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I remember one longish dream and two shorter ones. I don’t have time to write the longer one now, but I’ll come back to it tonight or tomorrow.


In which I’m in a dungeon…

old lady, dungeon, Dr H visit with book
daughter, Wolverine
valuable project, can’t remember what it was
trying to hide it from dr. H

Egads! I remembered this perfectly when I woke up- even tiny details. I wrote these tips to jog my memory, but now it's just a bunch of gobbledy-gook! It's so fascinating to me that detailed and clearly remembered dreams fade away from our memories so quickly. They stick to nothing if you don't write them down- no matter how well you remember them when you first wake up. And what a shame to have Hugh Jackman in my dreams and not remember it....

In which I admire S’s arm…

I’m reading a paper and I see a picture of S’s biceps modeling a shirt sleeve. I recognize her arm right away because she’s so strong. Later, I’m at the bakery and I tell her I saw a pic of arm; she flexes it and smiles.

I guess I dreamt this because I really did see S yesterday and she does have muscular arms. I’m working out again these days, so I suppose body tone is on my mind.


In which my alarm clock is a cardiac pacemaker cell…

Every time the alarm goes off, I hit snooze. This allows another ion channel to open or close. By strategically hitting snooze at the right intervals, I’m able to prolong the slow drift to threshold and post-pone depolarization. Until there is an action potential, I can continue sleeping. Of course, this logic made perfect sense just a few minutes back.

In which my garden is destroyed...

Just a fragment:

I'm part of some organization though my backyard and kitchen garden look like they do in real life. Someone who works for the organization mows down all of it so it is just a patch of dirt. The details I remember are that he even pulled the morning glories from the fence and dug up the grass from around the border. Also I begged him to tell me what he'd done with all the nearly ready butternut squash and melons that I'd left in the garden for just a day longer to ripen. I remember telling him that it was supposed to be my veg intake for the whole summer.

At some point later, I'm walking down a long white hall. The floors, ceilings, and walls are all white and the surface is some sort of shiny and cheap white plastic. There are flourescent lights in the ceiling that reflect off the plastic surfaces to make the whole hall ugly and unappealing. Somehow this pathway is connected to the same organization. I think I was going to make a complaint about the destruction of my garden?

Later I'm lost in an airport or giant hotel like complex. There is a lot about stairs and giant elevators and a library with a top floor in which I must hide in a conference room, but I can't remember at all what was going on.

In which I have a nightmare that I'm pregnant with an almost full-term baby with fetal alcohol syndrome...

I’m at K’s Memorial Day BBQ, chatting with H. She tells me that you can continue to ovulate for months after you are pregnant, so even if you have periods and negative pregnancy tests, you might still be pregnant. The only way to find out for sure is to have a special type of blood test done.

Then I’m at the doctor and he confirms that I am, indeed, pregnant. This is wholly unexpected and I start to feel the anxiety and disbelief common to stress dreams. How can this be? I relate that I’ve done quite a bit of binge drinking over the past few months, and I ask him if this could have affected the child. He scans my head with a device that looks like Dr. McCoy’s medical scanner, and an image of my cerebellum pops up on a screen. It is floating in alcohol. The doctor shakes his head in disgust. There is an infant curled up and sleeping in a branch of the cerebellum’s arbor vitae.

“Fetal alcohol syndrome for sure,” the doctor says. I cry and say that I had no idea I was pregnant. The doctor just shrugs his shoulders.

I imagine my future: decades of care-giving to a disabled child. I’ll never be able to work again. I see a life of special education tuition, ARDS, temper tantrums, speech delays, a fragmented personality… I can’t do it. I tell the doctor I want an abortion.

“Too late. You’re seven months.” I’m thunderstruck. Seven months? Again, I feel the confusion of dream anxiety. How can this be? How have I screwed things up so horribly? My mind races for an explanation, and finding none, instead starts plotting an escape. I’m pro-choice and have no belief in souls or divine plans. I’ve studied enough anatomy and physiology not to shed tears over zygotes, embryos and early stage fetuses. But a nearly full-term pregnancy? Well, that’s different.

At least it should be different. Yet I don't feel any of the things I should be feeling. Could I really murder a viable baby? I search my feelings on the matter. It should fill me with horror, but instead the only thing I think of is my need to escape. This situation doesn’t make any sense. How can this be?

I sit on the cold metal examination table in my hospital gown and wonder about the strangeness of everything. How can this be? How can I not feel anything toward this baby? How can I have not known I was pregnant? When was I binge drinking? I don’t remember binge drinking.

I don’t remembering binge drinking.

I don’t remember binge drinking because I didn’t do it. Because this isn’t real. Because I’m dreaming! That’s the escape!

Then I wake up, sweaty and scared.

In which I catch on fire and Sigmund Freud is my paramedic...

