Thursday, October 29, 2020

Covid agitas invades our dreams

HALLIE EPHRON: Normally at this time of year I’d be zipping in and out of airports and giving workshops and talks at conferences. Willamette, Surrey, Writers Digest, Crime Bake, Bouchercon, the Piper Center at ASU, and more. My recurrent nightmare has been that I can’t find my car. I parked it… somewhere… and I’m going to be late wherever it is that I’m going.

Now I keep dreaming that I can’t find what I need in the supermarket. The whole middle of the store has gone missing and been replaced by aisles of luggage and small appliances and who knows what all stuff that I do not need.

No more dreams about lost cars. Not surprising because the only place I’m going these days is… the supermarket. In at 6:30 AM and out as fast as I can.

Meanwhile, my Stop ‘n’ Shop has taken it upon itself to completely reorganize in the store. Last time I was in there, celery, mushrooms, broccoli, scallions and cauliflower were MIA. Butter and coffee have moved halfway across the store. There's no longer a "health foods" section."

It’s as if they threw the entire store up in the air and put everything down somewhere new. Gradually. Over the course of 3 months. It takes triple time to shop.

And they're still at it. Here's what was going on in the meat department at 7 AM this morning.

In my nightmare, I dreamed that I marched up to the customer service desk and chewed out the cashier. (Something which I would never do. I adore the staff at my local Stop ‘n’ Shop.) My husband woke me up because I was shouting.

When I realized what I’d been dreaming, I cracked up laughing. So absurd. But really, my path through the supermarket is one of precious few things that were predictable in an otherwise-gone-bonkers world.

Have your dreams changed since Covid? Are new everyday challenges giving you agitas these days?

LUCY BURDETTE: I haven’t noticed the dreams so much, but waking hours definitely are affected.

We have decided to head south--we have a careful plan about staying with relatives who have bedrooms in their basement and will accept cats and puppies. And I’m planning all our road food.

But John has banned me from buying any more masks. My latest are from Everbrand. They fit really well and don’t fog up my glasses and have some kind of silver treatment on them that’s supposed to kill viruses. (Who knows right?)

So that’s how I’m channeling my anxiety--about everything!

RHYS BOWEN:
My dreams have not become disturbing on the whole but very vivid and complicated. The only worrying feature is
that I dream we are keeping a lion or tiger as a pet I’m not happy about it as I realize the danger.

Having studied dream psychology at university I interpret this as having something that could be dangerous in my house with me— the virus. We don’t know where it is so we don’t feel safe.

Oh, and I realize that I am on a lot of trains, a mode of transport that I rarely use. Is my brain saying that flying is unsafe? Am i trying to get somewhere where I’ll be safe?

JENN McKINLAY: I don’t dream. I also don’t sleep. A good night’s rest for me, is five to six hours uninterrupted, but with teenagers and pets that rarely happens. I think that I’m so exhausted by the time I go to bed I’m too weary to remember anything my unconscious is throwing at me, which during these very trying days is probably a blessing.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:
Oh, I have been having terrible dreams. Not every night, but some nights. My dreams are insidious, in that they always start out like very normal life, everyone doing something that they'd ordinarily be doing, and then at some point there's something off--WAIT, I used to know where the door was, or did they change the time of this event, or why can't I find the right building, or what happened to my suitcase, or where did all my clothes go? they used to be in the closet RIGHT HERE and why why why didn't I plan for whatever it is?

I'm always trying to fix things, and as soon as I figure something out, something else goes wrong.

Recently, there's been a scary black-dressed thing
--and I don't mean a person exactly, just a scary thing--at the end of our driveway, which is scaring me just to think about it. I suppose THAT representation is pretty obvious, right? Not so tough to interpret.

And hey, by the way, brain, I don't need dreams to tell me it's scary out there.

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  I've been having very vivid and disrupted dreams, too, and a lot of them seem to be about looking for things. In one the other night, I was going through drawers, and in one of them was a very silky black cat, with bright green eyes. Not a stuffed cat, either, a real live cat! In my dream I could feel the texture of its fur. So weird.

I don't have a superstitious thing about black cats, having had several over the years, but it was just...weird.

My Covid agitas is more evident in the daytime, with horrible problems concentrating, and I keep feeling like I have to remind myself to breathe. A walk helps.

HALLIE: Has covid invaded your dreamscape? Please, tell us about it...

81 comments:

  1. It’s an EXTREMELY RARE occurrence for me to remember what I dream, so if I’m dreaming of silky cats or black monsters or lions as pets, I don’t remember it at all.

