cbernard

I dreamed that Dani was having her birthday party at my house. We were scurrying around setting up during the afternoon, before she arrived. Mom saw a piece of paper taped to a wall that said

Denielle (sic)
(someone else's name)

And she said, "I don't like it when people shorten their names. I mean, if Daniel shortened his name, it would be Danny!" I did not appreciate her comments but didn't say anything - I kind of wanted to tell her to be respectful to Dani on her birthday, but decided just to let it slide.

I wanted to make some tea, so I put some water in the microwave, then went to my room to choose a tea bag. The tea bags were on my piano, just like they are in real life, but they were organized differently, kind of scattered, and some were on the floor. I also thought that there were some boxes I didn't remember having, but I was in a hurry, so I didn't think about it. I rationalized it by thinking that mom had been messing around with my tea. I picked a bag and left. When I got back to the kitchen, the water wasn't done boiling, so I wandered off.

I found myself near the front door (I think some time elapsed without me remembering) and suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten about the tea water. I sort of leapt and ran my way through the library (the floor was grass) to get back to the kitchen, but I thought that maybe the water hadn't cooled down too much.

The next thing I remember is sitting down on the floor of the library with Dani and my sister. Dani and I were sitting next to each other, and my sister was left and forwards of me, like this:

Code:

sister>
         ^^dani
      me

Between Dani and I there was an atmosphere of having been through a lot, with a lot of sadness but happiness at knowing each other.

Dani told my sister, "Did you know that Caleb proposed to me on date night?"

Apparently proposing (I think she meant asking out) on 'date night' was a very creative/adventurous thing to do. When she said this, I felt a complex emotion, with pride and sorrow and happiness, and I just kind of looked at the ground in sadness, but Dani was smiling a sad smile. My sister didn't really know what was going on, she was like a zombie or something.

Then we all got up because guests were starting to arrive. Dani went off to greet people, and I went to drink my tea and generally hide from everyone. There were tons of people, at least 150. Everyone was packed really tight. I caught glimpses of Dani walking around.

I stayed until midnight, then I had to go drive my little brother somewhere. We were driving until he said, stop here. I got out and we switched places so he could drive. There were colored plastic round things scattered across the road. It was dark and in a haunted-forest type of environment, but I wasn't scared. He said, I need practice at Rock Band, so go set up the cones. Apparently the little cones were Rock Band icons, and he wanted to drive over them to practice songs. He told me the song he wanted, and I was supposed to walk down the road and arrange the cones for a particular song. I thought, oh no, this is going to take forever. I started arranging the cones. Next thing I knew, I was waking up (in my dream still). I was disoriented, but my brother was there, saying, good job, I got enough practice in. Let's go home now. I was distressed because I had left the party early just so my brother could practice his video game skills.

When we got home, the party was over and everyone was gone. Mom was looking really tired. I asked her how long the party lasted. She said, until 6. I was confused because I thought she meant 6 PM, so I started to say "but--but-" but then I realized she meant 6 in the morning, which really surprised me, because I didn't know that I had been away for 6 hours. I was really upset that I hadn't been able to say goodbye to Dani, but Mom said that Dani had been so tired that she decided to spend the night at our house, so I thought, okay, I will see her when she wakes up. I started to help Mom clean up.

When I walked into the kitchen, there was one of those electronic picture frames that shows a slideshow. It was full of pictures from the party. I was very grateful that Mom had taken pictures. Watching the slideshow, everyone's hair was funny, so I realized that they had played some kind of crazy hair game where whoever had the craziest hairdo won. I wanted to see Dani in the slideshow but she wasn't in it. My brother was in there twice, which made me mad because he had been driving with me, keeping me away from the party, and he had actually been at the party, at the same time. I didn't understand how he did it, so I got mad. In one picture, he had a really big long-haired black wig, and the other picture was a video clip of him eating all the party food in fast-motion. There was also a picture of my sister with a really weird hairdo.

I went around the picture frame, which was sitting on the island in the kitchen, and started throwing away plates.