The Time I Was an Undercover Operative on a Goat Farm

Last night I dreamt that I was part of an elite military intelligence unit in the late 1970s. I was a big, bad-ass woman, but I still didn't do actual combat because it was the 1970s. However, I had war stories from when I'd helped a general in a major battle in 1972, which was when I was noticed and recommended for the special unit.

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Our unit was undercover, investigating this guy whom we suspected of filming pornography with his two pre-teen daughters. He liked to go out to parks and stuff to film, bringing his camera and his pretty blond girls with him. Our cover was that we were goat herders. So we'd take these goats out to this beautiful park with rolling green hills and spy on this dude while pretending to take care of the goats. The target was really sneaky, though, and we could never actually get evidence on him.

OMG, baby goats are so adorable! Source.

His daughters liked playing with the little goat kids, though. I had a long conversation with a new operative about how human kids just can't resist adorable goat kids. So that helped us get closer to our target.

Seriously, they are the freaking cutest! Source.

Anyway, some of the goat kids were really tiny and sickly, and one night one of them died, and I was devastated. There was this other tiny goat the size of a chihuahua that I'd carry around in my arms because it was orphaned or something. Then one day I was sitting on the couch and telling war stories. When I finally got up, I realized that the goat was not in my lap anymore. I checked among the blankets and behind the couch cushions--terrified that I'd squished my little charge--but there was no impossibly tiny baby goat.

I am slain. Source.

I really hoped that the little guy had just gotten up to go to the bathroom without my noticing. (Because this was a housetrained baby goat.) I wandered through the hallway of our house/secret headquarters calling for him. Maybe he was stolen by the evil pervert for reasons! And then I woke up.

The Time I Found a Latina Lover and Fought a Witch to Save My Town

Last night I dreamt that an IRL friend and I started to take our relationship to the next level, romantically speaking. Meanwhile, we lived in a small mountain town that was under attack by a powerful witch. She had buried several other towns in avalanches and landslides, and she was moving towards our town.

Meanwhile, my more-than friend introduced me to a gorgeous Latina woman and it was no contest. I had to have her. My more-than friend was sad but wanted to support my choices. We didn't have time to fight about it anyway because the witch took down half the mountain near the mountain where we lived, causing a massive earthquake. It destabilized the rail bridge that was now our only way in and out of the town. If the witch was going to hit anything next, she was going to hit that bridge.

That night, my friend and I rushed to the home of my IRL former landlady, who in this dream was a healer and minor witch. We needed some protective charms and materials for spells to use against the witch, but the witch whipped up a powerful thunderstorm—nearly strong enough to produce tornadoes. The wind knocked us over when we stood up, so we scrambled up the slick, wet rocks on the path to the healers house on all fours while the wind howled and wrapped our hair around our eyes.

The storm was so loud that the healer didn't hear our knocks and screams at the door for a while. When she finally did, she said she was scared of the witch and, while she was willing to provide us with the herbs and charms we needed, she did not want to let us in her house. We spent a miserable night under a makeshift tent that we'd built with her backyard clothesline and the sheets she had forgotten to take in after the storm started.

Early the next morning, my friend and I made our way to the train bridge. We began to cross, casting protection spells as we went. We'd only gotten a few meters out when the witch, standing on a ledge across the valley, started to cast great shock waves towards the bridge. I cast my feeble magic back, repelling her just enough to keep the bridge standing, though it shook and the gravel below our feet shifted. We were halfway across when a train appeared, coming towards us, and my friend and I hand to hang onto the side supports of the bridge for dear life as the train swept past mere feet from us.

We resumed our slow creep across the bridge, fighting mightily against the witch as we approached her position on the other side. Despite our best efforts, the bridge crumbled away behind us. We ran the last few hundred feet to the other side. The witch had disappeared behind the trees, but she was still close. We gathered ourselves for what we realized would probably be a deadly confrontation, and then I woke up.

