This post is very self-indulgent so you might want to skip over it. I just had a bizarre and amusing series of dreams, and I had to write them down, complete with footnotes. (1)
Each dream morphs into the next.
Dream A: I'm babysitting for a family with four kids, at their house. The oldest is a four year old named M. (2) I'm doing my job, playing with the kids, feeding them, changing diapers. Then I take a break. That's when the father comes home. (3)
The father starts working at the computer and I go into another room and to pick up toys. There's a DVD on the floor and it's a movie I want to see so I slip it into my purse. I look up and the father is standing over me. He thinks I'm stealing from him. I feel guilty and try to explain but end up sounding like a liar.
The truth was, I only wanted to take the movie home, watch it and bring it back. I knew the mother wouldn't mind. I intended to ask her but there's a chance I would have forgotten.
Dream B: There's a news story on TV about a four year old boy who was kidnapped and murdered. One of his arms was cut off at the elbow and he bled to death. It's a serial killer because another four year old boy died the same way a year earlier. The police know the perpetrator was a woman.
I'm afraid they're going to think it's me because I'm a mental patient and I babysit a four year old boy named M. Lots of times when I'm babysitting, I invite his friends over to play, including the second little boy who was murdered. (4)
I have to find the serial killer, to save myself and protect M. I think it might be the mother of M's friend. (5) I offer to babysit for her so I can look around her house.
When I get there, the mother looks like a slightly less cracked out version of Amy Winehouse and I know she's the killer. I'm trapped in this tiny house with her and she's got an axe or a knife or something. Then I see her four year old son standing in the doorway and his arm has been cut off. The police have us surrounded. I want to save the boy and save myself but I know the police are going to think I'm the killer. If the boy dies, I won't have a witness. If he doesn't die, he might lie and say I did it because he's afraid of his mother.
I'm completely trapped unless I can get the woman to act crazy so the police can see for themselves. If I do that, she might kill me. What a dilemma.
Dream C: I'm in my apartment and it's a mess. Dirty dishes piled everywhere, garbage overflowing, and boxes of stuff sitting everywhere. I'm trying to clean. There are several five pound bags of sugar. I want to get rid of them because they're old and I'm not supposed to have them. When I try to throw them away, the bags break open and spill all over the floor. (6)
Dream D: My former psychiatrist Dr. W is back in town and he's called me. He invites me out for dinner. But there's something weird about the way he was acting so I told him I have a date that night. He hesitates but says to bring my date along. The only "date" I can come up with is my gay friend so I invite him. Despite both of us knowing that Dr. W knows he's gay, gay friend pretends to be my boyfriend. At the last minute, I'm still feeling a little queasy so I invite another friend. One of them is my friend in the dream, a brunette. When we get to the restaurant, we pick up another "friend" who's blonde. (7)
In the dream, we've never met the blonde before but we pretend to know her. Blonde and brunette are also pretending to be a Lesbian couple. So gay friend, brunette friend and blonde "friend" are waiting for Dr. W at the restaurant's bar. By the way, we're all mentally ill. (8) This is a restaurant my friends and I could never afford. (9)
Finally, Dr. W shows up fashionably late. He's wearing a toupee. One of those "I don't want anyone to know I'm wearing a toupee" toupees to make it look like his hair is thinning. The wig is black but peppered gray and he has dyed the rest of his hair to match. Everyone can tell it's a wig. He's also got a fake tan, he's wearing a brown polyester suit (10), and his shirt collar is open to reveal a nice patch of curly hair, and a gold chain with a shark tooth on it. (11)
He looks like a lounge lizard from the 1970s - he's trying to look like he's in his 40s but we all know he's in his 70s. My friends have never met him before but they see how surprised I am to see him looking like that. He's absurd but thinks he's pulling it off. My friends and I snicker behind his back. (12)
I'm excited because he knows I like chest hair, and I realize my hunch was right. He's on the make for me. I'm practically giddy - I want to sleep with him. (13) I check to see if he's wearing his wedding ring, hoping that he's now divorced. He's wearing it, but I can tell he had taken it off and put it back on. It's too tight for him and wouldn't go all the way back on. You can see the outline where it was and his finger is red and puffy. (14)
I think he's gone temporarily insane. If he sleeps with me, he'll violate his own ethics and risk ending up in jail. (15) Not to mention he'd be cheating on his wife, although that doesn't bother me. (16)
But I want to protect him from hurting himself. And I want him to leave his wife and marry me. What a quandary.
