Dream Journals

Last week I started keeping a dream journal as versus a personal journal. It's a journal in which I log my dreams from the previous night's sleep. My younger daughter suggested it because she claims I have very unusual dreams and she thinks I can get some good story ideas from it. Hopefully she's right. Unfortunately, I don't always remember my dreams in much detail and I'm not good at interpreting them. At least not yet. So far, each dream has been unique, unlike my daughter and my mom who claim to have a recurring dream. Some of my dreams are similar to things going on in my life or a TV show I watched that day. However, others seem to have no connection to anything whatsoever. For instance, the first dream I logged was that a bunch of people I didn't know went into a big amusement park with real T-Rex's. The people stayed on a big rectangular walking track while the T-Rex's snatched them up at random intervals and ate them. The people didn't try to avoid them too much as it was some sorority thing. I don't recall that I was eaten, but I did awake during that dream so maybe I would have been had it kept going. I have no earthly clue what that dream meant. Later that same night, I dreamed about two people I know, one a critique partner I've met in real life and the other a lady in my department at my day job. We were riding on some stand up motorized scooter and we kept losing our shoes and finding ourselves either barefoot or wearing a pair of white shoes none of us recognized. Again, I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. The following night, I dreamed I was looking for my husband late at night. I thought he was across town in a really bad part of town and I was scared to walk those streets. So I hopped a city bus to get across town. However, one of the other passengers wanted to be let off on top of a mountain of garbage. So the bus drove on top of the garbage and let him out. But then the bus started sliding down the hill of garbage. My daughter thinks this dream means I'm suspicious of her dad but that my suspicions are unfounded. I'm not sure on either count. Maybe it means I'm full of garbage? LOL Last night I dreamed about having to find a new place to live and that we couldn't afford anything but in a bad part of town in an awful and scary tenement building. I didn't recognize which town. But after my gut reaction of hating it and being scared, I started to find things I liked about the new neighborhood. My really good friend Jo was in another apartment in the building and I met other really nice people there I started to bond with. Then I ventured further into the old, formerly scary part of town and I found really neat things. I happened upon the library that had a lot of great programs and I stayed there till closing. Again, the same coworker from my day job was at the library volunteering and having a grand old time. It was actually a pretty uplifting dream in the end and I didn't want to wake up. I have no idea why this same coworker has shown up twice in my dreams within the same week now. None of the other people from my department have, at least not to my recollection. Whereas I like this person a lot, we're not best friends or even lunch buddies like some of the others. I don't dislike her. So I'm stumped why her so often? Why not the others? So far, I don't think I see any wonderful story ideas in my dreams, but I'll keep at it. I think this journal is turning out better than my other daily journals for interest factor. And I do relate them to daily events and past things in my life a bit so it'll probably end up being a good genealogical tool for my descendants. Of course they'll probably think I'm nuts after reading my goofy dreams. Then again, what will they think of my mom's recurring dream? She dreamed she was part of the fated Donner Pass Party in the 1800s US, the one where they got snowed in with insufficient food to last the winter so they cannibalized one another to survive. A few made it out alive. Anyway, it freaked her out so badly, she hopped on a plane and flew over the Donner Pass instead of driving through it with my step father when they went out to California for my wedding back in 1980. She couldn't bear to "go through it again". Can you imagine having a dream about cannibalization over and over? <> Sooooooo, do you dream a lot? Do you have recurring dreams or themes in the dreams? Or are you like me and have a lot of unique, weird dreams? Do you interpret your dreams? That's my next project, to see if I can learn to do that. Maybe I can be another Joseph. Why do women like to read erotic romance? One of my loops is discussing this topic this week. Personally, I'm an emotion junkie - romantic emotions, that is. I want to feel as if I'm falling in love and maybe I'm oversexed, but I like those feelings, too. When I was a kid reading Harlequins and Silhouettes, I used to cheat and read that back of the book to make sure there was a happy ending which of course there always was. I also dog-eared the pages where the hot sex was so I could re-read those parts. I know some women profess sex is dirty, that it should be secret and hidden behind the closed bedroom door. Some of those same women have 8 kids. Hmmmm. That makes me think they're not so against sex. I'm sure others are like me and enjoy sex - both the real deal and the emotions it evokes. I'm sure I have at least one kid as a result of getting hot from reading a fictional sexy romance. For some reason, we don't want our mothers, grandmothers, and aunts to read our erotic stuff - at least not most of us. For some odd reason, we don't like to think of them as sexual creatures but obviously they were at least once if we're here - well, maybe not the aunts, but usually. I was in a workshop listening to a famous author a few years ago who is hilarious in person as well as in writing. Maybe more so in person. Anyway, she had me laughing so hard when she told this confession. She had told us that her mother professed to be shocked (I don't recall exact words) about her erotic romance scenes, but then she'd catch her sneaking to read them. She then told us that she was afraid her mother would get so hot she'd jump her father and she'd wind up with a new baby brother. It happens. That's life. :) If you like to read them, why? What are your reasons? Do you mind if other people know you like them? I imagine a lot of women like to read them but don't want other people to know. That's one reason they're so hot in e-book format. No one else gets to see a cover with naked, entangled bodies - a dead give away. Try explaining that one to your pastor or Bertha-better-than-thou if they see you reading it at Borders. You'll also want to see what Amarinda Jones, Anika Hamilton, Anny Cook, Barbara Huffert, Brynn Paulin, Bronwyn Green, Dakota Rebel, Kelly Kirch, Molly Daniels, Sandra Cox, Regina Carlysle, and Cindy Spencer Pape are up to, so make sure to visit them also. :)