"Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you." ~ Marsha Norman

Okay. These weird dreams can stop any time now.

Last night I dreamed that our mentally retarded dog, Goldie, threw up on the carpet in the den in the spot where she usually sleeps and she sat on her hindquarters for hours next to the spot, looking at me, sort of wondering when I was going to clean it up so she could go to sleep.

If you are familiar at all with Goldie, you know that nothing, absolutely nothing would keep her from getting her 23-1/2 hours beauty sleep. In reality, she would have merely found another spot to stretch out.

Now, don't ask me why it took me hours to clean Goldie's barf spot up. I don't know why. It was a dream and I don't think cleaning up barf was the point.

Whoops . . . Just as a wrote "I don't think cleaning up barf was the point", my gut reaction was, maybe it was about cleaning something up. Maybe. But, dreams are rarely that simple.

So, I've dreamed about living in a homeless community (two or three nights so far), buying a $12 onion, looking for grandchildren whose names have been changed and cleaning up dog barf so my dog can finally get some rest. How is that for a stream of unconsciousness? What all of those situations have in common, I'm not really sure. There's really no common denominator, or enough of one to string them together into a rational stream of consciousness. What I do know is that those dreams weren't really about being homeless, onions, grandchildren or my dog and her barf.

How I go about delving into the meaning of these dreams is by looking at the symbolism and free associating. I haven't done that yet because I can't seem to get passed what they mean consciously or "in reality." For example, the fear of being homeless, my son hiding his children from me or not being able to buy food. Most people would think, yeah, well, makes sense to me. I figured it out. Move on. Not so for me. I know they mean something else.

I believe my dreams are elaborate pictures of my unconscious; how I view, interact with and interpret the world I live in. For over a week, I've been dreaming about these intricate and highly nuanced situations. And when I'm awake, I've been a fearful, emotional, crying, blubbering idiot. Finally, my unconscious got a little frustrated that I was not getting the message and gave me the "Terri for Dummies" version. Last night I had the not-so-intricate and not-so-nuanced dream about Goldie and her barf. Not very elaborate. In fact, it was pretty straight forward ~ I've set myself up to be the Cleaner of Other People's Messes. Well, duh.