The Lava Tree

This one was a bit weird in that it was really quite a bit like watching a movie rather than being a part of the goings on.

There was a guy that lived alone in the woods, and he had a bit of a quirky personality. He reminded me a bit of Mark Wahlburg. He was living in a house that was supposed to be like Mike's (former step-father) house. In this version of the house, though, the basement was very different. Instead of being four and a half to five feet tall, it was a full eight or nine feet tall, or maybe even ten. Also, instead of it being under the middle of the house, it was under the bedroom on the front end of the house that used to be my room.

In the basement, in the corner closest to grandmamma's house, was a large tree trunk growing out of the floor. It was ten to twelve feet across and hollow with a cross formation in the middle, so there were actually four hollow "sections" in the trunk. Deep down in the hollow parts, below the level of the basement floor, were pools of lava.

The man went down into the basement at one point, and he had to chop off the top part of the trunk that was coming out of the floor because the tree would grow in spurts periodically. Whenever it grew, there was a loud mechanic thunk, and it would suddenly be about a foot taller. It did this every few hours.

Then we were outside, and a young-ish business looking woman with her hair up in a bun showed up and was interested in the man. They wound up walking around and looking at various things throughout the house. After a short bit she brought up something about the fact that he lived off deep in the woods somewhere, and the way she said it was trying to imply that he was creepy for being that way. He seemed to want to make a decent impression with the woman, and he wound up kind of stumbling his way though the conversation, trying to keep her interested.

I'm not sure if the woman was still around for this or not, but I started seeing some of the chores that he had to do periodically around the house. One of the main ones was that he had to go into the basement once a week and chop down the lava tree and take it outside because otherwise it would wind up growing up through the house. The math for this doesn't work out, of course, if it grows a foot every couple of hours and the basement is only about ten feet tall at best, but oh well... that's the way it was. I saw him outside with an axe and chains and stuff from chopping down the tree, and I wondered how me moves such a heavy tree to get it outside all by himself to chop it up.

Then the scene switched back in time, and I saw the first time that he discovered the way that the tree behaved. I think he had either been outside or in the room above the basement, and he heard the clunking sound of the tree growing. The higher it grew the faster it would grow until the mechanical thunks were coming about once a second. The tree started to push it's way up through the wooden floor planks of the bedroom and come up through the tree. He ran downstairs into the basement to start chopping it down as fast as he could.

After he was done chopping down the tree and had it back under control, the house needed to be repaired. Andy Griffith, Opie, and Aunt Bea were there, and there was a large warehouse area that was, I believe, in another part of the basement. They had a lot of large crane-like machinery, and Andy was trying to go around and inspect things (I think both the machinery AND the house) while Opie made notes about his observations.

Aunt Bea was wandering around and saying how she was worried that she wasn't doing anything to help, and she went over and tried to take Opie's job. Opie told her to ask Andy if she's doing the right thing, and he told them both that they're fine and repeated to them what they're each supposed to be doing.

Pretending To Be Sick With Leather Pants From Mexico

[Once again I hesitated to write this down when I had it, so it's a bit vague]

Em (wife) and I were up late and we were talking in our bedroom. At some point, she decided to go take a shower, and evidently the sound of the shower woke up her parents in the guest room, and they came in and were mad at us for not being asleep.

In order to cover up for the whole thing, I decided to tell them that I was sick and that's why we're still up. They left and wound up having some sort of party in our house with a few couples that they knew and invited over despite the fact that they had just jumped on us for being up really late.

Then it was early in the morning, and Em is telling me about Matthew (my brother) is selling leather pants from Mexico. Shortly after, Matthew showed up on his own and told me the same thing. He was acting all silly and goofy about it, but I don't remember exactly how.

Then I started getting ready for work. Victoria (wife of Doug, a co-worker of mine) was there, and we were talking about the TV show Lost. While we were talking, the TV was on, and we saw a show where we recognized Jodi Sweetin's (Stephanie from Full House) "real life" sister.

Then there were another couple of people around, and they were talking about Lost, too. While they were talking, I started seeing the scenery of the Lost island, but it looked more like the island that Link is from in the video game Zelda: Windwaker.

Victoria was supposed to be getting ready for work, too, I think, but she was being VERY slow with it. I started talking to Em about how Victoria is never punctual with anything. Finally I told Victoria that I had to leave in fifteen minutes, and if she wanted a ride to work or home, she would have to be ready by then. She started getting all huffy about having to hurry and my threatening to leave her there, and then the dream ended.

Apartment Store

I was out in a downtown area with Em (wife) and her parents, and it was either cloudy or starting to get dark. There were no open stores in along the street we were on. It all seemed very run down and deserted.

