I had a dream about Rich last night. I found myself outside a quaint country church. It was white with some red brick and a lovelyt white steeple. It was on a hilltop with a green grassy lawn leading up to it and there was a tree set slightly to the side of the lawn, to the right if you are facing the church. I think it was like an oak tree orsomething but somehow it seemed more willowy. I think in the dream you were getting married to Irene. I saw her in the dream...or some representation of her, a blond woman, older with a thick Russian accent. I remember feeling an urgency to stop this wedding...and I entered the church despite the fact that someone...I don't know who...it actually felt like more than one person...was tryig to convince me not to go inside. The church was dark with dim lighting...candles? small lights? idk. So anyways...I sat down in a seat...but the seats were not pews like in a church they were more like those in an auditorium like at a large university. And the aisles were tight so I climbed over the back of the last row of the front section to sit in the second to the last row of that front section...it was probably like 10 rows from the front which was like a stage in an auditorium with a podium. I watched quietly, helplessly as you got married and then I discovered, after the ceremony, upon talking to your bride, that you and Irene had a child together, a small toddler boy and another one on the way...and I saw you watching me talking to her...and I could see the pain and explaination in your eyes of why you married her, even though you didn't really want to. Obligation and responsibilty. So this little boy...so cute, in a tiny tuxedo with dark brown hair neatly combed to the side, framing his cherublike face, was going to where the kids go during mass...downstairs to the basement area...and so I followed him. And there I saw my own little boys busily happily painting some sort of ceramic project. I wanted to paint to...because it's something I love to do...mix colors, feel the smotth creamy texture of the paint gliding across material...and the satisfaction of the end result. So I lined up with th kids...and there were all these trays to put paint in...and dozens of bottles of colorful paints - acrylic in squirt bottles...but the trays were all shaped like objects, like houses and stuff...except my tray was plain, it had 4 little compartments to put paint in...and I was gonna squirt some in a tray for myself but the teacher wanted to do it for me so I let her but she was chossing such aweful color combinations...and messily combining them so the colors got muddled. I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I took the tray but I just couldn't stand to work with those so I tossed the palette and snuck over to make myself a palletable pallette. I could see now that everyone else was finishing up and I had not even begun yet so I hurried to get my paints and kept squirting too much out of the bottle and couldn't find the colors I wanted. And the teacher was trying to get everyone and everything cleaned up and all the kids kept coming up to me to show me what they did and some of the things were terrible and some were ok but none were great because after all they were just little kids but nonetheless I oohed and awed and found something wonderful to tell all the kids...but still I didn't have a chance to get to my own thing. I don't know what happened after this...maybe I woke up or switched to another dream.
Then I had this other dream about horses...I was driving home...to my parents home in Tewksbury...and I saw a horse...a beautiful horse with properly trimmed main, reddish gold colored. Somehow I knew she was a mare. I drove home quickly and grabbed a halter and lead to go catch her before she got hurt in traffic. THe onyl halter and lead I could find were very heavy but I didn't have time to waste looking for a better set. SO I ran up the street lugging it along and spotted the mare across the busy street. She was scared and not thinking well. She saw me and was trying to come to me. BUt the was puttin gherself in danger in the process so I started to try to cross the busy street to get to her. Somehow she managed to get to my side of the street. But she was so freaked out she couldn't stay still long enough for me to slip the halter on...and she took off again, on flight, fleeing from some perceived danger...but she regained her head momentarily and came back to me and I managed this time to get the halter on and lead her back to the barn...but not calmly...she was very nervous and skittish but I remained calm and I knew she trusted me. When I got back to the barn I tucked her safely in a stall at the back of the barn. When I came out of the barn and looked around I saw all these mamed horses...they were all wearing their winter blankets, dingy, brown, dirty and tattered. They were tied to the outside of the fence of a pastuer. IT was growing dark and it was very windy and damp and cold....and the horses were all unhappy and pacing or resisting the tie. There was one horse in particular that had no back legs. All the horses had something terribly wrong with them. But this one I rememeber most vividly. He was trying to break free. And I was astonished that he could somehow stand/walk/move on just 2 front legs...very awkwardly but nonetheless functioning in some capacity. I felt so sad for this beautiful marelous creature and thought how cruel...why do they make him live like that? Why didn't they put the poor guy down?