One time I dreamt I had borrowed a friend's car and wrecked it. When I told her about my dream, she was all "dude, you wrecked my car!?" and I said "dude, you don't have a car, you don't even have a license to drive!" and she was all "but it's the principle of the matter - you wrecked my freakin' car man!"

So back when I was on anti-depressants all those years ago, I used to have whacked out dreams.  I mean those dreams where you wake up and you aren't terrified, or crying, or anything, just staring up at the ceiling going "dude, what was *that*?" For the most part these ended with the mind and mood altering drugs, but every now and again I get some real doozies.  They can be divided into two groups: airport dreams and WTF dreams.

I've figured out the airport dreams.  Because I fear flying and I hate being late and I really do worry a great deal about missing flights, when I'm anxious I tend to dream that I'm running through an airport trying to catch my flight.  These dreams usually end with me running across the tarmac because the plane has left the gate and for some reason airport security never sees this as a problem.  I wake up covered in sweat and exhausted.  I used to get them quite often when I was writing my dissertation, but now I only get them right before I fly somewhere, and I'm so blasé about the whole thing I usually just let them run to the end, wake up, take a drink of water, roll over and fall right back asleep.  What I can't figure out is why the airports are always designed like something out of the 1970s - orange carpet, brown fabric on the walls and chandeliers made of aluminum rods and glass balls.  (Why, yes, I do dream this dream so often I now pay more attention to the details out of sheer boredom.)

The others, classified WTF, are called that for a very good reason.  I once had a dream where I was standing beside the children's slide in my kindergarden playground.  Kittens were sliding down the slide.  If they hit the ground at the end of the slide, they died.  I was trying to stop them by placing my arms across the slide to block their descent, but I couldn't catch them all.  They just kept tumbling down the slide.  I tried reasoning with them and begging them, "please don't slide down the slide!"  But they just kept coming!  Now, when you wake up, you ask the obvious questions like "where did these kittens come from?" and "why did they die as soon as they touched the ground?" and "why couldn't I just go around to the slide's ladder and stop the damn kittens from getting UP on the slide in the first place?" and they are all good questions, but if you've ever had one of these dreams, you know that logical thought does not apply while you're dreaming.

I mention all this because it's very rare for me to have such weird dreams these days, but I guess the pregnancy hormones and the inability to stay in a deep sleep (due to acid-reflux and an exercising Spawn) means that I may be enjoying some interesting subconscious weirdness for the last 8 weeks of my pregnancy.

Last night's dream went like this:

I was walking through a darkened suburbia, where the houses were set relatively far back from the road and there were a lot of trees and no street lights.  I was wearing high-heels, a short tank-top blouse, and carrying a purse but I wasn't wearing any pants (trousers for the Brits - I was wearing underwear, thank you very much).  The ground was very unsteady, like I was drunk or had been drugged and the horizon kept tilting and I was staggering about, in and out of the street, and on and off people's lawns.  

I knew was trying to walk back to my campsite, where I had a little caravan.  To get there I had to climb over a wooded ridge and I was worried that the drunk who slept in the woods would wake up as I stumbled through the brush and attack me.  He didn't, I made it safely over the hill and into the campsite.  

Only I couldn't remember where my caravan was.  Sigh.  

I started walking in one direction and then changed my mind and walked in the other and then I found my car.  (This would be the car I drove as a high school student - a '72 Chevelle.) Since I had my keys and my purse, I considered driving the car to a hotel, where I could shower and sleep, but then realized that I didn't want to try to check in because I wasn't wearing any pants and people would ask questions and I just really didn't know what had happened to my pants, I just wasn't wearing them any more.  But right before I decided to sleep in my car, it occurred to me that if my car was here, then the caravan couldn't be to far away.

By now the sun was rising and it was getting light enough to see the trees and open meadows of the campsite.  It wasn't anywhere I've ever been (well, in real life, in my dream it was very familiar because this is where I was camping, duh).  I walked down the road and, sure enough, came upon the campsite.  Where everyone was out watching the sunrise.  

Apparently I was camping with a group.  This wasn't in the least bit strange, it just sort of slotted itself into my dream, "oh yeah, that's right, everyone is going to be awake now."

My family was there (minus my sister) along with my best friend, my husband, and my ex (who's very presence is my brain's way of saying, "by the way, this is a nightmare, in case you didn't know") - all sitting in folding chairs, looking east, and drinking coffee.  

My caravan was not in the circle of caravans.  

I walked up and everyone looked at me and started laughing and asking what I'd done with my pants and saying "oh, look what the cat dragged in!" etc.  I was pretty tired at this point, I had been wandering for quite some time after all, so I asked where my caravan was, because I really just wanted to go to bed.  Everyone started looking at each other, all shifty and uncomfortable, like they didn't want to tell me and it was going to be an unpleasant subject.  

"Well," I asked, "where is it?"  

"Well, when you didn't come back," someone said "we let your sister take it."  

"Where did she take it?" 

Shrugs all around.  People begin going back to looking at the sunrise and remarking on how nice everything was.  I was pretty pissed off, but since no one would talk to me anymore, I called up my sister on my cell phone.

"Hey, where are you and why have you taken my camper?"

"Well, you didn't need it."

"Yeah, but I need it now.  I want to go to sleep."

"Not my problem."

"Please, KT..."

"Whatever."  And she hung up on me.

So there I was, shivering in the early morning, without pants, surrounded by people who just didn't give a crap about what had happened to me and were all much more interested in talking about how beautiful the sunrise was and how nice it was to be camping.  All I wanted to do was lay down, but there was just nowhere to go. No offer of a place to lay down, pants, or even a cup of freaking coffee!  Then they wanted me to take a photo of all of them having a great time.  I angled the camera to include the space where my caravan *should* have gone and everyone leaned in towards each other for the picture, grinning and holding up coffee mugs.

And that's when I woke up.  What a sucky dream!

I told the DB about the dream while he was in the shower and when he got out he gave me a huge, rather damp, hug.  I figure the dream was about some fear that no one actually gives a crap about me or loves me.  Thankfully, when fully awake, I know that that's not true, I have a long list of people who care and who give a crap about me and who would be worried sick if I didn't come home one night or if I showed up in the morning without pants and a dazed expression.

So seriously, subconscious, WTF?