I did have long and complicated dreams, but I don’t remember them that well.

I was working with Mr. T somehow, and he didn’t have anything to do. So I went to my bookshelf and started pulling out books for him to autograph and pictures of him from magazines. I told him which pictures were Kathleen’s and which were mine, and he’d just sign away. “That was a good idea; I’m not nearly so bored now.” I had a picture that I wanted to scan in to look like a book cover, so I also looked for an appropriate book to get ideas from, but didn’t find any,

Matt and I went to a nursery in a big truck to buy grass seed. While he was talking to the salespeople, I went to the record collection and started browsing through their albums for sale. I found a Shaggs LP for $8.00, but the girl on the back didn’t look like a member of that family at all. It seems the Shaggs fell apart after she–Linda Shagg–married a wealthy athlete. Then we were taken upstairs and given a sales pitch about buying the top four flights in the barn. Once you went up one flight, you couldn’t get back down. We weren’t interested, but there were three other sets of people that at least pretended to be. I noticed my dad up there in his silly cold-weather hat. He was tired and said he was in his 2:45 pm slump. The real estate agent did succeed: one couple bought all four stories. Then we did get to go back down the stairs.

There was more, but I can’t remember right now.

I’ve been housesitting, so I haven’t had very many dreams. I haven’t been sleeping well, although when I get sleep, it is deep.

As part of the cycle, after I haven’t been able to remember my dreams, the first night afterwards I just can recall images. The next night usually has a very complicated dream, so there may be something to look forward to tomorrow.

Now, the images:

–I was in the bathroom of the place where I was housesitting, and I looked in the mirror only to find Brian H. behind me. I was terrified, confused, and angry. I just continued to wash my hands, wondering what to say.

–We start with an aerial view of a LA intersection, then swoop down until we’re sitting in the car. I don’t know who I’m with, but someone else is there. A mentally ill and/or drunk man is screaming, “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” I scream out, “Three.” He turns towards me, and my companion steps on the gas. As we leave, he mutters, “The world may never know.” (Probably a bleed-through from a commercial on Cartoon Network.)

Another Boston dream–this time I’ve lost my Pikachu backpack, but it turns out that I just put it in my car after getting off the subway. Matt and I went to a huge concert with all sorts of people. Jon Spencer and the rest of Boss Hog got onstage and performed about thirty seconds of a song before running offstage into a tiny room. I asked Matt if we all were supposed to run in there after him. We didn’t know what was going on.

It’s way too early for me to be having summer camp nightmares, but I had one last night. Forty-five students were coming, and I had no way to transport them to the event we were going to attend. Luckily, we had some older students–some in their sixties–that we were able to rope into driving. Once they left, I started worrying about snacks. I didn’t have anything and there wasn’t really time to go buy anything.

The following two dreams occured within the nine-minute paradise the alarm clock gives me every morning. I remember flipping over and thinking, “Let’s show her what we can do.”

Another education dream: this time I was a student in some class, but I don’t know what. I assumed it was an art class. The instructor, a frumpy woman, told us “Well, you have all either improved or maintained your math and science skills.” A lot of people sighed and rolled their eyes; she was supposed to be teaching us math (aha!), but obviously was not doing that well. She realized she had instantly lost the class’ goodwill with her none-too-enthusiastic words.

Mom and I went to Space Mountain, and I was quite delighted to ride backwards with my eyes shut. We got separated and she ended up going in the first car. I was going to have to wait for another train before I could go. Then the snooze alarm went off and I didn’t get to go at all.

Wasn’t it funny when you got your soul stuck in that gourd? Good thing you got out.

I also dreamt about some color-matching Flash game: the screen I was on used peach and baby blue together. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

A busy night of dreaming . . . no wonder I woke up tired.

I was with my mom and dad in our old house. At first, we were in the living room reading the newspaper. Mom tore out an ad for a Siamese kitten and handed it to me. “Go call them,” she told me. I didn’t see why she made me, but I went to my old bedroom and called. The lady asked if why I wanted the kitten, it had “knocked a guy out” and “refused to be T.T.” (toilet trained). I asked if we could at least meet the kitty, and told her about how Mom could make the gorillas talk to her. The lady thought it would be okay.

Matt was getting out of the Army (perhaps a sequel to the dream of him entering the Navy?). Maybe it was just a movie set where he playing a soldier because it wasn’t that disciplined. For one thing, they had sheets with little Hitler clipart on it: there was Chef Hitler in a chef’s hat chopping vegetables, and Clown Hitler, etc. If you’ve seen Rocky and Bullwinkle plenty, you’ll remember the janitor at the end of Mr. Peabody’s segment: Hitler looked somewhat like him, but it was unmistakably Hitler. About twenty or so soldiers went into a convenience store and said, “All hail America’s heroes!” and took baseball cards. They opened up them and up and said, “Hail Jackie Robinson,” etc. As we were leaving, I said, “Hail Babe Ruth” to the poster of him. Back in the room, I asked a man who looked like Lou Rawls if they got to keep their props. He said sometimes.

