Oatmeal

I have decided to get my husband Oatmeal. His favourite, however, is made from steel cut oats. Since we live in an area that doesn't stock any at the local store, I have decided to make a trek out of town to find some.

I take my bike. Not just any bike, mind you...this bike doesn't have handlebars. Instead, the driving mechanism is something akin to an egg timer. That's right...no bars, just an egg timer to navigate with. The trip is very, very painful as it digs into my hands. Also, the only road to get out of town towards real stores is on the Freeway. I am being passed by cars barely missing me in the slow lane, while I trudge away on my almost impossible to navigate bike.

The first store I get to never heard of steel cut oats. The second I go to is almost like the bastard stepchild of a Pottery Barn/Salvation Army. I find one clerk to help (she is sitting at a makeshift desk which she has set up smack in the middle of an aisle). She has headphones on, and playing music so loud (bad music, to boot), that she doesn't hear me. She's cutting up....cardboard? Construction paper? Something, and then flinging pieces of it around...most of them landing squarely on me.

I tap her on the shoulder, and she asks me how she can help. She keeps the headphones on though. "Steel cut oats", I ask. "A boat? A float? A mote?" she responds. "No, you dumbass (yes I said this in my dream)." "Well, speak up!" she responds. I grab the headphones off of her and tell her to at least to pretend to listen. "Steel...cut...oats", I finish up with. "Not quaker oats, not any other type...but steel cut." 

"OH!" she responds. "The Quaker Oats are down aisle 15", then puts her headphones back on.

"DUMBASS!".

Needless to say, the Quaker Oats are down aisle 15...but that's not what I'm frikking looking for. So, off I go, bike and all, and head to the next store. This store...surprisingly has a sale of 'steel cut oats'. I am joyous! I go running to the display, only to find out it's Frosted Flake brand steel cut oats. Basically...well, Frosted Flakes. NOT what I'm looking for. So off I go again. 

Just as I am about to give up and go back home, I pass by a small specialty grocery store. Your typical mom-and-pop shop. I stop in, and lo and behold! STEEL CUT OATS! I am so very happy initially. However...there's something wrong. Instead of the boxes they normally come in, they are now in a blue plastic container with a pour-spout. Initially I'm going to leave them, but say screw it - the oats are the same, so the packaging shouldn't make a difference. I buy a dozen of them, and make a note of the store on my iPhone map.

I start my trek home...only now, I have a dozen plastic containers of steel cut oats and I'm riding my bike with an egg-timer steering mechanism. I'm riding slower now, and the cars on the Freeway are piling up behind me (those that don't fly by me, flipping me off). I get off the Freeway at the Rimalta exit (Rimilta? either way, there's no such town). I stop in the middle of the road to rest my hands.

Three old ladies come out of their houses, and point to the bike. "What's wrong?" the one in the center asks. "This steering column, it really hurts", I answer. The other two old ladies get closer...only now they're young. "Well, you have to remember how to drive." They repeat it, all three now in unison.

At this point, real life beckons since my dog is now barking madly. I wake up; my husband was woken up as well, so I tell him..."Honey, I've had just the strangest dream.". This time, he listens to me.

And laughs so hard for 30 minutes almost, that I think I almost killed him.

Bad, Bad Parent

I've been out drinking, apparently, and my 18 year old daughter comes to pick me up. She only has her learner's permit. Since it's illegal for her to drive at night, technically, we go to the power company to ask for them to switch the traffic lights from red to green when we go by, so we won't have to worry about her getting pulled over.

While we're waiting (the operator is very indifferent to our presence), I accidentally bump into a power grid...which is run by a P75. Everything resets, and I notice that Gilroy and Hollister's power is offline. I urge my daughter to go ahead and drive, since I have 'taken care of everything'.

We drive on.

The cops, however, are onto us..they know that I've reset the power, and they are quite pissed. My daughter is driving like a grandmother - slowly, and weaving in and out, not to mention almost getting us hit by a giant truck.

As we swing around the corner into the parking lot of a string of grocery stores (most of them are actually tattoo parlors, with one small store in the middle), it starts to rain. I have her slam on the brakes, and I urge her to continue on, and I'll wait for her.

As she drives off, the cops catch up to her, and I run into the store. I've thrown her under the proverbial bus, and I'm quite happy with myself, since I didn't get caught.

Of course, as usual, I wake up and tell my husband. He mumbles something about needing my medications changed, and then rolls over and goes back to sleep.

