A Strange and Vivid Dream
It's raining hard. For some reason I'm carrying around a medical sample of some bodily fluids that must get to the doctor. I don't know why. I'm somewhere around the intersection of Belmont and Clark, maybe closer to Ashland. I'm waiting for the bus. I keep asking the drivers that come by if it's the 155 bus. In the real world, I know that the 155 bus doesn't run anywhere near Belmont and Clark, but for some reason I need to get to Clark and Devon.

Somehow I find my way to somewhere near Granville and start walking toward Devon, still hoping for the bus. Somehow I know (because I've seen it, around Belmont) that the number 20 bus (Clark St. bus) is flooded out, on its side, completely out of commission. At a street corner I wait. Another woman (tall and thin) is waiting there too, also holding a bag. We discover we both have to get samples to the same lab on Clark St., up near Morse or Tuohy, before 5:30 when the lab closes.

It turns out, she works for a different lab on Devon, right around the corner from where I live (yes, I used to live on Rosemont near Clark). It's still raining. I tell her about the bus. She tells me they're hiring at the lab. I need a job, so I give her my phone number. She goes back to her office, excited that she's found someone to hire, and is going to tell them.

Since we both know the bus is running very late, I decide to get my car and follow her to her office and wait for her. We can drive to the medical lab instead of waiting for the bus.

But I oversleep -- I don't know how I find myself in bed, but there you go. I look at the clock, and it's 20 past 4. But I realize I never set daylight savings time on the clock, and I always have the wrong time anyway, and I don't have the woman's number, and so I get up and start trying to get out of the house, rushing around, spilling laundry baskets trying to find clothes to wear, etc. etc.

I'm frantic that I've let her down, and race to the lab, thinking I'll see her there, and that I'll get the test samples to the doctors in time.

Then I wake up. I have no idea whether I got there, or whether I saw the woman. I just know I feel as though I've screwed up in an enormous, undo-able way, and I feel a great deal of regret.

Aren't you happy I've shared all this with you?
- posted by Cynthia @ 10:38 AM | | | Link |