Goals

The house I will live in will have a dining room, even if we never use it.
I won't be living alone.
There will be a room with large windows, but probably small with not much else in it. A solarium, if you will. (The light of the large windows and the ability to bask in the sun when it's available will make up for the lack of insulation / possible heating bill increase.)
There will be hard wood floors.
Hopefully, there will be a basement. If possible, it will be accessed by a trap door and be filled with play pen balls (the hard plastic ones. And they won't be nasty because there won't be random children with their random germs playing in them).
I will have a room, tiled or with linoleum on the floors and at least a foot and a half up the walls. I will then get giant rolls of paper and spread them along the walls and cover the floor in several layers of paper. Then I will get water-based paint. And then there will be loud music and old clothes and rolling around and laughter.
I will have a large dog and it will be fluffy and it will be named Alot because of Allie Brosh.

I will leave the country as soon as possible and for as long as possible, but for a limited time.

Hey, me, remember when?

My SubConscious is a Jerk

Recently, I've been having only super-realistic dreams instead of th ones you know are dreams or the ones that obviously logically aren't real, but could be, if only, you know, gravity worked differently (or whatever).

The problem with the super realistic ones is that they affect my judgments of people. Because I remember things happening that never actually happened. Last night, for example, apparently one of my friends saw me, and, in summation, told me all his friends hated me and couldn't understand why he hung out with me. And then his mother made fun of me, to my face, because she thought I was his girlfriend instead of recognizing me as myself.
Mmm... yeah.

The title stands.

Or not

I was going to write a post about the dream I had that I mentioned twice that made me wake up in the middle of the night and whisper "happy things happy thoughts happy thoughts happy things happy thoughts good happy nice happy" to myself under my breath, of course, so I wouldn't wake up my roommates.

However, it is past the time that I would like to be asleep, I have to be up at the normal time in the morning that only sounds early to people who sleep in every day, and I still have things I need to do before i go to bed. So.

Last night?
I dreamt (which is apparently not a word... who knew?) about an ugly tiger, being busy, having the latest ex call me to tell me something important to which i responded "yes, okay, I'm kind of in the middle of something..." which he interrupted with, sadly, "can't we just... talk?" Meaning he was sad. Not that it made me sad. That's when I saw the ugly tiger. It was in my neighbor's yard. Then somebody came over and I tried to take pictures of the ugly tiger on the camera on my phone. And then I was trying to show them to somebody. At some point, I hung up on the ex.

It's weird how much I dream about him. Like, I dream about people I actually know not very often and when I do it's in a super realistic you-could-be-awake-right-now sort of a dream. I've had a bunch of those about him, too, though. They confuse my feelings because sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between a dream and reality. Sad perhaps, but true. It makes me more careful when I talk to people, though, because if I can't remember exactly what they said in what exact situation, I have to allow the possibility that they never said it at all.
I've never dreamt this much about a boy before. It's weirding me out.
And then I wake up and tell myself "Does not matter." (I'm a little influenced by Nation, by Terry Pratchett, which you should probably go out and read right now.)

One day, I will stop caring whether or not I dream about you.

Now I have the Cranberries stuck in my head.

So, i haven't posted in a while, which should be obvious. Oh well.
This semester has been kind of crazy, but through it I managed to keep up with Psych, Big Bang Theory, and How I Met Your Mother (not to mention starting and getting through more than half of Battle Star Galactica).

I obviously have my priorities straight.

Most of my recent dreams have been about my now-ex boyfriend being a jerk. Which isn't totally surprising. I mean, he did break up with me. And I've never had a dream about him where he's not a jerk. He really isn't in real life, though. Well, except for breaking up with me.
This is not an emo blog, though. So moving on. (I haven't. Three weeks later and I still think about little else. Ug.)

Zombies.
One night I had a collection of dreams all about zombies. It was pretty much a series of short stories, but in video.
Some of them were kind of terrifying.

General background:
There are zombies. They kill people, kind of gruesomely. In this particular city/town (larger than the town I grew up in, smaller than NYC or Boston), there are small groups of people, say three to six people, who have so far successfully survived. One group of four or five people has fortified a house mainly by not leading zombies to it.

