Weird dream!

OK, YES, it is 3:00 PM and I'm blogging about a dream I JUST woke up from... I've been dealing with very bad sleep lately due to depression and arthritis pain. So I'll take all the sleep I can get, when I can get it.

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In my dream I just had I was having a cooking party. Everyone was bringing their own containers, recipes, and ingredients. We were all supposed to bring food enough to make a 12 serving dish. Each person/group/couple was assigned a different part of the menu and everyone came from all over the state representing their favorite recipes.

I had posted this party on a site like Craig's list or Yahoo, thinking I wouldn't get anyone to come, but giving it a try anyway. Turns out I had quite the crowd! there were several couples, a few families, and several singles. All brought amazing meal plans, amazing ingredients, got along well with everyone else, had fun sharing together, and I got on my way making my own food preparations. Before I was finished I noticed everyone else had already finished and were now on their way to splitting up their dishes to share with everyone. I felt under pressure to get mine done. I was baking cornbread and making a corn salsa. The salsa I could rush, but not the baking. So I was growing restless and impatient. I started to try and mingle with the people who were now gearing up to leave. I tried handing out communication cards asking people to fill them out to let me know if they wanted to do this again, many did so I bought myself a little time. I saw one woman sitting on the couch trying to squeeze the wrong sized lid on a piece of Tupperware she had brought. I explained to her as I gave her one of my own right fitting lids that she was putting a lid for a 3 cup container on a 4 cup container, that I used to sell Tupperware so I have extra and would just trade so her food would get home fine. She seemed to appreciate that. As I was getting the lid from the kitchen I noticed that several of the ladies actually were still inside and that it was just the guys that had gone out to the vehicles, they were putting the food away to make more room, and to take care of that while the ladies cleaned up. I started sheepishly saying they didn't need to do that. I'd get to it after the party. They start speaking up about how they had to keep washing everything as soon as they got here because there was a sink full of dirty dishes and nothing clean for them to use. I was puzzled because in the dream everything was laid out ready to go (in real life I never could do this party in my kitchen because I do regularly have a sink full of dishes.) And then some of the older ladies start speaking up in detest about how awfully dirty some of them are & were. I start stammering. I'm trying to explain that I really thought I was healthy enough to host this party, and had cleaned before everyone came. As I'm trying to explain and stammer I'm feeling every part of my body that deals with arthritis get really painfully arthritic. I grab for the back of the couch to hold myself up as I feel both attacked by my guests I've never met before, as well as my own body and arthritis. One of the older gentlemen speaks up as he's standing with his cane telling me that I'm too young to have arthritis, and starts chewing me out for being lazy and still expecting to be a hostess. I'm crushed. I sit down on the dining-room floor and cry, in pain, wishing he were true. Knowing that is what many, even experienced people think of me. Everyone is out at their cars loading up the last bits, aside from one lady who is sitting in the kitchen on my barstool by my stove. I think at this point she's the only one left who knows anything about my cornbread. She's sitting there peacefully taking in the smell and happily anticipating taking it out for me as I'm sitting there on the dinning-room floor (just a side note, sitting on the floor directly is excruciatingly painful for me, so how I was doing this in my dream I don't know, but I was in pain in the dream, so maybe I felt too emotionally crushed to care.) The timer for the bread stops and I come out of my emotional fog and get up to help the lady pull it out of the oven and spilt it up into 6 different portions into sheets of aluminum foil. As I'm watching her and seeing that she's gracefully taking care of it and I'm not really needed right here I start looking around to see the various communication cards thrown around. Amazingly and happily filled out with people who loved the drive out to my place, loved the menu idea, and hoped to join me for this again. Most only put an e-mail address, but I was fine with the positive remarks. As I was picking up the cards I noticed that someone had left a Christmas reindeer antlers headband on the couch and I remembered that someone's dog was wearing them as people joked around and made merry while they waited for things to cook. I grabbed the headband and asked the lady if that was her dog's and she says no, but she'll take it to them. She's walking towards me at this point and has a bundle of the wrapped cornbread in her arms. Somehow without loosing the balance of holding them all she grabbed the headband from me and walked outside to everyone else. She gracefully distributes the bread, and puts the headband on the dog again. Everyone laughs. The owner thanked her saying he "though he lost it somewhere in her (my) mess!" Graceful lady pointed to me and said "She found it." and the man waved to me sheepishly, but thankfully. A couple of the ladies who've been mingling outside come back towards me to tell me in person just how much they loved the party, the drive out to my place, and that they'd hope I'd host another next month. I said "...sure, and I'll try to be better prepared then." They didn't care. They just wanted the experience again. One lady said "we all took care of most of it anyway." So I felt a little better about the events, but I was leaning hard on my cane as I was watching people drive off and waiting to go back inside and collapse and cry a bit more. As there was one car left, a tall skinny man in worn out clothes said it really was a good party and not to dwell on what this mean old man said. He handed me a stack of pictures that showed that most of these people went to the same church a ways down in the state, and he said I could keep the pictures with the communication cards. Then he asked me where the best place to get liquor was around here. Kevin asked "store or bar". The man said "bar" and we said we didn't know, but that the one just in town certainly seems popular. He started his motorcycle and drove off towards town. His portion of food expertly tucked into a cooler strapped to the back of his bike. I stood on the lawn looking through the photos. Some were Christmas photo cards of the of couple families. Several were of the graceful lady standing by her church's organ with different quilted tapestries behind her on the wall in different shots. It made me think she sewed all the different ones as gifts to her church for the different times of the year. I thought even more highly of her on that, and saw her as even more nurturing, patient, and graceful. I saw a few of just the guys shoveling down plates of food around a long white plastic folding table. Completely unaware of their women standing behind them watching on. I saw another where the mean older man was standing in the middle of some of the guys and they were all around him in a circle and he was in the middle of the shot wagging his finger at the camera. And I saw one of the other man with his dog and the silly headband on it. I tucked the cards and photos into my pocket with this new understanding that most everyone there already knew each other, and yet they all treated me in such different ways. I thought about how I made a new friend in the graceful lady and was thankful she was apart of the group, and hoped I could figure out which card went with her. I came back inside to see that the house smelled amazingly like a wonderful banquet. The table was set and food on it hot. Not a dish in the sink or on the stove that needed tending to, and the love of my life sitting at the table ready to say a prayer over the meal and relax over food with me. I sat to eat just after grabbing the medications I need to have with food. Relieved it all was over, but still shook up by how differently people from the same group treated me.

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I don't know why the start and end were so peaceful and the middle so insulting and chaotic. I think maybe my pain that I was feeling in my sleep was messing with what would have normally been a nice dream otherwise. And I know that having such a party without a hitch would be a dream, something I could never pull off in real life because of the state my kitchen always is in due to my arthritis slowing me down all the time.

I know I am deeply wounded any time someone mentions to me that I'm "too young to have arthritis" I can agree that I myself feel to young to have osteoarthritis, but rheumatoid arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis are generally diseases that effect people in their early-middle adult years. Knowing this doesn't do much to shield my heart sometimes though. Especially when it's someone who one would imagine that years has made them wiser.

So to my readers. After reading this (if you could follow all of it) do you think of any further analysis? Do any of you like to dabble in dream interpretation? I'd really love to know if anyone else has any further insight to this dream.

I did wake up feeling awful. I'm tried to eat a plate of nachos I microwaved just to get something inside me, but it was not appealing. I'm now towards drinking a glass of milk to not feel hungry, but I had done that before falling asleep, & I know I need to eat something nutritious... I just feel so worn out, and that's after having slept all day.

Does anyone know of any good dream interpretation books?