Bad Dream 148 -- In Baltimore with Dad

In my dream, I'm in Baltimore with my Dad.  He has some kind of appointment downtown -- but I don't know what it's about.  Further, it seems that my presence at the appointment is not necessary and may, in fact, be prohibited by the subject of the meeting.  All I know is that he will be going over "there" and I will be free to wander around the city.  Unlike the last several meetings where I went someplace with Dad, I'm not concerned about his welfare or ability to navigate the city.

So I'm free to roam around Baltimore wherever I wish.  I wander around the downtown part of the city -- lots of tall buildings, most of which look a lot alike.  (In my dream as was the case when I lived in Maryland, I didn't know the city all that well.  I knew a few landmarks, but that was about it.)

I sense that I've lost track of time and that Dad's appointment -- whatever and wherever it was -- might well be over.  And it then strikes me that we didn't set up a rendezvous location or a time by which we could get back together.  It's not given to me in the dream that Dad has the car keys, but I do know that I won't be able to get home until and unless I link up with him in downtown Baltimore.  And I don't know when or where that could take place.  

I continue to wander from block to block, hoping that I would recognize something that would help me get my bearings -- and from that possibly figure out where Dad might be.  And I have no luck with any of that. 

I'm starting to feel hungry and decide that getting something to eat might somehow stabilize the situation.  At least getting food might help me think more clearly.  I wander into the ground floor of a large office building that has a coffee shop sort of place.  But the only things they have to eat are sweet pastries -- a nice array of them, but not a solid source of protein.  

I look through the glass display case and pick out the pastry that looks least lethal and ask for one and pay for it.  The lady behind the counter walks to the back of the shop to retrieve my order and comes back to the front with a plate carrying two or three pastries that look nothing like what I ordered.  I'm cheesed off at her and the store in general, but I'm more concerned about finding Dad than I am about getting my pastry order squared away.  If I can't link up with him, I have no idea how I will get home.  I decide to keep the pastries she handed me along with the nice-looking plate on which they were served.  (I'm sure she expected to get the plate back so she could wash it and reuse it.  But I will keep the plate to "punish" her.  Get even.)

I turn to leave the shop, but as I walk towards the door, Dad walks in.  And he looks terrific.  He's got this "movie star" glow about him, and he looks like he probably looked when he was 40 years old or thereabouts.

Needless to say, I'm delighted and relieved to see him, but he's taking it all in stride and walking past me as if he's got a task to do before he greets me.  

I wake up.

Bad Dream 147: A Couple of Oddities

 By this time, my Dream Analysis Procedure is pretty much routine: scribble a few notes when I awake from the dream, go back to sleep, get up and power up my Blogspot and write out what I wrote and what I remember and whatever elaborations seem appropriate.  But recently, there were two unrelated(?) dream segments that didn't fit this standard pattern.

SNAP!

(I had made arrangements to meet my sister in Havre de Grace at 8:00 one morning.  And given the time it takes to get fully awake, dressed, fed, car packed, and drive to HdG, I set an alarm the night before to 4:00.  It seemed a bit early, but I wanted to be in HdG early to do a bit of birding. This is the dream I had that next morning.)

In my dream, I am standing in front of a four-burner gas stove that has the two burners on the left lit.  No pots, pans, or skillets there, mind you, just the nice blue flame.  

I go to light a third burner -- the one in the back on the right -- by turning on the gas and listening for the "tik/tik/tik" of the igniter.  As sometimes happens, the burner didn't "catch" immediately, but this time, it seemed unusually long before igniting.  I could hear the gas hissing, but no flame.  

Just as I started to get concerned about too much un-ignited gas in the room, I heard a loud SNAP!! and saw a bright yellow flame roughly 10 inches above the burner tapering slightly at the top and bottom.  Flame maybe 15 or 17 inches tall.  Those two sensations woke me up immediately -- not just groggy awake but wide awake just like that.  

I looked at my bedside clock, which read 3:57AM -- three minutes before the alarm was set to go off.  This allowed me to cancel the 4:00AM alarm, so that Deb didn't have to be awakened by the loud alarm.  

How thoughtful!

Swallowing Screws  

I'm writing up this little part of a larger dream because it's all I can remember AND that because I'm pretty sure that it's been an element of a number of other dreams I've had recently.  

In the course of other things happening in the dream (which, as mentioned above, I don't recall -- but the dream was rather busy and vivid as many of my recent dreams have been), I find that I have several wood screws in the palm of my hand.  Maybe 3 or 4.  They're all identical, all shiny as if they just came from the hardware store.  I estimate they were #10 screws at roughly 1-1/4 inches long.  

Without thinking much about it, I pop one or two into my mouth and swallow them.  This activity doesn't interrupt the flow of the rest of the dream.  No one else in the dream notices what I'm doing.  There is no pain or any discomfort resulting from this activity.  Shortly after this, I begin to wonder what those screws will do to my interior.  I think about my esophagus, my stomach, and my intestines.  Then, knowing that my body won't digest the screws, I think a little farther along in the digestive process...  It occurs to me that the screws might well do serious damage to some soft tissue along the digestive way.  But it's more an academic concern than a concern for my health.  I think that I may have done this before, and that I might be building up a supply of wood screws in my stomach.

As mentioned above, I feel that this interlude in the middle of a dream is something that has happened to me before in several other dreams.