Some friends throw me a makeover party

I woke up a bit early today, so I decided to go back to sleep, and boy, was it worth it. I fell asleep listening to Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus, and it seems that, in doing so, a beacon was send out to guardian angels everywhere. 

I dreamed  that I had come home to find a few friends busying themselves around my house. People were moving my furniture and possessions around, and the place looked like it was either being robbed or emptied out for a yard sale. My initial reaction was, "Hey, who let all these people in, and what are they doing with all my stuff?" 

A guy named Hugo from work whizzed by with bunch of floor tiles under his arm from a box of new wood laminate flooring. He greeted me but did not answer my question. Reggie Martinez was sitting at my desk in my downstairs. I hadn't seen him for years, and I greeted him excitedly:

"Hey, Reggie! Long time no see. Whatcha been up to?"

He got up, as if to greet me, but then sat down on the couch and started reading aloud out of some book of philosophy.

"You've become a philosopher, have you?" I teased. 

Reggie was always the joker at work. He liked nothing better than to come up with the most perfectly  crafted insults, designed to rattle your cage, which he would spring on you at the most inopportune moment. Like if you were hoisting an engine, or struggling under a car, he'd say, "Dude, do you even know what your doing?" or "Your mama is a dead lay." 

If you took the bait and reacted, he'd be on you the rest of the day, tapping you on the shoulder at random times asking, "Are you mad?"  Perhaps it was his coping mechanism for being a short, trollish man with the ego of a rap star, I don't know. There was a nice guy under there, if you could get past his odious surface persona.

Whatever was going on in the house, with all the people and the moving about of possessions, I figured he knew about it, and I was pressing him to tell me. He never looked up. He just kept on reading from his book of philosophy, droning on and on in a very articulate, scholarly voice. 

I left him there, still reading, and went to look for Hugo.  I noticed whole crews of people in various rooms, taking pictures and things off the walls.  Some of my older stuff was being moved out and newer stuff was brought in. A real estate agent looking lady was in the kitchen giving directions for how the place ought to be staged while a guy in another room was cutting floor tiles with a wet saw.  It looked as if they were doing a full scale makeover on the place.

I caught up with Hugo and asked him again, "Dude, what are all these people doing?"

"You'll find out soon enough," he said enigmatically and darted off onto my next door neighbor's property.

I followed him for a bit, but he eluded me. I wandered around on my neighbor's property a bit, but no one was home. A company work truck sat in his garage on jacks. It looked like it had been in a fender bender. The front wheels were off, and the suspension was splayed out at an unlikely angle.

Wandering down an alley toward my house, my thoughts turned to another neighbor's house. I thought to tell my busybody friends about it, since it was a real haunted house of a dump of Lovecraftian proportions. I'd dreamed of it before, with its slime coated walls and flooded underground tunnels leading to torture labyrinths. I wondered how they'd handle taking that on as a project. I never did mention it, since there was no one there in the alley with me at the time, and I promptly forgot all about it.

Back at my house, I was finally putting the pieces together. In Amish barn-raising fashion, my friends and neighbors had conspired to throw me an all out "Reconstructing Andrew" party. Everything that was wrong was being addressed. Clothing was being thrown out, walls painted, flooring replaced. I wondered aloud whether or not this would extend to fixing my dental issues.

"Relax," one of the workers said, "The appointment has already been made."

I protested a little, but they assured me that all of these changes were for the best and that I'd be happy with the results. I was amazed at the lengths these people were going to and the level of detail they were endeavoring to achieve in perfecting my life. Every thing I had ever bitched about, they were in the process of fixing, as well as making some improvements I hadn't even considered.

I never did get a direct answer out of anyone regarding who had initiated all of this, and I woke up before they'd put the finishing touches on their big reveal. My audio book was still playing, the narrator droning on philosophically, something about suicide and the reasonings for and against it. 

I guess I'll get out of bed now.