Freud would have a Field Day with My Dreams

 Last night I had a really strange dream.

Let me say first, though, that strange dreams aren't unusual for me.

 I've dreamt about ghost mermaids.
And God Frogs.
And in one dream I was shot.

In ancient societies, people thought dreams signified divine intervention or interpretation.
In current society, people think dreams are insight into our unconscious mind.

 If that's the case, I don't want to know what the insight is into my dream last night:
I was trying to put on my contacts ... but they were gigantic. 
So, for some reason, I decided to put a gigantic contact into my nose.


Any weird dreams lately?   




 

Stress Dreams

I occasionally have stress dreams.

They usually involve water or tornadoes or snakes.

No Bueno.

However, last night I had a stress dream that went different than usual.

I was in a precarious raft in an awkward position with only one paddle....

in a dangerous lake.

It was scary. 

I was drifting to the more dangerous areas...

but, I was able to row with my one paddle and stay in the safer areas.

It clearly wasn't easy, 

but I felt like I had some control over the situation.

I think that's a good sign, don't you?

Do you have stress dreams?

What are yours like?

My 5 Dream Jobs

When I was younger, I wanted to be Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman.

And then as I grew older, I figured I either be a writer or a doctor.

Everyone now and then I get a wild hair and decide there's something I absolutely MUST do. 

Recently? I decided I wanted to train Annie to be a search and rescue dog so we could help out when children go missing or during tragedies...

And I really wanted a farm so I could grow fruit and vegetables and have lots of animals, including a dairy cow and chickens...

Which led me to ponder 5 jobs I'd enjoy:

1. Professional Traveler - I'd love to be paid to travel and write about it.

2. Island Caretaker - Pay me to live in your exotic island getaway

3. Book Reviewer - I'd love to read books all day and review them.

4. Electronic Gadget Reviewer - New technolgy, fun, fun, fun!

5. Best selling author - paid to live out your imagination on paper.

What about you?

What did you want to be?

What is your dream job?

My Dreams are not always Politically Correct

I don't think I slept well last night,

because I spent all night long running from a knife-wielding midget.

Trust me, that makes for a disturbing night and very stressful sleep.

Guess I have a new stress signal.  

Usually I'm running from tornadoes or snakes.
Or the one time I had a mermaid trying to steal my soul.

What about you?  

Stress indicators in your dreams?

Tell me what you want

I'll tell you what I want,
what I really, really want.



I want a purple streak in my hair
and to find my own special sense of flair.

I want a tiny tattoo in a hidden place
and I want to drape a canopy bed in lace.

I want to pack my bags and go live somewhere exotic
to watch sunsets and listen to waterfalls until I'm drunk and hypnotic.

I want to write and write and write until I find myself
and never end up boring and old on a dusty shelf.



Tell me what YOU want,
what you really, really want.

Mis Suenos Locos

I have wild dreams (suenos).

I've had dreams about God Frogs and mermaid ghosts.

So, I bought a dream interpretation book,
to see what kind of wackiness my subconscious was trying to tell me.





Apparently dreams are "symbols for self-understanding."

We'll see about that.

Some things might be better left un-understood.
Misunderstood?



The other night I had a dream where I received tickets while parked at a gas station.


A gas station.
Tickets.




I looked up "tickets" in the book.
Tickets are an opportunity for a new experience, an airline ticket, a movie, ticket, etc.

If you get a speeding ticket,
you might be going too fast
and need to take time out to relax
and unwind in your life.

But, I got a PARKING ticket. Maybe I'm going too SLOW?



Also, in the same dream, I ended up on a swingset, swinging.
So, I looked that up in the book.
Turns out I might need balance in my life if I'm swinging from emotion to thought.
meh, sure, maybe.




My 12 yr old told me he had a dream the other night where people were getting shot...
and where they were shot, their body turned into an octopus.





He's truly my son.

I'm so proud.

But, I looked up octopus in the dream book...and it says something about going in too many directions without control. And shooting is losing life force...

Yikes.

Maybe it's best not to read too much into dreams...
or perhaps just to interpret them in my own way.

But this is sure fun.