It's daytime in the summer, and my brother and I are sitting in fold-out yard chairs at the river. It's hot, and I have my toes in the water. For some reason, we have a campfire near us. We are talking and watching a crowd of people playing on jetskis and tossing beach balls. My iPod is hanging from my shirt. I'm not listening to it at that moment, but I know it contains the free iTunesU audiobook version of The Count of Monte Cristo.

The fire flares up, and a flame lands on my thigh as if it were a bird. I look down at it calmy and see that my shorts have caught fire. I stand up and walk towards the river. The fire starts to grow. As I'm walking, I disentangle my iPod and earbuds from my shirt. I've already listened to 113 chapters of the long Monte Cristo, and am eager to finish the thing so I don't want to destroy my iPod. I toss the device to my brother who is standing now at the edge of the water, alarmed. He catches it, and meanwhile he shouts, "Fire is on you!" I think how strange it is that he didn't say "You are on fire," but at the same time I realize that his statement is the more accurate.

I submerge myself completely in the river and start to roll around in the water. I see my thigh which is charred like chicken left too long on the grill. The cloth of my plaid shorts has completely melted into my skin. I can see the blackened and bloody muscle of my thigh. I worry about the filth of the river. It had just recently rained. We live in a rural area, and after a rain, soil from the surrounding ranches slides down into the water carrying all the bacteria associated with livestock. This isn't a problem unless it gets into the sterile sites of the body. Also I notice that I'm not feeling any pain. As I walk back towards my brother at the bank, I explain that I've burnt the sensory heads of my nociceptors clean off. I pick up a stick and draw a simplistic cartoon version of a neuron, then I whack off its head. "See? No axon hillock. No action potential. No pain perception."

The ambulance arrives. Sigmund Freud puts me on a stretcher. He cuts my shorts off with a cold pair of scissors. I tell him that I can feel the cold. He explains that soon I will feel the pain of the burn, too. This frightens me.

I start to chide Freud about his misdiagnosis of Anna and his misunderstanding of Dora. He deflects by asking me to explain myself. I realize I don't know what I'm talking about. I say something about the lack of research supporting the efficacy of anti-depressants. He asks what that has to do with him. I stumble on my words, but I insinuate that he is responsible for the creation of Western psychiatry and the resulting experimentation with neurotransmitters. But I realize I have no idea what I'm arguing about and I wonder why I'm rambling on like this. Freud simply responds that I'll be happy that pharmaceutical companies have learned all about dopamine receptors once I start to feel the pain of my severe burn. I shut up because I'm frightened.

My brother walks over to the ambulance as my bed is being wheeled backwards into it. Now my brother is Monte Cristo himself. He laughs at me vindictively and I realize this whole "accident" was his design.

And this was a deep sleep after being up for days studying for my physiology exam. So that's where all the neurological nonsense comes from. I really am reading Monte Cristo also, so that's where that comes from. As for Freud- who the hell knows what he's doing in my dream!

In which I can't keep up with the dishes...

I'm at work, only the restaurant has expanded to four times its normal size. I'm running back and forth between tables and our four wash basins. The dishes are piling up, and I'm trying to wash them all. Eventually, I have dirty dishes stacked all around me.

When the restaurant closes, I'm left to finish the dishes and sweep up. It takes me all night to get the dishes done, and just as I'm finished sweeping, we open up for breakfast. More dishes come in, and I'm never able to stop.

In which I see an owl and a fox with bird color vision...

I know I'm sleeping. I look out my window into my backyard (which isn't possible in real life since my window faces the front yard). I see my backyard under the moonlight in amazing tetrachromatic, UV vision. I'd listened to a podcast earlier that day that explained that certain birds can see all the colors that we see in addition to UV.

The moon is full and shining brightly yet somehow the stars are also stunning. The sky is indigo, and everything is perfectly still. The pecan trees in my backyard cast purple shadows on most of my yard, but their tops are bathed in deep green light.

A large owl, checkered with brown and white feathers, glides into my yard and lands on the fence to my kitchen garden. It's a great horned owl, and it's white feathers sparkle. I think that the feather I found in the lawn the other day must belong to him; he must be a regular visitor. I watch him through the window, and I think about waking up R to share the moment with him. But I realize that to wake up R, I'd have to wake up myself and this would make the owl disappear.

The owl is facing my chicken coop, smelling them and wishing he could get inside. The chickens are closed up securely, huddled together and listening to the predator. I know they are safe.

Then a fox with a white tipped tail leaps onto my fence from the field behind our house. It then jumps onto the roof of the chicken coop and turns to stare at me. Its eyes shine, and it looks spooky.

In which D really wants obedience...

I'm in the kitchen at work. D is chopping up some veggies. Suddenly he begins to slam the knife repeatedly into the chopping board while shouting, "Obedience! I need obedience from all of you! Obedience! Obedience! Obedience!"

In which I'm dangerously close to a mountain lion...

