Took a bullet for my brother

My brother was some big shot. He, and the rest of our family, was being transported, and I knew there was a trap awaiting him, an attempt on his life.

I knew, but didn't tell anyone (not sure why), and I knew that I was prepared to take one for the family. As we were leaving, my mom complimented me on my sweater, and I said thank you, thinking it would be last time I'd ever wear it.

We were on a bus with a bunch of other people, and I didn't trust anyone. At every stop light, I'd make him duck under the window. Finally, I saw the shooter, and I jumped in front of him, and I stared at the shooter, until the shot hit me in the chest.

Where are all the grown-ups?

Redneckhunter and I had a bunch of friends over for dinner - including J, K, and D - and a bunch of people we didn't know. These new people offered to pay us back for the food, but we were like, oh no, it was just like leftovers (even though it wasn't).

Then we all head out to go to a nightclub. We sat outside the club which was an imposing Greek-temple-like building (like how all the night clubs were in China in the 1990s). A very big (tall and broad-shouldered) girl came up and was looking for D.

After a while I noticed that none of our friends were outside anymore. There were loads of teenage girls waiting outside the club, hoping to get the bouncer to let them in. So I said, I feel like a 12-year-old sitting out here, let's go inside. So Redneckhunter and I went inside, but every one we saw inside was also a teenager. There was a stage with the curtain drawn, so I said, oh the adults must all be back there.

Then the curtain opened, and on the stage, arranging ourselves in perfect rows for our class picture was my second grade class. We were wearing the outfits I remember from the actual class picture (recently revived on my friend's Facebook page). And my second-grade self was up there too, all happy and excited.

Visit to the Mall

I was at the mall with Debbie and petiteseour. They were shopping while I was sitting at a cafe table eating a sandwich voraciously, talking to someone. In my gesticulations while talking I accidentally flung half my sandwich across the mall corridor. It landed at the feet of a man, who then bent down, picked it up, and started eating it - I was shocked!

Then I wanted to go wash my face, so I stopped at a sink that was near the server station and splashed water on my face, but then wanted to walk into the bathroom to actually wash it. Of course, there was a line for the bathroom, so I had to stand around dripping.

Debbie came back to show us a pair of glasses she was thinking of buying. They were large round 70s-style glasses that were prescription glasses that tinted dark in the sunlight.

Then we got in the car. I had to sit on the lap of a guy who looked like Parker, a minor character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The mall was in a bad neighborhood of Trenton, and for some reason we had to drive way out of the way past dilapidated houses in order to get out of the parking lot. There were political signs all over the yards.

Streets video

I was either part of the production and/or actually in a Mike Skinner/Streets video, that was being filmed in Princeton. There was a scene on Palmer Square where we could be seen through a window above J.Crew/PNC Bank. Later we were screening a film and I was sitting with Redneckhunter's former boss. At other points, my former boss and my friend Anthony were also in the dream.

Down the Shore

I was walking down a beach boardwalk and saw a girl with ginormous fake boobs bursting out of a tiny bikini top. A guy was with her and he was licking the underside of her boobs. I got off the boardwalk onto the sand and started running. I noticed a lot of non-beachy looking guys - skinny, emo boys. One of them gave me a high 5 as a ran past him. They were all heading for the same place - a boarded up warehouse on the boardwalk (reminded me of Asbury Park). I figured there must have been a concert there.

The secret life of executive assistants and the French

Dreamed I was watching a movie starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as an executive assistant who finds herself in this sordid corporate underworld where ultimate power lies in the hands of executive assistants, who sleep with people strategically to gain corporate secrets, etc.

Then Redneckhunter and I were on our way to the house of someone I do part-time web work for. She was having us over to watch a movie, and I said to Redneckhunter, I guarantee you if it's a French movie, we'll see some male genitalia and someone in the movie will be sleeping with their sister or brother.

Zeppelin crash

I was in a field mesmerized by watching a huge low-flying blimp. I was watching the blimp approach and it kept getting closer and closer and lower and lower, and at a certain point I thought, wow, that's really too low. And I and some others in the field, started standing up and moving, worried that the blimp was coming right toward us, but before it reached me, it crashed, just slowly fell right into the ground.

Then it caught on fire, and the heat from the flame knocked me down. Later I found myself at a hotel where apparently they had brought the families of the crash victims. And I was stopped and questioned by a cop who looked like Richard Belzer. He seemed a little hard on me, until I started crying.

