The little pet

I don't know what he is, but he's alive and he's my pet -- along with a vast menagerie of other pets. He is so small and so fragile (maybe an inch and a half long), I have him in my hand to keep him safe and warm while I'm tending to the needs of everything else. There are mice, rats, dogs, and other animals all loose around the main compartments where they're all usually kept. The animals are loose while I'm trying to clean and feed and fix things, but it's taking too long because I only have one hand. The little pet keeps getting more and more hurt as I try to tend to all these emergencies. There's no time to even yell out for help; it's all happening too fast to stop it from happening.

First the little pet almost drowned as I'm trying to save a couple of other animals from drowning after they wandered somewhere they weren't supposed to go. He was immersed in the water just momentarily but he's so tiny that he just can't survive these things. Now he's gasping for breath and soaking wet and cold in my hand. He's limp and his eyes are closed but he's still breathing. Then something falls and I must catch it and I realize it's a weight of some sort and after I quickly lift it off this little thing, he's able to take in a deep breath again but I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he's dying and will not live. He's gone through too much to be able to survive.

I'm sobbing while trying desperately to keep him warm and dry, and I keep thinking -- if only I can get the rest of this under control somehow, I'll be able to tend to him directly. But since I've got him in my one hand, I can't adequately attend to anything else either. Both things require two hands and total concentration -- and both are equally as important. If I tend to him alone, the rest of the menagerie will get completely out of control and will be impossible to recover from; If I don't keep him in at least one of my hands, he will die from the elements. Both situations as just as important, and yet I'm failing miserably at both simply because I only have two hands.

Another tooth dream

This time my front tooth split in half and I could feel the pieces in my mouth. After I spit them out, I looked in the mirror and was happy I couldn't see any open area on the underside of the tooth -- no nerve exposure to air. I was calm; I'd get a crown and move on with my life.

A trip to the grocery store

I have a cart and am going up and down the aisles at the grocery store. They have blocked access and set up ropes to force people to go only one way (like in shopping mall parking lots during the holidays), which makes some of the aisles completely inaccessible. I start to get extremely frustrated that I can't get to the aisle I want so I push aside their blockade and go up the aisle I want. Everyone looks at me in disgust and I don't care.

As I'm moving through their maze, I see KZ on the other side. She sees me but acts like she doesn't know me. It's been 12 years since I've seen her, but I know she remembers me. We pass twice as we move through the maze, and both times there's no sign of recognition. I waved at her both times.

Then I get to the cereal aisle and I can't decide if I want Sugar Smacks, Peanut Butter Crunch, or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I tried to look at their nutrition labels to pick based on the lowest sugar count, but instead of number values, they've changed to letters to indicate a range and I have no idea what range the letters represent. Also, they moved them to the front of the box instead of the side. In the end, I chose Sugar Smacks.