Happy New Year!

Okay, enough of that. I need help. I know I promised I'd relate the sordid details of the New Year's Eve festivities (no goats were involved that I can remember), but I'll have to do that later. Right now I need someone with experience in dream analysis to tell me what the hell last night's dreams meant.

This is long, and very confusing, so first I'm going to list the major players in the dream so you all know who I'm talking about:

• Sarah: my wife.
• Rachel: one of our best friends. Very smart, very cute, lives in San Francisco, but has been hanging with us for the last few days. Very liberated woman. Does not eat meat.
• Brian: close friend for approximately ever, curator of milobloom.com, very funny fellow. Works too hard.
• My mom: Well, she's my mom. Nuff said.
• Karen Rodriguez: I have no idea who this person is, but the name comes up in the dream. I do not know why.
• Jodi: Good friend from college; Sarah and I were in her wedding back in November. Her first child is due on 1/27.
• Todd: Jodi's husband. Totally quality all around guy, but in the dream he is inexplicably very fat and alcoholic. He is neither of things in real life. I have no idea.
• Issa: 13 year old boy, sings in the choir at the Cathedral. Despite his youth, he is well over 6 feet tall.
• My truck: 2002 Ford F150 4x4. Black.
• Linda: another member of the Cathedral choir.
• Fitzy: Chris Fitzhugh. I've actually known him for longer than almost anybody; our paths keep crossing strangely. We were in youth group together in the early 90s, and then met again in college. Both of us are Y-chrome alums.

I think that's about it. So anyway, the part of the dream that I remember, Sarah and I are on the grounds of some kind of Presbyterian church. The church itself is not large, but rests on a large parcel of land and has many buildings affiliated with it; a hospital, some kind of dormitory. Anyway, Linda appears and tells us what a few of the buildings are. She then disappears and is not seen again.

Sarah and I enter the dormitory, at which time I realize that Rachel is with us. Not sure where she came from, but anyway. We go upstairs, and somehow I get delayed (not sure why), and when I enter the room, Sarah and Rachel are already there, and my mother is in there holding a young baby with a SERIOUS acne problem. There's also another woman in the back of the room, but I don't know who she is, and I never find out.

Confused yet? Welcome to MY world.

Okay, so my mom is holding an unexplained baby with more zits than hair. Suddenly I realize Rachel is the mother. To know how dramatically screwed up this is, you rather have to know Rachel; those of you that do are probably nodding. Rachel also has somehow changed from her normal hip attire into a bright white velour track suit. Not just bright...glowing, like something out of a Pieta. Her face also changes a bit until she's not really Rachel...she looks rather Claymont. Those of you who have been to Claymont probably know what I mean. Those of you who are FROM Claymont are probably rather annoyed right now.

Welcome to MY world.

Then, some sketchy figure appears wearing a hooded sweatshirt...I pull the hood down, and it's Issa. Except that it's not; it's a 25-30 year old guy that looks just like Issa, and has an extraordinarily poor complexion. So now I realize that he's the father, and that he and Rachel have been married for about a year, and the not-Issa lives around here, and Rachel lives in California.

My mom asks who takes care of the baby, and Rachel replies "Karen Rodriguez." My mom inquires about the cost, and Rachel tells her it's free. Who is Karen Rodriguez and why is she caring for a baby for nothing? I do not know.

Next thing I know, we're driving around in some of the nastier parts of the city of Wilmington, Delaware (not exactly a stretch, since that's about a 10 minute drive from our house). Sarah and I are being driven around by Fitzy in his little red Volkswagen, and it's about 2pm.

Suddenly we time travel, and it's no longer afternoon, but late at night. We are now being driven around by Rachel, who is driving my truck. We are very, very lost in a very, very bad part of Wilmington. We have to stop because the road ends at a fence, so we get turned around, and notice we're in some kind of parking lot, and all the cars are flashing their headlights. I'm all, "Rachel, floor it, get us out of here," and she's all "No, they'll just think we want to race them, and they'll chase us." Whatever. Did I mention she's no longer wearing the track suit, her face is back to normal, and there's no sign of baby or Issa-like father? Oh well. Then four very sketchy inner-city dwellers on roller blades are playing street hockey. At 2am.

I have no idea what is going on at this point.

Suddenly, Rachel drives by a very bizarre building; rather reminiscent of Burnett Elementary School, but weirder. I comment on how I don't want to go in there, so of course she parks the truck and we go in. Not sure where Sarah is at this point, but she comes back later. Once inside, we realize there's a big cocktail party going on for some reason. Everybody is wearing cocktail dresses or nice business casual clothing, depending on gender; I start climbing up the stairs until I reach the top floor. Rachel is there, and a bunch of people I don't know, but then Jodi appears, wearing a green velour halter top that reveals her belly button. Since she is 8 months pregnant at this point, this seems an unlikely thing for her to wear, but who knows. Todd, who in the dream is fat and drunk, is running around handing out beers.

Twitching yet? Welcome to MY world.

Then the party goes outside, where a bunch of people I don't know are huddling around my wife's car. Sarah and Rachel are inside, cackling maniacally about something, I dunno. I'm a little concerned about all these sketchy people, but then somehow we're all back inside having a great time, and some really skeevy young girl is totally hitting on me. I have no idea.

Next thing I know, I'm in a junkyard/liquor store with Brian. Why someone has opened a junkyard with a liquor store, I do not know. He's driving my truck, which apparently has had lifts installed, because we're at least 8 feet off the ground. We're driving around cars and things, and we decide not to buy any liquor, so we just drive through the checkout, Brian says something I don't remember about his son Zachary, and I woke up.

That's it. That's the dream. A few things are easy to figure out: I dreamt about Rachel and Fitzy because I hung out with them on New Year's Eve. Rachel looked Claymont because one of the other girls we hung out with at the party looked kinda Claymont. The bright white velour tracksuit appeared probably because it the words "velour track suit" came up in conversation two or three times this week.

Other than that, I'm incredibly confused, and somebody needs to quickly leave detailed comments about what all this means, else I will have to assume that I've gone completely insane, and I'm taking you with me.