Nightmare on Boring Street

Last night, I foolishly stayed up late (just fiddling around on the web--not, of course, accomplishing anything useful, just wasting my time) and then I woke up early this morning and felt irritable all day. I finally took a little nap after my dog's evening meal and walk (for which he had been agitating for hours, apparently believing that because I came home and let him out of his box at about 1:00 in the afternoon, it still meant food and a walk, like it does when I come home from work at 5:30 on weekdays--I was so cranky that when we came in I crabbed at him, "Now you're good for the night and you don't have to bother me any more"; he looked up at me so puzzled and with such big eyes that my annoyance became tinged with remorse and I petted him a little to try to make amends).

"Are you implying that I could ever be a bother?"

While napping I had a stressful dream. I dreamed my brother, who lives nearly 3,000 miles away but who is coming to visit soon, had made an appointment for a hearing at the local district court and had asked me, because I am a paralegal, to submit the correct forms and make sure everything was lined up. I dreamed I had assumed he submitted the correct forms but I was realizing I may have needed to check and correct them and that I might have needed to confirm his hearing with the district court clerk's office, but had thought I didn't need to. My co-worker was in my dream, helping me try to figure it out, and I realized my brother had scheduled his court business for two days but that one of the days was Memorial Day, so he would either have to reschedule or only have the second day. I was looking through calendars and court rule books. It was about then that I woke up on my living room couch, feeling overheated and worried.

In waking life, my brother's visit is not for a couple weeks yet and he has no business to conduct with any court while he's here (as far as I know), and there is nothing I need to confirm, correct, or reschedule. The dream was a mishmash of home and work anxieties,  with that dream effect that wherever you look for information or help is the wrong place. Phew. It took me a few moments to convince myself that my anxiety had no basis in reality.

Re-reading the story of my dream above, I realize that the nightmares of a legal assistant, while terrifying to experience, come across as rather boring in the telling. No monsters, no violence, just calendars and court rules. Any other person would fall asleep during that dream.