Colonial House discuss that the only way to get the cream out of her hair is using this goo in a nasty looking jar. The mother leads the younger woman over the sink and starts pouring what now is half melted ice cream on her head.

I should note that I’m still watching PBS’ ‘Colonial House,’ had heard on the news that Rosie told President Bush off for his marriage soapbox, watched a documentary on King Arthur and the Romans, and read a chapter of The Mists of Avalon at bedtime in which Morgaine takes Nimue to Avalon and on the road the girl explains to Morgaine how Fr. Griffin had told her she was a wicked girl.

I was sitting in the big chair in the living room, which was my
father’s chair, in the spot it used to occupy behind the door. The room
looked as it did when I was growing up. It was divided in half
with the sofa in the middle of the room, next to it the big chair and
behind the sofa the desk and hifi. I said to myself, I’m tired of
sitting behind the door (on the hinged side) and pushed the chair to
the other side of the door (knob side). This is in reality where my
father’s chair is now, which is now my chair and where I sit every
night to watch TV. The room is no longer divided in half by the sofa
which many years ago we decided to push up against the back wall to
make the room seem larger.

Anyway, after relocating the chair in my dream, I found myself back in
the old church hall. When I was in school, it was also used as a lunch
room. It’s quite different today as the school closed 20 years ago, but
in this dream, it was exactly like it was 25 years ago–lots of
flourescent lights, but still dark and grey-looking with rows of tables
lined up.

Some of the tables were filled with school children. It was very dark
and gloomy and sort of hazy and all of the people were mostly greyed
out figures. Something was happening where people were showing off
their unusual talents. As I entered, a very old black gentleman was
whistling but the sound coming out of his mouth was that of a horn or
some sort of brass instrument. His face was very round and puffy and
perspired. Suddenly, I seemed to be the only one left standing up at
the piano and trying to figure out what I would do. I thought to sing a
song, which is quite insane since I can’t carry a tune, though am an
accomplished organist.

As I began to play a little tune on the piano (without sheet
music–something I really can’t do) a young girl come from the back and
walked up to me… very gothic looking. She reminded me of the girl
from the ‘Addams Family’ (is it Tuesday or Wednesday? I can never
remember her name). She was carrying dusty old womens’ sandals and I
said to her, “My those are awfully big for you.” She giggled and
replied, “They’re my grandmother’s and they’re too big for her too.”