Monthly Archives: September 2013

Korean Air to Paris

Cast of Characters:

  • Mom – My mother, who lives in Waterloo, WI.
  • Robin – My older sister, who lives in Chicago, IL.
  • Chrissy from Master Chef – The chef/mom from Philadelphia on the most recent season of Master Chef.

Historical context:

  • Reoccurring dream – being late for a flight!
  • Dad and I are flying Korean Air to Bangkok next month.  I flew Korean Air from Bangkok to Chicago in 2008.
  • Mom mentors international university students.
  • I went to Paris as a high school student in 1995.
  • I am a reality TV junkie and watched the most recent version of Master Chef on Fox.
  • I studied in Bonn, Germany, in 1999.

Last Sunday’s dream:

Sorry guys, I’m a bit behind on my posts. 😦

So last Sunday night, I had a typical anxiety dream, including being late for a flight.  Mom and I were going to be accompanying a group of high school students on a trip to Paris.  We were very late for our flight that we were taking from some random place in the US.  Our airline was Korean Air.  I knew that I was going to miss the flight, so I sent Mom ahead to the airport by herself.  She met the students at the airport, and they all made it onto the flight and flew to Paris.  I promised that I’d be able to make the flight the next day.

So the next day, I was also running dreadfully late for my Korean Air flight to Paris.  I was immediately transported from some dark room where I was packing to a fountain in the middle of a city.  This was the fountain from the middle of Kaiserplatz in Bonn, Germany, though, in my dream, it was somewhere in the US.  Robin was playing in the fountain, and I begged her to stop, as I needed to get to the airport.  I don’t know why I wanted her to get out of the fountain, as she was not coming to the airport with me.  All I knew is that she had to get out of the fountain before I could go to the airport.

All of a sudden, Chrissy from Master Chef showed up driving a black Town Car, and told me she’d take me to the airport.  She drove me to the airport, and drove me to some back alley at the airport, from where she thought I could bypass the lines and still be able to catch my flight.  I went up a half a story of stairs and found the door into the airport locked.  I pleaded with Chrissy, who was now outside the car, leaning against the front, and smoking, asking her to call Korean Air to tell them I was there and to hold the flight.  She said that there was nothing she could do.  Flash to me going through security clearance at the airport, with about 12 minutes until my flight left.

The end.

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Chinese Flight Attendants in my Pool!

Cast of Characters:

  • Kristiyan – The 20-year-old, Bulgarian lifeguard at my pool in Arlington, VA, this summer.  He’ s like my little Bulgarian brother from another mother.
  • Random Air China flight attendant
  • Random guy
  • Me

Historical context:

  • My pool closed for the season on September 2.  On September 3, I looked down at the pool from my balcony and saw that they had already removed all of the lounge chairs from the patio and covered the pool.  It pissed me off.  BOO!  (FYI, you can’t swim at a pool in Virginia without a lifeguard… state law!)
  • I’ve went to China and flew Air China in 2008.
  • The purple referenced in this dream is what I call “Puke Purple”… this kind of icky medium purple color with a hint of pink.  A shade lighter than Barney purple.  The outside cover of my 1996 high school yearbook in Waterloo, WI, was Puke Purple.  I coined the term Puke Purple when I saw that yearbook cover for the first time.
  • I googled “Air China flight attendant,” and found that the flight attendants in my dream were a hybrid of Air China flight attendants (pillbox hat) and China Airlines flight attendants (pretty purple dresses).

Last night’s dream:

This one was pretty quick.  It was a cloudy, gray day, and it was pretty cold outside.  I was standing on my balcony at my apartment in Arlington (accurate), looking down at my covered pool, when I realized that the right side of the pool cover had been pulled back just far enough for someone to be swimming laps against the wall.  She had lots of black hair piled on top of her head, and she wouldn’t put her head in the water when she swam.  Kristiyan was standing on the patio watching her.  I screamed down to Kristiyan, asking him what the hell that woman was doing in our pool?!  He said that she was a an Air China flight attendant and that they stay in our complex during their layovers in DC.  He said that they had special rights to swim in the pool after Labor Day.

Flash to me standing in the hallway on the entry level of my complex, just outside the game room.  The scene was accurate… lots of tan and orange-y marble.  I was talking to a random guy (do not know what he looked like or sounded like), and we were looking at a poster of Air China flight attendants.  There were three female flight attendants on the poster, each wearing a plain, but pretty, short, purple dress and a matching purple pillbox hat.  They each were smiling, had their black hair in a bun, and looked like perfect flight attendants.  I said that they had to wear the pillbox hats because they were repressed.  The guy I was talking to thought that maybe the pillbox hat was a sign of liberation.

