Dreaming about Walmart again

This was a couple of nights ago. I dreamed I was working at Walmart and I needed to send Kacie on her break, but I couldn't find her. I pulled her name up on my handheld to see what register she was signed onto, and there were pictures so I could actually see what the cashiers were doing. I found Kacie, and she was sleeping in a sleeping bag on a floor. I recognized the carpet as being from a local church. I decided to go find her.

I hopped in my car and drove over to the church, and sure enough, there was Kacie, as well as about fifty other people, sleeping on the floor of this church in the sanctuary. My dad, who pastored this church, was quite distraught. He had just taken this church a week or so ago and to his dismay, found it was a very hyper-pentecostal church that spent most of their time waiting for Jesus to come back, which is why they were all camped out in the sanctuary.

I spent quite some time talking to my dad about this, when suddenly my cell phone rang. It was Rosie, one of the co-managers at Walmart. She said the other CSMs were looking for me and that Rachel needed her lunch. I hadn't realized I had been gone so long, so I hightailed it back to Walmart where I found Rachel curled up in the fetal position, sobbing uncontrollably. I rubbed her back and tried to make her feel better. After she finally calmed down, she explained to me that she had a fear of abandonment. I felt terrible, leaving her at Walmart all by herself, and I promised her that I would never leave her again.

But later on, when it was lunchtime, I wanted to go to Taco Bell, and then when my lunch was over, my car wouldn't start. I was really worried about Rachel, so I tried to figure out what to do. I realized there were two ways to get back to Walmart, and that one of the ways was all downhill. I hoped that if I got a good rolling start, the inertia would carry me the rest of the way, and maybe the engine would turn over and start. It worked for awhile, but then I came up to an intersection with heavy cross traffic and I was afraid I would get squashed if I didn't stop. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my car going again after I had brought it to a stop.

Luckily, Vicki Swalls came by saw I was having car trouble. She hitched my car, which was one of those two-wheeled things that mall cops drive, to the back of her truck and pulled me to Hymera where my parents lived, and they took me to Walmart.

Working at Walmart and leading worship

First I dreamed that I was working at Walmart and I had two bags of money that I needed to put away, but a customer needed help in grocery. So I carried the money to grocery along with a bunch of other stuff I had in my hand including the clipboard. I sat the bags of money down on one of the big coolers with frozen stuff in it. But I forgot to pick them back up and walked away from them.

A little bit later I remembered the money, and so I ran back to grocery, but they were gone. I walked around, scanning customers' carts looking for it, and finally I saw two ladies who had the money in their carts. I grabbed the customers by their ears and hauled them up to the front of the store, looking for the asset protection guy. I couldn't find him anywhere. I finally had to let go of their ears so I could look for him, but when I finally found him, the customers had left. They had taken some of the money out the bags and so I only retrieved about half of it total. I was in huge trouble. I tried to report it to the sheriff, but the sheriff's office closed at 5:00 p.m. so I couldn't call him. I was afraid I was going to get fired.

Then that dream sort of ended and I dreamed I was singing on a worship team and changing the transparencies on an old projector. Rick Coons was leading, and he had picked some really odd songs to sing. Some of them weren't even Christian songs. The only song I can remember for sure was "Mary Did You Know" but he only wanted to sing the third verse. I was wearing a ballet outfit, a motorcycle helmet, a mask, and the handheld computer that I put on my arm at work. It was very hard to worship in that, so I tried to take off the mask but since it was under the helmet I had to take that off, first. And since I had the handheld on my wrist, I realized I would start by having to take that off. It was really distracting to the people in church who were trying to worship, because after I took all of this stuff on I laid it down on the keyboard and it slid down the keys and made an awful racket.

