Blather, rinse, repeat

Tomorrow I'm going to Lao Shir's memorial. This is a thing I'd hoped I wouldn't have to even think about for a long time. On the other hand, she fought cancer for ten years, and her prognosis was about 18 months. But, when she wrote saying she was having trouble—CHF--I thought, 'Well, people can live for years with CHF. There's medication. She'll make it.' I guess that no matter when it happened, it was going to be sudden, even though it wasn't. It's always sudden.

It's so hard for me to believe that she won't show up. I know how weird that sounds. I had a dream last night that she did show up, actually. That her memorial was at a college campus (it's not; it's at a restaurant on the water by her home,) and I ended up talking to her about strength training. She was so her in the dream, all her expressions, mannerisms and everything. She was talking about how to do that thing where you balance on your hands, with the rest of your body horizontal, you know the thing? She could do that! And in the dream, she was telling about it, like, how to practice for it and get strong enough to do that. And I was just like, 'Of course she's here, why wouldn't she be?'

Then, in the dream, I decided I wanted to wear makeup. I met up with a girl who used to train with us, we'll call her Jen Di. She was a really tough gal, but her makeup was always on point. I asked her to help me do winged eyeliner. So we went looking for a bathroom. We went around the back of the campus and discovered we were actually in a place like Hogwarts. Excited, we ran to the restrooms, which were crowded, and my cousin was there with her son, trying to get him to nap in a stall. O_O Jen Di got out her makeup, and she also had this huge horse that she was suddenly leading around. She asked me to hold the reigns while she applied my makeup. Looking at the horse, I realized it was the same horse that I knew from when I briefly rode in the 90s: an 18 hand stallion named Nacht Wacht, but who we all called Urbie. He started to move away, so Jen Di tied his front leg so that he couldn't run off.

She finished my makeup, and when I looked in the mirror, I looked completely different. I remember thinking, 'Why haven't I been doing this all along?'

I went back outside to look for Lao Shir, but she had disappeared. Like actually disappeared, turned invisible in front of everyone and gone away.

It wasn't a bad-feeling dream? I woke up missing her, but also feeling like we'd had a nice chat.

I went to PM her on Facebook, actually, because I'd kind of kept doing that after she passed. We had been talking about getting together when she got out of the hospital. I'd sent flowers (she never got them,) and we were also sending music. I sent her “This Girl Is On Fire” and she never answered. I just kept PMing her because, I guess, I just felt like it. But then her sister changed her FB page to “in memory of,” and the messages are all gone now. That made me sad; I'd've liked to have read them again at some point.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be there with the old Kung Fu group, most of them, at least. It really sucks because we always talked about all of us getting together, you know, like you do. But then it never happens until someone dies, and I really hate that. We used to see each other two or three times a week, it's just weird.

I wonder if we'll be telling stories about Lao Shir. If so, I have a great one. It was the night we went out dancing, just the Kung Fu ladies. The song “Temperature” came on, and Lao Shir hit the floor! I mean, she got low! And then she started throwing all these KF moves into her dance, and people cleared the floor to watch her and cheer. She had just finished her, I think second round of chemo. But I'll never forget seeing her dance to Temperature. She was so happy. That's the story I'll tell tomorrow, if we end up doing that.

It's so weird to be using my Kung Fu tag again, and even weirder to be using it for this.

Last night, Havoc had a meltdown that was so intense, I was afraid for him. I've never seen a bird do this before. I was chilling out on Tumblr, everything in the house utterly quiet, when I heard him make this low, frightened sound like I'd never heard him make before. The only way to describe this sound was utter fear, even though I have never heard this noise in my life. You could just feel it.

When I went into his room, he was out of his mind. I've never seen a bird get this hysterical before. I actually thought he was neurological, that he had West Niles or something. He didn't know why he was in a cage, or in a room. He couldn't find his perch, just flapping around madly, panting and freaking out. And he didn't know who I was. This hysteria went on for about an hour. Even after I turned off his light to let him go to sleep (and darken whatever he might have been looking at that scared him,) I could still hear him shaking in his cage. And when I'd turn on the light to check on him, he would hiss at me, with his feathers all puffed up. Havoc gets annoyed and irritated and he doesn't want to be pet or carried, and sometimes he hisses meaninglessly when he's feeling bothered, but this time it was because he honestly didn't know who I was.

