NBF's DJ

I'm in my parents' old Ford LTD station wagon and I've just picked up the dogs. The strange thing is that they're two of the dogs we had when I was 12, black Labs. I drive up to our old house in Stormhaven (where we lived until I was 15) and open one of the back doors. I know there are three dogs back there. The third is from the present, my sister Bren's boyfriend's Jack Russell. The female Lab runs out and tears down the street about five houses over. The male Lab follows her. Of course, the terrier yelps and tags after them. I'm aware that I've just dug the two Labs out of their graves, and that after so many decades in the ground they must be rarin' to go. I grab the male by his collar - he's about 10 metres long - and the female follows him back with me as I command them both to come home. My cat, Miu Miu (who died in 2007), is there and is being cornered by the dogs. I don't tell her to come home because I know she will when she's good and ready. She looks hurt that I haven't included her in the command to come home, but I know you can't command a cat and expect immediate obedience the way you can a dog.

On the way home, we pass our next-door-neighbour's yard - the place where I was babysat and suffered abuse at the age of three. Someone who lives there is putting their cat out as the Jack Russell and the male lab start to rush around this cat. I'm aware I'm being glared at. I finally manage to get all the dogs home and safely enclosed in the yard.

I get in the house. Someone has brought in the stinky cheese we had in the car. There's a wrestler named, simply, E.O.S. - and the message I'd been trying to carve in the cheese was, "Thank you E.O.S. for keeping (some girl's name) company" and this is as far as I'd got. The rest of the message was to be "funny" - "big nose, fat, smells like a fish" - with a caricature of the girl and labels pointing to her various and many flaws. I go into the house and find that the cheese is there and that my mom is joking about E.O.S. being on the phone. I then realize the male and female lab were the wrong dogs - I think I must be having a Clonazepam-induced half-dream. So I mention the two older dogs' names - and my mom, sure enough, looks perplexed and concerned about me - and then I correct myself and say they're actually the family's current Great Dane and Landseer, both females.

Then I'm sitting at a piano in a room full of family members talking loudly about the dogs. At one point someone, possibly my dad, makes a flip remark about how much work it must have been rounding them up. I'm upset, and I mutter - much as Toby might have muttered on The West Wing - "I had to dig them out of their graves." Everyone's head flies up and they look in my direction. I leave the gathering and go to my room. I leave the door open, knowing my mom will pass the doorway on the way to her room. I just lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.

It should be noted, for future reference as well as for this dream, that I'm on Clonazepam for sleep. Clonazepam can have a strange hangover effect, at least with me, where I can be up and walking around and mechanically functioning normally and still be in a half-dream state. If I haven't slept all the drug out of my system, this is usually what happens. Best example happened about a week ago when I was sitting on the toilet, a thought occurred to me that I was going to have breakfast, and I reached up beside me thinking my kitchen shelf was there and I was going to get some ingredients down to make my breakfast. When I could find no kitchen shelf there, I awoke more fully. The other night I dreamt I scratched the skin of someone with psoriasis; the impression remained so strong after I awoke that I actually went to the sink and washed under my fingernails with soap. I suspect Clonazepam might have some hallucinogenic or narcotic properties, but I'm not sure. But it's either put up with half a minute of that after I awaken, or suffer circadian rhythm disorder and its full impact on my life. So the choice is there.

Recurring dream fragment: Digging up long-dead family dogs and having them come out of stasis.