Tag Archives: brown

A Day in Guadalajara

Cast of characters:

  • Cardinal Jessica – One of my BFFs who I met about 12 years ago. She was the door girl at the best bar in the world, the Cardinal Bar, in Madison, WI, where I spent a large portion of my time in the mid-2000s. We both then moved to Chicago. She now lives in Minneapolis.
  • Nacho – The definition of pure awesomeness.  My girls and I met Nacho and his friends in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, while on vacation in 2013.  He’s one of the nicest people on the planet, and he lives in Guadalajara.  We’re friends to this day, and he helps me practice my Spanish and keeps me laughing. 🙂
  • Nacho’s “friends” (not any that I met)
  • Me

Historical context:

  • I still use CDs in my car’s CD changer (I’m old school).  I have several deep house compilations from DJs at the Cardinal Bar from way back in the day.
  • I like the Green Bay Packers.
  • I love Mexico, but have never been to Guadalajara.
  • I was with Cardinal Jessica when we met Nacho.
  • Nacho drove us around Playa with his friends in a white SUV while on vacation.
  • Cardinal Jessica and I (and our other girls!) are going back to Playa next month.

The dream:

Last night’s dream started with Cardinal Jessica and I in Chicago, flying to Guadalajara for the day.  We arrived at the airport in Guadalajara, and Nacho and his friends picked us up in a shiny new white Suburban.  Nacho was wearing a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt… it was green with yellow writing and a yellow collar.  Nacho’s friend was really tall and big, and he was also wearing a green Packers sweatshirt, along with a green, satin Packers coat.  There were a bunch of other nondescript friends around.  I remember looking to the left and seeing a large US-style water tower.  Jessica and I got into the back of the Suburban… Jess on the right and I on the left.  Nacho got into the passenger seat, and his big friend got into the driver’s seat.  The other friends all piled into the middle seats.  There were probably 8 of us total in the Suburban.  We told them that we had to return to the airport for a 5:30pm flight back to Chicago in order to catch our flight down to Playa del Carmen.  Nacho and his friend said that they would have us back to the airport at 5:00pm, which would give us plenty of time to check in.  Jessica and I said we’d probably need more time than that.  Once we were all in the Suburban, we just started driving all around Guadalajara, which was actually more of a village than a city.  The colors outside were very bright greens and yellows and rich browns.  All of a sudden, I had a CD case in my hands, full of all of my old deep house compilations from the Cardinal Bar.  I pulled one out and handed it up for Nacho to throw into the CD changer in the Suburban.  Then I handed up another and another.  We just listened to my CDs as we drove around.  It came time for the boys to drop us off at the airport.  We got out of the Suburban and said our thank yous and goodbyes to them.  Then Jessica and I entered the airport, and the boys drove off.  Then I realized that I had left my precious CDs in the CD changer.  Oh man!

The end.

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A Snake in My Pants

Cast of characters:

  • Amy P. – I met Amy my freshman year of college at the UW-Madison in 1996.  I lived with her for two years during college, and she’s been one of my best friends ever since.  She currently lives in Madison.  Miss her!
  • Random dude driving a brown VW Rabbit
  • Lil BUB – Celebrity cat… awesome!
  • Copperhead snake

Historical context:

  • I am absolutely petrified of snakes.
  • I love Lil BUB!
  • My dad drove a brown VW Rabbit when I was very little in the early 1980s.  I saw one driving down East Wash when I was in Madison last week… hadn’t seen one in a good 30 years.
  • I was in Spain in June.
  • I’m not particularly fond of khakis.

The dream:

This was surely an anxiety-ridden dream, verging on a nightmare.  I woke up in a panic.

I was walking through a small village in Spain with Amy.  We were walking over cobblestones, all the buildings were made of tan-colored stone, and it was a bright, sunny, blue-sky day.  While we were walking, a random guy drove up in an early 1980’s brown VW Rabbit.  He opened the passenger door and offered us a ride.  We seemed to know him and decided to go with him.  There were bench seats covered in white vinyl in both the front and back of the car.  It was a four-door, and Amy got into the back seat, while I got into the front passenger seat.  After closing the door, I looked down at my khaki shorts, and a copperhead snake slithered up from the right side of the seat, over my hip, and onto my lap.  I started screaming, but I couldn’t move to get it off of me.  He was angry and baring his fangs and kept lunging at my right thigh to bite me.  But he couldn’t bite me through my shorts.  I knew that, if my shorts were only an inch shorter, he would be sinking his fangs into my thigh each time.  Each time he lunged at my leg to bite me, he shot venom onto my bare knee.  I had a ton of venom running from my knee down my shin.  He just kept lunging and lunging while I was screaming… I’m not sure if Amy and the guy were even still in the car at that point.  All of a sudden, the snake stopped trying to bite me and slithered down my thigh, over my knee, down my shin, onto the floor, and through a hole under the dash and into the engine.  He was about 4-6 feet long.  Once he made his way entirely through the hole and into the engine, I felt some relief.

