Tag Archives: Mom

Return to Rochester

Cast of characters:

  • Molly – A current co-worker in DC.
  • Molly’s “mom”

Historical context:

  • I was a Program Director at Camp Lucerne in central Wisconsin the summer after my freshman year of college.
  • Molly sometimes accompanies me on my drives home to the Midwest over the holidays.  I drop her off in Toledo so she can head home to Detroit.
  • I dropped my valet key in between my center console and my car seat last week when dropping my car off at the garage next to work.  When I got home, I spent about 15 minutes looking for the key with a flashlight.  The next day, I spent about 30 more minutes looking for the key.  I haven’t found it yet, and it’s driving me nuts.
  • I have zero connection to Rochester, New York.
  • You all may use Kayak, but I still default to Expedia when looking for airfare. 😉

The dream:

Sorry, Guys.  It’s been a long time since I posted last.  I need to get this back on my radar.  Truth be told, it’s been a hectic few months, and I don’t think I’ve been getting the same quality of sleep as I’m used to.  Thus, I really haven’t been dreaming too much lately.  But I had a dream a couple nights ago, so let’s get back to business…

So this dream was full of anxiety, once again.  But it did have a bit of humor rolled into it at the end. 🙂

My dream started at Camp Lucerne, which was located in a forest outside of Rochester, New York.  In my dream, I was my current self at my current age, and I was staying at a cabin at the camp.  The cabin was made of slate gray wood with a flat roof and located in a grove of tall old oak trees.  The bark of the oak trees was gray, and the leaves were the yellow-green of early spring.  The ground – coated with old leaves, sticks, and dirt – was gray.  I walked into the cabin, bundled up in gray and black winter clothes, and looked across the several gray cots and dusty dressers.  I grabbed my favorite cognac-colored handbag (you know the one!) off a gray coffee table in the center of the room, and walked out the door.  I was leaving to drive home to Detroit with Molly.

All of a sudden, we were at Molly’s house in suburban Detroit.  I’ve never been there, so I don’t know what it really looks like.  But in my dream, it had 1970s wood paneling on the walls (it was gray), and all of the things in the house were muted… grays, tans, etc.  All of a sudden, I realized that I had left my keys in the cabin at Camp Lucerne outside of Rochester (forget the fact that I must have used my keys to drive to Detroit).  I usually dream that I lose my purse, but this time, I left my keys behind.  I started freaking out and knew that I had to fly back to Rochester to get my keys so that I could drive from Detroit back to Rochester.  Yeah, confusing.  Molly let me borrow a laptop in her Dad’s office, and I started to look at flights from Detroit to Rochester on Expedia.  All of a sudden, I was sitting at a desk in Molly’s parents’ kitchen, looking up flights on a desk top computer.  I started to cry.  Then Molly’s mom came over to me, and she was a short and round Latina mom, wearing a royal blue sweater and gray tinted glasses with a beaded glasses chain around her neck.  (I’ve met Molly’s mom, and she is neither short nor round nor Latina.)  She gave me a big hug, patted me on the back, and told me it would be OK.  I was so happy to hug her, because she made me feel better. 🙂

The end.

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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.

Tanzania Calling

Cast of characters:

  • Jessica S. – A current coworker.
  • Albert – My head guide while on safari in Tanzania last year.
  • Mom

Historical context:

  • I went to Tanzania on safari for the first and only time in October 2012.
  • I borrowed a really nice work camera for the safari, and the battery melted inside the camera, so that I couldn’t recharge it.  I was devastated that I couldn’t use the good camera for the entire safari, but thankfully, I had a little point-and-shoot back up.
  • I have seen the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti and have been to the Mara River, but I was not fortunate to have seen the wildebeest crossing the croc-infested Mara.  We waited… it didn’t happen.
  • On Wednesday night, I saw a Nature documentary on PBS showing the wildebeest crossing the Mara, and crocodiles having a feast!
  • Seeing this documentary made me long to return to Tanzania and reach out to Albert to say, “hello.”
  • I just put together my 2014 budget at work and made it a priority to outfit all of my guides in the field with new branded t-shirts.
  • I’m not sure that Mom ever wants to go on a safari.  I know that Dad does…
  • Jessica S. is a sweet coworker who really has nothing to do with operating my Africa trips.
  • I was at a fabulous hookah lounge in Georgetown Friday night, where there was just one tiny bathroom with nothing but toilet paper with which to dry your hands.
  • In 2001, I squatted in an apartment in Amsterdam for about two weeks with my friend, Mara, her host brother, and his friend.  We had to step up into the bathroom, and I remember the bathroom being green.

Last night’s dream:

I have really been missing Africa, a sentiment that was manifested in last night’s dream.

I was in a modest, but colorful, apartment, somewhere in Africa.  It was dark outside, and the curtains were open.  Jessica S. was sitting on the couch, reading a book by lamplight.  I then realized that it was her apartment.  I asked where the bathroom was, and Jessica pointed to a little room around the corner in the hallway.  I opened the door and took a step up into the bathroom.  It was a dirty little bathroom with mint green paint on the walls, lit by one bare light bulb above the small mirror above the sink.   The sink was straight ahead of the door, and the toilet was to my right.  After washing my hands, I wiped them off with toilet paper from an almost-empty roll.  When I walked out of the bathroom, I saw Albert standing in another dark room to my left, and Jessica was still in the lit room to my right.  He had the face of Albert, but he was shorter and had a big belly (in reality, Albert is tall and lean).  He was wearing a properly branded, white t-shirt and khaki pants.  I told him that I missed him.

Flash to me being in a safari vehicle with Mom.  We were in the middle of the Serengeti on the banks of the Mara, surrounded by wildebeest.  We could see the hungry crocodiles in the river, just waiting for the wildebeest to cross the river.  I was fumbling with my camera and couldn’t get it to work.  Mom didn’t care about taking pictures.  All of a sudden, the first wildebeest jumped into the Mara, and then thousands followed him in.  We wondered if we’d see a croc kill a wildebeest, and just then, a croc jumped out and bit a wildebeest on his snout, dragging him underwater.  I couldn’t get my camera to work, but it turns out that I had accidentally shot a slow-motion video of the kill in hot-pink technicolor.

The end.

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.