This morning we went out for breakfast, which we don't do that often. Of several choices available we decided to go to IHOP, because neither of us had been to one for years, so we thought we'd check it out. After breakfast, we headed back home to relax for a bit before our weekend jaunt to the grocery store. Once I'd done a few things at home, I wanted a nap, during which I had a bizarre dream.

I dreamed that Mom invited me to lunch and I said sure, but I needed to go to the grocery store afterward. She said okay, picked me up and we had lunch. Once lunch was done, we were standing around talking; I reminded her that I needed to grocery shop and she said okay, then got into her car and drove away! I caught up with her a couple of times in the parking lot, when she had to slow down for traffic, but every time I'd get my hand on the passenger door, she'd drive off. Once she pulled out onto the main road, I realized that she wasn't just messing with me, she was really leaving me! I called her cell phone.

"Mom! Why are you leaving? I need to go to the grocery store!"

"Well, it's right there." [It was - we were in the parking lot of a Publix shopping center.]

"But Mom! I can't go grocery shopping if you leave me!"

"Why not? You've been doing it by yourself for years."

"Mom, you're my ride! I can't walk five miles carrying loaded grocery bags!"

Things continued in this vein until I started to cry. When that happened, Mom stopped her car in traffic on the busy street, got out and walked back through the parking lot to where I was standing.

"Mom! Why did you walk over here? You can't leave your car there!"

"Because you were crying!" (in a well-duh sort of voice - but I wasn't asking why she'd come back, I was asking why she'd walked, leaving her car in the middle of the road, door open, flashers on)

After some more illogical and, on my part tearful, palaver she reluctantly agreed to return to the parking lot and take me home after I bought groceries. Since she'd already passed the shopping center entrance, she drove up to the stoplight and turned, meaning that she'd be coming in to the shopping center on the side perpendicular to me so she'd be out of sight for a couple minutes. I waited in front of the grocery store...and waited...and waited...

My mom finally showed up, but instead of driving her PT Cruiser, she was in a Sunbeam bread delivery van. I have NO idea what put something like that into my head. I could see that the bizarro world of dream logic might have Mom show up in my Aunt Betty's Lincoln or my Aunt Rose's Mustang when she'd been driving her own car seconds before, but I can't fathom why she was in a Sunbeam bread truck. No recent delivery truck sightings and we don't even eat Sunbeam bread, absolutely no clue as to why my subconscious put her in a delivery van, much less a Sunbeam bread one. Furthermore, my mom is pretty law-abiding in real life and yet we must presume she hijacked the Sunbeam truck. I don't know why she would do this.

THEN, Mom refused to give me a ride in the Sunbeam bread truck "because of the liability". When relating this to Alan later, he commented, "Well, that makes perfect sense. She'd already committed one felony, grand theft bread truck - she couldn't be making it worse by transporting unauthorized personnel!"

There was more to the dream, involving me calling Alan for rescue and getting angry when he didn't want to fetch me but that part wasn't as good as Mom's bread truck heist. I ended my narration by saying to him, "So, when we go to Publix for real this afternoon, you are under no circumstances to leave me stranded there!"

Alan replied, "We are never eating at IHOP again. Their food does weird things to your mind."

We've had fun since then talking about my mom hijacking the bread truck, speculating about whether she overpowered the real driver and left him tied up somewhere, or if it was a crime of opportunity and she swiped the truck while he was inside the store with his clipboard. Further, we wonder if she is making fake bread deliveries or selling the goods randomly for cash, or might perhaps be subsidizing a cookout with stolen buns. Who knows what evil plans may lurk inside that petite, well-coiffed head of hers?