I'm standing in a clearing at the edge of a wood. A crowd is behind me, but I'm facing the forest. A mountain lion suddenly emerges from the woods. I'm just a few feet from it, so I take several steps backwards- slowly- towards the crowd behind me. The mountain lion and I maintain eye contact, but to my relief it does not leap towards me. Some fifteen feet back, I stand again with the crowd of people. I feel safer among them, farther from the treeline. I think of a school of fish swimming in shark-infested waters.

Here's another to add to my list of dreams about meeting older musicians. It's inexplicable to me that these guys keep popping up in my dreams. I like their music and I'm a fan, but this is not the music that I listen to or think about on a daily basis. It's just strange that they keep popping up in my dreams!

In which I meet Paul McCartney at a diner...

I'm sitting in a white and red naugahyde booth at a retro soda shop. Outside the window to my right, people are walking back and forth with shopping bags, and up on the wall to my left, a television is blaring the news. My mother and my uncle A have just left me to continue shopping, but they pop their heads back in the diner to tell me that they'd just realized that they'd dropped a parsley plant out in the parking garage near the car. I nod to them and say that I'll go get it after I finish my burger.

I listen to the news broadcast. Beatles fans are angry because Sir Paul McCartney compared his former band to Darth Vader. The announcer cuts to a clip of McCartney himself making the controversial statement. I note that he obviously said something entirely different. He didn't mention Darth Vader at all, and in fact he compared the band to Frankenstein's monster. I think how this is typical of the media and return to my burger.

But in the booth across from my own is Paul McCartney himself. He is twisted around in his booth so that he can view the television. He notices that I'm watching him and he looks at me. Pointing at the TV screen, he asks, "What are they all upset about? Did you catch it?"

"They say you compared the Beatles to Darth Vader," I explain. "But that's not what you said." He gets up from his own booth and walks over to mine. He sits down in front of me so that we are now sharing a table. He looks a little annoyed and confused by the whole news story.

"Darth Vader? Well, do you know what I really said?" he asks.

"Yeah. You said that the Beatles became like Frankenstein's monster. I assume you meant that you created something that got out of hand and took on a life of its own," I answer.

"Yes- that's it. I remember now," he says. He smiles, and I start to think how exactly he looks like the same Paul McCartney that I've always seen. "I made that statement nearly 15 years ago. I don't know what they're getting so upset about."

"No, no," I answer. "It couldn't have been 15 years. They said it was in 2000." As soon as I say the words, I realize that it's been almost 15 years since the year 2000. It seems impossible to me that so much time has passed . Suddenly I feel extremely old. I feel like I've accomplished nothing in my life and that the time is flying past me faster than I can catch it. I almost tell McCartney that we are getting old, but then I realize how much older he is than I am. He didn't seem to waste a day of his life. So instead I just say, "My god. I waste too much time."

McCartney looks at me earnestly. I notice his wrinkled face and thinning hair. I compare him to the image on the TV just 12 years ago talking about Frankenstein. And even that image was several lifetimes removed from the days when he actually was a Beatle! I look back at the man in front of me and notice his elderly, liver spotted hands. But when I look up at his eyes, they are vibrant. I'm taken back to my experience earlier in the day with the poppies and the butterflies in my garden. I open my mouth to tell him about it, because at that moment I know he will understand. Then I remember the parsley.

Hurriedly, I excuse myself and run out of the diner and down into the parking garage. By the time I get to the car, I remember that the parsley is actually our three dogs. They'd been left behind in the car. I let them out of the car, and as I'm walking them back to the diner, I wonder if McCartney will still be there. I decide that if he is, I'm going to thank him.

Back at the diner, there is only my mother and A. I can't go inside anyway because I have the dogs, so I wave them out. We all walk back to the car together, and A tells me that he heard a rumor that Paul McCartney had just had lunch there. I find myself bragging about meeting him. I bury all the feelings of regret and insight, and instead I brag. I tell how Paul McCartney sat down at my table and we talked about the Beatles. I tell how I played it cool and didn't say anything fan-girlish. A and my mom are impressed, and they asked if I took a picture to post on FB. I say that I was being too cool about the whole thing to ask for a picture.

The experience with the poppies and the butterflies is something that happened to me yesterday (the day before this dream) but I don't have time to write about it here. This dream was very vivid, and I remember each word as if I were hearing it aloud. I think it's because I took Benadryl before sleeping last night since I had terrible allergies.

In which I go for walks and vaguely watch much improved Star Wars prequels...


Richard Linklater had remade Star Wars Episode 1, the first of the prequels. Fans had been delighted with the results and we decided to ignore Lucas’ earlier disastrous attempt. The expectation was that Linklater’s new film would become the canon. Somehow I’d let it go to DVD without seeing it, and as the dream started I was walking with H and several of her friends from my house to a restaurant through town. Along the way, one of her friends, a baseball capped man in his early 30s who was walking a friendly pit bull, kept flirting with me. Mostly we talked about Star Wars and dogs.

