Saturday, Jan 31, 2009

It was like my busiest day in 0554 crossed with an episode of The Runway.

I was at my desk putting presentations together. I don't remember exactly what all I was doing. I just remember having several tasks to do and bouncing back and forth between offices. One of the things I had already completed was putting together a baby basket. I made a baby book and a blanket. I seem to remember that it was ultimately going to Linda W (a friend). I also remember that the items attached to the front of the baby book were starting to come off. It wasn't my best work, but I didn't have time to go back and do it again.

The next thing I know, I'm sewing men's clothing, a pair of pants specifically. The clothes were all a shimmery tan color. We had two pairs of pants, a vest, and two tank dresses with a fancy material along the bust line. (Okay, maybe we weren't just sewing MEN'S clothing.) At this particular point, I was attaching a darker brown strip of material to the pants and asking another member of our team what he thought about it. He said it looked bad and suggested we not go with that 'look'. He was sitting at a table with his feet up, reading a magazine. So, his opinion wasn't all that impressive to me, since he wasn't willing to help with the work.

At one point, the Tim Gunn of the process (only this was a middle-aged woman in a skirt and jacket) was mediating a disagreement where this guy didn't want to work on a pair of pants and I was explaining why he should...because 1) the group agreed on the look and we'd already 'pitched it' to the powers that be, 2) he wasn't doing anything else, and 3) the rest of us were busy. He finally grabbed the pants and stomped out in a huff. The mentor told me that she agreed with me and hoped that we didn't have any more problems with this particular team member. So, I went back to work adding a lining to a vest.

It was then that I remembered that I forgot to make the music CD. I was supposed to do that when I was in the office at my computer, but I completely forgot. The music CD is played while the models are walking down the runway. I couldn't even remember the exact songs or the order of them that we'd agreed to. Ugh, I'd have to go back to my desk and do that eventually. But when would I have time for that?!

I decided to tell another person on my team, John M (a co-worker), about my latest stressor. Apparently, I was looking to vent. So, I went to the room where I thought he was working, only to find the Tim Gunn lady. She told me that John went down to the warehouse to pick something up and she was babysitting for his things until he got back. I decided to get back to work rather than chase John down. Instead, I ran into him in the hallway. He was as stressed as I was about our chances of finishing our work on time. I said, "We have a problem." He said, "You're telling me. We have the James Brown benefit tomorrow night that we've hardly planned for because we're so behind on THIS" as he lifts yet another garment into the air. I'd completely forgotten about the James Brown benefit! But I responded with, "Oh, it gets worse than that." And we moved into a room and shut the door behind us.

Strangely at this point, John had on makeup or marker on his face. Something around his eyes that I can no longer pinpoint. And he had thick lines of red in the smile creases between his nose and mouth. It reminded me of a clown. Nevertheless, I told him that we didn't have a CD for our models to walk with during the runway show. AND I'd have to stop working on the vest in order to go back to my computer to make the CD. I was stressed because I needed specific songs in a specific order for a specific length of time...and I wasn't even sure that I remembered the songs and the CD wasn't even started. But we couldn't have the runway show without it.

I don't really remember anything that happened after that.

Thursday, Jan 15, 2009

I had a dream about Jeff as a young child, maybe 5 or 6. He had always talked about "getting a patch."  Neither his dad nor I knew what that meant. But he talked about it regularly. I figured eventually, he'd have the words in his vocabulary to truly explain what the heck he meant by that.

At one point in my dream, we were in a church. Not my church. Not even sure if it's a church I've ever been in. Instead of pews, there were chairs. And they were set up in a semi-circle around the altar. What seemed like hundreds of them. And the atmosphere was warm and glowing. I was walking around for some reason, delivering something to someone. Services hadn't started yet, so I wasn't being a distraction. When it came time to begin, I couldn't find Jeff. I was trying to look through the rows to find him. Someone pointed to the far end of the room, but before I could get there, the lights went out. Not a power outage, but a planned part of the service. Eventually, the lights came back up and I resumed my path to Jeff. I found him with a family I didn't know. He was all buddy-buddy with a boy about the same age. Except for his messy blond hair, I remember nothing about him.

The next thing I know, we're in a hospital. I believe Jeff was a patient. I have no idea what might have been wrong with him. I just remember that he kept going back to the wrong bed. And he was still mentioning this patch that he wanted to get. I'm not sure where the patient that belonged to that bed was. But eventually, I learned that the patch that Jeff kept asking for helped to safe the life of the boy who belonged in that bed…the boy Jeff was hanging out with at church.

The last thing I remember, we went to a little league football game to meet up with the boy and his mother. She was so thankful for everything Jeff had done for her son. She went on and on about it. I didn't know what to say and was uncomfortable talking to her for some reason. But the boys resumed their playing like they were in the church and nothing dramatic had ever taken place at the hospital.