A Sinister Dream

Dream

Sometimes when I oversleep I have these sinister dreams.
This morning my dream started out pleasantly, as they often do.
I was out in my backyard tending to my garden. I was in a good mood and feeling quite lovely. Then I heard someone coming through the house. A voice inside me said, “That’s not who you think it is, hide.” And I mentally argued back, “That’s ridiculous, who else could it be.”

Next thing I know this short Hispanic woman dragging a young child bursts into my back yard. I’m startled so I yell out, “Who are you? What are you doing in my yard? How did you get in?”

She says in broken English that the front door was unlocked. I say it wasn’t unlocked. I’m angry. In real life I have brick walls surrounding my yard, but in the dream there is just a redwood fence between me and the next house. Somehow she gets behind me and manages to pull some boards loose and squeeze into the next yard pulling the kid behind her. But for now they are trapped by the neighbor’s fence. So I figure I’ll call the police.
So I run into the house and grab the phone but it’s dead. So I grab my cell phone.

I dial 911 and I hear two voices on the line. One is the faint voice of my mother (who is dead in real life) and the voice of a man. With everyone talking at once I can’t understand anyone. I’m not even sure they can hear me. So I hang up and try again. Again I hear two voices. My mom’s is even fainter, but the man’s voice sounds like a sinister person, not like the police at all, so I hang up.

Part 2
In the next part of the dream I am on the front porch with my 10 year old daughter. We are leaving to find a safe place. I am locking the door. Then I notice a bag of belongings on the porch. Thinking they must belong to the woman that broke in, I unlock the door again to toss the bag inside and save it for the police. But when I swing the door inward, I can see a hole where someone broke through to undo the dead bolt and door lock, and then a wooden panel from the center of the door falls out, leaving a big hole, as if someone had sawn around it. Uncertain as to how to cover the hole before we leave, I step back inside while my daughter waits on the porch. I glance around for some wood to cover the hole. Realizing my mistake I yank open the front door and yell at my daughter to get inside. But she is already gone.

Frantically I glance around and spot that woman again. I grab her by the fabric of her neckline. I am yelling in her face, ‘Where is my daughter.” She said , “_______ had her.” (Unfortunately I can’t remember the name now.So I yell, “Show me where he is.”
She takes me to a nearby back yard that looks like someone has been camping in it. Right when we get there, two men come around the corner of the house. One of the men is tied or handcuffed by the wrist to my daughter. I am livid.

We are yelling back and forth. Somehow I grab this cutting tool out of the guy’s hand. I am trying to cut the ties that hold my daughter to the man. I get her free and we start to run. I glance back and see one of them has found a gun. But we run on anyway.

Part 3
I’m in a motel room. I have my daughter with me, but now I have my other daughter too. And she’s just a toddler. We are holed up in this room without any money or food and my youngest daughter asks for a cookie. I see one in our little bag of stuff. A round white cookie so I give it to her.

Then it is night and we are in a yard. I see a police car cruising the neighborhood. We yell and wave until it stops. I’m telling the policewoman the whole story. I show her the weapon. She takes it to study it and puts it in her pocket. “We need that”, I say, “It’s our only protection.” She is clearly not going to give it back. She drives off without doing anything.

Part 4
I am inside my apartment again. I am by the front door. I see someone has pinned a bunch of photos and drawings to it. One says, “Thanks for the chocolate milk.” But the rest are just ugly drawings of me. I can’t remember much of those. And then I finally wake up.

Social Networking Sites

Marianne working on a bow at a Paleoplanet gathering.


Here is it Friday morning already. This week just flew by. I've been busy honing my social networking skills. I'm now on Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Linkedin, Hubpages, and half a dozen other ones. A person with no life could literally spend every waking moment doing online networking. I have to pry myself away from the computer with a tire iron.

