A Really Strange Dream

A while back (November 1st or so) I had this really, really weird dream. Like, really weird. It was one of those dreams that feels like it's been dreamed before... and, who knows? Maybe it was. I asked a friend to look up some of the "symbols" in the dream to see what some think they dream might mean, but it was all very confusing.

So, what was the dream?

I was traveling across the country, from the East Coast to the West Coast (probably to California),  when I arrived at an abandoned restaurant somewhere in Tornado Alley (Kansas comes to mind, but I can't be sure... maybe Oklahoma; maybe Nebraska). Somehow I encounted a bunch of "friends" of mine (friends is in quotes because, unlike most of my other dreams, I don't actually know any of the people in this one) and decided to reopen the restaurant. This part of the dream is a little hazy, but I remember scolding one of the waitresses (apparently I was the floor manager and the host) for taking an order from a table without turning in a previous order to the kitchen. It should be noted that the waitress couldn't have been more than 12 years old.

Aside from that, the Grand Opening was going well, but for some reason I went outside (I think to find a chef or something) and saw a really tall silo-like building that was apparently the subject of some town controversy.

There was a tall ladder up the left side. The silo itself reminded me of a really, really tall log cabin. The bottom of it disappeared into a "shell" of a pine tree - imagine a pine tree teepee. What the silo contained was rather surprising... it was a very elaborate waterslide. The townsfolk, for whatever reason, wanted to close it down and there was some "lifeguard" assigned by the city. His job seemed to be to watch for violations so the slide could shut be down. Anyway, I climbed to the top and some guy up there was complaining about how people like to write wishlists and shopping lists on the waterslide walls (I guess someone used purple lipstick or something once, which left the dude complaining covered in purple stuff).

The very top of the waterslide portion was a corkscrew, which it appeared to be all the way down. I took off my pants (I heard someone yell that in order to get back into the restaurant, you had to have "three sets of underwear, a pack of cigarettes, and a beer" - like, what???) and went in. I thought it was going to be fast and furious, so I was a little disconcerted when I wound up almost having to push myself down the slide. The watersprays in the slide came from jury-rigged garden hoses. About 1/3rd of the way down, the corkscrew stopped at a hole in the floor, which revealed a straight drop (in the dark) the rest of the way down. Somehow there was enough light to see hand holds, which I used to climb down to the bottom.

Once I got to the bottom, I realized that my pants (and shirt, apparently) were still at the top. I was going to yell for someone up top to throw them down, but everyone was disappearing. So, I went up the ladder again... only this time, the ladder was cut in half and was actually two ladders joined together.

As I got to the top, the entry way was blocked by a black and red snake. I looked around and saw several more snakes. I couldn't get my clothes. I think I was going to give up and climb back down, but then I heard a cat meow. The black and red snake had a little orange-ish kitten trapped in a constrictor grip. I tried to help it, but when I yelled down to find out what kind of snake it might be, I saw its rattle (which is really when I saw the other snakes... there was some confusion as to which snake the rattle belonged to). Then, while I was mulling over grabbing and pulling on the cat (who seemed to be sleeping, as was the snake, in some weird lovers pose), the bottom of the ladder started spreading wider and wider, and I struggled to keep the top of the ladder together.

That's all I can remember. I have no idea if I fell or not.

What the Hell does that mean?