Some mornings I can’t seem to wake up. I’m out of bed, I’m upright, I’m typing, but I am not awake. There’s a cup of strong coffee next to me, but I am not awake.

I woke up at 4 AM from an annoying dream in which my mother (a compulsive clothes shopper) left me a truckload of clothes that were 1) in the wrong size, and 2) profoundly ugly. Instead of taking them to my home, my sister brought them, racks and racks full, to a shopping mall and I was left to gather them all. And my sister started yelling at me because I had misplaced a supposedly valuable hot pink wool suit. I was trying to get it back from the store clerk who found it. At least I saved the glow-in-the-dark suit. There were at least 20 pale pink cotton shirts and matching polka-dot pants. I decided I needed to lose weight to fit into all these clothes I didn’t even like. An old friend walked by and held up a stretchy skirt saying I could never lose enough weight to wear it. I bet her I could wear it right now and put it on over a long black matronly skirt. A sales clerk from another store tried to persuade me that these clothes were, in fact, breathtakingly ugly. I got mad at him because I knew he was just trying to sell me more clothes.

I’m awake now and wondering what the heck that dream meant.