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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.

I was listening to Apollo 13 on the DVD player all night while I was dreaming, and I could hear the movie in my dreams. In this dream, I'm staying at a detached guest house about 45 feet from the main residence. It's 2:00 in the morning. I'm looking up at the stars, I see Betelgeuse, and I send a wave of love to it because I know Adam is there. Then it occurs to me that we haven't advanced far enough in technology yet that he would be in another star system. I just know he's far away.

I go to the house, which I usually do at 2 in the morning when it's quiet just to sit in the living room. This time, it's filled with young science students who are trying to figure out a project. There is a lot going on. They're trying to save one of their buddies who is stuck on a spacecraft. I say this would make a good screenplay and one of them smiles, but they're all clearly more serious than that.

They keep working on it, and I notice a green messenger bag that John has given me. He's taped the notes for a theatre project onto the flap. I remove the paper with the notes, and it occurs to me that when John sees that I've done this, it'll be a daring move.

The guys in the spacecraft are eventually saved, everyone cheers, and one young man in the next car gives me a Spock "live long and prosper" sign. I smile and give him one back, conscious that anyone who sees this will think we are geeks! He smiles back, and shows his other hand (his left hand), which has only three fingers that are naturally arranged in the Vulcan peace sign - and he says, "This is the only way I can make my hands look even." It's clearly a joke. I smile in acknowledgement and then drive away with whoever's driving the car I'm in.

For one of these rare times, I simply haven't a clue what any of this means in my life. Edit: Oh, except the thing with John's messenger bag. Removing the theatre project notes symbolizes removing the guise of working together on a project. The simple messenger bag, without that embellishment tacked on, symbolizes us simply being together without a reason other than plain, simple desire. That thought is so scary that it had to couch itself in the symbolism of the green messenger bag. By removing the theatre notes, I'm boldly giving him the message that the messenger bag is a personal gift, not a utilitarian one. Brassy move. I'm sure I couldn't say something like that to him in real life...or possibly even say it to myself.

I have a principal role in a film (not the lead, but a major supporting) and the crew has suddenly decided they’re going to put everything in helicopters and go to shoot the rest of the film in Scotland. I realize I don’t have all my wardrobe!! I left it at home! We’re in Stormhaven, my home town, so I tell the production manager and she immediately gets behind a wheel and drives me out to Quartz Beach. We still only have a cottage there, not a full home (in real life we built a full home in 1979 when I was 15). I’m fretting the whole time because it was simply my negligence; I had the wardrobe for a play I just did and I guess I was so tired after the last performance that I threw it over a chair and forgot to put it in a bag to bring to set. Anyway, we’re on the clock, because in four hours, at midnight, we have plane tickets to Scotland.

Then it’s my sister Bren behind the wheel. Bren is the problem solver of our family. First she goes through all the tops I have with me and we find one that’s reasonably close to the top I was wearing in earlier takes, but not by any means an exact match. Same colour, different cut. I try to explain to Bren that it’ll be quite noticeable in jump cuts because it’ll appear as though I’m wearing a different outfit from one second to the next in the same conversation. We do have the tights I wore on Total Recall, my Mary Jane shoes, underwear, and the sweater I wore on Total Recall, but not the top I need. All we need is a rose-coloured button-down top.

We get to the cottage and I rifle through everything and can’t find the top. Then suddenly there’s a party full of my parents’ relatives and friends, so I can’t leave yet until they all catch up with me. Bren, unsympathetic, is beside me saying, “Smile.” (In other words, the family's concerns for appearances are more important than my career in the film industry.) I manage a tight smile. Bren, unconvinced, gives me a disgusted look.

Then I notice we’re in a school. An idea occurs to me and I voice it: “What if they held the Academy Awards in a school like this?” (I think I meant I’d like to bring my ideal world into my real world.) Bren thinks this is a great thought and shares it with Mom, who is on the other side of her. No one seems aware that I need to be on a plane in two hours.

We get into Stormhaven and for some reason, we need to stop off at our town home. I’m getting more and more frustrated and scared of production’s reaction to me if I miss the flight and hold up shooting. There’s something I need to get. Yes – it’s the top, which as it turns out is in the house in town, not the cottage. I find it and throw it in my bag, which already has a twin-size mattress in it so there’s not much room.

Then we’re in a Canadian Tire store and we’re looking at huge old-fashioned brick-like cell phones that can only call one number. (They're set up like one of those cylindrical devices on The DaVinci Code, mechanically rather than electronically programmed, where certain tabs are depressed and others aren't, so when you press the one button it only dials the one number.) Everyone wants one. I get one so I’ll have it on the plane and be able to update production on where I am.

Then we’re cartoon characters bouncing along a sidewalk feeling guilty for all the evils in the world. We’re children playing. I realize by this time that I’m not getting to Scotland. All my friends bounce away and I lose track of them. I yell, “Hey! Consciences! Come back!” – but the only one who hears me is a funny-looking cartoon character in a top hat with a cane. He isn’t one of my friends, so I ignore him.