07/29/04
Higher Ground

I came out into the living room from wherever I had been and thought that I heard it raining outside; at least, the road sounded wet when cars went by. It was overcast yet daytime, maybe early afternoon or late evening. Dad was in the room and I asked, "Has it been raining?"

I can't remember what Dad's answer was, but I went to look out the front porch door to see for myself. In real life, this leads out onto a little stoop with an iron railing on the right and the side of the house on the left; it goes down a few steps to a little sidewalk, and the yard is to the right. So it was kind of weird that in my dream, it appeared to have rained so hard that the porch stoop was flooding, yet the yard itself, a couple of feet below it, wasn't. It's like the water was sticking to the porch itself.

I opened the door to get a better look outside and there was this scummy water washing along the top of the stoop and toward the threshold. I was very curious about this but when I noticed how dangerously close it was getting to coming inside, I shut the door; I didn't want water, especially scummy water, coming in. Yet as soon as I closed the door the water started seeping under it and over the floor! At least the water seemed to be clean now, not scummy, but I kept backing away and backing away and backing away as it slowly crept further into the room. Yikes!

Dad asked something--I think he knew that the water was flooding into the house and he may have asked, "How far has it gotten?" I was backed over as far as the chair in the corner, near the encyclopedia shelf, which was all the way at the opposite side of the room from the porch door, and I pointed down at the creeping water frantically.

"It's made it all the way over here!" I cried.

Now--this was by no means a horrid, filling-up-the-entire-room flood. It was just a little wash of water spreading from beneath the door, across to the chair! It wasn't even in the rest of the room yet! But we knew that it was a flood nonetheless. In fact I think as the dream progressed the water did begin to creep around the rest of the floor, or at least part of it, probably closer to the door (like near the couch, in the south side of the room). We knew we weren't in danger, but we knew that things could get damaged so we got moving. We started hurriedly placing everything we could in a higher position so hopefully nothing important would suffer water damage.

I seem to remember us moving some things on the shelf below the mantel, or on the mantel itself, up higher somewhere, which is odd since that's not exactly near the floor, but it made sense in the dream. The room seemed less cluttered, as if the footstool were not there, or maybe the floor space was bigger. In real life, I have lots of stacks of videocassette tapes sitting around the VCR--and these are raised up from the floor by a few feet too, but in the dream some stacks were on the floor, and some were up higher in their usual place; some were even higher up on a shelf above the VCR, like in real life. I was afraid Dad was going to complain about the tapes since they are so messy, and thought he would not help me move them. But he started picking up some stacks which were sitting in the window beside the VCR, and moved them up to the higher shelf above it.

I got a little anxious because even though they appear messy, I keep some of these tapes in a certain order, and Dad had just indiscriminately moved some--now when I needed them I would have to go looking all over through the stacks again. (What a dumb thing to worry about during a flood!) But I said nothing. I just wondered...why did he move those tapes? Because in the dream, there was a clean open space on the floor to the right of the VCR (in fact it was almost like the VCR and its stand weren't even there), and down on the floor--I even remember seeing the little wall shelf hanging over the wooden floor--there were some videocassettes in little stacks as well. THOSE tapes were in far greater danger of being damaged than were the ones which had already been sitting up in the window, a couple of feet above the floor. Why hadn't Dad moved THOSE tapes first, and then the others, which weren't even likely to get wet? I think I was about to move the tapes on the floor to a higher spot as well. At last I seemed to be realizing the pointlessness of us moving things which were already elevated, but I never questioned it too much. It just made more sense in the dream, I suppose. I even wondered if perhaps Dad had not moved those tapes and neglected the others out of spite. :/

Well, I think it was still as we were doing this that the flood, such as it was, began to recede--it had never even come all the way across the floor (though perhaps while moving things we'd splashed around in it a little, I can't remember). We paused to wait for it to go. That hadn't been so bad.

I think it was this same dream; I then got the idea, or maybe Dad came up with it, to call Ma (at work?) and ask her to pick us up something to eat. Dad wanted a Dairy Queen Moolatte; I had one of those in real life a couple of weeks ago and it was FANTASTIC. I was puzzled that he wanted one (Dad's not big on ice cream novelties or coffee novelties), but I wanted one too. In my dream they had three different flavors: hazelnut, chocolate or mocha (can't remember which--I seemed to say chocolate, though it was probably mocha), and French vanilla. In real life, I think they have three flavors, but I'm pretty sure those aren't the three; they DO have mocha, but I can't remember the other two. As I walked through the kitchen (maybe taking a roundabout way into the dining room to reach the phone?)--it was all dim now, like overcast late afternoon with the lights off--I called out, "What kind do you want?--hazelnut, chocolate/mocha, or French vanilla?"

I can't remember what flavor Dad wanted, if he even answered. I was still deciding what flavor I wanted, and anticipating how great it would taste, when I believe I awoke.

Real-life ties: We've been suffering telephone/Internet problems, and haven't yet determined the source nor the cause of the trouble; my worry is that it could be the phone line going bad, or the electricity itself, which has been going bad in this part of the house for quite a while now; and we do not have the money to fix such a thing. Dad alternates between insisting it's not my fault, and blaming the computer or me and threatening to either get rid of the computer, or discontinue our Internet service completely. (He likes to threaten things like this, especially when bills get tight...we've already been as careful as we can be regarding turning things off when we're not using them, so I really can't think of anything else we can cut from our budget without suffering.) Seeing as the Internet is my only contact with the outside world, this situation makes me greatly anxious, and the feeling I had in the dream--of watching the water spread and threaten to take over the house, as well as of Dad possibly neglecting some of my tapes on purpose--made me think, on awaking, of my anxiety over the spread of the electrical problems to the rest of the house, and Dad not caring about what I care about. In addition, when I first opened and then closed the porch door I remember having the fear that Dad would blame me for letting the water in--as if I could have prevented it anyway! But that's just the way he is, in real life; he'll blame anybody for anything, no matter how unavoidable a situation is.

Also in real life, I've been drinking some Cappuccino Coolers, which are a powdered drink you mix with cold milk; they come in three flavors, French Vanilla, Hazelnut, and Chocolate. I've been wanting Chocolate but Wal-Mart only carries the first two kinds. I think the Moolattes in my dream for some reason took their flavors from this particular drink.



2004 Dreams
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