Day 1 - Journal Exercise (Sunrise Reflections)

"Get up early in the morning and greet the sunrise. Write about what you see and feel."

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1/25/2022

I had a dream my mother and I went on a vacation. The vacation was either this small town or we were just driving through this town on the way back from a vacation. I can't recall the name of the place we were vacationing to, I just kinda feel that it had a really great time there, but now we were heading back home. We stopped at a place to eat on the way home, it was more like a giant warehouse with 20 feet ceilings and tin walls for structuring. Mother and I, with a few other obvious tourists, waited in line for a few cafeteria ladies to show up. There were boxes and crates of food piled up to the ceiling, lots of it were MRE's,  fruit juice boxes, graham crackers, and a small number of canned goods, mainly MRE's. There were 3 of 4 cafeteria ladies that showed up, in typical cafeteria lady style, they ran a tight ship on an apparent tight schedule. They gave us each a boxed meal, a fruit juice, an apple or orange, of which we got to choose either apple or an orange, and a tiny thing of Jello. Mother and I went outside and ate with the others. I ate mine in 2 minutes flat and went to the restroom on the way back I started kind of snooping around for more food that might be ready for discard or anything I saw that I might not get in trouble for eating, I was apparently really hungry. All of a sudden, a bus pulled up and a prison guard got off with a line of inmates. It became obvious at that point that this was not a typical roadside cafeteria warehouse, but indeed, some type of off-campus chow hall for inmates. I stopped snooping and around to find a  place to hide and wait for the inmates to leave. The next thing I know, I'm getting yelled at by the Sergeant to get back in line, I told him I wasn't with the inmates, and that he simply found me out of place. After much deliberating he came to the conclusion I was in fact out of place and not one of the inmates and continued to try and help me find my mother and the rest of the group. Apparently, I had been hiding out for quite some time, every one of the tourists had left already, including my mother. I called my mother, and she was already back at home in bed asleep. I asked her to please come back and get me, she sounded disgruntled, exasperating it was a 3-hour trip back to get me. She said she would be there but to give her a while... I could tell she immediately hung up and went back to sleep. I started hitchhiking back home. I was picked up by a car of 3 young (early 20's) Asian women. They said they could take me half the way home, but asked if I could help them at their job before I left them, I agreed. For a long time I, the 3 Asian women, and her two male co-workers just sat in this big empty room.. with more tin walls, and long metal tables, in awkward silence, I distinctly felt I was being sized up. There wasn't any hostility, more like curiosity. I finally spoke up: "So... what are we going to be working on today?" I asked. One of the Asian gentlemen went to a back room and came back out with a big plastic container with drawers and compartments full of plastic beads. "Organize this?" I asked. He snorted back, the women giggled... I was busy sorting beads when I woke up to my cat sitting on my chest trying to nibble off my mustache.