Quest

Edited to add more random stuff.

Last night I had a quest dream of sorts. I had trouble sleeping, but when I finally fell asleep in between Swee'pea's restless thrashing and wakings (poor guy has a nasty cough now, occasionally hoarse voice, and very runny nose... I thought he got over the cold before we did but I guess I was wrong), I dreamed. I dreamed that I went to some sort of fashion expo, like a craft show type of event. Only it was also sort of a treasure hunt. If you proved worthy you could gain wealth or beautiful items of clothing. The judges were the people who made the clothes. I was deemed worthy of a sort of fur coat (leopard print too) with money in the pockets, but then the maker changed her mind I guess and took it away from me. I found myself in possession of something else, which was also subsequently taken away from me.

I was about to leave the event empty-handed and I was ok with that, when a friend, a young guy, short but cute, someone I don't know in real life, took me to a tree in the middle of all the booths that filled the gymnasium. He said he thought I might find what I was looking for here. An old wizened Asian man stood guard, with one of those long mustaches that nearly touched the floor, and he wore a robe and hat like a wizard, like Gandalf. He agreed to let me follow my friend through a tiny door into the tree. He said my friend would guide me to what I was looking for, but that I needed to keep my friend safe while I searched.

My friend went into the tree, and after a few minutes the old man let me follow. The tiny door opened onto a sort of ladder that I had to put together myself or flip levers to make it happen automatically. I climbed up and up and up, and eventually came into a dusty attic room full of boxes. There was no sign of my friend, but he had left some kind of indication leading me to a cardboard box full of envelopes, large and small. One envelope was bulging with money, lots of it. I hid this in my pocket, because the place outside the tree was rife with thieves, and it was nearly impossible to leave without getting mugged and losing your treasure. I think it was an extra part to the quest, to determine whether you were worthy of your treasure. Then I noticed that the envelopes had my handwriting on them; they were letters I had written to loved ones, now dead. I decided to take the box with me too, although it would mark me as someone bearing treasure. As I looked on the box, I felt certain that it was a gift dropped from the heavens, something that had materialized from the afterlife, a gift from those who had passed on.

It was hard not to run out of the building, which would immediately make me a target, but I walked as quickly as I could while still looking somewhat casual. I made it out of the show with my bounty intact. Outside the building I met my sister, and Sugar Daddy. My sister drove us to a store selling bathroom fixtures, in a sort of barn. She left, and SD and I waited for assistance. Nobody came, so we started taking out clothes off, I guess to test the showers and baths surrounding us. Someone finally came in from outside, and surprised us, naked. I felt hugely embarrassed, because I was acting like a teenager when I am 30, and a mother. Then I woke up.

Anyone know anything about dream interpretation?

* * *

Yesterday afternoon, I watched a small bird of prey swoop through the patio at Einstein's Cafe with its prey dangling from its talons (luckily no one was dining al fresco). A few minutes later I discovered it in a tree. I think its prey was twitching, and perhaps it was just waiting for it to be still. I took some pictures as I got closer, until finally I couldn't have been more than 15 feet from it. I kept snapping compulsively, and then it flew away with its prey.

I thought it was a falcon, perhaps a peregrine falcon. But my ornithologist friend says it's a Cooper's hawk. With a pigeon or a mourning dove, I think. They look bigger in the picture than they were in real life.

It was cool, because I was just musing about how stupid it is that I've started carrying my camera everywhere, what a waste of energy it is to carry it when what's the point? It's just Guelph. I've already shots hundreds of pics of Guelph in the last month. What more can there be worth shooting?

Swee'pea slept on oblivious.