Dream: A Series of Bad Decisions

Monday Morning:  Another anxiety dream.   This one had been going on for a while -- I think we had been at a child's birthday party and the adults were nailing the kids with Nerf Guns --  but my recall starts with the family standing on a rocky outcrop, looking at the ocean as it rolled over the sandy.  I think we were near a river.  I realized several things at once: 1) the tide was coming in, 2) we needed to get back around the rock outcropping or we'd be trapped in a cove, 3) our cooler and art supplies were going to be swept away.

I jumped down onto the sand to try to get the blue and white plastic cooler and the basket of art supplies just as the surf surged around me.  This isn't very smart, I thought as the water rushed around my knees.  There was a moment where I tried to rescue our floating stuff, but I quickly decided I needed to get out of the channel I found myself in.

The scene shifted, and I was slogging through the surf along the covered peirs of a wooden walkway.  When the surf pulled away, there was a space under the wooden siding, and I managed to get under the peir.  This also wasn't the smartest decision, because the rocky ground probably had crabs and anemonies hiding in it, and then the water surged up I was trying to find my way in an akward, rocky, wet, dark, compartmentalized area.  I tried to find the gap I'd come though, but I couldn't and I worried that the unseen surf would surge just as I was trying to squeeze through and trap me underwater.

I have a vague notion I rested on the ground for a moment until worries about pinching creatures got me to my feet again.  I heard voices and started shouting and banging on the boards above me.  I managed to bang a plank loose.  I had an overhead shot of me looking up through the deck of a logger's cafe.  The wait staff was cleaning up between some kind of concernt event.  I've got an impression of lots of plaid.  

Someone reached in and pulled me from underneath the deck.  The scene was now in the middle of the woods, possibly on a river, but the ocean was nowhere to be seen.  I was now an old-ish man, in dennim and a plaid shirt, with a long white Rip-Van-Winkle Beard.  Either the cook or a head waitress brought me a bowl of hot soup (chouder?).  There was an exchange where she said I could stay as long as I liked and I thanked her.  

Then the dream went on to something about a cabin, or a trail through the woods that passed by many cabins. 

I woke up with a slightly upset stomach, and under too many blankets.