Spying on the castle-mansion, foiled by pitbulls

I was perhaps a spy or something, and had walked up an outdoor walkway in the woods to the outside entrance to the top (third?) story of a castle/mansion of grand proportions (maybe football-field sized).

The door was open, looking into a roomy stone hallway. Before I could really step in, a pair of pretty evil-looking brown pitbull-like dogs came up to me and began to menace.

On and off, they went from baring their teeth and looking ready to pounce, to zoning out and looking nonchalant. I decided, though, that I better not take chances, so I strolled back down into the woods. The dogs followed me for a ways, still switching between evil and docile.

The last stretch out of the woods was a neatly delimited steep slope, covered in fallen leaves, with a railing all the way up the left side. As I climbed the slope, holding onto the railing, I noticed that the entire railing was covered with a very thick layer of whipped cream.

Estate + ferry: shortcut out of DC

I was riding in a car driven by a woman I knew well, who was maybe my mother's age. We were on our way out of the city, which identified with DC in my mind, though a bit different.

There was a huge river running through the middle of the city, for one thing. But I'll get to that. We had figured out that the best route to take was to drive south and enter an impressive, yet compact, estate. We drove our car from the back gate, into a courtyard filled with gardens, green copper statues on stone pedestals, and a circular center with maybe a sundial or fountain in the middle.

We stopped for a moment in the circle, and I turned and took a picture out the window of some small copper statues, perhaps cherubs or children. I looked at the picture on my camera's screen, and for some reason, the focus was messed up. There were three statues, the closest one on the right, the other two behind it and slightly to the left. I had tried to focus on the middle one, but the focus ended up showing up intermittently in different parts of the picture.

We turned right from the circle and continued through a small tunnel towards the front exit from the estate. As we were coming out, some of the estate's actual residents (at least one dark-haired guy) were walking up the covered front steps (kind of like a valet area), and looked at us, as if trying to remember if we were guests staying there or what. We glanced awkwardly at them and continued out.

Basically the only thing accessible from the front exit of the estate was a ferry that crossed the very wide river that ran through the city (though here the shores of the river looked pretty mountainous/woodsy and not built up at all).

EDM clubbers and the pirate who can't spell

I went down into the woods near our old townhouse, entering down the hillside path near Bob's house. At the bottom of the slope, where the creek passes by, a large group of guys were having out, listening to electronic dance music. They were dressed for clubbing, I suppose.

At first I approached timidly, expecting for some reason that they would be hostile upon my intrusion. I sort of passed through, down to the left, then set about climbing some rocks over the creek to get a better perspective. A guy with short blond hair, pretty Scandinavian-looking, saw me and helped guide me in getting the right footholds to get up.

At the top of the rocks, maybe ten feet above the ground, I found what looked like a sliced-off section of a metal boat, with seating, so I sat there and watched the gathering. Somebody mentioned to me that this hunk of boat belonged to a guy nearby (sitting higher up on another raised hunk of something) who was kind of dressed for yachting -- I think he had a skipper hat and maybe an eyepatch. They noted that he lamented his inability to spell, due to being a pirate.

Bungee horses

I was with a group of people in the woods, near a medium-sized pond or reservoir. Next to the water was a framework tower, maybe three or four stories high. Two people from our group were playing a weird sport where they each were mounted on a horse, and around each horse's midsection was tied a bungee cord. Both horses, with the guys on them, were dangling from the tower over the water, slowly bouncing up and down (it was a rather springy cord) and swaying back and forth. The idea was to knock your opponent off his horse, and the two came close to each other a few times and scuffled. I can't say I recall either one falling in the water.

"Mason mama"

I came to a facility in the wilderness where I was supposed to train in survival skills. I followed a course that had me sneaking quietly around, behind, and through small fir trees in this sparsely wooded property. Apparently a primary goal was to not alert wildlife to my presence.

I finished up and headed out. I saw a woman from another special agency just arriving to take the course as I left. My exit route took me to a long indoor bridge with glass sides for looking out. It dipped towards the middle like a rope bridge. Looking out, I saw only a vast body of water and I recalled that the facility had been on a small remote island.