Summaries of some of the stories, in somewhat chronological order:

A young girl (actually a sexless child- characters are sometimes like that in my dreams, but it's easier to pick a gender) wakes up to find a zombie in her room. She hears it grumabaumble (no, that's not a typo). She's terrified, but realizes that it's lit by the candle her mother left by her bedside. She grabs the candle, bludgeons the zombie, watches it fall, and falls back asleep with the mild suspicion that it was all just a dream.
The girl wakes up, finds her brother with hot wax burns on his face, dead at the side of her bed. (Yes, I know, wax doesn't really burn /that/ hotly, but oh well. Maybe she got in a particularly good whack to his head when she was flailing at him).

A group of four or five people are living in a two-story house. A grubby stranger comes to the door. They are suspicious, but take him into the house with them. He proves useful at finding things.

A group of three people are running through the town. They are being chased, but by something faster than zombies. Probably dogs. There are a lot of pets around because the zombies are only interested in human brains. Or they can't catch the animals. Maybe some of both.

Three women, one red haired, one short and dark (the point of view), and another are in the back yard of a nice enough house, next to a partly rotting, painted brown, wooden privacy fence. There is a zombie coming towards them, around the corner of a barn. There is a struggle. PoV feels useless because she is too afraid of the zombie to be useful in a fight. The 'another' and red have gotten the zombie pinned, but it's struggling and they are having difficulty holding it down. They tell PoV to hit it. "With what?" She's terrified. How can she kill something, even if it's not truly alive? How does she know? Red has an arm and is holding its head down by the hair. Another is pinning the legs and the other arm. PoV doesn't know what to do. Red yells at her to grab a piece of the fence and just hit it. She tries. The wooden beam is heavy. Red shifts, to bare the throat, and encourages her. PoV brings the wood up, her arms hurt. She tries to bring it down, but it seems to bounce off the thing. She has to try again. She brings it down harder. Nothing. She tries again. Harder. It seems to have an effect. Again and again and again she brings it down. (This one wins for most distressing, though not particularly gruesome).

PoV (different person) is running through the house the group of four or five was in before. She might be one of that group. She is being chased by a rather well put together zombie which is barely leaving any pieces behind. It could have been a mountaineer once. Or that male gym teacher who always skeeved you out a little. It is apparent that it was once is good shape. At one point she is hiding on the top bunk of a double-decker bed. She gets up the stairs, climbs onto the roof of the porch, hides. She can hear it moving around inside. Somehow, it thinks of the roof as well. It finds her. She screams, scrambles, falls off the roof. (This was probably the second most distressing)

The group of four to five has met up with another group. They are trying to think of ways to get rid of the zombies, at least in their area. They realize that fire seems to work.

A man (PoV) is in the backyard of a house, by a swing set near a garage. He is digging in the mulch around the building, looking for something he knows was there before. He hears something, pauses. He watches a zombie approach. He doesn't move. Maybe it won't see him. As it comes closer, he looks around for a weapon. He sees an old canister of fuel. It nears, is obviously after him now. He picks up the canister, feels it's heft: there's liquid in it. He pours the liquid over the zombie. It's water.

"Love me to Death" (yeah, sometimes there are titles)
A girl is on the second story porch of a house, looking over a wooded area with a barn. She watches a zombie of a boy she knew before. It is slouching towards the barn. It pauses. She ducks and hides. It looks up at the door to the house, continues into the barn. She remembers what it was to her, when it was him. She wonders what she would do if it ever came up the stairs.

