My boyfriend Bret Michaels saves me from the Bull Woman

Dudes, dudes, I have no choice but to confess that I have had yet another dream about Bret Michaels. This marks the third in a series, prompted no doubt by his recent brain hemorrhage, win of Celebrity Apprentice and appearance on American Idol- but who's keeping track?

I dreamed that Bret was my boyfriend and we were going to a sweat lodge in Kentucky. On the way there we passed a carpenter's work room and we stopped so he could show me what a great craftsman he is by making me a snow board. When we got to the site of the sweat lodge, we saw that it had been taken over by the evil bull-woman-with-claws from the second season of True Blood. I was really scared but my boyfriend Bret said "I'll protect you" and then I woke up and laughed my ass off.

Birds Inside

I dreamed that there were three different birds inside my home. One was yellow, one was a female cardinal, and one was a male cardinal. The apartment was filled with these double-door combinations...like a main door and a screen door. It made chasing them outside very difficult.

Mostly I tried to ignore that the birds were inside, because I have a really hard time with flying things indoors (bats, birds, whatever). But once in awhile I'd try and coax them outside.

At one point, the yellow one was perched on the outside screen door, trying to get outside but not quite making it. I stood about 6 inches from it and realized how tiny it was. I thought about how if I held it in one hand, I'd probably crush it. After I stared at it for awhile, it finally flew away.

Whale Sharks and My Family

I was on vacation with my family - parents and siblings. We were on some beach that I think was maybe in Florida. We'd just arrived and decided to go swimming. There was this body of water that was like a combination of a lake and a pool, and there were four "whale sharks" swimming in it. They did not look like what real whale sharks do in real life...



...they were dark, almost black, glossy, and a bit bigger than a beluga. Although somebody told me there were four of them in there, I only saw three.

My father caught my attention and beckoned me over to where he was. There was a separate room with the "hot tub" in it - it was really just a smaller pool surrounded by large rocks and encased in glass, like a greenhouse. There was steam rising off the surface of the water. One whale shark swam in this water. My father was on the edge of the pool opposite from where I stood. Without speaking, he told me "watch this." He raised his hand high in the air and waved. The whale shark mimicked him with its tail. It imitated my dad so closely that it's tail changed shape; his tail looked just like a glossy, black version of my father's hand, five fingers and all. They were like mirrors of each other.

My father did many other hand motions, all of which the whale shark imitated with its tail. Very late in this whole production, I noticed that there was a third hand coming out of the pool, and it was the hand of a gorilla. I thought to myself "that's impossible, how could there be a gorilla under there?" Immediately after that thought, Emil confirmed it. "The tour guide told me it's true," he said.

I kept watching my father, wondering at how he could make the whale shark's tail do all these different formations. I was also very nervous about my father being so close to the water, since he can't swim (which has inspired other dreams). He got wet, but didn't fall in. He was wearing a suit.

Later, we were in my sister's front yard in Atlanta, where all of her living room furniture was placed in a very organized fashion. We were deciding what to give away. I chose a broken lamp. My father pointed a television remote control at nothing and a light turned on. It was dusk, and the air felt damp. The light was hazy and there were shades of purple everywhere. My mother sat in an easy chair and read. Everything felt very peaceful and calm.

Elephant Tapping

I was watching a documentary about the character Olive in the movie Little Miss Sunshine. In this dream, Olive had won some big title (probably Little Miss Sunshine) and was now very well-known, which is why there was a documentary made about her. It was in black and white when it showed her younger days.

Olive's talent was "Elephant Tapping." It is my understanding that Elephant Tapping means sitting in shallow water (1-2 feet deep) on a beach with a baby elephant in your lap, lightly splashing water on either side of it. So imagine you're sitting on the sandy ground with water up to your chest, your legs stretched out wide, and there's an elephant in front of you, and your arms are around it, splashing water. Elephant Tapping.

