Dream Journal

I’m finding the best time to remember dreams lately has been to remain lying in bed while trying to remember, and scenes pop in and expand as I focus on them.

Uncle John’s Puffball Mushroom Farm

I was at Uncle John’s house. He had this wild pine forest in his yard, and he was growing something out there. At one point, I found a puffball mushroom growing. He saw it and decided this was the crop he wanted to pursue. The next time I was out in the yard, he had a patch of soccer-ball sized puffball mushrooms growing out there among the pine needles. I was impressed! The next time I looked, there were several patches like that, some growing to basketball size or larger. The next time, he had built a volcano-shaped mound in the center of them, about 8 feet tall, which held water and would spray it out to water the mushrooms. He was harvesting them while still in their firm stage, cutting big slices of them. He pointed and said “look!” and I followed his eyes to this huge puffball mushroom a little ways off. It was the size of a large beachball. When I got to it, I could see a boulder-sized one in the distance.

Amazed, I ran to it, but oddly, when I got there, it was replaced by several large but different types of mushroom, like tan, orange, and white layered shelf mushrooms, but several feet tall and wide and more shaped like wedges. None were as big as the boulder-sized one I’d seen here. They were along a sunken path next to a wood building. There was one that was shaped vaguely like an angular weasel face, mostly a light orange color. When I brought my hand close to it, it seemed to move a little in response. Rebecca and Jamie and Holly came near, maybe some others, and I told them to hold their hands out to it, and it reacted similarly. I decided to take a video of it and Jamie got behind it and jumped around. I asked him to stop.

We walked away after a few minutes, and there were a swarm of flies ahead of us, and then we saw some reddish raccoons walking about. Some were young. Some walked on their hind legs like a human. Now that I think of it, they were the same colors as the shelf mushrooms we were just looking at. One walked up to Jamie, and he picked it up. These were probably red pandas, his favorite animals.

Singing Finn

Rebecca and the family are at a huge mall, in a movie theater watching a movie. It was the mushroom farm movie! I remember pulling out of the movie a few times to adjust some of my belongings nearby or say something to Rebecca, who was sitting next to me. This explains all the “the next time I looked” up above. I kept coming out of the movie rote for various reasons and returning to find things progressed!

When the movie ended, I had the idea that our dog Finn was there, but not on the leash. Everyone got up to leave and we didn’t see Finn. I blamed Rebecca for bringing him but not keeping him on the leash. As we walked out into the massive mall, I began to despair about finding him. I suggested we see if there was someone we can call, and both look for two hours and consider him lost if we don’t find him. Resigned, I stood up to start looking but immediately ahead of me was two security guards with Finn on a leash. I ran up to him and petted him and hugged him, so glad to see him. I picked him up. I thanked the security guard. He stepped away to talk with the other security guard and I wondered if we were in trouble but my strategy was to focus on how glad I was to see Finn. The second security guard approached and talked to me, but I was entirely distracted by her impossible size — 10 feet tall, growing, it seemed, to 12 feet. I don’t recall what she said but we weren’t in trouble.

So now I’m holding Finn over my shoulder and walking through the mall. The mall is playing music, and Finn starts singing along, in his strange doggie voice. I’m surprised. He sings the next part of the song, and I’m surprised he knows the words. “This is amazing,” I think, and I try to record it with my phone to show Rebecca later. I wander into a cafe and walk up to a large table where some women are. One looks like the actress Kaley Cuoco. I hear her say to me “I like you so much.” I wasn’t looking at her at the time, so I look up at her and meet her eyes and say “hmm?” but she is embarrassed and says “Oh! Nothing. . . . ” I see/feel the clear, transparent-ish shapes of Rebecca and the kids across the table as they enter the context and I’m reminded that I’m already with someone. I set Finn on the table and he runs across it, knocking over someone’s drink. Now I’m entirely focused on cleaning up the spill with paper towels, but they seem to lack any absorbency and I’m just spreading the liquid around further. As I scrub, the granite pattern of the tabletop begins moving along with the push and pull of the paper towels.

Earlier in the mall, Rebecca and I were in a clothing section and I was looking for socks (which I seek in physical life). There was someone working there getting way too much into other people’s drama, acting a little crazy-pants. I steered clear of him in my exciting quest for socks.

References: Kaley Cuoco is an actress. Finn is our dog.