Yesterday I heard a random blurb on TV that the average person sits for over 8 hours a day. I probably sit even more than that between the Internet, creating arts and crafts, eating, watching TV, and riding in a car/bus/train. I totally wish I had a treadmill hooked to my computer monitor. 'No walkie, no talkie.'

So every day I do gardening, hooping, juggling, and some dancing. The dancing is more like stretching because I have so little space to move in where someone isn't gawking at me. I've just started another monthly archery gathering, so now we'll have two a month and that should help with the physical end of things. If nothing else I get exercise walking to and from the truck to the archery range. Then if I shoot arrows I get a lot more walking in retrieving all those arrows. Most of them land on the hay bales nowadays, so I don't have to hunt and fetch quite as much as I used to.

Library Hour Cutbacks

I was off to the library this morning at 9 AM when I remembered they don't open until 11 AM on Mon. through Thurs. and noon on Friday and Sat. With all the California budget woes, I'm amazed we have libraries at all. It just seems wrong to cut something that increases the education of the populace. Libraries don't just have books, but computers for those that can't afford their own, videos, community meetings, unemployment resources, tax forms, and many other things that keep a city working smoothly. I'm sure the staff at libraries fights all the time to keep their branches open.

I've always loved libraries. It was one of the more pleasant things I got to do with my father. Did you know military bases have libraries? In high school I worked at my library. Years later after I had children, I volunteered at the Cal Poly SLO library for a while. If you want your kids to frequent libaries, set a good example by going to libraries.

Dinner and a Sick Cat

Since I'm doing my best to dance each day or at least stretch so I can dance, I just did a round of stretching and footwork. I am very stiff from a weekend of hiking, juggling, altatl dart throwing, and hauling bins, chairs, tables, and food. Basically I was useless today. I did have to run to the post office to mail an Etsy order to a customer. And later we went to the woodworking store and a grocery store. But once I got home I sat at my computer, too stiff and tired to move. I made myself get up and stretch. I should have cleaned the aquarium filter. Ah well. It's after 9 and dinner still isn't ready. I asked my boyfriend if we'd be eating soon and all he said was, "I just made meat." But he didn't get up to cut the meat or get plates or anything. I don't want to offend him by getting my own dinner. I ate some honey roasted peanuts to tide me over. He's tired too. For all I know he fell asleep on the couch.

Our cat has been sick today too. He doesn't want to eat. He just lays about looking lethargic. We may have to go to the vet if he's not perky by morning.

Caption: The fish I made in the crochet contest.

Seek the Light

I just had a very strange and epic dream this morning. I won't tell the whole dream, because it was quite long, but rather the ending.

At the end of the dream, I was wearing brown robes. My hair was long. I was younger and thinner than I am now. I was carrying a stave made of wood. The top had a carved wooden ornament with four lathed spiral finials. The staff was taller than me by about 2 feet. I'll post a photo of a drawing of it. I think inside the ornate top there was a mirror, or a light, or stained glass. As I was holding the staff I was also clutching 3 long sticks of incense.
The world was a crowded place. Many people were meandering around, so I joined the first parade of people that went by. They were shouting out random things to the crowd. They were all dressed in brown too. When no one else was yelling anything I would yell out "Seek the Light."

There was a man marching with us with medium long curly brown hair and kind eyes, so we took to standing somewhat near each other and watching each other. At one point every time I spoke something out loud, he would say the very same thing at the very same time. We both seemed quite amused at this.

Eventually we lost site of each other and the parade meandered away from me and after walking alone a bit I wound up in another parade. It was still light out. I'm still randomly calling out 'Seek the light'. Then I realize the new parade is wandering into a building. Too late I realize they are all funneling into a church service. Knowing that is wrong somehow, I turn to go. In the entryway there are all kinds of rusty statues. One is of Jesus on the cross. That seems really creepy to me, but there was also a sculpture of a bunch of giant forks all welded together at the base. I wondered what that could possibly mean.