The maitre d' escorts us through the main room of the restaurant to a back room with about 10 tables but we're the only ones seated there. Which is fine with us, even though we realize he doesn't want us around the other customers because we're such a rag tag lot.
The waitress brings us soup and salads. We eat and talk and we're all having a great time. The blonde says Dr. W and I would make a cute couple because we're the same height. Which makes me nervous so I say "He likes them tall." (17)
But it's well past time for the rest of our food to come and there's no waitress in sight. Dr. W goes to check on it and my friends go to the bathroom, leaving me alone in this big room. I wander over to the window. While I've got my back turned, other customers come in and begin filling the tables. They all think I'm the waitress and expect me to wait on them, which I start to do before I realize, hey, I don't have to. (18) They're all pushy and obnoxious but I ignore them.
Three rich people are sitting at the table where my group was seated, even though our stuff is still there. I go up to them and explain this is my group's table and ask them to move. They refuse and call me a liar, even though it's very obvious our stuff was already there. One of the guys goes to get the maitre d'.
My friends return and back me up but the rich people still won't leave. The maitre d' shows up and calls us liars and tells us we have to leave. Even though he's the one who originally seated us there, he believes the rich people because we're mental patients. The only member of our group with any credibility is Dr. W and we don't know where he is.
He finally shows up and the maitre d' and the rich people believe him, even though the way he's dressed, he looks weirder than us.
The dream fast forwards to after dinner. My friends are gone and it's me and Dr. W in the parking lot. He's divorcing his wife and he wants to be with me. He wants to come back to my place and I want him to, but I don't want him to see how dirty my apartment is - especially all that sugar spilled on the floor. And I don't want him to see me naked because I'm so fat.
Fast forward, we're in my bed. I'm naked and half the time he is too and half the time he's not. He's telling me how much he loves me and lovingly rubbing his hands over my fat body. That's when I realize - he's nothing but a chubby chaser.
And then I woke up.
Robert Redford's picture is here because he's the same age as Dr. W and my father. All three of them were born in lower working class families during the Great Depression. To picture Dr. W, imagine Danny Devito with gray hair and a beard. My dad looked kind of like Fred Flintstone. They're kind of like Bizarro versions of Robert Redford, just like the dream doctor was a Bizarro version of Dr. W. (19)
There's a lot more explanation about Redford's connection to these dreams, but this is already my longest post ever. If anybody wants to know, tell me and I'll post it later.
- - - - - Footnotes - - - - -
1. This is a footnote.
2. Real life - I babysat for this family 15-20 years ago, but the kids' ages were further apart than they are in the dream.
3. RL - That always used to happen! I'd work my ass off all day, then I'd put the little ones down for a nap and get the older boy to play a video game or go to a friend's house so I could take a break. The father rarely came home during the day, but every single time he did, he'd find me taking a break. He never complained though. It was obvious I was doing a good job. The kids were happy to see me every morning and happy when mom got home at night. And the house would be cleaner than it had been when she left.
4. RL - Friends of the woman I babysat for used to call her at work and ask if they could drop their kids off at her house and have me babysit them for a few hours. She would call me and I always said yes because it was easier for me when the kids had someone to play with.
5. The boy in the dream was Shay, a real life neighbor of the boy I babysat. He used to come over a lot and M went to his house. The family I worked for had a lot more money than Shay's family. Whenever M broke something, he blamed Shay. His parents always believed him. They said Shay came from a bad family (not true) and they didn't want him to come over anymore. When I tried to tell them M was lying, they didn't seem to believe me. But M knew that I knew he wasn't telling the truth.