Then, Erick brought in the mail, and showed me all the cool stuff he bought off Ebay, and Rick Coons kept giving me dirty looks because it was so distracting. Erick bought an iPhone and this thing that looked like a blue mesh skillet filled with green fuzzy material. Embedding in the green fuzz was what looked like a green tennis ball, and it turned. He said that it was to help me change the transparencies on the projector--all I had to do was put a transparency on the green ball and it would turn by itself.

I also dreamed about a girl who was trying to kill me because I took her bracelet, but I don't remember much about that one.

A few days in another country and being chased by my sisters.

So I dreamed last night that Erick and I went to a faraway country for a conference. It might have been Taiwan or maybe Timbuktoo. I know it started with a T. Anyway, we were only supposed to be there for a couple of days, but we didn't get a chance to see any of the sights and so we decided to see if we could stay a little longer. The entire time of the conference we were inside, except at night when it was dark, so we hadn't even seen anything.

First we called Matt Rubacha to see if he could preach for Erick, since the next day was Sunday, but he was busy. So we asked Bruce Borders, and he said he would do it. Then we went to change our tickets.

I realized that my driver's license expired soon, and so we decided we couldn't stay too long otherwise they wouldn't let us back in the country. While we were still trying to work out the details. we stopped at a restaurant to eat. There weren't any prices on the menu, but we just ordered what we wanted and figured that we'd just put it on the credit card. When we got the bill, it was over 50,000 dollars! We were horrified. Finally, a waitress explained that it was because we were in another country. If we converted it to American dollars, it only came out to about $600. It was still outrageous, but not quite so bad.

Then I dreamed I was at my parents' house and I was trying to find some peace and quiet but my sisters kept chasing me. They chased me everywhere--through the woods, into a building, and even to the beach. I tried hiding in trees and bushes, and even ran down a corridor with lots of door and chose one, hoping that my pursuers would choose another one. No such luck. I even found an emergency pack with food and water to take with me, but when I was hiding in a bush eating from my pack, my sisters saw a half-eaten bagel I had left on the topside of the bush. They knew immediately it was mine because of the way I had licked it. As I was running and they were gaining on me, Erick woke me up. I nearly smacked him and told him to leave me alone!

A hurricane and Islamic fingernail polish

So I dreamed there was this hurricane coming. I was working at Walmart and we were trying to get all the merchandise off the shelves and into a safe place before the storm hit. I was taking Barbie dolls and action figures and stuffing them into my hope chest to keep them safe.

While I was doing this, I decided it would be a good time to do my nails. I found some peel-and-stick fingernail polish in the toy section and grabbed ten packages, one for each nail. The first couple went on really well, but the next one was way too big. I realized that I had accidentally grabbed men's fingernail polish stickers instead of women's. It was too late to go back and get more, so I just trimmed it down with fingernail clippers.

Some of the fingernail polish stickers had little hoods to go over the entire top of the fingernail. I realized that they were designed for Muslim women (yes, two dreams about Islam in two night! What's up with that?) and they were supposed to be more modest than regular fingernail polish. I thought it looked kind of silly, though, so I just peeled off the "face" part of the fingernail sticker and used that.

Finally I got my nails done and by that time the storm was really close, so I decided I'd better get home. The trees were already uprooting. It took me awhile to find my car in the parking lot through the driving rain. I was starting to get worried about the kids being home alone at night during a hurricane, especially since we lived in a trailer.

Erick joined me in the car, and I was really grateful, because the car wouldn't start. So he had to push me home through the rain. That was about when I woke up.

I do remember vaguely a part about redecorating the house and pushing furniture around, but I'm not sure how it fit into the rest of the dream.

Islam and soap

I dreamed that my mom, dad, and all of my siblings except for Susie decided to convert to Islam. So had Matt Rubacha. Actually, Matt Rubacha had written a book about it, and my family had read it, and that's why they were converting. The whole premise of this book was that Christianity was actually an extension of Islam rather than Judaism, and that Jesus fulfilled the Islamic prophesies and not the Jewish prophesies. He had all sorts of proof in there, such as the Muslims views on same-sex marriage to prove that Islamic beliefs matched our belief system better than Jewish beliefs. Everyone we talked to in my family just kept saying, "You really need to read the book."

