Dream: Mailing hamsters and fixing sinks
Mar. 7th, 2005 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mokie_edomThe dream unfolded in three parts, the first of which I do not remember clearly. It is a faint outline, a memory of a memory, but unusually enough I'm certain of the details below because I remember thinking back on them from the third part of the dream, when I revisited those details. Yes, it was déjà vu within a dream!
The first part took place at a shopping mall movie theater and a mall restroom, located arond a looping corner of pristine white balcony. It involved an older man, presumably a shopper at one of the stores along that balcony. He was one of those obnoxious older people that thinks they have some innate authority over others, and he tried to boss me around despite the fact that I was not his child, it was not his store, my activities were not bothering him (he had to go out of his way to even notice me), and it was none of his business anyway. I think he yelled at me to "Come back here!" or "Get away from there!" as I trotted to the bathroom, along with "Don't you run in here!" perhaps.
The second part of the dream was unrelated. My mother decided she wanted to send my friend
Afi a rabbit, and showed me the white bunny with grey points that she had bought to send her. I held the large Federal Express envelope that she pulled the rabbit out of (though I don't think the rabbit was delivered by mail) and noticed movement. When I looked down, a golden Syrian hamster was poking his head out of the top of the envelope. I showed my mother and as she told me she knew nothing about it the envelope wriggled in my hands and I noticed a juvenile hamster's rear end poking through a hole in the bottom of the envelope, legs pumping frantically in mid-air.
At this point I thought back on buying feeder fish for my pond last year, and the way the young employee scooped out a number, eyeballed it and labelled the bag twenty, while it was actually more like forty fish. I thought to myself that the pet store employee must have done the same thing: scooped out a rabbit, eyeballed it, and dumped it in the envelope and called it one rabbit while in reality it was one rabbit and a couple of hamsters. I mentally tsked at the carelessness of some people these days.
As I was daydreaming my mother had lost track of the rabbit and two guinea pigs. Somewhere in the course of things, the number of animals she had purchased to send to Afi had jumped from one rabbit to one rabbit and two guinea pigs, though we intended to send the hamsters along too because, well, what were we going to do with them? More for Afi, s'all good, right? What's a rodent or two more?
We were in the front bedroom that my sister previously shared with her girlfriend and their many pets, and Mom and I began to look among the cages for the rabbit and guinea pigs. In one cage a dog lay nursing puppies which looked like overgrown pink baby hamsters (along with several fullgrown hamsters as well), and I noticed several puppies that had fallen out between the bars of the cage onto the floor or into other cages. I retrieved them and began to put them back in when I noticed that they were smaller than the other puppies there. I looked around and there was another dog in another cage that had puppies, and I guessed that I had put the puppies in with the wrong mother, and began to sort them out.
Before I got much of that done Mom called for my attention. She had gotten the rabbit, the guinea pigs, and several other rodents that had appeared out of nowhere, all of them white with grey points, tucked away in a cage far too small for them, despite the rabbit nibbling at her at every given opportunity. She was proud of herself but I was annoyed, as the cage was far too small for them and yet too large to mail, and where were we going to fit the two !@$%& hamsters that I was still holding?
The third part of the dream, again unconnected to the previous part, began with me calling friends to see if they wanted to hang out and see a movie, but all of them had other plans. The last person I called was Jackie from "That '70s Show," who told me she was going golfing. I decided to go by myself, and as I sat down in the theater I noticed Jackie and Fez (another character from the show) seated several rows back nearer the aisle. I was happy to see them and debated getting up to sit with them or just saying hello when Jackie noticed me and began worrying at Fez because she had told me she'd be elsewhere. Would I be mad at her or think I was avoiding her?
I don't know if she was avoiding me, or if her plans simply fell through, and I decided against going over to say hello and ask. At first I was slightly amused by the situation, but as she went on and on I finally stood up, said to her and anyone else listening, "It's okay, I'll leave," and walked out. Though it sounded huffy I did not intend to be dramatic and was not upset; it simply was not important to me to stay there and see the movie, and I thought leaving would be easier for both of us. A few patrons made approving remarks at my choice, a few were glad because it would shut her up (she was ruining the movie!), and a few more threw snarky 'dramaqueen' remarks my way. As I left I thought about going back to explain things so they'd see it wasn't like that, but it seemed to be more trouble than it was really worth. They didn't know me, I'd probably never see them again, and then I'd be ruining the movie for others. Besides, what did they care about the hubbub between me and Jackie? They weren't involved.