At some point, the documentary's narrator said something like "Olive has been in these waters since she was no bigger than a baby elephant." It showed her in the shallow water at about four years old splashing water by herself as a herd of about 12 elephants swam by her in perfectly straight lines. They all had their trunks in the air and they were smiling.

rodent creature

i opened a dresser drawer and inside were what looked like milkweed pods facing down. four in a row, from largest in the front to smallest in the back. i used some inanimate poking object to overturn the first one. when i did, a rodent-like creature sprung out of it and skittered around the whole house. at some point i was able to get a good look at it while it was standing still. it had a furry face and large-ish ears, a skeletal body (seriously, just bones) and a long tail. oh, and the best part? it had a freakishly long, skinny trunk. yes, like an elephant. but realllllly skinny and reallllly long. it curved upward. i feel like there was mutual hatred between myself and this thing but i didn't want to kill it. i was just disgusted by it and thought it was going to hurt me. i woke up and tried to draw the creature and it didn't so much turn out.

Different Kinds of Dinosaurs

I dreamed I was taking a little boy to the Geology Museum in Madison. I was excited because it was free. The kid was reluctant, so I explained to him that we'd be able to see how modern day animals are just "different kinds of dinosaurs." Right then, hundreds of giraffes appeared in front of us. I was able to tell which dinosaur they had each descended from. Some giraffes were giant, about ten times larger than they are in real life, and some were miniatures and incredibly skinny. One of the mini ones turned to green plastic. All of a sudden, I realized I'd lost the little boy, so I went searching through the geology building. I ran into professors everywhere - none of them would help me.

At first, the little boy was my brother at about 5 years old, then later turned into my friend Marc's son who is also five years old. Throughout the dream, they morphed from one to the other, and I could never tell who he really was.

75% off

Four dreams in one night...
1) My parents are waiting with their van late into the night for me and my band to finish our performance. We are doing an entire set of Jackson 5 [bitches!]. I get off stage and am swamped by fans. We are all in our best Tito outfit. It takes hours to break everything down because we are doing it all in dance moves. I don't want to pack the van which will take more hours, so my brother, Kyle, and I take the mattress off the roof of the van and onto the back porch where there are puddles, but we figure it'll dry...

2) Black mice in a cage. I feed them but find out 2/5ths of the food is poisoned. I wonder how many will die. Two seem dying or sleeping weird. Throughout the other dreams I check on them. Sometimes they all look dead and sometimes they are all running around.

3) I am costumed as a female, blue and reddish/orangish harlequin attracted to a male black and white harlequin. He is a knife juggler and thrower. The nearer I get to him the sharper his knives are and the more often they appear in surprising places.

4) In airport. I toss an empty briefcase at the feet of a police officer. He doesn't see me and I disappear into the corwd. I think I'm making it away when (and this almost startled me awake it felt so real) I feel his palms lift me from under the bottom of my feet. I am suddenly tumbling 30 feet into the air up and back down. I land stunned with a gun in my face. The officer is holding a different piece of luggage, one I recognize as being my mom's. He says, "looking for this?" and he pulls out a piece of paper with my brother, Eric's name written in red. I'm busted for the terrorism of unattending a bag.

A jungle

I had a dream that I was at an office building. I was working there. I feel like maybe it was the same building that the TV show "Ugly Betty" takes place (I've been watching a lot of that show latley). But I was on one of the lower levels. I was doing something with the post office.. or maybe just with paper and letters.
I left and called my sister to tell her my cell phone was dying and that I was on my way to the Alliant Energy Center. I was taking the bus there. I was with someone else. I know they were male but I'm not sure who it was. Maybe my brother.
We got off the bus a little late and had to walk further to get there. But it didn't look anything like the Alliant. We were at the top of a hill that was surrounded by a jungle. And I looked out over the trees and saw a tennis court.
I looked to my left and saw a lion come out of the trees. I was terrified. Then there was some sort of old ruins around us. That had window type cut outs. We tricked the lion into climbing up into the window and I told him that I didn't trust him. The lion could talk for some reason. So he was sitting up in one of the windows. I pushed him out. But somehow he lived. And said "I guess you're the one that can't be trusted" and he began to attack us. But it was a teasing kind of a attack. Not using his full strength. I got behind him at some point. I think the other person I was with had him restrained somehow. I wrapped my hands around him and started to pull out his eyes with my hands.
Then my alarm went off.