There was also something in my dream that had to do with fancy bath soaps that were sold in containers that looked like they were plants. Joy kept asking me if they grew straight out of the ground and I kept telling her no, that it was just soap.

A trip to Italy

I dreamed we went to visit the Heekes. Afterwards, we were driving home when we passed by a little Assembly of God church that we hadn't realized existed. There were a lot of cars parked in the lot and around the front of the building, and a lot of people standing around outside, and they seemed agitated, so we stopped to talk to them. We found out that this was the church that Brent Heeke was currently pastoring, and that there was a special service scheduled for tonight that he had forgotten about. In fact, the reason he was leaving this church was because they were firing him because he was always late to everything.

Then we went on a family vacation to Italy. We had a map of must-see sites, and the first things we went to see was a lighthouse. It was really cool, but somehow after we saw the lighthouse we managed to lose the map. I knew that Cheri Ferris had printed out some extra copies and that they were the drawer in the office at the church, so I ran home to get one. Back home, there were a whole lot of kids at church, and Betty was sitting up front in her power chair. I didn't know for sure what was going on, but I asked one of the kids and found out that Betty had decided to put on a VBS all by herself. I quietly looked through the desk so as not to disturb anyone (besides, I didn't want to be asked to help) but couldn't find a map. So I went back to Italy.

We decided to just drive around and see what we could find on our own. I decided to let Jay drive for awhile, but suddenly realized with horror that the road we were on ended in the ocean. The tide had come in, and several of the streets were covered with water. I tried to get Jay to back up, but he didn't know how. We ended up having to get out and push the car out of the ocean.

Then we visited some little Italian shops, and they gave us free samples of hushpuppies and also some wine. The wine was very thick and tasted like vanilla custard and we let all the kids have some, even Timothy. There was a photographer there that thought our family was exceptionally beautiful and captured the essence of Italy, so he took a picture of our family drinking the wine and framed it.

Pirates and MoneyGram

So I dreamed that Erick and I decided to become pirates. We were waiting for the green flash, because we knew that when the green flash came, if we held our treasure tightly between us then we'd become richer than in our wildest dreams. We didn't have very much treasure, but it was enough. But just about the time the green flash was supposed to appear, something would always come up and we wouldn't be in position at the right time and everything would be spoiled.

We were almost ready for the green flash, when I got called away to do a MoneyGram for a customer. I had to go all the way to the top of the mast because that's where the MoneyGram machine was located. This time the customer was a small boy, around 8 years old. He was getting ready to go back to school and needed his picture taken for the yearbook. There were gaps all around the little platform at the top of the mast, and he was standing too close to one. I told him to take a step towards me, but he was shy. The boat was rocking back and forth, and I was afraid because he was going to fall. I reached out to grab him, but just as I reached out he took a step backwards and fell off the mast. I screamed, "Noooooooooooo!" and climbed down after him as fast as I could. He wasn't dead, but he was pretty banged up. His parents weren't happy with me at all and threatened to sue me. And that's why I didn't get back in time for the green flash.

A dream about Walmart

I dreamed this several days ago and I still remember it, probably because I've told it at work numerous times.

I dreamed I was at Walmart, checking out a customer. I was scanning a ham and trying to scan the serial number, but somehow I accidentally scanned the serial number on some pictures from the photo lab instead. I got the order all mixed up and finally just decided to abort the whole transaction and start over. I waited and waited for Sandy, who was the other CSM, to approve it. I waited about ten minutes, and the customer was getting quite upset. I kept paging on the walkie, "Sandy, can you please override me?" but Sandy wouldn't answer. Finally I paged management and told them that the CSM wouldn't override me. Rosie answered and said, "Why don't you call out to Garden Center and see if they have an extra handheld?"

