(5/11/09) maxed out by useless items; mouse mess

(Entered in paper journal at 8:44 AM at Starbucks at 29th Street and Park Avenue.)

Dream #1

I was in a store that felt like it could have been a department store, like the hardware section of a Sears, in a mall. I stood before a cashier. The cashier was a tallish man, a little pot-bellied, possibly wearing a thinly plaid shirt and a sleeveless fleece jacket. He was white, a little red-faced, and bald.

The cashier stood behind a lowish counter, probably just below waist-height. The counter was made of some crude material, like plyboard, and seemed to give the feel of a bait shop or a tool shop. There may also have been a computer (as a new cash register) to the man's right.

The man had charged me on my credit car for something which may have cost me nine hundred dollars. The thing might have been used to take care of some problem I had caused, possibly on my computer. (I said this because I couldn't remember for sure, and the day previous to this dream, in waking life, my sister had told me about some computer problems she'd been having.)

I wasn't sure I wanted the thing I'd been charged for. I might even have asked for a refund, at which point I may have been told that it would take a while for the refund to hit my charge card.

The man now set me up for some kind of special product, which he would usually try to "pitch" to people, but which struck me as completely useless. The product cost nine hundred dollars. I thought, Nine hundred dollars for the first product and nine hundred for the second. That's eighteen hundred dollars! My credit card will be overdrawn!

The man had hardly even told me he had put the charge on my card, like it was something of little importance. I told the man, "Don't you dare! Don't put that charge on my card!"

The man said, "I already did."

I said, "Then take it off! Take it off immediately!" I explained to the man that there was no way my card could handle the charge.

I looked at my credit card. It was broken, all the way across the card, following the bottom of the magnetic strip. The bottom piece and the top piece still clung together, but the card could now bend back and forth at this break, like the card was hinged.

Dream #2

I was in a big room with a group of people. We were all probably engaged in some task together. The room was emptyish and wide, like a somewhat uncared-for elementary school classroom.

We noticed some kind of mess on the floors. The mess seemed to panic people, like it was contaminated and exposure to it could lead to disease. We tried to figure out the cause of the mess.

I looked up to the ceiling. The ceiling was a thin steel grid-frame with fiberboard (?) paneling. Some of the paneling was missing, revealing the deeper space above, with heating vents, etc. I noticed a few mice scurrying around in the space, runing to the edges of the paneling, along the thin steel grid, etc.

I called out to everybody, "Up there! There's mice!" I may have been ashamed, as if this place was my home, and I had let mice get into it.