We came to the front of this one store that we could see inside of. It looked like there was either a renovation going on, or things had been pretty torn to shreds inside. There was a bunch of old furniture. Some of it was covered with sheets or plastic, and some wasn't. The front door was unlocked, so we went inside.

We went looking around, and the more we looked around, the more we realized that someone actually lived there, but they didn't seem to be home at the moment. There wasn't just the mess of renovation or destruction, but there was also a lot of clutter. There seemed to be a lot of trash or small broken items and maybe even old food just laying around on the floor and other various surfaces of the house.

The first room we were in was huge. It was at least a 30'x30' room, and there was a light on in the middle of the room. The light was something like what is used by painters and contractors to shine light on the walls and ceilings as their working on them. We walked around looking at everything and trying not to break anything else.

At the far side of the room, on the right hand wall, there was a big arched door. Through that door was the dining room and kitchen, and maybe even a breakfast nook area. Em and I went through there and looked around. There was a window seat in there that had another one of those spotlights focused on it, and there was a lot of stuff up on the counter space and on the floor.

While we were looking around, we started to think that the woman that lived here might come home and see us poking around and get all upset at us. I think we went back out into the living room, and about that time the woman showed up wondering what we were doing. I think we told her that we were looking around because we thought it was a store that was being renovated and not someone's house, and she believed us, but we left anyway.

Cleaning Aquariums

I started out at Stewart Middle School, and I was back in my eighth grade science class, but it was either before school or between classes. Mr. Kendall, my science teacher, was telling me about how I needed to clean out the aquariums that were in his classroom. I didn't feel much like it, but I figured I might as well.

Phil, a supervisor from Mercedes, was there, too. I was supposed to be working with him in order to get the aquariums cleaned out. We started out at this pretty large aquarium (three feet deep, two feet wide, and four feet long), and we had a metal blade window scraper with a long handle that we were supposed to use.

Phil started out scraping the left end of the aquarium glass from the inside, scraping off all the green algae. I was talking with him, and we were joking around a bit. Even though the scraper had a long handle, it was JUST long enough to reach the bottom and leave about three inches of handle above the water. It was just enough to hold on to, but whenever Phil or I tried to use it, we managed to get our hands a little wet. We traded off a couple of times before we finally got the aquarium scraped down.

Then we went to another classroom, which was still Mr. Kendall's room, and Leon (stoner guy from Mercedes) was there and trying to get a couple of smaller aquariums cleaned out, but he was having a lot of trouble doing it. The main problem was that because the handle of the scraper was short enough that your hand had to touch the water, Leon kept getting stabbed by these little black fish that had half inch needles sticking out from the tops of their heads. When he got too close, they'd swim up quickly and attack him, trying to stab his hand.

Phil, Leon and I stood around talking about it for a moment. Then Leon somehow equated it to ducks. He said that when a duck dies in the swamps, other ducks will eat it to stay alive. I thought that was really strange because I hadn't ever heard that before, but after he said it, I was watching it happen in my head. I saw a dead white duck that looked like it had been there for a while just laying in a bit of green marsh land. It was almost as if I were watching it on TV. Then another duck, which was mostly brown, came up to it and nibbled on a couple of the dead duck's feathers. It pulled them out and let go of them, letting blow off to the left in the breeze.

Then I was back in the first room with Phil. We were cleaning out the first aquarium again. Since we had just cleaned it out, it wasn't very dirty again yet, but it had already started to go all green within just a couple of minutes that we'd been gone. Phil, mostly, was working on scraping it down again. Then a bell rang or something, and it was time for class.

I was sitting in Mr. Kendall's class. Rather than desks, we were sitting at black topped tables. The were situated end to end for the most part, but they formed a "U" shaped layout. I was at the end, and the tables went off to my right, and then turned and went forward, and then turned again and the rest of the tables were in front of me.

Mr. Kendall came into class and told us all to get into our seats. I was already sitting, but there were a number of jocks that were up and running around on the far side of the class room, and they didn't have their shirts on. Mr. Kendall told them to get their shirts back on. The goofed around for a bit and then finally did what they were supposed to. Something about them having to put their shirts back on caused me to have to change my shirts with one of them. So I was there for a moment without my shirt while I was trading with someone.

Mr. Kendall came over from my right, which was where the door to the classroom was, and smacked me on the back of the head. Not hard, but just in a way that was kind of joking around, but also meaning to hurry up and get my shirt on. I did so, and as he turned his back, I picked my open book up from my desk and acted like I threw it over my shoulder at him. Other people in the class giggled a bit as I sat my book back down. I was laughing a little, too.