I decided that instead of calling out there, I'd just go out there since I wasn't that far away. So I left my customer and ran out to Garden Center, and there was Sandy, standing right there with a handheld on her wrist! "Sandy!" I said. "Why didn't you override me?" Sandy looked down at her wrist and said, "Oh, my handheld went down."

(If you know Sandy, this dream is a lot funnier and makes a lot more sense.)

A dream about 4-H judging

I dreamed we went to 4-H judging. It was in a place called Soccer, Indiana, and it was at the top of a huge hill. We found that in the town on Soccer there was actually a small business that manufactured soccer balls, which we found delightfully ironic.

Abby and Joy both had projects in this judging: Fashion Revue, and Gymnastics. I bought them each some fudge pops on the way, and both of them wiped their chocolatey hands all over their outfits. I was mortified. Gymnastics was kind of a spur-of-the moment, last minute project that Abby wanted to do, even though she doesn't know how to do gymnastics and never has. So she just improvised and twirled around the floor.

When the judge went to announce the winners, she had trouble being heard over the crowd, so I took pity on her and gave her a megaphone. Apparently, this small-town judge had never heard of a megaphone and didn't know how to use it. She put it on her head like a hat and tried to speak upwards through the hole in the top. I suggested to her that she take it off of her head and speak through the little hole and that it would make her louder. She asked me how I knew that, and I told her it was because I went to college.

It was really scary going home because of the long hill, but we finally made it.

A strange church day

I'm on a roll. It's been awhile since I could remember my dreams, and now this makes two in two days.

I dreamed last night that we were at church and we were going to sing a song that we had worked really hard on. It was going to be great. Steve Goodrich was going to be singing with us, and we had a lot of guests that day that came out just to hear us sing that particular song. When I started the song, though, I realized that I was the only one singing and playing. When I glanced behind me, no one was there. I finished the song, but it totally flopped. Then I found that everyone else in the band--Erick, Jay, Sarah, and Steve Goodrich--were all in a prayer room. They had decided that we should all pray together before we started the song, and somehow had forgotten to tell me. So I was mad at them for not telling me, and they were mad at me for singing without them.

Afterwards we gave everyone a tour around town. We pointed out all the different places that used to be our church or old parsonages. Then we drove to where we lived. It was a horrible, little run down trailer and all of our clothes were hanging outside. We told people, "This is our open-air closet." There was no grass in the lawn. We explained that we had planted grass three years ago when we came, but that for some reason it never grew. There was trash and toys all over the yard.

We also had a cook-out for our visitors, but we had forgotten to buy charcoal. So I fed them peanut butter and jelly instead. I had this huge jar of peanut butter that didn't have a lid on it. It had fallen behind a cabinet but I dug it out and decided it should be okay to use.

Later I put my hair in two ponytails and put a bike helmet on each ponytail. I also was wearing these long, dangly earrings. I mean, they were really long! They draped over my shoulder and hung across my chest. I wore a purple hoop and a black hoop. I looked really strange.

A dream about failed socialism

I dreamed last night that I was in charge of the maintenance crew at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. I had to make sure that Glenn and Justin were doing a good job of cleaning the bathrooms and walk through with them every so often, pointing out areas that they missed. My supervisor was so impressed with my managing skills that after awhile I was promoted to a different position.

My new job was to implement socialism in the U.S. I had to give away a number of tickets to every person in the country. These tickets were used to obtain each person's allotted amount of resources, such as fuel, food, and even housing. Everyone was to have an equal amount of everything so that things would be fair and there would be no rich or poor anymore. I dutifully handed out the tickets, but soon found that people were buying, selling, and trading tickets to each other. Before long some people had more resources than other people had. I didn't know how to stop this from happening. Even though it was against the law to buy, sell, or trade, people kept finding ways around the new law.

I was glad when I woke up from this dream--trying to enforce socialism would be a nightmare.

