I’m with BoringFish, and she and I and her long-haired black cat have been traveling from somewhere in eastern Washington state. We drive through Yakima to see my mom and stepdad, but when we arrive at their house, no one’s home.

We walk around to the back yard, and let ourselves into the house through the sliding glass door. I sit on the sofa and play with her cat, while she goes and looks around the rest of the house.

Finally, everyone arrives, and by everyone, I mean everyone. My mom and stepdad, my brother and his wife, and even my dad and stepmom. They all come home and it’s instant chaos. We’re supposed to eat dinner, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon. Everyone is frantically trying to bring in these giant pre-made plates of food. Everything on the plates is muted in color–an unappetizing shade of gray–and it all looks the same. Scrambled eggs, potato cakes, mysterious tuna/chicken/crab mush, and sausage, and everything is covered over in white biscuit gravy. Finally everyone gets their own plate, and we sit down to have dinner together. BoringFish isn’t there. She seems to have left the house for some reason. I call her name, but there’s no response. I ask at the table if anyone’s seen her, but they all are ignoring me, and wrapped up in conversation with each other. I’m the only one who seems to think that it’s weird that this combination of people is sitting here eating together as if it’s completely normal, and I’m also repulsed by the huge plate of weird, grayish food.

Everyone is talking, and devouring their dinner. I sorta pick at mine and ask, “What is this? Tuna? Chicken? Crab?” My dad says, a little too loudly, “It’s Ecktote.” [That’s not really what he said, but it was some sort of food substitute.] I push it around on my plate and take a bite of the eggs instead. Suddenly everyone else is getting up to leave. I ask what’s going on, and everyone answers in different ways at the same time. They’re going to a dinner party–another one!–and again, they’re all going together. I decline, saying that I didn’t know anything about it, and I’m not hungry anyway. My dad glares at me, and says, “Well, all right, but we’ll be back in a little while to go to the next event, and you’d better be ready to go.” Everyone leaves. It’s only been like five minutes since we all sat down; it’s very strange.

I stand there in the hallway, wondering what to make of all this. I walk through the rest of the house to look for BoringFish, but I don’t find her. When I walk into my old bedroom, it’s full of Christmas decorations, with puffy cotton on the ceiling to look like snow, with little white Christmas lights poking out every few inches. I think it’s odd that there’s snow on the ceiling. I also think it’s odd that there are two women in there, dressed in green, wrapping presents and making little trinkets. They’re talking animatedly to each other when I walk in, and my arrival just means that they include me in the non-stop flow of conversation. One of them grabs a can of sticky stuff that they’re using like glue, to wrap the presents. She holds it up to show me, and says, “I got it at Erthler’s.” Another nonsensical, generic name, but this time it’s a store. I kinda laugh and say, “What’s ‘Erthler’s’? I’m from Portland. We don’t have one there.” I walk back out of the room, and as I do, I hit the light switch out of habit.

I poke my head back in and say to the women, “Oops, sorry about that.” and hit the switch to turn the light back on. The Christmas lights start to flicker, and they won’t come back on. I flick the switch on and off, and wiggle it around, and they eventually come back on, so I leave.

Just then, everyone comes bursting in the door. Again, it’s only been a few minutes since they left, but my dad sees me and says, “Okay, are you ready to go?” “No,” I say. “I’m not going.” I’m still wearing the T-shirt, boxers and beanie hat that I’ve been wearing the whole time. He starts to yell at me, saying how he can’t believe that he bought me this ticket and that I’m wasting all this money, not to mention that this dinner is for charity and all the food’s going to go to waste. I say, “I didn’t even know about it until now, and I don’t feel too great. I’m not gonna go.”
He continues yelling, and my stepmom is there too, saying to him, “Well, maybe he didn’t get the message after all? We should hear his side of the story.” I gesture to her and say, exasperatedly, “Thank you. I promise you that this is the first I’ve heard of it.” My dad is silent. I notice that he’s shaved his beard and grown his mustache out long, into a scruffy handlebar style. He also has what I thought was a wart next to his nose, but after I look at it for a second, I see that it’s actually a small screw from some sort of surgery.

I say again that I’m not going, and my stepmom says, “Well, I guess we’ll pay for in calories what we paid for in money” or something weird like that, to fill the awkward silence. They go outside and drive away.

That’s when I woke up, not at all rested. Boy, I wonder what that dream means.

I’m late for work, dang it.