Suddenly, I was standing outside the car in the same village, but now in the town square, standing on wide tan-colored paving stones.  It was still bright and sunny, and I was still surrounded by tan, stone buildings.  I was now wearing khaki pants instead of shorts.  I looked down to my feet, and all of a sudden the snake started slithering out of my bottom, right pant leg and onto the ground.  The snake was in my pants!  I was so disgusted and freaked out.  I started screaming and jumping around trying to get him out of my pants.  He slowly slithered all the way out of my pants.  Once he was fully on the ground, he coiled up, and I knew that we was going to shortly lunge at me to kill me.  I looked all around me to see what I could do.  To my left, Amy and the guy were now standing outside the car watching me.  Behind me, I saw a church about 100 yards away.  I knew that, if I could get into the front door of the church, I could close the door and escape the snake.  I turned around and started to run full speed toward the church.  The snake immediately started slithering after me, gaining speed every second.  I ran for what seemed like forever, when I realized that Lil BUB was running behind me, also trying to escape the snake.  She was running as fast as her tiny legs could take her, but I was afraid the snake was going to get her.  I screamed, “Come on, BUB… BUB, come on!!!”  I kept trying to get her to run faster.  I finally made it into the church and started to close the huge wooden door behind me.  I peeked out and saw that BUB was only about 10 feet in front of the snake.  She finally ran in the door, and I slammed it shut behind her.  The snake lunged at the door to get us but slammed right into the closed church door instead.  BUB and I survived!

The end.

An Inexplicable Series of Dreams…

Cast of characters:

  • Dad
  • A young, 1970s-version of my grama (mom’s mom).  It was my grama as she looked in my parents’ 1973 wedding photos.
  • Jan and Harry – Two clients with whom I traveled to Bhutan in October 2013.
  • A gigantic cast of randoms.

Historical context:

  • I have been on a hot air balloon ride in Turkey.  I did not crash.
  • I like banana pancakes; berry ones, not as much.
  • I’ve read the Hunger Games series.
  • Nothin’ else!

The dream:

This dream consisted of six, separate, unrelated scenes.  It was a bad dream.  The whole thing was very quiet with an overwhelming sense of foreboding.  When I think of all of these scenes, and how they quickly flashed from one to the other, I do think I’m probably a little bit insane…

Scene 1:  I was sitting in a dingy, gray, cement room in the middle of the desert in Mexico.  The room was probably only 12 ft x 12 ft.  There was a long, skinny window about 5 feet off the ground along the North side of the room.  The sunlight coming through the window was the only light in the room.  There were cobwebs and dust covering the window and the walls.  There was a round, wood table in the middle of the room.  I was sitting at the table with three other people, playing poker.  I don’t know if they were men or women.  I was about to lay down my cards and win the game.  But I had cheated.  I don’t know how I cheated, but I had cheated.  And the others knew I had cheated.  But I was going to lay down my hand anyway and “throw the match.”  As soon as I laid down my hand, I knew that war would break out around the world, and the world would end.  I laid down my hand.

Scene 2:  I was in a dark tent, sitting in the blackness.  The wind was howling outside, and it was freezing in my pitch-black tent.  I opened the zipper of the door and looked out.  All of a sudden I had a view of my little black tent from hundreds of feet above.  It was daytime, and my tent was high in the mountains, pitched in snow.  All there was to see for miles was snow and rocky outcrops of mountain.  Snow was whipping around my little tent, and the sky was gray.  There was nothing but snow and rock for hundreds of miles.  I realized that my Dad was out walking in the snow and was lost.  I got very worried.  I then had a view of him trudging through the snow.  He was wearing animal skins and furry boots.  Suddenly I was back in the tent, and he opened the door and came in.  He was drenched.  He said he’d been walking in a circle for 12 miles, just like he did every day.

Scene 3:  I was in a hot air ballon with Jan and Harry.  We were in a small basket by ourselves with no pilot.  The sky was gray, and it was very windy.  Our balloon was rainbow colored.  We were flying to the west, completely out of control.  Our balloon was being torn up by the wind.  We knew we were going to crash and just hoped we would survive.  Our basket skimmed a large oak tree, and part of the balloon fabric was torn by the tree branches.  We then flew only another couple hundred yards and skidded to a landing in a rock-solid field of dried and cracked mud.  We were thrown onto the ground, but we survived.  We realized that, before we hit the tree, we had flown over a decrepit little village.  We started to walk back to the village for help, and as we approached, we could see people peeking out of their windows with deep suspicion.  The roads of the village were dirt, and the homes were shacks, at best.  The whole village was falling apart.  The villagers started to come out of their homes and descend upon us.  The old women wore white kerchiefs on their heads, and the men wore cabbie hats and smoked pipes.  The entire village, including the clothes of the people, was gray and brown.  We were in a village in Eastern Europe.  The people were all old and had no color in their skin.  As they started to circle around us, we knew there were going to kill us.

