I wander to the arcade in my bathrobe and nightgown. I had major surgery less than three weeks ago; let’s just say I had organs removed. Tonight is my first night without pain pills. Well, I haven’t had my narcotic pain pill in nine hours. That counts.

I play one game that is supposed to unlock the door to the arcade. I suppose that they set it up so that if you can’t pass it, you can’t get in because you have no business playing video games. I can’t win. It’s some luge simulation and I can’t even jump on the luge like I’m supposed to — aren’t I supposed to be already lying down on my back?

Speaking of lying down on my back, I had one of those episodes earlier. I woke up flat on the floor and crawled back into bed. It took me a minute to remember which bedroom I had chosen for my headquarters tonight. The lights in my room are going dim. My cat had hogged all the blankets when I had gotten back; I’m still nervous, unsure if Amy would try to knead where it’s sore with her paws, desperate to show love to the girl who doesn’t feel much anymore. I was also worried about Amy’s health (as well I should, since she really would 28 this year in human years, not cat years), as she seemed to be going a bit deaf in one ear.

Anyway, after losing the luge game, I tear off the LCD display and begin to throw it down. “I will destroy you!” The three fifteen-year-old boys are headed up to get in and manage to get the display away from me before I destroy property.

In the parking lot, a woman is trying to convince a man with myopia to rent her car from her. He needs to get to Florida.

Outside, in three different drive-in-looking areas, the arcade has set up coin-operated Dance Dance Revolution practice areas. Behind you is a giant green screen, but you can watch your image projected along with what you’re supposed to do on the side of the building, sort of an Eye Toy DDR. All three bays are in use.

I’m noticing it’s my high school reunion tonight. I call Mom. She’s driving in the pasture — actually, she’s wardriving in the pasture, circling at the top of the hill in Howard, trying to get a good signal. She’s checking her eBay.

“My God, you’re wired tonight. Can you calm down once in a while?”

“Well, I wasn’t really expecting this. I thought it was going to be in Kansas City.”

“Why would your high school reunion be in Kansas City if you didn’t go to high school in Kansas City?”

“That’s the way they are, Mom. Jeez. So they’re all going to meet over in a church by the old school.”

“Oh.” Mom’s distracted. In the mental-telepathy-connection I used to contact her, not by phone, I can see with her eyes, the pasture fence spinning as she tries to get a signal. Finally, she finds success. She’s pulled up a response from a college athletic director who has gotten modded down to -3. “Crap. He says the check’s in the mail. What can I do?”

“Demand a proof of delivery, or at least an estimated delivery date. I don’t know, Mom. People get modded down for lots of things.”

I’m walking around the DDR people, trying not to get hit. There are lots of familiar faces, but there’s no one I see with whom I want to spend any time talking. I then see Katie E. lying on the ground. “I know how it is. I just had parts removed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you pay for it? Oh, right, insurance. So if we had all stayed working when we left high school, we might all have health insurance.” She gets a dreamy look in her eyes and then shuts them.

Zach and Tom are nearby. Somehow it comes up that I’ve been in pain for a long time. Someone’s talking about how they can’t take aspirin without getting a buzz. I laugh, but not too deeply.

“You can take Lortab and Valium together and still function just fine at work. Personally, work only noticed a difference when I wasn’t on painkillers. That’s when I lost the ability to string a sentence together, started slurring my words, and could no longer function.”

“Listen to you babble,” my mother pipes up over the telepathic connection.

Their jaws drop. “And how do you think now?” Mom asks.

“Well, I wrote on Monday, but my heart wasn’t in it and it was a little hard. But I also had an assignment. I’m doing quite well, thank you very much.”

“So you’re driving to Kansas City tonight?”

“No, I thought I had to at one point, but I’m just going a couple of miles. A few people might follow me home.”

“Well, that doesn’t surprise me.”

Then I ran out of fun people to shock and awe, so I headed home. All the kids were playing this new MMORPG that was available on their cellphones and pornographic. It was certain to be a hit, but I could care less.

I was being fitted for a beaded silk dress.