Pounding a car with a grocery cart

This is the first time in awhile that I could remember what I dreamed, and it's still pretty fuzzy. I dreamed that I was working at Walmart and everyone was doing some deep cleaning, like vacuuming the ceilings and dusting all the merchandise right off the shelves. I was assigned to help deep clean the lot. The parking lot was sloped, and a couple of shopping carts got away from me and took off down the hill towards a car. I ran after them as fast as I could but I was too late--it pounded into the car and left a red grid mark from the shopping cart in the car's white paint.

I apologized to the old man driving the car and offered to take down his name and information to give to my boss. He seemed to have a really difficult time remembering his information. He was trying to tell me where he lived, and he said it was out in the country next to a Jewel grocery store. I told him I hadn't seen a Jewel in a long time and didn't know if they had any around here anymore. I suggested that maybe they had one in Indianapolis or Bloomington, but I knew there weren't any in Terre Haute. He also had trouble remembering his phone number. I kept repeating the first three numbers and asking if it was 898 or 989 and he wasn't sure.

I was writing all of his information down on a large tablet, trying to construct a picture the way that the police use an artist sketch to draw a picture of a suspect. There were three main pictures I was drawing, but I can only remember the middle one. It was a man in hat with glasses. The man said that he was an inspector and that his last name started with a "G." I asked if it could be Inspector Gadget, and he wasn't sure. I looked closer at my drawing and noticed that the words "Inspector Gadget" were inscribed on the man's hat. "It is Inspector Gadget!" I said, excitedly, and showed the man the picture I had drawn.

I dreamed other things, too--something about a barn with spider webs, and something about my daughter holding hands with a boy from co-op, but I don't remember enough to blog about them.

A baby, a play, hillbillies, and a viper.

The first thing I dreamed was that Erick wanted to move to Terre Haute. It had to do with being closer to Clay City, although I don't know why since it's not really closer to Clay City. He wanted to sell the house and I was really upset about it. I threatened to refuse to sign at the closing if he went through with it. He said that he felt God wanted us to move to Terre Haute and I told him that God didn't tell me we were supposed to move.

Then I dreamed that I had received a big gift bag full of baby items, including a baby. I was like, "Great. A baby. What am I going to do with that?" I decided to take them back to Walmart and return them, but I wasn't sure where they were purchased and I couldn't find a bar code or UPC number on any of them. Whoever gave me the gifts also gave me some money, and I knew Walmart would take that back even without a bar code. So I took them and I was also doing the return from behind the service desk. I assumed that the person who gave me the items was behaving unethically and so I wrote a scathing note to the gifter on the receipt. Then I noticed that one of the gifts was a bag of Pampers, and I realized that it must have actually been a promotional gift from Pampers. I was immediately embarrased for my assumption and scribbled out my note.

Later on I tried out for a play, and so did Erick. Both of us got parts and I just assumed that he would be the hero and I would be his fair lady. When I saw NeeDee (a cashier at work) come out in a costume that was embroidered with suns, and I saw that Erick's costume was also embroidered with suns, I knew that she had gotten the part I wanted. I cried on Erick's shoulder for awhile because I was so disappointed. Then I wandered through the streets looking as sad as I could hoping for someone to stop and say, "What's the matter, beautiful lady? Why are you crying?" But no one did. Everyone agreed that NeeDee was much more talented and beautiful and a better singer to boot.

Then I was in a room with a bunch of hillbillies who had some musical instruments that would not play in tune no matter how hard they tried. I knew the reason for it had to do with magic and that only I could play those instruments and make them sound right, but nobody cared about my opinion. The various cousins had a skein of green yarn tied to the ceiling and were jumping up on the yarn to tell how many greats they were in relation to grandmother. One of them jumped all the way up to the ceiling to tell that Grandma was her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, and then she lost her grip and fell below.