    What I do remember . . . and hate . . . is the grocery store moving everything around . . . it is particularly aggravating because there’s no rhyme or reason to the some other place that things I'm shopping for have been moved to . . . .

    Lucy, a mask that doesn’t fog up your glasses? I need one of those!

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    1. I almost never remember my dreams as well.
      We certainly don't need complications in the grocery, we have enough as it is.

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    2. Joan, I just got it and haven't worn it much, but it fits better than most and has a metal bar over the nose that can be molded.

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    3. Lucy, you'll have to give us a verdict after you've used it a bit. The standard paper hospital masks (blue/white) have a flexible bar over the nose for molding, too. I think that helps with glasses-steaming.

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    4. This is what I've been wearing and I love them. They're made by Stark Vacuum. Instead of a wire nose piece, they have a small fabric flap at the top. The masks fit really well and your glasses don't fog up. https://starks.com/products/face-masks/

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  2. I have been having this recurring nightmare since November 2016 and it won't go away.

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    1. Judy, something interesting to know about is directed dreaming. Some people are actually able to direct their dreams. There was a piece in Oprah... http://www.oprah.com/spirit/how-to-control-your-dream-lucid-dreaming/all (but keep in mind Oprah touts Goop, too)

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    2. Or you could just make sure all your friends and family vote. I did.

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    3. Right on, Gigi. Fingers crossed up here!

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    5. OMG Gigi, I wish some of them wouldn't vote.

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    6. Well, now, Judy, that's a completely different nightmare, isn't it? Sorta makes you glad you won't be all together on the holidays? I had to be very careful around my father-in-law, back in the days, because he just loved to go off on political rants.

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  3. I don't know that my dreams have changed all that much. I've always had some whacked out dreams that I have no idea where a lot of them come from.

    As for the grocery store reorganization, instead of a dream, I found that my local BJs warehouse has changed their store around. I was there the other day and I had to go to the other side of the store from where one item used to be located in order to find its new spot.

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    1. I think it's a plot to get you wander down aisles you woudn't normally go into and pay attention to what's there. Some marketing genius...

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    2. I think so, too, Hallie. They moved everything in my local Trader Joe's a couple of weeks ago, for no discernible reason. So annoying.

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    3. All it did was tick me off. Luckily nothing I was there for was in the extra aisles I had to down to find what I was looking for because I was so mad I would've just skipped picking it out of spite.

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  4. Wow - crazy stuff, ladies. Roberta, safe travels.

    My dreams often involve driving without sufficient control. Either I can't quite see or my foot won't reach the brake pedal, or the worst, I am flying a big ass airplane full of people knowing full well I do NOT know how to fly. Most recently I was driving a schoolbus and I knew couldn't make the corner and the tunnel opening was way too small and...

    But last night Trump himself was in my dream (for the first and I hope only time). He was cordial, but it was a slimy cordial. He kept trying to get behind me as we approached doorways. I didn't let him. Right now I feel like my brain needs a shower. No more of that disgusting p-o-s in my dreams, thank you very much.

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    1. Edith, when I was in college a professor did some dream interpretation for me and he said driving is most often a symbol for how you feel about your control of life. Driving and feeling in control is a good sign, driving and feeling out of control means you feel out of control of your life right now. That seems to fit, as who among us feels in control right now?

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    2. I get that driving dream too--either without brakes or steering. Awful!!

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    3. Yeah, Edith, ick. Maybe you need to do a cleansing with a sage bundle or something...

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  5. I mostly don't remember any dreams that I might have; like Jenn, sleep doesn't come easy to me, so if I've had some -- especially uninterrupted -- that's good enough for me.

    As for supermarkets rearranging their layouts, what on earth is up with that?? I wonder if COVID-related shortages or delays in delivery routines is causing the need for shelf roulette... Shopping is its own nightmare these days without the addition of hide and seek in the store, for heaven sake.

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  6. Stay safe Lucy/Roberta, particularly traveling thru Florida. Silver does have an antimicrobial effect, has been used in would treatment since forever. I like the idea of having it on a mask. At least it might kill a few bugs before you touch your mask to adjust it or remove it. And we all do that I think.

    I always have weird dreams, so nothing new there. Except I'm having author dreams! I think that's because we've attended the virtual Bloody Scotland and Bouchercon plus a few others lately. And I'm able to concentrate when reading now. I always read about three hours in bed at night, but I found that turning my phone off has helped a lot with focusing on the book.

