Thursday, February 09, 2006

Dreaming the Bizarre

In the all the reading I’ve done about what to expect in pregnancy, I’ve come across only a brief mention of odd dreams, but nothing that warned me sufficiently about how truly weird they can be. Up until recently, I hadn’t had any dreams out of the ordinary, and I thought that I was going to escape the bizarre. No such luck!

Last week, I had a very nice dream about visiting this quaint European town with family and friends. It was a beautiful, old city full of wonderful little shops and bakeries. However, they seemed to have one oddity—giant snails. I’m not talking about snails the size of a cat (which would be strange enough). No, these were mini-van sized snails! And no one seemed to notice but me—they were slinking their way through the city streets (slowly, of course) and it was completely normal!

After that dream, I had a relatively peaceful week of sleep—until last night.

The most bizarre of my dreams last night was one about fishing. Brandon has recently decided that he wants me to go fishing with him and I guess it was on my mind when I went to bed. In my dream, we were going fishing, except not on a lake; we were back at my grandfather’s dock where my brother and I went fishing when we were young. (It also happens to be connected to the ocean; bass fishing is done in freshwater.) I cast my line out and felt a bite, so I tried to set the hook, but it seemed as if I’d lost the fish. This happened several times and I finally decided that I’d lost the fish and started reeling in quickly to cast the line again. When I finally got the line in, I discovered that I had indeed caught something, but not a fish—it was an adorable little puppy. As you might imagine, this was extremely disturbing, as the poor dog was bleeding from the hook and very scared, not to mention hungry (he went after a fishing lure!). It was still disturbing as I described it to Brandon this morning.

I’m not even going to try to analyze the meanings or sources of these odd dreams—like everything else bizarre right now, I’m just chalking it up to pregnancy hormones.

7 comments:

Becky Davis said...

True story...

When I was little, I went boating with my family (including my dog). One time my sister and I were fishing--not for anything big, just catfish. Anyway, my dad sometimes had us use hot dogs for bait rather than worms. I was little and personally I believed my dad when he said this would work for bait. Also, I much more prefer baiting a hook with a hot dog than a worm. Well, when Gloria and I were done fishing, we just propped the poles up against a tree with the bait still on the hook. Anyway, our dog Ski decided she wanted the hot dog off the hook. Other than this, I don't remember much more to the story except Ski was okay after the entire event.

On a different occassion, Gloria stepped on a hook and caught herself. Ouch!!!

See, your dream isn't as weird as what you think! :)

Jana Swartwood said...

Hmm. I'm more intrigued with the dream about giant snails. Tell me, were they doing anything other than slinking through the streets? Were they posing a silent but deadly threat to the citizens? Or were they just...there?

You're probably right that it's the hormones, but I think it may also have to do with the fact that you've got a creative imagination, so your dreams automatically do weirder things than normal people's. I experience this myself (though, obviously, not heightened by pregnancy hormones because I'm not pregnant). I don't dream often, but when I do, boy, are they vivid. I don't think I've ever had a single "normal" dream that "everyone" is supposed to have had. But if you want to hear about tornadoes knocking trees on top of me or my dad and his posse hunting down and shooting my horse, I'm your girl. :)

Anyway, not sure why I went into all that. Crazy dreams! Did Brandon have any brilliant analyses?

Christie said...

No, Brandon didn't have any analysis for me--he just laughed and said I'm weird. He doesn't tend to have odd dreams, he just has life-like dreams with terrible events, such as someone he loves getting shot or me cheating on him, after which he wakes up saying, "I'm mad at you". Of course, he's not really mad and all he needs is some loving reassurment. :)

The snails were just slinking along as if it was a normal event. They weren't endangering anyone and no one seemed to be panicking or even taking extra notice of them.

I have always had very imaginative dreams.

Christie said...

Becky--I am always worrying about Spike accidentally biting into one of Brandon's fishing baits, or the hook getting stuck in his curious nose. Maybe that's why I had the dream!

Anonymous said...

Dear Lord Women,
Actually Bec, I fished with hot dog pieces as bait as a kid too. My dreams are usually altered events where I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Or I feel like I'm watching from the outside as different parts of my world collide. I like how this is keeping us conversing.

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