I dreamed I lived in an apartment that was in a part of the Death Star being rebuilt in the Forest of Endor. I was reading Discover magazine, trying to see if the error I'd written in about in the last issue had been mentioned and corrected in the latest one. It was New Years Eve, and I only barely remembered to get ready begore my blind date showed up.
He turned out to be much much younger than me, but he was good looking, spoke Latin, was interested in Discover, and didn't seem to mind the age difference, or that I'd decided to wear a black velvet cloak with red satin lining, so I figured I'd see how things went.
It was almost midnight when my mom showed up to drop off a stray dog she'd found and decided to give me. He was a big, shaggy white dog with a brown patch on his left shoulder. I could t think of a name for him. I couldn't even remember the name of my date. Then my mom said my baby sister was very sick, so dog, guy, and I all got in her truck to go back and be with the baby.
My family lived in an old stone keep with dank passages and torches on the walls. Late late at night I was keeping watch when the baby started crying. I raised her up, and she was burning with fever. I rushed with her down the hall to our parents' room.
Mom leaped up, took her from me, and we all rushed back to the truck to go to the hospital. We were about to turn off the highway when Mom slowed almost to a stop, grabbed the baby, and jumped out of the truck, continuing on foot. I grabbed the steering wheel, and managed to keep us straight as we coasted to a stop, just past the turning. I moved over into the driver's seat, backed us up a little, and turned off onto the road Mom had run down.
Unfortunately, there was a Megabus stop right at the turning, and dozens of people were milling around in the road, waiting for the bus. I drove very slowly, honking at them to move. But they only yelled mean things back at me. I just kept driving, gently nudging them out of my way. By the time we got through the crowd, I couldn't see where my mom had gone.
After driving around for a bit in a panic, I finally found a place to park, and we started looking on foot. This was a good idea, because the dog set off at once in the right direction, and we followed him down a cut in the river bank to a wide meadow by the river, where an outdoor army hospital had been set up. We found my mom and sister there, but Mom sent us away. She insisted I go swim in the river for a bit, so I did. But when we got back, the hospital had been taken down, and even the indoor rooms, set up in an old warehouse nearby, were empty.
Then I could hear Mom calling from the truck. The guy, the dog, and I went to find her, but my baby sister wasn't with her. They had taken her into Castroville, so we were going there. I was all dripping wet from the river. I had a change of clothes, but the guy was right there in the truck, and it was broad daylight, so I couldn't change. Mom finally dropped me off at a La Madeleine just on the edge of town, and said to just go in and use their restroom. She was going on to the hospital.
Now, I hate just using a restroom at a business without buying something, but this La Madeleine was also a small inn, and had a few rooms upstairs. I went to see how much one would be for that night, because maybe it would come in handy, anyhow, if we needed to stay. But I was too dripping wet to feel acceptable in the lobby, so I finally did just rush to the back to find a restroom to change in.
This La Madeleine was actually a Mexican restaurant. The floors were terracotta tile, and the restroom stalls were free standing in the back seating area, wood frames painted turquoise blue. No one was sitting in the back room, so I figured I'd be okay, even though the stall walls were short. I could look over them standing. There were televisions mounted up in the corners of the ceiling.
As I was changing, I noticed they were showing some sort of gaucho games, taking place down in Guadalajara, where Mexican cowboys did all sorts of riding and roping tricks, along with more stylized things like the blanket toss. They each had 8 foot square, heavy, elaborately decorated blankets. They'd get them spinning over their heads like a pizza crust, then do high tosses in the air, and perform some sort of gymnastic move on the ground, leaping up just in time to catch the blanket and keep it spinning.
A man dressed in a matador outfit of black and silver was just getting his blanket, embroidered and jeweled in the pattern of the Mexican flag, up and spinning and in the air in his first toss, when I woke up.
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