Dysfunctional neighbors

I dreamed that Redneckhunter and I lived in a duplex townhouse where we shared an entryway with our neighbors. On this particular day, we had people visiting (our guest kept switching between our friends in London, and my cousins in New Rochelle, and their kids), and our neighbors also seemed to be having some sort of big brunch party at their place, as guests kept coming in and making a lot of noise.

The neighbors were a couple where the husband was gay and the wife was considerably older and straight. And we found out the reason for the party was because the husband's mother was giving birth at their house, and her lesbian wife was the one doing the delivery.

How do you make it stop?

While on vacation, the night after quite a choppy ferry ride, I dreamed that redneckhunter and I lived on a houseboat, which was tipping and swaying quite dangerously. And like all people who live on houseboats (*sarcasm*) I had decorated the place with tons of glass objects like tall vases and such. So I was running around the place, scooping up vases before they rolled off of counters and tables, and with my hands full of glass items, I kept saying to my unresponsive husband, "How do you make it stop? How do you make it stop?"

Dating in NYC

I had a dream where I was on a date in NYC.  We went to a normal lightweight restaurant, were taken to a big booth, but there was someone already sitting there, so we were then given a tiny table in a bad spot.  Then we made small talk, and I wondered to myself why I am so bad at dating small talk.

Then some high school friends showed up.  I saw them as they were walking in/by, and was trying to decide whether to shout out to them or not, when one of them saw me, and they all came over.

Then I realized I had forgotten my date's name, so I did the old "pretend you can't talk because you have food in your mouth" thing, and let her introduce herself to them.  [I am horrible with names, sometimes forgetting them within seconds of learning them, and often fail miserably at introducing people.]

Then my date...turned black.  Which is especially odd, since I don't generally find black women sexually attractive.

Then some of my high school friends...turned black.  Well, my friends didn't actually turn black, but a number of new, black friends showed up.  Except that I had very, very few black schoolmates in high school.

Then my phone rang, and it was my boss.  I remember being very scared about this, since he doesn't normally call me on weekends, or whenever this date was taking place.  But it turned out he was asking me to come back because of some medical related stuff.

Then I woke up.

Close quarters

Redneckhunter and I were in a motel with 2 of his friends - we had connecting rooms with an adjoining bathroom. I went into the bathroom while redneckhunter was taking a shower, and the floor was full of water. It was one of those walk-in tubs for old people, and he had forgotten to close the door.

Then we were eating at a cafeteria, and his friend Cashman was the first to sit down with his food, only he had picked a very small booth, so the 4 of us were squeezed in to a tiny booth. Only since he had already started eating, he was too lazy to want to move and find another table.

Swim-up Zoo & VHS tape

I was at a swim-up zoo - it was like the safari drive idea, but with water animals. Two girls I went to high school with were also there, and a friend who used to live in Princeton. The zookeeper apparently had a child with one of the sea creatures - a weird hybrid.

I was running with Debbie and was having a hard time, then I realized it was because I was carrying a backpack. I didn't even have it on with both shoulders, I was carrying it with one strap and running lopsided. So I decided to ditch the bag by the side of the road, but first I opened it to see if there was anything in it that I'd be worried about leaving. The only thing I decided to take out and run with for fear that it would get stolen was a VHS tape of the movie "After Hours."

I was at a cocktail party, sitting at a table with my current co-workers, and I ran into my boss at my old job. I was self-conscious because my hair was messy.

Four dinners

I was with redneckhunter and his brother, and I was eating KFC chicken. And redneckhunter's brother said to me "No wonder you're feeling bloated - isn't this your fourth dinner?" And I said, "No I only had one dinner ... and 3 snacks." Then we were in our kitchen and I was wearing these tall turquoise platform sandals - they had about 5-inch tall skinny heels and looked like stripper shoes.

Music calms the worm

I was in a sci-fi movie - with the point of view of a character played by a Brad-Pitt-look-a-like. Faux-Brad Pitt was working in a field (the scene was similar to a bad Sci-Fi Channel movie that redneckhunter was watching the other day), when suddenly in the distance I could see a giant worm (like the worms from Dune) approaching across the fields.

I/faux-Brad-Pitt started running for my life toward an old manor house that I saw in the distance, periodically turning back to see how quickly the worm was approaching behind me. I made it to the house and started looking for an open door. I heard piano music coming from the house, and found an open set of French doors. I ran in and tried to hide behind a couch so that the woman at the piano would not see me and be frightened, but she seemed to not notice at all. She was blind.

