Okay, the dreams where I realize I forgot to take an important class and my degree is retroactively voided, or where I’m in a maze from which I cannot escape despite clearly marked exits, those I get, but what’s with these reoccurring dreams where I did not sell the house in my old town in 2011, like I think I did, and it’s just sitting there, vacant and deteriorating and ridden with squatters?
Did you forget to take out the garbage? (Or some other task?)
Don’t eat pickles or peppers at night.
I kid.
Dreams can be disturbing. It’s true.
I dream crazy stuff if my BG is acting up during the day. Check your blood glucose numbers.
Are your dreams particularly lucid?
I’m not diabetic. If I eat too much in the hours before bedtime, I use a bed wedge because I sometimes have reflux. Oh, the joys of getting older!
I KNOW I sold that house, because they handed me a check for $85,000 (remember, this was 2011 in a LCOL area) at closing. As I drove to what turned out to be my temporary home (long story there) I kept checking my purse in case that check jumped out spontaneously, and made it there in time to deposit it at the credit union. When I cleared, I divided it up into CD’s and supplemented my income with it for some time.
Mine had been odd, of late. They’ve always been weird or attempting something and not being able to.
Lately I’ve had a dream about yelling at my father for something. Then a dream about former husband where I refused to give him money for drugs. Now one about my former roommate/sortof boyfriend where I tell him how hes wrong.
Its like Im settling old scores.
Are you stressed over something coming up, a deadline, presentation, etc? It sounds like it’s stress like you’re worried about missing a timeline or not being prepared for something. Maybe, consciously, it’s not something that’s worrying you, but subconsciously it’s working on your mind.
Lovely dream the other night.
I have the enlarged prostate of old age.
Dreamed I was urinating, with a large steady stream. Lovely. Very satisfying. Watch if flow!
And as it was hitting the porcelain, it was reacting with something that was sparking short, colorful, crackling flames. Very cool! That’s good. If I just put some of that stuff around the rim of the bowl, I’ll be able to see if I’m getting any splashes on the rim, which will help me to know that I’m keeping the area clean and tidy, not causing any cleaning problems etc. I must remember that when I wake up!
So I remember it when I wake up. Sadly, when awake I don’t know any substance that sparks into crackling flame when hit by urine, so I’m not going to be able to coat the rim of my toilet bowls with it. Still, I’ll always hold to that memory…
I bet dreams like this go back centuries, except instead of you forgot to sell the house, it’s like you forgot to shut the sheep up in the barn, or something like that.
I had a dream recently that was a beautiful change of pace. I was in school again, but instead of being totally out of it, I was killing it. I was back on track to graduate with flying colors. Everyone was impressed with my work.
Until I realized I’d left my son in the car all day. My panicked brain was still working through whether it was a hot day likely to kill him when I woke up.
I look forward to returning to general academic incompetence.
I had a dream last night where I received a coded message left by a friend in a coffee shop. It was about where I could find my brother, Hunter (nonexistent). Then I was riding backward on a train through barren fields, looking at strange flat houses. One had a giant eagle statue on the roof. Then I saw a living giant eagle landing! Then I was walking in the woods, and had to climb up a steep rocky slope. I was pulling myself up using tree roots as handholds. When I reached the top, my alarm clock went off. 
On mornings like this, I wake up confused and can’t function right away. I mean, damn, I was living a whole other life just a minute ago.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the “find-out-I-missed-a-credit-so-I-have-to-go-back-to-college” dream. My old undergrad campus can either look the same, or be different but I still know it’s my undergrad campus.
Same with the “math or science class I was enrolled for but forgot about completely.” Or just walking through the halls of a high school, or, hell, an elementary school.
And one time I dreamed that there was a production of My Fair Lady taking place at a local community theater I frequent. The production was directed by an old high school drama teacher of mine (who actually DID direct at least one show there–Evita).
I hadn’t rehearsed, I hadn’t even auditioned, but it was opening night and I was playing Eliza Doolittle.
Upon awakening, I realized that this was the theatre nerd’s equivalent of “test I didn’t know about and hadn’t studied for.”
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but when I started teaching at a university, I soon started having a recurring dream where it was nearing the end of the semester and I realized that there was a course I was supposed to have taught but never showed up for.
Anxiety dreams will get you where you live.
I recently had a dream where I was living in my old house in Chicago, a two story Victorian. It was apparently during the time when my wife was in home hospice, because I remember talking to the nurse who was tending her. The weird part was that the house was filled with boxes and piles of stuff, like one of those hoarding shows, and I was trying to organize all of it and see what I could get rid of.
I’m always running.
I swear I’ve woken up panting/heart racing a few times.
I kinda realize I’m trying to catch up. My whole life has been tryna catch up.
I’m losing the race.
Sodium? I wouldn’t recommend coating your toilet with it though.
I have dreams about being back at my old high school. But I’m not in school, I’m visiting and wandering around and marveling at all the renovation they’ve done since I graduated, and the place looks great. And then at some point I have to use the restroom and I walk in and the place is filthy and the layout makes no sense and I’m trying to figure out where I’m supposed to pee… then I wake up because I have to pee.
So very true. I have anxiety dreams based on classes and jobs I haven’t had in decades (which is often the focus of said anxiety dream!).
My next most common sort of “weird” dream is semi-frequent where I’m totally lost with various degrees of worry. Often there’s someplace I’m supposed to be but I can’t find my way there.
And there’s the other popular option, where I’m heading down a street at speed, but suddenly realize I can’t drive the car because I’m in the backseat. No mention of how we’ve gotten this far, at this speed without someone upfront, dream is in control.
Then there’s the zombie attack / end-of-the-world dreams where I often have a gun but no ammunition for it, or if not, I’ll hit something with a bat/sword and no no damage, often with various flavors of dream paralysis blending in.
Actually, while it’s probably some form of confirmation paradox, I don’t really remember any pleasant dreams in recent memory, the only time I’ll wake up with any residue is various flavors of unpleasant.
Oh, and yes, the intensity is much stronger now that I’m taking melatonin regularly per my PCP. Which absolutely sucks when the dreams are poor or weird.
One of my recurring nightmares is being at the wheel of a car but I can’t stay awake and my brakes don’t quite work.
Another one I have which seems more uncommon is “pet neglect” dreams where I have an animal or animals that I’m not properly taking care of but I’m too afraid/ashamed to look and see how they’re doing, so more and more time passes where they aren’t getting what they need to live. The worst ones involve giant tanks of fish I never feed and their tanks are overrun with filth.
One dream I remember having about that old house was that I was traveling back and forth, and spent enough time in that town to justify keeping the house, even without most of the furniture. (Since closing on the house, I’ve been back once, the night before the total eclipse in 2017, because they had motel rooms that cost less than $500.) On this particular occasion when I returned, the place had been crashed by a big group of lesbians, none of whom I knew personally, who were using it as a party house. My elderly next door neighbors, who AFAIK still live there, had turned the back yard into a big vegetable garden.
I don’t know where ANY of that came from.
My reoccurring car dream is this: it is nighttime, and I am driving on a winding road. My headlights suddenly fail, and I can’t stop the car for some reason. So I am attempting to continue, in pitch black, without crashing.
Yes, this one! It’s always big fish tanks in the basement, and I haven’t lived in a house with a basement or had a fish tank since childhood. The tanks are overgrown with weeds, but the fish are somehow OK.
These culturally shared dream themes are very strange.