Two Dreams and Other News

I know that I have not written in quite a while, but it seems that the time has long past since teachers took it easy on the children after breaks (sigh); however, I suppose that I should not have expected any different, and I am excited that we have jumped right into Killer Angels because I am eager to get to Grapes of Wrath. Unfortunately, our reading of The Great Gatsby has been cancelled, another book that I have been looking forward to reading, based off of its reputation.
Anyways, I have had two seemingly-related dreams in the past few days; I came to my mom's house on Tuesday and had the first of them that night, the next one occuring on Wednesday.
The first one took place at my friend Shannon's house, down in her finshed basement, where her cousin Sean is currently staying. We were all hanging out and playing with his ferret or something, and then, suddenly, one of those bouncing balls that you sit on with the handle appeared out of nowhere (it was pink and Hello-Kitty-patterned, like Hope's), and so I instinctively decided to sit on it and bounce around. Shannon and Sean ignored me as I maneuvered around the basement, bouncing higher than one actually would in real life, naturally bubbly and filled with joy over the experience; then, it happened: I came to a dead stop in the far corner of the room, near the stairwell, and found the stairs blocked by a fairly large (but not car-sized) jumping spider. I fell off of the bouncing ball in my haste to get away. I scrambled back in the direction of the ferret's cage to escape, and my mom had appeared there as well. Everyone, upon seeing the spider, cowered in the small space between the bed and wall, trapped, except for Shannon, who glared at me over her shoulder, stepped forward, and exterminated the spider with one clean crunch of her shoe. However, when she tried to pull her foot away, she found that it was stuck on the ground; it took the group's effort to pull her away, and when we did, there was a bluish gunk that would not remove itself from her shoe. And that was the end of this dream.
The next dream began in my mom's house. I was hanging out in the living room, and it seemed that there were a ton of people who had come to stay for a certain important event; the reason why and the people involved are both hazy aspects upon rememberance, and so will remain vague in my retelling. There were lots of people that I didn't know; someone that I did know was asleep in my mom's bedroom, but I don't remember who. I walked through a crowd of talking people to get to my bedroom, across from my mother's, where there was this little girl that looked almost exactly like Hope (though she wasn't).
She was playing around with basically every noisy toy or game that I happened to have in my room, and so I said, "I think someone's sleeping in the next room; we should keep it down,"
to which she responded by grabbing my arm with surprising strength and pulling me into her play. I realized, as I watched her, the major differences between her and Hope: this girl had these bright green eyes, while Hope's are "Tarheel Blue," as she would say (her father brainwashes her to cheer for Carolina); and this girl had a different voice, a bit higher-pitched and a bit on the little-kid lispy side. Hope is very well-spoken for her age. I had no clue where this girl's parents were, but she started to shout loudly about something. Though I tried to hush her, it was too late; my mother's bedroom door creaked open, and a man a little taller than me with straight, brown hair (perhaps in his late 20's) came through the door, glaring, a girl about my age behind him who I took to be his daughter. He looked in at us, and his glare immediately disappeared.
"We have your drum set in my car," he said cheerfully, "and we'll be ready to head over in just a minute." I said that that sounded good, though I'm not sure where we were headed, and why my drum set was required.
The next thing I knew, I was in a crowded night-clubesque atmosphere, with tons of tiny, round, candle-lit tables that faced a medium-sized stage. It was hard to see the faces of the audience; there seemed to be a black space above each man or woman's shoulders. I recall wandering through the crowd looking for my drum set or the man who said that he had it in his car, but I could find neither. Someone was speaking up on stage, a man, I think, but I don't remember what he was talking about.
Then, there was another blank, and I was up on stage singing karaoke. A huge screen had appeared out of nowhere on the back wall, and this is where I found the words, reading them above the black abyss-like heads of the audience, who were cheering and singing along, mostly (I don't remember the song). I was dancing and getting way into it, when I was suddenly struck by an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion and I fell asleep right on stage.
When I woke up in the dream, I found myself in my mother's bedroom; most everyone seemed to have gone, since the house was quiet. In the room with me was my mother, the brown-haired man, and the little Hope-like girl. I felt really stupid and my mind felt as though it was working extra-slow.
"What happened?" I asked slowly, slurring. My mom answered, but I couldn't really process what she was saying. "What?" I said, but nothing she said was intelligible the second time, either. Then the man turned to grin at me, almost evilly, and I remembered something else.
"Do you still have my drum set?" I inquired of him; the little girl, singing a hymn (I think it was the Doxology) softly to herself, floated out of the room, a few inches above the ground; this seemed entirely normal. My mom kept babbling in whatever language it was. The man continued to look at me creepily, not speaking.
"What happened last night?" I asked him. He finally spoke, his voice drowning out my mom's, somehow: "You fell asleep." he said. "And your drums. . .they're -. . ." He stopped speaking and presently fell backwards in a sort of arc, dissolving into my mom's dresser behind him. The house was presently silent, and my mom had disappeared as well, apparently when I wasn't looking; It was dark and the wind blew branches outside the window; I felt very lonely and sad all of a sudden. Then, I saw the little girl running outside, and the sun came out (it had originally been gray and stormy) and Hope was there, too, playing with her, so I decided to get up from the bed and join them outside. I had reached the front door before I woke up.
side-note: as of Monday, the situation at my dad's house has deteriorated again. He went out to eat with me at La Carreta, where he was super-quiet and sad. We went to Borders afterwards, where I found a Jimmy Stewart Biography (but did not buy it), and the sky had the most beautiful sunset that I had seen in a long time. It looked like the clouds were bleeding. I hope things have improved since then.