Travelling to Moscow, Russia, with my wife for an extended vacation. The airliner is laid out as rows of seats on risers, sideways to the direction of travel. We’re the last people to be able to order at the grotty little on-board cafe — they’re closing and also almost out of food. I move seats to get more room, but still can’t get much privacy. I turn my huge CRT monitor in the seat next to me but there’s seemingly no direction I can point it where a stranger can’t see it. The space isn’t much like an airplane, a crowd of people moving around in what sometimes feels like a filthy abandoned stadium. At some point I have to prep and clean a poorly-maintained old toilet.
The dream after this is what came before. We’re in the planning stages for this east-of-eastern Europe vacation. I fantasize about the routes we could take, passing through places like Crimea, Turkey, the Balkans, maybe even the Greek Isles. No firm itinerary has been made, as is typical for us. I realize I need to worry whether Russia, and all the countries we may go to, still consider kratom legal.
We have a small fight while driving down to Palm Springs, on the way to Las Vegas, where our deep-discount direct-to-Moscow flight leaves from. I tell my wife I left my luggage at home and we need to go back. She angrily asks why I didn’t take it, and I say it’s because when we left, I asked her if we were just going out to run an errand and would have a chance to come home before we left. I insist she answered yes, but she insists on having no memory of that. But I know we make the flight, because I’ve experienced it already.