Dreams of antique store purgatory

Usually when I shop for books and records in dreams, it's kind of a happy place: I find a bunch of cool things at a thrift store, for example - usually things I really want for my own collection, or occasionally things I know I can resell. Sometimes it distracts me from a quest I am otherwise on - a store with used books or records materializes in the middle of a dream where I'm trying to find and save someone, for example, and I forget all about them and spend the rest of the dream shopping - which I feel shitty about when I wake up, but enjoy while I'm asleep; who needs a quest, when there are books and records? 

But last night, the dream turned positively vicious: I was in a sort of antique and junk shop - not so much a thrift store, really - that had a room for books with a bunch of boring paperbacks in it, but - I discovered on the way out - a side room for furniture that, on closer inspection, had boxes and somewhat hidden shelves of much more interesting books and a few 7" records. Among those were two copies of the Subhumans' "Death to the Sickoids"/ "Oh Canaduh" 7" and an early 7" single by the Pointed Sticks that doesn't actually exist, but I recognized in the dream as a collector's grail. There were also lots of books that I knew I could resell for a profit. I was going from box to box, from shelf to shelf, piling these rare collectibles into my own boxes, and had two boxes brimming over when I went to look at the 7" records... 

...and as I was doing that, standing to reach them where they were stacked on a high shelf - the boxes I had been setting aside for myself disappeared. I could no longer tell them apart from the other boxes - it wasn't that someone else had bought them, it's that I couldn't find them. Panicked, I repeated my circuit, from box to box, shelf to shelf, and the stuff I thought I was going to make a small fortune on simply no longer seemed to be there. Was this the box? No, these books are all garbage... how about this one? Worse, when I looked down at my hand, I saw that the 7"s I'd been carrying around - the Subhumans, the Pointed Sticks, and a few others - had vanished; I was now merely carrying around a piece of scrap paper. Literally everything I had set aside for myself had vanished, and it had gone, in the dream, from being near the end of my night - I had ducked into the store, as its only customer, on the way back from Vancouver to Maple Ridge, where my parents were both still alive and awaiting me - to the morning, with other book-people now in the store. I had spent my entire night searching the store, then as morning came, I had lost it all, and had to resume my search, exhausted and stressed and dispirited...

...it was almost like I was going to spend the rest of my life in the store, never finding what I wanted, or thinking I had found it then losing it again. It felt purgatorial, a punishment - the myth of Sisyphus as enacted in a junk shop. That's how I woke up - stressed out, bummed out, and needing to pee. 

It is now about 6am. I'm here at my "office workstation" - a dining-room table in the corner by the kitchen, with cars and buses zipping by on the rain-slick streets of Burnaby, on a very wet early winter day. The cat - who has had three teeth removed recently, increasing his energy considerably - is now awake and prowling around, hopefully not disturbing Erika, who is trying to sleep (he'll sometimes go stand at her ear and meow until she wakes up, or sometimes climb onto her chest). We are attempting a keto diet, of late, and it seems to be working (Erika woke up one morning and decided; a couple weeks later and I've decided to tag along). I'm still working from home, and she's still going into Opus, sometimes working very long days (which sometimes stresses me out a bit). Both of us are getting more nervous about things like eating out or shopping, as COVID cases grow. Metrotown has had several, we gather, both at Superstore and T&T.  We've decided, given the numbers, that it is also unsafe to go to the island for Christmas - a big deal for Erika, who has lots of family and friends on Vancouver Island - including a favourite great uncle who seems to be being swayed by his Trump-loving children into believing that maybe COVID isn't real (not sure how that will impact his understanding that we are not visiting). But we're safe and comfortable here, relatively speaking, in my fortress of media, even if we feel a bit stuck, maybe - killing time, waiting for the next phase of our life to begin. Is Burnaby now our real-life purgatory?

Anyhow, I guess I can put on the bacon, soon. I think I'm awake for good...