Dreamy ...

I wish I could stick leads to my head and record my dreams.

I would love to know what triggers them. All those electrical impulses firing in my brain. Why are certain things drawn on certain nights while other things stay tucked away?

Last night I dreamed, in part, about people I haven't seen since I was a child. They're relatives of my mom's best friend, so I guess their names can come up in conversation from time to time, but why did I dream about them last night? And why did I dream about them in a Christmas setting? And why was such a big part of the dream that Kimmy, the daughter, had gotten a puppy for Christmas, but the puppy was more like a 6-month-old dog, very lanky, more legs than anything else? Cute. Sweet. Let me hold her. The dog, not Kimmy. But what the heck?

Some parts of the dream, I understood. The scene where I was waiting in line at what seemed like a Pier 1, and it was taking forever for the cashier to check out the people ahead of me? That I get. I have an exquisite gift for picking the wrong line in a store. It always *seems* the shortest, but when I pay attention to the other payees in the other lines, they almost always make it to the cashier before I do. It's like a race, and I'm usually the losing team. Hmm. I feel like I should lie down on a couch when I write that. Paging Dr. Freud ...

But really, holidays, shopping, long lines, that's just present-day reality, so I understand where that part of the dream came from. But other parts baffled me.

Most of my friends say they can never remember their dreams. Some insist they don't dream. I insist back to them that they do. But I have pretty good dream recall. Some stay with me for an hour or two after I wake up. Some stay with me forever. When I was little and I'd have a fever, I always had the same two dreams. I remember those.

And I remember the dream I had about Dave when we were on a train and he gave me a little figure of Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz" and I said, "Is this to remind me that I always have everything I need, right inside me?" And he smiled.