did I really dream that?

I took yesterday off work as I was unable to sleep the night before. It wasn't the usual reason (asthma); instead, I simply couldn't sleep. Every once in a while I go into a bit of a frustrated sulk as I feel I'm tied down by my own possessions and the related costs of them, mainly my house. Then I lie awake trying to think of ways to escape Chez Melina without simply walking away from it.

Although this doesn't make a lot of sense - one has to live somewhere - it still happens now and again. But I always get over it in a day or two.

After spending the morning in bed, I set out to learn video editing. Recently I had been given a new freelance project, which was to edit an existing video presentation about new garage building procedures. After some false starts I was able to edit the video myself with no assistance, replacing the corporate information at the end of it. Then I e-mailed it to Ian's office for his approval and went to bed.

Early this morning, I had a dream in which I met several friends for brunch. Although I was in Sydney, the friends who appeared were people who live in Texas. A designer I used to work with presented me with a birthday cake with white icing, which was oddly pink and tasteless inside. We were at an outdoor cafe; these are common in Australia.

I eventually noticed that the store next to us wasn't really a store - it was an odd condo building with glass walls. You could literally see the occupants inside. I looked closer and realized I could see Dismissed Date* in one of the units, asleep in an Ikea-decorated condo. Everything was white. What was even stranger is that he had a dog as a pet, wandering around the bed as if he were waiting for DD to wake up. In real life, he doesn't really like dogs.

Later on, a young, dark-haired woman emerges with the dog on a leash. The dog wants to come over to our table for attention. It's a large Airedale mix. She seems to be DD's girlfriend, but nobody speaks to her, although we all pet the dog.

When the brunch is over, I walk down some stairs to a basement car park. I'm almost knocked down by a young man being pursued by a policeman. When I arrive in the car park, I realize that I don't know how I got there. Was I driving my bimmer, or my motorcycle? But then I spot the car.

Besides the fact that I usually dream about my past - I suspect my subconscious is trying to perform a memory defrag/delete operation - I am clueless as to why I dreamed this. I haven't spoken to DD in well over a year now, and all email ceased in late 2009.

My only guess as to why the dog was in the dream is that Brett (DD's ex-business partner, who fired him a few months ago - see previous postings) recently told me that DD had hitched up with someone else in mid-2009, and it had quickly turned into a co-dependent relationship. Brett was not wild about the situation as DD kept going on about how rich his current girlfriend's parents were, and what she stood to inherit. In the meantime he was shacking up with her in the suburbs with her children. This was hard for me to visualize, like his owning a dog.

When I asked Brett if he were talking about the same DD I had dated in 2008, he said "This is always how he is with women. He's like a relationship chameleon; he always reacts to his girlfriends by imitating them."

All of this puzzled me when I heard it, but it also made me feel especially glad our relationship hadn't progressed. I just wonder how he would have acted towards me if I hadn't been so emotionally distant. I suspect the relationship would have ended considerably sooner.

* see Key to Characters at right.