shopping for lingerie; north of italy

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in either a women's clothing store or a lingerie store. The store was part of a shopping mall, and I could see the shopping mall's hallway just outside the window-front of the store. The store was grey, lit with a very drab, fluorescent light. The store may also have felt a little empty of racks of clothes. Some women were shopping in a couple different places. I may have felt like I knew the women, even though I wasn't with them.


I found a rack of lingerie that I thought I might like to wear. It was mostly cami and panty sets, made out of some soft, cotton-like fabric. I saw one set that was cream colored and another set that was lavender. There may have been other sets as well. The price of these sets was only something like $2.99. I thought I should get one. But then I thought that $2.99 would be too much money to spend.


A woman who worked at the store walked up and asked me if she could help me find anything. I didn't know what to tell her. I had the feeling the woman was kind of attracted to me. She was young, kind of pretty, with black hair and pale skin. I was afraid to tell her that I was looking for lingerie for myself to wear. I didn't want her to be disappointed in her attraction to me.


I was also starting to worry because I noticed that the people in the shopping mall hallway could easily see me. There weren't many people in the hallway. But what if one of them knew me and saw me buying lingerie? I decided to get away from the lingerie and get out of the store as quickly as possible.

Dream #2


I was with a friend, probably a female friend. We were meeting for a meal. We were in some upstairs area of a shop. But we had to head downstairs to get to the restaurant area.


As we headed down the stairs, we were talking about travelling. I mentioned something that I really liked about travelling. It may have been something about rich, cheesy foods. But that may just have been symbolic of something about the intellectual climate of, or the level of respect in, certain countries.


We walked all the way to the back of the small restaurant as I continued talking to the woman. I followed the woman almost all the way to the ladies' restroom, which was on the back wall of the restaurant. All the way, I was talking about travelling. Finally, as the woman walked into the bathroom, I said something like, "The best place for what I'm talking about is in the North of Italy."


The woman closed the bathroom door. The restroom door was green. I noticed two women sitting at a small table just to the right (my right) of the restroom door. The woman closer to the door looked like Isabella Rossellini in the movie Blue Velvet. She looked at me with anxiety. Apparently I'd said something she didn't like. I had an idea it was my mention of the North of Italy.


I was standing just to the right of some sort of small service counter, like an area where wait staff could quickly fix beverages for customers. My view was partly obstructed by an espresso machine with a pale green-painted body. Behind the espresso machine stood another woman, maybe in her mid to late thirties. She was tan and had short, brown hair in a spiky, but rounded cut combed down around her head.


The woman mentioned something to me about "Svetlana," the panicked girl who was seated by the restroom door. She said that any mention of the North of Italy would make Svetlana look like she was fraternizing with the customers. This was not allowed by the manager of this store, a woman in maybe her fifties. The woman believed Svetlana had recently been fraternizing too much with the customers, and that her work performance had fallen off as a result.


I knew this meant I should stop mentioning the North of Italy. But I thought this was stupid. I hadn't even been talking to Svetlana. So how could she get in trouble for what I'd been saying? And I wasn't going to stop talking about stuff that I'd come in here talking about, just because a manager was getting stuffy about it. So I kept on talking about the rich foods in the North of Italy.


Just behind the service area was a small stairwell up to the ground level. The stairwell was across a small hallway from the bathroom door my friend had gone into. The manager now walked down the stairwell. The manager was tan, with red hair and kind of wrinkly skin. She was short and a little stout, but more in a way that made her look tough rather than out of shape. She did seem to be tough. But she also seemed to have a friendly, natural personality.


The manager had heard me talking about rich foods from the North of Italy. She jumped into the conversation easily and naturally, telling me a few things about the foods. The manager mentioned that the restaurant was actually planning on serving foods from the North of Italy on this day.