    Last night I started SQUEEZE ME by Carl Hiaasen. Run, don't walk! His satire on the clown at the top is priceless. I won't add any other spoilers, but this is possibly the most unusual murder I've come across, too. I needed a laugh!


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    1. so glad you're reading again! I need to turn off my phone, I know it too...

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    2. Oh how I wish Hiaasen wrote satire oh how I wish... sadly.. it is closer to non fiction. amiright?

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    3. Sleeping with a warm puppy helps too xox

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    4. Thanks for the recommendation, Ann - Just opened Squeeze Me's online excerpt and encountered the character Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons who goes missing after a charity gala for a group committed to defeating Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Sounds like the perfect book for nightmare times.

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    5. I’m on the library waiting list for that one!

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  7. Every morning, I wake to the rumble of school buses going by, starting at 6:30. The world hasn't imploded because the buses are running. Except this morning, when the pounding rain drowned them out. I woke late, in a panic.

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    1. Our schools are closed again.
      Remembering after 9/11 when there were no airplane rumble. Ever.

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  8. I had not remembered the content of a dream in a long time, but recently I woke up from a pretty vivid dream where I was traveling on a bus with a bunch of people -- except the inside was too big for a bus, as there was room to walk around and interact with people. It has faded some now, but I seem to recall we solved a mystery together on the bus. And at the end the group on the bus was going on, and it was assumed I would stay where I was with the people there, but at the last minute I flagged the bus down so I could get back on and continue traveling with them. Weird!

    I share everyone else's angst about re-arranging the grocery store. My preferred store just did it. I see no rationale, nothing that was improved. They just literally moved the stuff around enough to make it difficult to find. Call me crazy, but in the current situation, I would think grocery stores would want to MAXIMIZE the value of being the one stable, secure place in our lives. But apparently I would be wrong.

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    1. I like dreams with happy endings...

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    2. Do dreams have endings? Mind never do.

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    3. I suppose they don't have endings. But I love it when my dad or my favorite aunt Jo (his baby sister) walk into one of my dreams. I always wake up happy.

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    4. Susan, the day my Trader Joe's rearranged things was absolutely chaotic. No one could find anything so it was taking everyone twice as long to shop, and lots of cart bumping, etc. Not good on the social distancing. But otherwise TJ's has been great with their safety protocols.

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  9. I'm with Jenn, I don't sleep much, at least not unbroken sleep. I do dream, though. My favorite dreams are those I can manipulate, or those I can return to if I wake.

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    1. YOU CAN DO IT! Any tips on how??

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    2. Yes, I can sometimes do that too. In a bad dream, I just say, in the dream, this is a dream! Don’t worry about it.

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    3. Sometimes I can manipulate my dreams, too. Unfortunately, not the one from November 2016. I have that one even when I'm awake.

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  10. For the most part I have been having trouble sleeping at all. If I can even get to sleep it's for a brief time and then I'm awake again for what seems like forever. Or perhaps I am dreaming I can't get to sleep; I wonder if that is possible. I decided I will stop watching the news and see if that helps. It's only been a couple days but I think that may be working. A very interesting dream I had recently was about a book I was reading. I've never had one like that before. I was the character in the book!

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  11. So far, so good on the grocery-store rearranging--just large bare spots randomly lacking whatever would normally go there and strange brand names showing up. But I take what I can get and punt when I can't get what I went for.

    Dreams--always, but now nightly. Unsettling--dreaming of dead people from my life and how I've got to take care of them and in my dreams I know they are already dead. But here they are and I'm responsible for them and they are looking at me with eyes of trust and supplication. I just want a dreamless night of sleep, please.

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    1. That is one scary ass dream. OMG.

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    2. Hallie, I think it's fear that I can't take care of those I love through this pandemic. I can't protect them from the virus--no more than I can take care of those I love who are already gone. I know that intellectually, but emotionally I'm a wreck worrying. Most of us have probably had those moments of worry and panic/despair that we don't want anyone else to see. Mine just come back to haunt me when I sleep!

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    3. Have you tried saying in the dream that you know this is a dream? Sometimes that works. and maybe they are not relying on you so much as thanking you.

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    4. Hank, thank you, I'm a lucid dreamer--I always know when I'm dreaming. And yes, there is a sense of gratitude. I'm thinking I really need a creative outlet right now--something to do to get all these emotions and thoughts and feelings out--maybe I need to go back to poetry. Reading Louise Gluck at the moment.

