A fine mess

At 3:00a.m. this morning I was having a dream.  I had a monumental cleaning task in front of me.  There was a RV/Camping Bus that needed a pretty serious straightening up before it could be used for camping.  For some reason, I had heroically taken on the task of cleaning the kitchen, which was piled high with dirty dishes, pizza boxes and clutter. I had pulled out all of the waste items and stacked them on top of the bus so they could be dumped in the garbage.  I looked down and saw my younger brother, Rob, standing below looking very idle.  In the dream he looked to be about 15 years old.  I asked him if he would throw away this pile of garbage for me.  He ignored the request and started walking away.  I started to shout after him but he just sped up.  I felt myself getting very angry and decide to jump off the top of the bus and chase him down.

CRASH!

It is 3:05a.m. and I am awake on the floor of my bedroom, on my hands and knees amongst the wreckage of my overturned bedside table and food pump apparatus.  Evidently, my dream jump manifested itself with a real jump off the side of the bed.  In the dark I realize by smell and feel that my bedside portable urinal has overturned on the hardwood floor.  (Since I tube-feed and hydrate all night, I have to urinate fairly often and will use the portable urinal rather than drag all my pump stuff to the bathroom.)  I'm tangled in tubes and electric wires and scrambling to find and right the overturned urinal in the dark.

Mary is awake too, probably freaking out from the crash.  She's telling me to stay put and I'm telling her to turn on a light.  So we commenced detangling and sizing up a real mess that definitely could not wait until morning to be remedied.  I cleaned up myself in the bathroom (along with my electronics, which had been charging on the bedside table) and then went down to get a bucket of water with Murphy's Oil Soap and a sponge.  Mary was on the macro clean-up detail with towels and had already unplugged the spaghetti of extension cords and isolated all the pee-covered fallen objects from those in the all-clear zone.

By 3:28a.m. I plugged in the electric clock and reset the time.  We had pretty much restored order but found ourselves wide awake.  Mary decided right there that she would be taking a personal day from work. I'm sure when we look back it will be a funny story.

I'm a bit puzzled by why it was my brother, Rob, in the dream.  I am typically the grasshopper to his ant.  He is a farmer and the hardest working person I know so it doesn't make sense that I cast him in the "lazy" role in my dream.  Hmmm....

On a completely new and unrelated subject, I have been disturbed by the recent mass shootings.  The most recent one at the Sikh Temple was slightly more disturbing to me as it seems to have been motivated by hate (as opposed to the Colorado shooting that seemed to be motivated by crazy).  There is so much anger and distrust and misunderstanding out there!  What are the forces driving these behaviors to be actualized?  And then a local example surfaced that has me simply stunned.  Can't get it out of my head.

The East Hills Neighborhood put on an event called "Gay Day" to celebrate diversity.  It was a block party with fun and food and community.  Naturally protesters showed up.  Someone videotaped an exchange with a couple of the protestors.  This exchange was a religious argument that I had never heard before and has left me absolutely flabbergasted.  The man used the Bible to justify rape.  It is a pretty disturbing clip. (The clip has been pulled from the Internet but the content is summarized at the link). I put it here in my blog because of the fact that I can't stop thinking about people who are out there in this world with such a skewed understanding of living with their fellow human beings.  Sorry to end with a downer.