The end. 🙂

Lavender Snow Pants and Tunnel Robots

Cast of characters:

  • Jess J. – BFF
  • Maddie – Jess’s 4-year-old daughter.
  • Tunnel robot
  • Random extras (one with popcorn)
  • Me

Historical context:

  • Reoccurring dream! – Being late for a flight and rushing to get to the airport.
  • I miss Jess and Maddie.
  • I’m going to San Francisco at the end of the month.
  • I watch lot of crime dramas on tv that utilize two-way mirrors during interrogations.
  • No connection to lavender-colored snow pants, tunnels, or robots, per se.

Last night’s dream:

Surprise… three nights in a row with mentions of Jess.  Guess we know who’s in my thoughts. 🙂  This dream was definitely anxiety ridden.  I  haven’t been sleeping well at all.  The dream started as I was standing in the middle of Jess’s living room.  It wasn’t her real living room.  This was a HUGE room raised at least a story above ground level, overlooking a birch forest in the middle of winter, facing West.  It was carpeted in tan carpet and had brown wood paneling on all of the walls (anyone remember the brown and tan Ford Explorer from last night?).  The ceiling was a cathedral ceiling, about two stories tall, with a brown wooden ceiling fan at the top.  It was completely empty other than for a bunch of random cloths and toys strewn across the floor.  I looked over into the other room behind me, which was about three steps up from the living room.  Jess was standing there and told me not to forget the lavender snow pants that she bought for me.  I then remembered that my flight to San Francisco was leaving in less than an hour, and I was late.  A duffel bag magically appeared in my hands, and I knelt down on the floor to start packing.  I first packed my lavender snow pants, and then started shoving some of the other random crap into my bag.  It would not all fit.  I kept trying to shove stuff in, but the bag was too full.

Suddenly, I was not in the middle of the floor with my duffel bag anymore.  Rather, I was standing along the North wall of the living room.  There was a light pink curtain hanging over a portion of the wall.  Maddie suddenly appeared, wearing a horizontal striped red, white, pink, and turquoise shirt, and bubblegum pink pants.  She pulled the curtain aside to reveal a black tunnel leading out of the living room.  I went in, of course, and all of a sudden there were a handful of other people with me in the blackness.  We followed the tunnel East for a few dozen yards, when we game to a giant window into another brightly-lit white room.  It turned out to be a two-way mirror, not a window.  We could see into the white room, but anyone in the room could not see out into the tunnel.  Suddenly, a gigantic, silver, man-shaped robot appeared with a black face mask.  He started to smash his head against the mirror, over and over again.  The mirror glass started to crack, and we all started running away down the tunnel.  The robot finally broke through the glass and started chasing after us.  One lady flew her arms up while running and spilled a bunch of popcorn into the blackness.

The end!

The Price Is Right!

Cast of characters:

  • A Bob Barker/Drew Carey hybrid
  • The audience
  • Michael Jordan
  • Me

Historical context:

  • I used to loooove The Price Is Right when I was little.  When I stayed home from school sick, I would set my alarm for 10:00 am so that I could wake up and watch it.  I also used to get weekly allergy shots at the clinic in Columbus, WI, and while waiting in the waiting room for 20 minutes after my shots to make sure I didn’t die, I used to make my mom play The Price Is Right with me.  And I always made her play the same game… the price tag game.  I’d make two sets of four price tags with different prices.  I’d hide one set behind objects in the waiting room… a lamp, a piece of doctor’s office art, a chair, a plant, etc.  Then I’d give my mom the other set.  When I said, “Go!” she’d have to run around and put each price tag next to the object that she thought was that price.  Then I’d check, and if she had any wrong, she had to do it again until she got it right.  Bob Barker was the only ever real host of The Price Is Right.  Yes, I loved The Price Is Right.
  • You couldn’t pay me any amount of money to get on a big-box cruise ship.  They are death ships, or ghost ships, in my opinion.  See “Carnival Cruise.”  Jess J. and I once watched a 4000-passenger death ship in Aruba sail off into the darkness with no sound at all.  Creeeeeeepy.
  • I have no particular affinity toward Michael Jordan or Ford automobiles.
  • I used to work a lot in Miami and kinda liked my airport transfers in big, fat, black Cadillac Escalades.
  • My Prismacolor colored pencils were some of my most treasured items in high school.

Last night’s dream:

Yayyyyy!!!  I was on The Price Is Right!  I was standing with the host, sometimes Bob Barker and sometimes Drew Carey, staring out at the audience.  I remember that I was facing North (directions are always really important to me in dreams).  And low and behold, it was my turn to play the price tag game!  It wasn’t the mid-1980’s version of the price tag game that I would have expected.  It was a cheaper, older, 1970’s-ish version of the price tag game.  There were hand buzzers (like you use in Jeopardy) involved.  I don’t know why.  The colors of the game were peach and goldenrod.

