After researching this dream, I discovered many people have it or a version of it where gum is stuck in your throat and that it can mean you have sleep apnea and literally stop breathing in your sleep! I also grind my teeth and wear a night guard. Sometimes strange dreams actually have physical causes or manifestations.

I also have the “I can’t get my costume together in time” dream. It used to be about Halloween, but since I’ve moved to New Orleans, it’s sometimes about Mardi Gras. I’ve forgotten to finish my costume and It’s happening right outside the door and I’m missing it!! I spend the hours rummaging through boxes and closets trying to put something together, so I can just go out into the magical night( or sometimes day)
The funny thing about that is that my father once said that one of the things he truly loved about me was that I could put together a really good costume for anyone in about 10 minutes flat from pieces I had lying around. So apparently this is never something I’ve needed to worry about. As an interesting side note, I have a realy hard time changing clothes in my dreams.

I have another dream that has many variations. There are small helpless things. Usually a box of kittens or sometimes my children when they very young. There is some type of danger, a fire or a someone in the house. I am trying to gather them all and get them to safty, but I can’t ever hold them all at once. When it’s the kids one will run away from me and as soon as I get that one I’ll realize that I’ve lost the other one. When it’s kittens or puppies then I keep finding more and trying to catch them until I can’t hold anymore and begin dropping them. It never occurs to me to take some outside and come back for the rest. I have to gather them all at once, but I can never hold, and protect them all.

By the way, let’s talk about what Neil Gaiman called the lightswitch thing. It’s character that lives in the Dreaming. It’s function is to make the lights not work in your dreams. Does that happen to you? It apparently screws up the locks as well, because I can never lock any doors in my dreams.
Finally, one of the best recurring dreams I have, isn’t really a recurring dream, but a recurring setting. I dream about a city, that is an amalgam of every city in which I’ve ever lived. The dreams are all different, but I usually realize that I’m in “The City”. Over the years I’ve learned how all of the different neighborhoods and streets fit together. One day I’ll actually map it out. Sometimes, I lull my self to sleep by mapping it in my head.

My favorite are the dreams where I realize that I’m dreaming. I can usually fly or make inanimate objects dance. Dreams are tricky though. They don’t like it when you know you are dreaming. They try and get you interested in the plot so that you’ll forget again.

Thanks for giving me the subject to ramble on about. Strangely, it’s helped my insomnia tongiht to talk about my dreams.

Dream A … I have one of the major roles in a play, it is opening night, I have not learned any of my lines, I know that “the show must go on”, and I am in complete terror of going out on stage … the entire cast is staring at me and whispering behind their cupped hands … and everything seems to be going in slow motion, including my screams.

Dream B … I suddenly realize that I have not fed or watered my horse in days (and in some of the dreams it has been weeks), and the last time I remember being with her, was closing her up in her stall at night. This dream always ends with me running up the driveway, with my heart pounding because I know that I will face the worst horror when I get to the barn. And the most terrible thing about it all is that I can’t really remember what happened to make me forget something this incredibly important.

Of course, neither of these things ever happened to me in real life … I always knew my lines, and I never forgot my darling Shayla … I wish I knew what the deeper meaning was behind these nightmares that wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat of terror.