As I left the building I soon passed a group of people preaching to the crowd. One man shouted out, "Don't spend money on root canals, spend it on feeding the poor."

I thought what an odd thing to say, for what good is it if you feed the poor only to die of a tooth infection. I could see forgoing pleasure to feed the poor, but you have to take care of your own health first, otherwise you won't live long to help others.

So I walked on. I passed this older man who was standing there in black or dark robes. As I walked up to him my skirt elastic gave out and it fell down. Quite mortified I was trying to pull it back up, though I still had a slip on under it. This man is watching me and says, "What is that you are holding." So I look at the staff and the incense I am clutching.
With the other hand I'm still trying to fix my clothes. At that point I woke up and realized I was trying to pull my blanket back up though I was still covered with the sheet.

Today's Highligts

So much happened at the archery range today I can't cover it all. So I'll just do the highlights.

1. Found part of a dead snake.
2. Saw a gopher nibbling on the end of Ken's bow stave.
3. Hula hooped with a pregnant lady and a 10 year old boy.
4. Missed all but 2 altalt shots.
5. Watched Alex start a primitive fire.
6. Saw a man walking 3 beautiful whippets.
7. Attempted to juggle five balls while filming a video of myself.
8. Saw Alex shatter an atlatl dart which then flew in two directions.
9. Saw Mike's new bow bench and David's new chainmail.
10. Saw Ken building some sort of forge for knives.

I have photos to upload but that's a job for another day.

And The Archery Field Was Overrun

I was right about ready to turn off my computer and crawl into bed when I remember my committment to do this daily journaling. Granted it's almost 1 AM it's close enough.

Today when we got to the archery range, there was a huge archery tournament going on. There were more cars than parking spaces and they were parked all over the grass. The grass is the area our organizer had paid the city a fee to reserve for us for our knitting, juggling,& archery event. She got there around 9 AM to set up and there was just no way we'd be able to use the area and move all those cars. And even if we could get them to leave the grass, there'd be no parking spaces for all the knitters, jugglers and so forth to park from our group.

And the only reason I got my boyfriend to drive me there was so he could do archery. The archery that wasn't going to happen now. Because the club of archers had rented the entire range.

Our leader had driven down the horseshoe shaped narrow road and found us a spot in another part of the park near restrooms. She did the best she could but there was only parallel parking and some of the spinners had to lug their spinning wheels a very far way.

But once we got all settled we managed to have a very good time anyway. We had contests, and a raffle and lots of eating and hooping. I juggled but no one else did. I guess the jugglers took their party elsewhere, maybe to the park in Irvine.

I won some yarn and stitch markers in the raffle.

My friend is going to try to get a refund for the reserved spot we got kicked out of. No way she should have to pay if she couldn't use that spot.

About Dance, Juggling, Atlatls, Knitting and Hooping

My newest project is taking a photo of myself dancing every day. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think most of the photos are just going to be me in my backyard, because it's been years since I danced in public anymore, mostly because it's just not that fun to dance when I'm overweight and self-concious.

I'm getting ready for 2 events this weekend. The first is at El Dorado Regional Park. It's a combination of World Juggling Day and World Knit in Public Day. It's at an archery range so I'll take my bow too. If we have to pay $8.00 to park inside the park, I want to get my money's worth.

Then on Sunday is our monthly Paleoplanet bowmaker's gathering. And it's an atlatl competition as well, so I'm going to take my archery stuff, my crating gear and my newly finished darts. I haven't made an atlatl yet but I'm pretty sure someone there will let me borrow one. I just hope I have enough energy to make it through the weekend. I was so tired today I had to lay down and take a nap, and I hate napping because it makes me feel like a little old lady.

I guess we are going to try to be there at 9 AM tomorrow, even though it starts at 10. But we have heavy gear and need a good parking space. We are taking watermelon and snacks too. And my hula hoops. One way or another I'm getting some exercise tomorrow.