Stressful Dreams

Last night, I started back to work at my last out-of-the-house place of employment.  In my dreams, that is.

I have this dream every few months, and it’s always alarming and stressful.  I find myself back at my old job, with no clue who any of my co-workers are or what my job now entails.  There were some new twists in last night’s dream, though.  Initially, I realized I was very late for work – it was around 9:15 and I was supposed to start at 8 am or so.  I was completely panicked because I couldn’t remember my boss’s old phone number so I could call to let her know I was still coming in.  (It was my first day, you see.)

Then the dream changed and I was at work, but hadn’t seen my boss yet and I still had to explain that I’d been late.  Then I got the bright idea to just walk into her office and look at the phone number on her phone.  So I got the number, and somehow I needed to use my computer to call her (I know this makes no sense – do dreams ever make much sense?!) … but I realized my son had installed some kind of software that completely changed how my computer worked.  Everything I clicked brought up some kind of menu or performed an action that just left me clueless, and I was getting more and more frustrated with every click.  (This last bit cracks me up because he really is always light years ahead of me in terms of apps and computer stuff.)

This dream seems to have replaced the high school dreams, as far as stress-related dreams go – you know, the ones where you have an exam you never studied for, can’t remember your locker combination, can’t remember how to get to class, etc.  Now I dream that I have to go back to this job I haven’t performed since early 2001, re-connect with all the people that worked there and/or meet new co-workers, try to remember how to do everything, plus catch up with all the ways things have changed since I left.  I’m glad I don’t have these dreams very often!

I’m not feeling stressed in real life at all these days, so I’m not even sure where this is coming from.

I’ve talked about recurring dreams before, but there’s one ‘theme’ I’m pretty sure I’ve never mentioned:  the ‘can’t go to the bathroom’ dreams.  (Maybe I’m the only one that has them.)

I’ll have a dream that I have to pee (sorry, there’s just no other way to say it) and either I can’t find a bathroom or, when I do find one, I can’t actually use it.  It might be some kind of public bathroom – all the toilets next to each other in one big room, or maybe the only unoccupied toilet in a public bathroom is one that has no door.  There’s always some reason I can’t actually use the toilet, and most often it’s because they are all occupied or there’s no privacy in some way.  I know what’s happening here – my body is stopping me from, well, wetting the bed.  (No, I’ve never had a bed-wetting problem in my life, but I definitely have had to wake up in the middle of the night to go.)  Isn’t that weird, though?  I don’t wake up right away and just go use the facilities … instead, I incorporate it into my dream and torture myself for a while.  So fun!

Casually veering toward a less TMI topic, I’ve also had recurring dreams about our indoor cats (the former-feral ones) getting outside.  This is guaranteed to get me worked up because we can’t pick these cats up, so if they really do get outside somehow it’s not like I can go scoop them back up and bring them in, like I can with Sabrina.  The dream I had earlier this week, though, changed things up a bit.

In this situation, Dave and I were at some kind of medical appointment having to do with our respective hearing losses.  (I suspect this came from a visit we had earlier that day from a Caption Call rep, who needed us to fill out forms verifying our hearing loss in order to keep our caption phone.)  We were in a medical building, sort of like a hospital.  And I was carrying Maxie, our former-feral mom cat, in my arms.

As we walked around, I realized I was getting some looks from people.  Maxie was kind of squirming around and I had to keep talking to her to calm her down.  Finally I told Dave, “You know, we probably shouldn’t be in here with her – I think someone’s going to ask us to leave.  We should probably go home.”  So Dave took us out a side door (to get us out of the building right away), but we were nowhere near the parking lot we’d parked in.  We had to walk and walk, forever it seemed, along a road.  Maxie got agitated every time we passed any kind of animal outside, and I was getting more and more worried that she would leap out of my arms.  The stress finally woke me up (and then I was so relieved to realize it was just a dream).

Hopefully tonight will bring a stress-free slumber, and I will not be worrying about our cats getting loose at my old place of employment, while crossing my legs and hopping around, trying to find a free (private) toilet.  Sweet dreams!