Avelox Dream 2 - School Bus Police

Lots of broken sleep and dream fragments on the second night of Avelox, but only one dream sequence with a semblance of a plot:

I'm at home on a school day and I read a story to my daughter about this girl who makes magic muffins.  When you eat them, there is a surprise inside, a bee.  The bee will buzz around in your mouth and when you open your mouth, the bee will fly out.  We decide to make our own magic muffins and just use a chocolate chip for the bee.  They turned out to be golden brown overfilled muffins and I put them in a cloth-lined basket like any proper domestic hostess.  All of a sudden I notice the time and it is 5:15pm.  OMG, that is an hour and a half since we were supposed to pick up Adam at the bus stop.  I ask my husband frantically about it and he seems unfazed.  "Didn't you hear the phone ring?"  Apparently it did while I was in the shower while the muffins were baking.  "Is he stranded at the school?  What's going to happen to him?" 

"Don't worry, Mr. Robinson will drop him off," my husband replies.  And sure enough, a pair of headlights drive up our driveway. 

My son comes in the door and I immediately embrace him.  "I'm so sorry we missed you!" I exclaim.
"It's OK, mom" he replies and heads inside. 

I notice that Mr. Robinson comes in as well as his two girls who are older than Adam.  It appears that they want to stay a while.  "Thank you so much for bringing my son home, Mr. Robinson," I say with utmost respect.  He follows me inside and I begin to worry that he he checking out our home to make sure that we don't abuse or neglect our children.  They see the huge basket of muffins, and I tell them to help themselves.  My dining room is much bigger than in real life and it is positioned differently in our house.  There are a row of metal shelves with gleaming pots and pans on them to separate the dining room from the living room.  Thankfully, the house looks respectable, and Mr. Robinson starts looking around.  He goes upstairs and I worry that he is going to peek into my son's room which is completely trashed with Legos.   I hope that he doesn't ding me for my son's sloppiness.  Thankfully, he only peeks into my daughter's room and looks satisfied. 

Later that night, I'm in a town trying to cash in on some bottle deposits.  I sit in front of a machine and feed it my cans and bottles. I leave the big two liter bottles for last and find that I can't get the last bottle to take.  I keep trying and pushing and I get covered in a sticky purple gel.  I look at the bottle and realize that it is not a soda bottle, but a huge squeeze bottle of Welch's grape jelly.  I realize that I can't recycle this so I put it aside.  I want to clean the sticky mess off my hands before I get my receipt, so I take some hand sanitizer from the dispenser on the wall and a bunch of paper towels to get  my hands clean.  A lady behind me starts to put her own cans into the machine and I tell her to wait, I haven't gotten my receipt yet.  I quickly press the button grab my receipt with my hands which are covered in alcohol and leave.  I get about 20 feet from the place and the lady runs after me with a copy of my receipt yelling, "It's you!  You're the one who didn't pick up her son at the bus stop!  You're not allowed to have that money, it's bail money!"  OMG, I'm not sure what she is talking about.  I start to run and she is yelling at everyone to follow me.

Observations:  I think I was too traumatized thinking that I had to remember a dream for a daily Avelox post.  Obviously, neither my husband nor I would ever forget to pick up our son at the bus stop.  And I never get the deposits back for my cans and bottles, I just recycle them.  But two nights in a row with oversized muffins!  I always make them normal sized. So no more promises on Avelox dreams unless I have a really good one.

Lost in the Elevator

I'm walking towards a high rise building, but it feels like my old dorm.  I'm walking with a girlfriend and we are talking about guys.  She off-handedly mentions that she saw one of my old boyfriends from college lately.  Really? I ask.  As I step into the elevator, she waves goodbye and says, Oh yeah, and I slept with him.  Whaaa?  The elevator takes off, and I can't remember what floor I need to go to because I'm so befuddled by her remark.  I'm convinced that I'm on the wrong elevator as the floor I need to go to doesn't have a button.  It must be an express elevator, but where is it going?  I tried to hit any floor to get it to stop, but it overshoots the floor.  Where is it going?  I press the first floor again and it starts to go down.  It overshoots the first floor as well and stops in the basement.  I get out just to get out of the elevator.  I manage to get back outside and notice that the river next to the dorm is no longer a calm river, but a huge waterfall.  Everything seems quite out of balance.

Observations:  I had this dream shortly after reading this article on elevators (fascinating, worth reading all 8 pages).  And a long time ago, I was driving with my SO and he mentioned that he had dated a friend of mine before he knew me.  I got so flustered I missed my exit.

Green Bingo markers and green dragon tires

I'm walking around MIT near the Student Center with an old classmate who I haven't seen since I was a student there, and he's pointing up at the sky. It is full luminescent green arrows that look similar to Magnetic Bingo markers, but in the shape of arrows. He says, "Can you imagine when we didn't have the direction markers for airplanes and when we used to rely solely on air traffic controllers?" There are thousands of planes in the sky and in front of each one there is the green directional marker that automatically point in the direction that the plane is headed. The other planes can clearly see them and they avoid each other this way. I, myself, think that it makes the sky way overcrowded, but it is the norm nowadays, so I just nod my head. He then says, "Can you imagine if people had the same thing?" All of a sudden the space in front of me is filled with these green markers in front of all the people walking. Not only that, there are cartoon bubbles showing some of their thoughts as well. Now, I think this is too creepy, I don't want to be telepathic or anything, there would be no more privacy with these markers! So I say that I really don't like it, makes things too crowded.

We walk down to Amherst Street and suddenly I stop because this antique car catches my eye. It is covered in a green form-fitting hard leather case and all you can see of the car are the tires. I move in closer and see that the tires are not a rubber tube, but actually an intricate carving of solid green rubber similar to a Chinese ivory puzzle ball. My friend is telling me to come on, but I wave him off because I want to touch this tire and all the cool dragon shapes on it. Suddenly it is clear to me that I must talk to the owner of the car and I know where he is. I walk into a Sloan school building (on Ames street now) and into the elevator. I very deliberately press the button for the 8th floor.

(At this point my daughter walks into my room and wakes me right out this dream. Thankfully, the imagery was so vivid, I didn't forget any of it.)

Final Poetry Exam

I'm in school taking courses in Poetry and Mechanical Design. I've sorely neglected my Poetry course because all my time has been taken up making autonomous syringes for the design course. I'm at the end of the semester and there is a take home final exam for the Poetry course. I heard that all the answers are all contained within a house that is located in the country. I take a bus to there with some other classmates, and it is a very long ride. We arrive as the sun is setting, and the late day sun casts a warm glow on this huge log cabin house, with glass sliders along the front. I walk inside the house and it is full of little rooms containing many interesting things. Many rooms have at least one wall full of books and I immediately try to find the book that I need to answer the first exam question. There are way too many books to look through and there is no card catalog or anything. I just want the quick answer so I can get back to my mechanical design project. I walk through the house some more and realize that one room has a machine shop where I could have worked on my syringes as well as study for my poetry course at the same time. I realize that I have a syringe in my pocket so I can do both now. I immediately put the syringe on a machine and went to work, forgetting about my poetry exam.

Observations: I work on autonomous syringes at work, but only the software, not the mechanical design, although I am a mechanical engineer. The mechanical design course that I took at MIT (the famous 2.70 competition) was extremely stressful for me. I hate having dreams about being in school, especially being unprepared for final exams, even though I haven't been to school full time for 19 years. This house reminds me of a cross between the Hands-On Art Museum in Shirley, MA and Dean Kamen's house which I've only seen in these pictures. Hopefully, I'm not sorely neglecting anything in my life!