At the same time, I started thinking of the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads", and thought of Jenny Lewis singing it. I started to sing it like her. It seemed that the song was being dedicated to my wife, who lived on another, more populated island, yet had never really gone to the sea or left the island (thus, "stranger to blue water"). The line "mountain mama" was changed to "Mason mama" (Mason being pronounced "mass-un"), Mason being the name of her hometown.

(In my mental map, the facility island was in the southwest corner, the island/group of islands with Mason was towards south-center, and halfway up the map to the north started a landmass that covered most of the north half of the map, and may have been "West Virginia".)

Escape with the apes, and taking a chunk out of a punk

I (female), one way or another, ended up being held in a skyscraper by an evil corporation or militia; also being held there were associates of mine, several chimp-like people who moved sort of like large humanoid muppets. They were smart enough to carry on rational conversations (in sort of goofy muppet-like voices) but they were completely befuddled when it came to technology. We made our escape, and later I was hanging out with them in someplace resembling a mix of a swanked out office building and an Ewok tree village. A couple of the chimp people were sitting in front of a computer (right in front of the railing at the top of a quite wide, shallow, circular ramp that led to the next floor down), shaking/cocking their heads in confusion in sort of an endearing way.

After our escape, I was outside in a semi-urban area (maybe just outside of the skyscraper we had escaped from), and I had just reached the edge of another property, an open area near a dumpster, chain link fence, and tar bike path, not far from the road. A punk on a bike (one who had tried to harass me from his bike earlier in the dream, before the skyscraper) showed up on the path and started trying to bug me. I walked along the bike path, with him keeping up, until we reached a lightly forested area that the bike path continued through. He was starting to swing at me with what appeared to be claws like Wolverine's. I looked at my own right hand as I put out my own claws of the same type, though a little thinner and rounder than Wolverine's. I hacked back at the biker punk and got a good slice in across his right cheek before I woke up.

Forest-office-Charlie-Maura-drum squares

I was working at a desk, except the office visible in front of me seemed to be more of a forest than an office (not that it seemed odd at the time). To my right, sitting on my desk, was a small, vertical mirror on a stand, and every 10-20 seconds or so I would take a moist cloth and wipe it down. Lee W came by my desk and got me to admit that it was a little obsessive to wipe the mirror so often.

I explained to Lee that something was bothering me about the coworker to my right (who was apparently Charlie Sheen), though I couldn't quite put my finger on it, so I kept glancing over at him, and then wiping the mirror to make it look like that was why I was looking to the right.

Meanwhile, another male coworker came by and Lee held out a very tall styrofoam cup and said to the coworker, "Could you get me a mug?" At first the coworker wasn't sure if Lee wanted him to go bring him a mug, but then he figured out Lee wanted to get his styrofoam cup refilled with coffee (from what looked more like a soda fountain than a coffee brewer).

To my left was another coworker, who happened to be Maura. The details evade me at this point, but somehow there was a drum beat playing (with brushes), sort of a swing rhythm, and, of all things, the snare beat had a brush coming down on top of each of our heads. We weren't particularly bothered, as it was apparently part of usual work.

By the way, in visualizing this dream, the office seemed more like a vertically stacked 9x9 square (reminiscent of Hollywood Squares, but in an office/forest setting), with me at the bottom center, Charlie to the right, Maura to the left, the other coworker possibly in the square above me. And for the most part people were facing out of the square towards the viewer.

Two (or three) towers

I had lost track of a girl I was with earlier (with medium length dyed redhead hair). I was walking through a sparsely wooded park (reminiscent of Rock Creek Park in DC) in autumn, along with some friend of mine. Off to the side, in the distance, but not too far off, I spotted two massive light gray towers, sort of castle style with battlements, but maybe the size of the steam stacks at a nuclear power plant. These two towers belonged to a complex, and a third tower, a little bit separated from the other two, was also present. I decided to take a picture, but even at this distance, I could only fit the two towers closer together into the picture.

