You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...

I was visiting a far-away city, somewhere to the east and south in the U.S. (it was somewhat cold and wintry there). I had received as a gift 2-nights stay in a hotel there, and it was now Sunday afternoon and time to go home. I had also booked another hotel starting a day or two previous to the paid-for days (La Quinta), apparently because I’d arrived before the gift stay started. Both hotels were in a long mall block with individual storefronts like the mall in Tig--.

Time was running out and I had to check out of the hotel I had the gift pass for, and also I suddenly remembered I hadn't checked out of the other hotel I'd booked originally (why I had booked the stay in La Quinta through the stay in the free hotel, I do not know). I had to check out of La Quinta by 4 or also pay for another day. And I had to leave as soon as possible afterwards in order to make it back home before I needed to go to work the next day.

However, I wasn’t actually at either hotel when I realized all this, I was in the mall in a shoe store. I had just returned from some peculiar side-trip, possibly to another dimension. It involved archery with large colorful bows. I had discarded the pants I had been wearing on the bow trip (pale blue pantaloons), because they were bloody, and was trying to buy a pair of all black clogs with straps. There was a whole other part of the dream about this side trip, but when I appeared back in the shoe store it was all vague and I couldn’t remember the details of what I had been doing. I found one of them and waited for some time for a salesperson (getting antsy about getting back to the hotel in time to check out) only to discover that they only had the one clog on display, not a pair. I then discovered I had lost the sandals I was wearing (my real-life slip-on Danske sandals). I backtracked in the mall and found my sandals on the floor, and put them on. I kept losing them (or finding that I was shoeless, at any rate) throughout the rest of the dream.

I then hurried over to the counter for the first hotel, to check out. I had the keys, but the lady was taking her time to process my check-out. There were an additional 20 dollars or so I had to pay (reminiscent of our recent gift stay at another real-life hotel, which didn't look anything like this but mimicked its description, a trend I’ve noticed in many of my dreams recently. The situation will sound like something that happened in real life if you describe it, but it's actually totally different).

My mother came up beside me at the counter and said not to worry, she would take care of paying the difference. I was very grateful because it was only about 20 minutes until checkout in the other hotel, and I still had to actually get there, and get my stuff out of the room. But when I asked if I could go now, the lady at the counter said no, not until the room was actually paid for. Then it turned out that my mother was paying by signing over a pile of checks that hadn't been cashed yet, instead of using her credit card. Interminable! Finally, it was done and I tore for the door. My car was parked just outside. But my sandals were missing again. I found them (my husband was there now and helped) and put them on and dashed out to the car. Then I realized, by asking a passerby for directions (I didn't know where anything was in this city or how to get to the other hotel), that the La Quinta hotel was in the same mall, further down. I went back inside instead of driving and finally made it there, got my stuff out of the room, and checked out before the time limit.

During most of the dream my alarm kept going off every 15 minutes and I kept hitting snooze on it so I could go back to the dream and make sure that I finished the whole checking out business within the required time frame. It all worked out well in the end.