Parking lots and pits

Here's one I woke up from this morning...

In the dream, I'm in a parking lot that's almost exactly like one I saw in Chicago. (It was a parking lot for the metro station line that ran to Chicago, you see. For some reason it was indelibly impressed on my brain cells...?)

Anyway--so I'm in this parking lot, and apparently I'm supposed to pay for my parking space by going over to a booth-type dealie and finding a slot that's marked with the same number as my parking stall number (which happens to be 273) and insert a $10 bill into said slot. Phew!

I also have some guy with me (I knew him in the dream, but my waking self has no idea who he is) and three African American kids: a little boy, a little girl, and a baby boy. These kids are apparently nieces and nephews, which I only know because I refer to my mom as 'Grammy' while talking to them at one point, and I also know (the way you know things in dreams) that they're not my kids.

Anyway--I go to the booth (mentioned above) and I can't find number 273. The numbers go up only so far, and they don't get that high. Rather panicking, I dash off to the other end of the parking lot where there's another booth to see if my number is there, but it isn't.

(By the way, while all this is happening, I keep falling into these pits that are in the middle of the parking lot. Go figure.)

Then I finally see yet another booth that's actually located right by where I was parked (but which, necessarily, I didn't see until late in the dream). So, I run over there and, sure enough, there's number 273 next to a nifty little slot.

A woman comes up to me as I'm fishing around for a $10 bill in my purse and explains that she's an employee at the parking lot and that, because of all the trouble I went through, I'll only have to pay $1.50 and she'll cover the rest. (Except, somehow, I end up having to pay the whole amount later anyway.)

So, I go back to the car, where the three kids and this guy are waiting for me and we prepare to go off to the zoo (where, I say to the kids, we will see lions and giraffes and...some other animal I can't remember now).

The End.

Interpretation:

Uuuuuuummmmmm... Well... For starters, there's this thing I have about the number 273. You see, it's a very significant number to me because it's the number of times...I've...coughed...in the last year. No, 6 months. The number of times I've coughed in the last 6 months.

Yerg.

No, I think this one may have to do with my tired brain coming to a realization that, despite all my stress about moving & finances & changes happening in my life, things really will work out in the end. And I'll get to show my nieces and nephews those grand ol' giraffes after all.