I dreamt that I was in a church, full of people. I was there as a guest of some kind (I think my role was chosen because of my status as significant other to the girlfriend I was there with - the GF had dark hair, and, like everyone else in the church was wearing black - no name was given to the dream GF). An older (60s?) man came up to me and explained that my role would be to discuss the ancestry of the child. He was obviously somewhat senile. He handed me a stack of papers, and wandered off. Suddenly, the religious offical announced that I would be reading the (word that meant "ancestry of the child"). I was supposed to list the family of a newborn going back as far as possible - I knew that people who knew the family well would often intersperse witty anecdotes in this process, but I only needed to read out the names. The stack of paper did not seem to have the family tree in it as I had hoped, however, so I stood in front of lage church full of people, shuffling through paper. The priest was getting angry, and the old man was trying to help.

Eventually, I fled, and was in the yard behind the church. There was a sort of maze made from just over head height wooden walls dividing the yard, and a lot of greenery. I had the impression that there was a pool, though it was not visible at any point. There were a number of people standing around - most of them were roughly my age, and many were people I knew. The sun was perhaps an hour away from setting, its light glinting gold off of the pale wood of the walls/fences. I was embarrassed, and started climbing up onto ledges on the wall-fences. corbet was there, and teasing me gently about my failure. I took the teasing too seriously, and at that point, the church-goers came out, and were still mad at me. I crept away along the ledges and fence tops, my movement becoming increaisngly cat-like, with a lot of pulling myself up onto higher ledges.

There was a scene change, and now I was in an operating room of some kind. The room was small, and had a window. My high school English teacher, Mr. S. was the surgeon, attended by a nurse I didn't know. MrDr. S. was operating on a pregnant woman. The operation involved pumping out a great deal of blood, and replacing it. The operation wasn't planned, and the proper equipment wasn't available, so the removed blood was basically just being sprayed into a sink. I ended up getting sprayed by a fair bit of blood. For some reason, after it was done, it had to be done again (not sure if it was still the same patient). Dr. S. was quipping with the nurse about being the only docotor who could do this, and how he wanted the other (residents? med students?) to learn how, too. The nurse responded that the simplest way was to just teach the one white boy how to do it, and then the others would learn how because they didn't want to be shown up by some white kid (at this point it became apparent that I was a med student, and the only white male in the class, as well as the least competant doctor). Dr. S looked at me and said "well, isn't that what I'm doing?" I was very nervous, because I hadn't thought that I was a med student, or that I was supposed to be learning how to do anything. I started working the hand pump for blood removal, and the patient delivered via c-section. She had given birth to a litter of cute, hairless kittens. I remember thinking that the kittens belonged on that cuteness overload site that went around last week, and that I should make sure corbet got to see the kittens.

Some of the imagery has pretty obvious interpretations - neeuqdrazil's dad is a doctor, and I'm still a bit nervous about not knowing the protocol for things in her family. Mr. S. was the only teacher I knew in HS with a PhD, and he was also sarcastic and intimidating (great teacher, too, though I was not ready for him when I had him), which explains why he got to be the doctor instead of Zil's dad, who's a lot less vocal. I have no explanation for the kittens.