I won't even get into my dreams where tornadoes are chasing me...





Do you have any dream symbols you want me to look up in my book?

Ghost Mermaids want to Possess Your Soul

I'd planned to write a post full of deep meaningful thoughts on the significance of birthdays and how people react different ways to theirs.
Some people soak up extra attention, others don't want to celebrate at all.
It's interesting.

But then I decided that was too heavy,
and I thought I'd share a dream I had the other night instead.

I have wild dreams.

I dreamt I was with one of my sisters,
and we were interviewing for jobs at a camp in the country for children with special needs.
And while there, I found out Misty Dawn was the head director of the camp.
(I've never met her in real life, but she's the blogger who started Camera Critters, the only regular meme I participate in.)

And on the grounds of this camp was a huge swimming pool.
Where I was warned a ghost mermaid lived.
And if you were swimming in the shade,
the mermaid would try to suck your soul and take over your body.

For reals.

And I was slightly scared, but mainly fascinated by this.
And the woman who warned me about it, decided to demonstrate.
So, she swam into the shaded part of the pool,
and I saw the shape of a mermaid swim up.
The mermaid came up behind her, slithering really,
and put her hands over the woman's ears
and kind of slurped into her body.

It was weird.

And the woman looked like she was in a trance.
But then I moved her into the sunny part of the pool and she was ok.

Really weird, I know.

So, then I decided to Google "mermaid ghosts" last night while writing this post...
and I found this horrifying photo.

I'm sure it's fake.
But it freaked me out.

And that's when I decided to call it quits on this post and go to bed.

I'll leave you with this photo instead.



I took this photo at our local trade days.

I love the cool stuff they sell at these open-air markets.

A Special Message

I had a dream last night that was so bizarre.


Ok, maybe I should admit that all my dreams are bizarre.
My mind works in weird ways, my dreams are vivid and weird.
But you already knew I was little strange.

Anyway, in this dream, I knew I had to find this sand castle to rescue two princesses.




I found this castle easily, because the two princesses were really smart
and left a trail of lemon drops for me to follow.

Inside the sand castle were a bunch of weird alien frogs,
and they asked me,

To which I answered, "Of course, don't you?"

And they replied that they did not.

So, I sat down on a giant toadstool and shared my dreams with them.

And in return, they gave me the two princesses,
which was a good thing, because it was both of the princesses' BIRTHDAYS TODAY!!

Princess Jen has a handsome Prince Jeff Charming who let me know today was her special day.
So, it's a good thing I was able to rescue her and return her to her four little ones.

And, I figured out it was also Princess Shannon's birthday also!!
Thank goodness her two little ones didn't know she was missing!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Shannon!!

So, do me a favor and go leave them some birthday comment love.

Jen is at Buried with Children
and
Shannon is at The Nut House

Have any of you had any special birthday events you'll never forget?

My most memorable would be my 30th birthday (only a year and a half ago)
where my mom took me to California.
We stayed in Monterey, explored Carmel & Big Sur.
Saw mommy and baby seals,
and made me fall in love with that area.

Fizzing Thoughts

I've discovered a conundrum (and it's a good thing I have spell check).

I've determined how to access an extra bit of brain percentage
(do we really only use 10%? Nope, that's a myth, I just Googled it).


When this special moment occurs, where I am able to break free from regular thought,
my creativity bubbles over like pink champagne
and my mind froths with inspiration.




I come up with amazing story ideas, brilliant blog posts
and solutions to cure world hunger and spread peace around the globe.




You think I'm kidding?

I kid you not.

What's the secret?

Drugs? Alcohol? Deep meditation and transcendental transcendence?

Nope.

The secret lies in those last few minutes of consciousness before I fall asleep.
Those moments in my trance-like slumber state,
the house quiet, the fan whirring, the dog snoring,
the deep even breathes from my children
and the wind brushing tree branches against our windows...
this is my nirvana.
Just before I drift away to dreams of colored pens, blank paper and mountain retreats,
inspiration hits me.
Hard.
My mind suddenly hikes paths through a forest of ideas.




I meander through the trees, stopping to explore caves of plot and jump into fast-paced rivers of insiration, plunging eventually over a waterfall of deep ideas.





