Don't mess with the Joker

WEIRD dream last night.

I was spending time with 18 (I think?) small children. I'm not really clear on their relationship to me. At one point, I'm pretty sure they were all my siblings somehow... but at different points of the dream, they were from an orphanage or something like that. Most of the dream was fairly innocuous... but towards the end, the Joker made an appearance. And he'd amassed some kind of child army he was training to do his bidding.

Anyway... at the end of the dream, I was in a barn with all of the kids and all of my coworkers from HRC. Then the Joker showed up and let us know he'd set up some kind of explosives, so the building was about to burn down. He left. We were all a little startled by how bluntly he gave us that news. But of course there was nothing else for it. We started evacuating the children and clearing out the furniture (??? in the dream this seemed like an important step).

I grabbed five little girls (including a baby---maybe one year old, but who could speak as well as an adult) and herded them outside, but I wasn't sure where to take them. I didn't want them to stay too near the barn, or they might still be hurt by the fire. But I didn't know where the Joker was. I didn't want to leave them somewhere he could snatch them. I was really stressed out, trying to find a place to take them, knowing there were still several other children I needed to go back for (although in real life, with that many other adults present, they would all have been taken care of). Finally I took them to another building across a field... some old abandoned pioneer house.

One of the little girls said, "But... you know the Joker never says what he really means, right?" All of a sudden I remembered how he worked, and I realized by evacuating the children from that building, we were playing right into his hands somehow. He was probably going to kidnap them or worse. I needed to go back and warn the others, but I didn't know what he was really planning and I wasn't sure how to protect the children. I was stressed out of my mind.

The baby discovered a trap door in the house and crawled down some stairs. When I followed her, I discovered Joker's child army doing drills in the basement.

Weird, yeah? A random dream, but I wonder a little bit... am I feeling helpless in some important aspect of my life or something?

San Diego

Some highlights of my San Diego trip:

Cruising around the city in my coworker's red convertible (with the top down, of course).
Trying lobster for the first time (it tastes great, you just can't let yourself think about what it would look like if there was more than a tail on your plate).
Seeing the beautiful San Diego temple. It's one of my favorites. If I marry a California boy, that's where we're going.
Relaxing on a private deck on the harbor, watching the stars over the ocean.

I definitely want to go back for a real vacation... Who's in?

Can you be happy for 100 days?

One of my friends posted this great challenge on Facebook.

100 Happy Days--Can you be happy for 100 days? The idea is take a picture of something that made you happy, every single day for 100 days. Then at the end, you have the option to print out a little book of all your pictures.

Basically, it's like a gratitude journal, but in a visual style! I'm not quite sure how I feel about posting it on my Social Media page.... I may switch to something less public like this blog or something. But, I'm excited to take this challenge. If I'm doing my math right, since I started today, I need to go until June 22! Life will change a lot over that time, but hopefully those changes will be good things.

Here's my first picture, from our weekly sibling lunch:

Fire

So last night an abandoned house across the street caught fire. Three or four firetrucks came screaming in around 2 am, and they spent the next 3 hours battling the fire.

As far as I know... no one was hurt, and they were able to get it out. Still, a little bit scary!

The view out my window tonight