07/11/02
Who Turned On All The Lights?


This was a fragment I had while napping at night.

It started out with me going out to see something Ma was working on on the computer. She was acting very pleased with herself and wanted me to see it. I stooped forward and saw that she was editing some kind of picture. I can't remember much about it but it was a big golden disk of some kind, to the right, so large it didn't show up completely on the screen. I think the background behind it was dark brown. She was cloning over something that may have been written on it, or maybe it was a flaw. In any case she wasn't doing the cloning right, or else it wasn't really cloning at all; maybe she was painting it. I said, "No, no, no, no, no!" and took the mouse from her, intending to show her that she could much more easily clone the area she wanted, so it would look more like the rest of the big golden disk. I remember changing the size of the brush to be much bigger. She hadn't known she could do that before.

Something happened though, and I think I screwed up. I may then have closed the file, and started to reopen it, but then I asked Ma if she'd saved the changes she'd made. She sheepishly shook her head and I flung up my arms. "Ma, I thought I saw you save it before I started messing with it! You should save things early and often. I would have saved it if I'd known!" I think the file hadn't even been saved with a name yet, so it was entirely lost, all the work she'd put into it first of all, and then all the work I'd put into it. Very annoying. I walked away from the computer and let her continue working on her own.

Now I was at Eric and Shannon's house, and we were staying here for a while. I remembered this more clearly before. It was nighttime and the room I was in had a light on; I suddenly decided to go see if my brother's room, or else his computer room, was all right, since Eric had been gone for a long time leaving us behind, and I didn't want his room to fall into disrepair for whatever reason. It was something that, like a plant, needed to be tended to. I hadn't checked it out in ages--as if a room could go bad. I felt I had to do so now.

I decided to leave one light on, in the room I was in, and to make sure the rest were off. I turned to my left to look down the hallway leading to the rest of the rooms (the house layout was different from real life), and it was pitch black down at the end of it. So I believed all lights were appropriately turned off. I headed off that way anyway since it was where the room I wanted to check out was. I got to it, or another room, and noticed that the light was ON. That was puzzling. I may have turned it off, then continued looking around for any more lights. And...every room I stepped into now had the lights blazing! Room after room after room, even the hallway and nightlights and such...there was like a lantern or something sitting on the carpeted floor somewhere, and I feared it could start a fire. What a horrible waste of electricity!

I think I may have started to turn the lights off...I've learned to do this at home, and I hated the thought of Eric and Shannon running up a huge bill when they aren't exactly rich themselves. I wanted the house to be in good shape when Eric returned; I felt he had left somewhere long ago (weeks, perhaps) for something important, almost like a soldier off to war. I had a duty to uphold for him while he was away.

While wandering down the hallway trying to decide what to do, I came upon Shannon coming out of a sideroom on my right. She may have been dressed in a bathrobe, getting ready for bed; it was black outside. (The hallway was very narrow, like in the real-life house; they live in a ranch house, but the one in my dream definitely had more rooms!) She may also have been drying her hair with a towel or something, and she looked at me not really with surprise, but wondering what I was doing. I told her about all the lights being on and asked her if she wanted me to turn them off, because I would. I expected her to say yes. She said no, it was all right; there was actually a reason for them all being on, though I can't remember it. Maybe it had something to do with Eric? I felt a little embarrassed that I'd been so adamant about turning them all off, and maybe even had shut off a few, when it wasn't wanted. I meekly said, "Okay," and turned back the way I'd come. This really didn't make any sense to me in the dream, but, it was their house, not mine!

I think I went back out to the computer, only maybe it was the other computer, in the utility room. (Ma had been using mine.) This makes no sense either, as those computers are not at Eric's house, but at mine. Still. I seem to remember that I then went and started editing something on the computer, maybe with Ma showing up again, but I can't recall what. Perhaps it was similar to what Ma had been doing, only it was a project of my own.



2002 Dreams
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