I made my way to the restroom again, and the obnoxiously bossy man stepped out into the balcony ahead of me with a smug and victorious smirk upon his face. He was wearing a security guard's uniform and I thought it was just like him to get a job as a guard just so he'd have an excuse to go out of his way to bother me. I slowed down far enough away from him that he had no reason to take me aside for a talking to, which took some of his win away, but my mood was killed and my sense of direction confused. When I reached the alcove that should have contained doors to the restrooms, it instead held two elevators and doors to a stairwell. Two heavyset black women in the elevator laughed at my confusion and shooed me away from the doors so they could go upstairs and continue their shopping, and I turned into one of the cramped, dingy and poorly lit corridors off of the alcove.
Near the firedoors at the end I found another restroom, its door half blocked by a protrusion from the wall that might have been a fuse box or section of ducts. I slipped inside, passed a black teen standing at the unusual fountain that served as the room's only sink, and waited for her friend to step out of the room's only stall. Inside the toilet was also half blocked by a protrusion, but after some investigation I realized that it rotated away from the wall. I rotated it back into place and stepped out into the restroom again, where the two girls were washing their hands. One then handed the other a wrench, and I asked if the sink was broken. She replied that it was but it was no problem, she had gotten it working, but it couldn't be left on or it would flood the basement. I remembered then that there had been construction outside the mall near the underground parking lot (in the first part of the dream), so this made sense.
The girl needed someone to rotate part of the handle as she worked the wrench, so I tried to lend a hand. I turned it the wrong way, however, and sent a new burst of spray out and into the girl's face. Embarrassed I stepped back to get out of the way before I made things even worse than I already had, but the girl didn't complain or blame me. She closed her eyes against the water, set her jaw, and continued to concentrate on the wrench and the fountain.
Notes and explanatory details
#1. The corridor and confrontation in part one reminds me of an incident from a few years back which has recently been on my mind, in which several students from a school group tried to cut in line at a museum exhibit, their irresponsible teachers tried to justify it by pointing out that they were from a Christian school (and therefore apparently allowed) and besides, we were cursing! In the end they still had to get the hell out of line and wait for everyone in their group to show up instead of letting their kids cut ahead of everyone else willy-nilly, the little bastards.
#2. My mother does indeed intend to send my hamsterphile friend several gifts, because my mother is strange and has adopted her. She's not sending live animals, however, but rather a slew of hamster-related items like stickers and such. So why a white rabbit in the dream? Because during a visit to a pet store last fall my mother cooed over the bunnies and debating buying one--white with grey markings--for herself, ultimately deciding against it. I point out that the hamster in the envelope was a golden Syrian because to Afi such things matter.
#3. I say that the dogs and puppies were in cages, but in reality they were wire kennels (same difference). When my cousin's dog had puppies, he kept her and the nursing puppies in a kennel, which I think is the primary source of the image. The little pink escapees, however, goes much further back, to a time when I kept hamsters as a child. The cage we had was made with chicken wire, and though the hamsters could not escape the babies slipped through and out onto the floor--my mother discovered several squirming beneath the couch beside the cage as she swept.
#4. My mother has a bizarre knack for fitting massive numbers of things in very tight spaces. I find it disturbing and unnatural when I'm awake too.
#5. I pointed out to friends before going to bed something that an actor on "That '70s Show" had written elsewhere. I think that's why two characters from the show appeared in my dream, though the golfing is still a mystery. The old man might have come from another show ("Malcolm in the Middle") or might simply have been an obnoxious old man, I can't say for sure. I recognized no one else, either from life or TV.
#6. The state of disrepair in the restroom, the mention of flooding in the basement and construction outside, probably comes back to the need for repairs in my own bathroom. I have been pondering replacing a leaking faucet myself but worry about making things worse.
#7. I did not use the toilet in the dream. There's no excuse offered in the logic of the story, like the toilet was dirty or I no longer had to go, or I went and just blurred it out; I simply did not use it. I don't know if it works this way for others or not, but for me toilets are an obvious signal that I really, really need to wake up. Sitting down on a toilet in a dream has unpleasant waking consequences...
