Cold winds of a nuclear summer, or how I escaped my father

 Last night I dreamed my dad was a nuclear scientist and built an atom bomb. We drove out to the he desert to drop him off and then went back to a town a “ safe distance” from the bomb, but we could see the very top of it over the clouds do in the distance. We also felt the wind, but told we were safe.  I used it as an excuse to escape a long-time relationship and go for something more exciting while I was still alive.

Negotiation of union contracts - but in cages?

 Had a dream last night I was a witness to the work the steelworkers were doing during a contract dispute. 

The company put regular citizens in cages in the center of the workspace so we could watch the negotiations. 

We had to be escorted in by security. I ended up sleeping there because they needed a volunteer for 3rd shift. I had a bed in the cage/island. It was like a giant child's crib, but with lots of people. It was on wheels but could just be pushed around and moved easily. 

The next morning, they asked me to move to a different floor because there were more workers who needed an observer. As I was being escorted through the giant workspace to the next floor, workers were stopping to hand me notes about their conditions. At one point I was in a board meeting with a contractor negotiator and the lawyers and was very surprised that they were letting in an outside observer to hear their discussions. 

Then they moved me to a new section on a different floor. Interesting dream.

When talking to the press, always make a game of it - [Celebrity Dream Edition!]

 Dreamed I was Ron Howard and was going to testify about some weird thing, and someone made a snide remark about “what Opi thinks” so I yelled at them, “I’m a 65 year-old man! How dare you think because I was a child actor that I don’t have a valuable life experience to share!” 

Ron was friends with a 19-year-old me. I was also a child star, maybe from Happy Days, and we were going to a party with Henry Winkler. 

I had a reporter/physiologist with us who was Gillian Anderson as Scully from X-files (but blonde). She was asking us if we had any special codes when talking to the press, so I was like, “No, but that’s a great idea!” 

I tried to get us to make Happy Days jokes and we’d each get points for every coded reference. I tried to get Gillian to play too, but she was like “As a Doctor, I’d best to listen and observe this time, but maybe next time.”

More Wild Dreams

I had a wild dream last night.

First, it was my friend's birthday so we went to this bar where his parents owned. He was Jughead from the TV show Riverdale. We weren't drinking, but he wasn't in a very party mood, so I just left and went home to the house I grew up in. When I got there, my youngest sister had used paint to paint all the furniture white. It was all the couches, the chairs, and the cabinets. I was really angry because I knew all the furniture was ruined. She was an adult so the had done something really really stupid.

I escaped to the basement so I could just process it, but she followed me downstairs and was annoying me, like a younger sister does and I kept yelling at her to tell her to go away. I was trying to get into her head why what she had done was so ridiculous. I even pointed out that our older sister, Gail, had spilled nail polish on the white couch in the basement (which wasn't painted), and we didn't paint over it, we used nail polish remover and there was still a stain, but it didn't bother us.

She wouldn't leave me alone so I started insulting her trying to get her to back off. At one point I said straight out "I'm intentionally being a bitch to you so you will back off, why don't you understand?!"

I left the house and there were these mini-planes on the street and someone offered me one. I thought it was a great way to escape so I took the plane. It was really small, with just room for one. It only had 1 engine which was on one side of the plane. I knew it didn't look like it would fly right, but others were flying around and doing fine so I hopped in.

I took off easily, but because I wasn't used to the steering yet, I ascended a little too fast and was too high. The oxygen-nitrogen mix of the air wasn't right for the engine so it cut out and I was in free fall. If you are familiar with wings, you know as long as you have control you won't just fall out of the sky like a stone. As I got closer to the ground I kept trying to re-start the engine and finally it started so I could use the momentum to get some speed to land safely.

I landed a few blocks over from my house in the neighborhood I grew up in. When I got out of the plane the kids from Stranger Things were standing there. They asked me who I was, and I said I was an adventurer. They asked if I wanted to join them to help save a ghost and I was like "Hell ya!"

We rode bikes to this community pool, where all the houses on the block backed up against a pool, and there was a fence going around the pool, but every house had a back gate entrance to it. We snuck across the pool and went into someone's back yard. Under their porch were a few plastic bags that were inflated and kind of bobbing like when a balloon is loosing its helium, so I could understand why the kids thought that these bags were a ghost. The woman who lived in the house was old and had several cats, and they were afraid the cats would attack the floating bags and kill "Baxter" [which kind of sounds like Bag-ster. My brain is awesome at puns when I'm asleep.]

Baxter was real! He was the ghost of a kid that was made of these plastic bags, and he could talk to us. We grabbed him and ran out of the yard before the lady could catch us, but running with giant blown up bags of air was rough, and it was even harder to ride a bike, so we deflated the bags and threw them in my messenger bag and took off.

I was trying to run home, but there was this robot that cleaned the gutters, that made it impossible for me to cut corners and run fast across the streets and yards to get back to my house. Instead,
we went back through the pool and then into one of the kid's yards, and then we went into the "decoration room" where his parents stored their holiday decorations. It was basically a closet, but they wouldn't be suspicious of plastic bags being in there. There were lots of Christmas decorations, and since it is January, there weren't any big holidays coming up where his mom would be in there very much. We re-inflated the bags the best we could, and Baxter came back to life!

