December 30
*I’m walking out of a school… kids are packing up at the end of the day. I see my neighbor’s eldest daughter in the hall, she is crying, coming out of a meeting with the school’s therapist. She is saying her daddy has a girlfriend. We knew he was cheating on his wife, but I’m surprised they weren’t doing a better job of shielding it from the kids.
*The building I’m in is under construction, looks like a kitchen area is being redone. I have two boxes in here I need to pick up on my way out… one of them is rather large and flat, the other is rectangular sitting on top of the first. My items are stacked and waiting for me, but I’m a few feet away, standing in an aisle (I might be at a home improvement store?) A man asks if he can help me to find something, and I slowly shake my head, lost in thought. I’m looking at a series of organizers and trying to decide if I should get them for the kitchen. One is a sort of clear plastic frame – similar to the rings around the top of a 6-pack of soda – but sturdier… and it’s used to keep stacks of canned foods from falling over. A lot of the stuff in this store is overpriced, but these are $1.49 each so the price seems reasonable, but I wonder how well they actually work.
*I’m in a grocery store looking for the bathroom. It’s a huge store, the upstairs area runs the entire span of the store. I go up the back steps, carrying something large and heavy… and I arrive at some kind of lounge area. There are hallways leading to offices, names are on each door. The names are single word names… they don’t all make sense but are all maybe 4 or 5 letters long. I wonder if they are people, or nic-names, or screen names, or just supplies written in another language. I ask someone who works here where the bathrooms are, she directs me to go down the hallway and around the offices to the left, and warns me that they are co-ed due to the limited number of toilets for such a large building. I follow her directions and walk for what seems like a long time… halfway down the hall I find a map with a “You are here” symbol, and a dashed line leading to the bathroom. The building is not rectangular… it looks like the silloette of a stealth fighter:
Only with the angles of the “wings” area sharper.
I continue down the hall and turn to the left, finding a wide doorway with two doors, the left says “Men” the right says “Men” for a moment, then changes to “Women”. The heavy object in my hand is an infant inside a carrier, I shift it to my other hand and lean into the door to open it… and I find a line of men using the toilets as urinals… I back out of the room and go into the “Men’s” room instead… finding just one toilet/sink combination, no stalls, and the door locks. There is a sign explaining that people use the opposite restrooms because this one is more private for women, and men can all stand and pee in a line quickly. The floor of the bathroom has puddles on it, and the toilet seat is crooked, but I think about how this reminds me of trying to find a bathroom in a dream, only this time I at least found one that is private and semi-functional.
December 29
*I am staying at the beach with S… it is nearly noon and we are out somewhere… our stuff is still in our hotel room and S wants to stay another night. He is worried about getting another room somewhere, and we need to check out of the hotel. I suggest we just stay in the hotel another night, maybe we should try calling and asking if the room is available another night before we start to worry about getting reservations somewhere else.
*BW wants to rider her bike home from our house… there are a couple of steep hills between our house and theirs, and I offer to ride up the main hill with her. I haven’t been getting any exercise and I could use the challenge, then I can coast back to my house. The neighborhood we are in looks similar to the one S and I were in when we first started living together – only with much steeper hills.
*I’m talking to coworkers… the guy hasn’t eaten, the girl doesn’t have time for lunch, she has to get back home for a baseball game. We are standing in a courtyard area of a business park, there are several restaurants to pick from. I ask the guy if he’d like to join me for lunch, assuming he has time to sit and eat.
December 27
*I’m standing in my mom’s kitchen, looking out to the backyard. It is the same shape it was when I was a kid, smaller patio and more lawn throughout. The grass is really long and the yard seems wider than it is in reality. I see one of our old folding loungers moving in the grass, but I can’t see what is moving it. I call S over to look, and point out that there must be some kind of animal scooting the lounger around. I see the grass move and a nose emerges, then a body… it is a badger.
There is still movement around the lounge chair as the badger climbes over a small hill and runs away. Two raccoons jump up from the chair now…
They look very thin and unhealthy and very dirty – like they have been rummaging in a garbage dump and have been sick or starving.
They also run away… but there is still movement. I look again and see a creature I don’t recognize – it appears to possibly be larger than the raccoons, but it has a long sort of pointy nose. I only see the front end of it. I want to know what kind of animal it is so I try to memorize it while I can… it is mostly brown, roundish body, long nose. It’s not something that lives where I live… but I think I should look in one of my books. I can see myself walking into my own living room and going to the book shelf to get the National Audobon Society field guide to North American Animals, the answer is in there.
(When I woke up this morning, I looked in that particular book and found this creature – called a white-nosed coati. They don’t live in my part of the US)
*I’m sitting at the end of a rather long table… it’s in a formal dining room of someone’s very large house (possibly mansion) We are playing Monopoly and I am the banker. I’m trying to explain the rules to people. It’s all celebrities sitting around the table… Rob Riggle, his wife, Yo-Yo Ma, several other people I recognize in the dream but can’t recall who they are now. One woman lands on the free parking space and takes the cash under the spot – she hands it to Rob because they’ve decided to team up their efforts and he mixes the play money with real money and hands it to me to buy one of the utilities. I’m trying to explain that you can’t buy the utility unless you land on it, and you also can’t play with real cash, you have to use the Monopoly money. He doesn’t have enough to buy the utility without the real cash, though… but I point out that it doesn’t matter, he didn’t land on that space anyway, so he can’t buy it. Another person asks when she gets her salary, and I explain that you get money whenever you get around the board and pass “Go”. It is now Yo-yo Ma’s turn, but he is taking his time deciding what he wants to do. He pulls out a cello and begins to play. I look to the person next to me (sitting between myself and Yo-yo Ma) and he explains that he is trying to decide the best way to go – whether he should buy the property, and how it will affect the game later – he is looking to discover the best karmic action to take, and playing the cello helps him calm his mind and make decisions.
December 26
I’m in a grocery store, and I’ve lost my purse. There is a post office outlet here in the store, and I left my purse sitting on the floor by the counter from when we were mailing some stuff out. I’m frantic to get to it. We have come up a flight of stairs to use the bathroom, that’s when I realized my purse was missing… I know exactly where it is at and I need to run downstairs to get to it. I’m shoving people out of my way while calling the counter to see if they have it, I’m describing my purse hoping they can find it and hold it for me.
S has tickets to a concert, it starts at 2:00 a.m. and is in Oregon City. I’m arguing with him, I don’t think we should go to a show that starts at 2:00 a.m., and it’s far too far of a drive to get there. I’m walking down a hallway filled with dogs lines up along one wall… their trainers/owners are holding them. On the opposite side of the hallway are puppies of the dogs… they appear to be labradoodles. One runs up and jumps on me. Normally I back away from dogs jumping, but I know I’m not allergic to this one so I go ahead and pet it.
December 25
The only note I have on this day is the following number:
$5,798.00
I don’t know what the price refers to, if it is the cost of one thing or the total of many, or an amount owed.
