I was in a mall, going through sets of doors. There was an awful, terribly loud sound of starlings. I saw stupid gopher figurines and heard my mom say, “I could sell that.” There was also a golf towel that had horrible clip art of a foot that said “Barefoot Husband on the Prowl.”

I was sleeping in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.

The Center was hassling me about some preschool thing in an odd-shaped room. Julie was there, and she had a doppelganger who made her cry: I don’t know if the one in blue or the one in red was the “real” one.

I was house-sitting for my boss. I was very good and didn’t even feel tempted to go through her closets, pantry, or doors. She lived in a 1970s-style ranch house with a mild A-frame type living room with big windows. I saw Cyndi, harried and hurried, drive by in a burgandy Suburban.

• I was painting in red and orange.

• Anna G. dyed her hair bright bright fire engine red with acrylic paints. I was watching her wring out the oozing red in some smoky country-western bar.

• Howard let me paint at the Center. I was working on some canvases on the floor in the gallery and I praised him for being so adult and letting me play at the Center again.

Now, a collection of dreams from previous nights:

11/15: My boss gave me a Sit ‘n’ Spin and I was, of course, deliriously happy.

I visited DRC in his Comotara home. A strange man outside wailed and wailed, so I took shelter inside. He had to go throw pots, and I did him a favor by going to KU and getting some clay for him.

I was either in a large arena or an airport and I ran into the mayor.

11/16: Kathleen and I were playing in my new house when we discovered that it had a whole additional level in the basement. We walked into one room and it was very much like Larry’s Piano Bar. There were nine circular booths, like the corner one in Angela’s where Linden, Jaime, Matt, and I had lunch last time Matt was in town. I heard Kathleen squeal, “Oh my God! You have to make them leave the dance floor.” We turned the corner and found several rooms with 1970s dark wood bunk beds. I reasoned that the previous owners had a Little League team spend the summer with them.

Al Gore was hawking Suzukis for Carbanc.

I took an elevator to New York after returning curtains to JC Penney’s.

The airlines would charge passengers who went to the bathroom within five minutes of takeoff an additional $2000.

11/17: Lael sent me an e-mail entitled “however; angle 2.”

11/18: I was running with a flashlight on my grandfather’s road, dodging between cars.

Recently remembered dreams:

I dreamt that Afghanistan pronounced a jihad on just the place where I worked, and I wondered how in the world I was going to spin this in a positive light for the media, especially without the help of my boss (who’s currently on vacation).

I dreamt something about Jon selling T-shirts at a trade show.

Thinking in the mornings is hard, and I haven’t been sleeping well at all.

Caryn came into my office, waving my job description around, and she said, “You better be prepared to come down and explain what the hell you did here.”

I was with Beck. He started singing and I clung to him, then we ended up doing lines from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. I was screaming “What a dump!”; Beck was playing Richard Burton‘s role.

I was involved in an incredibly complicated Technicolor Hitchcock film. I owned three large dogs and was close friends with an alcoholic elderly woman. When she was found murdered, I went with Mom and Dad to her home. The cops put my dogs in three-ring binders, then bags, and closed them up, saying that they could still breathe. Dad came down a hallway and said, “You don’t want to go in there.” I checked the binder and my dogs weren’t there. I went out on the deck and saw my parents standing around the elderly woman’s body. My dogs were barking. There was much more intrigue and confusion to the whole thing, perhaps an uncomfortable dinner party, but I can’t remember it.

I was chatting with some lady in my office, perhaps an applicant for my current position. Somehow we started talking about Maslow’s theory of self-actualization, and neither one of us could remember the name for the level below self-actualization, the level “Maslow himself really fit in,” according to me.

My apartment was looked over by a home inspector and I kept pointing out things that were like that when I moved in (particularly the faucets).