I sleep a lot and I dream a lot.  The other day I got my second Shingles shot, and this time I had a reaction.  Not only was my arm really sore, I developed a low grade temperature. I was toally wiped out. As usual, though, I didn’t fall asleep until 2:30 am.  And I had one of those dreams from which I just don’t want to wake up.  This is how it went:

I am at some some sort of State Fair kind of place, and it’s time for me to go home. As I leave, I pick up a small bunch of flowers and stick them in my pants pocket. My pants have lots of pockets. I plan to give the flowers to the man I recently met. My other pockets have money in them, both coins and paper.

I have to get on a bus to get back home. Crowds are crowding into the waiting buses, but I am having a hard time finding the bus I am supposed to get on. I am looking for a bus that will take me to Albany NY, where I used to live. I keep asking people what bus I should get on and I keep getting different answers. I finally get on a bus that is very crowded. I keep asking if this is the bus I should be on and saying where I want to go. Everyone seems to be planning to get off at different places. It is hot and crowded and noisy. I feel I am not being helped because I am an old lady. So I start doing a Mrs. Maisel act – shouting funny things at various people and using “fuck” a lot, like Mrs. Maisel. People start paying attention to me and laughing and relaxing. At the same time, I keep trying to call my ex-husband to tell him I will be late, but my phone isn’t working. So I ask if there’s anyone who can help me figure out what I did to screw up my phone. A black “homie” guy says he can help me, so I give him my phone. It becomes obvious that he is not going to do anything or give it back. So I kiss him on the lips and lick his cheek, and his other homies laugh and tell him to give me back my phone, so he does.

As I do my schtick, I say I am 85 five years old and make a big deal out of it because I don’t look that old. One girl on the bus asks if she could see my driver’s license, so I give it to her and she lets everyone know that I am only 82 years old. She says she is a college reporter and she would like to do a story on me after we all get home. I say OK.

Little by little people keep leaving the bus, until there are only a few of us left who will be going in my direction. We get off the bus at a road that has appeared in my dreams before. I realize that I have to cross that road to catch the bus going the other way. I also realize that the flowers I had stuffed into my pocket were all dried up and crumbing, so I throw them away.

Finally the bus comes and some of us get on. When I go to pay the $1 fair, I keep trying to fish out the quarters I have in my pocket, and at the same time, the paper money keeps falling out. The guy behind me helps me fish out the quarters and hands me the money that had fallen out. As the bus continues on, I see a roadside store that I had been to in another of my dreams. The landscapes I am seeing go by are ones familiar to me from past dreams.

Then I am at my apartment and I am excited because I am about to see the man I got the flowers for. My deceased cat, Calli, is waiting for me but she has become feral, and won’t go inside. So I put cat food and water out for her outside the patio door. The man lives in an apartment across a park from mine, so I go to him.

We kiss and he holds me and I feel wonderful. He laughs when I tell him about my adventure.

Each time I get up, I return to the dream. There were more interactions with others on the bus, but can’t remember the specifics. I wake up hot and sweaty because I had turned the heat on at one point when I got up to go to the bathroom. I have been in bed for 12 hours, from 2:30 am to 2:30 pm.  I could have gone back to my sleeping and dreaming, but I figured 12 hours in bed was more than enough.  Maybe I can find my way back there  tonight.