Menagerie of Small Animals and a Peeing Hedgehog

I dreamed last night that I had a menagerie of small wild animals living in my back yard. When I say small, I mean as in Small Horses (which incidentally are one of the funniest of all creatures as far as I'm concerned), not baby animals but smaller versions of full-size ones.

There were small elephants, small white siberian tigers, small horses actually, small gazelles, small great danes. And though several of them are naturally predator/prey to each other, they weren't mean and mostly rolled around playfully in a very cute way. I would feed them by tossed balls of raw meat - like meatballs - in their general direction. They all ate the meat even the vegetarian elephants and gazelles.

I kept getting distracted from my feeding by my old pet hedgehog Sally Pineapple who had broken free in my house and was peeing giant puddles everywhere. I couldn't catch her because whenever I would get close she would roll up into a spiky ball making it impossible to pick her up. And then when I'd go get an oven glove she'd run off and pee a huge puddle again and then roll into a ball so I couldn't catch her. Rinse. Repeat.

More Petrified Animals

I had approximately thirteen billion dreams last night, but I only remember a couple of details. In one, I was in a giant bathtub with other people - it was like a public pool. I kept feeling something rough go by my legs. I reached down to see what it was and realized it was a crocodile. I knew I needed to get it out, so I started moving around with my hands under water, trying to catch it. At one point, I found a long tail sticking out of the water which I knew belonged to this sneaky little monkey. I grabbed it by the tail and flung it out of the tub was like "jesus christ, everybody get out of my way!"

I somehow got the crocodile and ran to go show my brother. I'd put the crocodile in my parents' shower. It sat in there, not dead, but petrified, on all fours, with it's mouth wide open. "I know it's not dead, but is it alive?" asked my brother. "Don't worry, it won't get you," I told him.

The reason I had to put it in my parents' shower was because I'd already put the petrified great white shark in the "kids' bathroom" in the hallway. It was petrified in the same way - mouth wide open.

Here are some other dreams I've had about petrified animals:

Cardinal
Bird
Buffalo
Peacock

Cardinal in the Kitchen

I was in the kitchen at my parent's house. My mom was there, cooking dinner. I realized there was a bird inside the house, which is something I'm terrified of (bats and birds alike...flying things indoors = BAD NEWS to me). It looked like a gray bird with red specks...maybe a female cardinal. It flew back and forth across the room. I was really upset and nervous.

My mother tried to calm me down. She opened the sliding glass door and told me to try and get the bird to fly over that way. The bird flew right towards me and I put my hand up, thinking I could somehow guide it towards the door. Instead, I accidentally swatted it. It fell to the ground and I sort of screamed. I looked at it - it was a male cardinal now, and about 8 inches tall. One leg was extended and it's wings were spread. It was, like every other effing animal dream I have, frozen still as if it were a stuffed bird (see here, here, and here).

Mom moved a shear white curtain away from the door and the bird's wings fluttered slightly, then it quickly made it's way out the door.

I Just Don't Know That Answer

I was in the basement somewhere and I was surrounded by stuffed animals. They were a mix of sea animals and Sponge Bob characters (I know next to nothing about Sponge Bob, but there they were). I was talking to one, and I turned my back to it for a minute. When I looked back at where the animal had been, there was only a stuffed animal shark. And it was alive. Not like a real shark though - it was the stuffed shark, and it was alive - talking and moving.