The worm had caught up by this point and came right up to the doors and windows. By this point, the woman playing the piano realized that the worm was there - she could feel the vibrations of the giant worm moving, but somehow faux-Brad-Pitt was communicating to her to keep playing. The worm seemed to calm down - it continued to peer into the windows, but it didn't smash through into the house - and after a while it moved on.

Wild Boar-Elephant Attacks

I just had one of the weirdest dreams I can remember having in a long time.

I was at the ocean with my brother.  We were swimming out in the waves, and he said he wanted to do a test.  From nowhere he produces a gallon jug of cooking oil (while skulling), and pours out about half of it, then tells me to swim through it for a bit, so I can see what it feels like.  It was just a thin, oily feeling, not like gulf coast oil spill covering you until you die.

We continue swimming back, and now I am holding the oil container, which is half oil, and half seawater now.  At some point it gets really heavy and almost drags me under for a minute.  Then my powerful swimming talent kicks in [ed: I did used to swim as a kid], and I get over it.  In my sleeping brain, this was some sort of science experiment that I now "got" as to why the jug suddenly got heavy, something to do with density changes and swimming through pockets of warmer water.  I called my brother over and gave the jug to him, and then he sank, until his swimming memory kicked in too.

West Side Story Meets Oklahoma

That about sums it up - kinda James Dean-like characters, with singing and dancing.

On campus

I was searching online for a "black and white polkadot romper." I guess since we currently don't have working internet at home, I was at the computer cluster on Princeton campus. I remember being a little embarrassed at doing online shopping while everyone around me was doing schoolwork. I was having trouble typing though - every time I tried to type in "black and white polkadot romper" - it always came out as different words.

A very young undergrad sat at the computer next to me and he was having problems with Final Cut Pro or some other video editing software that I know, so I started helping him. Then he started kissing me, and I was like, what?! He said, just relax... Then he picked me up and carried me out of the computer cluster "Office and a Gentleman"-style while the other people in the computer cluster cheered.

Then I found myself outside near the football stadium, and I had a heavy backpack and was trudging my way back up the hill - much steeper in the dream than in real life. I decided to cut through a building, which was not a real campus building - only in my dream. Inside it was an abandoned and empty and dilapidated lecture hall - pretty cool looking.

I ran into a couple friends of redneckhunter's. I revealed to them that what I was carrying was a shitload of alcohol for a party to which they were coming, but even then, neither of them bothered to help me carrying the bag.

Running from something

I was with Redneckhunter and his brother who's in the military, along with some other servicemen in my old high school cafeteria. Something upset me and I shouted to the room at large something about "Stupid white people just don't understand!" and ran out. I kept running through the school (only it wasn't my actual school anymore), up and down stairwells, through locker rooms, into the library, up and down the stairs of the library.

I am such a nerd

I had a dream that included some sensual lovemaking.  Only while we were in bed, we were sending each other messages on our phones via Facebook.  What the hell.

The Klan

I was driving down Washington Road in Princeton, going down the hill approaching Streicker Bridge. I took my eyes off the road for a second, and when I looked back, I saw a row of white hoods. There had suddenly appeared 5 or 6 Klansmen standing in a row, blocking the road. I slammed on my brakes in fear, and I forced myself to wake up. I didn't know what they would do to me, but I didn't want to find out.

More things latching on and not letting go

I have a recurring dream where things latch on to parts of my body and I can't get rid of them. The latest one was the mangy cat from The Book of Eli movie. The cat was on my arm, digging its claws in, deeper and deeper. I tried to wake myself up, but couldn't. So I tried to yell or scream to wake redneckhunter up, but I couldn't make a sound. I tried to move to hit redneckhunter, but couldn't move. My theory on these dreams is that I'm sleeping on that body part funny, so I feel the cramping and the pain, which manifests itself in the dream as an animal attack.

Flesh torpedo

My friend brownie's baby is very long and thin, but in this dream she had a baby who was the fattest thing I've ever seen. He was basically like the little fat Asian kid in the movie "Up!" only as a baby. He was all swaddled up, with just his fat face sticking out, no arms, and he was like a sausage. I was carrying him around and saying, "Look at you, you have no arms, you're like a little flesh torpedo!"

