squalid group living

I guess this dream was prompted by our recent housekeeping woes (as in, lack of) and our attempts to find a leather couch that the dogs won't dirty up so much. We (my husband and I) were sharing a house with some other people, a couple of different parties consisting of two or three people. All of them were Asian (I think one party was Indian and the other, with more members, was Korean). All were either students or had "knowledge economy" type jobs*.

Anyway, my husband and I had the living room as our area, and we had never properly moved in so everything was a huge mess (you know what happens when you've run out of steam in the end stages of a move and haven't found a proper place for everything). To make things worse, we had our two dogs with us--I think they were in an indoor-outdoor living situation, and the doberman had been inside.

[At some point in the middle of this dream, the dwelling curiously transitioned into a huge construction-parts warehouse; even while dreaming I was aware that this was my subconscious's way of voicing its displeasure/overwhelm at our real-life messy house.]

Back in the actual house (not warehouse), I was trying to tidy up while my husband, who had a cold, was lying on the couch watching TV. I wasn't really upset by his lack of help because he was sick**, but I was completely overwhelmed and questioning the utility of my endeavor. I had just discovered that the dog had thrown up in several places after chewing on a rawhide (so it was that whitish, milky post-rawhide throw-up that will be familiar to dog owners).

I was trying to find something to clean up the mess (and not finding a rag, of course). In the adjacent kitchen, a couple of the Koreans were eating their breakfast, like perfect little robots: get out the food, dish it into one dish, eat it all quickly in a focused manner, quickly rinse single dish and single glass. This only increased my feelings of inferiority, since I have never been able to eat so neatly and with such little production of dirty dishes.

Breakfast tidily put away, one of the Koreans grabbed his backpack (without fumbling, of course) and started to very quickly navigate the piles of junk on his way out the front door. I panicked and tried to warn him about the dog-vomit piles, but couldn't get it out fast enough. He landed in the biggest one with his clean be-socked foot***. He was too polite to register more than the briefest expression of surprise and discomfit before he whooshed out the door, sweeping up his shoes in one smooth motion.

I never did find a rag to clean up the vomit, I just sunk into self-recrimination and amazement that the tidy Asians hadn't already kicked us out, then woke up.


*Yeah, my subconscious hews closely to racial stereotypes.
**This does at least show a departure from the trope where I start yelling at assorted family members because I'm doing all the housework.
***Because, being clean, he didn't wear shoes in the house.

ugh and ugh

I've had several unpleasant dreams lately. Here are a couple (breaking them up so as not to overload the tag limit).

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I was on yet another group trip, this time to Hong Kong, with a group made up largely of young and youngish Asian women. We had just arrived, and our first stop was a large park on the top of hill so high it might better be called a mountain. There was a spectacular view, and the mountain/hill itself was covered with green vegetation. The park was very touristy, with a gigantic parking lot, a bus station (we came by bus), and lots of touristy amenities.

Instead of confining ourselves to gawking at the scenery, we were supposed to doing a craft activity. It was one of those very specific, structured projects with little room for individual variation (I think some kind of paper folding was involved). I had been vigorously reproached by the tour guide for my clumsy American lack of politesse, grace, and social nicety, and I was trying desperately to prove my worthiness by perfectly executing the craft project. This backfired on me, though, since as a result of my care I took too long and was still working on it when the rest of the group had finished. Of course the guide was unhappy about my slowness.

After the craft fiasco, we all went to a restaurant to eat lunch. Because I had been so focused on my project, I hadn't changed my money at the nearby exchange kiosk like everyone else had, so I had no Chinese money. Since the whole place was so extremely touristy, I was clinging to the hope that they might accept payment in dollars. On entering the restaurant, which was cafeteria style, I realized that wouldn't be an option, but the extremely nice girl in front of me in line offered to pay and I could pay her back later.

So all seemed to be going reasonably well, until I tripped with my plate of food and spilled it all over. I was confused at this unexpected catastrophe, and went to get a refill. I was so shaken by my showy accident (food went all over) that I didn't stop to think that they would want payment for my replacement food. I guess I consumed it, because the next thing I remember was a confrontation with a cleaver-wielding chef who demanded payment (and not in dollars). He insinuated that I would be pursued by gangsters if I didn't pay up.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In another unpleasant dream, I was working as a secretary in a large and somewhat weird building. My boss was the woman who in real life is the boss for the business occupying the first two floors of my real-life office building. We all have the impression that she's much stricter than her predecessor, although that's not based on a lot of data.