I asked the shark where the other animal went, to which the shark replied "Well, I just don't know that answer." This puzzled me, so in order to find out, I turned to the pile of sea animals (stuffed) to my right and started throwing them at the shark. One by one, he caught them in his mouth and swallowed them. Starfish, crabs, a lobster, a shrimp (I don't know what this even looked like, but it was included). Then a "dolphin" (who looked exactly like the shark) started lecturing the shark about eating too many small things. With that, they all turned back into non-alive stuffed animals.

Later, I was in somebody's backyard - it looked like a darker version of my parents' backyard when I was growing up. There was a swing set with a treehouse, a "Mr. Miagi Bridge" leading from one end of the yard to the other, and a small grassy area to the right. I was talking to a woman with five or six kids running around her. She would not shut up. As she talked, one of her sons, who was about 3 years old, picked up this giant bird with a long beak. It looked like a toucan but was all brown. I kept trying to interrupt her to tell the other kids to come look at the bird, and then to tell her that she should ask her son to be careful with the bird, but she would not stop talking.

Eventually, the 3 year old started fucking with the bird enough to break its beak - he made it so that the beak could go in and out, becoming longer and shorter. The bird also had a lot of pieces of wood sticking out of its body.

Bored.

I dreamed that I was holding either a newborn baby or a big puppy. I don't remember which one. I do know that I was paying special attention to make sure its head was supported. Bored.

Horse

I dreamed that I was standing outside Mickey's (a bar) with Genia. I heard the sound of a horse walking behind me - like the clip clop sound. I turned around to see a horse and carriage with two horses. The driver guy was patting one of them on the head, but then the other one got loose and started running towards us. The driver was yelling something at us, and I yelled back "do you want me to stop it?" Right as the horse got to us, I held out my hand and grabbed the reins and caught the horse. I pulled the horse closer to me and put my arms around it's neck. It folded into my arms and as it grew smaller, I cuddled it as if it was a kitten.

What The Hell??

Okay, so I dreamed a lot last night, and only remember bits and pieces, and it feels very disjointed. I know it looks long, but it's FUNNY, so here you go:

I had to take four tests for a class. They were all in different languages - I remember that one was obviously Spanish, but one was a word that looked kind of like Valencia but wasn't, and had a ton of those accents over the letter A. Like this: à. The first question was "What does this word mean?" and I answered that it meant "czar," even though the paper had been copied wrong and I couldn't read all of the multiple choice answers. The test was ridiculous and hard. Another question said "Go find a piece of roadkill and make a shopping list/cooking instructions out of it." I got fed up at that point, and complained to the teacher, my friend Lisa, who winked at me and said "Yeah, the test is real hard Reem, go finish it." Her winking, however, made me realize it wasn't a real test and I didn't have to do it.

Then later I was on the second floor of my cousins' house in Buffalo Grove and my friend Matt was there and something bad happened, and all the lights went out, and a third person (I'm not sure who it was) got turned into something else. The lights came back and I ran out of the room before I could see. Matt and I ran downstairs to the living room to tell everybody, and he had seen what the person had been turned into - half gum and half tobacco. "It's probably because I'm chewing gum and he's smoking," I thought to myself. THEN! when I realized I didn't know what had happened, I came to the interwebs and read this very blog, and Matt had posted it as a dream, so I really knew what happened. Yes, I read this dream blog whilst dreaming. NERD.

At another point in my dreams, I was with Shane and Nick ("How the Hell Are Ya" Nick) and we were in the backyard somewhere and there was this dead buffalo or elk or some giant animal laying in the grass. Nick went behind it and was "acting like a caveman," which meant having mud on his face and pounding on the carcass like a drum. As he did, I realized the animal wasn't really dead; it was raising its head and trying to communicate with us - I think it was trying to talk. "It's still alive!" I yelled at Nick, who got scared and grabbed the horn of the animal. The horn broke off in his hand and the animal's facial features disappeared, which made it hard to tell if it was still alive. This reminded me of the peacock dream.

