Bizarre Dreams

I've been having some really bizarre dreams lately. I've always been a vivid dreamer. They're in color with sounds and smells and I remember them on waking. Apparently that isn't ordinary because when I tell people about the details of the dreams, I get quizzical looks and the questions, "Your dream was in color???", or "You could SMELL something in your dream???" Well yes, of course. Doesn't everybody dream in color and smell-o-vision?

Anywho, I've been having a lot of covert military ops dreams. I've been crawling around through creeks and tunnels and trenches clutching some type of weapon in my hands. Hubby says I shouldn't go to sleep watching The History Channel any more.

THE COVERT OPS DREAM

Last night in my covert ops dream I was dressed in khaki fatigues and my platoon was trying to sneak out of our own base. It was in the middle of the day, the sun was shining brightly, and some huge luncheon awards ceremony was happening. The ceremony was held outside in a space the size of a football field and there was a tall stage on one end. Hundreds of people were on the field seated around tables listening to the speaker on stage.

The stage wasn't straight across, it curved in slightly, concave to the audience. Stretching across the front of the stage was a long table with red, white, and blue bunting draped across the front. People were sitting at this long table, maybe a dozen folks on either side of the speaker; non-military people in civilian clothes.

Our mission was to crawl under the table along the stage to a truck waiting on the other side. The speaker and the two dozen people sitting on the stage knew what was going on and they had pushed their chairs back from the table so we wouldn't be crawling across their feet. The bunting on the table was there to hide our presence from the audience because they weren't supposed to know what we were doing. There was a guy at our end of the stage telling each soldier when to go...."Wait, wait, wait....now GO!" Each soldier would then scramble up under the table and began crawling the length of the stage.

The weapon clutched in my hands today was an old, wooden pump shotgun. While I was standing in line to go under the table the shotgun racked loudly making that unmistakable shotgun racking sound. It was loud enough to give our mission away because the hubbub of the dinner eating was over and everyone was quiet, listening to the speaker. So I had to clutch the shotgun tightly so the slide wouldn't rack again. I clutched it so tightly it came apart in my hands. I had the stock part in my left hand, and the barrel and wooden slide in my right hand. I was squeezing it soooo tightly that the slide splintered into pieces.

Then it was my time to go under the table. I managed to climb onto the stage, which was about four feet off the ground, without a free hand because I was still clutching the shotgun parts in both hands. I was crawling along and had made it by about six people when I woke up.

I woke up in a sweat, realized I could unclench my fists and let go of the dreamland shotgun pieces, and turned over and went back to sleep. Then there was this:

THE NEWSPAPER OFFICE DREAM

It was my first day on the job at a small-town newspaper. I don't know what my job was at the newspaper, I was still unpacking my office supplies. About a dozen women worked in the office; no men. (OK, it was a nightmare, not a dream.)

I somehow knew this day happened to be the editor's first anniversary as the editor so I had purchased a greeting card for her. It was a really cool card. It was aged, hammered, embossed metal, almost like a thin book. It had all kinds of little gewgaw charms hanging on it here and there. The greeting was something benign like, "Congratulations on the First Year!" or something of that nature.

I showed the card to a couple of the women and like a ripple effect, word of the card spread around the office. Somehow like the telephone game, the card's greeting had been misstated with each retelling. In 15 minutes the office grapevine was all abuzz about the "inappropriate" card, and rumor had it that I was going to be fired for it.

Several of the clucking women had met the editor at the door as she arrived for the day and bombarded her with the tale that I had brought "inappropriate" materials to the workplace. They hadn't told her it was a greeting card for her.

She came into the office with a dazed look from all the hen clucking, and followed by all the clucking hens approached me at my desk. She then reamed me for bringing "inappropriate" things to work and told me not to do it again. She turned on her heel and sat at her desk and the clucking flock of hens dissipated.

I stood there just stunned. I picked up the card, walked to her desk, flung it down and said, "Here is the 'inappropriate' material. Read this and tell me what is 'inappropriate' about it." She opened the card, read "Congratulations on the First Year", and realized it was for her. She got a weird look on her face and said simply, "Oh."

I was enraged that she had listened to and believed the gossips without checking the facts herself. I was enraged at the juvenile, gossipy behavior of the women. The corporate culture that tolerates tongue-wagging on that scale will be a miserable place to work. My head was spinning.

I went back to my desk mad as hell to unpack the rest of my office supplies. After just a few seconds I mumbled, "I have to get out of here." I went outside to pace around, smoke a stogie, and calm down. I was back at my desk in about five minutes. I was standing up to unpack the box of supplies. I remember there was an old green stapler and two staple pullers.

(Vanessa, a real childhood chum from junior high, made it into this dream. She was a sweetie. I haven't seen her since about 10th grade.)

Vanessa had the desk next to mine. She said in a snide voice, "Well! You were sure out there a long time. Aren't you even gonna bother to sit down now?"

The office manager lady piped up at this point. The office manager was a little Napoleanette. She was about 4'9" tall and about that wide. She had mousey brown hair pulled back in a tight bun and horn-rimmed glasses. She piped up and said in a fakey sweet voice, "That's OK if she was out there a while. She can make up the time tomorrow." The fakey sweet voice came with daggers as if to say, "I'm gonna make your life a living hell, bitch."

Me: Tomorrow? Tomorrow's Saturday!

Her: That's right. We work half a day on Saturday.

Me: Why????

Her: Oh, it's not so bad. If we work on Saturday, we get to leave thirty minutes early Monday through Friday.

Me: But you work from 8:00 a.m to 5:30 p.m. now. When do you take off early?

Her: We leave thirty minutes early at 5:30. If we didn't work on Saturday we would have to stay until 6:00 p.m.

They came to work for a sixth day and worked four hours so they could get off 2.5 hours early the other five days of the week. The stupidity of that logic made my head explode. This was just my first few hours on this new job and I realized I had made a HUGE mistake coming to work here.

Then I woke up in a sweat again.

I don't know what is going on in my head to cause such bizarre dreams, but I wake up more tired and stressed than when I went to sleep. "Sweet Dreams" doesn't seem to be in my vocabulary these days.

Sigh.