food sculpture

Part of last night's dream was about (of course) being on a group trip and getting ready to go somewhere. It was a large group, and I don't remember who was in it, where we were, or the purpose of the trip. The getting-ready part involved finding a bathroom, getting the bathroom fit to use (some shower-curtain difficulties), trying to arrange all my cosmetic equipment (which, in the dream, was much more plentiful than in real life), and forgetting several times to bring crucial items into the bathroom with me and having to go and retrieve them from wherever the rest of my things were. Also, I had a eureka revelation that I needed to remove all of my travel toiletries from their case and re-evaluate everything before each trip, because I had ended up with a lot of extraneous stuff and almost-empty containers.

The other part was less predictable. Still on the trip, I commented to a real-life coworker that her husband was "cute" [I met him yesterday]. She sighed and started talking about how he had been unemployed for quite a while and wasn't making any effort to find another job, and I realized I had stepped on a conversational landmine.

Then, the trip apparently over, I was at work and the same coworker brought a gift to my desk. It was something she was giving everyone in the office in honor of some holiday I hadn't been aware of. It was a surreal sculpture consisting of a chicken (cooked or uncooked, I wasn't sure), with all manner of small raw vegetable pieces stuck into the skin to make it into a whimsical rabbit-like animal. Small pieces of carrot made up the "fur", and other vegetables were used as facial features. The overall effect was like a very strange stuffed animal, and I wasn't sure what to do with it. Should I cook and eat it? Use it as a decoration? I played with it a little at my desk, trying to seem appreciative because she was very excited about these creatures. I tried to figure out if it was pre-cooked or not, and came to the conclusion that it was cooked just enough to be technically done, but still uncooked enough that one could bake it longer to cook the surface vegetables and make a nice crust on the meat itself. Then she commented that she didn't think it was "food safe", and that it was just a decoration that would last a few days, for whatever holiday this was. It was very confusing, and I also realized after waking up that it was way too light-weight to be an actual chicken.

Driving, mountains, hairspray

I was in the car with my parents, and we were driving by what I recognized as Mount Rainier. It was much smaller, though, and I could see a path leading up the side of it with people climbing. It was sunny outside, but the summit of the mountain was shrouded in clouds. My dad was talking about how it was his mountain and he had a favorite special spot, and how he loved climbing it. But we passed two exits and didn't stop; I think it had something to do with the fact that although it was a nice day, it would be cold and cloudy at the top.

We continued up a winding road that is a recurring theme in my dreams. There were concrete barriers along the side, and in addition to some nicely done graffiti, there were huge oil paintings hanging, like a gallery. They weren't all that great, but they also weren't terrible, and I wondered if people ever just took them.

We got to a hotel, and in the bathroom I looked at my hair. It was very short, somewhat straighter, and kind of awesome. My red streak was particularly prominent. My mom had left some hairspray on the counter, which had an aerosol nozzle attached to kind of a structured mylar bag. I used some to preserve my totally awesome hair day.

I left the bathroom and found a birthday present my brother's roommate had sent to me--sort of a homemade scrapbook. I realized that she was quite poor, and that this was a thoughtful gift.

$11,000 bill

Last night I dreamed that the company I work for had informally engaged Karl Rove in some advisory capacity. I was at a coworker's house with a few other coworkers, and everyone was in a tizzy because Karl was apparently about to drop by. It was his birthday, and our boss thought that we should give him a birthday gift. I don't know who had gotten the card, but I was charged with putting card and gift together and getting everyone's signature on the card. Another coworker was supposed to get the gift, which turned out to be 3 $20 bills, a Wal-Mart gift card, and...an $11,000 bill! The $11,000 bill was very, very pretty, and we were all admiring it, having never had occasion to handle one before (or indeed, even be aware that such a thing existed). It was mostly a traditional green and white, but with really pretty metallic bronze accents (and maybe a touch of purple?). Needless to say, I thought that it was an excessive birthday gift, but no one dared express that.

Baby Gifts

One of my mom's friends was pregnant, so my mom bought her some baby gifts, like 2 entire dressers full. We called her to tell her to come over, but she never showed up. Finally my mom left and The Boyfriend and I were hanging out with the gifts. I held up a brightly colored boat and asked why they would buy that. He laughed and said that I'd have to play with it to see. It was some sort of magically contraption that used magnets to pull the boat through the water so the baby could follow it.
He then informed me that you could stack broccoli between the boat and the magnet, or any veggie really, and it would still work. He was really excited, but I didn't understand why you would put broccoli in a toy that went underwater.
Finally my mom's friend arrived. The Boyfriend thought we should hide. I thought that was rude and that we should open the door, but not let her see the gifts. But she busted through anyway and walked into my bedroom to see the gifts.
She was like a movie version of a high powered executive. Ordering us around, talking on her cell phone, power suit, all of that instead of the nice suburban mom I remembered.
And then the alarm went off.