The larger group is organizing something. The people have split up. One man, the useful one who once was scruffy, has a mega phone or a microphone. He is running around a rather densly zombie-occupied space, yelling about his luscious brains ("I rarely used them, after all! Sure to be tender!"). Zombies are gathering, surrounding him. He runs into a convinent abandoned warehouse (ah, now, that was their plan all along).
A boy and another person are throwing meat around, hoping it will help lead the zombies in. The bodies they have seen, after all, have more than just the brains missing. They are on a second story.
There are all kinds of zombies. (My favorite was the girl with spiked purple hair.) Pan over, to take in the diversity.
The boy from before is getting out fuel canisters. He and some others start throwing it over the collected zombies. Some of the zombies have humorous (to me) expressions. The boy lights a match, throws it onto a soaked zombie. The flame goes out. He tries again, nothing happens. He tries again, it catches, the zombie starts flailing, burning unexpectedly well. It catches others on fire, but many are catching on and moving out. The boy douses himself in kerosene, lights himself on fire, and dives in.
The place in on fire. The one with the microphone is dead. The boy is dead. Some others have perished. Three people look onto the burning warehouse from a roof several streets over. A job well done.
They go back to the house.

I wish I could take credit for the world building of my subconscious. Some of the worlds are really pretty.

In news of today? I tried signing up for a YouTube account. It almost let me, but now refuses to acknowledge my usename as one in existence, but also refuses to let me sign up with that name since it already exists. There is no e-mail contact for YouTube that I can find (which makes sense. I shudder to think of the many trolling e-mails they would probably receive) and I have little inclination to send them a written complain through "snail mail".

Oh, I also have a DeviantArt account. I may link to it later, but not today. Stalk away, if you think you can find it. (I'm actually toying with the idea of starting a second one to watch groups, so I only watch individuals with the main account, and to post written work. We'll see if I ever actually do that, though.)

Gruman's Court

My dreams don't often have titles, but this one specifically did.

Starting scene: There's a red haired girl in a stone tower which is the bunk space for a boarding school for girls. The duke is coming for a visit with his royal army and she's so not interested. So, she's hiding from all his people who will inspect the school and from the ladies in charge of it who are making sure that all the girls are attending as they should.
One of her friends had told her that she should really go, at least to see the duke who was reputedly a good looker, but she's not concerned with such things. She's trying to figure out a way to be hidden somewhere they will not look as a part of the inspection. Under the bed is no good, for it's high enough for trunks to go under, on top is no good for they'll surely look there. She considers trying to hold herself under the top bunk, but it doesn't look like there's enough space to hide her body, and she probably wouldn't have the upper body strength.
Someone's at the door. She whirls to try to dash somewhere, but the door opens and the matroness sees her.
The woman expresses her disapproval in the girl and how she's letting down the whole school. She grabs her and pulls her down the stone spiral staircase of the tower down to where the rest of the school is gathered to welcome the duke. She finds her friend, convinces her to help her get away.
Somehow she manages to get through the crowd of people and away without being seen and caught. She ends up at the stables (because that's what happens in teenage magic realism books for girls), full with the horses of the duke's army. She wanders past the horses, talking to them, meeting them. She pauses at a gorgeous charger. A man comes up behind her and says something about how it's a nice horse, isn't it. She turns, surprised because she didn't hear him walk up. He speaks softly, reassures her that she doesn't have to go back to standing in a crowd under the cloudy sky. She doesn't recognize him, but that doesn't mean much. The girls aren't allowed to hang around the farm areas that help supply the school, and there are lots of stable hands and farm workers.
The man moves on to a conversation topic having to do with the weather, how it's such a nice day, shame, though, that it's overcast still. It's been overcast for years. There was a joke (that was less of a joke than the girls would have liked) that the sun was afraid to come out.
The girl swears she remembers a sunny day, years and years ago, back when her mother was around and would sing to her soft songs in the back yard. And the sunshine. The sunshine was important.
Having been lost in her thoughts, she's startled to realize that the man is allowing her to be: he hasn't kept talking on about nothing and hasn't asked her a question, pulling her back into their talk. She, feeling slightly guilty about ignoring the man who wasn't turning her in to those who would make her stand around for the duke, says something about how yes, it's good enough, but it'd be better still if the fighting stopped.
The man has no idea what she's talking about. She notices, states- more than asks- that he's not from the area. He replies how he's from a holding to the south. She realizes he must be with the duke, feeling guiltier that he hasn't turned her in yet. To offset her feelings, she offers to show him the fighting.
They saddle some horses and go off to the east, towards some smoke on the horizon. She motions to him to slow as they reach a not-quite-forest, not-quite-meadow area. They can hear men dieing. She motions to him to be quiet, trying to convey with her eyes how dreadfully important the quietness is. He nods his acceptance and follows her to the top of a small rise.
There are men dieing. They die when the shadow beasts, tall as a man standing on another's shoulders, slash through them with their claws. Hundreds of men, fighting uselessly, for shadows are all the beasts are, until they decide to use their claws to slash through another body, the blood falling off as soon as they're through the spine as they will their claws to be shadows once again.
The man is astonished. "How have we at the holding never heard of this?"
The girl gives him what might be, had she been looking at her friend instead of a stranger, disparaging. "Probably because nobody survives long enough to bring the duke news."
The man is about to reply, but catches a movement with the corner of his eye. There is a flank of shadow beasts closing in on the townsmen fighting the main group of beasts. It also happens to be cutting of the man and the girl's way back towards the school, though they don't seem to have been noticed by the beasts.
He tells her to go back to the school and get the duke's army to come back to aid him. He recommends speaking with the adviser instead of anybody from the school. She rides hard as she can back to the school, finds the man. She tells him about the shadow beasts, but he ignores her as he has more important things to attend to. She's upset, being ignored, knowing her new friend is about to get slaughtered like all of the other men who have fought the shadow beasts. She mentions him, gets the adviser's attention. She describes the man and has his full attention. He questions her where, exactly, the fighting is going on, suddenly horrified that the duke is going to get himself killed.
The army goes off to aid the duke. More people are dieing, now. People start fleeing the school, trying to get farther away. The shadow beasts have never been as close to the school as they are now. The girl is running around, trying to stay out of the way, not wanting to leave, not knowing what to do.

