A Frantic Search For A Gift To Buy

Not really sure about the date on this one, I forgot about it until some time later.

In the part I can remember, I stopped by this place sort of like TESC campus. I was with some friends (possibly including K-) and we had to get a gift for some event we were going to. We were already late. We split up to go look for something and I ran across campus. There was this fashion clothing shop which I had been intending to get something at (although it was very expensive) but it was closed. But there were some people with an upright board out front selling knickknacks. I ended up buying a glass paperweight, one of the ones with a blown glass flower-like shape inside, which I thought was pretty. They also had weird colorful sparkly hair scrunchies and decorations of that sort. I rushed back to meet up with the others. They were somewhat dubious about my gift choice but I don't think anybody had found a better one. Throughout we were extrememly rushed and I felt anxious and worried that I had not been prepared.

Car Trouble on the Way to the Coast

Sunday night/Monday morning

It is the last day of work at the company I work at (which I think is not the real company I currently work at, but somewhere else). The company is shutting down so we are all ending on that day. I work there with my friend S-, my female cousin K-, and my sister, among others. When the dream opens, the work day is already over and we are leaving the building into the underground parking garage. We decide to "celebrate" or get together after work on this last day by taking a trip together out to and up the coast. After some discussion, we decide to meet up at "Mo's", a chowderhouse, and we'll stay the night at a hotel at the beach, then continue up the coast. Mo's only has restaurants at 3 towns so we try to remember which one is the most direct route from where we are (it will still be over an hour drive). We settle on meeting at the Mo's at Hecata Head (there isn't really one there in the real world, to my knowledge). My friend S- leaves first, in a very beat up old car. I was thinking we might all ride together, but then we realize that would mean somebody would have to drive me back here to get my car, so that wouldn't be good. So as it ends up we all ride separately.

Everybody makes their way out of the parking garage, I have some issues extricating my car but eventually make it out, behind everybody else. Skipping ahead somehow I am in a town somewhere along the way, having not yet reached Hecata Head, when my car breaks down. That is, I park my car outside some building, possibly to get an item of grocery for my journey, and when I come back out I realize that the back tire has disintegrated. There's sort of a foam tire insert left but the outside is all peeled away, in fact it doesn't even look driveable although I suppose I've been driving on it for a little while. Plus, it's a Sunday (why I was working or why it is now no longer evening is not explained, although I haven't actually reached Mo's yet to meet up with the others, and I don't think the drive there was supposed to be overnight... but of course this isn't an issue in the dream).

I am frustrated and annoyed. Everything will be closed, of course. I walk around for a while trying to catch a glimpse of a likely shop, a Les Schwab or something. An older woman stops in a dark car and asks if I need help, and I tell her about the car issues and if she knows of a tire shop nearby. She thinks over possible options out loud, most of which are closed, and then after some hesitation agrees to give me a ride down the street to look for one. I hop in and we drive along, we pass a Les Schwab but of course it is closed. I consider that I might be able to buy a new tire at a general store (or for that matter, put on the spare) myself, but I am hesitant to do so becuase I'm no longer with my car, but with my old mazda pickup. This truck is absolutely terrible to retrieve the spare from, it has this weird long crank that has to be threaded through a hole in the bumper to loosen a chain holding the spare underneath... it's quite a chore and not something I am relishing. Plus for some reason I think I don't have a jack.

We pass a small convenience store with a phone booth, and I ask the lady to stop so I can look in the phone book. While I'm looking at the phone book, she realizes there's some kind of tire shop just next door to us, the sign is visible through the trees. We go over and it is in fact open. Now some tire places might come and bring a tire to you but this isn't one of them, so I go back and get my truck and drive it on whatever is left, very slowly up the street and to the shop (which is not far away). The lady goes on her way, I am grateful.

At the tire shop there is a small boy running around in the parking lot, I talk to him and he runs inside. I walk inside the shop, and there is a man with 3 or 4 little kids playing around, all probably 3-5 years old and under (they don't all look like they are related to him, I don't know if they are actually his or adopted). It appears to me that business is quite slow. I tell him my predicament and ask if I can have a replacement tire put on. He says sure! It should be done by tomorrow noon. What! I am quite taken aback and a little outraged, as it's quite clear that it's not busy and it does not seem to me that it should take this long to replace a tire. Plus I need it done today so I can continue on to the meeting place. I tell him this is ridiculous, and can't he do it today. He says he can get it done today for an acceleration fee, and when I inquire as to what it is, he doesn't want to give me an estimate, saying it will vary. Eventually he comes up with $500 dollars. I am furious as he's obviously just trying to make trouble. I say I can change the tire myself in significantly less time than that, and he (unperturbed) says go ahead. Then I tell him fine, I will just buy the tire and change it myself... how much for just the tire? It is $36 and some change. I am surprised at how comparatively cheap this is considering the amount of time he wants to take for changing it, and the acceleration fee he was going to charge, but I am agreeable to this price of course.

I am expecting him to just roll out a new tire, but instead he brings out two tire pieces and a whole lot of what can only be described as random trash. He starts stuffing the new tire halves with this, and affixing them together. This takes a little while. The kids run around and try to "help." I am not exactly thrilled with the rebuilt tire, but I don't say anything. I wonder if other refurbished tires I may have purchased in the past are made this way? How long will it hold up? But frankly I don't really care, I just want to get going, badly constructed as it may seem. Eventually he finishes building the new tire and goes back inside after I buy it. I ask one of the kids if I can borrow a jack and a wrench from the shop, but the kid says Dad doesn't let people borrow them becuase they might not bring them back. I go in and explain that I just want to borrow it to put the tire on, I'm not going to take it off the premises. He agrees and gives me a jack and wrench, and assigns one of the kids to go out and watch it (so I won't steal it). I change the tire and put the new one on, but then I wake up around this time.

