Coronavirus in California

 Whew what a few years it's been since I've written here. We moved from Louisiana to California in August 2018 just in time for Mike to start his first day at his new job and the kids to start school. We love getting outside here. We can drive less than an hour to the nearest beach or mountains. We love hiking and exploring new areas. We've made lots of new friends and four out of five of us has been to the emergency room at least once. This was all pre-pandemic too. We have all been vaccinated except for the youngest two kiddos. I may start writing more. We shall see. 

Snake and Taho Dream, Journeying and Associations

Edit to update that I was mailed my dad's autopsy report and he died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Last night's dream. I'm working at a church. There are many familiar details around it, some of which I have dreamt before, such as the downstairs being kind of like a clothing closet/food pantry for the needy. I think I remember seeing some of my long-estranged ex-relatives here. Upstairs is the nursery area where kids go for Sunday school. The lights are on at some point and off at some point. It seems there is a kitchen up there too. I am marking 'x's' next to these circles on a chart for the ones that represent things I will like to teach the kids. Someone reminds me I'm no longer teaching here I'm confused for a minute, then look around and think "who's going to teach them?" and notice that there really are not that many people there and wonder what happened to them. I start thinking of ways to get more people there like church buses, etc and visualize the room filling with people (a vision within the dream). I go downstairs and I'm at a house that seems to belong to my husband and I. We are outside. My husband is walking around looking for a leaking water pipe or something. He has a man with him from a company that he's called out. I see what is going on. The man is looking for his company's logo, which is Home Depot. I see through his eyes. If he sees his logo painted on where the problem is at then he can leave without doing any work because they've already been out to assess and it's no longer his problem (which sort of reminds me of my doctor and my cardiologist who have given me a diagnosis of "costochondritis" for my chest pains with no real reason of why I'm having them and say the chest pains have nothing to do with a leaking heart valve which really makes no sense to me). So the man imagines that he's seen his Home Depot logo and leaves and another crew comes out. The first man was white with brown hair, the next crew are two black men. They follow my husband around helping him look for the problem. I'm still confused what the problem actually is that he is looking for because I see no evidence of a leak anywhere, just rows and rows of rusty pipes side by side (similar to the pipes on a pipe organ) going up the side of the house. I leave them to their search and walk down the sidewalk that is parallel to the road towards a creek that runs under the road. As I approach the area next to the bridge I notice a HUGE black and whitish snake swimming in the water. I feel fear, but continue walking, because it's still in the water, but then an even LARGER red and whitish snake comes speeding through the water, past the black snake. It is going so fast that it just slides onto the shore (kind of like a canoe would if you did not stop rowing as you approach the shore). It was pointed straight towards me and I turn around and sprint away. At the same time I turn to run, I look to the side of the sidewalk and notice the same type of snake is there, dead. It has been flattened and is even severed at one part at a sharp 45 degree angle. As I'm leaving I see vehicles speeding down the road and a group of people going down the sidewalk towards the snake that had came out of the water. I warn them about the large snakes and they tell me about the "wreck in the Tahoe". I'm not sure what they are talking about, but they speak as if it is a news story everyone has been following. They tell me that the people in the Tahoe had died. I go into a vision within the vision which is sort of like me googling the accident in the dream and see that it is a young couple. The guy has brown curly hair. He's new on the music scene, but is connected with some other well-known musicians and had just released either his first hit single or his first album. This takes me back to the upstairs of the church which is the vision of the fuller church, this time with more black people in it, and they tell me about the same thing, the "people in the Tahoe died". 