#8. Why do I point out the race of the women in the elevator and the teens in the restroom? In part because when God first appeared in my dreams, it was as a black woman, so I've become a bit sensitized to race in my dreams.
The first part took place at a shopping mall movie theater and a mall restroom, located arond a looping corner of pristine white balcony. It involved an older man, presumably a shopper at one of the stores along that balcony. He was one of those obnoxious older people that thinks they have some innate authority over others, and he tried to boss me around despite the fact that I was not his child, it was not his store, my activities were not bothering him (he had to go out of his way to even notice me), and it was none of his business anyway. I think he yelled at me to "Come back here!" or "Get away from there!" as I trotted to the bathroom, along with "Don't you run in here!" perhaps.
The second part of the dream was unrelated. My mother decided she wanted to send my friend
Afi a rabbit, and showed me the white bunny with grey points that she had bought to send her. I held the large Federal Express envelope that she pulled the rabbit out of (though I don't think the rabbit was delivered by mail) and noticed movement. When I looked down, a golden Syrian hamster was poking his head out of the top of the envelope. I showed my mother and as she told me she knew nothing about it the envelope wriggled in my hands and I noticed a juvenile hamster's rear end poking through a hole in the bottom of the envelope, legs pumping frantically in mid-air.At this point I thought back on buying feeder fish for my pond last year, and the way the young employee scooped out a number, eyeballed it and labelled the bag twenty, while it was actually more like forty fish. I thought to myself that the pet store employee must have done the same thing: scooped out a rabbit, eyeballed it, and dumped it in the envelope and called it one rabbit while in reality it was one rabbit and a couple of hamsters. I mentally tsked at the carelessness of some people these days.
As I was daydreaming my mother had lost track of the rabbit and two guinea pigs. Somewhere in the course of things, the number of animals she had purchased to send to Afi had jumped from one rabbit to one rabbit and two guinea pigs, though we intended to send the hamsters along too because, well, what were we going to do with them? More for Afi, s'all good, right? What's a rodent or two more?
We were in the front bedroom that my sister previously shared with her girlfriend and their many pets, and Mom and I began to look among the cages for the rabbit and guinea pigs. In one cage a dog lay nursing puppies which looked like overgrown pink baby hamsters (along with several fullgrown hamsters as well), and I noticed several puppies that had fallen out between the bars of the cage onto the floor or into other cages. I retrieved them and began to put them back in when I noticed that they were smaller than the other puppies there. I looked around and there was another dog in another cage that had puppies, and I guessed that I had put the puppies in with the wrong mother, and began to sort them out.
Before I got much of that done Mom called for my attention. She had gotten the rabbit, the guinea pigs, and several other rodents that had appeared out of nowhere, all of them white with grey points, tucked away in a cage far too small for them, despite the rabbit nibbling at her at every given opportunity. She was proud of herself but I was annoyed, as the cage was far too small for them and yet too large to mail, and where were we going to fit the two !@$%& hamsters that I was still holding?
The third part of the dream, again unconnected to the previous part, began with me calling friends to see if they wanted to hang out and see a movie, but all of them had other plans. The last person I called was Jackie from "That '70s Show," who told me she was going golfing. I decided to go by myself, and as I sat down in the theater I noticed Jackie and Fez (another character from the show) seated several rows back nearer the aisle. I was happy to see them and debated getting up to sit with them or just saying hello when Jackie noticed me and began worrying at Fez because she had told me she'd be elsewhere. Would I be mad at her or think I was avoiding her?
I don't know if she was avoiding me, or if her plans simply fell through, and I decided against going over to say hello and ask. At first I was slightly amused by the situation, but as she went on and on I finally stood up, said to her and anyone else listening, "It's okay, I'll leave," and walked out. Though it sounded huffy I did not intend to be dramatic and was not upset; it simply was not important to me to stay there and see the movie, and I thought leaving would be easier for both of us. A few patrons made approving remarks at my choice, a few were glad because it would shut her up (she was ruining the movie!), and a few more threw snarky 'dramaqueen' remarks my way. As I left I thought about going back to explain things so they'd see it wasn't like that, but it seemed to be more trouble than it was really worth. They didn't know me, I'd probably never see them again, and then I'd be ruining the movie for others. Besides, what did they care about the hubbub between me and Jackie? They weren't involved.