Wolf Spiders

I'm excited to write about this dream for two reasons: 1) it's the first dream I've remembered in weeks because I've had to take sleeping pills and can't remember anything and 2) I have visual aids. And boy do I love me some visual aids.

I dreamed that I woke up and my room was filled with "wolf spiders" which really looked like these giant crabs I saw at the Georgia Aquarium earlier this summer:



There were thousands of giant, prehistoric creatures and they rolled around roboticly, clawing their way across my floor, bed. There were so many of them that they ambled across the backs of others. One of them had gotten tangled up in a ball of red yarn but it didn't slow him down.

I thought they were wild looking and I liked watching them but I didn't like that they were on my bed. I keep a water gun next to my bed to shoot my cat when he claws the curtains in the middle of the night and meows incessantly. The water gun is in the shape of an orange dolphin. I decide to shoot the wolf spiders with this gun. They fall, immobilized off the side of the bed when they get hit.

Peacock Beak

I had a dream that I was in somebody's backyard with my siblings and cousins. There was a gigantic peacock walking around like he owned the place. Somebody said that if he put his feathers up, he was "showing off." And indeed, his feathers went up.

Later, I sat across from my cousin Laith and the peacock settled on the table between us. He was giant. He sat down and tilted his head up in the air, pointing his beak straight up. The beak was as thin as a needle. Laith reached over to try and point the head downward and the beak broke off in his hand. As he looked up, horrified, holding the needle-nosed beak, the peacock didn't move. He seemed to freeze in his position and become what looked like a stuffed bird.

ticks

i was in a room that was "my room" (it totally wasn't but in the dream i understood that it was my room). and my exboyfriend was there. the one from high school. and we were sitting on the floor talking. and then i look over and i see tiny tiny bugs crawling all over a blanket that's on the floor.
and i'm like "shit, john. get up. i think the floor is covered in bugs!" and i'm trying to look at them to see what kind of bugs they are. and then i decide to lift up the blanket to see where they are coming from and under the blanket are HUNDREDS of ticks.

Animals and Hitchhiking

Friday night: I dreamed that Sarah and I were on an adventure on some kind of wooden boat/obstacle course. We had to eat at Noodles and Company, and my brother joined us, but instead of buying lunch, he bought a "soccer ball." It was actually a multi-purpose ball; you could play football or hockey or baseball or whatever. It was plain white and about the size of a volleyball, but soft and completely versatile.

Later, Sarah and I were being chased by an elephant. It kept charging at us. We tried to hide behind thick wooden posts but the elephant broke them. The only way out was to hitchhike. But everybody on the road was either on a bicycle or in a little red wagon. Later, I was scared of this barking dog who kept leaping at us. Sarah looked at me, and at the same time we said out loud "Wow, Reem, for somebody who likes animals so much, you sure are afraid of all of them..."

The Bat Dream...Finally

I had an encounter with a bat in my apartment a couple of weeks ago, and I knew that I'd have the bat anxiety dream sooner or later...

I dreamed that my family and I (parents, siblings, a few cousins) were sitting around my current living room and a bat started flying around the room. Everybody seemed kind of bored by it. It would swoop by people's heads and they would duck slightly out of the way. I tried to remain calm/bored as well, but eventually I lost it a bit and started swatting it with a pillow. "This is what I keep telling you guys!" I yelled at my family. "This is how it was the last time this fucker was in here!"

I think my dad realized that I was somewhat distressed, so from his cross-legged sitting position on the floor, he reached up and slapped the bat. It was as if he was giving him a high five. Also, he was dressed in a plaid button down shirt and 70s-like pants. He was really skinny, even more than he is now. The bat fell to the floor and I covered it with one of my blue couch pillows.

About twenty minutes later, I lifted the pillow to see it. It was tiny, no bigger than my thumbnail, and kind of a beige color. "Oh," I said. "I guess it was just a moth."