The last two nights, I had some...strangely terrifying dreams. The first involved me forgetting I had to go to work, only to realize it an hour after the building would have closed. Also I had some start-smoking paraphernalia aimed at children in the back of my truck for some reason. And my dad was there and my brother was suddenly seven again.

But the dream I had last night tops that one in the weirdness department.

Now then, for those of you who are new and don't know me that well...I dislike children. A lot. And I currently have no desire to ever have children. That may change. But for now that is how it stands.

In this dream, I was married to an immigrant from sort of war-torn country. We had three children, two daughters and a son, and still lived with my mom and brother. But we lived in our old house, my childhood home. In the dining room. We had to move though, because my grandmother was coming to live with my mom and for some reason that meant we couldn't live in the dining room anymore. Except we only had one day to pack up all of our belongings AND find a house AND buy said house AND move into that house. But neither of us worked, so we didn't have a lot of money so there were only two houses we could choose from.

So we packed up the car, and told my mom to watch the kids and went out to eat steaks. Even though we literally had no money. And somehow eating steak triggered my husband's memories of war and he had a full blown panic attack, which eventually subsided until he was just crying quietly over his plate. And I said something along the lines of, "Well this shouldn't be even bothering you anymore. I am going to go pay for my meal and wait in the car for whenever you want to man up and have some steak balls."

The way you paid at this particular restaurant was by getting a card and sending it through an old time clock punch machine (like what people used to use to clock in and out at work before it became more common to just do it on a computer), so I punched my card and was walking out when my husband came up. And he punched his card over and over again, and I kept thinking how stupid he was for doing that because we couldn't afford to pay for all of those meals. But I was happy again by the time we reached the car, and so we went to check out the first house we were considering.

This house was in Kingwood, just off the railroad tracks on a (I'm assuming) made up street called "Kids Connection Avenue." It was on a cul-de-sac with two other houses, one on either side and was the smallest of the three. It was blue and white on the outside with a porch and a spring/creek thing. As we walked up to it, the realtor explained to us that she lived next door and that her father had built this house and now that he was dead, her mother couldn't bear to live there anymore and wanted to turn it into a daycare. But her mother had somehow heard about our situation through her church and wanted to help us by selling us this home for very cheap. The outside and inside of the house were very decrepit, and the house clearly needed a lot of work. As we walked through it I gradually became more and more pregnant. The kitchen counter was made up of the porcelain-type material that bathroom counters are usually made of, and it was really narrow. There were also bath tubs and showers all over the place, and it really bothered me that they were sitting out in the open rather than hidden inside rooms with doors. There was a nursery on the second, that was divided in two with its own toilet (but no sink or bath tub) and I thought it would be really good for kids. Even though it was decorated like a haunted Victorian nursery, I thought the decor was nice. The paint was peeling and there were cobwebs all over and roaches crawling around on the floor. The other two bedrooms were upstairs on the third floor, but both staircases were almost impossible to get up because one was broken, with holes in the steps that went straight down to the first floor, and the other was chained off (albeit very inefficiently with a thin chain similar to a bike chain). The whole third floor swayed.

As we walked down to the first floor the realtor told us that her mother really wanted to do good with the house and would mortgage (dear dream self, that is not how you use that word) the house to us for only $3,000.05 and that the realtor herself would only charge us a $467 commission fee on top of that. She told us the house was a very good deal and that she needed to know immediately if we were going to buy it. I really wanted to take the house, but I could see that my husband didn't like it and that made me really hate the house. I told her she would know by the next day if we were going to move in or not, because this was the first house we looked at and it didn't seem fair to set up all of the other house-seeing appointments at the last minute just to cancel them after seeing this house. I could tell this really pissed her off, and so I told her that it was my favorite house and that we were just going to look at the others to be polite. When we got to the door, both her parents were standing there, and she didn't seem to find it unusual that her dad was suddenly alive again. We shook hands with everyone and they wished us luck.

On our way to the other house, we realized we didn't know where it was so I opened up the glove compartment where a laptop computer was welded to the dashboard. I had difficulty using it because by this time I was so far along in my new pregnancy that the glove compartment computer wouldn't open all the way. I tried looking up the other house we were going to look at, but the computer told me it was unplottable and to try a different method.

I called my mom and asked her for directions to the house, referring to it by its address (2213 was the house number, but I don't remember the street name). She asked if I meant the Mantricore House, and I said yes. She gave us directions, and I wrote them down on the air in the car and then I suddenly wasn't pregnant anymore. My mom told me congratulations and that she would take care of my new son.

We looked at the other house by ourselves (there was no realtor) and it was very nice. New, with six bedrooms and two floors. My husband really liked it because the house had a good history. I pointed out that it didn't and that all the floors, despite looking immaculate had water damage, and that he could see it if he held a mirror against all the floors. He did, but insisted it was fine. And then we were suddenly in the car again, driving in a circle while we discussed the two houses. I was willing to overlook the damaged floors in the second house, but it was $60,000 and we didn't have that much money. I pointed out that the first one was just a fixer-uppper and would look amazing once we cleaned it up. It was around this time that I woke up.

The only thing that has me thinking these dreams are related is the fact that I've just opened a new carton of ice cream. It's a new flavor I've never tried before, and I had a bowl of it before going to bed the last two nights. I'm thinking maybe I need to just eat this ice cream earlier in the day. Or you know. Maybe the ice cream and weird dreams are unrelated. Idk.

In other news, I want to comment on people's journals more often. Usually I read y'alls entries and then just don't comment and I think that's a rather lazy approach to friendship. Obviously you are sharing your lives with me because you want us to connect. And it's working one way, just failing on my end. So hopefully, I'll start commenting more.

The paperwork for my August paychecks was misplaced and it took a while to sort that out. I've only just received the check yesterday and I am so grateful it came when it did. It was starting to look like I was going to be living off of dry, stale cereal and freezer waffles and whatever granola bars I could steal from work. I'm a little miffed, but not as much as I thought I'd be. Once I realized there was a problem (Tuesday), I called my boss up and she fired off an e-mail that same day. I worked the next day, and her supervisor was there and told me it had already been sorted and that my first check had already been cut (I get paid by three different departments and my total pay is split between three different checks) and sent off to the next person in line. I got home from work yesterday, and my checks were waiting in the mailbox for me. I received all the pay due from August, and they had rushed processing my pay for Monday (the 5th) so that I would get that early, rather than having to wait for the paper work from the rest of this week to go through. So now I can take advantage of this week's awesome sales at the grocery store (buy one get one free ice cream, and $2 off my favorite brand of toilet paper ftw). I was seriously more angry that I might miss those sales than I was about my check being so late, lol.

I think I am going to order celebratory Chinese tomorrow.