Scene 4:  I was sitting in a long, white breakfast room at someone’s house in Europe.  There was a long plank table on the west side of the room with long benches along each side.  My grama and some others were sitting on the bench closest to the wall, and I was sitting on the opposite side with some others.  There were no lights on in the room, but plenty of sunlight was flooding into the room from a large window on the south side of the room.  I looked down onto a plate of very flat pancakes.  There was some sort of berry compote on top.  My vision then moved around the table from plate to plate, with a birds eye view of all the pancakes.  All were flat with berry compote, and all were on terra cotta plates.  Then I was back in my seat and looking diagonally across the table at Grama.  She was the 1970s version of my grama… big dark brown beehive, royal blue lace dress.  Grama had a big fluffy pancake on her plate, and it started to grow.  The more she poked it with her fork, the more it grew.  It grew until it was about a foot tall and two feet wide.  We all looked on in wonder.  It was going to explode.

Scene 5:  This one was the worst.  I was standing in the middle of a grassy field.  The grass was about a foot tall… half of it was tan and dead, the other half was barely green and still alive.  I was standing with someone’s brother, and there was blonde girl (maybe early 20s) about 30 yards away from us.  The sky was gray and the day was calm.  We were dressed in mesh armor from the middle ages.  All of our armor was silver, and we all had on maroon felt shoes.  I was standing facing the girl, who was trying to kill someone’s brother who was standing behind me.  My only mission in life was to protect the brother.  It was a stand off for what seemed like hours.  The girl and I just stood and stared at each other, as a bit of wind tousled our hair every now and then.  The brother just stood behind me.  After what seemed like forever, I thought I could better protect him if I turned around and hugged him.  I hugged him so tightly.  He was about my height with light brown hair.  This is the first time I ever saw him.   I hugged him and hugged him and hugged him.  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the girl lift her hand, and in one quick motion, she threw some sort of weapon at him and it sunk deep into his neck.  The weapon was made of shiny lead and was about 6 inches long.  It had a long handle with what was like a spur at the end.  It was the spur that stuck into his neck and killed him almost immediately.  I had failed at protecting him, and we both sunk to the ground.  I held his bloody head in my lap as I screamed and screamed and screamed.  I just sat in the long grass with the dead brother wailing for a lifetime.  I’ve never felt so sad in a dream.

Scene 6:  I was standing in a dark room, alone, with only the faintest brown light.  All of these scenes had been manipulated by some supreme power.  This was the Hunger Games.

The end.

PS – I had the aforementioned sequence of dreams three nights ago.  This morning, I woke up from a dream thinking, “I am a mall rat.”  That’s all I remember. ???

 

Damn It, Kristin!

Cast of characters:

  • A 4-year-old girl named Kristin (spelled exactly like that; I saw it in my dream).  She’s no one that I know in real life.
  • My cognac-colored, calf-skin handbag.  If you know me, you know it.  It’s the only bag I’ve carried for the past 5 years.  I love my bag.

Historical context:

  • In 1999, a friend and I drove from Oslo to Bergen, Norway, one of the most fantastic drives of my life.  At times, we had to drive through mountains, via kilometers-long, rudimentary tunnels.  The tunnels had been bore out of solid mountain rock, and the walls were never finished.  The walls were jagged where the drill cut through, and there was no lighting in the tunnels.  It felt like the mountain was swallowing you whole.  After driving several kilometers with nothing but our headlights on, it was very disorienting and uncomfortable.  It’s amazing how quickly your mind starts playing tricks on you.
  • I don’t know any 4-year-old girls named Kristin.
  • I haven’t been on a water slide for about 20 years.