The Time My Pills Got Dirty and It Was NOT OKAY, Also I Dreamed about The OC

Last night I dreamt that my brother and I were accepted as honorary members of an extended Mexican/Filipino family that lived in the United States. (In this dream, I did not speak Spanish or even a Filipino language but okay.) One of the other members of this family was my friend Vero who is not Mexican or Filipino IRL, and everyone else were people that I feel like I've seen before but don't actually know. There might have been some students. It was confusing. This was a really big extended family.

Picture this, but with more Filipinos. Source.

So anyway my brother and I spent a lot of time hanging out with our new Mexican abuela at her relatively large house with a basement, and she taught us some spells and then we all sat around a table with the huge family and ate chicken tacos out of a pot while holding the tortillas in our hands. All this time, I tried really hard not to think about how dirty the floor was, how the dirt had just kind of been shoved into the corners with Fabuloso.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun and there were guitars and plenty of off-key throat singing. Then my brother and I realized that we couldn't get home that night because of a storm or something, so we had to spend the night at our abuela's house on a mattress. So we had some sheets that were too big for the mattress on the mattress and the mattress was on the floor in the family room and my brother and I shared the mattress and for some reason even though I was sharing the mattress with my brother and sleeping in a room with no door and the house was full of people, I decided to sleep in my underwear like I usually do IRL.

And then, while sleeping at the abuela's house, I dreamt this very intricate dream about the TV show The OC, except there were witches and zombies and all the houses in Newport Beach were black or other somber colors, so Ryan was trying to keep Marissa from summoning demons and Julie was this high priestess and it was all very exciting.

There actually was a one-off summer series called The Gates that was like an occult The OC, but it wasn't nearly as dark as this dream-within-a-dream version I just had. Source.

Anyway, the next morning one of the late-thirties Filipino men woke up before I did and came up the stairs from the basement, and the too-big sheet had slipped off me and I was wearing something completely see-through, so I got off the mattress and tried to hide behind the bed, but that didn't help much since the mattress was on the floor.

I eventually found most, but not all, of my clothes, as the rest of the house woke up. Then I went in the bathroom to take my pills. I suddenly realized the house, being old, only had one bathroom. So I was measuring out my pills but someone knocked on the door and I dropped my pills on the little blue-striped bathmat. I hurriedly picked up the pills. This required me to get close to the bathmat, so I could see all the hairs and specks and strange things caught in the matted-down fibers of the bathmat. I straightened up and looked at my pills. There were hairs (like, pubic hairs) and strange specks on my pills! And a few strange dots that looked almost like pills but were probably cardstock punch-outs from drug-store packaging had also come up with my pills. My heart started to beat faster.

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The person knocked on the door again, so I left the bathroom. What do I do? I tried to brush off the pills but only succeeded in sending a few of the smaller ones back to the floor, which initiated another frantic search. Do I wash them off in the sink? No, some of them are really small. They might dissolve or go down the drain. Do I just take them? Uggggggh, germs, pubes, probably-dry-skin-bits. Do I throw them all out and get new pills? No, that would be throwing out like $15. I was still pained with indecision when I woke up.

The Time I Split into Two People

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Last night I dreamt that I was in college and looking for housing, so I moved into this big Victorian house that was well-kept but had several people living in it. Some of the people might have been my cousins (but not my IRL cousins). Anyway, the house was nice, but they were out of beds, so one of the nice guy roommates set me up with some couch cushions spread out on the floor with sheets and blankets in the pink-overload female wing of the house.

Then I split into two people. One got the red in my hair and the other got the brown in my hair, and redhead could do magic and was a bit of a wild-child. The brunette was very serious and immediately started flirting with a handsome rich man, but she was nervous to take it very far because of the whole just-split-into-two-people thing. The redhead started flirting with one of the male roommates, who I really hope was not one of the cousins.

The next day, I was back as one person with the memories of both halves, and I asked my female roommates, who turned out to be witches, for help. The wise one said that I had chimerism and that something-magic-something was making me split into the two sisters I was meant to be in the womb.