Then he fell asleep, and woke up fine, like nothing had happened.

What. The. Hell.

I wonder what he saw out there? He's seen cats, raccoons, mice and rats go by before, so I can't imagine it was anything like that.

Anyway, I'm glad that's over, and may that crap never happen again, jesus.

I finished watching Lost, and, WHAT. Really, WHAT? I feel like all seven seasons totally trolled me. I'm not going to say anymore about it, because people who read this LJ haven't seen the whole thing yet. So no spoilers. Just know that I was not pleased with the last five minutes.

I have been having some crazy dreams. In one, I was at the beach down the road. Again, it's a dream-beach: never the way it is in real life, but always exactly the same in every dream. What is it with that? I have a lot of dream-places that are like that. They are only vaguely similar to the actual places, but are laid out, detail for detail, the same in every dream, from one to the next, even if the dreams are years apart. I mean, are those like, real places in parallel worlds or something? So bizarre. Anyway, I was at that beach, paddling out into the water on a chair, so that I could get a picture of the sunset. I know it sounds boring, but something about it was really intense.

Then, a few nights ago, I dreamed that I was watching TV somewhere and this nature show came on, talking about a building called "The Cascade," where, if you could get past the waterfall and get to the top of it, your most important question would be answered. After that, I was driving home from somewhere, and I decided to take an alternate route. I got lost, and ended up in front of The Cascade building. It was really high, and the floors got narrower as it went up.

My Dad was there, telling me that I had to press certain buttons in a sequence in order to get past it. He said he'd figured out that if you press one button, it would deactivate a barrier, but activate another one farther in. (I play too many video games, it's true.) Then he demonstrated by pressing a button that had a picture of a small rock on it. When he did this, the waterfall in front of the building came on. Some of the other buttons had labels, like "rain" and "river" and things like that. Dad said he had to go meet someone, and he'd be right back.

Then I ran into my brother, and then Lao Shir. They were also trying to figure out The Cascade, and how to get to the top. My alarm went off before I could figure it out.

Wow, I guess the surface of that dream is very sort of Buddhist or something.

Work is pretty much what it's been: good weeks with tons of clients, slow weeks with next to no one. But fun, nice, mellow.

Still hot here in the afternoons, cold at night and in the mornings. Jo-chan started college again and is here every Mon-Tues and then Wed-Thurs. It's nice, we're still watching Doctor Who, and we've started re-watching Sorcerer Hunters. That show still cracks me up every time.

This, that, and the other.

Last night I dreamed my cousin Jo-chan was in some kind of play w/ a revolving stage surrounded by water. She were playing some 19th century woman in a huge dress, surrounded a bunch of kids. My Mom and I were in the audience, watching from behind a glass divider.

An otter swam by, chased through the water by a female lion. Everyone freaked out and the director tried to stop the play, but Jo-chan said, "the lion and the otter are my friends" (like in Colors Of The Wind.) She then sat with the lion on her lap. The girl next to her had a crazy face like Miss Evangelista from Dr. Who, and the lion kept eyeing her. I was like, "Oh my god, this is so awkward, the lion just keeps staring!"

Then I went home and had a baby. I was very surprised by this (and have obviously been watching Dr. Who, still.) I named it Sprog. It was really really tiny, but I realized that I didn't have any room for it. So I went to my old childhood bedroom, at my mom's house. (After I moved out of there, my Dad turned that room into his Disney memorabilia room and all that stuff is still there. But in the dream, it was my old bedroom.) My Dad was there. He said, "Just get rid of some of your old clothes and you'll have room."

So I cleaned out my closet, getting rid of all these costume dresses, and stuck the baby in there. Then I had to go to work and I was like, "Can I really leave it in the closet while I'm gone?" And as soon as I left the room, I missed it.

And then I woke up because my stupid neighbors were blasting their music at 8 AM. I am going to leave a note in their mailbox asking them to stop, seriously, because this is like an every day thing. >_<

My dream last night was SO BAD.

It starts when this guy breaks into my Mom's house while I'm there alone. He somehow gets in through the window and he's coming to kill everyone. So I grab the fireplace poker thing and just start beating him with it. Blood is flying everywhere. Then I somehow lose the poker, but I keep finding different things to beat him with. He keeps trying to get up, but I'm not even looking at him, just trying to kill him because I know he's come in to do harm.

