Two bits of background:

First, today is a day we spend the afternoon logged into a friend’s Discord server playing our current RPG campaign. (It’s a Fate-based Star Wars game at the moment, in which I play a Gamorrean named Xagg whose high concept is, “Just tell me who to clobber.”)

While I was shopping this morning I found a small roast in the Manager’s Special part of the meat department, 50% off. So I grabbed it. While unpacking groceries, I told my husband I figured we should eat it for dinner tonight. Frequently on game day if we don’t order food, we wind up discussing dinner after logging out of Discord, and then decide we’ll just graze on the leftover snacks, because there is usually too much, but then we both later admit we wish we had eaten something real for dinner.

Now the anecdote:

We log off a bit after 6pm and I start working on the roast. I chopped up the items from the veggie tray we hadn’t eaten, plus an onion and some small potatoes, season it, put it all in the InstaPot with some water and turn it on.

I tell me husband that I need to lay down for a bit. I swear I also told him, “Wake me when you’re ready for dinner.” He says I didn’t tell him I was laying down or anything else…

Three hours later, I’m still conked out in the bedroom, but I’m having a dream that our friends Jared and Katrina have come over to our apartment just for fun after the game. This is a little unlikely since one of them lives about an hour and 10 minutes drive north of us, while the other lives a four and a half hour drive south of us. But this is a dream, and dreams don’t care about stuff like that.

In the dream we’re having a lovely time. And we started talking about cocktails–because one of the birthday presents (my birthday is tomorrow, but…) my husband had me open while we online with our friends is this really cool book called The Cocktail Codex.

Note: the book and tomorrow being my birthday and such are all true, even though this is a dream.

So in the dream I’m getting some cocktail glasses out of the cabinet and we’re discussing what drink I could make with the booze and mixers I have on hand, and Katrina leans in and whispers in my ear asking me to make a special cocktail for Jared but do it without him seeing what it is.

I can understand every word in her request except the name of the cocktail.

I ask her to repeat it.

She does, but I still can’t understand her.

This repeats several times and I’m getting a bit exasperated. I take a notepad from the refrigerator and ask her to write the name down. She does.

I look at it, but I still can’t read it.

My husband then chimes in and says, “Of course not. Everyone knows you can’t read when you’re dreaming.”

At which point I sat up in bed, wide awake and a bit cranky. It took me about a minute to sort out that I had just been dreaming and apparently woke myself up because I was frustrated with the dream.

I then went to check on the roast. The InstaPot had been in Warming Mode for about 2 hours. I went to the computer room to ask my husband why he didn’t wake me or eat some dinner. He isn’t there.

It takes me a few minutes to find him. He’s deep asleep in the bedroom. When I woke up frustrated from the dream, I just literally didn’t see him there.

He says that when he laid down next to me that dinner still wasn’t ready…