The snakes are a reoccurring dream visitor and I've researched it a lot, but every time I have one of these dreams and share it I'm hoping someone is going to resonate with it and say something profound that I haven't understood just yet. I am currently reading "Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation" and had journeyed with a drum last night. I was able to get a visual in the journeying! It was me, but I was a Bald Eagle flying over a beautiful body of water next to land. I was so flustered that I snapped out of it and came back to my body very quickly, but went back to drumming. I was asking for help in understanding my chest pains. My birth dad passed in 2011 so I asked to connect with him if he was available, but then I heard what sounded like a loud gunshot that snapped me back to again. I ran outside to see if anything looked out of place, but no. I looked at my watch and it said 10:01 pm. My birth father took his own life. I do not know what method he used as I'd never been able to find him until I found his obituary a year and a half later. I see I'm writing a book here. The last part is sort of significant because I wonder what time he took his life (I might try to find out if there was an autopsy) and wonder if the gun shot was real or from the journey. And then this dream happened. A prior dream with snakes had my birth dad dead on an altar, so I feel somehow it could be related to him. After finding his family on Facebook through his obituary, I learned that his dad, a journalist and former professor at the college that I graduated from, had died two years after I was born in a car accident. Other relatives from that family live in Lake Tahoe. Those are just some associations that could or could not be related to the dream.

Quite the Grip Dream

Dream: I'm at a gathering...we are outside at someone's house. It's a BBQ, maybe? There is a bonfire and people are hanging out and socializing. Seems I've visited this place before in another dream. I'm holding a glass (it looks like the glass that I use in my bathroom to hold my cotton balls and q-tips) and either I break it or it just breaks in my hand. Then I'm inside the kitchen of this house...I've broken another glass, this time it's the one I'm drinking from. A very well-dressed, distinguished-looking gentleman comes in. He's wearing something like a black suit, maybe with a red vest or tie...white or gray hair, and has a thin face with age lines. He could be a scholar or maybe a business man. I know he's very wise. I'm talking to him, apologizing and surprised by my clumsiness. I'm feeling foolish, embarrassed. I wonder (maybe out loud, maybe silently, but he hears me) why I keep doing this. In waking life,  years ago when I was just at drinking age in Ohio, if I was drinking alcohol from a glass, I often would drop it as my body and hands became very relaxed and it would break. I remember this similar feeling of being embarrassed at the same time of not caring too much because...whatever, I felt great! In the dream, the man assures me that it's okay and tells me that I have "quite the grip". I think the difference in the dream and the memory from waking life is that when I was younger, I was much more carefree and ignorant. Now I'm very cautious and have learned so much...I've got a much better grip on life than I did back then.

In the dream, I start pondering the dream's meaning. I'm wondering if he's saying that I have a strong grasp of things or if I'm gripping on to something too tightly that I'm breaking it. The man tells me that his grandfather used to tell him something. I try to remember what it was, but I can't. He showed me a lyrical poem on paper. The verse is in italics and the rest of the words above and below the verse is blurred out. I remember that it was an extremely significant and profound insight...both beautiful and enlightening. I remember that it was about life and learning. The word he used to describe the type of learning resonated so strongly with me that I wanted to wake myself up to write it down so that I could study it. I tell myself over and over again, "wake up, write it down, wake up, write it down." As I'm coming too, the words "Betty Crocker" "Betty Cook" keep repeating over and over and over and over again until I'm awake. I wake up, groggy, remembering the line I need to write down, but I can't bring myself to get up and write it down and fall back into dreaming. I convinced myself that I will remember everything in the morning and can write it down and investigate it further then. When I woke up, my mind blocked the profound word that described the type of learning the man told me about. The closest thing I could come up with was "metaphysical" learning or "esoteric" learning, but neither of those words are correct. The word was shorter and one that I don't remember reading about before.

Since I remembered the Betty Crocker Betty Cook line, I decided to look up "Betty Cook" since I don't remember ever hearing of her before. She was a world champion power boat racer who graduated from MIT. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Cook

Betty Crocker, to me, is about being a homemaker.

These two women sort of symbolize my life dilemma...being a wonderful wife & mother, but also trying to accomplish my dreams and become successful as an entrepreneur. One, a risk-taker, one a stable, reliable domesticated woman.

Another dilemma I face is not being able to let go for fear of losing control over myself and my life. I am immensely interested in studying the metaphysical and what happens to us when we die. Everything in this study requires you to let go of your beliefs in order to open yourself up to knowing beyond this world. It terrifies me. I have a fear of opening my mind too much and not being able to come back to my everyday life. I'm afraid of losing my mind and going insane, so I tiptoe around the edge of this realm, watching and studying from afar.