Eventually I realize that the bad guy is gone – he escaped out the back door somehow. I look down to find Haku in his place, all bloody. So I start freaking out realizing that I did this, and that if I had looked sooner, I would have realized that it wasn't the bad guy I was hurting, but my dog.

It just got worse from there and was so awful I can't even write about it.

After that I had a dream about the guy I met in school who I still see sometimes. In the dream, we're going on a date to Greenport (irl we decided on Montauk, when the weather gets better.) It's high summer and we get to Greenport and there's some kind of party on the beach. Bonfires and such, as it's night time.

My cousin joins us. (Note: My cousin and I lived together for a long time and were very close. We were always together and were, unfortunately, often judged as "The Pretty One" and "The Smart One." She was [is] actually gorgeous, which, sadly, precluded her from being thought "smart." Which was ridiculous, because she was totally smart – but people never looked past her beauty, which always ended up to her detriment. Anyway, she was very popular, while I was plain and, you know, sort of anti social.) Anyway, so she shows up, and she starts dating the guy I'm seeing. Strangely, I don't mind too much when this starts happening, thinking, "Well as long as they're happy." It didn't matter also because it turned out that I was dating the guy who played the psycho bad guy on Criminal Minds the other night.

The second dream was just uncomfortable and awkward, but the first one was so terrible that I had to wake myself up from it. Truly, that head movie made my eyes rain.

I think the thing with Haku had to do with the fact that he was in therapy again yesterday. He's not going for a whole 'nother round of it (I am out of money and that's the dang truth,) but I had one left over from the last surgery. So I figured, let me get my money's worth, and see what they think of his progress since the surgery.

The leg that recently had the surgery is doing fine, fortunately. However, the other leg—the one that had surgery last year—has major arthritis, and that is really what's giving him a problem. Also, his shoulder is tricky now because he's been using his front legs to carry all his weight, going on a year now. GDI!

Anyway, back to the dream: yesterday Haku was really unhappy with the therapy; he just kept fussing and whining and crying the whole time. When it was done I told him, "Okay, doggie torture is over, I'm sorry I did this to you!" So maybe that phrase stuck in my head.

The other dream, I have no idea.

So as I mentioned in my last post, I entered that promotion to get my query letter critiqued again. It'll be nice, if I get it, because the agent in question was one of the ones who rejected the query! It'll be super awesome to get some feedback and find out why. Until I do, I'm holding off on querying. Maybe there's something really wrong with the letter that I'm not seeing, and that other people are missing? Maybe it's a "feeling" thing that's causing it to be rejected out of hand, and having someone truly look it over will pinpoint the problem. It's really weird, because last year I had all sorts of good feedback--good rejections, if you get me, helpful ones—but in the last year, I've just gone back to getting form rejections. And I can't help but wonder why that is.

So maybe I'll get an answer! And that will be a tremendous help to me, you know? Cross your fingers for me, guys! :)

Let's see. Today I studied for my last ever finals. I studied my face off, and I still don't feel prepared. It's not as if I think I'll fail, because I know enough to get by decently. However, I don't think I can swing an A, and that's going to be crushing. If that's the case, it would be my first A- since Dad. I have just never really been feeling this class. I don't know if it's because I checked out already and just want to gtfo, or what, but I never really caught on. And tomorrow is the final (I'm doing the written and practical in one shot, so I don't have to be there on the last day, which is really cool,) and I spent a lot of time studying today, and already it's gone from my damn head. Poof.

Last night I was on the phone with This Guy (boy, he really needs a better code name) and we were having a pretty decent conversation about ice cream and pie, when I heard a racket from the bird room. I didn't even need to see, to know that it was Dana having a seizure. She's had maybe one like this before, when she was young, but I really thought she had improved over the years. Although, the night I went to see Harry Potter, right before we left she started making this really strange, noisy chirping sound. I had a vague feeling that it was some kind of seizure then, but then I thought maybe I was overreacting. I should trust my bird instincts.

I started her on Arnica TID again, which I haven't given her in years because she hasn't needed it. I can't think of anything else to give her. It's not like she's got primary epilepsy or anything. She has some kind of brain dysfunction but I can hardly give her an MRI or even an x ray. So I just have to guess.

Today I had a very weird thing happen. The phone rang, and even though I already knew who it was (it was This Guy,) the first place my mind went was, "Oh, Dad's calling. Finally!" I don't even know where that came from.

