"Hey, Joe," I typed in Facebook chat, "I had a dream about you the other night."
Oops. Too late, I realized he might take that the wrong way.
"Oh really?? Good or bad??" he asked. I could practically hear the leer in his typing.
"Horrible," I told him.
See, my friend Joe owns a hardwood floor business and I am in need of his skills. Those glue-encrusted floors in the entryway, two parlors, dining room and bedroom have got to go. The trouble is, when the floors go so will a huge chunk of my money. That's where the dream about Joe comes in. I've been meaning to call the man to get an estimate, but every time I reach for the phone my hands start to shake and my mouth goes dry. This is less a reaction to Joe himself than it is to the cost of refinishing floors. Spending lots of money scares me. So I've put off calling him.
But now, a couple of times a week, I have a recurring nightmare about Joe. In it, he comes over to take a look at the floors. He walks through the house somberly shaking his head and taking notes. In the nightmare, this seems to take hours. Finally, he turns to me and says that he has an estimate for me.
"Nine thousand dollars," he says.
I scream.
And then I wake up. And worry that it's not really a nightmare, but a premonition.
So I hit Joe up on chat the other night, confessed my nightmare, and then asked, "It won't really be $9K, right?"
"No way," he replied.
"Oh good," I answered.
And then he typed, "More like 12 thousand dollars."
Such good friends I have.