I believe I later went over to that complex, and possibly found the girl from earlier in the lobby there. But I can't quite remember.

Sophie B. Hawkins's woodland home

I visited Sophie B. Hawkins's woodland home with a couple other people. Her house was two stories, very open, seeming to be the hollowed-out upright trunk of a gigantic tree. Some music began playing, and for a second I thought it was her song "As I Lay Me Down", but it turned out to be her cover of "Oh What a Night" by The Four Seasons. It started out with her on vocals, and I started singing along immediately in my best falsetto. Her lyrics had changed the gender of the object ("you know I didn't even know his name"). However, when it got to "Oh I, I got a funny feeling", it sounded just like the Four Seasons version, and then it was clearly a male vocal when it got to "hypnotizing, mesmerizing me, she was everything I dreamed she'd be". So I guess this was a duet, or even a collaboration with the original band.

As the song was going, I was wandering the house. I noticed a piano right near the front door. Plenty of clutter on the first floor. Very woody. Open layout. Went upstairs, also pretty open. You could still look over and see downstairs from the edge near the stairs. I walked into a sizeable library/study with one very large polished wooden table in the middle and bookshelves all along the walls. Sophie and the other two had walked up another short flight of stairs (second floor was sort of split-level), but I could see them clearly, as the two rooms had only table-height walls on the sides that faced each other.

Then some song started playing which I assumed to be a Smashing Pumpkins song, judging from the style of the intro, but I was unable to confirm it because I woke up.

The shaman's big-ass singing turkey

Big-ass chicken or turkey-like bird. Belonged to the.. monk? oracle? shaman? Something like that. Three of my friends are on the tar path leading down into the woods. I am standing on some large rocks and leaning against a tree across a 2- or 3- yard wide creek parallel to the path, reading a pre-exam review essay written by my professor. This bird comes along and my friends are a little in the way, and the bird stops. They shuffle out of the way and the bird starts wah/squawking this tune out:

E ----------------------------------- B -12----------------12-------------- G ----13-11-13----------13-11-13----- D ----------------------------------- A ----------------------------------- E ----------------------------------- | | | | | | | | | | | | E ----------------------------------- B -12-------------------------------- G ----13----11-------14-11----11----- D -------14----------------14-------- A ----------------------------------- E ----------------------------------- | | | | | | | | | | | |

The second time around, as it starts to disappear into the forest, another bird in the distance sounds like it's trying to harmonize with it. We are, naturally, impressed by all of this.

Attacked by the black coil at school

I'm school-aged... maybe late elementary or middle school. Walking by maybe a bus stop, a few kids are waiting there, I take note of a sign, white with red letters, something something "but skating is allowed" or something like that. I continue on to a tar path through the woods to the right. I'm walking with my horse on the way to the school. As we approach the school I notice we're being tailed by a male horse that might have a romantic interest with my horse. I bring my horse into the school building near the front and leave her there and begin to walk away.. the other horse approaches, and I'm trying to decide whether to try to separate them...

Very long long auditorium (there are actually four of these in corners of the building). As I leave, I'm assaulted by some black long coiled wiry... thing... which came from a custodian's closet.. which enters my body. I'm on the ground, with quite an enlargement of the belly. Kids, attempting to save me, jump repeatedly on my stomach. Eventually it works, and the thing goes away.

Microprognostication

Charlie's Angels 2? Something about a long steep hill in the woods, one of the characters comes out of a cabin partway down the hill. More credits come on, this late in the film.

-

I'm in some kind of small store or apartment... not sure. I read names "I'm so-and-so" off a piece of paper. After each name is a description of what's going to happen to them in a few seconds. I go through the list and each person does something markedly different from what is written on the paper. I get down to the last name (Beth) who is supposed to do something... anyway, she's sitting across from me on the same couch, and she's a regular bombshell... sandy hair? A little short. But she's the only one in the room who looks at me and says something like, "at your house.." And who am I to refuse? I may massage her bare feet at some point.