Dream Fragments

I'm driving down a gravel road on a classic red motorcycle with sidecar*1.  A child, perhaps 4 or 5, with his shorts slipping down a little to show some plumber's crevice, stands facing away from us.  Whitney Houston (early, still with the curls and no cocaine), who is in the sidecar shoots the kid in the bum with a watergun as we drive by him.  She lets loose peals of laughter.

I am part of a group from the Department of Health and Human Services doing a routine inspection of a foster mother's house.  She is a jolly lady, one of those older ladies who loves cats just a bit more than is ordinary, and she is just fine with the whole situation.  There are no children in the house, which is an older and once grand house of several stories, but as I move through the house I see a series of cats.  The first are two miniature leopards together in a cage.  I think, "At least they aren't full size leopards" only to see a full size leopard in the next, larger cage.  Lying around the place are domestic cats of varying degrees of grace or indolence.  Many are quite large.

However, I am here to do an inspection.  The place is one of those houses that was once shabby, and has gone with that for twenty years.  It is grimy, messy, and has lots of old fabrics covering things and hanging "decoratively," but there is no smell *2.  I search around and find a used Q-tip, unfortunately broken off and barely an inch long.  Armed with this Q-tip I set off into the house to take forensic swabs to be examined at the lab to make sure the house is not contaminated.  Holding the Q-tip very delicately between thumb and forefinger I reach into the corner of cabinets and such to gently swab the surfaces, one of which is essentially an ash tray.  Since I only have the one Q-tip I must make sure that I get the four samples I need by rotating the Q-tip 90 degrees each time.

*1  I have had quite a few dreams over the years of owning and riding motorcycles.  These have been some of my most vivid dreams, to the point where when I awake I think I own a motorcycle and can ride one.  I have never been on a motorcycle and am not going to own one because I think I would have so much fun that I would wrap myself around a tree within the first week.

*2  I have no sense of smell in my dreams, sometimes I just know that something does smell, as if I had read it in a book or someone had told me.  In fact, the only sense I actually have direct experience with in dreams is the sense of sight (I dream in life-like colour) but I know that other senses are going on.  For example, I don't actually hear anybody say things to me in dreams, I just know that they have told me things.