Men in White / The Grump / Admirer

Monday night

Dream 1: Men in White

My girlfriend, Michelle, had enlisted me to help out in the renovation of an old farmhouse out in the country. The idea was that her family would move into it eventually. When I got to the site my initial thought was, "this place probably can't be saved." The old house was made of stone, and it was pretty run-down. To make matters worse, a wall on the right side of the house was connected to another building project -- something taller, possibly an apartment building.

Instead of walking into the farmhouse, I wound up taking an elevator to the top of the building that was under construction, and I wound up working there. When I got to the top I found that the owners in charge of the new building were my cousins, David and Wingard. They were dressed completely in white golfing outfits, right down to their shoes, and a Lucite box containing golf balls sat in the middle of the concrete floor. I got the impression that they did no work, but when they got bored bossing people around, they'd hit a few balls off of the upper deck. I resented getting roped into the project, and wished I'd never gone there in the first place.

Not long after I arrived, I needed to go to the bathroom, but since the building only contained slabs and steel girders at that point, none were to be found. I decided to pee directly onto the concrete, into a pool of rainwater.

Dream 2: The Grump

A friend of mine was constantly enlisting me to help out with his elderly relative -- probably his grandfather. He was a grumpy old guy, and I was spending so much time doing chores at his place, I started to feel guilty that I wasn't spending more time at home with my own mom and dad. I remember standing inside the basement door of the old cuss'es house, watching as he struggled with a very heavy garbage can. It seemed important to him that I'd see that he could lift it. Finally, I said, "Put that down; let me do it." He sighed with resignation, and acquiesced.

Dream 3: Admirer

I was on some road trip with my brother Andrew and we ended up bunking in the same bed. Just before we went to sleep he was asking me if I'd seen a recent magazine photo shoot of singer Sheryl Crow. He was a fan...

*****

Some interesting themes popped up last night.

Dream 1: Men in White

Michelle L. was my girlfriend for a year, around 1989 - 1990. I haven't seen her since about 1991. Her family lived in Haymarket, out past Gainesville, VA, which, to a suburanite such as myself, might as well have been over the moon. I'll never forget driving out to her place one time and coming across a cow standing in the middle of the road. That was far-out. I'm sure that that area has grown a lot in the past 17 years; the great BBQ stand that I used to visit there is long gone.

David and Wing are my cousins, but they don't own any apartment buildings that I'm aware of, and I've never worked for either of them. I don't recall ever seeing them dressed in white, but they do probably golf on occasion.

There's a lot of resentment in that dream, about doing tedious work that I don't like, and feeling unappreciated. I piss on your concrete!

Come to think about it, I may have been remembering part of a "Sopranos" episode in which one of Tony's subordinates got drunk and came to his house, prepared to gun him down. He thought better of it, and took a leak in Tony's pool instead.

Dream 2: The Grump

The guy who "played" the grandpa in this dream is an old British actor named Peter Vaughan, who I recently saw in a funny film called "Death at a Funeral." (I think I'd first seen him portray the father of Anthony Hopkins' character in "Remains of the Day.") Although the house in the dream was supposed to be his, we were actually standing inside the back door at my parents' house.

Am I feeling guilty that I'm not nearer my elderly dad as he gets older? Am I worried about getting older, too?