Architectural Dreams and S.W.A.T. Teams

painting by Thomas Kinkaid

I've talked about Danger Dreams before, but last night I had my favorite type of dream. I call them Architectural Dreams. Although it was combined with a Danger Dream, what I dwell on most was the architecture.

Architectural Dreams involve architecture, obviously. My brain creates some house or building in which the dream takes place, and when I wake up, I lie drowsily in bed remembering the details of the building. I've dreamt of whole houses and just one fantastic room. Last night's dream was in a cottage. It was a small cottage in a wooded valley next to a stream, and, oddly enough, close to a major highway through the mountains. The cottage's outer walls kept morphing between stone and siding, but the interior was cozy with lots of heavy wooden doors, deep pile Asian rugs in red colorways, and soft, overstuffed couches. At one point in the dream I remarked to someone that I was glad the French doors didn't open into the kitchen but into the den. The daughter of a lady in my ward was lying on the floor, sucking her thumb and staring at the ceiling. Don't ask me.

The dream wasn't all about the cottage, however. A S.W.A.T. team showed up and was patrolling the nearby quiet highway, rifles slung across their backs, occasionally running off into the forest on a mission. I never found out why. Also, snakes were slithering out of the stream and frantically crossing the road, which made me wonder aloud to some dream-friend if an earthquake was imminent. And, to top it all off, we nearly had a riot when someone found a Wii (or some other game system. That part was a little foggy.) for sale in a discount store. As everyone wanted it, we had what amounted to a town meeting to decide the lucky buyer.

I guess it was a Danger Dream after all. Are any dreams really not Danger Dreams?

Upon awakening enough to realize I had been dreaming, my first thoughts were these (I kid you not): "That was a bad place for a house -- prone to flooding, mosquitoes and fog. Plus, it was right by a major highway! The snakes were slithering right across the road, for goodness' sake!"

I'm really curious about the S.W.A.T. team. And do snakes ever slither frantically away from water when they sense earthquakes in the near future? Would very popular game systems wind up in a discount store?

Feel free to leave a comment with your educated and scientific answers. Or just a dream analysis. I'm just trying to hang on to the memory of the cottage.