Dream 22: Friends with Diseases and Walking with Parrots
I was looking after a friend who had a degenerative disease. She was sitting in a chair in the TV lounge of my (real life) childhood home. The disease made her limbs wither and become distorted so she was curled up in the chair in an awkward manner. She was sweating a lot and losing fluid from her bladder too and I was trying to get more fluids into her. At one point my Mother came in. She was trying to be helpful, but didn't know enough about the disease so her suggestions and actions we counter-productive and I was getting annoyed.
Later another friend turned up and she too was in the early stages of the same disease. She sat in the other main chair in the lounge room and I was looking at both of them wondering how I could care for them and thinking I might have to make the house an official care home to help them.
In the next part of the dream I was going for a walk. I didn't have my walking boots or appropriate clothing so I didn't want to do a walk involving too much scrambling about or mud. I was wearing my (real life) first pair of leather trousers, burgundy ones with normal shoes. We decided to go on a walk I'd done before because it had a path most of the way whilst still being through nice countryside. When I had done the walk before I'd started at a different point so the first part was unfamiliar to me. The pathway lead off through some open fields then turned into woodland. It was becoming a little muddy, but generally the path held up ok. We then went through another open area which looked like some water works, purifying or something (but not sewerage works). We had to go along a criss-cross of metal walkways and bridges before we got back to the country path again. I was becoming annoyed because we hadn't even got the the part of the walk I knew and that was going to be a few hours from there. I had been led to believe this first part was only short. We went through some more woodland and crossed a small lane into a series of meadows. Again the path wound backwards and forwards and seemed to turn back on itself, making me cross. In the meadow section a loud group of walkers started on the path. Because it was winding back and forth at one point I looked across and a rough-looking woman met my eye. She was ranting about us spoiling their walk by being ahead of them. I wanted to walk faster so they couldn't catch us up later and I didn't want the peace to be spoiled by their shouting and yahooing.
We came to a grassy hill, it was a very verdant green and the grass was long and flowing. One of the lads from the other group had run up behind us. He did a great whoop and launched himself down the slope. He slid all the way down on his back making a dent in the wet grass. I walked carefully and quickly down the slope worried the others would also catch up. My feet were getting wet and muddy, threatening to ruin my leather trousers. I was now annoyed that I started the walk at all since I wasn't in appropriate gear.
We came to another winding path amongst some trees that led into a valley. By the side of the path I saw a large colourful parrot. It was mostly yellow and reds but with some blues and greens as well. It hopped along the branches right next to me. I called to P for him to have a look as it was beautiful and unusual. As I did it jumped up right next to me and started pleading for me to take it further along the path to a spot where it couldn't be seen. It was afraid of the group coming behind us. P was trying to tell me what to do when the bird jumped up onto my shoulder and turned into a woman. She was exactly like the parrot, the same colouring and so on and was quite slim and small. She was balancing on my left shoulder and I was trying to hold her with my left arm bent up around her. She was pleading with me to take her along an unused section of path away from any prying eyes. She wasn't too heavy, but still awkward and bulky to carry in that way. I could feel I was using my back to much to counter-balance the load. I wasn't happy about ruining my back as I was sure I would if I had to go too far, also I felt again that I wasn't dressed right for this type of thing. I contemplated carrying her in a different way but there was some confusion because of her being both a parrot and a human at the same time.