Puff, the menacing caterpillar

 

I dreamed I was staying with an older couple in a sleepy seaside town where the houses were built right up to the waterline of the harbor.  The back deck of their place was a pontoon platform made of redwood that would rock and tip if too many people leaned over the edge at one time. I found this out the hard way, when a group of us were all leaning over at the same time ogling a giant shark that was feeding under the deck.

"Don't all of you go tipping us over, now," admonished the lady who owned the place.

"That is, unless you want us all to wind up in the sea," her husband added.

We backed off, and the platform righted itself. A Hispanic woman grabbed a tiny fishing pole and began casting in the direction of the shark, hoping to snag it. I didn't think she knew what she intended to do with it if she hooked it, and I told her as much.

"You're going in a little light if you hope to ever reel in that beast," I said.

"You'll see," she said. "I done this before. Dios mio! I think I got him!"

Her line started feeding out, and it appeared she was right. It was likely to be a long time before she either snapped her line or gave up trying, as it appeared the shark was unaware that he was hooked and was lazily swimming around the dock. I turned my attention elsewhere.

Lily Zermeno, an old cult era crush, was there observing the aquatic life from the deck. There was an enormous sea caterpillar traveling over the surface of the water, inchworm style. It made a few passes at the deck in a rather threatening fashion, baring its evil mandible teeth. It managed to get up on the deck, and Lily recoiled and screamed in horror as it slithered by us. 

I went to shoe it off the deck, but found that it had shrunk from about four feet long and eight inches around to a very insignificant three inches long. Although it had deflated, I was still afraid of it, since I knew it had the potential to puff up at any minute. He fell through the cracks between the deck boards, and we didn't see him after that.

Lily asked the couple if they had a pair of dice she could play with, now that the excitement of the giant sea caterpillar had passed. The Hispanic woman had given up on her shark fishing endeavors, and we were back the lazy, sleepy seaside lifestyle that engenders such activities as playing dice to pass the time.

Another older couple heard her request and produced a pair of stone dice that were magnetized on one side to keep them attached to a stylish polished stone holder. They demonstrated how it was used to keep the dice together when traveling. Lily was impressed and started playing with them right there on the railing.

"Aren't you worried that they are going to go in the drink?" I asked incredulously. "I'd have to be careful if I lived here because every valuable I own would find its way through the cracks. I remember the time...," I launched into an unnecessarily long story about my wedding ring falling off my finger, and how I'd only found it after several days of digging through the earth on some mountain where I'd been attending Honda training at the time. 

In another dream segment, I was observing a group of baby birds whose nest was on the ground. It was made of out of the carcasses of rodents, which was their primary food supply. Some of the rodents were still alive, and were babies themselves, which made me wonder whose nest it really was and who was eating who. It made me sad, so I stopped observing it. 

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Now I have to call the surgeon and report a post-op complication from my lymph node biopsy. I have a fluid pouch under my left armpit that jiggles like old lady skin when I poke at it. It's a squishy, numb kind of feeling, and a bit disturbing, since the other armpit has no such feature. The sutures from the excision of the melanoma are about 6 inches long and will make an impressive scar story someday, if I live long enough to tell it.