In the Army Now

So yeah, I set my alarm on Christmas morning. I wanted to get a jump on the day; we're having a party here today! But it was my alarm that woke me from this elaborate dream, and which I ignored to sleep more.

I was in the Army (or some branch of the military) and it was my first day of training. We started to do typical marching drills (or at least what I would imagine is typical from the movies) and then some other drills. I hadn't realized that it was going to be hard-core exercise intensive, and I was not terribly happy to find this out.

A large group of us lined up in rows opposing another group of lined up people. We were competing with the other group. Each row had to do squats as the group counted off. One lucky person in each row had a mat put under them and they had to squat down all the way to the ground with each count and touch their knees to the floor, but still keep time with everyone else doing regular squats. That lucky person was me.

Time after time, I could not keep up with my group doing the squats. They were just going too fast and my legs couldn't move that fast. And I was pointed out to everyone by the people in charge as the loser every time. :(

Finally we stopped this drill, but not before I realized that my group had been counting too fast. They were counting faster than any other group - no wonder I couldn't keep up! I realized that I should have been leading the count since my squats were the hardest and I was mad that I didn't figure that out sooner.

Then we started some running drills (good lord, my favorite) and everyone just kept running faster and faster. Eventually we were all so spread apart that it was difficult to follow the line since the leader was weaving us through a large building complex and through all kinds of doors. I would round a corner and not know which door the person in front of me went in.

Finally, I realized that the officers were trying to trick us. They were purposefully going too fast to make us lose our way and enter dangerous rooms on accident. I have always thought that I'd be no good in the military because I refuse to do irrational things just because someone tells me to - so I just quit running and wouldn't go into any more rooms where I thought I could get hurt. It was just a drill after all.

Alarm went off sometime around now, and I didn't get to see what happened in my training program.

Spiders

I only remember one part of this dream, and it's definitely one I've had before. At least I've had very similar ones. Apparently I'm afraid of spiders because sometimes they show up as the innocuous "bad guys" in my dreams. I mean, I know I'm afraid of spiders because they creep me out in real life, but apparently it's bad enough to get into my psyche and harass me while I'm asleep on a relatively regular basis. Yuck.

This time it wasn't anything wacky; Kane and I were hanging out in my mom's downstairs living room, like we are at this very moment (and like we have been for most days of the past month). In real life, I have encountered an inordinate amount of "big" spiders (approximately the size of a quarter) down here since we've been living here. In my dream, we were hanging out when I discovered a spider on the carpet under one of the folding chairs by the wall. It was probably 3" in diameter and blackish maroon in color. It was horrifying.

Looking around I noticed two other spiders on different walls of the room, equally as large and menacing. I asked Kane to get them for me since I was scared. This is what I do in real life, I hand him a cup and ask him to take them outside. And he's pretty much the nicest person ever, so he does without complaint.

But in my dream I wasn't sure these gigantic spiders would even fit in the standard spider cup, nor did I know if they were dangerous at all (they were, after all, big enough to apply to college). But I didn't want him to just smoosh them because they were huge and would leave a big old gooey mess on the carpet/walls, and, indeed, may put up a fight. So, I wasn't sure what to do about them, but I was just about hyperventilating trying to figure it out.

In one ear and out the...other?

This was a segment of a dream that happened just before I woke up this morning. Besides this part there was a family in a 3rd world country and their apartment was all torn up and one of the kids was mad at me for something...

But that's neither here nor there for this entry (ok, maybe it's there). In this very last part of my dream I was hanging with some friends in some room somewhere (mysterious unidentified dream location) and my nose started to bother me. I looked in a mirror on the wall and saw that in each of my nostrils I had an open orifice at the back that led to my sinuses. Like take the regular holes at the top of your nose that go to your sinuses and put them right at the bottom/back of your nose just inside your nostril where they are visible. They were small holes and looked like they should be in your mouth (made of the same skin a the back of your mouth).

So, if you think that's disgusting, when I looked in the mirror I noticed that there were 2 Excedrin pills poking out of the holes. I pulled them out and was horrified to find that the asprins I took the other day didn't go to my stomach (so that's why my headache didn't go away!) but instead had gotten lost in my sinuses and came out these holes. I looked in my nose more and other stuff just started pouring down the chute. More asprin came out, I think some other stuff that I don't remember, and then finally my collection of Metcards from Melbourne.

Metcards are like BART tickets: little credit card sized pieces of paper that you validate when you get on public transport. I had collected a whole stack of them living in Melbourne and in this dream, they were now all exiting via my nose. It was disgusting and somewhat painful in the dream (not sure how that works).

I gently pressed on the outside of my other nostril to see if there might be stuff in there too and it was tender. I figured I'd be cleaning this out all dang day, yuck!