Dream Journal

Last night’s dream was a doozy. As a bit of background, my dad’s family was never really close. We saw family members maybe once a year, once every two years, things like that.

My uncle died in December. The first we heard of that was when a . . . what’s the probate version of an ambulance chaser? Basically, it’s a company that will get money from the probate court for you, but will take 33% of whatever you inherit.

My dad thought it was a scam of some sort, but eventually he was able to ascertain that my uncle had, in fact, died. Now my dad is trying to figure out how much my uncle left. My uncle was childless and died intestate. By our calculations, my dad stands to inherit 1/3 of it, then my aunt’s kids will get 1/6, and my other uncle’s kids will each get 1/9. That may be nothing or it may be quite a bit of money for each of his surviving relatives.

So. Dream.

I dreamed that I had two friends over for dinner and was making steaks. I don’t really “speak” steak, so my brain was, like, “steak?” and threw in something that looks like halibut steaks made from beef. I mean, they’re . . . steaks, right?

Sometime before I started dinner, my dad, who had been out of town, came home and brought my recently-deceased uncle with him. Now, my uncle didn’t look like my uncle looked in real life, and I even acknowledged that in my dream. He looked like my dad looked 15, 20 years ago.

I’m putting dinner on and I realized that I only had four steaks and that I’d need a steak for my uncle. I head to the store.

When I get there, one of my coworkers walks through the door right behind me. I get stopped by the manager, who tells me that my shoes aren’t acceptable for their store. I may have been wearing open-toed sandals, I may have been barefoot. I think it changed back and forth.

I told him that I just wanted to buy one steak and I’d be out of there and he said that he would turn a blind eye to the state of my feet as long as I would buy a pair of shoes in the store and so I went to the shoe department, which had all of the shoes hanging from a kind of a rack, I think, and grabbed a pair of ankle-high slippers. Not wanting to take any more time than necessary, I took the tags off and put them in my pocket, so that I could pay for the slippers with the steak.

I never made it to the butcher’s department, though, because then the head of store security stopped me to tell me that my footwear still wasn’t appropriate and then she demanded to see my back under my shirt. I turned around and lifted my shirt so she could see it and she did something. Touched it? Rubbed something on it? And said that she thought I was okay, but that I couldn’t come back into the store until I got a clean bill of health from my doctor, and then they escorted me from the store.

I texted my coworker to see if she was still in the store, but didn’t get an answer, and finally decided that we’d just order a pizza.

Oh, and as I walked back to my car, I put my hand in my pocket and felt the tags in there. I knew that I’d have to get a clean bill of health, because, even though I hadn’t been given much choice, I felt guilty about “stealing” the slippers.

Today’s Gratuitous Amazon Link is Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi. There’s a lot to like here, though it wasn’t perfect (like, how come no matter how fast they traveled, they couldn’t get any kind of lead on Inan?). I’m still working on the next book in the Legacy of Orïsha series, Children of Virtue and Vengeance, which, for some reason, is nearly not as interesting to me.

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