About halfway through our walk, we passed a boutique which had an outer façade of brick on which were hung hundreds of necklaces, bracelets and earrings for sale. Someone had recently painted the brick and they’d neglected to cover the jewelry with drip protection so everything was splattered and ruined. Even still, the prices were set high and we laughed that they would get this price for their merchandise. H and her other friends went inside and lingered, but the baseball cap man and I were obliged to stay out since he had the pit and since Lucy was with me now as well. Our dogs were friends, and I fumbled with the jewelry while we waited. I noticed a ring that I’ve recently lost in real life. I’m not too concerned about having lost it because it is damaged and one of the stones is missing but I was surprised to see it among their collection. I pointed it out to the capped man, but we just laughed about it.

Then I’m watching Linklater’s Star Wars on DVD only the parts that I remember seem so emotional that I feel that I’m really a character in the movie. On the one hand, I’m watching the movie, but on the other I’m Anikan in the movie. Linklater’s Anikan is perfect. The movie is dark and sleek. Anikan is strong, reserved, focused and tormented. He’s a badass in a difficult situation trying to do his best with all the earnestness of Luke later in the movies. In a seemingly inconsequential scene, he is given the base of a light saber from an elder Jedi which is forged from a metal unlike any we’ve ever seen before. The galaxy is at war, and Yoda and Obi Wan are training Anikan. He’s a good student, and not in the least whiney or annoying. The movie ends with him becoming a full Jedi.

I’m walking again with H and her friends, but I remember from last time that they are not going to walk fast and that we will get stuck again in the boutique. I’d wanted to make excuses because really l prefer brisk exercise, but I go along with them, expecting to be bored again outside the shop. I have Lucy and the capped man is there again with his pit bull. The man tells me he enjoys my company and asks if he can come visit me without H. I remember that he’d been flirting with me, so I remind him that I’m married. He responds that he only meant so that our dogs can play together and that he’s happy to hang with my husband too. I feel sort of embarrassed for assuming he was flirting. We get to the wall which is covered in jewelry again, and this time I realize I’ve lost my necklace among all the items. I didn’t care about the ring, but the necklace is important to me. I tell the guy that he must help me find it, but I can’t remember what it looked like. I just know that I’ve lost some necklace, so we start looking through hundreds of them. I think it will be hopeless, but he finds it among the others. It is the silver halfmoon that R gave me several months ago, and I’m thankful to recover it.

The people who own the boutique come out and tell us we can enter with the dogs. Inside, the building is a beautifully made cob cottage, and we sit at a rustic wooden table and have tea in ceramic cups. I admire the pottery and the owners of the cottage tell me I can walk upstairs to see more. There is a winding wooden staircase leading up to a loft, and the light shines through stained glass windows to bathe the room in bright red light. The rays of light were thick like fog, and from the top of the staircase I could not see down to my friends below.

I’m Anakin again and simultaneously watching Anakin, now in the theater in the cottage. This time it's the newly released Episode Two . Linklater’s second feature is darker, as the middle installment of a trilogy should properly be! Anakin is led astray by someone impersonating Yoda. I remember feeling that there is intrigue and double crossing, and though Anakin earnestly tries to work through it in an admirable way, he is in a no-win situation. Anakin is captured and placed within a machine of some sort that analyzes every atom in his body and gear and tells the secrets of all of it to reveal everything about his soul. It’s a horrifying process, but unexpectedly in the end, his enemies discover that the metal at the base of his light saber is not from this galaxy. Somehow they conclude that the metal in fact is something precious from the dawn of time itself- it is a substance that originated at the Big Bang itself. Anakin is torn somehow. He must protect this substance or else horrible things will happen to the galaxy, but he also doesn't want to betray his friends. The film ends on this note.

The capped man and I discuss how brilliantly Linklater wove the plot and how we can see no escape for Anakin except for him to turn to the Dark Side. We are thankful for him saving the franchise and correcting Lucas’ stupidity. I tell the capped man that if I were Anakin, I’d make the same mistakes he was making and we discuss how it makes sense that he could be led over to the dark side. He compares his fall to Michael Corleone and we get excited about seeing Episode Three. He also talks about how the light saber metal is like the Holy Grail and he tells me all the times that he noticed allusions in the movie to the story of the Fisher King, and he says that Anakin’s character is based on Perceval. I’m very impressed at his insight, and we are eager for the last installment.

In which chewing gum gets stuck in my mouth...

I'm trying to spit out a piece of gum. I can't spit it out, so I reach into my mouth and pull it out with one hand. More and more gum appears, and I start to take a rope of it out of my mouth by pulling at it, hand over hand. I find more gum stuck behind my teeth and more at the back of my mouth.

