Dental Doldrums

Was home from work today after having some sort of weird vascular/brain-related reaction to the lidocaine and epinephrine that was pumped into my system during my dentist appt. The dentist was prepping me for the porcelain crown, which involved a lot of drilling below the gumline and two nasty-tasting impressions that took 7 minutes each! The epinephrine was to stop all of the bleeding that was caused by the gumline drilling, so the blood wouldn't fill up the impression. Gah. Anyway. Afterward, I was feeling like I'd sprinted and like I'd just woken up, both at the same time. As soon as I stood up from the dentist's chair, something happened to my blood pressure, and I felt sick and woozy and strange. I missed my exit on the way home. I immediately took a nap when I got there.

Dream:

My parents had bought a horribly ugly old house and were moving into it. Everything was shabby and dark and rotten. The bathroom floors were sunk down. There was a huge canyon in the wall of the shower that went all the way down to the crawlspace. Meanwhile, Caspian was sleeping in one of the nasty bedrooms and was extremely sick drunk. I left him there and went out exploring the neighborhood, which seemed to be populated by a strange, prudish, uber-religious sect - which religion, I had no idea. Everybody frowned at me when I walked by, and a group of somber children informed me that naked showers were outlawed; you had to wear your clothes. I had to get out of this place.

It was a snowy day when Inga (my Latin coach) came hiking into the neighborhood to rescue me. She told me I had about a 5% chance of surviving the grand journey to escape from this place, but I didn't care. I hiked through the snow behind her wearing socks but no shoes, skirting deep crevasses and bottomless pits.

After 10 years of hiking, we were suddenly in downtown Chicago, and it was a windy spring day. I saw my aunt and uncle getting into their car, so I shouted, we hugged and I was rescued!