Fashionable fugitive

I was staying in a hotel with a girl who I had met last year on my honeymoon in Peru. She was a Chinese-American girl from NYC and I had a bit of a girl-crush on her. Anyway, in the dream, I found out that she was wanted for some crime and was on the lam, and she had disappeared again but left all her luggage in our hotel room. So I needed to run upstairs and find some clothes of hers to give to the investigators who were looking for her.

I went upstairs but instead of just grabbing the first things I found, I ended up going through her clothes and trying stuff on and getting distracted. She had some awesome clothes, including a vintage Chanel wool shift dress, very Joan-Holloway-Mad Men-style. She had a great black cashmere sweater with an awesome graphic lime green pattern on it. Finally I could hear the police downstairs talking, so I realized I should go down, so I grabbed those things and went downstairs, so of course I was mortified when they took the Chanel and basically threw it on the ground for the search dogs!

Ray Corvair Trio

Dreamed I was out with petiteseour and redneckhunter, and I saw a marquee advertising that The Ray Corvair Trio was performing. So I got really excited and insisted we buy tickets. The Ray Corvair Trio was a band that my friend Royce and I got really into in the late 90s - even though they were from Boston, they had a standing gig at The Knitting Factory. They dubbed their music as "surf noir," and they had a retro look that Royce and I both were into. I liked the guitar player and she liked the bass player, and we would chat with them after their gigs.

So I was very excited sitting in the theater waiting for the band to come on. The show started and the guitar player (looking 10 years older) was out on stage playing acoustic and singing. Though Ray Corvair was strictly instrumental - they never sang. Very different, I thought. Then it just got weirder. There was spoken word and noises a la Laurie Anderson "O Superman," there was theatrical pantomime, and it was all really mopey. I had to tell redneckhunter and petiteseour that this was nothing like what I liked about them.

I was so pissed, I actually walked up to the stage and started trying to talk to the musicians, to let them know my unhappiness. When that didn't work, I went to the box office to try to get my money back.

Lady Gaga and mistaken pregnancy

Redneckhunter and I were at a Lady Gaga concert. It was a seated concert in a grand old theater. There were lots of dancers and she seemed to be performing David Copperfield-style spectacle magic while singing and dancing - lots of smoke and mirrors type stuff. In one number she appeared to grow taller and taller with larger and larger boxes appearing to grow out of her legs - it was very Alice in Wonderland.

Then I was in NYC at a shop and saw a woman who redneckhunter coaches in rowing. It took me a while to place her. I also ran into a woman from work, and I thought how strange that they'd all be shopping at the same store in New York.

The rower said hi to me while I was looking at some stretchy camisoles. As I examined the camisoles, I saw that the tags had labels like "For 4-6 months" or "6-9 months" and it took me a while to realize that they were maternity clothes and the recommendations were for when to wear them in your pregnancy. I thought, oh no, now she will go back to the team and tell them all that we are expecting! She seemed to be shopping for a dress to wear to her wedding (though to the best of my knowledge she is not engaged in real life...)

Assorted mini dreams

It was a rainy day and I was on my way with redneckhunter to a family gathering. We walked past a house with a porch where there were Princeton alumni wearing their Reunions jackets all going to a party.

Later, I was running in race with Debbie. It was a big event, but it was like the race was an afterthought. There was only a narrow roped off area for the course - the width of a hallway. And it was winding through people drinking and partying. At one point, we ran past a concert stage, and it was Paul Weller performing, so I shouted "I love you, Paul Weller" and waved as I ran past.

Then I was on a New York city street corner with Clinton Kelley of "What Not to Wear." He had an Eastern European accent. I was telling him how the latest episode of "How I Met Your Mother" had made me feel old because Barney is upset that a girl he slept with lied about her age when she was actually 31.

Then I was with my family on a family vacation and we were calculating expenses where everyone had to document every cup of coffee and pay for his or her share.

Rough night at the bar

I was with my friend Karin at a very dark bar, and we saw 2 dudes who looked like Osama Bin Laden. Of course we didn't really think it was Bin Laden, until my brother-in-law Kyle who is in the Special Forces came in and attacked the one Bin Laden who was still there with a knife. The other Bin Laden however, had snuck out a back door.

I had to move behind some dark heavy black curtains - they were like theater curtains, and there were flamenco dancers back there, and I had a maneuver past the heavy skirts of their costumes. I was crawling on the floor under and past their skirts.

Suddenly I realized there were mice and rats everywhere all over the floor with me, so I freaked out and woke myself up.

