In the land of dreamy dreams

Yes, I know that this title has already been taken by someone else - Ellen Gilcrist I believe. I love her books where one of her main characters usually is a rich, spoiled girl named Rhoda. Anyway, I have these weird dreams, some of which are reoccurring and some that are just too strange to be experienced more than once. The most common reoccurring dream is about dirty bathrooms (one of my unwritten books will be titled "Dirty Bathroom Dreams" which sounds like a racy novel but won't be). I dream that I am constantly scrubbing a bathroom around the area where the toilet is attached to the floor. No matter how I scrub I cannot get it clean and I must hurry because some guests need to use the toilet. My sister B Jean, has a similar dream. She dreams that she is trying to use a toilet that is full and she can't flush it. Why do we dream this? Part of it for me, I think, is stress. I dream this when I am worried, upset, or have a lot to do. I think it is because, as a kid, we had a toilet that needed to be flushed with a bucket of water and I was very embarrassed by it. To this day, I worry about the 3 bathrooms in my house being clean when people are coming over - they always are because my sweet husband keeps them that way. By the way, the above picture is the house I grew up in and where many of my dreams began - good and bad.

The second dream is a little more pleasant and I am not sure if it is a dream or a memory of another life. I dream of being a tall (I am not) elegant (not that either) blond with my hair swept up on my head and perfect makeup. I am dressed in a red velvety dress or sometimes red plaid (Christmas attire I think) and I have two daughters dressed the same. We are in a laundry room and I am arranging their clothes which I believe I have made for them. We are waiting for something or someone - maybe we are going to the Nutcracker or some Christmas party. In this vision or dream, I am just focused on being a mom and a housewife (maybe I feel some guilt cause I didn't get to do this - but I did actually sew things for my kids when they were little). That's as far as that one goes. This dream doesn't inspire me to a title of a story but it is an interesting scene.

Being a runner, I also have pre marathon dreams where I am running a marathon but am off course and am running up steps, through malls, and in street clothes. Or I am late and can't find the starting lines. My favorite is when I actually finish in a time of 3 hours or less which would be fantastic but out of reach for being 50 something. Usually though, the dream involves running in slow motion with very heavy legs. These are pretty benign dreams and common amongst my running friends.

My favorite one time dream sort of involved running or at least my muscular legs. I am going to work and I have a huge laceration on my calf muscle. I can see that the muscle is sliced open and I go to ask one of the docs in the ED where I work to look at it. He pulls back the muscle which is sliced open but without blood. Inside are perfectly whole Oreo cookies stacked up on top of each other! I guess I really don't have muscular calves at all - it is Oreo cookies! And I don't even like them. I would prefer Salt and Vinegar potato chips to Oreos.