Then I noticed it was really quiet, and people were looking at me with a grin on their faces. I wondered what was going on, and then all of a sudden it occurred to me that Mr. Kendall had turned around in time to see me act like I was throwing my book over my shoulder at him, and he was standing right behind me as long as it took for me to notice him there. As I started to turn around, I think he had a hand out to the side of my head or something so that when I turned left, his finger jabbed my cheek. Everyone, including us, laughed about it.

Christmas Blizzard Ornaments

Em (wife) and I were at a place that was like a cross between home and a store. It was Christmas time, and we had a radio playing Christmas music. We were going to decorate our tree, but I think there was an issue with the ornaments. Either we didn't have any, or ours were lost.

I wound up going outside in my pajamas, and even though it was a blizzard out, and the snow was five to seven feet deep in spots, I wasn't cold. I was digging through the snow and finding ornaments for us to use for our tree. Also, even though I was outside, at times it also felt like I was inside with all this snow. I could still hear the radio playing the music, and I was still talking to Em.

There were some other people there with us, but I only recall hearing them, not seeing them. It was like having family over for the holidays, but they weren't family that I knew. It seems that an older man may have been giving me instructions on finding the ornaments in the snow that we wanted.

I finally found a bunch and went back inside. I was feeling a bit chilled now, but I was nice and dry, so I got into bed, which was right there in the middle of everything, and crawled up under our duvet to warm up. It was so nice and cozy.

She Had The Power

[There is a very bizarre portion at the beginning of this dream that I am trying to remember, and it really sets the stage for what happens later. There was something about being at a beach, I think, and we knew what the object was that we had gotten from the man.]

I was with Em (wife), and I had just been involved in something where I had found an object of some sort that belonged to a man. I'm not exactly sure in what way it belonged to him, though. By that, I mean it may have been something that he found or possessed, or it may have been something that was part of his body before he died, but it was something that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Anyway, Em and I were outside in our neighborhood, and we came across this woman. She was short and had dark curly hair that was cut even with her jaw line. She was in her mid forties, and possibly Hispanic. She said that she had something to show us or tell us, and it involved this thing that had belonged to the man I mentioned above. She told us that he was her husband, and she had caused this thing that we now possessed of his to appear in or from his body.

We didn't believe her at first, and she asked that we follow her into a house. I'm not sure if it was her house or our house, but I know that my car and Em's car were parked in the HUGE garage. The garage was big enough to have held at least six cars, but it didn't look like it from the outside. We followed her in and she shut the door. The garage was lit by a single bulb in the middle of the ceiling, and so it was a bit dark in there.

She had Em to follow her over to my car. She told Em to stand at the front of my car, and she went around to the back end of it. After she was in place, she said that they were going to lift the car, so they both bent down, grabbed hold under each bumper, and lifted. Sure enough, the car came about three or four feet off the ground. Em was looking thrilled at this, and she was talking about how light the car felt.

They set the car back down, and they went through a couple of other exercises. The woman picked up the car from the back end, as if it were as light as a broomstick, and swung it around a bit. She then had Em to do the same from the front end of the car. Em managed to almost hit me with the car, and although she apologized, she was giggling quite a bit because of all the fun she was having.

I realized that this woman had strange powers that was was able to transfer to us in close quarters like this if she wanted to. At about the time I realized this, she stopped, put down the car, and had me follow her to a door on the far side of the garage. She opened the door, and it opened to the outside. There was nothing there but flat land that stretched as far as we could see. There were no features on this land. No trees. Not bumps. No buildings. Nothing. It was just completely flat and colorless.

She told us again that she had caused this thing from the man to appear. She was going to show us how she had done it. She seemed very sad, but she wasn't crying or anything. We knew that whatever it was had caused the husband to die, or he was dying anyway, and so she did something that made this object appear or come out of him.

She took a couple of steps outside, and Em and I waited in the garage while we watched her. She had her back to us, and she stopped, pulled off her shirt so that we could see her bare back. I don't think I actually saw it happen except in my mind's eye, but she slowly fell forward, like in a controlled fall, with her arms straight out to either side. As she touched the ground, I'm not exactly sure what happened. It's like parts of the ground heated up, as if it were snow melting, but other parts were moving around, as if it were being dug up. The digging wasn't like it was being done with a shovel. It was more like when you push your hand into a pile of loose damp sand. It just moves out of the way easily, and the surface bulges where your hand is under it.

Another object that was similar to the first one appeared, so we believed her about conjuring the first one from her husband. Another thing also appeared. It was a raw chicken breast. It came out of the ground clean, but it had a rougher texture to it than normal, almost as if it had a bunch of pores on the surface of it.

