If I tried to write down everything that was in the nightmares I just woke from we would be here all week. But here’s a quick summary.

A friend from work had a new car (SUV actually) that had voice activated controls. She told me I could try them by telling the car to become a camper, and she handed me a fancy phone/microphone/doohicky. When I told the car to become a camper it became a playground instead – the swingset I’d had as a kid, to be exact, but with one lone tire swing and a largish (30×30) square of AstroTurf that the swingset sat upon.

That drew a crowd, and suddenly I wasn’t going out to lunch with a friend, the car was part of a number of booths at a home show / car show / convention type thing. We did have a camper then, but it was a separate vehicle, which I had to chase a different co-worker through to get the car remote back from. He was planning something nefarious, or maybe he just wanted to run off with the senator (who looked like a different woman I know from work) because they were a couple.

Anyway, I went back outside and asked the car to transform into a camper so we could leave and the car agreed so long as I made sure the senator (the car recognised her) got off the swingset first and wasn’t in danger. Once I did that the car transformed into an armored vehicle, and the senator and I drove away.

Now the dream was no longer first person adults. (Although I have to admit in most of my dreams, including this one, by “adult” I mean I’m about 22 years old.) Instead, the camera is on some toys on a bedroom floor that are being controlled by a child (9 or 10 years old) who is never quite on-camera. Bare arms capped with the dark green sleeves of a teeshirt, brown courderoy pants covering knees, and the occasional white sneaker were glimpsed, but the camera was at head height of our protagonist (and yet it wasn’t the child’s view of the toys) so that’s all we saw.

The child was narrating a converation between some terrorists in their fort (a closet door) who had taken the child’s mother (a Barbie doll in her underwear) hostage, and given the child specific instructions on what he could do to get Mom back, which strangely included trying to blow up the terrorist fort so the terrorists would know he arrived. (Blind & deaf terrorists perhaps?)

Instead, the child used a battering ram (soda straw) that he kept cutting shorter and shorter, to slowly bang the closet door open so that, while he was still negotiating with the terrorists, mom could run out and jump into the armored jeep and then they drove away.

The rest of the dream was a long and complex chase scene, back to normal first person, sometimes taking place in a Hummer, sometimes in my Saturn, sometimes in our Camry, sometimes in my brother’s new Subaru, and sometimes in my parents’ Oldsmobile. I was the driver most of the time, and I was back to being me. Mom was safe at work. I don’t know where my sister was but she was safe as well. Nighthawk, as far as the dream was concerned, didn’t exist.

My father was being hunted by the aforementioned terrorist gang, but since they were a secret society we couldn’t tell who they really were. Everywhere we went at least six cars were following us. We tried lots of ways to shake them, most of which were temporarily successful, but none of which were foolproof – after the next turn or the next car switch they’d be back on our tail in different cars.

Eventually we figured out how to ditch them all and we went home (my parents’ house). Dad and my brother worked on making a giant inflatable toboggan/slide out of a twin air mattress that was at least 30 feet long, and I was in the house thinking about dinner. Dad came in and said that he wanted to go out for a drink and I agreed. I said I’d drive because he was in no shape for it.

We stepped out the front door discussing where to go, and just as we yelled our choice out to my brother, we realized there were at least 10 cars in the yard & on the street, filled with “friends” we recognized, who said they’d all meet us there. They all left.

Mom arrived home from work to find us discussing whether the air mattress would work yet (no) and suggested we go somewhere else for drinks. I got Chance and Kaylee into the house and we all got into my car, but then I got nervous that someone would attack the house while we were gone. I went back to the house with Dad to collect the dogs and that’s when we realized the house two doors up was on fire – at least, the yard was. By the time we saw it, the yard next door was glowing too, and it was starting to seep into our yard.

I thought it was lava, so I ran inside and got the dogs. My brother, and I debated who was going to call 9-1-1, while Dad whipped out this big phone and called. He apparently recognized the man on the other side of the line and explained that it looked like “the rig was leaking again”. When I looked down I realized it looked like a mixture of vegetable and motor oil was running through the yard.

Then a second person cut Dad off on the phone and demanded that if he was going to call 9-1-1 he needed to join the calling club to get the best discounts. We could all hear the argument over the phone between the legitimate dispatchers and this loud screaming man, who was trying to get Dad to admit that his last name was Hochstetter (it’s not) and then hung up yelling he’d be right there.

I suddenly realized that Dad wasn’t on his own cell phone. He was using some other phone he’d picked up somewhere. It was the same phone controller thing from the transforming SUV, which we didn’t even have anymore, and the whole chase was because the terrorists were after the fancy car.