Sauna room gawking

Redneckhunter and I were at a small water park with 2 of his former co-workers. We were in wading pools, but the water was kind of deep for me. It came up to above my chin, so I had to bob to keep my head above water. Then we went into an underwater passageway that opened up to a sauna room. The room had windows to the outside, where people had gathered to watch us. So we sat and stared at them staring at us. Only then I noticed that no one was actually looking at us - they were all staring at Megan Fox who was also in the sauna.

Tickle monster at the Chinese market

I was wandering through a Chinese market in a narrow winding alleyway with my mom. As the alleyway got smaller and more empty, I started getting nervous, but my mom insisted on going on until the alley dead-ended. So we turned back at that point -- I was pushing a shopping cart, and she was walking behind me, but she was kind of slow.

We got back and needed to take an elevator, so I got in the elevator and pushed the button to hold the doors open. I saw a shadow coming around a corner and thought it was her, but when the person rounded the corner, I saw that it was a huge guy - like 7 feet tall - with a bright red crazy long-haired clown wig. I started screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" but I didn't know where she was. He got in the elevator with me and I was screaming in horror as he reached out to tickle me in my armpit since my arm was still extended holding the button. Then I woke up.

Nipples on my butt

I had nipples on my butt, as if each butt cheek were a breast. I was looking at myself naked in the mirror trying to figure them out. And I wondered if they would be visible through a bathing suit bottom.

Rain Indoors

I was in Africa staying in a big Victorian townhouse. I was sleeping on the top floor, and there was torrential rain outside, and suddenly the rain was inside the house. The roof apparently was not holding out the water, and it was pouring inside. The heavy raindrops on my face woke me up. There were other people sleeping in sleeping bags with me on the top floor, so we retreated down to a lower level where it was still dry.

I wondered why the owners of the house - who were an older British couple - had not fixed the roof, but I figured it was a huge house for just 2 people, and they probably never had to deal with things on the top floor if they didn't need to.

The next day, the sun was shining, and the temperature was astronomically high, and so the wet top floor was like a sauna, the sun baking away all the moisture.

Shutter Island

I was a black woman and I was imprisoned on a remote rocky island - looked like the one in Shutter Island. Two other prisoners and I decided to attempt an escape - we squeezed through a gap in a high metal fence and onto a rocky cliff ledge. We had to climb down to the beach, but once down there, we realized there really wasn't a way to survive the ocean, so we started climbing back up.

Hotel Stay

I was staying in a hotel room.  Someone kept turning the lights on while I was asleep, and the lights would cause me to wake up.  People were jumping on he bed in the other room in the suite, too, though I didn't seem too upset about that.  Then my wake-up call didn't happen, and I woke up late to catch my flight home.

This dream was a little vague and boring, but it is interesting because I had it while I was actually, in real life, staying in a hotel suite.  There were like 25 different lights turned on in there, only half of which were controlled by switches, the rest had to be turned off by hand (including one that was part of the under-the-counter microwave).  I also had an early morning flight, and was worried that the wake-up call wouldn't come, as happened the last time I stayed in one of the larger suites at that hotel chain (because the phones there actually had 2 different lines, and the wrong button was clicked).

We don't like the people upstairs

We have never had luck with our upstairs neighbors. Recently a new batch of them as moved in, and just in the first few weeks, it's not looking like these new tenants are any better at helping with the general courtesies of living on separate floors of a single house - like taking out the garbage and recycling, etc.

Last night's dream: We parked the car in our spot in the small shared lot next to the house, and went into our place. When we came back out, the car was gone. The upstairs neighbors were having a party and people were hanging out outside. I suspected that the neighbors had had our car towed from right out of our own parking lot, so I confronted one of them. He said, they were just fucking with us, and just moved our car around the corner. I was furious and was screaming at him - why the hell would you do something like that?!

Because I have never actually seen our real neighbors and have no idea what they look like, I had to put a face on this guy I was yelling at, so it was a friend of a friend that we had met last weekend - a Scots-Irish guy originally from Georgia who took an instantly liking to redneckhunter for whatever reason.

Cooking without a pan

Redneckhunter was making meat sauce on the range... literally. Meaning he was making sauce directly on top of the burners without a pan. I kept arguing with him that there wasn't a pan there, but he argued with me that it was ok.

Cooking for actors

I was part of a summer stock theater production out in the country, though I couldn't figure out exactly what my role was, why I was there, since I don't act or direct, or do lighting or sound or stage sets or anything. It reminded me of an internship I had at a summer arts festival in New York State where I first realized that I really hated actors as people to hang out with. Anyway, then it occurred to me - or I kind of decided - that I was the cook.

