vi-o-lent dreams

i had a dream on saturday night that i was sleeping in my office at norcostco. this was unusual for any number of reasons, not the least of which being 'norcostco' - for the purposes of my dream - was set up like a ranch-style house. where the shirt room is was a kitchen with lots of windows. the gel room was a sitting room, once again, with lots of windows. the showroom was the same, but instead of leading off to costume rentals there was a sitting room with a tv. then the costume shop was a sort of ante room and my office was set up like a bedroom. all the furniture was old and distressed. it was clearly an old house in a small town in the south that had been shoddily converted to a kitchsy theatrical merchandiser place. and i believe the whole thing was on cinder blocks, as though it had been plucked from monticello, ga and placed in the middle of atlanta.

there was a ton of people in the store when i decided to call it a night. some i knew, some were just dream people. but instead of looking at crap to buy, they kept following me like a tour group as i did all my stuff. i tried to explain to them that the store was closed and they should leave, but they didn't get the idea until i told them it was time for me to go to sleep.

so i tuck into my bed, am drifting off to sleep and i hear loud voices outside. trying to get inside. adn though they were laughing and joking, it was clear that they were 'doing a job'. i went to investigate and got to the kitchen. two dangerous lookin' guys were trying the screen door. they didn't see me, and i tried to run into the sitting room, forgetting that they were gonig in the same direction (towards the front door) and that the room was full of windows. i caught one of them's eye, tried to hide on the wall and woke up. it really freaked me out.

let me explain.

this is the second time i've had a 'they're at your screen door try not to be seen, oh shit they saw you' dream. oddly, it was about a house i was living in during college (which may have actually been on cinder blocks) that iw as about a week and a half from moving out of. this is the interior of that house and my roommate. he wasn't usually this slovenly or angry looking. that's why i took the picture.

now, then, that first dream was all about another completely weird situation that had everything to do with the place i was living in. i had teh scariest potential stalker that i've had to date at that house. i'm not in the same situation at work, thankfully. but...

i haven't been at norcostco much lately. well, no that's not entirely true. m-th i'm there for about 3.5 hours (3.75 today...whee). so i don't really know what's going on. all i know about last week is that i saw one of my co-workers (the other female) in the store once on monday. then she hadn't been in at all. friday, when i'm there 8.5 hours, i decided to find out where she was. the story i got, we got, was that she had food poisoning and had gone into the hospital on tuesday, but that she was supposed to have been released on thursday. if you've known someone who's gone to the hospital with food poisoning, this is kind of weird. generally speaking - even if they have to pump your stomach and put more fluids in you - the longest you're there is overnight. but still no word from her, and no one had been able to get in touch with her by the time i left at 5:30 on friday.

this posed a special problem since she was supposed to work on saturday. normally, the new guy will be working saturdays and this girl will work m-f. but he had a prior obligation that would take him out of work until like 2:30. so he had switched with this girl. who is totally awol. on the weekend before dragon*con at a costume/make-up/bizarre tzchotkies emporium.

so i worked alone on saturday from 10 to 2:30. seriously, from about 10:30 til 4:50 there was always at least one customer in teh store. most of the time there was more than one. and from like 1:30 to 4:30-ish there were about 25 in the store at once. and the two people (once the new guy showed up) working the store have the least cash register experience of any one else in the store.

it was hella fucked up. crazy stressful. and it doesn't help that out clientele is weird any way. and even weirder this week.

around closing-ish, i asked if new guy had gotten in touch with that girl we work with. which is when he informed me that, yes he had and that she hadn't gotten food poisoning afterall. she had o.d'ed. on liquor and a bottle of advil. that in fact, she wouldn't be out of the hospital for at least another week and that she almost needed a liver transplant.

yup.

fucked up, right?

anyway...this was my saturday, or at least the first 7.5+ hours of it. this is why i took a four hour nap after i got home (incidentally when i got home i got some bad grandpa news too, nice for weekend, no?) and didn't do anything remotely active on saturday night.

sunday was dropping the cat off at my folks house in woodstock, hanging with the parents, heading up to canton to see grandma, stopping at home depot to get copies of my keys made, going to the grocery store, cleaning my house and doing laundry in anticipation of the canadian i'm housing for tournament this weekend, and generally worrying.

and this is just the end of week one of the 3 week marathon. this week, this one that started today might kill me. i'm for serious. i'm tired just thinking about it. and while the non-work stuff is going to be a lot of fun, it's still going to be business-related.

in fact, right now i can't escape 'business'. there is no un-business right now. which really bites. i'm not sleeping well, i'm gaining weight, and i'm stressed to my eyeballs. it's shitty, shitty.

which is probably why i had a dream that i was trapped at work and people were about to attack me there. i don't have a lot of nightmares. in fact, i probably had only had about 7 bad dreams before my sophomore year of college (when i had a week straight of a recurrent bad dream) so i remember most of them really well. they always mean something. or at least, since i've been an adult they've always had a really specific meaning to them. this one is shoving me out of norcostco. which is scary and weird, but it's still better than being at norcostco.

in other news, the new job kicks ass. i think once i'm a bit more comfortable with it, it'll be a breeze. also, in a related story, i have a job interview tomorrow for a position with an ambulance-chasing law firm. which, is better than no interview, no? yes.

i had a dream on sunday night that i was attending a 'corporate training' session being led by one of my old college professors. it was pleasant but odd. there were at least 50 people at this thing and we were all paired up with someone else. now, this might have been a metaphor or an allegory, but we were all either in the marching band of color guard and we were paired with the other.

for some reason, we were donig a birdie on the perch-like exercise with our partners, but instead of mingling and having music played and stopped, we just were climbing on each others backs. or at least the color guard (me, et al) were jumping on the band's backs.

then, my professor called up two audience volunteers who were two other professors from my college who i never had. i remember my teach said something funny and i woke up. i don't know what he said.

seems like fall to me.