Dream On

This morning I woke up completely exhausted from the dream I had last night...or rather, this morning. This is not an unusual occurrence for me since I have narcolepsy which means I am pretty much all REM all the time and that's when most dreams happen. Some dreams do occur during non-REM sleep but most people never remember those dreams. I remember all my dreams, all the time, in vivid and exhausting detail.

The dream that wore me out last night occurred in Holland. It felt like it lasted for hours and hours even though the average length of a single dream is between 5 and 45 minutes, depending on how long you sleep. I've actually been to Holland before but my dream had nothing to do with that trip.

Jayson, Taylor and I were on a 2-week vacation in Holland. Apparently we had booked the trip with some big tour group since there were lots of people traveling with us and we had made some friends. It was the end of our trip and time to start packing up so we could head home. I am a chronic nester so repacking everything I had unpacked was quite a chore. Taylor was probably 10 years old so she wasn't much help and Jayson had sort of disappeared when it came time to work.

I started packing up all of our stuff, frustrated at how many toys Taylor brought with her. I would get a few bags packed and take them downstairs to be loaded into the transport. That's what they called it...the transport. It was the huge vehicle that was driving everyone in our tour group back to the states. It was really long like a train but it didn't run on rails. I never did see where they stowed the luggage, which was my main concern, but I did see where all the people sat. The transport was open, like a big flatbed truck, and it had super long goal posts mounted on it. Yeah, football field goal posts. All the people were sitting on the goalposts, straddling them in a most uncomfortable looking way, waiting for the transport to start its 3-day journey back to the U.S. My dream brain temporarily forgot about the ocean it would somehow have to cross or how everyone was supposed to straddle those goal posts, exposed to the elements, for 3 days.

I continued to frantically pack bags, and by bags I don't mean suitcases. In typical Green family fashion we had packed all of our belongings into tote bags and plastic grocery sacks. There was lots of activity around the "hotel" as everyone else was packing up too. I say "hotel" because it wasn't really a hotel. It had lots of dorm-like rooms and a little coffee shop on the second floor but the first floor was a big warehouse with lots of loud industrial equipment. I would pack up a few bags, take the elevator to the first floor then wander through the maze of scary equipment until I could exit through the big overhead doors to see the transport waiting in the gravel parking lot. We were piling our "luggage" in one spot until we got it all done, then it would be loaded on to the transport. After depositing my load I would then make my way back to the elevator and up to our room, #1426, on the second floor.

Just before I finished packing, I had one of those dream time-warps where you blink and it's like 3 hours later. I grabbed my final load and when I got to the warehouse on the first floor, all of the equipment was quiet and there were no people around. I had to manually open the overhead door and when I did it was dark outside and the transport was gone. So was our pile of "luggage".

I quickly went back up to the second floor and found Jayson relaxing in the coffee shop and visiting with a couple of the employees. I was in a panic and screamed at him that we missed the transport. He calmly said we'd just catch the next one but the employees said there were no more transports. Jayson and I both went back down to the parking lot and stared at where the transport should have been. Then another overhead door opened and several employees came out carrying all of our other luggage that they had stored since we missed our ride because of the random time warp. I was really relieved to see our stuff.

Jayson started talking to the only employee who spoke English, asking him what our options were. For some reason all the employees were Hispanic instead of Dutch, I don't know why my dream brain did that. Anyway, the guy said it wasn't a problem, it had happened before and he showed us how they handle it. Another employee drove a regular flat bed truck up to where we were standing and the English speaking guy said we could drive it home.

I was all worried because we'd already paid for our return trip on the transport and we didn't have extra money to spend but we also didn't have any other choice. Jayson said they had to charge us for the use of their flatbed and it was more than what we already paid for the ultra luxurious goal post fitted transport that we missed. I was slightly concerned about the 3 of us fitting comfortably in the cab of the truck but I was more concerned with how our 20+ pieces of luggage would fare if it started raining. English speaking guy threw some cardboard onto the bed of truck and I began to fashion it into a holding area for our belongings. I asked him for a tarp to put over it in case of rain and he said we really didn't need one.

I told Jayson that he needed to talk to the employee guy about a tarp because we darn sure needed one. Jayson explained that we weren't going to drive the truck all the way home like the transport, but we would only drive it to the nearest major airport, which happened to be in London. From there we could book a flight home and they would pick up their truck on their next trip to that area.

I was all freaking out because we couldn't afford the airfare to get home, especially since we had 20 pieces of plastic Kroger luggage to check! My dream brain still didn't remember about the body of water we'd have drive across to get from Holland to London.

Then there was another time warp and my dream turned into an infomercial about the guy who owned the hotel we were staying at. He had moved to Holland from the U.S. back in the 60s and opened an amusement park which was still on the grounds of the hotel. The amusement park consisted of one single ride: a rickety wooden merry go round.

And then I woke up. Exhausted and stressed and confused as to why all my dang dreams have to have that much detail. Sometimes I just wish I could have a pleasant little vague dream with fuzzy suggestions instead of stress-inducing details that I absolutely don't need. Either that or a lucid dream, which is just about the coolest thing in the universe. During a lucid dream you are full-on dreaming but inside your dream you aware that you are just dreaming which means you can consciously control the events or the direction of the dream. It's freakin' awesome. I've heard that you can train yourself to have a lucid dream but I have no idea how to do that. I've had several of them but they're random and they're just about the only dreams I have that I actually enjoy.

I don't waste time trying to interpret dreams because I really don't believe they have any kind of deeper meaning. My Daddy used to say, "I can tell you what that dream meant. It meant you were asleep, that's all it meant." I choose that interpretation since some of mine are too disturbing to even say out loud. Am I the only one who has dreams that I'm embarrassed about? Please say no.