george clooney

I had one of those annoying late-for-work dreams last night. I had run a bunch of errands and badly miscalculated the time that would take (as usual in real and dream life). I was supposed to be going to work at 10 or 11 a.m., but still needed to take a shower. In the dream, I was living (temporarily?) in some group setting* with common bathrooms. There were about 4 shower stalls in the bathroom, and I had just peeked in and seen that they were all empty with no one in line for them. By the time I gathered up my stuff and got there to shower, though, they were all occupied and there was a line of about 6 people waiting, including a girl I had found annoying in high school.

That was the boring, unpleasant part of the dream. After that, I was at an airport with both indoor and outdoor waiting areas, and I was supposed to get on a flight to somewhere for some kind of work-related trip. There was a giant snowstorm/cold front over pretty much the whole northern hemisphere, and all flights were canceled until further notice**. I was waiting outside on a high concrete balcony with an assortment of past real-life acquaintances, random dream people, a Norwegian girl whose design blog I sometimes read, and George Clooney (?). We were all leaning against or sitting on the balcony railing, and talking about random things. Incidentally, I was dressed in a very ratty pajama ensemble, possibly having given up earlier on getting a shower.

It turned out that George Clooney was extremely personable and funny, capable of a wide-ranging conversation. He had the sort of dry, punny, double-meaning humor that I particularly enjoy, but at one point he got serious and launched into a rather long, Steinbeckian soliloquy on the salt-of-the-earth working man and the dangers and hardships he faced (I think he was referring specifically to truck drivers, in the context of the big winter storm).

George stayed there for quite a while just chewing the fat with us, and I kept thinking, "he's a great waiting companion, but doesn't he have bigger fish to fry?" At one point he abruptly buried his face in my stomach to warm up his nose, which I thought a bit odd (although I realized that it must be an effective strategy, and that he probably found lots of willing stomachs to warm his cold nose, being who he was).

At one point in the dream, toward the beginning of the George Clooney episode, I was very concerned because I had noticed that several of my teeth seemed loose***. I was very worried, and asking everyone if they knew anything about it and if I should be worried or if it was normal****. No one had anything too reassuring or useful to say about my problem (I think the girls were all too focused on our distinguished companion). Only George had something somewhat helpful to say, and he also reminded me that [in this alternate dream universe] people's teeth were generally spaced far apart (??).

Anyway, if you're ever stranded at an airport in an open-ended, weather-related travel complication, look for George Clooney. I highly recommend him as a temporary waiting companion.



*I'd really like to someday get to the bottom of this group trip/group living thing.
**A relatively rare intrusion of current events into my dream life.
***I've experienced this loose-teeth thing a lot in dreams before, although not for a while.
****What a charming thing to bring up with a very attractive celebrity: "Nice to meet you. I think my teeth are getting ready to fall out."

gross and girly

I dreamed the other night that I was staying with my husband at my parents' house (they weren't there). I had apparently disposed of some leftovers (a lot of beans, and some other miscellaneous food) in the upstairs bathroom toilet, but hadn't flushed for some reason that seemed perfectly legitimate at the time.

Three girls in their mid to late 20s were there, for some reason I can't remember. Neither of us knew them, but their presence there had been pre-arranged through some sort of lodging swap program. We had just gotten home from somewhere, and I had decided that it was the perfect time to broach the subject with him of whether or not we were ever going to have kids. I have no idea why I found this the ideal time, especially with the three visitors in the house, but I was convinced it was the perfect opportunity, so I cornered him on the piano bench and started questioning him.

He wasn't as forthcoming as I had expected, and the conversation soon fizzled out. I was walking around the house doing chores, and he was in the living room messing with his phone. I ascertained that he was calling, or trying to call, a girl, and got very disturbed about this--especially since I took it as a reaction to my effort to get him to decide on the procreation question.

I decided to just stay upstairs and occupy myself with things and let him call whoever he wanted. I would then react as warranted to whatever ended up happening. Alarmingly, though, I looked over the second floor balcony and saw the three female visitors lounging in the living room in see-through 1950s lingerie (all three of them had very vintage/rockabilly hair and makeup). Great, my husband is in the living room making a "booty call" while surrounded with three women in various states of undress, looking like Suicide Girls itching for an orgy! I was quite unhappy but determined to maintain my sangfroid. The most annoying thing was my impression that I was expected to waltz down there and join in their orgy with them (even though said orgy had not started and was possibly only a figment of my imagination).

I went into the bathroom fuming and flushed the toilet. Unfortunately, though, the garbage had sat in there long enough to start getting fizzy, and the whole thing blew and splattered all over the place when I tried to flush it. There were little bits of decomposing garbage all over, including on my eyelashes. I went out to inform the charming group below that the toilet had exploded and that I was going to have to clean the whole bathroom and then take a shower (what better way to discourage them from including me in their orgy?).

I never did get my shower, although I did get the bits of slime rinsed off my face. The girls had come upstairs and I gradually caught on that they did not, in fact, intend to involve our couple in an orgy. On realizing that, I started to warm to them and we ended up in my old room talking about vintage clothes, various sewing and crafty things, and selling on etsy. I started rooting around in my old dresser and came up with handfuls of really neat old pajamas--lots of hand-embroidered silk and that kind of thing.

The whole encounter turned out rather pleasant, except that after having rinsed my face I hadn't put on any lotion, so my face was very tight and itchy. Also, I realized that since my parents weren't there--and since the girls weren't there to engage in an orgy--we had three separate bedrooms to lodge them in. The only problem was that the other two bedrooms available hadn't been cleaned in quite some time and were crawling with dust bunnies, which I found very embarrassing. (Garbage-spattered clothing and dried-up face showing messy and dirty lodging space to very cute, put-together visitors. Great.) I don't even want to think about what this dream says about me or my sense of self, but once again I've managed to generate a surreal and unwholesome list of labels.

russian porn?

After some other things I can't remember, I dreamed I was accompanying my sister while she underwent some sort of test. I can't remember whether this was an educational, professional, or medical test, but it was taking place at an unlikely location, an isolated building in the middle of some woods. The building was sort of a modern, somewhat institutional thing reminiscent of a National Park Service visitor's center, with a stairway leading up to the main entrance on the second floor.

I think this testing was being incorporated into a longer road trip or maybe a long-distance move, because the car I was waiting in contained a lot of random possessions. I was just sitting there, trying to work up my energy for some personal grooming, including changing out of my pajamas (?), when I saw a familiar-looking guy walk down the stairs and approach the car.

The guy turned out to be someone I had gone to school with briefly in college and been fairly good friends with for a short time. He got into the passenger's seat to talk, and proceeded to ask what I had been doing all this time. He made a ridiculous gesture meant to simulate jiggling boobies*, to which I said, "If by that you mean have I been making Russian porn**, no, I haven't." He seemed disappointed but took it in stride, and then tried to convince me to go on a trip with him, saying, "it'll be fun!" By the way, he was also pajama-clad. I really don't know why we were both in our pajamas; it had no bearing on the story. Perhaps it was an artistic flight of fancy on the part of my subconscious, a little Hugh Hefner-esque touch (although both pajamas were regular cotton, no silk dressing gowns).


*Totally in character for this guy, who I liked in spite of his crassness.
**I think my subconscious, knowing I'm not a fan of the stuff (Russian or otherwise), throws in a cameo appearance every so often just to bug me.