2001-08-10 - 10:47 p.m.
Reminiscing on Kroger and laughing about odd dreams

I was reading through my stack of Oregonians today (I tend to save them up for a bit, to digest on a good blank evening) and found an article on the financial problems of Albertson's. Normally, this topic would bore me, but one of the two supermarkets within a five-minute driving radius is an Albertson's, so I flipped to the second half of the article. It didn't say whether or not our particular Albertson's would close, but I did trip over another astonishing tidbit, in a section about Albertson's competitors.

Fred Meyer is owned by Kroger!

This is like finding out that Helmann's mayonnaise is known as Best Foods west of the Rockies. (That one thrilled my 12-year-old heart no end). At 23, I am no better: instant, unreasoning joy. There are very few moments in this Pacific Northwest culture when I am instantly reminded of my Texan upbringing, and this was one of them. I can just see those enormous paper "Cost Cutter" scissors hanging from the ceiling now, and hear that absurd "Let's go Kroger-ing" jingle.

It's an extremely silly thing to reminisce about, I know. A grocery store, for crying out loud! *grin* My family shopped almost exclusively at Kroger's for the first eleven years of my life. My name (misspelled, but still my name) was plastered in enormous letters on a banner in our local Kroger's due to something I did in Kindergarten. I can still picture the banner, although my apparently noteworthy deed has long since been forgotten. And then there's the hours I spent clipping coupons from newspapers with Mom (while telling stories or watching TV) and filing them for her to use during the years of Quadruple Coupons. Amazing what fond memories bubble up from a simple news article.

I think I'll have to stop in at the Fred Meyer's near my job a little more often now. *laughing*

Speaking of funny things ... I had another really odd dream last night. At some point I and several other people went to see this new live art exhibit that was being put on by our friends, sort of a re-enactment of some historical party in a large, ancient house. I can't remember why or what the details were, really, but I know there were several rooms, with several different things going on ... a kitchen with folks cooking, a dining room with people feasting, a parlor-type room with tables of card-players and people chatting, a room with ... I don't know quite how to put this ... risque activities going on ... And so forth.

As we were wandering the rooms, I exchanged small conversation with the "actors". Little stuff, not all of it in character, you know, jokes between friends, comments on what we were going to do once the re-enacting was over, that kind of thing. But when I got to the card room and sat down, there was a white flash, and suddenly everything was different. The actors weren't just in character, they were the characters. All recognition was gone in their eyes when they looked at me.

I was baffled. Was I the only sane one? Was I the only one who remembered this scenario wasn't real? And then I looked down, and I wasn't in my own body.

*laughing* Talk about a shock. The body I was wearing was shorter, had very black hair (mine is dark brown), finer features, and much bigger breasts. That might have been pleasant, had it still been me; I wouldn't mind being shorter and more "attractive." But then I looked to the right, and there was my real body, sitting where a male friend of mine had been before the flash hit. I heard my laugh, and my voice saying, "I'll give your body back, Shell, but only if you make that one a little more masculine first." It was unnerving.

Then the game turned into some bizarre EverQuest style thing. The two of us (me and the guy occupying my body) ran around zoning ... That's the only way I can put it that makes sense. We'd be running along, then everything would freeze and the scenery would change. I can't remember what we were doing ... it was some sort of quest.

At one point, I stopped, and thought, "It isn't working!" And then I laughed, because I (the foreign body I was wearing) had lost some of the Lara Croft physique it had had when I switched into it, and gained a little more muscle, and I had thought nothing was happening because the new state was much more "normal." And then the dream nonsensically continued, EQ style.

Later, I stopped again, and all the long black hair was cut short, and the body I was wearing had no breasts left and was stacked like a body builder's with all kinds of overblown muscle, and I told the guy wearing MY body, "There's still a sad lack of chest hair and male parts, but I've done as much as I can. The rest is up to you. Can I please have my body back?"

He laughed with my voice again, and then VOILA, I was me again, and he had other body. Except now it was back to being really a guy's body. (I don't know how I know that; I didn't make him drop his pants). He was cute, but the whole situation was still weirding me out. I left him behind and took off. I was extremely happy to be myself again, and very much relieved not to be stuck as someone else.

At some point later on in the dream I started to climb this absolutely enormous wall build out of giant-sized children's toys, because for some reason the room I was in was way below ground level and the only door out was at the top of the wall, and I got about 200 feet up the wall before vertigo hit and I began to panic. I told myself not to be silly, that I couldn't get hurt, and started jumping sideways and up at diagonals and grabbing on to things with fingers and toes the way Tom Cruise does in the beginning of Mission Impossible II when he's climbing the cliff.

I don't remember much of the dream after that. I do remember, however, laughing myself silly when I woke up, about what I did remember. *grin*