When Lectures Are Invaded by Wildlife

Contains: Coworkers, strangers, broccoli and donuts. IDK. In this case, "wildlife" are polyester wearing co-workers.
Odd Factor:

I'm in my house; my living room to be exact. However, there's a lecture of sorts going on, and my living room increases in size to accommodate more and more arrivals. The topics is on statistics or some such. They have food at this lecture, as well: broccoli. Lots, and lots of raw broccoli. I have a piece in either hand.

For some reason, I am fascinated...thrilled even. Until the doorbell rings, then rings again.

The lecture stops. Everyone looks at me, angrily.

"Aren't you going to GET that??!!" hisses the lecturer, so of course, embarrassed, I get up and run down to get the door. There is one person there:

My boss.

He's wearing a pale blue polyester suit, kind of like the one you'd see on a gameshow host from the 70's: powder blue, with blue satin lapels.

"Can I have a donut?" he asks, and I nod. So up he runs, through my (now) massively large living room, through all of attendees of the lecture, nearly barrels over the lecturer, to a table in the back.

In between all of the broccoli platters, there is one platter of donuts. He grabs one, then two, then hurriedly leaves.

I am..confused to say the least, but I shrug it off and go back to my seat, only to have the doorbell ring again. The lecturer now tosses an eraser at me, and demands I stay by the door once I answer it.

Begrudgingly, I head back down and open the door, to find another of my coworkers (hi Kim) standing there. She, too, wants a donut. I look out the doorway, and...well, hell, I notice a stream of people now starting to mill about my house in a line. I nod at my coworker, she too runs up and grabs a donut and then leaves.

None of the milling people answer me when I ask what they're there for, so I close the door. And then the doorbell rings again.

This continues. Each one of the people lined up will only come and ask for a donut, if I have closed the door.

I wake up, I look at my husband, I decide to not mention it, but instead ask him if he'd like a donut for breakfast.

Motorboat

Contains: Well, a husband, a wife, and newly washed pillows
Odd Factor: Uncertain. This isn't a dream so much as a thought.

To start off with, this is definitely NOT a dream. This was, however, inspired an online Bud Light commercial. Why? As usual, I have no frikking clue. This is just how my brain works.



Layout: A husband is pulling out pillows from the dryer. They do, of course, get skanky after a while and need cleaning.

He looks at them, and then at the new bottle of detergent his wife has purchased. Something generic with "Now with fresher, livelier SCENT!!!". Holding a pillow in each hand, he looks to one, then the other, then pulls them to his face and inhales deeply.

He smiles; they obviously smell good.

He pulls them to his face again. This time, he buries his face between them and shakes his head back and forth, making the "BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..." sound, over and over again.

His wife walks in....and hesitates.

"What ARE you doing?" she asks, confused.

"MOTORBOAT!!" is his response. He goes back to doing that.

His wife looks down...frowns, then looks at her husband angrily. She backs slowly out of the garage.

A Marriage Made in Spreadsheets

Contains: A wedding, some spreadsheets, a trip to New York, and vague references to Babylon 5.
Odd Factor:

This one, I can only remember bits and pieces of, and all I can do is blame it on watching a marathon of Babylon 5 on Sunday.

My husband and I are getting married, in 'our traditional fashion'. This means, matching ornate, eggshell coloured silk & lace gowns. I am bald, looking quite like a Centauri female from B5. My husband, well, he's naturally bald as well...but this time he has black curly hair. Our gowns are matching, as are our bouquets. We are skipping (yes, skipping) down a beach in someplace tony...the Riviera? Unsure as to location, but we are heading towards an stellar 5-star hotel. As we get there, two masked bike riders (another tv reference...these two guys like the bike riders on Throwdown with Bobby Fway:P) greet us, telling us we both need to go away on business.

My husband is shuffled into a waiting car, as am I, where there is another man waiting for me. Ok, not so much of a man, but a kid...perhaps 20. It turns out, he is my 'replacement' at work, and this important meeting that I had been planning for, for ages, I needed to attend to, so he could monitor my work and take it over for me once we were done. Of course, that would mean I would be out of a job.

I was...nonplussed, to say the least, and was then forced to grow my hair.

We get to the meeting, and I am now miraculously wearing some form of business suit. The spreadsheet I've been toiling over for months now is up on the projector, and we start going through data. The sniveling kid decides he needs to take over and starts going through the data, and misses some very keen points. He refuses to listen to me, so I finally raise my hand and ask if I'm allowed to send him for a time-out. The board, or whatever, agrees that I can, so off Junior goes to a corner, to suck on his thumb where I point out the errors he had not taken into account when reading this spreadsheet. Those errors were namely:
* Animal Attack needs to be added to root cause
* Typhoons need to be added to root cause
* Alien invasion needs to be added to root cause.

