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 woke up from a fifteen minute nap only slightly refreshed.

In the dream, I was living in a house built like a capital T shape, suspiciously in a semi-Asian style like the Center. In the wide crossbar of the T, I fell asleep on the couch of the living room. I was covered, not with blankets, but with the remnants of 8.5 x 11″ paper after nine 2.125″ circles had been cut out of them. I was buried in baby blue shards of paper, yet not whole sheets of it. (You know the dough that’s left over after using cookie cutters? The pieces of paper were like that.) I was watching some inane homosexual high school soap opera until I fully woke up in the dream. I realized (in the dream) that I had just had a dream about the lead character in the soap opera, a slightly ethnic boy of eighteen, who uttered some stupid punchline. The show ended, credits rolled, and I became aware suddenly that I was late for my dinner appointment. It was 4:18 pm, and I thought that the clock had to be wrong. Then Star Trek: The Next Generation came on as it did everyday at 4:18 pm and I knew I had to move and get going. I clicked off the television and stood up, but I could not stand up straight. It was as if I was heavily drugged or drunk. My head spun, or the room did, or both. I ran (for some reason), swerving and weaving like young boys who hold their arms straight out pretending to be airplanes. I was aware suddenly that I was naked and soaking wet, as if I had just gotten out of the shower, and I worried if anyone had seen me through the windows. I thought about drying off in my sheets, because I had made it to my room, but I remembered that the bathroom was certainly to the north of me. Directly west of me was the closet. I collapsed on a loveseat in my room. I heard the echo of water running outside and figured Jon J. had left the sprinklers running. I did not know if he was coming back or not; then I became terrified of being locked in and not knowing the alarm code to disarm the system.

Margaret (my ex-boss, last seen in 1997) was mad at me for not telling her that there was going to be construction done in the theater, and we got into a little war. I chased after her through a festival downtown, screaming all sorts of things at her. After my throat hurt, I turned around and went back, remembering that the plans had been drawn before I even started working there, so there was no way it was my responsibility to keep her informed.

I was in New York and bored out of my skull. I was entirely alone for some reason. I only stayed within a one-block radius of where I was staying. There was a movie theater that was playing the uncut version of sex, lies, and videotape, which I didn’t really care about seeing, but it was directed by the same guy [Stephen Soderbergh] who did Kafka, so I thought about giving it a chance. Admission was $2.93. I had picked up a CD somewhere, and I abandoned it in a CD store because I was afraid they’d try to charge me for it.

I was at work. Stephanie had just wrapped up a volunteer meeting that was held in her cubicle. A woman named Mary Johnson was the last to leave. She had left me an email asking for a copy of her enrollment form that she had faxed. I tried to make a copy, but since it was faxed, the quality wasn’t excellent. Add to that our horrible copier, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. A different Mary (this one from the university) appeared and told me not to use the copier or else it would go down forever. I was tempted to ask what the good of the copier was if it was unoperable, but I didn’t.

Then I woke up, wrote down key things and went back to sleep.

So I dreamt the work dream all over again, only I told Mary (from the university) that I had just had a dream about her and wasn’t that odd since I hadn’t seen her in over a year and a half. She pointed out the enrollment numbers Stephanie had thought we should post on the cubicle wall of the copier and said we shouldn’t let people know those statistics. She also complained that they were low. I went back into my office and was hounded by people wanting to enroll in classes. Someone waiting kept turning on and off the lights, so it was very difficult to maintain a semi-professional atmosphere. They weren’t filling out enrollment forms right and didn’t know which classes they wanted. One family had about eight kids and said, “Just put them in whatever class you want. We’re unemployed, so we can get them to any class.” A group of two black boys and one white came into my office asking for a drink of water, so I showed them to the water fountain. I almost launched into a brief history lesson telling them that once upon a time, they wouldn’t have been allowed to drink out of the same fountain.

I had an incredibly horrifying nightmare. I was trapped in a “Hitchcock” movie, even though it was completely unlike Alfred Hitchcock movies in any way. I was simply in the movie, just existing within it, with no sense of being on a movie set: I was also watching myself in the movie on television. In the movie, I was told I had to give Scott Baio oral sex, and I promptly vomited in the fireplace and on the tiles around it. I switched the movie off at that point and went the patio door, where I stood with my squirming Siamese cat (Amy, who was put to sleep in 1995) and I refused to let her go. She finally escaped and I went back to the movie, knowing I had to finish it or else something even worse would happen. Then it seemed like a real Alfred Hitchcock movie, the highly stylized 1950s Hitchcock of Rear Window and North by Northwest.

I hope I never dream about Scott Baio again.

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.

Two brief dreams about software (because installing software was one of the last things I did last night), one about work, one where I’m a child again, and one about mass transit: it’s another typical night.

