42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

Somehow, I’ve gotten myself roped into working part-time for a maid service. I’m supposed to be cleaning at a house Tuesday night. My supervisor and I have gone through training, and this is my first solo night.
I realize that I should be cleaning, but that I’ve forgotten, and I’m going to be late.
I hop into my car, but I’m in a crowded parking lot full of rude drivers. There’s a truck parked very close next to me, and I give the driver a look, because he’s made no effort to park straight. I know I’m going to hit him.
So I start backing out anyway, and keep coming very close to hitting the truck. The parking lot is slushy, too.
Either I do hit the truck and it does no damage, or eventually I shame the guy into moving.
My friend Heather is with me in the car. She asks me if I’ve remembered my cleaning supplies. Which I haven’t, of course.
I wonder, in my typical fly-by-the-seat-of-the-jeans fashion if I can just use the cleaning supplies that the homeowners might have there. They won’t notice, will they?
So I speed over to the house I’m supposed to be cleaning. I wonder if I can call the people and tell them I’ll be over tomorrow instead. Then I realize I have to work at my real job the next night, that it’s Tuesday night or nothing. So I make it over there anyway, and there’s nobody home. I have a hard time getting in.
But I start cleaning, and the family’s irritating pre-teen kids show up. Then I’m outside, and there’s a group of people starting to show up, pushing their way in. I try to keep them from coming in, but I can’t stop them.
Many are scruffy, threatening me. They start smashing beer bottles on the ground outside, and I think I’ll have to clean it up, but there’s just to much.
One of them cuts me a little, and so I start to bleed.
The men outside the house want money from the homeowner, or something. I try to tell them they’re not here.
Then the dream fastforwards, and the wife is home, and thanking me for handling myself well, and getting the people out of there.
She is a thin, older woman with a gray pageboy. One of her children comes up to hug her, and I wonder how these could be her children. Maybe they’re adopted, or maybe she is just prematurely gray.
I’m hoping that the woman will give me a tip; after all, I’ve had a very lousy night. And I managed to get her house clean, on top of that.

I guess this dream can be connected, vaguely, to a lackluster mystery that I finished several days ago, with the thin premise of a woman who runs a maid service, and has a penchant for finding dead bodies, or something. I’m thinking, much like Jessica Fletcher always getting involved in murders in a tiny Maine town, this is going to start becoming less and less believable. I think it was the second book, too. Mystery writers can’t just write one; they write an entire, unreadable series, which becomes less and less palatable after the initial OK book. Bah!

Anyway, in another part of my dream, I now dream that I’m at my real job, but that things are set up differently. There seems to be a lot more pasteup. I wonder if that somehow ties in to the cutting theme, because I see someone using an exacto knife. I spy my boss, who shouldn’t be at work, because he’s on family leave, and say hello to him. I wonder what he’s doing. He’s on a Macintosh, which is odd, because we don’t use a lot of Macs.
But it’s only a fragment.
I think I also remember shopping somewhere, which may be where I was when I remember I was supposed to be cleaning someone’s house. I was looking for lamps, and finding only hideous ones.

Another theme that I seem to pick up from my dreams is usually guilt. Guilt about not being somewhere, forgetting to do something. I know I’m not supposed to be cleaning my house in real life; it’s clean at the moment, though probably the kitchen floor could stand to be swept.