he's alive

probably a cliche dream in the circumstances.

Rex isn't really dead. he somehow came home between funeral and interment, but there was no point in telling anyone because he has already been declared dead by the government and it would just be a really big hassle to try to get him declared not dead, so we'll just keep him as our smug little secret.

(This part seems to have been a former dream, although I don't remember dreaming it. It was embedded as the basis of this dream, so I don't really know if I dreamed it or if it was just part of the knowing that sometimes happens in dreams.)

Some members of Rex's family (his brothers Max and Cecil) stopped by the house to check on me (which has never happened) and discovered him there. Thus the explanation and the conundrum. They couldn't disagree with our logic, but the whole thing just doesn't sit 'right' with any of us.
Lots of discussion; no conclusions. Other family members (his family) begin putting in their two cents worth, although I'm not sure how any of them knew anything.

Interspersed with this dream is something with children in an old, cold house with very long hallways. Sometimes my sibs, sometimes my kids, they are trying to get away from the cold, when there are corners of the rooms that are almost superheated.
White (snow&ice white) rooms with white sheets on white beds, and children with dark hair and eyes.

I have had dreams with "commercials" -- other dreams before, and they usually turn out to be significant. These commercials, I think, were a combination of watching the end of "The Day After Tomorrow" and my own air conditioner. Maybe the heat was hot flashes; who knows?

I think maybe the complications of Rex being alive indicate how complicated it would be if he were alive -- they said he'd have to be immobilized (basically) in  nursing home, and going back and forth to hospital for infections where the tube was permanently placed.
The dream is both accepting things as they are and wishing as they should be.
It's the whole preface feature that I find odd, although the explanation could be the same.

Skinny Missy

My friend Missy was in the hospital. Rex was taking me to see her.

When I got there, she was very very thin and kept talking about how she had to fit into some dress, and how they were keeping her "inside" and wouldn't let her go home and try on her dress. She had to get into it, for some event, and she was starving/killing herself to do so.

She asked who it was with me (Rex) only she suddenly remembered that his name was Shawn, and I had been talking about him.
He agreed that he was Shawn Patrick, and he looked at me and I remembered he was supposed to be dead and we had decided we didn't want anybody to know he wasn't.(Wishful thinking, no doubt.)
That look said he was okay to be Shawn Patrick instead of Rex Patrick. (His name is Rex Allen; no Patricks in his family that I know of. My Dad's middle name was Patrick, though. Could this be related to Father's Day upcoming?)

Anyway, Missy kept going on about her dress and the event and how they were trying to make her choose something else because the dress was making her sick, and it wasn't worth it; it just wasn't worth it. Nothing was worth it.

I finally caught her face in my hands (that sounds grotesque) and looked her in the eye and asked her "What about your boys? Aren't your boys worth it?Aren't they more important than a dress?"

Her eyes filled up with tears and she admitted that only they were.

Having saved her life by making her face that truth, Shawn Patrick and I drove away discussing her anorexia.

Bun Cakes

Booths such as for waffle cakes (one such tent/booth has been moving around Mt Orab. At Radio Shack for a while. Then at Brown County Automotive.)

Guy named Mark (a composite of several Marks I have worked with) was selling franchises. The product was buns made like cakes. The more popular designs were the praying man (pretzel shaped) and smiley faces.

Mark; tall, curly dishwater-blond hair, burly. Briefcase and book in hand. (One of the Marks quit fast food to sell insurance)

Lisa and I decided to open a bun cake business together, selling saffron smiley face buncakes. We chose as our location a space in the Bethel shopping plaza, high on the hill at Charity&Plane Streets. (No shopping plaza in Bethel; no hill at Charity&Plane)

We put up beaded curtains and played tinkly music, and were, in general, somewhat hippie, at least for our buncake business. 

Mark wanted us to go more conventional, but we were somehow able to prove that we were building a loyal and purchasing clientele, and he backed off, because we were showing a profit.

Then Helen bought into the franchise and her store was in Peebles, behind the restaurant she was manager at. The places were all close by, but to go to her buncakes shop from her restaurant you had to go back out on the highway and back into another parking lot and go way back in. But she thought it was a great idea, and she was having fun with selling the buncakes. She used several designs.

Helen brought the franchise and Mark to the attention of a woman named Frances  that she called Frankie. (She has a friend called Frankie; she posts to her occasionally. Also, Re had an Aunt Frances; a brother-in-law Francis,; and I have a writer friend Frances.) This Frankie is/was  short, blonde, and round. Very curly hair. Round face, pouty lips. blue eyes. 

Frankie bought into the franchise and called her shop Fatso's, and added powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar to the yellow buns.

Mark was running around to all these stores, trying to keep up with all of his shop managers. Helen was driving him crazy because he never knew which store she would be at -- her work-for-hire store/job, or her bought for herself buncakes store.

We were all supposed to be meeting somewhere, and Mark was late. It was night, the venue (whatever it was) was gloomy. Frankie was slouching half off a bar stool.