I'm in a house with Gail - I don't know if it's her house or not. I've been doing something with some others & need to go home - it's not that we've been all together doing whatever it is, but I have been doing whatever I'm supposed to be doing, on my own, involving moving around the house. Gail is working somewhere in another part of the house & I'm taking my leave, basically - I've gone through the kitchen & looked in the refrigerator to see if there's anything to munch on particularly, to take along for the ride. There's nothing - I'm disappointed and I'm going on to get my gear in another room. So I do that, and on the way back take a turn through the kitchen again & lo and behold there's some cookies now, nice looking ones - storebought but that's okay - so I munch on one and, grabbing a few others & holding them in my hand, I go on. I run into some of the other people, including Gail, who is sitting I think at a computer & working. I'm hiding the cookies - I don't want them to see that I've taken them without permission & I've got them down at my side in my hand - and occasionally when I have to move my hand I squish it a little bit & I'm afraid I'm squashing the cookies but that is how it is, I guess. On my way past where Gail is sitting I see that she has some other cookies too, of her own, on a tray - they're very nice looking as a matter of fact, these look homemade, some of them have chocolate on them, I think - and I wish that I'd been around to get some of those. But that's sad, and I go on. The house apparently leads into a hardware store because I am in a hardware store next, and I haven't been outside and walked into it. It's very close; there's stuff everywhere, even overhead, sort of a general-store look to it - there's more than one room, and there's nobody about -I know the store's run by a family, there's a number of them - and I wonder if they're closed, which would be very strange. I pass by the front door and see that there's a hasp on it, and it's moved over but there isn't any padlock and I'm most concerned about that - how in the world could it be that there's nobody here and they're closed but they haven't locked the door? It's most disconcerting, and I decide I'd better call the police. I go a little way beyond the front door and see that I can see in the mirror if there's somebody at the front, and indeed there is. There's a mirror rigged so you can see whoever's just outside the front door. There's a young woman, blond I think - she's got on a sort of business suit - looks like a nice person. She opens the door and comes in - I can see her standing in the entry - I move forward a little bit and make a casual remark - as least it sounded casual to me, about how, "Oh, I didn't realize that anyone was coming in - I wanted to see if it was possible to get in the front door." She looks rather startled and concerned - looks around and leaves. I hadn't realized she couldn't see me - the entry is a very close place too, kind of cave-like, and this mirror's not flat against the wall like I thought it was, I have to look for it. I myself am beyond the wall into the next room and I can see into the entry to that room; there's no door to shut, and the mirror I'm seeing is in a kind of cleft or recess in the wall, which is on the craggy side, and it's placed at just such an angle that you can see what you need to see - for instance, somebody coming in the front door, but they can't see you. They can't see the mirror either. So she's gone, and at this time the proprietor shows up, and his family, and it turns out that what's been going on is they've been preparing for a family celebration of some kind. They've gone off to get things from the back - food and whatnot - and they have left the store open, but they didn't figure they'd be gone any length of time. Now I'm feeling kind of thwarted - here I was going to be a hero - I had been telling them, "Well, yes, I saved your store from being robbed" maybe, or something, but I'm no longer needed now.
Before I go I figure I will go into this side room and do a kind of meditation ritual which involves spreading a sort of blanket (or maybe it's a robe of some kind) and setting a little altar sort of thing, and I'm starting to do that. But the owner is also setting up something in this room - it might be a barbecue pit or something like that - he and one of his sons maybe or another relative, are bustling around carrying things and setting them up in the middle and he's pretty oblivious to me. I guess that I could be going on doing what I'm doing for all of him, but I'm definitely uncomfortable carrying on with it - I think that I might, I guess, but I realize there's no way I can meditate with this going on. So I pack up my stuff and I'm thinking maybe I'll do it at home - not the best way to do it but I'll do it. Now right after this (or between the house and the hardware store, but I think it's after) I stop by a place where there are people I know (I don't think it's the hardware store family but it might be) and there is a young girl that's a friend of mine - she has bought a puzzle game that she's wanting everybody to do and before I go she wants me to put a piece of the puzzle in - she hands me one and says, "There ya go - go ahead - you put this one in, this is where we are!" and she shows me the picture of how it's supposed to look. I figure where it's supposed to go and I put it in and then I grab another one and put it in, and suddenly of course I've got jigsaw-puzzle fever. My piece looked like a corner - like land on a map next to water, but it was definitely a right angle [but?] that was supposed to be where we are - and I can see a piece that looks like a part of New England - like New Jersey or Maine or something like that, maybe New York, and I'm thinking, okay, this is a map of New England. But it's not really and as I keep putting things together bit by bit it turns out that it's not just that but it's the whole United States - how did I miss that? That's really strange. I've got the thing mostly put together, and I realize - and my friend does too - that if I keep on going like this, her family's not going to have any parts to put into it, and it's embarrassing. But at the same time I want to finish it, oh, just got a few more pieces! But the better part of valor is to take it all apart and let the family do it - someone comes in, a man who is familiar but I don't know who he is now, maybe he's an actor or some other personality, don't think somebody I really know, I think he's the dad here, and he makes some joke about taking it all apart because he doesn't know why I put it all together in the first place. So I pull all the pieces apart and put them back in the box. Now, there's also a scene from a time before the house with Gail in it, I think - it seems to be gone - I am in another house with another group of people and there's a big metal shelving unit with things on it that falls over and falls right on a glass-topped coffee table. I can see it start to go and I realize it's going to break the thing to smithereens if it lands there, but there isn't anything that I can do about it while it slowly keels over and goes kablam. There's pieces of glass everywhere and everybody's gonna have to help clean it up and we're gonna have to be careful, of course, not to get cut by the glass.