So I set up a buffet meal - both meat and vegetarian options. One actress started asking me about whether the vegetarian entrees were truly vegetarian, were the beans cooked in chicken stock, etc. So I was kind of a bitch to her about it. I preferred dealing with the crew over the actors.

Alien ape babies

Some round boulder fell from the sky, and we brought it inside. It started to crack like an egg hatching, so redneckhunter told me to make sure I retrieved the transmitter inside. So I took it out to the back porch, and waited for it to hatch - it got bulbous and out popped a little black plastic thing, so I picked it up and brought it inside.

When I got back inside, redneckhunter had a baby gorilla in each arm, dressed in little clothes. One was a boy and one was a girl. I was a little frightened of them, though they seemed perfectly calm, so I focused on cleaning up around the house. The house was a mess - there were food scraps all over the floors - carrot peels, etc. So I was busy sweeping, and doing the dishes. Then one gorilla started imitating me cleaning. I laughed at him, and then he talked. They were both very intelligent. I asked them if they were going to get bigger or if they were fully grown, cause I wasn't sure if we could keep them if they turned into full-size gorillas.

Being inconspicuous; Being ostentatious

Part One: It was pitch black outside my house, and I was coming up from the parking lot and had to feel my way along the curb and along the side of the house, up the stairs. When I got inside, there were a bunch of other people there in the living room. It seemed like they were hiding. A car drove up the street and started shining a bright light into the living room, and everyone crouched down so as to not be seen by the light.

Part Two: I was wearing a horrendous 80s bright purple harem pant jumpsuit. People kept staring at me in restaurants, etc. but I thought it was cause I looked like a fashionista.

Fight club

After watching Ong Bak 2 this weekend, I dreamed I was being forced to fight in some gladiatorial style exhibition. I had 4 opponents - each getting progressively bigger. The first was a tiny skinny girl who I was pretty confident I could beat, but then each opponent got bigger and bigger. My theory was that the whole thing was for sickos who liked to watch girls get beat up...

Communal Living

First part of the dream I was stuck sleeping in a small space on a bunch of air mattresses with my department from work (I had this dream before the weekend's storms that brought power outages which left some work colleagues seeking shelter in the local gymnasium!)

Then I dreamed about a 20-something social media blogger acquaintance of mine who lives quite a "Sex and the City" lifestyle as a young media maven. She was there as well and asked if I wanted to head out with her to do some "food hopping" as she called it - meaning grazing at various eateries. It was midnight at the time, so all I thought, was "oh the life of the young..."

Pete Townshend

The Who was playing at a small bar, and I was right up front by the stage, which was about 6 feet tall even though the place was tiny. Because the stage was so tall, I could really only see Pete Townshend who was right in front of me, but I was by myself, rocking out, having fun. Then I realized that Pete Townshend had come down and was taking me backstage up the stairs and onto the stage. I thought to myself, you know, he doesn't look that old up close and in person. There were a few other girls up there, but they were all wearing matching shorts and t-shirts (like cheerleaders or Hooters girls). Then they had us moving a row of schoolroom desks and chairs around, but something about it was really silly to me, so I kept laughing at it all.

Sebastian Bach and Paper Planes

I was walking around the Main Street of my hometown with Sebastian Bach, and another guy and girl. This was not the hot "18 to Life" Sebastian Bach of the 80s, but instead was the weathered and bloated 41-year-old "Celebrity Fit Club" Sebastian Bach of today. Still he looked pretty sharp in a khaki suit, and he was definitely flirting with me. While we were walking around the other girl and I were singing "Paper Planes."

Avoiding the office party

Our VP at work is stepping down. In the dream, I was avoiding the goodbye party because I was worried that I would be called on to play piano, and I didn't have anything prepared. Then I found myself with a crying baby (my cousin's youngest daughter), desperately trying to find a place to change her. She was soaking wet. Her top was all wet from drool, and her bottom was all wet from pee.

My red room

In Redneckhunter and my real-life place, our guest room is basically my room, decorated in my favorite color - red. In my dream, I had a red room too, only it was way bigger with high loft ceilings. In addition to the posters I have in my real room, there was also other art on the walls, and a whole Rock Band set-up. Something about the room reminded me of Mick Jagger's place in the movie "Performance."