Then Katie E. and I were going to school early. I didn’t know what we’d do because, as I told her, “we can’t exactly wander through the barracks now that Matt’s out.” Jon J. said “Be glad you’re not in the room. It smells like ‘party’ in there. I can’t exactly put my finger on it.” Dan S. was dipping chicken nuggets and french fries into mayonnaise on his hamburger bun.

We were in a sandwich shop, and we left when Greg and his girlfriend did. Matt’s former bunkmate tried to leave too, but he wasn’t allowed to. He sat in the corner and talked to himself a lot; he went crazy after he was released from the army. Outside, I removed the tomato from my sandwich and threw it away. Even if I liked tomatos, it was a bit too green around the seeds to eat.

I was standing in a line, holding Matt’s hand. Jesse Harris wanted to be involved in our hand holding too, but found a girl behind us and held her hand. Aali was in front of us, and he turned to me and asked if I had read his poems. Then I had a flash of a poem titled “Girl, You’re Like My Cappuccino” and another one which included the lines (roughly remembered) “All I want are passing glances / From the people I knew five years ago / And maybe a word too.”

Lael and I were saving the world, and we told people that too–I added “before bedtime” like the Powerpuff Girls. We found a bomb hidden in chicken and dumplings in an old butter tub. As we drove on the highway, we were sure there were more bombs hidden in the basket of flowers that had fallen off a truck.

We then went to a garage sale, and I became interested in an old (1930s era) yearbook from WSU. The price on it was *$1.95: a little blond girl came up to me and said, “All books are three dollars.” I asked her if that included those books that had lower prices listed on them. I put the yearbook back–I wasn’t too interested in buying it for $1.95, much less $3.00–and found Norton’s Anthology of English Literature (Vol. 1). I put it back, praising myself on not buying yet another anothology. Under the anthology were tons of romance novels (it was pretty blindingly pastel pink with all the flowery covers), and I immediately doubted the seller’s tastes. The kid came back up to me and handed me a note that read, “Yes! The prices with an * by them are to be ignored. $3.00 is the correct price.” I went inside the garage and found two Seventeen magazines about dreams. They were analyzing teens’ dreams based on which celebrities were in their dreams. I didn’t really recognize any of the names, but Lael definitely didn’t. We left.

Then I was in a hotel, riding with three people up to the sixth floor in a very shaky elevator. Rebecca (from the preschool) was waiting in the lobby, trying to get all the energy out of her system before returning to her room where her husband was fast asleep. At the sixth floor (which looked like the Kendall/MIT stop on the red line in Boston, minus the bells), they started complaining about their rooms. I told them it was better than the second floor (the orange floor). I got off the elevator and decided to take the subway home. I was the only one though, and was surprised when it started going down the stairs, especially since there was no track. It took me to the fifth floor where a whole bunch of children were sitting in multicolored sofas that would whisk them places.

I got an email for Grandpa with two broken images:
1.) hot-water-heater-no-answer.gif
2.) water-pump-no-answer.gif
The only text in the email gave the phone number to call for a status report.

It was a busy Friday night for dreaming (I didn’t have to get up early, but here it is 8:57 am and I’m already awake). Last night, I woke up at 4:30 am and thought to myself, “What a complicated dream. I wasn’t even involved.” I don’t know what the dream was, but I am amused at my pseudo “It’s not my department” kind of apathy.

I went to a very neat estate sale, but Beck was not my cashier this time. I was doing the usual–trying to figure out the previous owners of the merchandise–and it was fairly complicated. I got intrigued by a number of items: a multi-colored woven afghan, the Left Behind DVD (which was still $10, so I left it behind-hah! Sorry.), and several sequined shirts. One was all about time and had a big Father Time on the left sleeve, a clock with moveable arms on the left breast, a cursive “Groundhog Day” and red sequin stripes on the right side, and even more on the back. There was also a polyester shirt, mostly white, with old illustrations of Siamese kittens. The pictures were all on the sleeves though, so I passed on it. The shirts were $3.00-$4.00, so they weren’t too bad, but I’m a cheap girl, even in my dreams. In the kitchen were some wonderful baby blue Fiesta dining sets and a wetbar with a monkey on it. It was Monkey from Dexter’s Lab, and he was on the cabinet doors. For some reason, I knew I was on vacation or something and couldn’t bring anything big back home with me, not even the blanket.

Dad and I were wandering around misc. large city at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday. I tried to tell him that nothing would be open, but we went into a Kinko’s anyway. We ended up just bringing Mom back a McDonald’s Coke.

Mom and I were in a field behind a farmhouse, and she was telling me her dream. As she described it, it happened. Ten white children ran towards us, then immediately to the left, and then hid. When they stood up, they were all black slave children in rags. They again ran towards us and disappeared as they got nearer. Then Mom told me about a sculpture she had seen made out of straw that was clearly a Texan woman. She was about eight feet tall and had real breast implants under her straw shirt. She had a cowboy hat on a pole behind her, so she could appear to wear it, but it wouldn’t muss her hair. Then the slave kids were back, and we all ran through the farmhouse, slamming doors behind house, as we ran to the street. It was almost like a time travel thing, where the house served as a gateway from rural to urban. In the house, which we were only in for just a second, I worried about someone yelling at us, and one of the kids said, “They always yell at us. You stop listening after a while.”