last night's dream.

Last night I had one of the strangest dreams I can ever remember having.  Here's some highlights:

I was in a mall, two-stories with high ceilings.  (Strange note: This exact mall was in a dream I had a couple of weeks ago) My mom got a package delivered to her while shopping (that's some pretty good service!), which she opened.  It was a little black piece of something, like a piece of coal.  A note with it said, "Your father is dead.  Find the black pearl."  As she pulled the "coal" out of the box, a couple of feathers came out with it.  She threw it on the ground, apparently having handled such a substance before, and it became a black bird straight out of the cartoons with pointy white feathers on the top of its head.  It didn't fly, it bounced.  And when you touched it, you bounced too.

[I don't remember what happened next]

Next thing I know, we are climbing up stairs to see a friend's new apartment.  She was so proud of her new place.  It was one big room, and in order to pay the rent, she had to have 11 other people live there too.  Lining the walls were two bunk beds, and then this "bunk bed-esque" thing, that looked like mattresses in drawers, which slept 5 people all stacked up together.  (I'm hoping their rent was less!)

We then drove to get something to eat, through a series of one way streets.  It was apparently the best place to eat in town, but the location changed every week, so it could be difficult to find.

Suddenly I'm back in the mall and looking for my grandma.  But, we can't get to her because she is on the other side and there was a parade in the middle. 

[There were some other crazy things that happened, that I unfortunately don't remember now.  I should have written it down right when I woke up.]

The next part of was the strangest part of all.  I dreamt that I woke up from this strange dream and was telling somebody about it, but I was really still dreaming.  I was even aware that my shoulder was hurting, told them about it, but was really still dreaming.  I woke up (for real this time) and by shoulder, neck, and back were all extremely sore from how I was sleeping.  Or maybe it was from all that bouncing.