An unmarried Hispanic couple came into my office. The female had taken classes before, but the male had never enrolled. He was incredibly frustrating: he kept changing how he spelled his last name. He took two Sprites from my office and opened them both for himself. I could not find the official membership form and he mocked me. To get away from him, I went to some high-dollar Neiman Marcus-type store that was located in the gallery. A woman I faintly recognized as “Board material” was selling diamond rings. She waved to me and I smiled. I found my mom somewhere and she gave me a pastel pink sweater to wear over what I was wearing: a long blue shirt, a pair of paints, and a skirt. I was heavily layered. I left then and ran into Joan Rivers and a gaggle of her types. They complimented me on my unique outfit and I became this instant fake social butterfly. I complimented Joan on her solid gold botanical-themed tiara that looked like it was on upside down. She hugged me and I said, “You’re so kind to me.” She then said she’d be talking to the President of the Board to see if we could “speed things up.” I don’t really know what things she was talking about, but I knew it was going to be the best for me.

I went back into my office and it was way too bright. Howard came into my office and, in an attempt to fake eye contact, I kept my eyes shut and looked up at him. I explained that I didn’t have to see to work. He grabbed a pair of scissors and pretended to cut a massive potholder I had weaved in sixth grade. I saw him through squinted eyes and stopped him, knowing that he was just testing me. The potholder was navy and orange, with a quasi-floral pattern tying the two colors together. The odd part was the way it seemed to grow: the potholder eventually became a full tablecloth size and I told Howard it was for “big dishes” in a little kid’s voice.

I did not sleep well at all last night. I woke up about every two hours right on the nose.

My dream about the preschool program is obviously heavily influenced by the Scooby Doo Movies episode with Jerry Reed that was on Cartoon Network. So at the program, we couldn’t start because someone stole Jerry Reed’s xylophone. There were three families that wanted to sign up for Thursday afternoon preschool, and one has waiting to have a baby until they had enough money–even though the lady was already pregnant. I guess she just wouldn’t go into labor until they had more money. Mom came up to me and said, “I’m so bombed.” She had drank too much (my mom doesn’t drink often, so this is not typical, as it may be for others). As I was getting dressed for the program, I heard about reports of a flood in Hutchinson, and I thought to myself, “We could have died. We were just there.”

Randy, David, Matt, Mom, Dad, and I all moved to Japan. Mom and Dad bought a bright red 1930s car (a Pierce Arrow?) with a matching trailer. I spotted Engrish: a sign from the “Potato Meatball” Restaurant advertised “Meat Poptein,” not protein. I kept wanting to go to a bookstore, but we never found one. David worked at Benetton and I visited him in the mall where he worked. It wasn’t really a mall, but more like the basement of a fancy hotel. “Man, I used to not be able to afford this stuff, but now, it’s Japan . . . I used to think I’d get here and just totally immerse myself in art.” I told him that I thought I’d get to Japan and just watch TV all the time. The American district was signified by the picture of Queen Victoria on the Bombay Sapphire gin label.

We were at some sort of Center retreat. I rode with Caryn and we had to park on the side of a dirt road. When we looked up, a tornado was whipping towards us. We put our heads down and walked towards the building. Inside, we learned that the tornado had hit the packing room. “That stuff’s insured for $50 a shelf!” I screamed. (I don’t know why I screamed that, but I did.) Then Charla greeted us and led me towards the City Arts store. I dove through a little door (think Being John Malkovich) and landed on a huge pile of Play-Doh . . . still in its containers, so it didn’t soften the blow any. After making my way down the huge pile of Play-Doh, I went to a jewelry case and saw works by Melanie J. Then the tornado started to come back again, and I ducked. It went over my head (these were just little funnels, about six inches wide) and then another one came, and I ducked.