I was working away, although my job (like my actual, real-life job) didn't require a whole lot. I wasn't actively loafing, so I had no reason to be on the lookout for a scolding of any kind, but the boss came looking for me, extremely angry. She started ranting and raving about how I couldn't "control the infrastructure". I finally realized that she was referring to some cars that were parked illegally downstairs, one in an actual space and a couple in a grassy area next to a sidewalk. None of these cars were in places where I could have seen them from any of the windows--I would have to have been outside, and thus not inside doing my job. I tried to tell her this, but there was no reasoning with her, and she insinuated that I might lose my job over not having called a tow truck*.


*In my real-life job we have limited parking space, and it falls to me to call the tow truck, which I must admit I sometimes do with relish if the car is expensive and parked directly in front of the very visible "no parking" sign. There has been some hinting on the part of a coworker that I'm mean for calling the tow truck (I actually have only called a very few times, and never for very battered, run-down cars that, to my mind, indicate someone operating on less than a full share of resources); other people are perhaps more strict than me regarding cars that don't belong there, so I feel like I'll be seen as not doing my job if I don't deal with it when a car is parked in one of our spots. Apparently this car-towing thing causes me angst than I might have thought.

mystery and intrigue!

I had a really somewhat delightful dream this morning, spanning a couple of snooze-button pushes. It's a bit hazy, but it was a very plot-twisty cloak-and-dagger sort of thing. In the beginning I think I was in a group setting, maybe a school dorm. I was going out to run some errands (for me and/or others, I'm not sure) and get something to eat. This took me to an old Asian neighborhood, very much like how I would picture an old city neighborhood in China: very narrow, warren-like streets really only suitable for pedestrians and bikes/carts.

I went into a business that seemed to be partly food-based and also a front for some other, slightly sinister enterprise. In the course of a short conversation with the people working in there, it became apparent that I had somehow been peripherally drawn into a conflict/intrigue involving a Korean group and a Chinese group. It was never clear who the groups were or what they stood for, respectively, but they were a combination of underground political movement and organized crime group.

I think I was involved on two levels: one was a specific job that I was requested to do (by what group or who, I have no idea, nor do I know what the job was), and the other was a growing journalistic/investigative curiosity and a desire to figure out what was going on and who was doing what. I got very excited indulging fantasies of "cracking" the case and "breaking" the story, and wondered how it could have taken me so long to realize that my true calling was as a spy (I was absolutely certain of that).

After leaving the Asian neighborhood, I found myself in an old apartment building, in a living room with people talking and coming and going. They were all young, and seemed to be radical underground political activists of some sort. I wasn't really involved, just there and observing (a sign that espionage was my true calling was my uncanny ability to not attract attention). The neatest part of the dream occurred during this mini-episode, and consisted partly of what was actually happening in front of me and partly of my mental images of things that had happened before that. I was watching a young man and simultaneously an image of another young man I had seen before. It slowly dawned on me that the two were the same person, but came across as completely different people through his ability to project a completely different persona just with a change in clothing, accessories, and hairstyle. It was a wonderful ah-ha moment, both because of his transformative skill and because of my delight in piecing together the fact that he was a double agent.

I arrived home ("home" being a neat old house where we apparently lived), and my husband was there puttering around in the kitchen*. I indicated to him that I needed some time to think, undisturbed, because I was on the verge of piecing together the various pieces of the puzzle to figure out exactly what was going on.

The whole thing had a wonderful atmosphere of intrigue, adventure, and danger, although the sense of danger was more enjoyable than scary. And the settings were very detailed and atmospheric too--if it were a movie I would have given a good rating to the props/costuming/cinematography people. My snooze button went off a couple of times, and each time I was determined to return to the story so I could see what was going to happen next (unfortunately I didn't ultimately figure out the mystery). The ironic part is that when watching movies involving organized crime and political intrigue, it takes a great deal of concentration for me to figure out what's going on.


*This is not someone who normally putters in the kitchen, so I don't know where that came from.