More dreams

[3rdragon]

I dreamt that I was flying to Spain, accompanied by a non-related avuncular figure and his wife. There were also two children between the ages of four and six, a clever and quick-witted African-American girl and a very quiet boy, but they seemed very self-sufficient and were only there sometimes. For some reason, going to Spain involved flying west, and the part of the dream that I can remember clearly begins in SanFran or some comparable airport on the West Coast. I'd gotten up at 5:00am Philly time, or something equally ridiculous, and it was now midnight local time. Needless to say, I was really tired. As in, the stage of tired that I describe as 'drunk on tiredness,' where I'm no longer anything remotely like lucid, and just sort of wander through life in a haze. (Remember that evening in the Astronomy Lab after Big One last October/November? Like that. Or maybe worse.) The avuncular figure wanted to know how long I'd been awake, but I told him that this was a calculation that I had no intention of making in my current state, both because it was too difficult and because I really didn't want to know.
And did I mention that the SanFran (or wherever) airport did not look like the SanFran airport? In fact, it looked like Suburban Station*. Anyway. Our flight was delayed and supposedly leaving in an hour or two, so the avuncular figure and his wife took me to dinner, only I was way too tired to eat. I fell asleep and woke up manacled to a table in the cannibal restaurant. The little boy was manacled to a different table. I was still really tired, and it would be a while before they considered me ready to do anything with, so I fell asleep again. When I woke up, the girl was there arguing with the management about whether or not they were allowed to cook me. Eventually she got tired of the diplomatic approach and dumped the garnishes they were preparing for me on the floor, and they decided that I was maybe too much trouble and since they needed to start all over again anyway, they might pick someone else with fewer uncooperative friends. It should be stated that while I was no longer so tired that I couldn't focus, I was still rather short on sleep, and so less emotionally connected from the situation than I might otherwise have been. I was keen to get out of there, but also concerned that we should rescue the boy, too, but when I looked over he wasn't there, and I realized that she much have rescued him while I was still out of it. We hadn't gotten very far in the airport before the boy showed up and ran over and hugged both of us. Being the oldest by about 15 years, I took charge at this point.
Then the dream did one of those dream-shift things. I was still flying to Spain, and still looking for the avuncular figure, but rather than being with the kids, I was with Emily and a bunch of her friends (who were all also going to Spain). And the building we were in was a airport-cum-train-station whose architecture was a cross between Reading Terminal in its heyday and Philadelphia Academy of Music. We were in the section for Outbound Trains, and walked past the train to Smith (which was only about a 20 minute ride) until we found the richly decorated alcove that marked the entrance to our gate. We walked past the plush stadium seating to the woman at the desk, and she told us that if our tickets said 106, we wanted the entrance right on past her desk. We glanced at our tickets and everyone else's said 106, but mine said 488. I pointed this out, and the lady came out from her desk in a very conciliatory manner. She explained to me that this meant that there'd been some kind of muck-up in the ordering of my ticket, and that when I'd been ordering I'd done something wrong at the end and the system had crashed rather than finalizing things. The whole time she was saying this, she kept looking at me like she was worried that I was going to burst into tears, which I felt was a bit ridiculous, since even though I was short on sleep, I wasn't so on-edge as to cry about a bit of mis-done paperwork, and I'd paid for my ticket, so whatever the computer muck-up was, it wasn't as if they weren't going to let me on the plane. And there might have been a bit more, but I don't remember it.

Then my other dream was about moving, only it was what my room at college would look like if it were suddenly mushed together with my room at dad's house and I hauled around a bunch of the junk that clutters up that room (including the toy horses that I got rid of six or eight years ago). And I thought I was almost done packing only to discover that there was still loads of stuff everywhere. Luckily Dee was there, and some other friends, and they helped. I'm so glad that I don't have to move for another two months. There was a second half to this dream, which might have involved grocery shopping, or might have been something completely not grocery shopping, but I don't remember what.

EDIT:
It wasn't grocery shopping. We went to Herrells. Only Herrells had two locations, neither of which is where Herrells actually is. We went to the one beyond the stables, which is the one that people knew about even though it was further away and more out-of-the-way, rather than to the one down past modern myths. They had a number of unusual flavors, including blueberry with real frozen blueberries and one that I think was called 'love,' which was several different flavors together but not mixed up, mostly fruit-flavored but also chocolate-expresso. I got some of that one, but didn't get any of the chocolate expresso part; the blueberries kept rolling around and obscuring everything else. Then my cone fell apart (it was mushy and flexible, which was normal, but mine was broken in half, which was not normal) and the guy wouldn't give me a second one which I could slip it inside, but I managed to hold it together okay anyway. And then I woke up. And now I want frozen blueberries. Preferably with ice cream.




*Not a great picture, but the only one I could find. Dear internet, 30th St. Station $\neq$ Suburban Station. They don't even really look similar.