Oh boy, and I have been having some seriously cracked out dreams. Like, swimming around the living room in my Grandma's old house (which now belongs to my cousins,) trying to dive for plastic gems while the Andrew Sisters sing in the background, and then Tom Hardy asks me to make out and I stare at him and think "This is the best day ever" and then the alarm clock goes off, kind of weird. Like, shopping at K Mart for fuzzy skirts and corsets, and once again, for reasons beyond my ken, Joe Biden is the door greeter kind of weird.

How dull of me; I can't think of any other news fit to print. It's Tuesday, it's chilly, I haven't decorated for the holidays, gotten a tree, nor bought any cards, though I considered all of the above. I just don't know if I'm going to this year. I don't know. Maybe. Sometimes I really feel like it, and then other times I feel like, "What's the point?"

Well, at least I get my finals out of the way tomorrow – whether or not I do well enough is another thing entirely. And then, I swear, I don't even want to open another effing book.

I mean, until the board exam gets closer, that is. Umm. :)

Last night was the first night that Kung Fu started to feel like "home" to me again. More and more people from the old school are showing up. On top of that, we're doing this drill in blackbelt that's so awesome, I'm fangirling over it.

Kung Fu has a lot of aspects for me that keep calling me to it, which I've chronicled over the years, and most of you know about. In brief: That meditative state you hit after about an hour of non-stop movement, the "runner's high," the feeling of well-being, balance, the friendships, the nakama feeling, knowing you're doing something for your health, knowing you're doing something that could potentially save your life, or even just save you some trouble. There is of course another aspect to Kung Fu that I seldom discuss because I feel like such a sell-out or a poseur, maybe more like.

But the truth is that Kung Fu just looks so goddamn cool and hardcore, it's kind of a big draw for me. I know we're not supposed to really focus on the awesomeness of it, but there are those moments during a drill like the one we're doing now when I look at all of us in the mirror and go, "damn we look fly." I suppose that makes me a bad martial artist. Or maybe not; maybe just an honest one because I think that if more people were real about it, we'd say that, yeah, we started in the first place because it looked so cool when Jackie Chan did it, or Bruce Lee or whoever. ^_^

I mentioned some folks from the old school coming back, and last night marked the return of Te Ji Nan, our young stunt boy. Or, not so young anymore, I guess, since he's just turned 16. Hard to believe I've known him since he was 10, and so wee. There are still a few of us missing, like Homeslice, Silent Boy, etc. But I'm sure they'll return soon.

Also, last night this guy I met at school came along for a trial class, too. He used to train years ago, the same lineage but at a different school with a different Sifu. This guy is super nice and I suspect I think he's quite cute too, in a super tall, dark kind of way. (But I'm not sure, because my defenses are set on red for a while.) If he sticks around, I need an awesome code name for him. He rode his bike there, and I drove him back to his house. We beat the crap out of each other in the first drill; I think that's a nice way to bond with new friends. In class today, we compared bruises. It was kind of sweet, maybe.

Oh, yeah, so school. Okay, remember about a week ago I talked of that girl who'd had a meltdown after failing her midterm? I mean, not a normal "OMG I failed" meltdown but a "those teachers are bitches, die die die" kind of meltdown. Yeah, well today? DIFFERENT WOMAN, different meltdown!

( This is long. )

So now, I don't even feel bad about thinking of her by her unflattering nickname behind her back. Instead, when I see people literally facepalming over her stupid questions and the answers that she thinks she has, I just feel gratified and I facepalm along with them.

This gets filed under "WTMFF is wrong with people, I swear."

SEE? I meant to only write a bit, but then took up half the night bitching about some chick at my school. GAH.

Onto head movies. Last night, I had a dream that I was writing my pathology paper, and on editing it I realized that I used the word "thereby" like ten times in every paragraph. I'd written it by hand and it was all, "thereby, thereby, thereby..."

The night before that, I dreamed that I was trying to empty the pond on my yard for the winter. I've never emptied it before, so I don't know why I'd do this. I picked it up (it wasn't that heavy,) and unplugged the bottom to let the water run out. But every time I thought it was empty, more water would somehow fill it up. And I'd go, "Oh, now I have to start all over again!" I know they say that water is a metaphor for your feelings, but in this case I disagree. I think the pond was a metaphor for my credit card. That, or I had to pee.

