Having one of those dreams where you're trying to sleep and no one lets you sleep, but you sleep in patches anyway, wherever you can, no matter whose house you're at.

I was waking up this coming Wednesday morning, and I looked out the window. There was a dog with a Trump/Vance banner hanging loosely around its neck, trotting across the yard toward a stand of garbage cans. I could hear a child saying, "It's over, we're going forward."

In such dreams you wake up inside the dream with strangers around you. Blearily, I said, "It's over?"

One of the strangers whose home I'd crashed in was a Trumper, and he was quoting the numbers from North Carolina that hadn't come in that gave Trump a chance.

The dream disintegrated into a cloud of pixie dust at that point, the way they do, but that feeling of relief is still tangible as I have that 4:00 a.m. snack & beer before going back to bed.

Richard von Busack was the film critic for Metro Newspapers for 35 years. He is the author of an upcoming collection Shooting the Survivors.