Even though the woman was still doing her melting/digging thing and didn't move in any way to do this, the chicken breast was tossed over to where we were just inside the garage. Our cat, Nellie Belle, was there, and she came over to the chicken and started sniffing it and nibbling at it. The woman continued what she was doing for a moment, and then the dream was over.

Remodeling For The Mob

I was at Grandmamma's house, but it had been sold to Al Capone, who actually looked like Robert Deniro. There was a team of people there working on remodeling. I was walking around and watching everything and interacting with a lot of the people. This is what the floor plan looked like for the part of the house I was in:













At one point I was in a room that looked like our guest room, (at the X) and I was near a closet, or maybe a small room where the air conditioner/heat unit was sitting, and I was looking around in this little cut out in the wall. I had picked up a bit of the dry wall compound and was playing with it. It had hardened up a little bit so it stayed intact when I picked it up, but it was soft enough that you could form it. I looked closely at it, and I noticed that it had fibers in it, kind of like fiberglass or nylon. The main person leading the renovation was there, and I asked him about it, and he said that I was correct. I rolled it into a hot dog shape and put it back into the hole in the wall that it came from. I laid it on it's side, and then squished it flat over the seam I had pulled it off of in the first place.

We then left that room and turned right up the hallway. At the end of the hallway was a very large room. It was the master suite. That room was mostly finished, and the guy leading me around (who seemed to remind me a bit of Tony Danza now) was talking about this room. I went off to the left, and I noticed that this room was painted a cream color, and there was light blue carpeting in place. There was a brick area in the middle of this part of the room, and though it took me a little bit, I recognized it as a fire place. In front of it was a bed. I thought it was really odd that the fireplace was in the middle of the room like this, and so I bent down and got on my hands and knees between it and the bed to look up into the opening and see the flu. For some reason I didn't really want to look into the darkness above, so as I bent down and started to look in, I asked Tony whether or not this was a fire place. He said that it was, and he seemed very happy about it.

At this point there was a woman there with him, too, but I don't know who it was. While I was down on the floor, I noticed that one of the bricks on the face of the fireplace seemed to be aligned wrong. It should have stuck out about a half an inch, lining up with the others to the right of it, creating a kind of lip or hood that stuck out a little from the face of the fireplace. I reached up to touch it, and the brick moved. I realized that it wasn't secured in place, and that it was only being held up because of being wedged in there. The mortar had come lose from the sides of the brick.

I mentioned this to Tony, and he didn't seem to think it was a big deal. I thought to myself how if I were putting this together for the mob, I would think it was a big deal to get everything right because I might be killed if I didn't. I wound up pulling the brick out and laying it on the carpet. I then noticed that the two bricks that were to the left that that one were also loose. I pulled those out and sat them all on the carpet. I told Tony that I'd leave them there so that they could see them and fix them. He thought that was a good idea, and then we moved on.

We went to the front area of this room, which reminded me of my old room that was downstairs in Grandmamma's house. Tony stopped me in front of the closet. There was a dresser there in front of the closet door that was at least four feet tall, and there was already a bunch of decorations on it. They were things like candles and bricks.

Tony said something like, "Hey, check this out!" and he grabbed a remote. It had been fairly dark in here up to this point, but when he clicked the remote, a 42 inch plasma TV that was hanging right above the dresser came on. He had told me about his plans to do this somewhere earlier in the dream. When he showed me, I thought it was pretty cool, but then as I continued to look at it, I realized that the picture was all funny. It was like the screen was too light, but there was a problem with the "darkness threshold", and places where it should gradually go into black, like dark shadows and whatnot, had harsh lines around them. I remember noticing that they were using DirecTV when he first clicked it on. I don't remember what was on TV, but it was something that was outside, and it seemed to be maybe a western, or just something taking place outside in a desert like area. The movie seemed kind of old, and I wondered if that was the reason why the TV seemed to not be able to handle the color gradation.

When he was done, he turned off the TV. I noticed that there had been bricks placed in front of it to hide the TV when it wasn't in use. I was trying to situate the bricks back into place, but they didn't seem to cover the TV very well. There were only five bricks, and they were supposed to be standing on end. The TV had shrunk way down. The brick that was supposed to stand in the middle was longer than the others by 50%. I finally realized that this brick had some hooks on it, and there was a hook or hinge on the wall that it was supposed to sit on while the hook on the side of the brick latched around the right side of the TV. I was worried about scraping up the screen while I was putting the bricks back, but there was something there was was preventing me from doing it, and I was glad about that. The last thing that I needed was for Al Capone to be mad at me for scratching up his TV.