the obama family p.r. tour

I dreamed that President Obama had decided to move on from town meetings to garner support and had started a goodwill campaign with his family. He was randomly selecting families to visit with refreshments and little gifts, and we were one of the first selected (I was living with various members of my family in addition to my husband).

We had been told what time they would come by, but I had put off going to the bathroom and preparing myself, and consequently had to duck in right when I heard them arriving. It took me longer than I had expected, and I was moving really slowly, to the point that the Obama daughters started to need to use the bathroom. They started knocking on the door and asking why someone was in there so long, which was quite embarassing.

When I finally came out there was a very impressive spread on the table, consisting mostly of bottles and bottles of various types of wine and champagne, with a card in front of each of them saying what they were. Most of them seemed to come from the same company and were brushed aluminum bottles* with fancy "modern" designs on them. There was also a really pretty green glass champagne bottle with art nouveau white flowers painted on it. I didn't really know what else to say, so I commented on how pretty it was. Obama picked right up like a poised social whiz and made a return comment, leaving me impressed with his social skills and unimpressed with mine. The general effect of the wine exhibit was almost as if they were presenting a brand, and I suspected that the most-represented company had had good lobbyists to get their product in the p.r. roadshow.

I was a little confused about what my role in all this was, and slightly cowed, but blown away by the collective social graces of the Obama family. They were both extremely poised and personable in their chit-chat, Mr. in a more cool, off-hand way and Mrs. in a more warm, motherly way**; and their little girls were boisterous and running around, but not in an obnoxious way. Besides being a little ill at ease, I wasn't sure what to do with my other family members. My dad, who apparently loathed Obama, had hidden himself away somewhere and was refusing to come out until they were gone. And my grandmother, who I have never heard sing in real life, was wandering around singing and ignoring everything else going on around her.

I was relieved when they left, and wondered how long they were going to keep this campaign up, because it seemed like an awful lot of work on top of their regular schedules. I thought vaguely that the idea didn't seem very well thought-out, because it had been hinted that they would be visiting every family (sort of a variation on the Chicken in Every Pot), and I suspected that someone on their team was going to realize that they hadn't calculated how long that would take.


*Yes, wine in aluminum bottles. I'm sure that works well in real life.
**Yes, my dreams hew to sex-role stereotypes. I'd like to think it's just because I've been doing a Mad Men dvd marathon.

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.