Running with Oprah

I am, for whatever reason, running the Las Vegas Marathon. It's held on a series of boats somehow connected via an elaborate system of stairs and ramps. I pass Oprah and a gaggle of girls content to run behind Oprah. Oprah is gracious and wearing the most ridiculous running outfit I've ever seen: "stylishly" disheveled overalls and boots. She's making good time, though, despite her silly getup.

I take a wrong turn and end up going up an escalator. The adjacent escalator coming down contains a couple that sees me in my flimsy running gear and warns me that the escalator comes out in Korea and it's very cold. I get spooked and hope the banister and go back down. And then I think, When am I ever going to get to see Korea? I apparently am not concerned about North vs. South and which Korea I would be popping in to. I hop the banister again and go up and through the big wooden door and see a gorgeous mountain range and green things and then, over to the right, some sort of construction area and a very tiny wooden block emblazoned with a swastika. I see Megan Morris there, taking pictures, and I say to her, "Hey, I think I've seen that (the swastika) on a website somewhere!" meaning Google Earth or whatever. She seems to know exactly what I'm talking about, and resumes reviewing her digital photos.

I notice that it's not as ridiculously cold as I had imagined it would be, and think it seems slightly odd that a boat in Las Vegas would provide passage to a mountain in Korea, but whatever.

I go back down the escalator and try to resume the marathon, but it becomes harder and harder to choose the right paths, and there's usually no one around to tell me which way to go.

FUBAR

I'm changing out the lenses on my camera and I look down and realize I've gotten an amazing amount of dirt and dead leaves in the interior of my little kit lens. I blow into it, thinking I can just dispense with the mess, but when I look down again, there's even more debris inside the lens. I tug on some kind of string, thinking it will pull the bad stuff out, and the entire guts of the lens come tumbling out into a pile.

There are people around — presumably people who know how to deal with camera equipment — and as soon as I show the lens (what's left of it) to a white-haired older gentleman, he shakes his head as if to say Too bad, that lens is FUBAR.

I set about trying to reassemble the lens shortly before realizing I have no idea how a lens' interior should even look.

I feel like a total fuckup but I'm not too disappointed because I've been wanting to get a new primary lens for a while. And yes, I did think of that exact lens in the dream.

Prison and Spy Missions

Dream 1: I have gone to prison for what seems to be a DUI, but I have befriended a male guard who coddles me and gives me special privileges and generally treats me like his granddaughter. I walk in and out of my cell as I please. Inside my cell is a hospital bed, and I'm in a hospital gown, and I feel fragile as if I've been in a wreck. I know I haven't but that my health is failing for a reason no one can determine (I actually left work early Monday and didn't go at all today for health reasons). I dread telling Al that I've been incarcerated for the DUI (poor health) because I've been sick so many times lately. I wander behind a barn while dreading telling Al about the DUI. I can't even begin to think of how to word it. I go back to my cell and see the male guard leaving out a utility door. I wonder if this will present a problem. I see Jeff's phone sitting on my tray table. I think, "Oh great! I can text while I'm in here. I prolly need to tell him I'm in jail, anyway." Then I realize that if his phone is there how can I get in touch with him? I have a moment of panic. I whirl around, looking for my phone.

Dream 2: I am looking at a photograph of a former teacher of mine - we'll call her Ylffah Ydnic for the sake of Google and my own very fragile pride - that Lindsey has taken for me on a spy mission. It is a face shot, and although the back part of her hair has gone gray, I notice that the front strands have not, even though Lindsey plainly told me that it was completely gray, and the hair around the face usually goes first. I am mystified and enchanted as the photo comes to life and begins to say something. But before she can get a word out I wake up in my own bedroom and can't figure out where I am for at least an entire minute. Then, when I do, I lament that I freaking missed what she had to say.

UPDATE: I just saw the real photo Lindsey snapped for me on her real spy mission and my dream was right! It's not totally gray around the face. It's salt and pepper. My dreaming brain was right! Also, if I may add, she looks so, so hot. SO hot.

Your guess is as good as mine

1.

It's New Year's Eve. I don't know this just yet, but it will become apparent in just a bit. There are people everywhere. I'm not sure where I am and I don't really recognize any of the people around me. Some dark-haired dude I've never seen before comes up and starts cutting my hair with very large, very frightening shears. He is cutting in such a way that I am afraid he's going to slice me open. I tell him to be careful, and I close my eyes tight in fear. Suddenly he kisses me square on the lips and I open my eyes and realize it's because it's midnight on New Year's Eve. Everyone starts cheering and celebrating and I realize that he has cut my hair into a ridiculously short bob*. This distresses me a great deal, as I'm quite attached to my long hair and I tend to look weird with short hair. I freak out and leave the place.

Outside, it's dark, and there are people perched next to cars, poised to take photographs of the people who come out of the building. Like paparazzi. I cover my face and lament that I will look so lame in the photographs thanks to my short hair.

2.