The data pans out. I'm still out of a job, but at least I got my shit right. And that snot nosed kid got to sit in a corner at my bidding.

I wake up to tell my husband; he's delirious with fever and agrees it was the best thing I could have done.

Point of note: I need to point out that I've spent the better part of 1 week in a particularly pesky piece of data, and have been living, breathing and eating Excel. This at least explains part of this dream. The rest, as usual...I have zero clue.

The Man Who Couldn't Die Brings Forth the Dinosaurs

Contains: A man that (as the title suggests) couldn't die, dinosaurs, lots of ramen, 8 unknown individuals, along with one solitary UPS driver. Oh, and a cameo from Sylvester Stallone

Odd Factor:

It starts out with this guy (I will call him Joe). As I'm talking to Joe, I notice that he seems a bit beside himself...sad even. It turns out that Joe has this entire Captain Jack thing going on: he can die, but eventually he will come back to life. He doesn't have the cool futuristic toys etc, he's just (aside from his immortality) human. Time after time, I watch Joe take a gun, shoot himself in the hand, then go off to get hit by a bus, or jump in front of a train....eventually, he comes back.

At some point, he figures out he's doing it all wrong. I'm sitting in my truck and watching Joe who's now at the beach with a friend; he's shot himself in the hand, and goes fishing. Unfortunately, he's fishing in a shark & gator infested pond. His blood dripping into the water draws the attention of...well, the sharks and gators, which proceed to snap into his tasty flesh.

Something at this point seems to wake Joe up...he doesn't really want to die, in fact he's scared shitless. His friend grabs him, and quickly they hide behind the tiny space between a hut and the fence.

I call Joe and his friend over, they jump the fence...Joe realises that he's been wrong all along, he knows he can die now, but he just doesn't want to. At this point, we notice that the pond is now changing, and now emerging from this pond are hundreds of dinosaurs. I turn on the radio, and we hear that this is happening all over. We quickly haul ass away down 880, towards a house that I own (definitely, in my dreams). There, 5 friends are already waiting, with boxes a plenty of packed ramen and bottled water. We have an old man sitting on this...tractor like thing, which is attached to a cylinder. He drives it around and around in a circle, which is firing off crystals that are keeping the dinosaurs at bay.

We look out to the road, and in between people getting gobbled up by dinosaurs, there's a fleet of UPS drivers making...deliveries. Completely unphased they are, even though they are getting snatched up as well. At this point, I go inside and look at my monitor, and I see that we're down to the last 11 crystals which will keep the repel-o-dinosaur working. I run out, shut off the power, and grab the old man and some girl who was out helping, and we run back into the house. The problem is that the lock doesn't work. We've got some bungee rope, and some tape over a parchment-type door (it used to be solid, I don't know where the original one went). So here we are, taping and bungee cording the parchment. That, my friends, is our dinosaur security.

Thankfully all of the rooms are downstairs, and we all take the boxes of ramen and water down.

At this point, I'm looking into the bathroom, and Sylvester Stallone is standing there. "We'll each take turns", he says. "4 in the daytime, and 4 at night, watching to make sure nobody breaks in, or no dinosaurs get in." At this point, I turn around the corner of the hall, and there is a guy huddled in the corner...ON the ceiling, screaming. Everybody rushes out of their rooms, we pull him down, and realise his feet are burned.

I wake up, and roll over to tell my husband. He's not there, so I figure, wtf, he's going to tell me to post it anyway.

The French Clown vs. The Airplane

Contains: French clowns, balloons, one single prop plane, and a pallet bed in the middle of a road.
Odd Factor:

It starts out in the middle of a road, pallet beds and all. Someone lets loose a balloon, and we (I don't know who the other(s) in this 'we' consist of) watch the balloon take flight, and head directly into the path of a prop plane. The balloon gets bigger, and taps the outside of the plane (it looks enormous from our perspective), and we watch it tumble towards the ground...where an old man that was hangliding? tailgating? from the back is dragged down a snowy hill.

Fast forward, we go looking for this man, and get into some....thing that resembles a car. Down the snowy hill, we end up on a French street, and find out about some clowns that might have heard about what happened. Again we fast forward, and it looks like we're watching a documentary. We're talking to this normal looking guy, who's responding in French, but I hear the voiceover of an English translator. We hear that he knows where the old man went, but it's some distance off.

I start hearing the sound of music, and a man's voice in French. It turns out that now we're in the middle of a desert, and the Frenchman I had been speaking to is now dressed as a clown, and doing a 'ritual dance and song' to celebrate the end of the season. He's joined by others.

I wake up, I tell my husband. He directs me to my blog.