That was fine and then I moved into the old office of a retired professor (who was the teacher I took over for IRL). The office was really musty and gross and smelled like feces because the old professor had apparently pooped in jars in his office rather than using the public restrooms, so the dream had a boring cleaning interlude. (I dreamed about cleaning! Ugh!)

Then I split again and ordered the redhead to keep cleaning while the brunette went to class. So brunette me started walking to class when the handsome rich man appeared and asked about my major. I explained that I already had my degrees that I was back as an undergrad for mumble-mumble-reasons, and that I was heading to Book of Mormon class, which I was thoroughly uninterested in, seeing as it was a freshman class I'd taken years before. "So skip it," Handsome rich man said, taking my hand and pulled me behind a tree and started kissing me.

Source.

The dream was just getting interesting when wise witch roommate cut in and said we needed to be more discreet with our kissing on BYU campus. (HAHAHA, IRONY!) She led us over to the outside wall of a building and pressed a secret button. Part of the wall swung back and revealed a basement bar of some sort, with cool air and low blue and purple lights. Handsome rich man disappeared, which was fine because the bartender was kind of hot in a hirsute looks-like-my-high-school-history-teacher way. He asked if I wanted a cigarette and I said yes and then I smoked it and realized that my brunette half was a seasoned occasional smoker, somehow.

However, my wise witch roommate had not closed the secret door behind us, so then a bunch of students started coming in and exclaiming, "I knew there was a secret bar somewhere on campus!" but I just wanted them to go away and leave me to my hairy bartender and then I woke up.

The Time I Watched My Friend Die during the Civil War

Last night I dreamt that I was a servant or slave or something to a family in the early 1860s. The family had some land, but their house wasn't like Tara at all. It was poky and dark, with only two bedrooms for the family, one bedroom for the housekeeper, and a few attic rooms for the servants.

My real-life friend was a seventeen-year-old daughter of the house, and kind of a tomboy. Her father wanted her married off and out of the house as soon as possible, so he dressed her up in some ill-fitting crinolined disaster and introduced her to his friend, a large, drunken, bearded lout—a classic wife-beating villain, basically.

Sort of like this guy, but meaner-looking.

She instantly convinced herself she was in love, and they married. The wedding party was planned for several days, so all her little brothers and sisters and all the servants, including the housekeeper, had to sleep on the floor up in the attic on thin quilts to accommodate the groom and his guests.

After the wedding, however, the groom barely looked at her, much less touched her or spoke to her. He was busy laughing and drinking long into the night with his friends. My friend was devastated. She tried to dress up pretty to get his attention, but she just looked pathetic in her ill-fitting patterned gown with stringy blond hair hanging limp around her rough, red face.

The next night, there was a storm, or maybe a battle, or possibly a battle and a storm. Also, one of the other slaves/servants and some of the children were ill. Everyone was huddled in the drawing room on the second floor. The groom, again, took no notice of his bride.

Something happened and then I was the bride. I went back up to the attic with my brothers, sisters, and servants, twirled in my blue-flowered dress, and collapsed in a heap, sobbing. The servant helped me get ready for bed, which was a corner of attic floor. We could hear music and drunken laughter through the floorboards.

Then I was the slave/servant again. "Look, she's getting worse," I said, dabbing a cool compress on a sick child's forehead.

"You'd better come over here," said the housekeeper, pointing to the bride. "She's dying."

I rushed over. The bride's face had purple shadows in it. She coughed, and it sounded like a rattle. "Tell my husband I'm sorry for offending him," she whispered. "Tell him I love him!" She breathed her last breath, and then I woke up.

The Time I Watched Tsunamis Roll In But Couldn't Find the Cat

Last night I dreamt that it was a dark and stormy night. My roommate and I were down in the basement but the basement was leaking, so we took the cat up to the small skylight/sunroom on the roof. He immediately disappeared among the boxes and old toys that the house owners store up there.

When we got to the top of the steep stair-ladder, two things happened. Dawn started to break, so I could see that my house was a few streets away from the ocean, and the rain went from heavy to torrential.

