I woke up with my lower back in pain around 3 am, so I got up, popped a Naproxen, and went back to bed.
The dreams I had thereafter were just bizarre. One in particular I found so weird I had to scribble some notes because if I didn't I knew I'd completely forget it by morning:
I was at work. I pulled my Mac out of my backpack and realized that somehow I'd grabbed Ben's old machine that's currently sitting in a closet. I briefly thought about using it (since I basically just needed it for email and cruising the internet) until I could go home at lunch but then realized it didn't even have an OS loaded. I told my boss I needed to run home for a few minutes (I live, after all, less then 5 minutes away) and left.
I arrived home to my last apartment in San Francisco, to discover a notice from UPS taped on the door that a delivery had been attempted and that Sparkles water had left a new bottle of water. The UPS guy was still there, saw that I'd come home, and came back to give me a large envelope.
I went in the building and noticed that the door to my apartment was ajar. I knew that the landlord was doing renovations, but she'd mentioned nothing to me about needing to get in my apartment. I walked in and every wall was covered with plaster patches. I thought, "what the hell?" and at that moment she walked in.
The landlord was Joan Rivers. Yes, Joan Rivers. (IRL, Molly, my landlord in SF was just as old and nearly as wealthy—she lived next door to Diane Feinstein—but not anywhere near as funny.)
"What have you done to my apartment?" I asked.
"Your apartment?" This is my apartment. You're on the wrong floor, silly! I'm renovating this one for me."
And then I realized that yes, I was in the wrong unit altogether and that the UPS delivery wasn't for me and neither was the bottle of water.
Interestingly, while this was supposedly my last apartment in San Francisco, it bore very little resemblance to the real thing. IRL, you got to the apartment via an outside balcony that ran the length of the building, and it was a large (for SF, anyway) one bedroom unit. In this dream, it was reached by an interior hallway and the unit I found myself in looked much a standard generic hotel room.
Have I mentioned that the entire time all this was happening, "Singin' in the Rain" was playing at angelic volume and that somehow I had forgotten all about the Mac—or returning to work—and had come home to watch the movie? (Something I've never seen all the way through.)
From there it got even more confusing. Joan had apparently taken over the apartment below mine, but I needed to go the apartment above mine to watch the movie. Joan wanted to see it as well, and while the door to the stairway was blocked by construction stuff, leaving only an opening about six inches wide, she somehow managed to get her skinny ass through but I had to take the elevator (which IRL we all referred to as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride). Apparently the elevator had been replaced as part of the construction as well, and it was now glass-walled and overlooked the four-story foyer—but still dropped an inch once you got on.
Upon reaching the fourth floor apartment, I realized I was now carrying my Dad's old flat panel computer monitor (apparently to watch the film on), but Joan was nowhere to be found and the apartment where this was going to happen was occupied by two black guys who had no idea why I was even there.
And then I woke up.
I always hope that by writing these dreams out I'll gain some understanding of what my subconscious was trying to tell me, but with this one I've got nothin'…