I was going to post about an experience I had over the weekend, but this early morning I am awake and remembering a dream.  It’s 4:30 a.m.  and I’ve retreated to the living room because no way will I be able to go back to sleep in the bedroom.  And to get the dream out of my head I’m going to share it with you.  Hope it doesn’t keep you all awake!

I’m driving a pickup truck and towing a big boat.  I think it’s a sailboat but that’s odd because we’ve never owned a big sailboat.  I’m attempting to get the truck and boat down to a beach which has a boat launch of sorts.  The problem is that the “road” down to the boat launch is more like a very steep, very narrow hiking path.  The kind that is more like a trail to climb up a mountain, or a place where water has run and carved a fissure in the rock.  And it’s almost straight down.

But apparently this is the way down to the boat launch, so I start down it.  I remember that my Dad, whose boat and truck I am driving, told me that the weight of a boat makes it harder to stop and so I downshift to the lowest possible gear just as I get to the steepest part.

Then in the dream I have parked the truck with the boat somewhere and have climbed back up to get some belongings I need to take with me out in the boat.  I am worried because the boat launch turned out to be two parallel chunks of concrete with water in between and I’ll have to be an expert to back the boat trailer out onto it to launch the boat.  I am thinking I’ll need to find someone that can back up a trailer better than me.  I’ve never hauled anything larger than a jet ski, and I’ve never backed up towing anything on a trailer.

I’m also worried because I don’t know how to sail a big sailboat.  I don’t even know how to sail a tiny sailboat, and the ocean (yes this is all at an ocean with big swells of water) is crashing on the rocky shore.  There’s a rumor of a baby shark out there too who’s been snapping at swimmers.  Great.

Then somehow I’m walking around trying to find where I parked the truck and the boat and I can’t find where I parked it, and more than that I don’t have any memory of actually parking it, just the vague feeling that I did.  I can’t find it anywhere and I start saying that aloud, that I can’t find my boat, and finally a woman asked me if it’s the crumpled brown one that is bouncing around between the piers on another side of the peninsula we’re on and I say I don’t think so, but that I can’t remember anything after I began the decent down the steep mountain and shifted into low gear.

She gently says that she thinks it probably is my boat that is totaled over on the other side, and the truck is over there totaled as well, and there’s blood on my forehead and I’m thinking Dad is going to KILL me for ruining his truck and boat and I still have no recollection of anything after I started over the cliff…and I walk by this shallow part where there’s a “baby” shark that’s about fifteen feet long and people are petting it, like in a petting zoo, and some little kid is crouched on the end of a rock petting the back of it’s head and it turns it’s head around and you can see it’s teeth, and the kid is petting it’s snout and I tell the kid “This isn’t Disneyland you know, that thing is real.” and I turn my back quick because I don’t want to see what happens next and I climb back up the steep mountain to get to the other side to see if it’s my boat.

I can’t even remember what “my” boat looks like and now it’s possible it’s a ski boat not a sail boat…and I don’t remember what color the truck is, and the lady is leading the way through some sort of back door into a dark hallway that is supposed to take us to the other side of the mountain where my boat is crumpled up.

And I wake up and find my knee hurting and the dog sleeping on top of my leg and I am SOOOO glad that I didn’t actually drive the truck and boat over a cliff.  But if I had I am SOOOO glad I survived it.  And I’m sure I’m not going back to sleep because I don’t want to find myself  back on that mountainous peninsula  looking for my truck again.  Ever.

So Katie and I are out on the sofa now.  Think we’ll try to get another hour or so of sleep before the work week begins.  She’s already asleep.  Wonder what dogs dream about?