My coworker is with me, and I tell her that I always dream that this happens. Then I think to myself, I must be dreaming now. But I look around the room and realize that I'm not dreaming. This is real. This time, I really do have gum stuck in my mouth.

Of course, this is exactly what I think every single time I have this annoying recurrent dream. Every single time, I remember that I usually dream it but think that this time it is real. So frustrating.

In which we cook a salamander...

My mom is cooking a three foot long, fat salamander on a flat iron skillet. It was supposed to have been double pithed before the frying began, but the salamander keeps twitching violently and trying to run off the hot surface. She grabs it by its tail, flips it over and starts cooking it on the other side. It struggles to get off the skillet and makes a horrible sound.

My uncle A and I are standing in the kitchen. "I don't think it's brain dead," I tell her.

"It's just reflexes. Like when you chop the head off a snake," she answers.

But we're not so sure. The thing looks like it is suffering terribly. I imagine being slowly fried on a skillet, first belly down then back down.

"We're all going to hell," I tell them.


In which I fall into a river...

My uncle A and I are walking along a roaring river through a national forest. I slip and fall into the water. For a while, I tumble over rocks and alternately submerge completely under the water then bob up again for air. The river bends, and it is shallow enough that I'm able to ride the current into a flat faced rock wall. I grab hold of a few protrusions and shout at a man on top for help. He pulls me up, and I feel incompetent that I wasn't able to scale the wall.

From the top, I look down again and see that my uncle A has also jumped into the river after me. The man who rescued me and I run along the bank until A manages to grab hold of a big boulder in another section of the river. We are able to reach him and pull him over some rocks back to land. But in the process, he pulls a muscle in his leg and can't walk easily.

We stumble back to the cabin, but I know that our vacation is now ruined.

In which I meet some friends and their dog...

There was a lot to do with dogs and an adventure, but all I remember is that at some point I was sitting in a hut on a trail when a family with a dog entered. There was a grandmother, a mother and a toddler with a pit bull. I heard the grandmother call the toddler "A--" and I realized that the little girl was the daughter of a friend of mine. I asked if the dog's name was "P---" and they said it was. Then I asked where the little girl's parents were. Turns out these people were her aunt and grandmother. It didn't make much sense to me because I'd met the girl's grandmother and this woman was not her, but people have complicated family networks so I let it go.

At some point, the girl's father (my friend EP) walked in with a couple of German shephers. I had Lucy with me, and we started talking about something important. The whole feeling was somber.

I had a lot of dreams last night that I can't remember.

In which my garden is dying, and I learn about my uncle B's past...

I'm trying to convert my garden into raised beds because the gophers keep destroying all my plants. I'm building the garden beside my deck underneathe one of my pecan trees when I realize that I'll never have enough sun here. I walk over to the sunny spot of the lawn where my gopher-ridden beds actually are, and I find that my mom has converted the space into a giant greenhouse, lush with vegetables. I tell her that I wanted this bit of land for my garden, and besides, she has her own garden up at her own house. She said that she had so many vegetables that she'd thought she'd grow them in my garden too. She suggests that I cut down my pecan trees since the gophers are just destroying their roots anyway. This makes me incredibly depressed, so I just go back inside the house and go to bed.

Later at night, I can hear the front door opening. I'm afraid it is a break-in, and I don't want the burglars to stumble upon me, get scared and panic. So I shout right away, "Who is it?"

A familiar voice shouts back, "Who is it yourself?"

I respond, "This is MY house. Who are you?"

He responds, "You know who I am or else you aren't who you say you are."

I'm pretty sure I do know who it is, but I test him just to be sure. "Is that you Ch?"

"Hey-ell no it ain't Ch!"

I was right. It is my uncle B. "What are you doing here B?" I ask.

"I need a place to sleep and your mom said you'd be out of town so I came here."

"Make yourself at home." I go back to bed.

This whole conversation happened through a closed door because I wasn't dressed and besides, I was really sleepy.

In the morning, I was awakened by uncle B talking to a lawyer or an accountant about how to finance his retirement. It seems he has way less money than we realized. I could overhear the lawyer/accountant saying things about the time my uncle spent in Chitzen Itza with the "natives" in the 70s and also about two prison stints, one of them five years long. This really surprised me because I'd never know that my uncle had done more than just a night in jail once for drinking too much. Five years in prison! I think back to my childhood and remember a long stretch of time that Uncle B was not around. It must've been then. We'd been told that he was a traveling man, enjoying life on the road.

I walk into the living room where they are talking and pretend that I don't hear anything. The lawyer/accountant tells my uncle B that he has had a fascinating life and done a lot of cool things, but because he could never get himself together and keep himself out of trouble, his life has amounted to nothing. Now in the end, he can't even support himself. I take it as a warning to myself.

