Hilarity at work and my sister wins a parrot

11/8/2007
Last night's dream (Wednesday night/Thursday morning)

I was at work, talking to my coworker L-. Su- and A- were also around, in their respective cubes. At one point, L- looked up through the corner of her cube (there was a roof on her cubicle), and I looked down into the same hole with one eye, surprising her. We both laughed. L- was feeling sick and coughing, and I commented that she really should go home. To my surprise, she agreed. First, however, we decided to disassemble her cubicle. We took all the walls apart and parked them in stacks around the room. When we were done, I realized that I had mislaid one of the walls, and we scurried about looking for it. It was a wall with a large window set into it. At first, I thought it had ended up on A-'s wall, but when I looked at her wall she had a smaller window in it, so it wasn't the same one. Then, I found that I'd accidentally put the wall with the window in it in my cubicle, leaning up against the wall. We giggled and laughed throughout, having a good time.

Later, I went to watch an event where my sister had a chance to receive a prize. It was somehow connected with her work. When I arrived, the people up for the prize were seating themselves, they were in four rows with about 100 people in each row, sitting in folding chairs outside. Only a certain number of the prizes were available, and they would go in order to the people who arrived first (it was a pre-selected pool of people who were eligible, not just anybody).

I sat behind the recipients, and was joined by both of my paternal cousins, my former neighbor P-, and another elderly woman, older than P-, whom I introduced to my cousins as (after tripping over my tongue several times to get the relationship phrased right) my grandmother on my husband's side. I was talking to P- and the grandmother-in-law before my cousins approached, and I made a lightly disparaging remark about one of them as we saw them approaching. Everybody had gathered here to take part in the special occasion for my sister.

The prizes were awarded and we could see this by the indication of a bright color for each person who got it along the rows - I don't remember if this was a piece of cloth or paper passed out or what, but it was evident from a distance as it rippled along the rows. It had the air of a graduation. I couldn't tell if my sister had gotten it or not. She came back and started telling us about it, however, so I guess she did. The prize was an amazonian parrot which was being taught how to speak, she would get to keep it or take part in the lessons in some way. We were all very excited. I asked if it was learning English, and she said no, they were being taught Arabic, because it was easier for them to begin on. They would start out with 4 letters only (R, K, L, and M I think), and they would be able to approximate most words this way. All of us were very excited about the whole thing.

As we left the event, I was walking with P- and one of the others in the group, either a cousin or the grandmother-in-law, went into this large building that we passed. It was made of heavy wood, and looked old and solid, like a large barn. We only realizes that one of the party had gone inside as we walked passed and realized that person was no longer with us, they'd gone in by accident. We waited at the other end for a few minutes but they did not come out. P- said we would have to go in and get them. We opened the door on that end, which was large and closed with a mechanical metal latch, and went into a small dusty room, which led off to a hallway and a lot of other rooms. P- went into the interior while I waited there, to check it out. When she came back she was talking about what a terrible place this was, and how disgusting, and I got the impression that it was a house of prostitution. We would have to go in and get the person out as they must have been detained by someone else in the house. I spent a lot of time opening and closing the latches on the doors leading in and out of the room we were in, and observing how they worked, then I woke up.

In the waking world, L- has indeed been sick for a couple of days but never goes home when she is sick. I've never met my husband's grandmother and actually I don't think either of them are still alive. P- was a lot more active in the dream than she probably is now, and after I woke up I realized that I should call her again and give her my new address.