so, I had this dream

And it's another one that I've had in the past, but this time it ended differently than it ever has before.

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It starts in the house on Glenning Street. I am in this house with a few other people, people I know, who I am fond of and connected to in some form or other. [When I am awake, I don't recognize their faces, but in my dream I know each and every one of them.] We are all at the house, doing nothing in particular, when suddenly THERE IS A T-REX OUTSIDE, OMG!!

And we are freaking out. We're thinking, Shit! The T-rex is coming for us, what do we do? and we are crawling around, trying to get all the blinds shut so he can't see in. As we do this, I notice that there are more people in the house than I had realized, mostly women and girls, but a few boys too; some of them really frightened, and some of them more bemused.

I'm one of the bemused ones. I think to myself, Gosh, dinosaurs are really scary! I'm glad they're not around so much anymore, and this doesn't happen all the time. Because in the back of my mind I know it is not a typical occurrance, to have a T-rex after you, storming around your neighborhood in the broad daylight of real life, and I figure the situation will eventually be resolved, if we can only survive this craziness a little longer.

I run downstairs to help close the blinds over the sliding doors, and that's when I see a crowd of people outside, with cameras and video equipment, snapping pictures and recording the T-rex for the evening news... And I'm like, WTF? The T-rex isn't even bothering with them; it wants someone in this house! [Later it occurs to me, heartbreakingly, that the people outside of the house don't care at all about the people trapped inside of it; that's not what the story is about. They only care about the spectacle of the dinosaur.]

Anyway, I suspect that I know who it is in the house that the T-rex is after: a young woman, gifted and pretty, even charming at times -- but aggravatingly irresponsible. So I go looking for her. I look down in the den but when I go down there the T-rex's arms burst through the basement door (defying physics and all forms of logic) and I think SHIT! and run away, back upstairs, to my old room where I find the girl I was looking for.

She is there with her husband, (who is very nice, by the way) and they are trying to get the blinds shut but it is tricky business because the T-rex is eyeballing that particular window with great interest, and they don't want to be noticed. Their baby is there too, in a carrier in the middle of the room, in plain sight, and I think, Great. That's just great. Way to take care of the baby. And I yell at them -- "He's only after one person; someone in here. Do you have anything to do with this?" and she says, "Shit!" and I say, "I KNEW IT!" and they are still trying to get the blinds closed, but I know that since she acknowledged knowing why the T-rex was there, she will also take care of making sure it goes away. So I take the baby, and I go hide for a little while in a small room by the stairs, in the center of the house, where there are no windows, cause I know that's the safest place.

The girl attracts the dinosaur's attention with a plastic babydoll, and when it roars at her she throws the doll into its mouth, and the T-rex is satisfied and goes away. But while this is happening, I am in the room with the real baby, and I think she is the cutest, sweetest baby I have ever seen. The stress of earlier events melts away, and I am having a wonderful time, singing to the baby, and she is singing back to me and it is freaking adorable. I want to show her mama, but I realize suddenly that her mama left, she's gone, and I don't know where... The crisis is over, and it's suddenly quiet, and everyone else has gone. It's just me and the baby, a brand new baby girl, who's name is Avari.

And I am a little bewildered by the silence, so different from before, but I know I will just have to take Avari with me to a new place, and I will take care of her, and we will be safe, now, and we don't really need all those extra people anymore, though it was nice to have them around when we did.

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So. There's a lot there, but I haven't got the energy to unpack it all for you, except to say that I suspect everyone inside the house was Me. Make of that what you will.

When I've had this dream before, it always ended with me being ambushed, grabbed from the den by a Tyrannasaurus Rex and hauled down to the basement where I was, presumably, promptly devoured. So this was a refreshing change; I woke up a little confused, but not frightened.

And I looked up the name Avari, which I'd never heard before. It means: "Of the Heavens, From the Sky."