It's all so wonderful, so magical, so right, that I know there is no way I'll forget this by morning. I'm certain I'll awaken tomorrow with this immediately on my mind, ready to explore further. Potential rumbles like a thunderstorm ready to break loose.
The negatively-charged ions release, dancing into the air.

Briefly it occurs to me, like a glimpse of an eagle soaring overhead, that I should grab a notebok and jot down some of these thoughts and ideas...



Nah. It'll still be there come morning.
How could it not?

Then I burst through the forest into a field of flowers
and lie down among their colorful softness to fall asleep.




Happy. Replete with a whirlpool of visions swirling in my head. Ideas to explore come morning...

And then I wake up the next morning with a slight hint of pine, a wet leaf stuck to my foot and no memory of what I found in the forest, the caves, and the river.

I'm going to capture that cool mountain air and map those forest paths.
One day soon.
Maybe tonight.

God Frogs

Welcome SITStas!

Glad y'all stopped by.

My name is Rhea (pronounced RAY). I live in Texas.

I have two boys, whom I love to photograph, make fun of, and interview.

They inspire me.

I'm always looking for inspiration.

As a writer, I find it everywhere.

In my childhood,

in my present,

being a mother,

hearing something funny in the waiting room at a doctor's office,

and

in dreams.

I often have vivid dreams with colorful characters and amazing plots.

Which leads me to today's post.

A couple of years ao, I had a wild dream,

and I woke up in the middle of the night

with the images and thoughts from it flowing

from my hand to paper.

I wrote feverishly for an hour or so.

Then I went back to sleep.

The next morning, I read what I wrote,

but wasn't as impressed.

I started to make a story out of it,

but put it aside eventually and never returned.
Here's the gist of it.

A young boy in a village loses his father at a young age to the local gods. This village and the people in it are stuck in tradition, which involves them paying homage to the God Frogs, which fall from the sky on the same day every year. These sacred frogs are covered in brilliant colors and live only until the next Showering when the new batch of frogs land.



Brolie, the young boy, has to decide, as he comes of age, whether he wants to commit to and join the Holy Order that tends to the God Frogs, or to venture away from his village and its traditions to explore life. I think there was more to it, but that's all I remember right now.

I didn't get much further, but one day I might return to this story.

It was a bizarre dream, leading to a strange story.

I just love the term God Frogs though.

It's fun to say.

Weird to imagine.

As a child I was called Rheafrog.

Weird, right?

I looked up frogs in a dream dictionary.
Apparently they represent positive omens,

Positive transformation,

happiness

symbolize the unconscious

and can even be sexual symbols,

representing male genitals.

Ummm, yuck on the last one.

Sorry to leave you with that image!

Can't catch a break, even in my dreams.

I had a dream the other night where I was running through a warehouse...a scary, abandoned warehouse full of people shooting at each other. I was caught in the middle of gang warfare of some sort. I remember trying to hide behind walls as bullets whizzed past and climbing the rafters to get out of the line of fire. It was a stressful dream, so say the least.

And, I ended up getting shot. Don't worry, not fatally, but a leg wound. I kept waiting for my husband to save me but I couldn't find him. I think I had to save myself. Wonder what that means? Freud would have a field day.

BTW, I don't like gang movies or violent movies, so this dream was pretty strange.

It reminds me of something that I did back in high school though. Being a little bit of a prankster (as long as it didn't involve rattlesnakes!), I was with my friend and we had just parked in the driveway of my family's house, a nice, safe neighborhood in Austin. We got out of the car, carrying various things, can't remember what, and were walking inside, when all of the blue, I yelled, "Drive by shooting!" and dropped to the ground.

My poor friend dropped everything she was carrying and dropped to the ground also. I was very impressed with her reflexes. I think she was pretty irritated with my little joke, but it was fun at the time (and she laughed about it later, a very good sport). I don't usually go around pulling stuff like that, not sure why I did, now that I think about it.

This has all been rather random, but I shared a dream and a memory, so that's something, right? I read somewhere that chocolate before bed can cause night terrors...or very interesting dreams.