Then the night before that, I dreamed that Tom Hardy's dog had lymphoma. This is because I was worried it was what Sano had, but he didn't, and I'd looked at pictures of Tom Hardy with his dog, which he seems to really dote on.

But here's a cool thing that happened. Two nights ago, two separate things occurred, neither of which was a dream. The first was that I needed to get something from Mom's house, and I had to go into Dad's music room to get it. When I turned on the light, his karaoke machine blasted to life with the radio on, scaring the christ out of me. Of course, I stood there and cried like a fool, trying to figure out what the song was. But the radio was tuned to mostly static, and while there was a song playing, I couldn't hear what it was. The second thing: That same night, I was writing this short story and I quoted this Japanese poem: Shadows on the darkness of my heart have left me in confusion; Dream or truth? Let other folk decide. It's by Narihira. Neat poem, I thought, so I gacked it.

Then yesterday my brother called me in the middle of the day to tell me about the dream he'd had that same night. In my brother's dream, he was listening to Dad sing a song, but he couldn't make out the words. This started to sound familiar to me and I thought of my dream. He continued on to tell me that after the song was over, he'd heard Dad's voice telling him, "In the shadow of a dream or a golden thought I come to you." It sounded so similar to the poem I'd copied that it was remarkable. Neither my brother nor I are very religious, though he is quite spiritual (he's a Buddhist.) Me, I'm more of a Taoist but really without the gods. But spirituality aside, it was actually quite cool, huh? Those little connections? Sometimes I rely on them; other times I realize I have a severe case of apophenia. But if that's true of me, then other people have it, too.

I'm not sure why people have to label everything. Just because you give it a name—apophenia--and label it a pathology, does that mean the patterns you see aren't really there?

Richard Feynman addressed this, actually, because he didn't believe in such things. He had a logical, mundane reason for everything – which I really quite adore, because he would also insist that there really is nothing mundane in the universe, and isn't that alone enough? Isn't there already such a huge amount of amazement for you to be overwhelmed? And I agree with that. And yes, the logical person that I am realizes that probably The Boychild pushed the switch on the Karaoke machine when he was playing in there. I still can't find a reason for my brother to have dreamed something so similar to what I'd written the night before, though.

AH! And another thing. Today while I was at school, I lent my Mom Wuthering Heights. Mom was a little "Well, I'll give it a whirl I guess," and I was like, "OMG WAIT TILL YOU SEE, SOOO GOOD SOOO INTENSE" (sorry, Link's Queen throwback there, dramatic reading and all.) Today was rainy and blustery, so my Mom spent the day watching Wuthering Heights and eating Cherry Garcia ice cream, ahh, what a day off! When she returned the DVD to me she was like, "WOW!" And she remarked on Tom Hardy's acting, saying more or less what I've been raving about: his subtlety, his honesty, how he can deliver an entire scene without opening his mouth. She said it would merit a second watching – a rare honor. ^_^

Me, tonight I'm watching some Star Trek film because he's in it. I've never seen any Star Trek anything before, so T-Hard gets my Star Trek virginity, which I think he well deserves.

He could be my third husband, you know, since Joaquin left me. I mean, we're only just engaged since Wuthering Heights, but I'm thinking it might work out.

Anyway. That's about it for this entry. Can you imagine that I've got two more entries lined up, one of which needs to be locked?

My brain is so full; it needs yet more emptying. But not to worry; one of the posts I've got in mind is nothing more than ridiculous fanpoodle yammering. I can't stay either peeved or pensive for too long a time. ^_^

In other news. A few days back I wrote about my Clinic supervisor geeking out with me over Dragonlance and Raistlin Majere. So now, what, almost a week later? I have this insane dream about Raistlin last night.

In it, I'm at this hotel on a beach, which is the same beach-hotel I always dream about, though I've never been there in real life and wouldn't even know if such a place exists. It's semi-sorta like Disney's Polynesian, but bigger. It's also got an element of the hotel I stayed at in Waikiki. There's a boardwalk that runs the length of the beach and I always walk on it, in my dreams.