That must have been too logical for my right brain to handle. I woke up.

It was a long & convoluted dream, so we’ll pick up where I looked in the mirror & realized that I had a second molar coming in behind the current set. And by “behind” I mean “on the roof of my mouth”.

Since that couldn’t possibly be right, I investigated further and determined that one of my molars had split clean in half and the cap was the bit stuck to the roof of my mouth like an errant popcorn kernel. Why that didn’t hurt like hell I don’t know.

Anyway, my dad took me to the dentist in his old pickup, after we dropped Nighthawk off for his surgery, and I was able to get an emergency appointment with some dentist I’ve never seen before in a ward-like setting very similar to the big room where my orthodontist used to have four kids worked on at once. And that’s how I knew this was gonna hurt.

They got halfway done the work and sent me out to the waiting room so the sealant could cure (did I mention this was a dream?) when for some reason Dad and I decided that it was the perfect time to take me to a doctor’s office I’d never visited before to have them look at my sinuses.

So off we go to a building that was halfway to the architecture of the junior high I attended, and halfway to the architecture of the training building at work, to see a doctor I didn’t know about an unsolvable health problem while I still had exposed nerves in my molar.

When we arrived I was handed my medical records & told to wait. Of course I started flipping through them. I discovered that other people’s records were scattered in with mine, including a “whiny Chinese woman” (that’s how the nurse had described her in the notes) who’d been in an accident and was so bruised that half her face looked gangrene and dead, and her ear had fallen off.

The staff kept confusing her with me.

Maybe it was the absurdity of that mistake, or maybe it was the 5 alarms I’d set this morning, but I woke up soon after.

***

Many years ago I read a conversation between a group of folks wih cystic fibrosis about the prevalence of nightmares where their teeth would fall out. As a group, it was a consistent indicator that their lung issues were flaring up.

I doubt a lung infection is my problem, but I think I’ll take my vitamins this morning anyway.

I dreamed that I had ordered a louisville slugger online directly from the company (why I don’t know) with my choice of paint colors (it’s blasphemy to paint a louisville slugger btw). it was going to be a personal piece of memorabilia so it was important that it was perfect. And I was going to use it to play backyard baseball and maybe join a league, so it was important that the bat worked.

When it arrived it was badly warped. And by warped I mean it was carved out of the elbow of a tree branch. When you held it out to bunt, the end of it pointed at the pitcher. The end appeared to be a drawer knob screwed on & wrapped with electrical tape. I’ve seen stick bats that were more game-legal than this thing. I could’ve carved a bat myself for less than the $629.50 I’d paid for this one. (I have no idea why mybrain picked that price, or why I remember it.)

So I hopped in my car and drove to the factory, which for some reason wasn’t in Kentucky. it was in Lancaster county, PA. There I asked for a replacement and got handed a bat so old the black paint was flaking off. Plus, I suspect it was a modified chair rail because it wasn’t shaped like a bat. Oh, and it was warped too, just not as badly.

I asked for my money back & was told i could only get $200 back, but not in real money. I was given 4 options: gift certificates to township plays, gift certificates to township chicken barbeques, eBay rattan chair cushions, and a SEPTA pass only good to take the train home (thus stranding my car in Lancaster). The township GCs were only good in the township where you live, and the nasty woman who wouldn’t give me my money back wouldn’t listen when I said my township doesn’t do plays or chicken barbecues.

A moment on the decor in this dream. picture what your house would look like if all the walls were wooden paneling. now, take your floors out and replace them with stained cement. Replace your windows with ones that are two sizes smaller, and don’t open. Replace all your doors with ones that don’t quite close because all the door frames are warped, the walls are off plumb, there isn’t a square corner in the joint. This is especially evident if you use the bathroom, because the door won’t stay closed & looks rift out into the kitchen. Cover everything with soot. Throw out everything you own & replace it with $250 in furniture picked up at a yard sale in 1970. That’s what the bat factory in Lancaster’s main office looked like.

By now I had concluded this was not a legitimate Louisville Slugger.

As I was shaking the woman by the lapels demanding to know why I couldn’t have my money back (they’d spent it remodeling & redecorating) my boss’s boss intervened and convinced me to go get some dinner & go home.

He took us (suddenly Nighthawk was there) to a cafeteria-style buffet, which was built the same way as the bat factory. The food was mostly Italian, deli, or items-wrapped-in-crescent-dough, but everything was at least 5 hours old. I ended up with two sodas, a rock hard crescent mini-weenie, an egg roll made of crescent dough, and some cranberry goat cheese.

I don’t remember anything after that, but the dream kept going. I think I’m more tired now than when I went to bed.