in which I dabble in the Albanian underworld

Well. After yesterday's extremely mundane dream, last night I had a pretty wild one. Following a bit of conversation about the Balkans yesterday, I dreamed that I was in Albania. Not only was I in Albania, but I was--wait for it--dealing drugs.

I'm not sure how I came to be in Albania, but I had our (real-life) old Jaguar with me (this will come up again later). Despite having transportation, though, I was stuck because I didn't have enough money to leave the country. So, logically, I turned to dealing drugs to make a quick buck (or lek, as the case may be).

I don't know how I made the acquaintance of the local underworld figures, but I had ended up as sort of a freelancer, only dealing with them in an off-hand way. I think I was obligated to turn over some kind of "tax" to ensure that they wouldn't meddle in my affairs. I also got my drugs from them. Of course they fit the exact mental image you'd have of a small-time Albanian Bad Guy: greasy hair, gold necklaces, track suits, unfortunate choice of headwear.

At one point I was in the lair of my drug provider to get re-supplied. There were several young women/girls in various states of intoxication and undress--it was obvious that they were working in a state of semi slavery, serving both as prostitutes, sex slaves, and drug customers. One of the gangsters was beating one of them up*, and I was trying to think of a way to get these girls out of the situation, while realizing that most of them were too addicted to participate in any way in their extrication.

During this same visit, while the guy I was dealing with was otherwise occupied, I started idly examining some of the wares on the table. I wasn't sure what it all was, not having any experience in that area myself. There was a pink package with some pink plastic objects resembling short pens (the labeling and packaging style was very Feminine Hygiene Product**). They had a little hole near one end, which I deduced was supposed to be sucked on or inhaled to get a hit. I tried it once, and got enough of an indefinable sensation to remind myself that rule number one was always that a successful dealer didn't consume the goods.

One of the most noticeable things about the dream was the feeling of being in a dangerous situation but of being tough and "bad-ass" enough to not be worried about the gangsters trying to mess with me (where this came from, I don't know, since I'm not exactly a toughie in real life). The scariest moments were two encounters, while in or near my car, with a group of young knife-wielding Roma boys intent on carjacking my car (I put that down to a stereotype about them favoring Mercedes and Jaguars). They were significantly scarier than the grown-up gangsters, but I managed to evade them both times.

In the end, the dream wound down in a fairly tiresome way. I had met up with some random young-ish American(-ish?) dream acquaintances, and we were all hanging around waiting for something undefined. I think we were waiting to be able to leave the country, although I don't know what specific event was going to allow us to leave. I finally got tired of them and their uninteresting and stupid conversation and went off by myself.

So there's another one to add to my collection of dreams dealing with unsavory themes. In my defense, I don't actually remember selling any drugs to anyone, and I remember having a philosophy of not introducing new users to drugs.


*In an interesting twist, I'm positive that this brutalization was inspired by that recent video of the guy stomping on the moveon.org protester's head. He used the exact same foot action.
**I was surprised to note a manufacturer's name and address in China; I hadn't thought that a manufacturer of illegal drugs (in my mind, this was some new exotic form of crack) would label their products as if they were, say, something you'd buy at Wal-Mart.

zombie lambs

I had a really weird and disturbing dream just before waking up this morning. I wasn't clear on all the details, and I think there were some double meanings/significances that I barely caught at the time but now can't remember.

It started out nicely enough. I was in a beautiful open field that sloped up on three sides to more wooded areas (there was a road in the distance at the uppermost point). I was just walking slowly and enjoying the scenery when I noticed a deer. At first I thought it would run away as I approached, but it didn't because it was very intently searching for something. Rather creepily, it almost brushed me as it went past in its quest.

I was a little alarmed and hoped that it didn't have some kind of dangerous rabies-like illness that was causing it to throw caution to the wind, but I soon realized that she (it was a she) was looking for her fawn. Just when I realized this, the fawn hopped into sight, but kept on going after something further up the hill.

It turned out that the fawn was going toward what looked like a group of lambs. All very idyllic, right? Almost syrupy-sweet? BUT. When it got to the group of lambs, I saw that they were writhing around on the ground in various zombie-like states (I guess my fears of a malicious infection were well-grounded, if misplaced). Some were motionless, apparently having died from their malady, others were wriggling around weakly, and still others were aggressively jumping at the fawn and trying to bite it.

