Tag Archives: pool

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. 🙂

Advertisement

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. 🙂