i know EXACTLY where this came from

so i'm driving through this beautiful wooded area and my mom says, "i bought a restaurant."  "WHAT?" "it was a nice place and only $35,000." i go into the kitchen which is adjacent to a large room which has fold-up tables and fold-up chairs with many windows and sunshine streaming in.

the L-shaped kitchen is a mess, with dishes everywhere (clean as well as dirty), a grill and stove somewhere, two small refrigerators along one wall. mom says she bought it yesterday and i'm thinking there's a lot to do and didn't the people even WASH the dishes before they sold it so i start washing them while the others are standing and talking. then mom finishes frying three eggs, two large and one small, and sprinkles them with some strands of green/white stuff and tells me to take them to the people who are waiting.

i go into the dining room and it's filled with people. i have no idea who gets the eggs, so i wander over to a table of three and ask them if they ordered eggs. they smile and say yes, so i lay down the plates. as i start back to the kitchen, i notice there are several other tables of three people. oh crap! but everyone is talking and no one seems concerned except for one guy sitting by himself. i go over and ask if he's been helped and he says no, but he'd like an egg.

so i go back to the kitchen, which is heaped with dirty dishes again, and look for the grill which has disappeared. i have to clean off a surface to find the grill, then open a frig to look for eggs. there's no eggs in there, just a whole bunch of different kinds of cheeses i've never heard of. finally i spot a large object which looks like an egg covered in a number of layers of brown mud. i pick it up, turn around to the grill, crack the shell and an egg comes out but it proceeds to go from plenty of egg to almost no egg, which i'm desperately trying to fry before it disappears completely. it doesn't take long for it to be done and i open the frig again looking for the green and white 'sprinkles'. i can't find them anywhere. i close the frig and ask mom where they are. she says i'll have to find them myself. i say can't you help me figure all this out? and she says nobody told me anything, you just have to figure it out yourself.

so i head for the dining room with this ridiculously-small egg with sprinkles and just outside the kitchen door is the man i'm headed for. he smiles and says he's run out of time and has to go and i turn back and grab half of a kolache and a napkin and say you need to eat something and as i'm handing it to him, he says thanks and takes a piece of cinnamon toast off the plate in my other hand, saying he'll take that too. my benevolence is suddenly affronted by his nerve, but he walks out and i think well maybe he'll be back sometime and actually pay for a meal.

i go back in the kitchen and try to organize things, but everytime i get a space cleaned off and start on another, it fills up again. i head over to the sink but i can't find it. finally i have to lift up a couple of counter-covers and try to start washing dishes. someone says they'd like to use the bathroom but they don't know where it is. i ask my mom and she says it's through the door and around the corner. i go through the dining room, through the door into a messy bedroom and around a corner into the bathroom which has a couple of kids taking a bubble bath. there are toys everywhere and i'm surprised the public has to use this bathroom.

the dream goes on with old friends of my mom stopping by to chat and finally i decide to just take a break. i don't see how i can keep helping her with this place when i have a life of my own, but if i don't help her she won't be able to get it done. as i walk down the street, i finally have a look at the town. her restaurant is on a little side-street which joins the main drag which is only about a block long. it's jam-packed with businesses and restaurants. i walk to the end and can see that a company is excavating a huge mountain with large pieces of equipment and rock-blasting going on and desecration of the earth, etc.

i turn back down the street and notice new construction. aha! that's why those people wanted to sell the restaurant -- after the new place got built, their business was going to die. that's exactly what's going to happen to my mom's business and what then? does she just close her doors? what about paying taxes on the place? so much to worry about in this bustling tiny town in the middle of a wooded nowhere with big business bearing down.