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  12. Good morning everyone!

    This is going to sound very strange. I have been having horrid dreams about the presidential debates and for that reason I REFUSED to watch the debates. The only debate I watched was the vice presidential debate.

    Other than that, I do not remember what I dreamt about. I have been sleeping in late recently and today I woke up before 6 am which is rare now.

    I've had lingering headaches for a week. Today is the first time my headache disappeared after having THREE cups of coffee and a hard boiled egg for breakfast.

    Hallie, I had similar experiences as you did with the rearranging in your grocery shop. In my case, this happened once at my favorite local grocery shop and there was a sign letting us know where the products were moved to. In some places, they do not show that courtesy.

    There have been many times when I walk into a pharmacy, also a CVS, and I never can find anything because they often rearrange the shop and I have to ask a clerk for help finding something.

    Diana

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    1. I just had that experience at my local CVS, trying to find barrettes or pony tail holders for my covid hair.

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    2. Oh, Diana, longterm headaches are the worst! Glad your poor head finally feels better today.

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    3. Hallie, how long did it take you to find them? I found myself going around every aisle looking! LOL.

      Karen, thanks!

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  13. When life became dreamlike 4 years ago, my dreams began to fade. Recently I did remember one. I was in total darkness without any sensory input. I knew I was awake. Then the dream told me this was the plot for my NaNoWriMo tome(?). Writing something has been a goal. I think my unconscious is egging me on.

    Supermarkets keep us off balance so we can impulse buy .. maybe? I still haven't found the cheesecloth.

    And Lucy/Roberta? wave to the west when you hit Melbourne FL. At this point you are 143.5 car miles from my house. I will wave back. Save travels avoid the snakes.

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    1. Cheesecloth! This is why Amazon is doing so well.
      Though wandering around my stop n shop looking for the coffee I found an extra-long charger cord for my cell phone.

      Coralee, did you NaNoWri- that story?

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    2. Actually yes,, my NanoWriMo title is: "I have no idea what I am doing".. and the next 50,000 words might prove that out. Fear not friends; no one gets to beta read this one.

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    3. Good for you, Coralee! We'll cheer you on, even if we don't get to read it!

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  14. I have a hard time sleeping much of the time. If you see me posting here at 4:30 in the freakin' a.m. just know that I'm suffering from insomnia. When I tried to explain a 3-hour afternoon nap to Deb the other day she said, "That's not a nap. You're just sleeping in shifts."

    If my sleep is fractured, my dreams likely are, too. I rarely remember them, and those I do remember are mostly the searching-for-a-bathroom type that mean I need to wake up and trot down the hall. But every now and then I have a very vivid dream, and those tend to be quite comforting. The one I like most to remember was the one where I was living on a spectacular ranch somewhere west of here, with elegant adobe buildings and miles of lush grassland stretching to distant mountains. I was writing, and had invited many of my friends for an extended weekend of writer's retreat time, followed by evenings of informal house concerts and fabulous food. If that particular dream ever comes true, y'all come join me!

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    1. Gigi, sign me up for that one. Sounds like bliss. I was talking about my uncle AC having had the Dobie Paisano Fellowship the other day, so looked up the ranch to see if it was anything like I remembered. Maybe I transferred it to you! https://dobiepaisano.utexas.edu/suitability-ranch-life

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    2. Although your dream ranch retreat sounds much more elegant than Paisano!

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  15. I dreamed about cats again last night. What is it with the cats???

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    1. I used to dream about kittens a lot. It usually tied to time when I had lots of interesting new options to pursue, or times when I was LOOKing for interesting new options to pursue. None of the dreams were harbingers of actual kittens.

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    2. I hope they're not harbingers of real kittens!! Three cats are plenty for me!

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  16. I sleep like my cats.. well not 18 hours a day.. but like Deb said, in shifts. It turns out this is how most of us slept before the industrial revolution. It certainly works better in tropical climates. Now that cooler temps are here hibernation threatens.

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  17. My dreams usually fade after I wake up but a recent dream involved an alligator (or crocodile I can't tell the apart) coming down the path I was going up. No water near by, just the blasted, oversized reptile. I HATE REPTILES! Terrified of them. As for grocery stores rearranging items, how about chains that don't have the shelves set up the same from one store to the other, even in the same town?

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    1. Deana, I just had a crocodile dream, too. I told Irwin about it because it woke me up. The darn croc was snuggling, seriously, like a pet. I do not freak out about reptiles in general, but I have a serious fear of meeting a croc or alligator in the wild, yeah, not a park or zoo, the wild wild. Anyway, crocs anyone?