6. The dream apartment is similar to my real apartment but smaller, dirtier and more crowded. In RL, I have a lot of sugar here right now. Two bags of Halloween candy, a bag of mints, a bag of Gummi bears, a box of Lucky Charms, popsicles, and fudgcicles. I never keep this much sugar around - ever - because I'm diabetic. But I bought all that stuff this week.
Footnote to the footnote: My blood sugar might have already been running high, which would cause sweet cravings. I'm eating compulsively and loading up on sugar. I know it can kill me but I havent' been able to stop. Part of the reason I'm doing this is because I feel a sense of doom. This weekend, I bought enough supplies to get by for at least a month. I think the the stock market is going to crash, banks and stores will close, and the government won't be able to help anyone because the Chinese and the Arabs will cut off our credit. (If you're paying attention to the news, you know this isn't paranoia on my part. It could happen.)
7. RL - The gay friend is my Seattle "fiend." The brunette is one of my friends from real life. The blonde is a woman I've seen in local commercials who reminds me of a friend I had a falling out with 10 years ago, who also had a falling out with the brunette friend. I always thought the real blonde would make a good Lesbian.
8. RL - Gay friend and I are mentally ill; blonde and brunette are not.
9. RL - The restaurant reminds me of our local country club where Dr. W was a member. Blonde and brunette could easily afford it.
10. The brown suit looks like a suit he really did wear a lot but it wasn't polyester. It always amused me because he's even shorter than my dad and a salesman once told my dad not to wear brown because it makes you look shorter.
11. RL - Dr. W would never do this, ever. My dad was always very tan from working outside and his hair was black and peppered gray. Paging Dr. Freud.
12. When I was in the psych unit 20 years ago, the nurses told me Dr. W had gone through a playboy phase in the 1970s, when he was in his 40s. He had cheated on his first wife with the woman who became his second wife.
13. RL - No, I never wanted to have sex with him. But I did wish he would cuddle me sometimes.
14. Yes, I recognize the phallic significance. Short and thick and red and puffy, needs a ring to keep it up.
15. RL - Dr. W was extremely ethical - one of the things I admired about him. In Iowa, it's a crime for a psychiatrist to have sex with a former patient.
Footnote to this foot note: I knew the woman who lobbied the state to make a medical professional having sex with a client a crime because of what had happened to her. Coincidentally, she looked a lot like the blonde in the dream.
Footnote to the footnote to the footnote: When I was in the psych unit in the 80s, I used to look out my window and see this woman waiting in the parking lot behind her therapist's office. He'd come out and they'd get in the car and leave together. I knew he was her therapist and realized they were having an affair.
16. Real life - Dr. W's wife was my therapist for 3 years. She was a control freak and a genius at the mind fuck. After she dumped me, I became a hermit because I was afraid of running into her and I've hardly left my apartment since. That was 20 years ago. Even Dr. W said the way she treated me was abusive.
Footnote to this footnote: My therapist (Dr. W's wife) worked in the same office where the sex-abusing therapist worked. The associates all knew he was going out to dinner with clients and they did nothing about it. I even told my therapist what I suspected and she defended him. She was shocked - shocked I tell you - when she found out the truth. The bitch. She dumped me soon after. Maybe because she realized I could testify against her when all those clients sued. Which they did. And won.
17. RL - Dr. W's wife is several inches taller than him. She has a big sturdy frame - her shoulders are wider than his, and her hands are bigger.
18. This is a common dream theme for me, as a symbol for anxiety. I'll be the only waitress on duty and the restaurant suddenly becomes very busy. People are yelling at me and I'm scrambling around trying to get everything done. RL - I worked as a waitress when I was in college, often alone on the afternoon or overnight shifts, and that used to happen.
19.
Bizarro was created when Lex Luthor attempted to make a copy of Superman but Bizarro turned out to be clumsy and destructive.
There are a lot of things the fashion industry does that damages women. The most talked about is the way they glorify anorexia and bulimia by holding models to unrealistic standards for body size. 
