News and a Dream

Today, in just a few hours, I will be boarding a plane to Atlanta, Georgia, where I will visit with my grandparents; I apologize for my laziness in not supplying my avid readers with my entries from the cruise trip as of yet - I still have to transfer them all from my notebook, which takes longer than it may seem. Unfortunately, my algebra EOC is tomorrow, so I shall have to make that up on Monday, according to Mr. Dankwardt, or Mr. Danforth as Jenny kept calling him.



Anyways, the fun part: my dream last night - it was one of those really long dreams that seem like they last the whole night, and for some reason, whenever I have these, I feel exhausted in the morning when I wake up. At least it was a good dream, though.

In the dream, I was back on the cruise ship (The Disney Wonder), and Hope and I were wearing these flouncy white dresses, walking around barefoot on the 9th deck (there were 11); it was about noon, and the sun beat down overhead, not too bright, but toasty enough to feel very soothing on our bare arms and legs (the best part was that, in the dream, it wasn't toasty enough to be roasty). The ship was a bit different in the dream; the swimming pools were gone, as well as the big screen in the center of the ship that constantly blared with music. Instead, there were three times as many beach chairs (the kind you lay down on to get a tan if you don't roast like I do) and they all faced the railing, beyond which the water could be seen, a crystal blue, for miles.

About halfway down the ship in our progress towards the bow (front), Hope saw her mother framed in the doorway, calling her to come get a slice of pizza from Deck 5 (though there wasn't pizza on deck five on the actual ship) and she was hungry from having a small breakfast that morning. (It is important to add here that in the dream, it was as though we had been on the ship for a few days, gone elsewhere for a while, and then gotten back on) I decided to keep walking, as I wasn't hungry yet, and I had almost made it to the end of the boat, and was really excited about the view I would have of the ocean, when I heard my name called from somewhere to my right. I turned and saw this kid that I had met (in real life) previously (the first night of the cruise at this party they threw for teens). He was lying on his stomach on one of the beach chairs while this elderly, pale woman wearing a pink dress that inflated and deflated as the wind took hold of it massaged some sort of ointment into his back (he was wearing dark red swimming shorts) Eyes closed in pleasure, pain, or some other emotion, he called my name again and I wandered over to converse, kneeling beside the bench.

"Hey," I said, "So you came back on for the second trip as well?"

He smiled, eyes still closed, and said, "Yeah. You going to the party tonight?" I thought about it and realized with dismay that my dad and I had planned to go see a movie tonight at the $2 theater (which didn't make much sense, as the $2 theater is in Winston-Salem, but dreams will be dreams) . So I told him that I would be unable to, and he seemed disappointed about it. At that moment, an old bald man wearing water wings (and swimming shorts) ran past with a wallet in hand, closely pursued by a muscular man in his early thirties who was shouting obscenities at the man and who caused many parental hands to be clamped over curious children's ears. The old, bald man, rather unsteady on his feet, stumbled back into the railing close behind me, trapped, and as the pursuing man made one last advance, he toppled back over the railing. The advancing man dashed up to the railing pointed down, and was yelling, "That man stole my wallet! The sonuvab!*#$ - he stole my wallet and now it's in the ocean somewhere - " Some blue-uniformed guards, the only people not in beach attire, dragged the man away somewhere and everything seemed to be normal again for the time. I was about to tell the boy on the chair that I was going to be going to the party tomorrow night, when Hope appeared again in the doorway, and informed me that there were apple smoothies downstairs, which in real life does not sound appealing to me; however, it did in the dream, so I excused myself and followed her down into the main hall, where Mickey and Minnie Mouse (or people dressed up as them) were singing opera, filling the cavernous lobby with sound. The End (my alarm went off).