As if that weren't disturbing enough, I suddenly found that I was responsible for either a small child or an animal (a dog? a kitten?). I really can't remember what my child/pet was, exactly, but I suddenly had to protect some sort of relatively helpless being from the zombie lambs. The whole thing was extremely creepy. I think some of the animals may have had speaking parts too, but I can't remember what they may have said.

morbid curiosity and other things

last night's dream was prompted by some time i spent on facebook prior to going to sleep. through facebook i learned about a friend of friends who passed away on sunday. it appears he has had a rough couple of years emotionally and the death may have been a suicide or an accidental overdose... no one knows yet.

i never knew this man but morbid curiosity took over and i spent a good amount of time piecing together his story through the wonders (?) of social media. i was sad to learn that he left behind two young boys and that led me to dream about holding a sobbing boy in my arms as he mourned the loss of his father. it was a rather gut-wrenching dream. upon waking up i realized that this is the third (at least) dream i have had where i remember comforting a sobbing child.

*****

today i spent the day with the department i work with at a retreat. which means lots of time together in one room. when i came home i immediately fell asleep and had a dream that one of my coworkers was blind. my interaction with him as a blind man was very detailed and i thought it was a rather strange thing to dream.

Classic Group Trip

I had what I might call the Classic Group Trip Dream last night (as opposed to all those dreams where being on a group trip is just one background fact among many). I was on a trip to India with some random dream people and some random real-life past and present acquaintances. We were crowded (very crowded!) into an older van with a dark red interior, going very slowly through some kind of border crossing or checkpoint. I was extremely uncomfortable because we were so crammed in, and I turned to the guy next to me, a rather prim Indian guy who was the de facto group leader and asked him if it would be okay if I put my feet up on the dash to give myself some more room. He was shocked--shocked!--that I would suggest such a thing, and said that he couldn't countenance it because the van belonged to a couple he knew. He then (possibly hoping to soften the blow of refusal?) added that the couple were originally from Mali but were now running a church in the U.S. for Indians. I responded enthusiastically that I was very interested in Mali, grasping at straws to both diffuse my apparent brazen disrespect for their dashboard and to distract myself from boredom and physical discomfort with the odd coincidence of West Africans running an Indian church in the U.S.

There was an unsettling subplot after that in which I was suddenly saddled with the responsibility of looking after several small children, who kept wandering away (I had to sternly warn one of them about the dangers of wandering off down an alley).

oh boy (literally!)

My brain is definitely responding to my fear of having more adolescent dreams and/or dreams about young boys*. The very night after the washing-machine dream, I dreamed that I was in a church-ish setting. I think they were having church, but there were some other things going on too, garage-sale sort of things outside. There was an old wooden Middle-America church-ish building with a high porch, and the inside where the church service was actually taking place there was also a balcony in the entrance, where you could stay and look over the proceedings without committing yourself to going in and sitting down.

When I was still outside, I saw a very small boy with curly hair who appeared to be lost. I didn't see any corresponding adults around, so I thought I should try to help him find his people. As soon as I approached him he darted away and was replaced by an older boy, maybe 10 or 11, with straight dark hair.

This older boy also claimed to be lost, and although I didn't have quite the same urgent feelings of concern for him, he was still young enough that he should know where his parents were, and vice versa. So I walked around with him a little outside, and we didn't find any parents. We then went inside and stood on the balcony, and I started to get the distinct impression that he was sticking around more because he had a crush on me than anything else**. I wasn't sure what I should do, whether I should continue the [somewhat fruitless-seeming] search for his parents; whether I should just stand there and listen to him talk, thus encouraging him; or whether I should just start completely ignoring him and hope that he would go away. In the meantime I realized that he seemed older than he had outside, and that, indeed, his voice had changed from preadolescent to adolescent. This freaked me out a little.

An unrelated but interesting detail was that there were food vendors in the back of the church. Someone had converted an old chicken coop to a portable stand for selling what they called “oeufs caillés”***. They were eggs cooked somewhere between soft- and hard-boiled, in the unbroken shells, but when one got to the yolk it had been transformed into soft little spheres the size of the big tapioca pearls in bubble tea. There were two versions, just plain lightly sweetened, and chocolate (although the white in the chocolate version was still white). The operators of the stand had set it up so that it was self-service, thus cleverly avoiding offending anyone with compunctions about buying and selling in the church building. I thought the whole thing was very clever, although I wasn't sure how much I liked the eggs in question.