Cars washed away

I was in a parking lot on Elkton Road in my hometown. I had my old Cadillac which I drove in high school, only I was locked out. I saw a car full of young guys, and I flagged them down. Apparently they had the key to my car, only they needed the same key to be able to drive their car. So we agreed to drive together to get the key copied and thus both be able to drive our cars.

However, as we were having this discussion in the parking lot, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that my car was more than halfway filled up with water. When I turned to look, I saw their car floating away on a high tide of water. We started running down Elkton Road in the opposite direction of the flooding. We reached a post office full of other people seeking refuge.

Beetles in the rice!

I was back at my parents' place, hanging out in my room with my childhood next door neighbor. I noticed that my mom had hung up on the walls of my room a variety of photo frames in different sizes. These were the large frames that had mats for multiple photos, and my mom had left in the sample photos of random people that had come with the frames when you buy them.

I went downstairs for breakfast, and many members of my extended family were there. I went to get some rice out of the rice cooker and we were out, so I went down to the basement to get more rice to make another batch. In my parents' basement is a storage closet in which they have kept all our toys - only when I walked in, the toys were gone, and instead there were stacks and stacks of Kleenex boxes. I had a container and was scooping rice out of our big rice tin, and then I noticed that I must have scooped from the wrong tin because there were a bunch of almonds in my container. I started scooping the almonds out of my container, when I noticed a bunch of huge beetles inside my container. They freaked me out a little, but there was one that was just a skeleton, so I started with that one. I picked it up with my fingers and then it started to move! I dropped it and really freaked out and woke up saying "AAAAH!"

Passport between dimensions

I was in a strange airport - there were glass doors leading to unknown rooms, with strange writing etched on them. I had a passport and was passing through security, and each time I presented the passport, I passed through into some limbo state, along with another girl. Once in the limbo state, we seemed to be invisible to the two other people who were there - Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes. The two of them were arguing about something - the gist of it was, if we stayed there in limbo, we would be unharmed as mankind went through its demise. Or we could try to go back out and try to do something to prevent it. I wasn't sure where or when or what the "airport" was - it certainly wasn't our current world, and so my fellow traveler and I weren't sure what we could do. She and I kept passing back and forth - we thought it was odd that the security guard didn't seem to notice, but it seemed like each time we did it we appeared to be different people.

My hero

Anthony Bourdain was doing a bunch of live shows. We were friends, and he wanted to try to do a smaller show - like 700 people - but said his managers kept pushing him to do stadiums. (The likelihood of Tony Bourdain filling a stadium in real life is pretty much zero, but clearly his hero status in my eyes carries through in my dreamworld).

So I finally got a smaller show together for him - it was for a Chinese audience. I sat in the audience wearing a red college sweatshirt. The person next to me asked, is that where Bourdain went to college? And I said yeah, it seemed like an appropriate thing to wear. (In real life Tony went to the Culinary Institute of America, hardly the kind of school that would have "fan" attire, but again... some people like football stars, I like food writers)

There was a vertical banner hanging from the rafters on the side of the stage welcoming Tony in Chinese, along with some great "Engrish." Tony came onto the stage to cheers and roaring applause. My dad was serving as translator. Only when the act started, it seemed like my dad was more in the spotlight than Bourdain.

Things latching on and not letting go

There was a big moth/butterfly in the kitchen that kept hanging around no matter how much I tried to shoo it away from our food. Then at some point I had closed my eyes, and the moth landed on my right eye, and wouldn't go away. I'd swat it off, and it would come right back onto my eyelid - it was about the size of my hand. I had to force myself to wake up to stop the dream because I couldn't get rid of it.

Redneckhunter and I were on our way to his Uncle Miguel's. We pulled up at the house (which wasn't really Miguel's house). It was a modern beach house - all glass and cantilevered terraces. On the ground floor, there was a wall of windows that faced the beach, but he had painted beach scenes on the other windows which didn't face the water. He also had mirrors that reflected the windows to the ocean so that you could basically see the beach from any angle.

Getting hairy

Dreamed that I had long black hair on my arms. I just noticed it - like I had been getting hairier for a while, but finally realized it was at a point where I should do something about it. The hair was really thick and long (like 2 inches long), and dense and curly, kind of like Persian lamb.