The woman had a few samples sat atop the espresso machine. The manager and I were eating these samples. I had a piece of ham that I was dipping into some kind of white sauce that was in a tiny, crystal bowl. Just to the left of that bowl there was another tiny, crystal bowl of Parmesan cheese. The manger was also eating something: I saw her putting something small into her mouth with all the fingers of her right (?) hand.


***


UPDATE: A discussion of images found in these dreams can be found at this entry in my dreamday journal.


UPDATE 2: Added drawing for dream #1, July 9th, 2012, 3:30 PM, Mountain Standard Time.

hospital television

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I woke up in a hospital. I got up and began walking around the hallways. The first hallway I walked through was golden with sunlight. There were people all around. But I didn't feel crowded. Everybody was taking care of their own business. I felt like I was left to myself.

I had apparently had some sort of surgery. I may have woken up from the surgery, or I may have woken up from a long convalescence following my surgery.

People may have been worried whether I'd survive at all. But now I seemed to be completely fine. I may actually have been looking for a doctor or nurse. I may have thought that I was going to be checked out of the hospital this morning.

I wandered down another hallway, possibly on the opposite side of the building. from the hallway I'd been walking down. This hallway was much dimmer. The sun didn't reach through the hospital rooms out into the hallway as it did on the other side of the building.

I wandered into a room where a father and a couple of his children were sitting on a couple beds and watching TV. The room was bright with daylight. I could see through a window to the suburban street below. The father and children didn't seem sick. I had the feeling they were actually waiting for the mother of the family to get well.

I think I had been looking for a doctor in this room. Since I hadn't found one, I walked out and into another room. This room was near the first room, but on the adjacent corner with the other room. This room was a bit dimmer than the first room.

There were people in the room, and the attitude -- one of waiting for somebody -- seemed to be like that of the first room. But one of the people in this room was definitely ill and being treated. This person may actually have been gravely ill. I wasn't as interested in this room as I'd been in the first room. So I left.

I walked back into the first room. I may have paid more attention to the room this time. The room seemed to be divided -- only by means of room shape and a couple square columns in the room -- into two distinct halves. The father and kids sat on two beds in the left half of the room. The family watched a television set that stood in the right half of the room.

I looked down to the family. The beds had only white sheets on them. The family was all sprawled out and relaxed. The father may have been in his mid thirties, a little chubby, but kind of worn-out looking.

One of the kids caught my eye. She was a little girl, maybe six or seven years old. She was tiny and skinny, with short, blonde hair. She lay on her stomach on the bed. She wore only a tiny t-shirt and a pair of pink panties.

The sight of the girl's bottom was arousing me. I decided to look away from the girl, so I wouldn't get in trouble with the dad. I stood behind one of the square columns, kind of to hide from the family, so they wouldn't even be aware that I was in the room.

I looked toward the TV. Something about the TV made me think that this room was a common room. I may have thought that any room in the hospital that had a TV in it was a common room.

The TV was playing some kind of children's channel. Somehow I managed to get the idea of what a few different shows on this channel were like. All the shows seemed to be live-action, studio-style shows, like the old Nickelodeon show You Can't Do That on Television. But many of them also had an anime-like, or Power Rangers-like, edge to them somehow.

I was really interested in seeing more of these shows. But I started to get the feeling that if I stuck around watching children's programming for too long, somebody would accuse me of being a pervert. I wondered myself whether I was a pervert for liking children's shows. But I somehow justified myself to myself by saying that I was planning on subscribing to this channel as soon as I got home.

I walked out of the room and back down the dim hallway. It suddenly occurred to me that I'd been away from my own room for a long time now. I could imagine my room, with some of my clothes, and possibly some kind of round-brimmed camping or fishing hat, folded up on my bed.

I thought to myself that in the time I'd been gone, the doctors may have come looking for me. They may have wanted to check me out of the hospital. But if I was away from my room for too long, they'd decide they'd need to come back later on to check me out. In that case I'd have to wait for hours to get out of here. I may already have missed my chance to leave. But, I told myself, if I hurried back to my room I could possibly catch someone who could check me out.