*Not that kind of dream. Really.
**Wait! This is the second dream I can recall dealing with underage boys having inappropriate crushes on me IN CHURCH. What is going on?
***I don't think such a thing exists. Literally it would be "curdled/clotted/coagulated eggs", and a search doesn't show up anything. However, there are "oeufs de caille", or quail eggs; but the eggs in the dream were definitely chicken, not quail****.
****Wait! Eggs. Is this whole thing really about my biological clock? Is my brain really that twisted that it's presenting me with these weird parallel themes of pursuit and procreation? Does my brain fancy itself a controversial Italian movie director from the 60s or something?

anthony bourdain strikes again

All I can remember from last night's dreams are that Anthony Bourdain showed up again, which alarmed me a little. I don't think he had a major role, just a short cameo appearance. The main plotline involved a huge boulder-like formation of very hard red clay. At irregular intervals it would turn orange and then change to a pudding-like or jello-like texture, which was dangerous for anyone who didn't get off as soon as the color started changing (I think there was also a warning siren). There were a couple of kids playing on it, and some panic about where they were and whether they would manage to get off in time or were too absorbed in their play to notice the warning. There was also someone who had a big drilling machine* and was getting ready to drill into the rock/clay/pudding. Maybe that was where Anthony Bourdain came in--maybe he was the guy with the drill?

On looking at this written out, I feel like I should issue a disclaimer: I am not obsessed with Anthony Bourdain, and the part about drilling should not be interpreted in a...let's say Freudian...manner.


*I blame this part on the fact that we recently bought some used drill stem to use as fence posts.

Parting of the Young Crowd

In an old building - maybe an old hotel. I walked up 2-3 flights of stairs. As I leave the stairwell, I see a White woman with a her toddler in a jogging stroller. She eyes me suspiciously. I hear her say to the child, "We have to take the stairs because the elevator is so slow." Just as I leave the stairwell, I hear the ding of the elevator and think to myself, "If she had only been patient." I hop on the elevator and take it up to another floor. There are lots of people standing in the hallway. It is hot and the building has no air conditioning. I see a Black family - mom, dad and two teenagers - standing outside a door (from now on the rest of the characters are Black). They are locked out of their room and waiting for someone to come and open the door. I was with my friend, CC and two other people. A small crowd gathered behind us. We had to walk through the other side of the building (the east side) in order to continue going up. The buildings were connected via a covered glass walkway with two sets of glass doors. I could see through to the other side of the building - a larger crowd of young people were on the east side waiting to pass through to go downstairs. The east side crowd outnumbered the people behind me on the west side of the building. I looked back to see if there was an exit sign pointing to another stairwell. I asked the mom of the locked out family if there was another stairwell. She said something like, "I wish. That would be too easy."

I looked ahead of me at the crowd of youngsters on the other side. There was no way both groups could pass through the hall at the same time. Since our group was smaller, I thought we could pass through first and then they could be free to walk through to the other side. I pushed my way forward to the west side glass doors and pressed a button to talk through a speaker. I asked the kids on the other side to stand back and make room for us to pass through first, and then, we would return the favor. I saw the kids move to the sides of the hall and make a pathway in the middle for us to go through. Before I went through the doors, I asked the mom to make sure the other group had space to walk through the hallway like they were giving us, but when I looked behind me, I realized that may not be necessary since there weren't many people on our side of the hall and we could pass through easily to the other side. I started my way down the walkway to the east side. My nephew (or another kid) was with me. The rest of our group stayed behind the west side glass doors to see what would happen. The glass door on the other side opened automatically as we approached. At first, the kids were making room, then a few of them started spilling back inside the middle. I paused and then moved back to the other side of the door. I had to press a button to force the door to close. I looked behind me - the people on the west side were still behind the doors, watching to see if I could get through. I turned around and spoke into the speaker at the east side doors. I told the kids I was going to give them time to settle down and regroup - to make space for us again. The kids calmed down and then made a path for us to walk through. I hit the button again and the doors opened. My nephew and I walked through the crowd. The kids looked excited, though not to see us. We walked through the crowd to the top of the hill, and then, turned around to look down on the others as they passed through. My friend, CC and the other people in our group, walked through - waving to the crowd. The kids were jumping up and down as if my friends were celebrities that they had been waiting to see.

midwestern girls

I dreamed last night that I had started dating a boy I had an obsessive but fruitless crush on in elementary school (the one who was messing with the coffeemaker in the other night's dream)*. [Obviously I wasn't married in this dream.] I was at my parents' house getting to ready to go to their church; it was going to be our public "coming out" as a couple and I was stressed out about it, not least because I wasn't sure how I had come to be half a couple with him and because I wasn't sure I wanted to be. Also, he had two small children, and it occurred to me that maybe he just wanted a nursemaid for them. And at some point I saw a picture of his ex-wife and she was really beautiful, which further stressed me out (I was sure he must not be over her and anxious about being compared to her). Oh, and I didn't like his hair very much, but it occurred to me that since he had worn it that way since age 7 chances were very slim that he would be convinced to change it now.