So, I leave this outdoor hotel party at dusk and begin walking along this boardwalk, when, I kid you not, a goddamn wizard appears. Like, pointy hat and all this nonsense. The wizard randomly grabs some young dude who is walking along the boardwalk as well. The guy is thin, lanky, with dark hair, and I think he's Asian. The wizard says to him, "Don't you know you're Raistlin from Dragonlance? And it's time to begin your stay on Earth."

The guy is like, "No effing way, and get off of me, crazy person."

But the wizard just smiles and walks away.

So I go up to the guy and I'm like, "You know what, I love Dragonlance." He says that he does not, that stuff is for geeks and he is so totally not going to be Raistlin Majere. But, I don't believe him.

We're walking along together and he mumbles something about how the sky looks different to him, or he's seeing things strangely.

"That's your hourglass eyes," I tell him.

And when I look back to him, his hair has gone white.

Seeing this guy turn into Raistlin somehow thrills me, like endlessly, ridiculously, ecstatically. Even though I know it's a lifetime of misery – still, the power! I'm like, "Oh man, we have to hang out." And then I ask him if he can help me to plant a gun under someone's yacht.

Well, Raistlin is too frail to go into the water, but he stands guard while I dive off this boardwalk (it's nighttime now,) and swim under a yacht. There's music coming from it, loud, and the lights around it are super bright. All of a sudden I realize that I'm wearing this flaming orange bathing suit coverup and it's highly visible under the water, and I am not such a ninja.

But I plant the gun, come up out of the water, and start running. I yell back to Raistlin to follow me as fast as he can, and, "Watch out for all of those candy bar wrappers, or you'll slip!"

Finally we both make it to the end of the boardwalk, where it gives way to sand. There are cliffs behind us and I say, "Raistlin, I'll bet we can find the waterfrogs."

A wave washes over my legs and when I look down, there are all these frog-legs sticking up from the sand. But I can't see their bodies. I want to hold one, maybe hold a few of them, but I know that if I pull them by their legs, I'll break them. I want to maybe dig them up, but I'm afraid of hurting them. I turn to ask Raistlin to help me dig up some waterfrogs, but he's suddenly hovering behind me, surrounded by vague green light.

I look back down to the frog legs and find them all glowing in the sand, all different pastel colors. Hundreds and hundreds of phosphorescent waterfrog legs. This delights me more than anything so far.

I turn back and say to him, "Did you do it? Did you make the frogs glow pastel? For me?"

And that's the end of that ridiculous dream.

I told my supervisor today that I had dreamed of Raistlin Majere and he was like, "YEAH! High five!" and then spent the next fifteen minutes talking about geek books. It was awesome.

I didn't have a lot of clients today, so there was plenty of time for this sort of yammering. I got in way early and it was super slow. I did an office hour, got a treatment, did my write-ups, stressed about my pathology paper.

Saw my path client today, who was so, so nice to me and even went up to my supervisor and said to him, "Your clinic is going to be the worse for losing her. She's the best I've ever had." My supervisor said, "She's my low-maintenance student." I was grinning like a lunatic. It feels nice to be appreciated. After the supervisor left, my client said, "I'm nervous about when you leave because I feel like the pain will come back. But at least I get to be pain-free for thirteen weeks. What am I going to do without your beautiful strength?" That was his exact phrase, and I had to laugh, because two days earlier in another class I worked on this great big guy and afterwards he told me, "That was great. You felt like a guy."

YOU FELT LIKE A GUY.

LOL forever.

In other news, congrats to my Mom who got the job she wanted. :) Yay, much less stress for her.

Apropos of nothing (as usual) here's a note to my future self: When going out to eat and getting Indish food, seriously just ask for whatever veggie thing that is the least spicy thing on there. Seriously; I went out with Wonderful Glassworker for Indian food and the waitress promised me—PROMISED--that what I'd ordered was not spicy. Some spice, but really very mild.

But, my tongue bled. No, I mean literally, with real blood coming out of my tongue. And my face melted, not so literally, but yeah, face melted clean off.

But then we had caramel apples so all was right with the world.

Monday: Film a zombie video at the KF school. More on that as it unfolds.

It's about time I had an icon to go with my crack dream posts, yes? Thanks, Inception. :D That was my favorite line in the movie, by the way.

I had this dream that I was in Egypt with Lady Chrysanthemum and Wonderful Glassworker. We were buying items wholesale to sell back home. For some reason we were all looking for paper flowers, because that had something to do with making tons of money. Like, we knew tat paper flowers were going to take off, and you could only get them in Egypt.