We knew that the viper was going to have a lot of extra eggs to eat and was therefore going to grow much larger than usual, so we all barred the gates. The viper, sure enough, tried to get in and eat us all up, but we held him back by our collective strength. He tried to pry open the lock, but we sneaked over with a spritz bottle full of bleach and sprayed it all over the bars of the gate. The bleach dissolved the iron bars and we were able to break the gate through and escape. We managed to put the measuring cups and pie server back where they were supposed to have been before the chef noticed.

A gymnast and a road trip

I dreamed I was at my mom and dad's house. I was standing on the second floor balcony (they don't actually have a second story balcony) and watching a gymast get ready to do a stunt. She had a tall platform that reached almost as high as I was and she was going to dive off it it headfirst into the grass. I had my camera because I was going to take a picture. There was a lot going on I kept going in and out of the house, waiting for that moment when she would jump. When she jumped, it was so sudden I almost didn't get my picture. She jumped so fast that when I looked at the picture, it managed to catch the actual movement. When I looked at the picture, I could see her moving from the top of the picture to the bottom, and then it would loop and she would move down through it again, over and over. It was really incredible that I caught the actual action in a picture. Afterwards, the gymnast told me that she was going to have to give up doing her show because she was pregnant, and she was afraid that diving headfirst onto the ground could hurt her baby.

Then I was driving somewhere. I had to follow Erick, but he was starting to get way ahead of me. I got pulled over by the police in Centerville and they were going through all of my things looking for loose cash. They recruited me to help look through other people's things for cash, too. When they finally released me, I realized I was almost out of gas. I didn't know how far away Erick was ahead of me by this time, or even where I was going. I had a feeling it was about forty miles until the next place I could get gas, though. When I got there, I stopped at an auto dealer's place and took Shadow (our dog) inside. Almost immediately he peed on the floor. I put him on his leash and took him outside, where there were rows and rows of plants in washtubs. Shadow peed on the plants, and then drank out of some of the washtubs that were empty, since they were all full of rainwater.

Then Erick woke me up so I don't know how my dream was supposed to turn out.

It was the red Hummer's fault.

I dreamed off and on last night, after eating Planter's Five Alarm Chili peanuts at 12:30 a.m. I don't know for sure if strange foods cause strange dreams, but I thought I'd pay attention to what I dreamed to see if there was any truth to that idea.

I do remember one snippet of a dream that Walmart was selling euthanasia services. I don't remember much about it except that Megan Gamble was shocked and outraged when she found out what she had been selling.

Later on I dreamed that it was Sunday and we decided it would be nice to cancel Sunday evening service and go visit our old church in Springfield that night. We thought we'd camp out while we were at it, so we spent all afternoon packing and trying to get the kids to put their shoes and coats on. Finally it dawned on us that it would take us at least five hours to get to Springfield and that Sunday evening services started in a little over an hour. We couldn't think of any way we could make it. We were disappointed and tried to think of something fun we could do to make up for it. We thought we could still camp out, but then we remembered it was January so we couldn't do that, either.

Then we had the bright idea of going to Cross Tabernacle in Terre Haute instead, since it was so much closer. We drove up there and the kids and Erick all went inside. I was outside on the front porch and there was a long, red carpeted stairway going down to the curb in front of the church. There was a red Hummer parked on the landing, and it started sliding down the stairs right into the back of a car that was parked at the curb. It busted out the back window and dented in the back fenders pretty good. I found out that the Hummer belonged to Carina, another one of the cashiers at Walmart. I told her she needed to contact the owner about insurance, but she didn't feel that it was her fault.

I went into the building to find the owner. I was pretty sure the car that had been damaged belonged to Jason Coons and that Joey Bell had been with him, but it might have been someone else. I'm not entirely sure on that point. I saw lines and lines of teens coming out of a dark room which must have been a youth room or something. They were singing this really odd song that sounded sort of Celtic. I didn't see Jason or Joey anywhere, so I finally went back outside and saw that the car was gone. Apparently he had left and didn't notice the broken window or bent fender.