Of course I was trying to pick out something to wear, and at first I thought I had a lot of great choices. The closet was full of similar printed silk dresses, some of which had really beautiful patterns and colors. I was feeling optimistic and planning to wear my red shoes when I noticed that only one dress was wearable--the others were very wrinkled, as if they had been hand-washed and drip-dried, all crinkled and crispy. Also, they had alarming huge 80s-style collars, and the red shoes turned out not to be my actual red shoes but patent-leather things with chrome buckles, which didn't really go with the dresses.

Then to my further annoyance my brain woke me up blasting "California Girls" to itself, repeating the part about midwestern girls over and over**.



*Random people tend to appear a few times in a row in my dreams, then disappear again. I think it's because I'm so puzzled as to why they appeared that they stay in my head and pop in again.
**Apart from "The Sloop John B", I am not a Beach Boys fan.

Pie, running, polka dots

I woke up dreaming about delicious pie. Upon waking, it struck me as an odd combination: blueberries, apples, and raisins, I think, all in sort of a souffle-like base--maybe something like a shoo fly pie? (I only had that once, about 15 years ago.) I poked "ooh" into the top crust with my fork tines, apparently to show someone my appreciation. Did I mention that it was delicious?

Before that, I dreamed that I had gone running with the African American family across the street--a father and about seven kids of varying ages. The street in question was the one I lived on with my parents in Portland, although the neighbor family has no precedent in reality. Before we went running, I had somehow gotten sucked into some sort of baseball game with them.

And before THAT, there was to be a wedding. I don't remember whose, but we were getting ready. Or, my mom was getting ready and I was entertaining a small girl in a shopping cart who had a volume of Childcraft. I was excited to read to her about Frog and Toad. On the bed, I noticed a strange little leotard garment. It was silky, black with white polka dots and fluttery sleeves. Then, a short-ish teenager who I recognized as a celebrity, and who had long bleached-blond hair, picked up the garment and put it on (or, rather, it materialized on her; I don't remember any dressing involved). In the dream, I thought she might be Ashlee Simpson, although, as is usual when I dream about a celebrity, a Google afterward indicated how wrong I was. On her, the little leotard thing (which apparently she was going to wear to the wedding) also had odd pink ruffles. She said, excitedly, "How do I look?" I replied (quite diplomatically, I thought!), "No one could wear it like you!"

Cats and Chickens

I dreamed that I was walking home from work/school, but not in this town, nor in any town I've lived in. I was walking through the neighborhood streets, looking at houses, when I noticed a sign on a street corner. It was like a "For Rent" sign, but it said "Piano for Sale" at the top in large, black letters. Underneath, however, was a long-ish paragraph of smaller writing. I stopped and read it, but all I can remember now is that the author(s) made a point of saying that they'd "been up for three days straight."

I was intrigued by the piano sale, but I continued on home because I knew that there were visitors waiting for me. A relative (in the dream, no one in real life) and her two small daughters were there: one girl about 6 or 7 and a toddler, about 2. I decided to take the girls on a walk and go back and see about this piano sale. For some reason we decided to take a chicken with us on the walk.

As we arrived at the piano sale house, we found three young, tall, thin guys lounging in the yard, as though resting after working hard. One was a tall black guy with dreadlocks and the other two were white. They nodded as we walked up to the door. An older, rounder, balding white man let us in. As we explained that we were interested in the piano, he showed it to us. It was an electronic, Clavinova-type piano and was, rather than the usual black, a wood-grained brown. I commented, "at least it's not black."

He asked us what we would be willing to pay, and at this point the six-year-old turned out to be a shrewd bargainer. She was signaling to me when to name prices and when to shut up. He mentioned $3000 and I regretfully responded that all I had to spend was $1200, when in fact me and the little girl both knew it was $1500.

