Dreams: A few nights ago I dreamt I was in a big old lodge of some sort that contained a restaurant. I asked to be seated, but there were no tables available, so I was seated at a table for two where a woman who was getting ready to leave was already seated. She was going over her bill with the waiter and asked that the charge for the Orangetta soup be removed because it contained peanuts, which she was allergic to. The soup bowl was on the window ledge next to the table and contained the remnants of the soup, which looked rather like a pumpkin puree. The table itself was in an awkward position, just at the bottom of a set of stairs and in what should have been a hallway. The woman had reddish hair, was short and about my age. Come to think of it, maybe she was me. But why would I be complaining about the mythical Orangetta soup?

Another dream was about my brother-in-law who was sitting on a lawn chair at the top of the street where I grew up. This is where I stood so many mornings waiting for the school bus. In the dream, I got off of a bus and found my brother-in-law with a piece of jewelry - a heavy, dangly, silver necklace - that belonged to someone in the family. He had a bucket next to him, as if he was going fishing, but there was no evidence of bait or a pole or fish.

Last night I dreamt that I was away on a business trip and was staying in a big old lodge (similar to the one in the prior dream). It was like something out of Twin Peaks - entirely made of dark wood, very foreboding. I had lost my room key and didn't know what room I was staying in, so a desk clerk was helping me drag my suitcase up the stairs so that we could find it.

The dream morphed into me looking at a map. I had to drive into Canada from northern New York and the map showed two highways that ran parallel to each other for a long stretch and then one branched off toward western Canada and the other ended at the border. There were a maze of streets in Toronto, which was right over the border in the dream, and I had to figure out the best route through them and memorize the streets because I couldn't have the map with me while I was driving.

Moral of the story: my mind is even messier than my house-under-renovation and desperately needs a thorough cleaning.