Suddenly, the sun comes out.
The shadow beasts dissolve. The sunlight burns through them, though they seem to be only dust, but dust is more tangible than shadow. The wind catches them, the wind blowing the clouds away, and they spiral off in pieces towards the sun, the brilliant sun that had been missing for so long.
The duke's army is in pieces, but surviving.

...Obviously, the girl did something since she's the main character and has yet to have a real adventure, though surely the duke, if he has survived, will bring her off with him and she'll have all sorts of things to entertain her. And no doubt the magicians that will try to figure out what exactly it is that she did. The court magicians, that is. Not that she knows.
And there's the overbearing doom of where the shadow beasts came from and who sent them and what happens next.

It wasn't as bad as it reads.

The auditorium:

I was with a group of people and we were walking along a hallway trying to find room 1014 or something. We walked past a door labeled 1012 and were like "oh, we're close." Then there was a bulge in the wall 'cause a room was kind of in the hallway and we had to walk around it and then the numbers on the other side were like 1018 and we couldn't find the room we were looking for. And then we were in it and there was someone talking and the dream continued, but I don't actually remember that part.

The title dream: (aka, knees)

Backstory: I fell and basically shattered my knee cap. A little. Like, it was in a bunch of pieces, but still all together. But that wasn't part of the dream.

So I could walk on it and it hurt a little but not that much, but I tried not to put weight on it because I thought that would just make it worse and my knee would be destroyed.
My mother took me to this Asian doctor who spoke pretty good English, but he kept lasping into worse English / a combination of Chinese and English.
He was really nice as he pulled out a scalpel and was explaining what he was going to do. He cut my knee open and asked my something about blood, but in French, and so I just responded "No." And he said "You had a very vehement answer there, but I think, in fact, you are bleeding" and gave me a tissue thing to wipe my knee off. And then he cut it open more.
Then he called my mother back into the room and was like "So, see this part here? This is the broken part" and kept talking and explaining and poking at my knee with the scalpel. Then my grandfather and father were called in because apparently they were there, too, and he started explaining my knee to them. And he said how I should come back in tomorrow and he'll work on it more.
By the time he was done talking to them, my knee had mostly healed and I was like "Oh crap, he's going to have to cut it open again."


Well, the end. I haven't had what I'd call an epic dream recently (those which make the best stories), but the knee dream seemed pretty good.

