How the Other Half Lives ~ 4/4/2014

I dreamed that I was walking down the one lane, cul de sac road I grew up on. As I watched, large mansions were built, shopping centers went up, and people appeared.  There was a fried chicken stand over the first hill, so it wasn't all bad. A big storm was coming, and I was waiting anxiously for my mother to come home.

I woke up for a bit, and when I went back to sleep, the street, the malls, the houses, had all turned into a sort of live action Mario game, where we directed our little avatars around a maze towards food and prizes, and that's how we ourselves traveled through the huge indoor mall that had grown up around it.  I kept trying to get to the fried chicken stand, but my character kept running out of energy, and I'd have to start over from a random point.

I woke up for a bit, and when I went back to sleep, I found myself in a part of the mall that was a huge five star hotel with an ENORMOUS brunch buffet, and I was going around with my tray loading up on eggs and ham and fried pork chops and hot chocolate. I took it all back to my family's suite.  We were very rich, and this is where we lived while we were in town.

I woke up for a bit, and when I went back to sleep, I was back out in the country, trying to get to our large country estate.  It was in a little town on the Medina River that somehow had a medieval church. The church was partly falling into ruins, but we still used it.

I woke up for a bit, and when I went back to sleep, I was back exploring our town lodgings.  I was the second daughter of the family, and I lived with my father and his mother and his grandmother.  I was taking care of my great grandmother, who gave me a beautiful pink satin dress.  I went to put it on, then explored our suite of rooms. In my father's library there was a large set of books each telling a ghost story or paranormal legend set in the Castroville and Medina Valley area.  He also had a big empty room that he used as a design and fabrication area for his machine work.  I found my rooms, and my grandmother's.  I went back to the main hall or drawing room that was all yellow with green trim, and had a double staircase that wound up and went behind a wall.  I was curious about what was upstairs, so I went up the right hand side, but the staircase was just for show. The right hand stair went behind the wall to a landing about a foot and a half wide, where it met the left hand stair and went back down.  So I went back down and waited for the party, at which I would apparently meet several suitors.

I woke up for a bit, and when I went back to sleep, an old, grandfatherly man was giving me and some other young girls advice on where to keep a handkerchief given to us by a suitor, depending on where he stood with us.  If we only had friendly feelings, we should keep it in our purse.  If we wanted to encourage him, we should keep it tucked in our sash or sleeve.  Only if he we accepted a proposal of marriage were we to keep it in our bosom.

Then I finally woke up for real.