Diario de Tepintzin

Here's a quarantine dream for you all....I was living with Svengine Karinsdatter in the Marana house, but it was in a city. Across the street was a store called (some beverage) and Pumpkin Pie. I can't remember what the beverage was, but I didn't think that it'd go well with pumpkin pie and I hoped that wasn't all they served because that would not be a good business model.

(tw section: home invasion, unsuccessful rape)

That night, someone opened the door into the master bedroom (which doesn't exist) from the Pumpkin Pie store. He came over and grabbed me out of bed and started violently kissing me. I bit his lips but it didn't put him off. I kept trying to scream to Svengine Karinsdatter, who was in the bedroom at the other end of the house. I broke away and ran to her room, followed by the guy and the gang who had come in after him. We pulled out our firearms and chased them all off, but I really wanted to pistol whip the guy who had tried to rape me. Svengine held him down but I couldn't hit him hard enough. I didn't know if my arm was too weak or I was subconsciously unable to harm a person. We let him go.

(end tw section)

I berated myself for being unable to pistol whip the guy. Svengine was supportive. I hated myself for my weakness. We went to dinner at a steak house with a friend who doesn't exist IRL, but I was so upset that I couldn't focus even on the menu, nothing looked good. I excused myself and went to buy ice cream (which normally I don't eat). I went to the Pumpkin Pie place, which now was an ice cream place, serving Baskin Robbins. I somehow muddled my way to making an order, a scoop of vanilla ice cream surrounded by a round shortbread cookie with pretty scalloped edges. The bill was $40 and I freaked out, refused to pay. I left and went to an Italian ice cream place where they bitched about the Pumpkin Pie shop. I got a scoop of ice cream, but the money I had in my wallet was now all counterfeit. It was in denominations like 7, 3, and 8.

I wandered out into the mall. There had not been a mall before. I tried to get Svengine on my phone, and told her to meet me by the closed up HMV. I was in front of a kid's pirate-themed ice cream place, and bowls of it kept vanishing into thin air, claimed by ghosts. I got a bowl of ice cream again in order to justify sitting there, because they were closing up. Svengine finally showed up and I fed her some of my sundae and she said it was good.

Other detail I should mention is that every person I met I told the story of the home invasion to. Everyone was sympathetic. My mood was one of failure, and of hating myself for my weakness.

It was in England, in a lakeside village. It had some kind of ghost problem, so this bunch of teenage paranormal investigators (in the dream they reminded me of the Scooby-Doo gang, though no one said it in the dream) came to see what was going on.

There was Old (village name), which was flooded. All that was left was the cross from the steeple of the church. The gang went out to investigate, and the village god started appearing. He was a lake god, who was a bearded man in a heavy hooded robe, who would be seen standing in the shallows of the lake, looking but never saying anything.

When the gang rowed out in a boat to the cross, they discovered it wasn’t actually a cross. It was just a T-shape or cross shape of metal. It kept changing forms, starting as a cross of rebar, then a T of pipes, and finally an antenna with a smaller dish-shaped antenna on it.
They went back to the village, and one of the teens went running in order to get in touch with the ghosts. This was in the neighbourhood where I grew up.

I/he passed a pile of stuffed animals on the sidewalk that was connected to an earlier dream (?) where there had been an abused child. The teen thought the stuffed animals had been rained on, and would be moldy, so he didn’t take any. At the end he was running through a paneled hall, and came out to say that the ghosts wanted all the sports the local high school played incorporated into the school cheer, not just football. He was told that he’d been gone for six weeks. The lake god was looking at him.

I dreamt I was in an ultra-Orthodox synagogue. I was wearing Edwardian clothes, so I was within dress code. It was coming to the end of Shavuot, and there was a room sized box with one open side raised about ten feet over the congregation. The men were standing around, looking up into it. I was told that inside was the Sabbath Queen. I was at the back of the crowd and all I could see was the wall of the box to my left and two mannequins. The walls were lavender and the mannequins were female, with thick black hair and as far as I could tell flouncy Victorian clothes. I couldn't see the image of the Sabbath Queen though, and I was very upset by this.

I went up to the gallery above the synagogue floor and still couldn't see. However I ran into my old flame L, who was dressed like me in Edwardian clothes. She and I went to the basement where there was a kosher deli, now opening because Shavuot was over. I got a vegetarian sandwich. We got into the open back of a truck going back to her place, which was really far from any of the bus or subway lines and down a rural road. My intentions towards her were completely dishonourable, but once we got to her place, other people kept showing up.

Today in the waking world, the Sabbath Queen image stuck with me strongly all day and in my slow moments I was browsing Jewish web sites. There is a reconstructionist shul near me that looks like everything I ever wanted in a place of worship, but I'm pretty committed to being a polytheist at this point in my life.