I had about six price tags that I had to put on different items, and about three seconds to put the tags out until my time ran out each time.  When my time was up in the end, it turned out that I had priced two items correctly.  YAY!  Victory!  But what had I won???  Somehow, even I didn’t know at the time, because it turns out that I couldn’t see the items I was pricing.  They were printed on a piece of paper and folded up on a table.  I opened the first piece of folded paper to discover that I had correctly priced a set of Pentach (not Prismacolor) colored pencils at $175.  I then opened the second piece of folded paper to discover that I had correctly priced a super combo pack of prizes at $26,000.  And what did I win for $26,000?  I won a brown and tan Ford Explorer!  I won a trip for four to Miami to hang out with Michael Jordan at some basketball championship, complete with limousine transfers to and from the airport (they showed a video clip of Michael Jordan standing in front of the limousine at this point… he was excited to meet me)!  AND, I won a trip for four on a cruise ship in Europe!  YEAH!!!

That’s it, friends.  The end.

Close Quarters

Cast of characters:

  • Jess J. – BFF since 1999.  Met during study abroad in Bonn, Germany.  Mother of my godson.
  • Drew J. – Husband of my BFF, Jess.  Father of my godson.  Cool dude.
  • Mark – Friend and one-time roommate.  Godfather to my godson.  Overall great guy.
  • Michele – Met during study abroad in Bonn, Germany.  We keep in good contact.  Cool chick.

Historical context:

  • Ummm… not much.  Lum Ave. holds no particular place in my heart.  Piggly Wiggly does, however.
  • I miss my friends in Madison.

Last night’s dream:

So last night’s dream was very quick and pretty uneventful.  Jess and Drew lived in their same house in Madison, but their street in Madison was actually Lum Ave. behind Piggly Wiggly in Waterloo.  Evidently everyone was trying to move closer to Jess and Drew.  Michele had just bought a house next door… a raised ranch with an old deck overlooking Piggly Wiggly.  She had an old 1970s fishing boat in the back yard, and there was a black and white cat slipping in and out of view in the grass around the boat.

While talking with Michele on her deck, she pointed out a small, angular, and cramped house on the other side of Drew and Jess’s house.  She explained that Mark has just bought that house.  I was stunned and asked her why the hell Mark would give up his nice, luxury condo in downtown Madison to move into that little house.

Done. 😉

Mexican Chickens and Semi Trucks

Cast of characters:

  • Max – A good friend and former colleague who lives in Burma.  I haven’t seen him in about 5.5 years.
  • Unknown semi driver
  • Me

Historical context:

  • Jessica F. and I went to Ixtapa, Mexico, eight or so years ago and visited a glass-blowing workshop a way out of town.  We took a public bus to the middle of nowhere, at which point we walked along a dusty highway in the desert to get to the glass-blowing workshop.  Many semi trucks passed us along the way, and they invariably all had a button that they could push when they passed us that whistled a little cat call at us.
  • Semis of all sorts scare the crap out of me.
  • I love Mexico.

Last night’s dream:

There I was, standing in the middle of the Mexican desert… hot and dusty with a bright blue sky and silence filling the air.  I was looking for a pottery studio, walked around for a bit, and found it.  I purchased a set of six pottery chickens that nested inside one another, just like Russian nesting dolls.  The chickens had big round bellies with small head and tails.  They were all painted identically in bright red with floral decorations on their sides in purple, green, and white.  I took all six of my ceramic chickens to the highway and proceeded to line them along the white dotted line in the middle of the highway heading East.  I lined the chickens up from biggest to smallest, all about eight inches apart from one other.  After the chickens were properly lined up, I left the road.

Flash to me standing in a dusty parking lot next to a semi with Max.  The driver was in the truck, and the motor was running.  I explained to Max that I had a present for him but that we’d have to get in the truck to drive to go see it.  Max and I jumped into the truck; I sat in the middle next to the Mexican driver, and Max sat in the passenger seat.  We slowly drove North toward the highway where I lined up the chickens.  When we reached the intersection with the highway, I could see that my chickens were still lined up in the middle of the road and that no one had run them over yet.  I specifically told the driver that he could not turn right into the first line but rather that he must turn into the far lane.  As he turned right into the far lane of the highway, I told Max to quickly roll down his window, stick his head out, and look down.  The driver drove slowly past the chickens so that Max could see them lined up in the middle of the road.  After we passed them, Max and I sat cheering in the cab of the truck.

That’s it! 😀