The weather kept going from ridiculously hot to mad cold, and days and nights were only taking minutes. Or maybe the sun kept coming and going or something. I bought a map that was wrapped up in a cardboard tube and I couldn't get it out.

Then Glassworker suggested a buy a poncho, because a huge sandstorm was coming and it would shield me. She and Chrysanthemum already had theirs, very colorful in reds and oranges.

Market stalls surrounded us but many were closing due to the coming storm. I found one that was still open but they weren't selling ponchos, just wool sweaters. I bought a patchwork-looking one and put it on over my coat that I was already wearing,

A small stretch of desert stretched out between the market stalls and our hotel. I could see across, but I also knew that we'd never make it in time. To test this theory, I stepped into the sand and found that it was quicksand. One of the salespeople told me, "It all turns to quicksand until the storm is over. Until then, you can't cross it. The desert is its own prison." (Thanks, video games.)

Actually this dream was a few weeks ago, I think, but I only remembered it today. Or maybe it really was last night and just feels like it was longer ago? It's hard to tell.

One thing is certain: I should not eat so close to bed time. ;D

School first, crack dream second.

First day back at school was boring. I'm not wild about either class. But, four more months then it's over. Friday is my first day of ClinicII. A little nervous about that, but mostly in the "Holy crap, my school is almost two hours away and I have to drive during a hurricane" sort of way.

To greet me this morning, my first day of getting up mad stupid early after two weeks off, the memory of this cracked out dream:

An Olive Garden restaurant opens up in town out here and I decide to go eat there. As I pull up, I realize that it's weird of me to go out to eat alone. I always go to the movies alone, but going to a restaurant – that's different, isn't it? But the outside of it looks beautiful, gothic almost. So I go in and ask for a table, party of one. Everyone turns to look at me. I ignore them and request a table with a view out the window.

The waiter obliges me as much as possible, since the building has levels, and lots of brick walls, almost like a maze. I get a tiny, stone table in a corner, next to a wall. I can just see over the top to the outside.

The view is to an aqueduct in town that leads to the sewer. But it's somehow beautiful to look at, and exciting. Kind of looks like the sewer in Final Fantasy VIII, only it's got these cogs and wheels that open and close the doors.

I order a salad and it comes right away. There's a packet of seasoning that comes with it, and I have to add water to turn it into dressing. As I'm doing this, a tall man with short dark hair walks past my table, muttering something. A second later, he walks by again, muttering louder. I catch the words "explosives" and "die." And I realize, HOLY CRAP, this guy is a murderer and he's going to kill everyone in the restaurant.

I turn to the family beside me and the man says, "Before you even ask, I heard it too. We have to evacuate. Oh my god, why are you sitting alone?"

"Can we just ignore that for a second?" I ask him. "We've got bigger fish to fry."

I signal the waiter and ask him to get the manager, because I think that the manager should know there's a crazy person waiting to kill us all. It doesn't occur to me to call the cops, or to leave.

The manager comes out, and it's Cillian Murphy. Yeah, I dreamed about him a few weeks ago and no, don't know why. Anyway, he's a kind of mad hatter / Willie Wonka sort of character. Tall and pale, eyes creepy blue, pinstripes and a black fedora. Everything amuses him, even this character who is going to blow up his restaurant.

The crazy person says, "The bombs are in the sewer; you'll never get to them and you won't get out in time!"

And then everyone disappears except for me and Crazy Man. Crazy Man pulls a lever, and a trapdoor opens beneath me. I go plummeting down, thinking I'll end up in the sewers, right? But a plastic hand juts out from the stone wall and I grab onto it. The hand is fake, but it sort of feels real. It starts to slide down the wall and I start to slide with it.

Crazy Man yells out, "It's a bottomless pit by the way! And you won't get out until you stop crying over your father."

I'm like "But that's hardly fair! What the hell!" And the hand keeps sliding down.

Then I see more bricks beneath my feet. I let go of the hand and put my feet down. The pit isn't bottomless after all, and I think that I might be able to climb out myself. So I grab onto the bricks and start to pull myself up. After a long time, I reach the top and get out of the pit.

Crazy Man is nowhere, and all the patrons are back. This time they're all dressed up, and I'm underdressed, in jeans and a t shirt.