I installed a paint program for Windows 3.1 on my 386, but it would only export *.avi files. I was confused and irritated.

I installed a word processing program and all that would appear is a table full of letters like [A] [B] [C] etc. I was again unimpressed.

Stephanie was attempting to bring the Jerky Boys to the Center for a performance (an obvious reference to last night’s Space Ghost episode). She was down the hallway making the most incredibly annoying sounds. I went into the room just behind my office and found Jon J. and Linden watching television while they cleaned. There was a 286 computer outside my office for volunteers to use: I have no idea what they actually did with it though. I was annoyed and bothered by all the noises.

I had to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom. (We’re still in a dream here.) I noticed that the kitchen was very bright, so I turned off the light. The hood over the stove fell and make a loud crashing metal sound. Dad came running in, followed by Mom. They got angry and I just murmured, “I’m so tired. I just need to go to the bathroom.” I went to the bathroom, closed the door, and cried. I could hear Mom say to Dad, “I can’t even hear her in there. What’s she doing?” So I ran water in the bathtub and turned on the black and white television, then I did my business. I took a bath right after that and was cold.

I was on the “New York subway,” riding the Green Line into downtown NYC. We were in the last mile, but there were five stops. Still, we reached speeds of 50 mph between them. The last stops were “City Exit (E),” “City Exit (D),” etc. I got off at Exit (C) and couldn’t find where to go to catch the Green Line to Exit (B), or even Exit (A). (Of course, I shouldn’t have gotten off in the first place, but oh well.) This dream is a likely reference to last night’s episode of Jackass where Chris Pontius (a.k.a. “Party Boy,” “Bunny,” etc.) is roller skating in the London underground, even when the cars are in motion.

Another dream dealing with weird time issues. I decided that my dream wasn’t being “refreshed” (a Windows term that has annoyingly entered my subconscious) often enough. Mari went into the bathroom and heard someone peeing, but didn’t see anyone. She was terrified and ran back out into the main room where I was standing. A weird electric sound came from the ventilation ducts and the wallpaper changed to mostly white with large yellow triangles pointing up towards the ceiling. “If you check the bathroom, I’m sure you will find Matt there. We just experienced some sort of hiccup in time.” We stood and waited: there was no furniture in the room. Then Matt came out.

Matt and I were in War Machine (an old Suburban). He missed the turn for the Westlink library, and we kept heading north. He stopped War Machine, then told me he couldn’t restart it for thirty minutes after it had been turned off. I wondered why he had turned it off in the first place, but I didn’t say anything. The back of War Machine was more of a conversion van. We both got out of the car to get into the back. I burst into tears and said, “I just don’t want to hurt anymore.” Matt got mad for some reason and went fetal, falling asleep on the little table with four cupholders.

I was in the parking lot of a mini-mall. There was a strip club there where no one really stripped much. They had a storefront, but hadn’t bothered to frost the windows or black them out. The stage backed onto a large window, and I had the misfortune of seeing some girl’s flabby ass. I wondered if she went to my high school back in the day. The lady of the club opened the two doors, and some fully clothed twenty-something in overall shorts played on the theft prevention devices (or metal detectors), splaying her legs for all the world to see her denim crotch. Mom, Dad, several other adults, and I got a 1950s automobile that really was a modern conversion van. We looked out the windows and giant birds, completely out of proportion to the mini-mall, were perched on the roof. We saw puffins, toucans, and other birds with unusual beaks. We turned the corner (left), and I pointed out birds with horns. I couldn’t speak very well, and I stumbled over words when I spoke to Mom: “That’s what you need, Mom, birds with beerhorns, er, longhorns, just horns. Whatever.” We turned again (this time right) and our driver, a Hispanic fellow, spotted a cop car that had pulled someone over in the right lane. He moved into the furthest left lane and said to my father, “They may not pull you over for nothing, sir, but they’ll pull me over” in a thick Spanish accent. “Especially with a van full of whites,” I added. “And a rifle pointed at them,” Mom quipped, and she held up a rifle that she had, I think, located under the seat. Someone dubbed it a “Texas War Weapon.”

Randy, Stephanie, and I were loading up Randy’s car with merchandise from Sam’s. We were on a tree-lined road by a lake; it was somewhat reminiscent of a combination of Godard’s Weekend and Henson’s The Muppet Movie. There was a red fox in the tree who was scared; it acted a lot like Bogie, an older dog I petsat recently. I pointed it out to Randy, then asked him if he had foxes on the farm. We couldn’t fit all of the stuff he bought in his trunk. Some of the things were not great buys: he had a sack that was bulk size, but only had enough pasta in it for one person. The rest of the sack was air. He complained.