I was ordered by the courts to attend a camp for hermits to break them of their “dreadful habits”: we had private rooms, but were expected to participate in group activities the whole other time. A guy came up to me and said, “My name’s Mario. Just Mario. If anyone asks, you never met me.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it. “Just Mario,” he repeated. I said, “Just one name, like Cher and Madonna.” “Just Mario,” he said, walking off. I went back to my room and read; the camp directors weren’t too happy with my performance.

I had just had surgery, and Matt and Zach came over. Zach looked essentially like he did the last time I saw him (1995). I was in my newest old room in the Summitlawn house. Matt went outside to get something, and I mustered all my strength and courage to go over and hug Zach. “Thanks for being here,” I whispered. He didn’t say anything, but as I hugged him, it was like I could read his thoughts–which were plain text documents. So it was as if I was reading messages behind his back: “Sorry about last time . . . I’m here now . . . ” etc. There were a lot of ellipses, which is unusual.

Lael and I were waiting in IHOP. He was showing me something he had written, and he turned to me and said, “I sometimes feel like two characters on television–either Eddie [the dog from Frasier] or Giles [from Buffy the Vampire Slayer].” I told him that I felt like Daphne from Frasier, “Oh, I don’t want to deal with all this,” I said in a British accent, “I’m going to go wash my hair.” We both sat stunned for a minute because Daphne is nothing like that. I got depressed and looked out the window. Melanie and Anna J. were riding horses. I looked back inside and a puppy was urinating on the floor; Lael barely got his bag moved in time before it ran in the ruts where tile grout lives.

Brian H. demanded that I re-examine his paycheck because surely he was owed more than he was paid. I took a look at it and realized that, in fact, I had paid him too much. He threw a huge temper tantrum in the hallway.

I can’t remember much about my dreams, but there was something about two foot high Powerpuff Girl statues. There was something else, but I didn’t write them down when I woke up. I was stupid (and tired).

(If this is the first time you’ve read this journal, please ignore the last two dreams and skip to a fun one. It gets better, trust me.)

I dreamt about making retrocards. Very unimaginative.

I was going to Sam’s (Wholesale Club) with Jon. He didn’t have a card, so we went to the membership desk. They had a card with his name on it and two pictures from when he was a kid. They also had a card for Greg, Jon’s best friend in seventh grade. It was quite creepy, and I told Jon that it was part of Sam Walton’s massive photo project: to get a picture of every person in the United States. Jon then vanished, and I was shopping with two women in Wal-Mart, possibly Mom and Grandma. I was a little upset that we weren’t at one with a grocery store, but I wandered nonetheless. Of all the Wal-Marts I’ve been in, it was most like the Blackwell, Oklahoma Wal-Mart: like Newton’s, but more claustrophobic and dirtier. Anyway, I saw long baby pink and baby blue spandex skirts that I thought about, but decided against. I picked out three pairs of corduroy pants until I noticed they were $35 each: out of my price range. It was then that I stopped and wondered what I had become–I was looking at a corduroy, a fabric I swore I’d never wear again after failed slide attempts in third grade–and thinking about buying clothes . . . baby pink spandex skirts even. I shuddered, put the pants on the rack, and went to find Mom and Grandma. Tom F. had gotten in an argument with Grandpa, so I screamed at him. “How dare you insult him,” I yelled, “He’s done more good in the world than you can even comphrehend. You, of all people, should have the decency to leave him alone.” I could tell Grandpa didn’t really care what Tom F. had said anyway (not that I really knew, beyond a vague “he was mean to my grandpa, that bastard” sense), but I also sensed he was proud. Then Grandma and I looked at some miscellaneous items. I was still furious.

(This is the first “normal”–meaning nothing related to death–dream about Grandma I’ve had since she died in August.)

My dream was heavily influenced by E.L. Konigsberg’s The View from Saturday. Lately, I’ve been rereading favorite books from my childhood and the library didn’t have Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William Mckinley, And Me, Elizabeth which made it cool to eat raw onions.