The kids then asked me if I wanted to go on adventures with them every day, and I said I had to work, but I would come over after work and we could go on adventures. I was one of the gang.

I didn't want the kid's parents to wonder why this adult was going on bike-adventures with a bunch of 11-year-old boys, so I we all had dinner together and I even brought my dad. The kid (I don't know if he had a name) had an older sister who didn't like me because what older sister likes her kid-brother's friends?

It turns out the kid's parents were Azorean, and all the neighbors were Azorean. We talked about the maritime culture and why the water was so important. As I was leaving with my dad, I commented that the jacked he was was wearing was Azorean, and he was like "you mom picked it out." Then I ran into Lisa and Kate who were coming from rowing practice. The neighbors all came into the street too, and there was a dwarf who lived on both sides of the kid's house. Random.

Everybody left and I was going to go home, but I saw there was someone standing near the gate to the pool of the kid's house. I went over, and it was a friend of mine from when I was a kid. She was just there, and on the other side was this guy who I knew was a known pimp, and she was totally ga-ga over him. I knew it was a bad idea to date a pimp so I was trying to break her up, without letting the people inside know I was in their yard.

I convinced her that we were in trouble for trespassing, so we needed to leave and we ran across the pool-yard, and into a gate of a stranger's yard. When we closed the gate behind us, it was really loud. I was afraid they'd look outside and see us, so we quickly went past the house and onto the street. When we came out the gate on the front of the house, we pretended we were guests of the neighbors. There was already a couple on the street leaving a house, but luckily, they were guests too and didn't know we didn't belong there.

We ran again across the street and into another yard, through their yard, and into another pool yard, but this time it was a huge complex of pools of many sizes on different levels. We ran up 3 flights of stairs until I got to the top level which had a fancy bar at it.

When I got to the top, it was a Massachusetts Democrats fundraiser, so I just pretended to blend in by looking for people I knew. There was a guy there who looked a bit like Randy Johnson, so I went up to him and was like "What a surprise to see you here. What brought you here?"

He was a really smooth person, and obviously a rich donor who kinda knew I was crashing the party and said "It is great to be home. There is no place I'd rather be."

It turns out it wasn't Randy, but just an Indigenous person, so I tried to play it cool when I realized this, so I said to him, "You are exactly where you belong. I'm so happy to see you here!" and gave him a hug.

After we hugged, he stuck out his hand as a goodbye shake, and slid me 40 dollars. At that moment the development director from the Dems who had seen me rush in, came over and was behind me tapping her clipboard with a sign-in form and an invoice.

The tickets were 80 dollars, and came to 84.38 with tax. I had the money in my pocket, but I wasn't going to turn down this guy trying to help me cover up that I was crashing a private party, so I pulled my phone/wallet out of my pocket to get the money, when a check that had been ripped up fell out of my pocket in shreds. It had been a mis-written check made to the MassDems, and I could even see that the Chair had endorse it before I shredded it for some reason.

I apologized, and pulled out a check, trying to decide if I should use cash, or a check.

Then I woke up. It was 3:30am.

I can explain my dreams

My dreams are totally wild, but often are built out of details of things that my mind filed away.


So last night, I had a dream that my old job at Big Ocean moved into this really fancy industrial loft that was a co-working space where they worked during the day, and I worked at night. But instead of being in New Bedford, it was on Chandler St. in Worcester. My old boss, Kevin and old co-worker, John had left.

It was after dark and I was alone when Kevin returned to the office in a dark suit and was totally plastered. He was throwing his hands up in the air and trying to get me to sing with him, and overall a happy drunk. He was slurring his words and then wanted to take his car to McDonalds, so I took his keys away. He was very intent on walking all the way to McDonalds down the street, walking in the middle of the street, and I didn't think he should go alone so I walked him to McDonalds so he could eat some food and sober up.

And at some point we were being followed by one of those old electric cars - the ones that are glorified golf carts.

The dream may seem pretty random, but actually, it was a pretty logical connection between things that I did or thought about yesterday, but didn't really give mental energy to. Here's the list of things that made the dream happen.

1. I was planning on going to Worcester today
2. There is a business on Chandler St that I need to go back too.
3. I moved my copy of Earthrise on the bookcase, so I was thinking of the Kevin who produced the movie and who had some sort of event I saw on Facebook last night.
4. I got drunk last night – sorta. I had a good stiff drink about 7:30 hoping it would help me sleep better. Instead I was drunk and awake until 11pm.
5. I started thinking about TEDx and remembered Kevin wore a dark suit to it, two years ago
6. There’s a McDonalds on Chandler (or is it on Main?) in Worcester where I once stood in the parking lot for 20 minutes while having a phone conversation. I have a good visual memory of the street at that location.
7. The location was near a house where my friend’s dad lives, so I’ve been in that neighborhood a lot. When I was there, she told me it wasn’t safe to sit there with the car running and the doors unlocked. I think she was bluffing but now I’m on heightened alert in that area, especially after dark when I'm alone.
8. I watched a TV show last night about this woman who had a loft bedroom, but a darkly painted house, like the loft in my dream. At one point in the TV show, I caught a glimpse of one of those electric cars that are basically just golf carts but with bubbles. Like this:



9. I need to write down the address of the co-working space in Worcester because I didn’t put it in my notes and didn’t want to forget.

So, now that you know my secrets, do my dreams still seem as much fun? I think so!