We heard a rumbling, and the ocean drew back. Next a huge wave rose above the roof level of our house and broke a few houses away from us. The remains of the wave washed up the street, coming just to my waist height outside the sunroom, and leaking a bit in the windows. My roommate and I stared at each other with wide eyes. A larger wave broke even closer to the house and washed up at the middle of the windows. Water poured in around the windows, over the benches, and down the stairwell.

Source.

"If the next wave breaks on this skylight," I yelled to my roommate, "it'll shatter the windows!"

"Should we go down, then?" my roommate yelled back, holding onto the railing next to the stairwell.

"I don't know! Maybe we're safer up here. Maybe the owner and her family should come up here with us."

Another wave obscured the horizon. "Oh, God, help us!" I prayed. "And where's the cat?" I panicked about the cat as the wave cast its shadow over the house, and then I woke up.

The Time Fergie Led An Ironic Christmas Program in My Mystic Falls Church

Last night I dreamt that I was on the planning committee for the church multiregional Christmas program. (I'm actually on the committee organizing the church multiregional New Year's celebration, but my sleeping brain can't get everything right.) Very suddenly, as happened yesterday evening with the New Year's celebration, we were informed that we weren't doing a multiregional Christmas program after all. Our local units would have to do their own Christmas programs.

I searched for "Fergie church" and only found pictures of the former Duchess of York. Anyway, this is closer to what Fergie was wearing in my dream. Source.

I'm not that great at organizing and I don't know a ton about music, who I turned to my Sister Fergie to help plan the last-minute program. She auditioned some singers from the area, but they all generally sucked. So instead of putting on a weak program in which the choir quietly mumbled "Away in a Manger" and other nonoffensive hymns and then shuffled back to their seats, Sister Fergie proposed that we be extra hipster and put on an ironically bad Christmas program. That is, she wanted our choir, with me and other recruits, to belt out "O Holy Night" and "He Is Worthy" with as much gusto as we usually reserved for a whole year of nonoffensive living.

The day of the Christmas program came. It was rousing. Half the audience was in the choir, and we filled the extra large conference building with our ever-so-slightly disharmonious singing. Next, Sister Fergie asked the regular choir to sit down, and members of every high school choir in the area—which was some, but not all, of about eight choirs—put on their high school choir robes and took up the choir seats in blocks of dark green, purple, cardinal red, royal blue, and lots of white (because a couple of the choirs had all the girls wear white robes). The choir seating behind the pulpit conveniently expanded upward and backward as things do in dreams. I nodded to my friend, and we ran up to join the high schoolers wearing cardinal red because we were wearing raspberry and it's totally almost the same color. Having an ironic pass to enjoy yourself really is awesome.The accompanists began the prelude, and suddenly we were surrounded by several hundred high schoolers belting a slightly altered version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" because Jesus eclipsed their hearts. "Turn around, save me!" they sang.

Apparently there's a church choir in the music video. Who knew? Apparently my brain, from back when that literal music video was viral. I hate the term viral. Source.

At the end of the song, the organist played a few minor chords, and most of the high school choir sank back into the choir seats, too weak to move and gradually falling asleep. The audience silently collected their things and filed out. "What's going on?" I asked Sister Fergie and the suspiciously handsome high school teacher with whom she was whispering gravely.

"Most of these high school students are vampires," the overly good-looking high school teacher answered, because apparently we were in Mystic Falls. (TVD season 5 premieres tonight and I'll have to wait for Hulu because my thrift-store TV is too old to process digital airwave broadcasts and I'm too stingy to pay $55 for a converter box.) "Uh, hello?" said hunky high school teacher, "As I was saying, we used a special frequency of sound from the organ to put these vampires in a dream state. We're going to stake them now, or at least inject them with vervain and stick them in a tomb for our great-grandkids to deal with."

"What? Why?" I exclaimed. "Have any of these kids even killed anyone? I mean, maybe a couple people each, but they're generally good kids." We were debating the rights of vampiric Americans when I woke up.