I was “abandoned” with one bossy white girl, a small child–possibly Guatamalan, and an African-American girl. We were left out in the woods to survive, but somehow there was a house nearby and there were mature adults all over. The bossy girl was making us use lasanga noodles to make “truck ruts” in the mud–I have no idea why. I carried the small child with me to a structure somewhere and reassured it that no one would let anything happen to us and that my mom might be back with the van sometime soon anyway. I said something mean about the bossy girl. As we left the room, I looked in the other room: the two girls were in front of vending machines getting candy and Coke. I glared at them, knowing they had heard me. The small child was afraid again, and I walked off, saying “I don’t care if they heard me. I meant everything I said.”

From today’s nap:

On The Spin Room, Tucker Carlson and Bill Press were going to be talking to the inventor of breast implants that were surgically implanted, then users (or anyone with the remote control) could inflate as desired. They were constantly turning the dial on Mandy Moore while she was in concert, and giving a diatribe about “What if the remote fell into the wrong hands?” Tucker simply giggled, “We’re always the wrong hands.” Meanwhile, I found in my closet (the Summitlawn house again) a sports bra from cheerleading and, in my dream (and it’s completely accurate), I remarked that it was incredibly strange–I never once even had the desire to try out for cheerleading after age seven. I got it out though and thought about trying it on just to see what happened. Of course, I became so engrossed in TV that nothing happened. I heard Free Design’s “Bubbles” playing and immediately turned to the computer to get on the Spin Room and discuss Free Design. While they were playing it, Bill and Tucker were on board a submarine, playing with the controls. It was Tucker’s turn to say that they were going to break for ads, but Tucker wouldn’t speak–he was too busy eating.

At that moment, Mom came in and wanted to use my computer. So I got off the Spin Room while the chat program was still loading and went to a different computer. When I left her, it was on her start page: a dark teal green, swirly-patterned thing that said “who wants to boogie” across the top. I went into a different room, completely empty (and I thought about how much more space the parents had since I moved out), and got online. Of course, I didn’t have a TV anymore, so the Spin Room was somewhat out. At some point while moving from room to room, I noticed my hair was shoulder-length (about 8 inches shorter than it is now), and, even more terrifying, my bangs were exactly like Mom wanted them when I was twelve: two rows curled back, two rows curled forward, then teased and hair sprayed. Ugh.

Matt and I got stuck in a Harry Dean Stanton-type movie. He had a fourteen-year-old alcholic brother, and the cops were always coming by looking to see if he was drinking so they could bust them both: Matt for negligence, and the brother for underage drinking. They came by one time, and I advised Mom to get lost. We were sitting on their driveway (they lived in the family for whom I was petsitting’s barn) and I ran. Mom said she was going to stay put and knit: she hadn’t done anything wrong. Neither had I, but she was more trusting than me. I told her to tell Matt that, if he was free, to meet me in a restaurant at Park City at 10. I couldn’t think of one, so I stayed in the shadows of the house all day before they left. Matt wasn’t taken in, but he did leave with two friends and a girl in a cage in the back of a pick-up. I ran after the pick-up and threw glass bottles at them until they stopped. The caged girl was laughing the whole time at me running after them. I asked Matt where he was going: he didn’t know. I pulled out a book, probably a text version of the movie we were stuck in, and we realized we had skipped all of chapter two. We were thus on our way to Adamton or Laugton, Alabama: we’d eventually go everywhere, including from Tennessee to the Great Lakes three times. Paths were color-coded, and we were on the pine green path right now, headed south from wherever we were (Southern Kentucky, most likely), headed for Alabama. During this process, I had a vision of an aerial view of the US, including Florida being entirely trees and New England being wholly concrete.

I was spending the night with Matt and his two friends: I think the caged girl just slept in her cage. One of his friends shared a strawberry Fruit Rollup with me after joking that it “got all smashed.”