In another Center dream, I had a lot of people coming in to my office. The phone would ring and people would also walk in. I helped one lady named Minnie Pearl (I even looked at her and wondered how many people thought she was Minnie “How-DY!” Pearl) enroll for portraiture and creative writing. She asked if I taught it and I said yes, then backtracked and remembered that I wasn’t teaching at all. I told her the truth. My desk was incredibly messy. The UPS guy stopped by and told me the new instructions for shipping things and gave me new labels. I took another phone call and realized that the east wall of my office was now a peanut gallery: five or six people would criticize me as I worked. “That’s sexual abuse,” I said at one point, “and I don’t have to take that–in my own office especially.” Then the peanut gallery asked me to sing Kris Kross’s “Jump Jump” which I did for a while (an obvious bleed-through from Cartoon Network, which is always on while I’m sleeping, and its Ultimate Hip-Hop Party CD ad). Then I saw Jeff S., a boy who lived next door to me while growing up, and now he and his three brothers were a successful boy band. I asked them which song came first, and he said “Love Will Never Do Without You.” I murmured, “of course,” wondering if they ever did an original song.

You can always tell when I get a LOT of sleep, and that happened last night. I went to bed at about 1:30 am and woke up at 1:21 pm when the phone rang. I also woke up at 7:00 am, but I went right back to sleep. Even now, almost 3.5 hours later, I really just want to go back to bed.

I was both watching the Oscars. I was very confused, because I knew it wasn’t time for the Oscars. Yet I still watched. At one point near the beginning, I was onstage. I was upset because I couldn’t draw a box around me by rubbing my hands together and pretending to draw a box. My hands had bubble solution on them, so I wasn’t completely insane. It had worked earlier. Instead the bubbles just burst and were not editable. Christopher Walken followed me onstage (I was now offstage, watching it all on television) ad said that there would be “some humor, some singing, and some old-tyme musical theatre acts.” There were about eight pages worth of awards to hand out. I had the pages in front of me and they were for very odd things, like best use of a wa-wa pedal (or however you spell it) in a theme song (which went to a Wayans brothers’ movie). The best love song by a teenager for another teenager came from a guy named “Tyrell,” a white kid with deep chestnut eyes. The awards show played a clip from whatever movie it came from: as Tyrell sang, the love of his life, a female soccer player in a yellow jersey, was running in a meadow. She got up to accept the award for Tyrell, and she had her hair in two ponytails with big knots at the tops, somewhat like they do in Sailor Moon. Her best friend, a Japanese teenager, was sitting across the aisle, and they hugged and shrieked together. Then the awards production showed a clip from the Asian girl’s movie: it basically involved her sitting on a boat, very dramatically, much like early on in The Piano. Then the show moved on to some animal theme, and we watched a clip from someone like Tom Green singing a love song to a dolphin. I noticed we had only covered about one page worth of awards (they had paragraph-long descriptions for each winner) and we were an hour into the program. I knew it would take forever to give out all the awards.

Then I was ‘at work,’ but not where I usually work, watching the awards show. I began talking about how I had given scholarships to this semester with Howard, and we thought about putting their names in our newsletter. I had given $200 to a home-schooled student who was unlike most of them. In the dream at that point, I knew her name. I think it was Mia now, but I knew for sure then. Mia had won the scholarship by passionately defending Dar Williams in an essay. So Mia took that $200 and joined the ultra-secret, ultra-powerful, ultra-exclusive “Boys R Us” club. They tried to block her, but couldn’t since she could now pay the membership fee. Jon ran the club and started it for personal profit. He wrote out her check for her and made her sign it. The figure on the check was originally $700, then $100, and finally $200. With her generous membership fee, she was now an officer. Mia told Jon that I’d take over the website since I had five years of experience and would be vice-president of all of her committees. I took both of Jon’s hands and held them in mine. “This doesn’t change the state of our personal relations. Oh wait, there weren’t any.” I then giggled evilly, dropped his hands, and hugged Mia. I had no idea she’d completely destroy the Boys R Us club.

I then drove home from my parents’ house (in my dream) and walked around my apartment complex. I noticed eight cars that were up on blocks and their back wheels stolen. I was glad I had stayed at my parents’ house instead of coming home. I was amazed at how quiet it was though, and I took a walk since it was so peaceful. I knew it was early on a Sunday morning, and I was wearing a trenchcoat as I meandered down the street. Then I saw Holly fighting with the school’s network, trying to get into her room. “Tell me about the whole scholarship thing. I hear Jon’s determined to kill you.” I told her the whole story about Mia, although I couldn’t remember Mia’s name. I told her that I could in “the dream,” and we both knew the whole Boys R Us coup was a dream. We agreed it was a pretty funny dream.

