Dreaming of Reality

Well, here it is in all it’s Full Frontal Beauty. With a quick search through the blog and I found that I started on April 19th, but there was the shoulder injury, and I pimped the fridge, plus all the work on the porch was done as well during that time. I could go back and find out exactly how much time I spent just painting, and I probably will, but for now I’ll give a rough estimate of three months of painting. It seems longer – much longer.

Click to bask in it’s greater glory



I really worked too hard to get this last section done and I am sore, sore, sore. Between the tree and then 2 marathon painting sessions Saturday and Sunday, I really pushed myself too hard. We are back to this strange weather pattern where we get thick fog and maybe even a light mist in the very early mornings and the first half of the day. Then around Noon it all burns off and we get beautiful sunshine. Because of this I didn’t want to let the bare wood sit without primer after I sanded it.

On Saturday I first dug up the stump from the tree and got rid of that, and then I started sanding everything on Section 2. Once I got it all sanded I decided I needed to primer, otherwise the wood might get wet over night. Well, wet might be putting it too strongly. It’s just, why take the risk. This is going to be the substrate for future paint jobs for the next 100 years maybe. I was out on the ladder until almost 8:00 at night putting primer on. Sunday was the same thing with the first coat of paint. It was just exhausting.

Because of all this I was usually in bed before 9:00, and I never ate enough those days. I had a very strange and lucid dream Sunday night. In a very odd and dreamy way it encompassed some of what I’ve been going through, or at least feeling. Of course, other parts of it are just strange dream stuff that has no relation to current events. In a lot of my dreams I have friends and other people that I don’t really know in real life, but in the dream we treat each other as if there is a history. It’s very strange. I call them dream friends, dream family, or even dream lovers (don’t even think about it). Oh, and my truck has bad brakes right now. Anyway here’s the dream.

I’m in an empty house with a dream friend, a man. The house is a nondescript tract home and we are looking for watch batteries and we find 2 of them. We go outside and are standing by the side of the garage when a woman walks up. She is in her mid-twenties and we know each other but I’m not sure how. She is mad at my dream friend and tells him to leave and never come back. She looks at me and says, with a pleasant smile, that I’m welcome to come over anytime. (nudge, nudge – wink, wink)

The scene melts away, the man and woman are gone, and I’m sitting in the driveway in a 1990s Ford Thunderbird. I go to back down the driveway but the car is in drive and I slam in to the garage door. I don’t really smash anything but the car skids along the garage door and strips off a lot of the paint. The door is painted red and several layers of paint come off. Each layer has the consistency of cellophane.

I decided I needed to repaint the door, so I go in to the house to look for paint. The house is now fully furnished and the woman is in the kitchen. She is wearing a slinky white nightgown, talking on a cell phone, and cooking an omelet. I walk past the kitchen and head towards the basement. The basement is finished with a bedroom, bathroom, and lots of storage cabinets. It’s not done real well, but it’s pretty clean. After I open what seems like dozens of plywood storage cabinets on the walls I find a shelf with some different cans of cleaners and what looks like a quart of paint. I spilled something on my hands and I go in to the bathroom to wash my hands. I then take the paint upstairs.

I walk in to the kitchen and the woman has her back to me. I decide I’m going to surprise her and I walk up behind and start to put my arms around. Just as I do that she turns around a shrieks and the omelet pan, cell phone, and paint can go flying. We both fall to the ground with her on top of me and we are both scrambling for the cell phone. There was just as much playfulness to this, as there was two people trying to get a cell phone.

Just as I reach the cell phone her mother, my boss from about 10 years ago, and 2 more dream friends walk in. It is decided that we will all go to the hardware store to get paint for the garage door. I take the cell phone and paint can to try and return them to the basement, but I can’t find it. I eventually find some man standing in the hallway and I hand them to him.

I go outside to join everyone and the woman and her mom are getting in to a newer truck and start to drive away. The woman truns to look at me once more before they pull off. My boss and the two dream friends are waiting by the most beat up Volkswagen Beetle I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s sitting in the driveway just where I left the Thunderbird. The two dream friends are already in the backseat and they’re making sandwiches. My boss has a large canister of C02 that he wants to put in the trunk. The trunks are up front on the old bugs and the trunk lid is crushed beyond belief. I manage to get it open and there are already two canisters of C02 in there. I try to move them around to make room but the car starts to fall apart. I tell my boss there’s no room. I manage to get the car back together and the trunk lid closed. We get in and begin to back down the driveway. The woman and here mom are long gone.

As I back down the driveway I see a cop car coming and I try to stop but the brakes don’t work to good. I roll out in to traffic and partially up the driveway across the street. The cop stops in time, and after I roll past, he glares at me and speeds off. I start to drive down the street and a block away I pass my house but it’s gone. All that’s left is the foundation. Again, I try to stop but the brakes don’t work so good. I keep yelling at my boss and my friends to look at what has happened to my house but they don’t pay any attention. We slowly roll by with me staring and wondering what could have happened to my house.

As we drive along we are slowly climbing a hill and the weather gets progressively worse. First it’s raining. Then it gets really cold. Then frozen rain and sleet. It gets very dark and we come to an intersection. Because we are going uphill I manage to get the car to come to a stop but I have to keep working the clutch so we don’t roll backwards. Just then, out of the darkness a group of Marines marches by. They are soaking wet and miserable. They stop next to the car and stack their rifles in formation right by my window. They are doing drills in the rain and all I can think about is that I want one of those rifles. The light turns green and we drive on.

The road continues up hill and a light snow begins to fall. Up until now, after we passed what was left of my house, we had been driving through desolate mountains. After the traffic light we come back in to a town. I see traffic up ahead and the snow is coming in so hard now it is almost white-out conditions. I see brakes lights about a block ahead and I begin to pump the brakes wildly. Nothing is happening and we’re now going down hill. The car is picking up speed and I just know we are going to crash. The snow is so thick now, I can no longer see the brakes lights. There is that feeling of dread and hopelessness that at any second something terrible is going to happen and you have absolutely no control over it. Just when I think we are going to crash, I wake up.

The End.