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.