I made my way to the restroom again, and the obnoxiously bossy man stepped out into the balcony ahead of me with a smug and victorious smirk upon his face. He was wearing a security guard's uniform and I thought it was just like him to get a job as a guard just so he'd have an excuse to go out of his way to bother me. I slowed down far enough away from him that he had no reason to take me aside for a talking to, which took some of his win away, but my mood was killed and my sense of direction confused. When I reached the alcove that should have contained doors to the restrooms, it instead held two elevators and doors to a stairwell. Two heavyset black women in the elevator laughed at my confusion and shooed me away from the doors so they could go upstairs and continue their shopping, and I turned into one of the cramped, dingy and poorly lit corridors off of the alcove.
Near the firedoors at the end I found another restroom, its door half blocked by a protrusion from the wall that might have been a fuse box or section of ducts. I slipped inside, passed a black teen standing at the unusual fountain that served as the room's only sink, and waited for her friend to step out of the room's only stall. Inside the toilet was also half blocked by a protrusion, but after some investigation I realized that it rotated away from the wall. I rotated it back into place and stepped out into the restroom again, where the two girls were washing their hands. One then handed the other a wrench, and I asked if the sink was broken. She replied that it was but it was no problem, she had gotten it working, but it couldn't be left on or it would flood the basement. I remembered then that there had been construction outside the mall near the underground parking lot (in the first part of the dream), so this made sense.
The girl needed someone to rotate part of the handle as she worked the wrench, so I tried to lend a hand. I turned it the wrong way, however, and sent a new burst of spray out and into the girl's face. Embarrassed I stepped back to get out of the way before I made things even worse than I already had, but the girl didn't complain or blame me. She closed her eyes against the water, set her jaw, and continued to concentrate on the wrench and the fountain.
Notes and explanatory details
#1. The corridor and confrontation in part one reminds me of an incident from a few years back which has recently been on my mind, in which several students from a school group tried to cut in line at a museum exhibit, their irresponsible teachers tried to justify it by pointing out that they were from a Christian school (and therefore apparently allowed) and besides, we were cursing! In the end they still had to get the hell out of line and wait for everyone in their group to show up instead of letting their kids cut ahead of everyone else willy-nilly, the little bastards.
#2. My mother does indeed intend to send my hamsterphile friend several gifts, because my mother is strange and has adopted her. She's not sending live animals, however, but rather a slew of hamster-related items like stickers and such. So why a white rabbit in the dream? Because during a visit to a pet store last fall my mother cooed over the bunnies and debating buying one--white with grey markings--for herself, ultimately deciding against it. I point out that the hamster in the envelope was a golden Syrian because to Afi such things matter.
#3. I say that the dogs and puppies were in cages, but in reality they were wire kennels (same difference). When my cousin's dog had puppies, he kept her and the nursing puppies in a kennel, which I think is the primary source of the image. The little pink escapees, however, goes much further back, to a time when I kept hamsters as a child. The cage we had was made with chicken wire, and though the hamsters could not escape the babies slipped through and out onto the floor--my mother discovered several squirming beneath the couch beside the cage as she swept.
#4. My mother has a bizarre knack for fitting massive numbers of things in very tight spaces. I find it disturbing and unnatural when I'm awake too.
#5. I pointed out to friends before going to bed something that an actor on "That '70s Show" had written elsewhere. I think that's why two characters from the show appeared in my dream, though the golfing is still a mystery. The old man might have come from another show ("Malcolm in the Middle") or might simply have been an obnoxious old man, I can't say for sure. I recognized no one else, either from life or TV.
#6. The state of disrepair in the restroom, the mention of flooding in the basement and construction outside, probably comes back to the need for repairs in my own bathroom. I have been pondering replacing a leaking faucet myself but worry about making things worse.
#7. I did not use the toilet in the dream. There's no excuse offered in the logic of the story, like the toilet was dirty or I no longer had to go, or I went and just blurred it out; I simply did not use it. I don't know if it works this way for others or not, but for me toilets are an obvious signal that I really, really need to wake up. Sitting down on a toilet in a dream has unpleasant waking consequences...
#8. Why do I point out the race of the women in the elevator and the teens in the restroom? In part because when God first appeared in my dreams, it was as a black woman, so I've become a bit sensitized to race in my dreams.