I look at the kitchen table where I see many old black and white snap shots of this very same lawyer/accountant. I realize that uncle B and I took these photos recently. We just made them look old. Uncle B walks over and looks at them with me and I realize that the lawyer/accountant isn't even real. It was just a story we made up to go along with the photographs.

Ch and my mom show up again. They are driving an SUV, and there are two white corvettes in front of my house. The corvettes belong to uncle B, but he needs help moving them somewhere. Ch and my mom drive the SUV, uncle B follows them in one of the corvettes and I follow in the other. For some reason, I must drive it laying down on my back with my arms up in the air steering. To see the road, I have to use mirrors that are placed to reflect what is going on above and in front of me in a way similar to a periscope. We are cruising down the road and I'm finding this very stressful but everyone else seems to think it will be a real treat for me to drive a corvette so I pretend like I'm having fun. They explain that eventually a Pontiac Grand Am will cross in front of me, and I must follow that car to its location while they carry on with the other corvette somewhere else. I tell them that I don't know what a Grand Am looks like, and they tell me it is the sort of car that A drives. I'm too embarassed to admit that although I've been in A's car millions of times, I have no idea what it looks like.

In which I have the worst morning ever...

I'm on a trip with my Physiology class. We are staying in a dorm room that looks similar to double berth sleeper cars on trains. Four of us are in one room, and when the beds are folded up, we have a table in the middle between us.

It's morning and I step into the bathroom to shower. I must share the space with two other girls. The walls of the bathroom are all windows so that people walking around outside can see inside. The way around this is to turn out the light inside the bathroom as this somehow turns off the windows. While I'm showering, one of the girls keeps flipping on the light. Each time, I tell her to turn it out again and she responds that it was an accident. She says it's just habit to turn on a light each time she walks past it. I finally give up and rush my shower, wrap my hair in a towl and wrap the other towel around my body and I walk back into the dorm area. I brush my teeth and hair here, still in my towel. My professor sees me, and he calls me over to him. He is standing behind a podium.

"Why must you walk around when you aren't properly dressed?"

I'm embarassed and don't want to explain the whole situation about the shower light so I pretend that I can't understand him. "What's that?"

"Why must you walk around when you aren't properly dressed?"

I cock my head to one side and pull my ear close. "I'm sorry, come again?"

"It's my accent isn't it?" he asks, earnestly. "Americans have trouble with my accent. I was worried that this might cause someone to struggle in my class." He seems honestly worried about this.

"No, it's not your accent at all. I can understand you perfectly and you are one of the best professors I've ever had." This is all true. "But I can't hear you right now because it's so loud in here." This part is a lie.

"I was asking why you are walking around in your towel. You should be more modest." I hate the word modest but I know he didn't mean it the way I took it. I looked down at my towel and feigned surprise.

"Oh really? This is less revealing than a bathing suit even, but if it is inappropriate for school then I'm sorry and I'll go change right now." I turned and ran back to my dorm room.

I made it just in time to catch the breakfast server. She explained that there were four items to choose from. Three were conventional breakfast items, but the fourth was a hamburger. I requested eggs, toast and coffee but the server explained that I must take the hamburger. She said that the four girls who share my dorm room had already ordered the other three items. I asked if this meant that the restaurant had run out of them all and now there were only hamburgers left. She clarified: Actually each person in a group of four must get a different item. There were still plent of eggs, coffee and toast at the restaurant, but since no one had taken the burger at my table and since the restaurant must serve all four items to each table, then I must take the burger. This didn't make any sense to me, so I told the server that I didn't want anything. I tried to leave the dorm at this time, but the server wouldn't let me leave until I confirmed that I would pay for the burger. I physically pushed my way past the woman, and my professor, still behind the podium, asked me again to approach him.

"Why are you fighting with the waitress?"

"I don't like burgers and I certainly don't want one first thing in the morning!"

I tried to explain the situation about the four items and how the server was forcing me to pay for a burger that I do not want, but my professor didn't see what was so strange about this. He thought I was making a big deal out of nothing.

Just then, a guy from my class entered the train. He was eating a breakfast taco from Torchy's. It looked wonderful so I asked him how he got it. He pointed me down an alleyway outside of the train and told me that there is a long line so I better hurry if I want to be back in time for lecture. We laughed about how stupid it was to require four people to get four different items regardless of what they wanted, and I felt really relieved to be talking to someone who agreed with me about this. We shared a laugh, and in the moment, I leaned forward and playfully slapped him on the shoulder in a gesture of friendship. He looked at me stunned and took several steps back.

"Oh god, I'm sorry. Did that hurt?" I was thinking to myself that he must be a real drama queen, but I wanted to smooth over the social situation. I leaned forward with my hands in the air, palms up, in a non-threatening gesture. "I'm really sorry. I was just laughing so hard that I must've invaded your personal space."

He faked a smile, but I noticed that he took a few more steps back. "It's OK," was all he said.