I dreamed there was an experimental rocket (I've been enjoying the SpaceX news) from NASA called the XM-1 or something like that. They needed an astronaut and were having a meeting at Los Alamitos. Since it was experimental, no one wanted to do it. I was sitting in the audience and I raised my hand, saying, "I volunteer." When they told me I was too old, I said that there weren't any other people stepping forward, and that all my life people have told me I was too short, too old, too young, too female, for anything I thought I could do. "I'd rather die at 50 in a rocket than at 100 in bed," I concluded.

I dreamt our company commander, whom I dislike and whom Ma'am dislikes more, decided to hold a PT test at 6 p.m. on a Saturday. I drove up early from San Diego, I remember that. I went to another gym on base and realized my destination was a mile away. It was dark, but since it was only a mile I ran alongside a darkened road with no reflective belt (gigantic no-no in the Army) to where I thought the correct gym was.

I had actually run to the PX. Someone showed me on a map that the correct gym was a mile away in another direction. I looked down and realized I was in my PJs (white t-shirt with red sleeves and red shorts) and not my PT uniform which I had been wearing when I was running. I decided to buy one, but all of them were too big. I decided I'd have to live with that and bought them.

The chaplain came in for a service and opened his Bible. I walked out saying I wasn't Christian.

I rejoined my unit for the PT test, and I was bitching about why the time was changed and who the hell does a PT test after dark in the winter? I didn't care who I was complaining to; other NCOs, officers, First Sergeants, etc.

There was something else about not being able to find a room in the billeting, but I don't recall what specifically.

...aussi disponible en espanol!

This is a biggie when it comes to dreams trying to tell you something.

I was in a huge house that I've been seeing a lot in my dreams lately. This time, my family owned it and we were going to visit my aunt in New Jersey. We were emptying out the basement of the family-owned house, and I and some of my cousins had become aware, years before, that the basement was haunted but we didn't know why or by whom.

As we emptied out the basement, it turned out that some of my aunts knew that the basement was haunted because they believed their kids, which my own parents hadn't. So we were all taking the contents out of the basement with a kind of grim anticipation since we knew this procedure would bring whatever was haunting out into the larger world.

At my aunt's house, I noticed that things were starting to be covered by a dusty black mold, and this was the taint of the evil. In a drawer I found a canvas, folded up, that when opened turned out to be a very large portrait of a great-great grandfather of mine who had been a powerful and evil wizard back in Mexico. He was dressed as a wealthy gentleman of the turn of the 19th/20th centuries and seated in his library. His curse was the reason for the taint, which started spreading rapidly.

So we started driving to my aunt's house in a van. As we traveled, the taint spread. Even newspaper articles brought up from the basement had this black mold on them and it made them tattered. The same with clothes, boxes, anything we had taken from the basement. The thing was, someone wanted the portrait, so we had to take it.

Eventually the bus broke down and I had to continue on on foot. I was trudging through a creekbed full of slushy snow (the wizard had made the weather bad) and I called upon Thor for strength and got through.

My destination turned out to be a big Anglican-style Gothic church. It was now all full of the dusty black mold. I started holding out my hands and calling on Jesus. One of my cousins came up behind me and asked me why, because I wasn't a Christian. "Because I know it works," I said. Whenever I called on Jesus, my hands lit up and a space became clean. I had cleaned the van, the family memorabilia and much of the church when a cousin said there were things back in the basement we'd left, but we had to get them. I said I couldn't let him go alone.

At one point there was a big religious statue, dressed in robes in Mexican style, in the basement. I held up a rodent skull and began to chant Hare Krishna. At this point in the real world, I started whimpering in my sleep, because I was shouting it through the clenched teeth of sleep paralysis. Steve woke me up slightly and then I went back into the dream.

The cathedral was now clean. I was sitting on the roof. Someone brought a statue of Santa Muerte to me, and her robes were now tattered black moldy lace. I said "Jesus" and her robes became white. She turned into Lafayette from "True Blood", said "Watch me flex!", and flexed her muscles happily. Then she turned into a fluffy white angel with a skull face and flew away.

I moved down to the choir loft. Some people brought me their Bibles and started asking me about God's involvement in this event. I told them, "Well, I'm an atheist, and the Hebrews were originally polytheists, let me show you in your Bible." Suddenly I realized that the Hasidic Jews celebrating down on the floor of the cathedral were dancing counter-clockwise. I ran downstairs and Steve woke me up as I was shouting, "Not widdershins! Not widdershins!" to them since I feared they were about to undo my and my cousins' hard work.

Last night was a whopper.