Amber is sitting at a table full of girls I don't know. They are all dressed in mid-'80s garb — acid-washed balloon overall shorts sets, for god's sake — and all of them clearly think they're onto a trend. Amber's wearing more jewelry than I have ever seen, and I note to myself that I have got to borrow her awesome dangly fuschia gem drop earrings. She's also wearing a hot pink cat broach, and a yellow dog broach (I did have one of these when I was a kid), as well as layers of necklaces and bangles on her arms. Her hair is cut short again.

Several of the girls at the table look uncomfortable. I don't know if they all know each other or not. I call out one of the girls for wearing all that '80s crap and not even liking it. She stands up to confront me and ends up being 9 feet tall.




* Yet another dream for which I pulled content from that day's events. My friend Ashley just got her hair cut really short and told me about it over e-mail yesterday at work.

The antiques store

I'm in an antiques store of sort — there's stuff everywhere, but it's not clutter; it actually has some kind of organization to it. My companion, a woman I don't think I know in real life, is telling me that I am to move a video camera over all the goods in one take, almost like it's a tracking shot (but I don't remember seeing any of the equipment required for a tracking shot). The camera I'm using is some wacky combination of a mounted stop-motion camera and an old-timey folding camera, but it moves smoothly and takes video, not still photos. I focus the viewfinder on one item, then another, the another, taking care to transition between the items with ease in one take. I nudge the camera a little hard and the picture goes shaky. We have to cut. But the woman with me isn't mad. In fact, she seems surprised I managed to get as long a take as I did.

We move on to our next task, which is finding the items in the store that have big tags on them. She tells me that these items need their Christmas cards signed. There's a clustered of tagged items hanging near the ceiling. Somehow we get one down, and she shows me what to write in the cards.

[line I can't remember]

The Citizens

I get my own tagged item and begin to write in the card, and am taken aback when my handwriting looks nothing like what I know it should. It's sloppy and childish. I'm embarrassed. I finish one card and then notice a little wrapped gift sitting on the counter next to me. It has my name on it. I realize that it's from my sister and I'm probably not supposed to see it.

[I think I lost some stuff here. Feels like I did, but I don't know what.]

I hear a baby crying, and turn to see where it's coming from. My eyes snap open and I realize the crying is coming from downstairs. The neighbors' new baby says hello.

A neighborly encounter

In real life, my downstairs neighbors recently had a baby, whom I have not yet met (they came home from the hospital a few days ago), but since they've arrived home I've wondered if my every movement was annoying them and/or waking the baby.

Enter dreamland.

I'm on the sidewalk out in front of the apartment when I see S, the mom, walking past. I catch up with her and ask her how she's doing and how the baby is. She tells me they're just fine, and walks me around back to the back yard (yeah, our apartment building does not have a back yard, but a back slab of deeply pitted asphalt called a parking lot) where she opens a set of French doors (from this point on, none of the details of how the place looks are true to life) to reveal the baby lying in a little bassinet. I coo over him politely, and M, the dad, comes over and picks the baby up and hands him to me, then goes over and strips down to a hot-pink Speedo and hops into the shower.

I'm confused.

A) I don't know him or his wife well enough for either of them to be wearing Speedos around me.

B) Who the fuck actually wears Speedos, anyway, and in hot pink?

Then I realize he's rinsing off because he's planning on going swimming. And sure enough, when I turn around, there are two, count 'em!, two pools in the back yard. Both above-ground and fairly small, but big enough for lounging. M makes his way toward the pools and I ask S which one they normally use. She tells me the far one. For some reason it seems weird because that pool seems to belong to people who live in one of the other duplexes (suddenly my apartment building is a standalone set of duplexes next to others just like it).

Out of nowhere, a crowd of people begins streaming into the backyard, serenading S and M (ha) and their new baby (who has kind of disappeared from the dream at this point). I come to realize that it's the rest of my neighbors whom I've never met. They're all old and the men have beards.

I get out a camera — my mother's five-year-old Canon PowerShot — and begin to take pictures. S scolds me. "You're still taking pictures with that old camera?!" she says incredulously. "You need a better camera than that!"

"I've got this too!" I say, pointing to my camera THAT IS GOING UNUSED AROUND MY NECK. I don't know why I'm not using it.

Doing it wrong. Again.

Last night's brief foray into the world of my anxiety-ridden subconscious mind involved me and my camera and the feeling that, once again, I'm not doing things right.

I've been dreaming like this for years and years now. It's getting really tedious.

Anyway, once again, I was at my parents' house, and I had been commissioned to take photographs of my dad and/or my uncle as they simulated working-man activities. Or something. Except, the lighting was low and I wasn't getting good shots inside. There felt like a time limit was looming. I gave up, frustrated, and then realized, stupidly, that they had gone outside to continue posing, and I was missing my chance to get good shots. It was almost like I was competing with someone else for the best shots. This is no doubt because the last thing on TV before I went to bed was that show The Shot, about photogs competing against one another.