Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car

I had some really messed up dreams on Friday night, like CSI crime scene grisly. So I did some googling (don't judge me, I'm a pursuer of subconscious knowledge!) and Sleeps.com told me "For years in our family [dreaming about death] has meant that someone in the family would soon be wed and the wedding would be beautiful." What wedding isn't beautiful? Weddings mean free dinner, chardonnay, dancing and cake.

Wait a second. On Friday night, Jen came over and copied a bunch of songs off my iTunes. She had a free dinner (I cooked), we drank chardonnay, at one point I put on a crappy bridesmaid dress from a wedding that we were both in a couple years ago and danced around to the music (I'm, uh, going to have to request no judgment from you again), AND we ate cake-flavored ice cream (Edy's Slow Churned Take The Cake, which has frosting and sprinkles in it and is nothing short of a religious experience. It's the best thing ever and it's low in points. AND it's an official blog dessert blessert because it came into my life on Nabbalicious's recommendation. The funniest thing is that it's a part of Edy's American Idol series. Five flavors are vying to be part of their regular line-up, people vote for their favorite one and the losers just go away. Faced with that terrifying possibility, Jen and I actually went to the damn Edy's website to make sure Take the Cake is winning. Thankfully, it is. Vote or die, people.)

Ahem. Sleeps.com also believes that death in a dream can mean "a birth, the opposite of death." Did they just define birth for me? And if you think about it, when you're single, a birth kind of would be a death: death of dating prospects, social life, and bank account. And, interestingly, your ability to sleep at night. Am I overthinking this?

Then on Saturday night I dreamed that someone I love died (don't worry, it wasn't you). Ack. Short of making tearful phone calls at 5 AM, I turned to Sleeps, now my old faithful, later that morning. But then I noticed that it said that dreaming of a fork in the road means you'll soon have to make a decision and dreaming about macaroni means that you're in for various small losses. Uh-huh. We're breaking up, Sleeps.

I turn to Lifetimetv.com, surprisingly serious on the matter considering all they do is air reruns of Designing Women or movies about your seemingly nice neighbor turning out to be a serial killer who is holding the mailman and your tenth grade boyfriend hostage and whatever you end up doing about it, at some point it will involve running down a suburban tree-lined street in the middle of the night, your heart racing and button-down shirt askew.

The intuitive minds at Lifetimetv.com say that "In the Universal Language of Mind, death signifies a change from one state of being to another" (I'm always suspicious of superfluous capitalization) and that I should "Identify the change that has occurred in your life. This will be the heart of your dream message. Who or what has died in your dream will lend insight into the nature of the change you have experienced, and will assist in responding to this change joyfully instead of fearfully. Keep in mind the change symbolized by death in a dream can be followed by a resurrection of your consciousness. Reach for this elevated awareness." Thanks for the fortune cookie, but where's my crab rangoon?

Then I thought about how well my own dream decoding worked on Friday and decided to deconstruct my Saturday night: Dorie's kitchen, more wine... but a different brand than Friday. Is that the change they're referring to? I did respond to it joyfully, instead of fearfully, and I believe it did bring about an elevated awareness: richer friends buy more expensive wine.