I was surprised at how weirdly he was taking being touched on the shoulder. "Are you hurt?" I asked again. He seemed so serious about it that I started to wonder if maybe he had a wound or something on his shoulder. I took a few steps toward him with real concern on my face this time.

He backed into a wall and started screaming, "Step back! Step back! People are watching you!" Many other students and my professor gathered around us. They all looked confusedly between me and him. I took several steps back and held my arms out again, palms up.

"She's trying to assault me!" the guy said. I tried to protest that this was ridiculous, but my professor intervened and said I needed to move along to give him some space.

I left the train, embarassed and fuming at the same time. I wondered if there was a camera on board that could've captured the whole thing. But pretty soon I stopped thinking about it because I found the line to Torchy's Tacos. The trailer is popular so it was crowded. I was waiting behind a dozen other people, but I wasn't in any hurry since I'd decided already not to return for the lecture.

A big middle aged man, clean shaven with blonde hair, stood in front of me. He turned around and looked toward my chest. At first I thought he was checking me out and this made me uncomfortable. But then he said, "What a beautiful baby girl!" I looked down and saw that I had baby M in my arms. How long had she been there? Had I been holding her during the scuffle with the guy in my class?

I was alarmed, but I looked at her carefully and she seemed perfectly fine. She was awake and happy, just looking around with her big blue eyes. The blonde man touched her face and cooed at her, but for some reason he really gave me the creeps. I politely shifted baby M from one shoulder to another. I was wondering where her parents, E and JG were. Did they know I have her?

Suddenly the blonde man started tickling me aggressively. He was acting like it was a game and the people around us were laughing, but I was having a lot of trouble holding on to baby M. Also I could barely breath enough to talk so I couldn't shout or ask for help. I fell over, with baby M still in my arms, and the man piled on top of me, tickling me. He was trying to steal away with the baby! I could see people's feet and it seemed that I was in the midst of a huge crowd. It was all very chaotic, with people pulling at one another and starting to trample us. I couldn't hold on to baby M much longer. A brunette woman wearing a striped sailor shirt offered to take the baby but somehow I realized that she was in cahoots with the blonde man. I was able to scream, "Watch them, they're trying to kidnap my baby!"

Then the blonde man and his accomplice became violent. They started pulling on my arms and punching other people in the crowd. I could sense the energy above me. It was like being on the tavern floor during an Old West fist fight. I was jostled about, and in the chaos, I felt baby M slip away. Finally, the energy calmed, and I stood up just in time to see the blonde man and brunette woman sprint away from the taco trailer. I looked around, panicked that I'd lost the baby.

Then I saw a big-busted mid-30s suburbanite woman with a nice haircut and fancy flip-flops that matched her capris, curled over herself in the corner of the room. Safely in her arms, she cradled baby M. She'd wrestled her from the kidnapping couple once I'd lost control of her. She handed her over to me gladly, and I told her how she'd saved the child's life. I was singing her praises and calling her a hero when the cops came. We told them the whole story, but they seemed alarmed that I was not the baby's mother in the first place. They wanted to know where E and JG were, but I couldn't tell them. They became suspicious of me and wanted to know what I was doing there. I explained about the class and the tacos, and they said they'd have to check up. I begged to let me have a taco first and they permitted it.

Finally, I got a migas and avocado taco with cilantro ranch salsa. At that moment, it seemed to be the best tasting food I'd ever had.

Back at the train, my professor verified what I was doing in this part of town but said he knew nothing about the baby. I explained what happened, but everyone looked at me suspiciously.

"With you," my professor said, "everything is always someone else's fault. But all morning long you've been getting in fights and causing scenes. Now you've really gotten yourself in trouble."

Somehow, I agree that he is right. I don't want to be that person that says that everything bad that happens to them is because of someone else. I must just be a royal screw up.

In which I'm unexpectedly in Delhi and have an altercation with a cafe worker...

I'm walking into the airport in Delhi with my backpack and a handbag when I see Sarah Dog wandering around in front of the terminal. This is surprising because we just found her a home in Texas last week, but there is no way she can explain how she got herself all the way to India so I simply try to catch her. She is happy to come to me, but I don't have a leash so I have difficulty making her walk along beside me. Eventually I just lift her up and carry her into the terminal. This is exhausting and cumbersome because I was already loaded down with luggage.

I sit near a stariwell in the waiting room with my backpack in the seat next to me and Sarah Dog on the floor with my finger curled under her collar. Suddenly I see my father coming up the stairs. I'm surprised again as I wonder how he could be in Delhi. In fact, I look away at first, thinking that it is impossible that my father could be here. But then when I look back, he is coming to embrace me and I'm certain it is him. I feel relief replace the confusion- now he can help me get this dog back to Texas.

I ask my father what he is doing here and he says he will explain everything later. He greets Sarah Dog familiarly and at first this surprises me too, but then I remember that I'd brought her to Houston during the time I'd had her. They are old friend. He tells me to run to the cafeteria and get us some coffee and cookies and then we can explain to one another how all three of us ended up in Delhi.

