Musings of a Loquacious Mind

One of those dreams

You know those dreams that you have over and over and over?

I didn't have one of those last night (that I remember).

But you know those dreams that you know you've had before, that are
ridiculously detailed?

I had one of those.

And it's one of those dreams that leave you feeling agitated. It's
not a nightmare, just something that makes your night of sleep leaving
you less than fully rested.

Here's the gist of the dream:

Keith and I (and Kris) had rented a condo townhouse from a beach
management company that included semi-private use of a sparkling pool
and hot tub (The three townhouse condos opened out onto the deck of
the pool, with clear flow-through dividers that split the large pool
in thirds - only the two end units had hot tubs, which were directly
next to and slightly elevated from the pool). We hadn't really even
had a chance to use the pool, when the pool area was overtaken with
families and teenage punks that filled the pool and hot tubs and the
general area with loud, boisterous play.

One part of us didn't want to be jerks, and definitely didn't want to
have to get confrontational on our vacation, but we had paid good
money for this (two notes here: first, clearly this is a dream. Keith
never would have paid $954 (I'm not sure if that was our total, or per
night, that's just a price prominent in the dream) for lodging;
second, the other two townhouse condo units were vacant - while we
would be sticking to our end of the pool, the area was to be,
effectively, all ours). So we got the property manager to come and
get everyone out. That's what we pay for, right?

I'm stripping a lot of details off here, just because I don't feel
like typing out basically a screenplay. Yes, it was that detailed.
Yes, it all followed rules of time and space. No, it's not all
important.

Anyway, the first thing that started getting me riled up was that when
the property manager came to boot everyone from the pool, she told
everyone that we were the ones making them leave because we had rented
the condo (darn right, I was thinking, and there's nothing wrong with
that!). Everyone was very grousy (is that a word? I know you can
grouse about something, but can you be grousy? I have decided you
can. If it's not a word, it should be), and took their sweet time
getting out of the pool (I won't go in to why the property manager
said they could all use the pool on our last day there).

After most people had finally gotten out of the pool, I went ahead and
got in, because I needed a mental margarita. One woman in particular
was taking her sweet time, and letting us know why we were the scum of
the earth for making them leave.

(Another note: the people in the pool were people staying in the
management properties other units. Like a hotel that was kind of set
apart from the condo townhouse set. The hotel had several pools and
areas - it really was a good bit like Kingston Plantation in South
Carolina, if you've ever been there, only not quite so nice. The
condo itself was quite nice, as was our really wonderful semi-private
pool area. We weren't condemning these people to a pool-less
existence (although, you know what? so what if we were, it was OUR
POOL. but we weren't); they just couldn't use ours.)

"My son wasn't even making that much noise or taking up that much
room. All he had was the basketball goal and he's very quiet. I
don't understand why we have to leave. You don't need the whole pool.
I'm sorry I don't make enough to pay for a room that comes with its
own pool for my son. Why should he have to use the Holiday Deck
(that's the name of the main pool complex for the area), though? I
hope you can live with yourselves for forcing poor people out of your
pool."

This diatribe actually went on for quite a while, and I was trying to
just ignore her, but I really wanted to jump up and say:

"You know what? It doesn't matter. What entitles you to use what
we've paid for? And maybe we just budget our money different so that
we could afford this. And I hope you can live with yourself for
trying to ruin our hard-earned vacation. Get out, you fat cow!"

But I didn't.

But the whole dream experience (let's just end it there) just left me
drained, so that I woke up feeling like I'd actually had to go through
all of this crap.

A few things that might have fueled into this dream: frustration with
certain colleagues regarding personal responsibility; watching part of
Cocoon right before bed, watching part of a
whatever-news-channel-it-was show where they talked about immigration;
being frustrated with my dad for still smoking (the part of the dream
that relates to this was cut); and I don't know what else.

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