Delayed Much?

So, I owe a post about the dream I had that totally rejects the title of the last post. That dream happened the day after that post.
So it's been awhile.
But life is busy. So I don't feel bad. And it's not like too many (read: any) people are hanging onto the edge of their seats to see what I dream about!
Exclamation point totally necessary.

But that dream will come later because I still don't feel like typing it all out. I did, however, type the one I had last night out. So here's that (partly: the dream it's from involved me meeting the family of husband-to-be-and-he-even-agrees-but-we're-not-dating well, the siblings he doesn't have. And so I was hanging out with his (not his, but she was in the dream) older sister and we were watching TV and this show was on. I met his half-asian brother, too, but that guy was a jerk. Like, he seemed quiet and I was like "um why don't we just chill and read books in the same general vicinity" and that was fine and then later he was like "it's all about the money" and "let's tell people we're dating, even though I would never date you for real". ... There was also someone else who might have just been a friend who was, like, trying to take my socks off (I hate people touching my feet) and I wouldn't let husband-to-be tell him that I didn't want him to touch me because I was sure that 'friend' would just try harder to annoy/piss me off. )

But, the show.
(This is a copy and paste from an im conversation, again, so just go with the lack of capitals and whatever pronoun use there might be)

i juts had a dream and it involved this tv show called Short Stories (look, I made sure to remember the title!) and it was really awesome and it was about this uncle who was in charge of this really big house estate thing and the nephew who should be in charge figures it out and is like 'hey, i'm going to take over now' and the uncle is like 'prove that you have the right' which involves this rube goldberg machine that takes up the entirety of the 'great hall', if you will, and it was really awesome.
because, you know, the rube goldberg thing was made back in the day when the person who left it to nephew/nephew's father/etc died and nobody's been able to figure it out because each piece has something off with it and you need to fix each piece and there are tons of pieces.
and as time went by, more things fell apart. so, like, tracks are simply disconnected and stuff.

they (nephew & co) started off by looking at a piece in the middle and it was this spiral ramp thing, probably about... 6ft? tall with a really low slope and it had a bunch of figurines on it. like a ton. and a bucket with three pies in it.
so they figured out that the point was to get the three (uncooked) (and yes they're really old, they figured that out too) pies into the next part of the machine (which was a block, probably suspended over part of the hall place, with a bunch of different squares with different colors and symbols/pictures on them.
and there was one that was made to look like a microwave oven
and they guessed that the point of the first was to get the pies into that part of the second
so they tried just running the part of the spiral part that made the pie bucket move but it, because everything is old and was made to not work unless something was changed about everything, missed and then someone said "well, they were 50+ *insert number here* year old pies. probably wouldn't have turned out that well anyway"

and they wouldn't have, but it matted what kinds of pie they were, as they will find out later.
and then that episode involves them tracking down what possible kinds of pies they were. but it'll be like a week later and all the pie goop is gone so they have to guess the grandfather/whoever left the place to whoever's favorite kinds of pies or the favorite kinds of pies of peopel who were important enough that their favorite kinds of pies were involved
i don't really know too much about that episode though
it wasn't the one i saw in my dream.

there was also a part where they were in this icy old place (kind of like artic pyramids? not made of ice, though, but the place they were in was cold and icy/snowy) and they had to go underground and they took some piece that they needed for some part of the machine (like one extra figurine) and then had to get out right away before the guards got them
and as they were getting out and putting the tablet covering the tunnel/staircase they used to go where the figurine was the guards got there.
they happened to be giant statues of cats or something.
i dunno exactly, because the tablet was put down on them and the people got away.
but i think the uncle was there too, so what probably happened (not a part of the dream though) was the kid figured out that he needed this figurine and where it was and how to get there and find it and the uncle tagged along to make sure he doesn't find it.
because when he completes the machine, the uncle loses the estate

um... i think that was all.
and this wasn't even the dream i had right before waking up. this was one where i woke up at like 4am.
and i still remember it.
pretty epic, eh?
but yeah. a show like this could go on forever and legit like never end.