I dreamt I was back in Toronto, working as a temp in an open-ended job at Royal Bank. I was on the 30th floor. The job was in a dark call-centre environment but I don't remember if it was data entry or phone related. I got sick and went home on a Monday. Tuesday I was still sick, Wednesday not so much and Thursday I was just malingering because I hated the job. Steve said I needed to work and I told him, as he drove me down Broadview that I probably lost the job because of being home for three days. He dropped me off and I went up the elevator before realizing I was in the purple plaid pyjamas that I was in fact wearing as I slept. I called him to bring me some work clothes and went to the call centre.

The boss-man seemed benevolently disposed in a patronizing way. The workers were all getting ready for some kind of war re-enactment. They were putting on tin foil armour and metal plates and pots and pans, that sort of thing. Then we were released in an auditorium with seats and everything to fight another group. I was still in my PJs, with aluminum foil over them and a pot on my head. I think I got "killed" and after about half an hour we took a break.

I went back into the auditorium by myself since I was hoping the boss hadn't noticed I was in PJs. There was a large black man in much more serious armour in there. I "killed" him twice with my spear (I hadn't had a real weapon before) and complained that he wouldn't die, and I realized this was for real. I left and found myself in Kuwait. I wandered over to the PX complex and there was a Yule ritual going on. Someone cheerfully said they hadn't cast the circle yet, but the man leading the ritual said he was not a Wiccan so there wouldn't be any circle. We got in line and one by one passed beside something; might have been a fire but I don't know. It was something also covered in red velvet. We left the PX complex and were in Afghanistan. The man leading the ritual was our bus driver. As we drove, he said that Christmas was just the birthday of Sol Invictus. "Hail, Soly," he said and I woke up feeling like something had changed somehow, and I still have that feeling.

I dreamed that I was told to report BACK to Bagram since the work had stepped up so much that they needed everyone back who'd worked my particular mission. I went back and found SFC N had been called out of retirement and TSGT H had been the one to call me at home to tell me to come back. I went back, a few of us went to a DFAC, and I started to have an "out of uniform in public" dream. I realized the only ACUs I had were the ones I was wearing, that I had no PT uniforms, and that I'd left the duffle of uniforms currently under my bed in the real world under my bed. Oh, and no one knew how long these orders were for so I couldn't just wing it with what I had.

I was allowed to go back and get the duffle. I flew into San Diego and Steve immediately started playing video games, talking on his bluetooth and someone from a legal temp agency who kept calling and asking for me. He told me I shouldn't use my civilian cell phone to call because it was too expensive, and I asked him to get my Afghan phone but he kept playing video games. I started having an anxiety attack. Since we were sitting on the bed in my dream and I woke up in the bed (obviously) I woke up wondering when I had to leave for Afghanistan and how to make sure I had everything I needed and how long I'd be there for since CPT S said "Oh, probably about six months" in the dream.

It took me about ten minutes of walking around making coffee in the real world until I finally became convinced that I did not have orders to send me back.

But I'll check AKO just in case.

Wow, two nights in a row. I must be settling in here!

Zombies! This was a fun dream though, not a scary one, because I was living in a zombie-infested city but Buffy was my friend. (No, I haven't been watching BtVS lately.) My family and I lived in a house with firearms stashed everywhere, in wall cabinets and under the floorboards since you couldn't go anywhere outside without one. My clearest memory of this dream was of a zombie coming at me, when I had a rifle in my hand. I shot it in the face and it looked puzzled, but then kept coming at me. I looked at the rifle and was confused because there wasn't a magazine, but then realized it was bolt-action. I pulled the bolt back, fired again, and the zombie went down. I was very proud of myself at that moment.

...and then they're Army tired.  I can't blame anyone but myself; I volunteered for this.  I was up at 4:30 a.m., got home at 7:30 p.m. and am doing it again tomorrow.  After this, shower, reading, and sleep.

Couple of Army related things of a personal nature.  I've decided to cut off all my hair before I deploy.  The reason is that I had a hard enough time keeping it clean when I was in Honduras--and in Honduras we had unlimited water.  Plus you have to be in full PTs to get up to take a piss in the middle of the night, and it's bad enough I have to put on socks and running shoes instead of putting on my sandals the way I did in Honduras.  Having to put my hair up properly to go to the latrine at 4 a.m. is not something I want to have to worry about.

I had an unsettling dream my last night in Colorado.  I dreamt I was about to leave on deployment and my family was in town to say goodbye.  It was my parents, americanstd  and electorprince .  I went upstairs to wash my hands or something, came downstairs, and saw Mei-Mei.  Even though she was Mei-Mei, she was a Siamese like Badira, just rounder and cuter.  I wailed out, "Don't die on me!", then turned to americanstd  and electorprince in turn and cried out the same thing, then the same with my parents.  One of my other long-lost cats, an orange shorthair named Beau was looking down from the landing at me.

I now need a shower and to get this headache under control.  See you later.