During the negotiations, however, I became aware that the chicken had at some point turned into an extremely ill-tempered cat, which was trying to claw and bite everyone within reach. I was trying to hold this cat down by the scruff of its neck while continuing to bargain with the bald guy, but the cat was writhing and growling, clawing at my arms and hands. A few times it slipped from my grasp, but the tall, thin, young guy with dreadlocks would capture it each time and return it to me. It was very distracting, painful, and frustrating.

A White Christmas

My dream started in the middle of a Christmas party. I was at my parents house up north, and the house was bustling with all sorts of people. All of a sudden I found myself babysitting this 4 yr old child (I used to babysit him when I was a teenager; he used to live in the neighborhood). He was having so much fun running around. I sat with him, played with him, talked to him, hugged him, and carried him around. In the midst of his adventures my parents' house he started walking on the top of the couch. My dad caught him and told me to tell him to stop, I did, and suddenly I started calling him a different name "Brandon". He didn't seem to mind, but as I told him, I noticed my father sitting on top of the couches. Musing to myself that this seemed hypocritical, I rolled my eyes and then went back to playing around with the child. His mother was supposed to come over and pick him up but we wanted to surprise her.
Before she came over I noticed the tree was now done from being trimmed with decorations and white snow. I marveled at how beautiful it was with "Brandon".
Suddenly someone came over. We were hiding in the dark so I couldn't tell who it was. We thought it was Brandon's mother, but it was my sister. We still said "surprise", and she came into the party, and started talking with me, my mom, and my dad about her life. I didn't want to be around her because she started to smell with the odor of old oil, so I quickly ducked away. And then I woke up.

get away from my dream, brangelina!

{I'm annoyed sometimes at how many of the same boxes my dreams check. This one checked most of them (school, group trip, career-related anxiety, procrastination, celebrities, family members).}

In the beginning of the dream I was somehow in school. It was neither college nor high school, really, more or a career-related thing (Remedial Career Planning?). We were either getting ready to go on or already on a group trip (I should just omit mentioning this and let the reader assume that, unless otherwise specified, all my dreams involve group trips). We were being assigned specific projects by a teacher/adviser, and when my turn came I was delighted to be assigned to design a coloring book featuring Texas wildflowers. The adviser hinted that it was in line with my interests in art and plants, and that I was wasting my abilities and should take advantage of this project to Get Ahead in My Career. I was really looking forward to it, but stressed at the same time because I had a sinking feeling that I was just going to procrastinate forever and either do a terrible job or not do it at all.

Against that cheerful backdrop, we arrived at Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's house (/compound?). It was supposedly outside New Orleans, but the scenery was very western. The house and various other buildings were in a grassy area nestled against some small hills. Behind one part of the house was a big ravine with a magnificent view of a canyon and distant hills (more on this later). I was with an undefined group, but my parents and sister were also there. My sister wanted to take pictures, more because she liked the place than because she wanted celebrity-related pictures. We were both rather upset when I realized that my camera was still broken and that I hadn't brought any other cameras.

I think we were there for a meal of some sort, but it was pretty clear that our presence was an inconvenience, and the meal didn't happen. A haggard Brad Pitt was chasing a bunch of kids around. Angelina never did make an appearance. Brad gave some of us a perfunctory tour of the place, although when we got to the actual house it was obvious that he didn't want to show us the inside, and hadn't really been planning to--it was completely chaotic.

By "actual house", I mean a small old semi-renovated house with bedrooms for all the kids. There were apparently common living and dining rooms elsewhere, possibly in the adjacent newly-constructed house where Michelle Obama's mother was staying with the Obama offspring. She was very cute, pleasant and spunky. Her bedroom looked out over the wonderful canyon/hills view, and she said, "I'm a low-wage woman, and look where I'm living! Look at what a view I have!" I wasn't sure why she and her granddaughters were living there, but everyone seemed to think it made perfect sense.

In addition to the two houses, there were several other buildings, some of them very weird. I was looking at one, a glass building filled with strange apparatuses and tube-like structures, and thinking it was really neat and had great potential when Brad wandered up, apparently having escaped all the children for a minute. He explained to me that the property had been a cleaning business (dry-cleaning, etc.), and that one of the reasons they had bought it was to take advantage of the cleaning-related buildings to modify them into something architecturally interesting. He got very excited talking about it, and seemed to shake off his haggardness for the first time.

I think there may have been some press people there then, because all the kids started posing for pictures, piling up on top of each other. They were stacked like pancakes, flat on their backs, but just before the picture could be taken the top couple of kids toppled off. Brad seemed rather stressed about having to get them all stacked up again.