The airport is now laid out like the Riverside Campus, and I'm walking to the horrible little cafe they have there. Once I get there, however, it is run instead by an Indian man and there is a larger variety of delicious food. I get in line and wonder why the Riverside Campus doesn't always employ this cafe instead of the disgusting one they usually have. Then I remember that I'm not at home- I'm in Delhi. For a moment, I start to wonder how I got here, but then I notice that the line is getting shorter and I must order soon. Other patrons are walking off with delicious looking food: wraps, kolaches, samosas, milk shakes, etc. I look at the blackboard menu behind the counter but I can't read any of the words. I try as hard as I can, but I can't make out any familiar marks.

Now it is my turn, but I can't order because I can't read the selection. I try to stall a little and make some indecisive remarks. There is a goth-dressed couple behind me, and they say some insulting comments about me under their breath. I turn around and yell at them. I'm very angry so I lose my cool and cuss at them. Then I realize I sound stupid, and I try to add a witty insult. The best I can come up with is, "and there's no excuse for goth clothes once you're over the age of 14. You look like self-absorbed brats!" They roll their eyes and laugh at me, but I feel better.

I turn back to the man behind the counter, and as I'm trying again to decipher the words on the menu, my eyes stumble upon the cookies next to the register. I had forgotten! My father asked me to get cookies! I order two cookies and two cups of black coffee. I start to worry about how long I've left my father holding on to Sarah Dog and I hope all is well.

The guy behind the counter rings me up for exactly $5.23. I pull out my debit card but he explains that he will only take cash. No problem. I hand him a 20 and he tells me he has no change. This is starting to irritate me, so I give him a 10. He says still that he has no change, and this provokes the release of a violent beast that I normally keep tied up, deep down inside me. I lean across the counter, with one knee actually on the countertop, and I grab the man by the collar and pull him toward me until his face and mine are only inches apart. I scream, red in the face and at the top of my lungs, "How can you expect me to pay with cash when you don't even have change for a 10?" I shake him back and forth, over and over again, shouting, "This doesn't make sense!"

The man tells me to please calm down and explains that I could simply pay with a 5. I slam a fist into his register and scream, "but the bill is MORE THAN 5 dollars. Don't you get it? There is no way to pay with a bill less than 10 unless I walk around with a pocket full of coins." The man acknowledges this, and says that since I neglected to carry around the proper coinage, he would kindly allow me to pay just 5 dollars instead of $5.23.

As the people in line were staring at me amusedly and the other employees looked ready to call the police, I stepped back. I gave the man a 5 and started to feel that I had perhaps over-reacted. He took the 5, and as he opened the drawer to the cash register, I pretended not to see the huge amount of change he had inside. Then he handed me my cookies, two of them soaked to mush and wrapped in wet paper napkins, and my coffee, blonde with a large quantity of added milk*. It's served in a glass with a handle that is too hot to touch. When I taste it, it is sweet like tres leches cake.

I give up. I ask for my 5 dollars back and tell them to just forget it. They respond that they can't give me my money back because I've already received the food I paid for. I scream again, this time jumping up on the counter itself, that they have given me nothing. They point, increduously at the coffee and cookies as if there is nothing at all wrong with them and I'm just being spoiled. I jump off the counter and on to the cashier's side. I grab the cookie mush in one hand and the cashier's shoulder in the other. I'm about to smear the mess on his face, but I notice that another employee is already on the phone with the police. I'm in an airport after all, and I don't want this to be the sort of day in which I wake up expecting a perfectly normal stream of events but then find myself in a life-altering situation that involves jail time or ongoing court cases or an evaluation of my sanity**.

The dream fades here.



*I did not realize this in the dream, but in real life both these things have significance to me. The cookies are from preschool, one of the first embarassing moments of my life. We were served milk in small paper cups and cookies on a napkin every day for snack. Some of the other kids used to enjoy drinking their milk, unwitnessed, until their cup was empty, then wrapping their cookies in a napkin and dipping it into the empty cup. They'd pull it out and say, "Magic! The cookies are still dry!" I tried this trick myself once but forgot to drink the milk. When I pulled out my sad wet napkin, my cookies were wet mush. The preschool teacher made me eat them anyway. I was mortified. As for the milky coffee, it is annoyingly difficult to get a cup of black filter coffee in India with the milk on the side. They want to make instant coffee out of Nescafe or else foam up the milk and pour it into the cup for you or else make you a capuccino or any variety of espressos and other concoctions. But ordering a cup of simple black filter coffee with milk on the side which you can add yourself to your liking is completely foreign at most places in India. They always screw it up and give you some sweet milky monstrosity they call "milk coffee"
** Just to be clear, I've never actually had a day like that, but in my dream I was convinced I had.