Little dreams

I've always had lots of vivid dreams. I must really drift off into a deep sleep in the early morning hours and I wake to the strangest dreams. Some just seem so real, like the one I had about being shot in the back as I drove away from someone with a gun. I hit the gas and was rounding a turn, then felt a warm, wet sensation on my back. I reached around and touched it and then saw the blood on my hand. I could feel it in my dream and I woke up and couldn't believe it had happened. Ever had a dream like that?

I've also had dreams that I've lost loved ones and woke up with tears streaming down my face and the thought of them no longer being in my life. And I've had dreams that people who are no longer on this earth are sitting at a table eating dinner with me or laughing and making jokes. Those are a bit freaky and a bit comforting at the same time.

Then there's the recurrent dream I have that I'm in high school and am struggling to get to a class on time and never seem to make it or that I'm at my locker needing to retrieve important papers and I can't remember the combination and the whole dream is a series of trying to get what I need and get it on time and I'm never successful. That parallels real life in a big way. I have one deadline after another.

It's interesting how dreams are linked to what is going on in your life and funny to try and interpret ones that seem so crazy and far fetched. I had a lot of intense and weird dreams as I was planning my wedding, including one that my grandfather (who has been deceased since I was a toddler) was driving a truck -- a milk truck, I think -- and I was talking to him. I vaguely remember what he looked like from some photos I've seen. In my dream, he had Jackie Gleason's face. Then I went into a Taco Bell restaurant that led to a big banquet hall and theatre in the back. There was a beauty contest going on and I guess I was supposed to pick someone out of the group to marry us. Crazy! What is a dream like that supposed to mean?

I've heard it said about dream analysis that the content of your dreams is related to something you thought about or encountered that day before you slept. Sometimes I can see the direct relation. Often not -- I doubt that the day I had that dream I was eating at Taco Bell, witnessing a beauty contest, watching the Honeymooners and thinking about a grandfather I hadn't seen since I was two-years-old.

Last night I dreamed of spiders. Yesterday my husband told me he'd seen a bunch of baby spiders making webs along the house gutters. So, that dream did make a bit of sense. Except that in my dream the house was surrounded by TONS of webs, so that we were almost in a cocoon and the spiders were gigantic man-eating creatures. I also dreamed about chocolate coconut milk after seeing a food blog recipe for Popsicles using chocolate coconut milk.

My kids now tell me in the morning when they've had a dream they can remember. I've heard some good ones about canoeing down a choppy river and about cities made out of candy. Last week my 7-year-old came up to me and said "Guess what my dream was last night? I drove an ATV all the way to Cuba and I didn't even have to stop for gas!" Okay, 'Where did that come from?,' I wonder to myself.

As I was typing this, my youngest came up to me and said, "Want to know what I had a dream of last night?" "Sure, I answer." He has no clue I'm typing about his dreams as we speak. I lean in hoping to hear some big tale about castles or animals or something really cool. He tells me, "I was a baby. I was only like one year old and I was smoking a cigarette." Oh, lovely...