I had another one of those bizarre ‘moving picture’ types of dreams last night. If anyone can decipher this one, I’ll name you my personal Dream Guru, ‘cuz it’s a whopper of wackiness.

Note to self: No more Kraft Macaroni & Cheese before bed.

Cheesy Dreams: Part I

It all started when…

I was driving down a two-lane highway with my daughter, Manda, who was in the passenger seat of our vehicle. I was driving a Jeep. I don’t own a Jeep, never have. What sort of a name is that for a vehicle anyway? It’s almost as silly as ‘Yugo’.

We approached a city and took one of the exits to see the sights. As I was driving along, I looked ahead to the left and saw a magnificent stone carving of a Polar Bear atop a mountain. Then, as I looked closer, I saw a couple of Hansel & Gretel type of buildings with Polar Bear statues on top of them as well. They were absolutely, amazingly detailed and brilliant and beautiful!

“Manda, look at that!”

“What, Mom?”

“Look at those Polar Bears. Aren’t they awesome?”

“Yeah, Mom. Cool,” she said, less than enthusiastically.

Cool? I thought they were awesome!

As I looked around us, lots of picturesque buildings and parks and just really cool stuff came into view. And I decided that we needed to take our time to check everything out. This was an incredible place!

“Wow. Are you seeing all of this? Somebody needs to navigate us to all of the attractions, so that we don’t miss anything. …I’ll navigate.”

“Mom.” *sigh* “…You’re driving. You can’t do both.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” *grin* “You navigate.”

“Sure. …But could you please at least pretend that you’re driving? …Mom. Put your hands on the wheel.”

“Heh.”

As I put my hands on the wheel, our Jeep suddenly became a tandem bicycle. We were back on the highway, just entering the city and pedaling furiously to avoid being run down by an unknown pursuer in a rapidly approaching SUV.

“Manda! I’m going to have to take the next off-ramp. Hang on tight, ‘cuz it looks like a really sharp turn!”

“Okay, Mom. Just do it!”

I hung the next impossible right and skidded our bicycle on to the off-ramp.

“Ooooooh shyte! What the hell is this? A freakin’ spiral copper slide!”

“MOM!”

So there we went, screeching and sliding down and around and around a narrow copper slide that closely resembled a gravity-defying roller-coaster of death. And somehow, we both managed to hang on.

Mind over dream matter, right?

Yeah.

I navigated (Ha!) all the twists and turns, bringing us to a bone-jarring halt at the very tip of a drop off.

“Ooomph!”

After burning the soles off the bottom of my tennis shoes (which were applied as brakes), I checked to see if my legs were still intact. Then I peered at the ground below. It wasn’t all that far after all, just a mere 6′ drop down a steep, wet, muddy, grassy incline.

The sun was shining. I should have been thankful for that, right?

“Manda. We’re going to be just fine, but we’re going to have to jump.”

“Mom, I can’t jump. I’m wearing heels!”

*groan* “You’re going to jump. ‘Nuff said.”

“…But it’s muddy down there.”

I took another look to judge the softness of the earth below us, trying to determine how far her heels were going to sink in the mud. In the back of my thoughts, I snickered.

I told her not to wear those blasted heels.

As I looked down, I saw something wiggle in the grass directly below my dangling feet. It was orange-ish-tan and white in color and rather plump. It poked its nose above the tall grass and glanced at me curiously. A gerbil! How odd. And next to it I saw something else wiggle in the grass. This one was much darker in color, a mixture of russet and black. I’m not really sure what it was, but it kinda resembled a groundhog.

I tried to shoo them away, but they wouldn’t budge. They looked up at me with nonchalant stares, as if to say, ‘You want us to move? Hey, lady. We were here first.‘

I shot back with my best–Well, if you don’t scram I’m going to squish your guts out all over the place when I land heavily upon you–look. It didn’t seem to phase them in the least.

So I jumped, landing a mere fraction of an inch to the left of the R.O.U.L.S.’s (Rodents of Unusually Lethargic Senses). The ground was a bit damp beneath my shoes, but it was solid.

“C’mon, Manda. Jump. You won’t sink a bit. …And don’t forget the blanket. We might need it later.”

Blanket? Where’d that come from?

“What about the bike, Mom? I don’t think I can reach it. It’s stuck a couple of feet above my head.”

“Forget the bike, we’ll hike.”

Manda jumped. She made it without squishing any rodents or sliding aimlessly down the hill. I was impressed. She didn’t even get her heels dirty AND she managed to save the blanket. A big, quilted black bedspread, actually.

…The next thing I knew, I was walking in a park on a beautiful, bright sunny day. But it wasn’t an ordinary, run-of-the-mill park. It was like an outdoor museum/botanical gardens. At my feet there was a flat, stone rectangle (about 8′x6”) inlaid in the ground. It contained a portrait of a woman and a man, carved into the grey stone. The woman was wearing an ankle-length dress and was lying back upon a chaise lounge as though asleep. A flimsy article of clothing was off to her right, as if drifting to the ground. The man was standing over her, waving a hand over her midsection as he looked down, smiling softly. In fact, they both seemed rather content.

Movement caught my eye and I look up, using my right hand to shield the sun from my eyes. I saw a man dressed in a long, dark coat. He was standing under the ease of an old general store, the building behind him made up of dark-stained wood. As my eyes adjusted to the light, the man walked towards me. I recognized his face, it was Rufus Sewell. Rufus!

He smiled at me, a small turn of his lips. I smiled back.

But then it suddenly occurred to me that I was having a ‘bad hair day’, so I looked into the mirror to see if there was anything I could do to fix the mop of curls on my head.

No. I don’t know where the mirror came from, it was just there and I looked into it, aghast at what I saw. I looked like Shirley Temple, for gosh sakes! I mean, ringlets? C’mon… not funny.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it.” Rufus stated in that soft sexy voice of his, indicating the stone portrait. He stood directly to my left, so close that the fabric of his coat sleeve brushed against mine. “…I come here often. Have your heard their story? It’s very romantic.”

“Um, no. …I’m not familiar with it. Will you tell me?”

He smiled again, stealing all rational thought from my mind as I felt his arm gently caress my back, drawing me close. At that very moment, while Rufus began to point out little details and share the romance of the story behind the stone, I forgot how to breathe.

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…Tune in next week, as Rufus shares even more romance, an alien talking-dog warns of an impending attack, and I have to choose between the Federal door on the left or the metal detector dormitory on the right–’Cheesy Dreams: Part II‘.

So… Had any weird dreams lately yourself?

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