Badly Planning a Vacation; Suprise Soup

4/2/2008 - Tuesday night/Wednesday morning

I am at my parents house. I am planning a vacation trip, flying to another part of the country, the next morning. During the trip I will visit my friend H-, and I call her and tell her when we will arrive the next day. My brother is supposed to come with me.

The next morning I sleep in accidentally and wake up late, around 2. I am irritated that my brother didn't wake me up so we could leave on time and consider this to be his fault. Now we are going to be late and our vacation will also be shorter. I try to call H- a couple of times and tell her, but I can't get reception. I finally get gravelly phone reception in the dining room and leave a message on her voicemail.

Now I talk to my brother about where we are going to go. We originally had more options, and could have taken our vacation anywhere, but now we are running out of time. Also we no longer have time to drive, we will definitely need to get plane tickets and leave today. My brother can't decide on where he wants to go. Finally I narrow it down to two places, Sp- and Ti-, because "I've been there before and will be able to find my way around." Except in the dream, Ti- is a town in central Washington.

When I think about having been in both towns before, remembering in the dream, I remember going with my sister to the beach. She had a small house on the beach, and is living there now. We might visit her if we go to Sp-. She is finishing up her degree. Either someone asks me in the dream or I imagine it in the dream, if I am also still in school. I laugh and say no, I graduated from college years ago. I can't remember how many years, I try to count but I mix it up. But my brother is still in it, I say, and my sister is just about to finish or she just finished but is still there. I remember another place in Sp- in the dream, a huge colorful and very fancy mall, with huge marble stairways and fountains and giant arched ceilings with bright neon lights. (This is a mall I visited in another dream quite some time ago, but it doesn't exist in real life. Neither does a seaside in either location. I realize this in the dream, since both locations are landlocked and some ways from the ocean, but I brush off the issue. Perhaps they are actually large lakes, I reason. I recognize the discrepancy but it does not bother me).

Returning to the present of the dream, I again argue with my brother trying to get him to agree which location to go to for our trip. I tell him to forget anywhere else we'd been considering, and just pick between those two because they are fast and easy. (How we will also visit H-, which seems to be a primary purpose of me going, when she is actually in S- , is not addressed).

We are sitting in the living room arguing, he is being typically lackadaisical. He isn't really interested in going but I think our parents have told him to do so. I leave him to decide and get up to make some soup, as I haven't eaten. I open a can of Campbell's beef soup in the kitchen and heat it in a pot on the stove, then pour some of it into a bowl for me and return to the living room. As my brother and I go back and forth about the locations, I stir the bowl of soup on the coffee table. I haven't had any yet. Then i notice something in the bowl, and lift it out with the spoon. It appears to be a used condom. I am disgusted and outraged, and also I consider suing the soup company. I fish it out and dump it, and go into the kitchen but then I realize I don't really want the remainder of the soup that was cooked with it either. I am not hungry anymore even though I still haven't eaten anything.

My father comes into the house and I run out and tell him about the soup incident and express my shock and disgust, and my consideration of suing them. I decide to ask my mother about it. Then I tell my father my brother still won't decide where to go for the trip, and my father says to pick something. He thinks we should go to Sp- because then we can stop by and see my sister as well, so I think we decide to do that.

The general feeling throughout is irritation at the delay and indecision, which I mostly take out on my brother, and the fact that we're going to be late and the trip is just sort of thrown together becuase we ran out of time, and not properly planned. I'm also annoyed at not being able to meet H- at the time when I originally said I would. The level of irritation is general annoyance and stress, probably about as much as if the situation happened in real life. Also there's the gross-out factor of the soup incident, which disgusts me and makes me want the soup company to pay reparations, which is more out of character.

Late for Group Pic, Meeting My Mother-In-Law

10/29/2007 - Last night's dream

For the last couple of days, I've been dreaming, but I lose the dream almost immediately upon awakening. The last one, I remember a few minor bits and pieces, but that is all.

I arrive at work not late, but too late for a group-picture that was taken this morning. The people who were in it are just drifting away back to their places; only a few remain. I realize that I have an alarm set on my cell phone, which has only just come up, that I was supposed to arrive early today for the group picture. I am secretly relieved since I didn't want to be in it anyway. The date on my cell phone indicates that today is Oct 30th. I think that I didn't arrive earlier because I was going around flooded roads, it is stormy and rainy (this part is vague and happened earlier)-- that and not getting the reminder on the phone and forgetting about the group picture.

Later in the dream, I meet my mother-in-law for the first time. She is happy and friendly to me, and I think she even pats me on the head. She is somewhat shorter than me, round, wearing a long dress which is many-colored, including pink and green (but casual). She has medium-long brown hair. She expresses happiness in meeting me, then a few minutes later, she pulls me down conspiratorially and stage-whispers that both of us (her and me) will have to be careful to make sure we don't eat cookies and candy, especially back home (her home country, which I'm not sure if I'm actually in in the dream or not) to keep the weight off. I find this to be a somewhat negative comment indicating that she thinks, and is planning to enforce, that I need to lose weight. I especially feel that it's negative because she is considerably fatter than me. I'm not sure how to react so I don't really react to it at all. She acts very friendly despite the comment, and is all smiles.

In real life, I haven't met her yet :S. Nerves? I actually did arrive late to work, later than in the dream, but there's no group picture, nor is there tomorrow (on the actual 30th).