The dream:

I was in a cave.  It wasn’t too big… maybe 50 yards in diameter.  The walls were rough and pointy brown stone.  The cave was man-made and had been bore with a giant drill.  The walls were left as-is after the drilling was done.  There was a pale yellow-brown glow inside the cave.  I don’t know what the light source was.  Along the right side of the wall, there was a ledge about 6 feet wide.  From the ledge, several water slides (maybe 8?) were carved into the stone leading to a pool of water about 10 yards below.  There were a few people sitting atop each slide, with a few people in line behind them.  There were maybe a dozen people swimming in the pool down below.  The water in the pool was aqua and clear.  I was sitting at the top of the slide farthest to the left.  A little blonde girl named Kristin was laying at the top of the slide to my right, maybe about 4 feet away from me.  My bag was sitting on the stone floor in between Kristin and me.  I stood up and looked over Kristin.  She had fine, shoulder-length, curly blonde hair and was wearing a turquoise swimsuit with white trim and a magenta heart on the front.  She was getting ready to go down the slide.  Just as she started sliding down the slide, she reached over, grabbed my bag, and crossed both her arms around it, holding it close to her body.  She then slid down the slide with my bag!  It occurred to me that she grabbed my bag because she wanted to use it as a flotation device.  Regardless, I yelled, “Damn it, Kristin!”  I then jumped on Kristin’s slide and slid down on my stomach, head first after her.  I dove into the water, and when I came up, Kristin was lying there, floating on her back, using my bag as a flotation device.  I woke up before I grabbed it away from her. 🙂

Plane Crash in Texas

Cast of characters:

  • Mom
  • Dad

Historical context:

  • Reoccurring dream:  I dream about plane crashes and have for about 18 years.  No fun.
  • The Malaysian Airlines crash a few months ago terrifies me.  It’s hard to believe that, in this day and age, a 777 with a couple hundred people onboard can disappear into thin air.
  • I traveled with my parents to Europe last week and flew on the same plane with them from Paris to Barcelona.  We were not in the back row.
  • I have no particular ties to Texas.

My last dream post was almost 6 months ago.  After my surgery, I had an impossible time trying to sleep for a few months.  And since then, I really haven’t been dreaming.  This weekend, my dreams came back!  I’ve had three that I remember the past few days, and this is the first one.

This was a plane crash dream.  I’ve had them for years, and generally, they follow the same pattern.  It used to be that I was at the airport, knowing that the plane I was about to get on was going to crash.  But someone always forced me to get on the plane anyway.  Once in flight, the plane would start plummeting to the ground, and then I’d wake right up right before it crashed.

These days, my plane crash dreams consist of me being desperately late to the airport.  Sometimes I make my flight in the nick of time; other times, I miss my flight and have to fly the next day.  Once in flight, the plane starts to lose altitude quickly.  The plane flies low above the ground for a long time before finally hitting the ground, sometimes crashing violently, and sometimes landing with damage to the plane.

The dream:

In this dream I was with my parents, and we were late for our flight.  Flash to being on the plane with them, in the middle section of a jumbo jet in the back row of seats.  It was night outside, and the lighting in the plane nearly nonexistent.  There was a reddish-brown glow inside, and it was quiet.  People were moving around in silence.  Flight attendants were serving meals.  Mom was sitting between Dad and me; Dad to her left, me to her right.  All of a sudden, Mom grabbed her head, saying that she had a horrible headache.  She said the plane was going to crash.

Suddenly, I was in the window seat in the back of the right side of the plane.  I opened the shade and could see that we were indeed crashing.  It was light outside, and I could see the ground passing by at lightning speed.  We appeared to be flying only a few stories off the ground.  The wings of our plane were snapping power lines.  The pilot told us to brace ourselves for a crash landing.  We landed hard on an empty interstate highway, but the plane stayed intact, and we all survived.

Flash to not being in the plane any longer and watching the crash landing on TV.  The news showed the plane crash landing on a Texas interstate.  It was a Malaysian Airlines plane that was white on the outside with light green and red pinstripes.

Flash to being back on the plane.  After landing on the interstate, the pilot continued to drive down the road.  The road was very hilly, and we kept going up and down the hills.  Eventually, we made it into a more inhabited area with some houses, utility polls, and power lines on the side of the road.  Everything was gray, white, and tan outside.  We approached an underpass underneath a set of train tracks.  I saw that the plane was going to have to go under the underpass to continue to travel on the road.  I was worried that the underpass wasn’t wide enough to accommodate the plane’s wings.  I was right.  As we drove through, the walls of the underpass ripped the wings off the plane.

The end.

Branded Cupcakes

Cast of characters:

  • Me

Historical context:

  • I like cupcakes.
  • We are in the middle of a major branding initiative at work.

Last night’s dream:

It was only a flash of a dream.  I was standing in a nondescript room with a cake-box full of chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting on the table in front of me.  The room and the table were gray, the box was brown.  The cupcakes were “appropriately branded” with my organization’s logo.  But then I realized that I had an actual branding iron in my hand, and I started to brand the blank cupcakes with the branding iron, which had our logo on it… like how one would brand a steak.  Branding the brand with a branding iron.  Geez.

At least it made my VP of Marketing’s day today after I told her.  😀