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  18. Hallie, I hear you on the grocery store. It's an ongoing frustration for me, because our local Krogers has been in the process of adding on another 100,000 square feet for almost a year. It was already one of their "super" stores, and now it counts as walking miles just to get from the deli to the milk case. I literally went there four times before I even found the milk. They've widened every aisle to ten feet, but people STILL stand smack in the middle of each bewilderingly enormous choice and force other shoppers to wait or try to squeeze past. Woe betide a customer who either has forgotten an item, or simply can't find it in the maze, because it could add another quarter mile to the walking tally. Or more.

    I've been going instead to the small produce and specialty food shop. Two fifths of the store is their wine department, and they always have bargains there. They were one of the first to sanitize carts and require masks, way back in April. So much less stressful, and even though their prices on things like cheese are higher, I probably spent way less because they have a more edited selection.

    My sleep has also been all over the place, and this morning I overslept by a lot, very rare for me. Waking up from a dream, I recognized that I've been having this one over the last few months, about running. Something I used to do, but have been unable to do for decades. In my dreams I run effortlessly, though, and for many miles, always at night. Wonder what that means?

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  19. Wow, we all are really having some serious anxiety dreams. Crocodiles, indeed! Maybe we all need to practice a JRW guided meditation before sleep! "This too will pass, and all shall be well..." The last week or two I've been going to sleep listening to an audio book--last night I actually remembered to tell Alexa to set the timer on it, so that I didn't have to back up hours the next day. It's so relaxing, especially as I'm listening to something I've read multiple times. You can't even think about the news. There is a reason we read children to sleep...

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  20. I keep dreaming I'm in rooms with lots of people and I'm so happy and then I realize there's still a pandemic. I don't have a mask on and I'm not social distancing. I panic. (I also hate when grocery stores move everything around!

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    1. Oh, Sherry! Both my partner and I have had the dream in which we find ourselves somewhere without a mask and then experience extreme anxiety. I was in a grocery store in my dream, and kept going up and down aisles, encountering people and feeling trapped, while John reported only his overwhelming guilt that he would have to tell me he had been out, around other people, without a mask on. (We have been home, isolated together, since March.) I heard a preview for a Science Friday episode talking about Covid dreams that mentioned being mask-less in public, so I guess we are not unique in this.

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  21. Argh, I missed this! Probably because I'm wrapped up in Youngest's life (weird health issues we're trying to get to the bottom of, moving into her first apartment) and my dad's life (elderly health issues, relocating to a senior living center, selling his house.) In fact, that last has provided fodder for many of my dreams lately, as I'm leaving the house and then realizing, oh, no, we left everything inside! Or the dream where I'm frantically scrubbing things to get it ready for the next owner, which is silly, because we hired a cleaner before the place was shown, and we're hiring her again to clean after the final move-out.

    I suspect these are a combination of ordinary "my head is stuffed with these details all day long" dreams, and my feelings about Dad leaving the house he and Mom shared for a quarter century. When my sister and I come to visit in the future, we'll have to rent a hotel room! That's... weird.

    Oddly, I'm not having Covid-related dreams at all. I think that may be due to Maine's relatively good position when it comes to the dispersal of the virus. Our current 14-day rolling average is 3.8 cases per 100,000 people, and most of the cases are directly linked to a couple of evangelical church services and so, unfortunately, are mostly affecting those people's friends and neighbors. I miss church, too, but come on, folks!

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    1. I had that dream about leaving things behind a few times last year, Julia, after we moved. And waking up so confused about how real it was!

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    2. I hope that the Youngest's weird health issues are resolved soon and Dad's life issues calm down soon. It is hard when those we love are having problems.

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  22. I forget more dreams than I remember. But boy did I remember one last week! I accused husband Frank of having no plans to move away from Houston. He admitted that was true. My response was I’d never leave the house and would probably die and rot there. Dramatic anyone? It certainly illustrated how frustrated I am feeling these days as my search for a new home is frustrated.

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  23. I have several varieties of recurring dreams, and they still happen. What's new is my "oh, I'm not wearing a mask!" dreams - or a dream where I suddenly realize no one is wearing a mask. Given my long-standing OCD, I'm glad this is all I'm dreaming!

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    1. I’ve been having the not wearing a mask dream too. I’m in a pleasant situation the. I realize no one is masked and I panic

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