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A Misplaced Hacienda

Cast of characters:

  • Virginia – The best (and my former) stylist in Chicago.  She’s one year and one day younger than me, and sometimes, we have the same peachy-colored hair.
  • Me

Historical context:

  • I’ve been to several countries in Eastern Europe, but never really to the countryside.
  • Once again, I love Mexico.
  • No other real context.

The dream:

I had this dream a few nights ago.  It was a weird one.  I was standing in a decrepit shack in the middle of nowhere.  The shack was made of long-faded gray wood, and the shutters were hanging by a thread.  I stood out on the rotten front porch, looking over a beautiful green field of long grass towards a “hacienda” about a half mile away to my West.  I was somewhere in Eastern Europe.  I left the shack and started walking down a dusty road that cut through the green field to the South.  It was a bright and sunny day with a blue sky.  I walked towards the hacienda in complete silence, and the grass was swaying in the breeze.  When I arrived at the hacienda, which was really an old adobe-style Mexican house, I entered the courtyard from the South.  The house surrounded the courtyard on the West, North, and East sides.  The rooms of the house were open to the courtyard… the walls were a deep cream, and the roof was made of terra cotta tiles.  You had to climb 2-3 steps to enter the house from any direction.  I entered the North side of the house and stood in the empty entryway.  I was really confused.  Then all of a sudden I was in the East side of the house, and I realized that I was in a Mexican restaurant.  There were 3 tables with 2 chairs each in this room, and the walls were a dark peach color.  All of a sudden, Virginia walked into the room and put a bowl full of salsa on one of the tables.  I was so relieved to see her.  Her hair was tied up in a kerchief, and she was wearing a white apron… she was the waitress.  Now, I was in Mexico, not Eastern Europe.  The steps from this room down to the courtyard were old and crumbling concrete, and each stair was covered with plywood so that you wouldn’t fall through the stairs.  I started to slither down the stairs like a snake, disrupting the plywood as I made my way down to the courtyard.  Virginia told me to be careful.  Then I stood up, and started walking down the dusty road, through the green field, and back to the little gray shack.  I walked in complete silence, as the grass swayed in the breeze.  The sky was black with an impending storm.

The end.

BONUS:  Here’s a little snippet of another dream I had that night.  I was walking from my loft in Chicago to the California Blue Line stop, which is the El stop closest to my loft.  I stopped in front of the little Mexican grocery right in front of the stop, and looked down at my purse.  It was this cream colored purse from H&M that I bought when I was about 23 and that I haven’t seen in at least 10 years.  The zipper had split.  I kept zipping it back and forth, hoping that I could get the teeth of the zipper to start gripping each other again.  I just stared at my purse as I kept trying to zip it back and forth, back and forth, with no luck.

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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.