stressful heist

I had a very stressful dream last night. My husband was working for some industrial company (mining? petroleum refinery? chemicals?) in a lower/middle management and/or possibly security capacity. For some reason I was there with him at the main office. No one else was around, so it was just the two of us. I'm not sure where the office people were, but it was clear that they would be gone for a while.

In the middle of our uneventful office visit, there was a loud explosion from the direction of the factory/mine/refinery. From the sound of it, no one was going to make it out of there alive. I asked him what it was and he replied "kryptonite" (??). He then sprang into action, although I couldn't determine whether this action was premeditated or a spur-of-the-moment idea. Apparently there was a huge amount of the company's capital just stored in cash in the office (??). He filled up two or three paper Whole Foods bags (again, ??) with what supposedly amounted to 400 million (billion?) dollars.

I found this sudden turn of events disturbing in the extreme. First of all, the idea that he was going to try to make off with this enormous amount of money was alarming both on an ethical and a practical level. How did he think we would ever get away with such a thing? And then there was the disturbing question of whether he had known about or somehow been involved in the explosion, which was such a terrible idea that I didn't want to dwell on it.

I guess my hesitation and nay-saying cost us some time, and we didn't end up leaving right away (I also argued that skipping the country at the exact time of the explosion and disappearance of the cash would make us look way too suspect and that it was better to stick around for a while to lessen suspicion on us; I think I was also hoping to talk him out of his scheme). I also pointed out that any business who kept large quantities of cash would be foolish not to mark the bills somehow, and that the first bill we attempted to spend would get us caught.

I woke up around the time that the police were starting to swarm around the place (amazingly, they didn't nab us immediately; I don't know what became of the paper bags full of cash, but they were still somehow in our possession). Then I kept drifting in and out of sleep, anxiously concocting strategies to keep us from getting arrested--plant a bill or two on an unsuspecting passerby? Drop a bill in a place where it was likely to be picked up and spent by someone else (I was very preoccupied with the whole marked-bill scenario)? I was afraid we were condemned to a fugitive life and would never actually be able to spend any of the money--so it was obviously better to just abandon the whole idea while we were still somewhat uninvolved.

in which i tire myself out both physically and mentally

I had a slightly alarming dream last night. I was getting ready to go buy a bunch of necessary materials and tools for a home improvement project, going over the list with my husband because I was going to be going by myself and wanted to make sure I didn't forget anything. I was a little nervous about driving the truck, since I had only driven it a couple of times before.

I guess I got the materials, because the next thing I can remember I was with some assorted family members in a very small cafe attached to the building supply store. It was sort of like an uglier version of an ikea cafe, and my dad had ordered a pizza. One of the employees brought it out, and it looked really good--kind of a white sauce, with chicken and maybe rosemary*.

The trouble began when someone jumped out of nowhere to intercept my dad's pizza. The person who initially grabbed the pizza was a 35-ish, redneck-ish man. I was furious, and immediately started slugging him (?!), knocked him on the ground, and kicked him (I was pretty effective, if I do say so myself). I was a little surprised and alarmed at the intensity of my anger; I guess I was getting out all my suppressed indignation about everything. I kept yelling "you can't do that! You can't take my dad's pizza! You didn't pay for it!" Between the kicking and the hitting, he ended up moaning on the floor, with blood running down his forehead.

I guess at that point I came to my senses and decided I had done sufficient justice, because I stopped and the person got up, morphing into a youngish female. I asked her why she had taken my dad's pizza and she said, rather pitifully, "I'm hungry". I immediately turned good samaritan and said, "well, let me get you something to eat". There was an immediate switch from "I'm so mad I could kill someone" to "this person needs to eat and I'm going to get them something" (with accompanied rush of charitable feeling).

She ordered something and I went to pay at the counter. I noticed that she had slipped in a package of condoms**, and was initially irritated that she had added something when I had only proposed a meal. Then I realized that she seemed to be the sort of person who had a lot of high-risk encounters, and probably did all kinds of drugs, and that it was a good thing she was getting them, so I didn't protest and just paid for the whole thing, acting like they weren't there. I had very uncomfortable mixed feelings of feeling good about being helpful, while simultaneously realizing that I was experiencing unwarranted feelings of moral superiority and a particularly annoying sort of Liberal Do-Goodism***.



*ironic, considering that my dad is vegan.
**once again, why does it have to be me introducing these labels?
***not that I'm against being liberal or doing good; I'm referring to that annoying "I'm doing this and this and this and this to save the world--what are you doing?" thing.

guns?

I dreamed last night that I went to a big night-time outdoor fair-type event with my husband and another (female) friend. The friend was just your average dream person, no one I actually know. We had been walking around for a while and sat down in an area on the outskirts of the action where some small tables were set up with bar stools around them. My husband said he was going to go do something and would meet us back there. Right after he left, I started looking around and didn't like what I saw. We were surrounded by groups of men who were talking among themselves and staring at us menacingly. There was a sense that they didn't have our best interest in mind, and also that some kind of violence might shortly break out between them. Most of them seemed to be foreigners (from several different parts of the world), and I got the impression that they weren't there legally and that most of them made their living in illegitimate ways*.

The friend and I decided that we should leave immediately, but just as we were walking away I realized that in my hurry I had left my purse on the table. I ran back to get it, but was too late; a guy who worked for my husband [in the dream--I don't know how I knew he worked for him, but it was an established fact] had made off with it. He hadn't gotten far, so I started yelling and ran toward him, but he whipped out a pistol and started yelling back at me. I realized that it wasn't a good idea to get in a shouting match with an armed thief, so we got out of there.

We finally found my husband in a more crowded part of the fair. The guy might have been pursuing us, because he showed up just as I was trying to tell the story of what had happened. The thief brandished his pistol at the three of us, among a growing crowd, and suddenly my husband pulled a 12-gauge out of his jacket. [How does one conceal such a big gun in one's clothing, and why did he have it there?] He cocked it with that menacing CH-CHK sound, and the guy, seeing that his pistol didn't measure up to a Big Gun, ran away. I have no idea whether I got my purse back, though.

I much prefer clothing dreams to gun dreams.

*This part makes me feel like a closet racist. For the record, I think the vast majority of illegal residents make their living in perfectly legitimate, if underpaid ways.