Kathleen and I went to play slot machines, only they were more like those gift-dispensing machines at grocery stores. We played a game that was similar to Plinko from The Price is Right. Kathleen spent five dollars, and I spent one dollar playing the various games. I was much slower than she was: it always seemed that someone was in my way when I wanted to use the machine. I got gifts from another machine; someone had won trashy toys, but didn’t bother collecting them. There were four things: a rubber superball, a glow-in-the-dark butterfly, a statue of a prince, and a glow-in-the-dark salt shaker in the shape of a bird that hopped a little bit. I kept the salt shaker and gave the butterfly to Kathleen. “Don’t spill it,” she said. I, of course, did spill a little, but I just wiped it off with my hand and pretended it never happened. I then left Kathleen to finish her gaming, and I put a quarter in a different machine to play a trivia game. Three players would line up at the trio of machines and shout out answers to basic questions, then the first person to answer a follow-up question won. “Name an animal,” prompted the announcer. “Cat,” shouted the first person. “Frog,” I said, wanting to be the one who said cat. “Moose,” the third person said. “What is missing from the series?” asked the announcer, and the third person said, “Scuba gear!” That was the right answer, and since I couldn’t make sense out of anything anymore, I pressed the coin return button and got my quarter back. I also got an additional $1 in quarters and a bunch of CD-Roms: Spiderman Cartoon Maker (”I can always use another copy, I suppose,” I thought), Spiderman Summer Update, Windows 1.0.0 (”WARNING: This is highly unstable release” it said on the CD), “Chapters 1-3″ of Final Fantasy III (”free version”), and a few shareware games. I was happy, Kathleen had spent her limit, and we left. As we left, two secretary-types with big 1987 hair, were getting prizes from machines.

I had another dream about the armless and legless Fisher Price Little People. That’s about it. I spent the night at my parents’ house since we went to three city-wide garage sales today. I was awoken at 5:11 am by the crows that live in the woodlands behind their home, and awoken at 7 am by Mom. It wasn’t a highly restful evening.

I finally had the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon dream I knew I would have someday: I was in a three-story building. I can’t remember most of it, but I do know that I was flying and running up the walls. At one point I almost hit my head on a ceiling fan. Dad was with me, and it was dark and rainy (like most of my dreams have been lately). The building had quite a bit of glass in it, but no one smashed through it. I wasn’t exactly fighting, I don’t think, but just sort of flying.

I was in an used clothing store on some class trip. There was to be another leg of the journey that involved going to another clothing store, trying on clothes, and a big graduation party. I didn’t really want to go try on clothes, but I couldn’t remember having a really big graduation party and that sounded like fun. There was an African-American girl who was flying on to Australia (it was just an hour plane ride away; I don’t know exactly where we were, but it wasn’t Kansas). She was terribly excited and couldn’t stop chatting, “Flying at night over the ocean is so exciting. It’s like you can’t tell what’s up anymore.” I wanted the people at the cash register to hold onto my bags while I shopped, but they refused to do that. I was very worried about “getting back in time,” although I have no idea where I was supposed to go.

About six other people and I went to go either watch someone die or kill ourselves at this person’s house. We were at the big metal gates begging to be let in when Bill Clinton walked by and shook everyone’s hand. He was quite jolly and relaxed, and I realized just how much I missed him. (This dream obvious reflects some of the main issues–euthanasia especially–tackled in last night’s moving episode of That’s My Bush).

The annoying client at work that has tons of ideas for how we should run our company called me on my cell phone. First, I was slightly disturbed that I had a cell phone, but realized it was “necessary.” Secondly, she just got my voice mail and it garbled part of her message. I threw the phone and said to Jake (I think), “See, I don’t want to be reachable.”

I was standing with three people (Lael, Joel, Bev?) and we were trying to will Sally (Lael’s wife) to turn on the air conditioning. We were on the east side of a highway and she was on the west side in a greenhouse-type building. She could only turn on the AC by making the large sign display the proper series of logos. I knew the last two symbols had to be “Union Label - Chevron,” but couldn’t help on the first two.