One of the things I find fascinating about dreams is how much great detail I see in some item while some events are vague and unformed.
Last night I dreamed about a couple of outdoor benches. They were old fashioned park bench style with black enamel cast iron frames and varnished blond wood slats - probably oak. ML and I took one to a lady who, with her husband, specialized in refurbishing these kinds of things. She wanted a lot of money to do the work. I didn't care about the money for itself but I was concerned about being overcharged. She had me sign several checks in advance. There were three or four of them in specific amounts between 1500 and 2500. I remember one in particular was for 2248. I assumed these were dollars. The checks themselves were pink with darker red printing, mad out in blue ink.
I told the lady that these benches would be easier to do than she thought, but in looking at them more closely I noticed that some of the iron frames that held the slats in place between the legs were missing and would have to be replaced with wood. I was wondering whether they replacement pieces could be steam bent or would need to be laminated, or whether they could just be thin pieces of wood bent ant held by the slats.
In passing, I noticed that the some of fasteners that held the bench together had unusual heads - they were Philips headed, but instead of the usual crossed slots on the axis of the screw, there were two crossed slots off set from the axis. I remember thinking that this seemed a good idea since if one cross got buggered up the other one would still work. I was wondering if all the torque applied to the screwdriver would get transmitted to the crew since the slots were off axis.
This observation only took up a very small percentage of the apparent time in the dream and didn't seem particularly an important part, but the detail of the screws was extremely vivid. I find it curious, the differences in detail focus from one part of the dream to another. I suppose in waking life we have these differences in focus all the time that go un-noted. This is probably because in waking life we have more definite priorities that guide our attention, whereas in dreams we are much more passive observers and a wide range of experiences have more or less the same emotional weight.
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