physically retarded and mealy-mouthed

I woke up this morning with the phrase "physically retarded and mealy-mouthed" ringing in my head. I don't remember the exact context, but I had been using it to describe the CEO of some large, nasty corporation. I was trying desperately to determine whether or not my terminology would be considered crass and insensitive to the actual disabled population. I decided that it was okay, since it was a figurative use (??). [This struggling over semantics happens a lot in my dreams, and I almost always end up hitting on some word combination that seems brilliant in the dream but which makes no sense on waking; or something that rhymes in the dream but that doesn't actually rhyme at all.]

I had also been dreaming about shopping for dress pants with my husband. Most of the men's selection of dress pants featured semi-flexible tabs sticking out all over, in various shades of gold and yellow. Once I was awake, I realized that they were modeled after the tabs that road crews stick on the center stripe. I have absolutely no idea where this could have come from, other than the seemingly endless road construction projects scattered along my daily route.

impulsive family members

I had a short snippet last night in which I was sitting around with my mom and some relatives. One of the relatives was my aunt, and they were discussing her daughter, my cousin Cheryl, who's always been pretty. Someone was talking about how she was bullied as a child by kids calling her ugly (not at all true as far as I know). My mother chimed in, saying, "yes, she was ugly!" I was mortified, and my aunt seemed very taken aback (you could almost hear the stunt music with the downward chromatic scale). I was trying desperately to find something to say that would make my mom's comment seem less offensive, but she carried on breezily as if nothing was amiss: "of course she's pretty now, but she sure was ugly then!"

Then I dreamed that my husband had learned to fly a helicopter. We rented one and took it for a ride, which was quite fun until he started doing stunts and flips as if it were a plane and not a helicopter (oh, and it was dark and rainy). Then he made a deal with the rental company to buy one (I wasn't consulted about this purchase; he came out of their rooftop kiosk with keys and we suddenly had our own helicopter). He was inordinately concerned with finding out the "correct" way to christen a helicopter, as if his future flying safety and pleasure depended on doing it in the prescribed way. I was just still a little queasy after the barrel rolls, and dazed and shocked by the big-ticket purchase.