Cillian Murphy / restaurant manager comes back out and says, "You don't need to worry; I vanquished the killer."

"What are you?" I ask him. "Like a super hero or something, with the weird look?"

"That's exactly what I am," he says. "And my name is Civet, from the McPolecat clan."

"Polecat," I ask him, "isn't that like a skunk or something?"

"I've got to go fight more crime," he says. Then he whirls around and disappears.

Crystals of all different colors scatter to the floor where he stood. I start to pick them up, thinking that maybe he'll need them later. I pick up two blue ones and pocket them.

The guy who sat next to me early in the dream leans down and says, "I hope you know those are his eyes. You're touching someone else's eyes."

"It's not like they're wet or anything," I tell him.

I go off in search of Civet McPolecat's office so I can leave his crystals there. In the back of the restaurant, I find a small zoo with tiny mammals. A lynx jumps up into my arms and I pet it.

And then my dogs woke me up.

I felt like it must have been hours later, probably pretty close to when my alarm would go off, but when I checked the clock I'd only been asleep an hour. And I promised myself that I would remember this stupid dream for the rest of the day, until I was able to write it out.

Civet McPolecat? WTF?

Dreams, that is.

This starts out as I'm watching an episode of Sorcerer Hunters that I've never seen before. My Mom and Dad are in a separate room. Mom can go back and forth between the rooms but Dad can't, so I have to tell him what's going on in the show. (Dad really liked Sorcerer Hunters, BTW.) As I watch the show, I'm yelling through the door what's going on.

So what happens is that the main character (named Carrot) is talking to a sales rep of a dog food company – one that is my competition. The sales rep is describing these new different kinds of dog food. Eventually I get in on the conversation.

"Our first flavor is Volcano Death dog food," the rep says.

"What's in it?"

"Well it's made out of actual volcanoes, and it kills your dog."

This strikes me as so hilarious, I can't even speak. The rep goes on.

"The next flavor is called Crawlspace Dust. It's made out of actual spare attic space, with a few motes of dust for your dog's optimum death."

Now I'm laughing so hard I can't even answer.

"Next up we have Gunpowder Chocolate, made from real, used gunpowder, and chocolate to kill your dog."

I literally fall down laughing, streaming tears, slapping my thighs because this is unbearably funny. I look at my Dad through the door and try to tell him what this show is saying. (It's somehow real and somehow still a show.)

Then the scene switches and I'm at the Kung Fu school as it exists in my dreams. (I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but the places in my dreams are always exactly the same. They aren't as they are in real life, but remain precisely the same in dreams. I have a dream Disneyworld, a dream Kung Fu school, a dream subway, a dream Manhattan etc. They never change. Anyone else?) Except, the school has been taken over by ninjas who are learning to dance, and they're doing the French Mystique. Again, I find this hilarious. When they're done, they roll out this mat with the words, "HAVE FUN TRAINING, PIMPS. YOU ARE SLAVES TO WORKING OUT."

Again, hilarious. I can hardly speak for laughing.

Next up, I'm taking a nap in a car and having a dream (in my dream. OMG LEVEL 2.) I'm talking to Dad again and trying to tell him about all of this. I comment that I wish he could come back into this room, and I didn't have to talk to him through a doorway.

Dad gets exasperated and says, "When you gonna stop with this?"

"Well, I can't," I tell him. "It doesn't work like that."

He says, "Well, that's your choice. If you wanna be sad all the time there's nothing I can do about that. But I think it's a waste of time."

"You never did get the whole 'mourning' thing," I tell him.

"No, I don't get it," he says.

(Which is true enough, and that's also exactly what he would say. My Dad really didn't get mourning. It was like he didn't have the patience for being sad. Took too much time away from stuff he really liked to do.)

In the last dream, Mom, my cousins, a few friends and I are going shopping at Target. (I guess my moral outrage doesn't stop me in dreams. ;D ) Also shopping with us is the Obama family. I turn to Obama and ask him if he plans to run again in the next election. "Nah," he says, "I'm done with this."

"WHAT?" I yell at him. "You can't mean that!"

He laughs, and Michelle laughs, and he says he was kidding; of course he's going to run again.

It turns out that Joe Biden is the door greeter at Target in his free time. He greets me, I say hi back. Then I ask him where the sports bras are.

And then my alarm clock went off.

Those were some of last night's crack dreams.