Mixed Family, Beach, dog food, disabled kid, sweeping

I was going to my aunt’s mansion for a family get-together. We all know her house is big, but this was more like a manor mansion than a house. It had been years since I’d been to their house and I was the first one to arrive. They couldn’t be found, really, either, so I just wandered around, reminding myself of the house. I remember thinking about how awful it must be to maintain such a monstrous home especially now without any kids to inhabit it. They had left the kids’ playroom perfectly intact, toys strewn about like they’d never left. It was rather creepy. I saw my uncle’s man-cave and noticed a hidden room panel which I proceeded to try to unscrew the bolts from to get in. It was hard to unscrew quickly by hand and I didn’t make it before we were all called to the kitchen area. Other family members started piling in and weirdly enough, the family members were mostly the members from my mom’s family, not my dad’s. There was this thing about the chairs that were never done and the men started talking about it. I was trying to wrap my brain around what they were discussing. It was a DIY sofa where the seat sections sat on rails and could be slid around and reconfigured as desired. I didn’t like the idea but tried to contribute to the conversation by offering 2 ideas: 1) now I don’t remember, and 2) to give them a brake handle since they slide around on the metal tracks. My uncle gave me a weird, dismissive look and said they already have those. I was like, huh? All the men seemed embarrassed that I even had an opinion. My nice uncle from my mom’s side tried to give it all a positive spin like he usually does, in a practical way. By then my cousins (now from my dad’s side) had just arrived and they were the last ones expected. Then some announcement was made.

Then I was in a store with my cousins and my one cousin’s boyfriend. I hadn’t like him since we were in the house, but whatever, not my problem. He was not only extremely inappropriate, especially given all the kids around, but he kept trying to be the center of attention, which he wasn’t. We were all sitting at the end of an aisle and I was trying not to pay attention to the dumb boyfriend’s suggestive remarks and my cousin’s appalled-but-not faces. I walked over to a hallway where people were going to the bathroom and remarked, “Wow I wouldn’t go in there that is smellllllly (I assume Gable farted in my room).”

Eventually I went into one of the bathrooms and it turned into an academy where some groups of students were being forced to watch weird costume actors randomly come in and get beat up by a “hero.” There was some argument amongst the actors and there was some running around in the greenspace enclosed by a stone wall.

Now I’m at the beach. I go out to the water and try to fish in it. Whenever my hook touched something it would turn into something else. I kept asking people to grab the items for me before they floated away, but no one would do anything. Finally, I went to grab one and found out that I was not only the only one who could see them, but the only one who could touch them. Figures. I went back into the house only to come back out. It’s  nighttime. This time, though, the entire place was FILLED with other beachgoers and I had to pick my way through them. I walked around saying “excuse me” over and over again. Half of them moved, half of them didn’t (white people). I stepped over all sorts of small children. I eventually found an open space at the edge of a square of sand, but then a bunch of people piled up in front of me. Some stragglers came in and asked if there were any open spots. I pointed to the middle that I could clearly see was empty, when the couple in front of me gets mean saying, “There is NO spot there!” I’m like, uhhhh…I can see it. And kept pointing people to the spot. I think they just didn’t want people in front of them. Everyone’s too afraid to move. Their loss. That’s when the move starts and it’s about a young boy with Down syndrome being kept in poor conditions. He lives out of a stone bathroom. They give him one of those sample mattress squares to sleep on. While they feed him regularly, a faceless man would come in and abuse him. They never let him out. The movie goes on to chronicle his life. The dumb couple in front of me, is indignant about his abuse. We turn out to be the only people still hanging around and a cleaning lady comes by to vacuum everything up. The 3 of us were so moved by the movie that they pick up brooms each to help sweep all the dog food off the floor. I can’t stand watching these rich white people inadequately sweeping, so I pick up my own broom to fix their inadequacy. I go into the storage room where they keep the dog food and there are so many pieces on the ground! It’s never ending!