Horrific Dreams

** BE WARNED:  This contains long rambles about my dreams lately.  It will probably be boring. **

Dream #1:

My kids and I lived in this enormous mansion.  We did not own it -- I think I was a curator or something.  It had a ballroom, giant bedrooms with beds with big gold canopies, crazy stuff.  Then I went out a small door, and found a stairway to the lower level.  There I saw a weird neighborhood of storage rooms, cramped hallways, utility closets, etc.  I came upon a family living in a teeny small room with bunkbeds and cement walls.  The mom looked at me and asked who I was.  I said that I lived in the house.  She replied, "Well, like 20 people live here.  So?"
And I was in shock -- 20 people?  I thought we were the only ones!

So I kept wandering.  I found a gatehouse of sorts, which had a large metal fence and gate.  There was another woman who was operating the gate.  She asked me for my passcode, which I didn't have.  I protested that I LIVED HERE IN THE MAIN HOUSE!  She looked me up and down, and said to wait.  She rummaged through a cardboard box and grabbed two blue polo shirts with white logos on them (couldn't see what it said), and tossed them at me.  She said to be sure to wear them next time.  And she let me out.

Problem is, I didn't know how to find my way back, and got lost in the town.
THEN.  I was back in "my" house, and decided to look for the mysterious underground portion of the house, and took my daughter with me.  We found the door and went looking.  We found the family in the little bunkbed room, we found more hidden rooms.  Then my daughter kept trying to explain to the people that our part of the house had a BALLROOM and how cool was that?  They didn't believe her.

Then I woke up.

DREAM #2:
Ugh.  This one is short but nasty.
I was at what looked like the world's saddest office party.  It looked like we were in the faculty lounge at some college or something.  Couches, counters, cabinets, a fridge, a sink, chairs.  But it was a funeral of sorts.  For two children.  One was a school-aged kid, and I think he was in a coffin on the side of the room.  But the real focus was the infant.  For some mysterious reason, the infant, while dead, was animated.  Moving.  ANd there was some underlying understanding that the infant was going to be this way for TWO WEEKS.  I guess at that point, it would be fully dead.
But there was a woman (I don't think it was the mother) who was carrying this infant around.  It was horrid. The infant was gray/blue, and naked except for a blanket wrapped loosely around its lower half.  The woman looked empty -- sad, resigned, somewhat disgusted.
Apparently the infant had died due to exposure to mold and bacteria.  No one wanted to touch it.  It needed to be fed.  Nobody wanted to do it.
So I took the infant and went to the sink to make a bottle of formula.  It wouldn't suck, so I stuck my finger in its mouth to get it started.  Then, oddly (like all of this isn't odd enough?), my cousin Peter was there saying, "Are you NUTS? You're touching it?  Do you want to be exposed to all the mold it's carrying? And bring that home to YOUR family? STOP!"

Then I handed the infant back to the woman, and started weeping desperately.  I found my friend Leslie and knelt in front of her, my head on her knees, and sobbed.  Then I lay down on an old green couch and try to rest.  Some man comes up with the infant.  I sobbed, "No.  I just can't.  I CAN'T!" but he lays the infant on the couch next to me, right against my arm and ribs.  It was so cold I could feel the chill soaking into me through its blanket.

I woke then with a start, still feeling cold one one side.

OK.  What the HELL was that about?