It Was Almost Like A Movie That I Was Watching From Above

I was looking down into a field on a breezy summer day -- a field filled with miles upon miles of endless multicolored daisies. I came to rest upon a scene of a very young girl and boy running. The girl's hair flowed with the wind as she and the boy enjoyed a game of tag. Over the next several minutes they laughed amongst calls of "You're it," and "No, you are!" Suddenly they disappeared and the field was once again quiet and serene. An odd feeling came over me as I reflected on this. I realized that they'd just been playing on my unmarked grave.

building! exploded!

i was at a roof-top party in downtown orlando. it was nighttime and it was a family-type party, or maybe a church family type party. my family was there but they were mingled in with everyone else. i was on the far side of the rooftop playing with a group of little kids. we had music blaring and we were dancing around and being all silly and jovial.

then, i caught a glimpse of something strange out of the corner of my eye. it was the sunbank building (i'm not even sure if it's still called 'sunbank' but it's the building with the pyramids on top that my old architecture firm employer's office is in) that was about a 1/2 mile away. i'm not sure why it caught my eye but i immediately knew that something bad was about to happen.

then, the building exploded. it was very loud and dramatic. and THEN the rest of downtown began to ripple like an ocean wave as a result of the explosion. the ripple was heading in our direction and i knew that when it hit us it would have terrible effects. i quickly grabbed the children around me and huddled into a corner with them waiting for the destruction. but the ripple stopped short of hitting us. it knocked out all of the power in the city and there was screaming and chaos all around but those of us on the rooftop were safe.

therapeutic screaming?

i was visiting the home of a blog friend who i've never met in person. it was her and her young son and then some other faceless people. me and her son and the faceless others were sitting at this small table with short legs - obviously a child's table. i was across from the boy.

the boy got upset, as children do, about something seemingly insignificant. he started banging his open hands on the table and screaming and crying (but without tears). i instinctively knew that his upset wasn't really about the insignificant issue - rather it was built up anger and sadness about the on-going divorce and custody battle his parents are embroiled in.

i watched him throw this tantrum and i saw the faceless others move in to try and shush and soothe him. but somehow i just knew what he needed and it was to really cry and scream and be allowed to be angry. and then i found myself joining in his tantrum. i started banging my hands on the table and screaming as well. my behavior shocked him for a moment and he stopped. he gave me an irritated and confused look. i said come on! don't stop! let's get this out! i'll do it with you... let's scream and cry! he looked at me like i was crazy and then he decided to take me up on it.

this time there were real tears on his face. and i noticed warm tears rolling down my cheeks. we screamed and cried together. and then we laughed.

more clothes complications

I had another nightmare-type dream last night that I was sure I was going to remember, but unfortunately I went back to sleep and it's been eclipsed with what I dreamed later.

In this later dream, I was back in school (high school?), and I was wearing a shortish plaid Catholic-schoolgirl type skirt. {It was actually a skirt I really had about ten years ago, and in reality it was a really nice wool skirt.} I don't remember much about the school scenario except that I had a turquoise velvet coat which I might or might not have had on the whole time (this becomes important later). We only had a couple of hours of classes because it was a holiday, and so around 11:00 I decided to go to the local art museum. It turned out to be more of a community center than anything else, with lots of people there that you wouldn't normally picture in an art museum--in fact, I don't remember seeing any art once I got inside, although they had a fair amount of children's play equipment. I wanted to go to the bathroom, but when I got inside all I could see were several homeless-looking men (just hanging out), so I started to leave, but an older woman (also just hanging out) called to me from the back that it was a unisex bathroom, and to come on in. I had taken my coat off and happened to look in the mirror; and I saw to my extreme alarm that in the bright sunshine my lavender underwear (and everything else) was showing right through the now-extremely-transparent skirt. Of course I found this highly disturbing, so I asked a couple of younger girls if they also could see through it--and sure enough, they could. This was really mortifying, and I tried to remember if I had taken the turquoise coat off when I was at school. At that point I noticed some familiar-looking clothes hanging neatly from pegs in the bathroom and realized that they were from a load of laundry I had put in the wash at the museum/community center a week earlier and forgotten about (they also apparently had laundry facilities!).

That was pretty much the end of the dream, except for a snippet where a three-year-old boy dashed between my legs to get to his cubbyhole. I'm sure that's extremely Freudian, but I'm not dwelling on it.