Casually held hostage

I was in an older building with a large lecture hall. Something kind of like Princeton's McCosh 50 lecture hall, kind of like a social hall of a church. The mob showed up with guns - they were looking for someone - a revenge hit. I ran between the wooden seats, but it became apparent they weren't going to shoot us, just hold us hostage while they rooted out their man. In fact they let us move about quite a bit - I went out to a common area outside the lecture hall, and started talking to Nick Cave who was chain-smoking cigarettes. He seemed nervous and I wondered if he was the guy they were looking for.

Later on in the dream, there was something about Redneckhunter and the Freemasons.

Another pee dream

I'm a little worried about the state of my pee dreams. In this one, instead of frantically trying to find a bathroom and being faced with dirtiness and obstacles, I just copped a squat in a living room and let loose on the plush carpeting. I even ignored the fact that there were people behind me.

Adventures with Redneckhunter

Redneckhunter and I were investigating the disappearance of several women all in the same apartment building. One of the apartments we went into was deceptively small upon first glance - it just appeared to be a studio, but as you kept going, the rooms kept branching off. In addition to the studio galley kitchen, there was a whole separate kitchen with black granite and stainless steel appliances. There was a library with wall to ceiling bookcases on all 4 walls. But when you looked at the books they were all brand new Modern Library collection books, as if the woman just bought the entire collection at once to look good in the library, but she didn't actually read any of them. Redneckhunter kept wanting to go down to the alley to look up at the apartment windows, but I kept wanting to just explore the apartment for my own curiosity more than anything...

Redneckhunter had to go on a date with Taylor from VH1's Tough Love. I got to be in his head. She started fake crying.

We were sleeping in my mom and dad's room. When I was little I used to like going through my mom's clothes and trying them on, so while Redneckhunter thought I was asleep I caught him going through my dad's clothes and doing the same thing.

Bachelorette party bullets

I was a waitress working a table of a group of girls out on a bachelorette party. They were all dressed in red with red ribbons and somehow I ended up tied to the table with the ribbons, and ended up being carried out along with the bachelorette partiers.

Later I ended up with them back in the same restaurant, now mostly empty. One of them had a box of bullets. While playing with them, I dropped one and it started spinning across the floor around the room. I chased after it, not wanting my restaurant bosses to see it was a bullet. I finally caught it and slipped it into my pocket, but the boss had already noticed and asked me what it was. As I was stalling, saying, um, it was, um, one of the other girls dropped a bunch of AA batteries, which went spinning across the floor. Brilliant! I recovered, and said Um, yeah, sorry, it was a battery.

Christopher Walken and the ride

I was wandering around a complex of museums. I went into a Warhol Museum store, wandered through a cafe. I'm not sure what I was looking for. Across the crowded cafe, I thought I saw redneckhunter's friend Gus, who also spotted me. But I had to keep going and didn't stop to say hi. I got on an escalator going down, and realized that it was getting darker and the tilt of the escalator was changing so that you ended up seated. There were lights and sounds and the ride was getting faster and steeper, and I realized that this was actually an art installation. It would have been kind of scary except that a young Christopher Walken ended up seated across from me and he was smiling and singing "New York, New York" and it was fun like a roller coaster.

Face pain

My face was badly sunburned or windburned. I kept putting moisturizer on, but it still hurt. Badly.

Dumb stuff from my youth

I was back to eating in the college dining hall, at the beach cruising the boardwalk, in a bar shouting at people to be heard. It was both fun and not fun.

School lunch

I dreamed I was in a little kid's body - to be exact, that of my 6-year old niece. I was in school and sitting next to Danny from 30 Rock. Even though he was in my class, he was Danny as his own adult self. I was eating an Eggs Benedict-style dish, only instead of the English muffin, it was a cinnamon crumpet, and instead of Hollandaise, it was a cheesier sauce - pretty delicious.

Frank Gehry Nursery

I was in the Lewis Library on the Princeton campus, which is a Frank-Gehry designed building with a lot of bright colors and odd curves. I was in the library and noticed a section that appeared to be a nursery. Gehry had designed the furniture within the library. So in this case, the nursery furniture was all one piece like one large Gehry-designed jungle gym - with a built-in changing table, drawers, cubbyholes, a hammock-like hanging cradle, all in bright primary colors. I was looking at this nursery set when I noticed a baby just left there alone in the crib! Almost as if the baby was there for display purposes. So I picked her up, and started to try to figure out who, if anyone, was there to take care of her...

More bad movies...

I was in my college art class with Powers Boothe, my former drawing teacher. It was the first class and he started it off by having us watch a movie. He said it was by The Weinstein Company, but it seemed to be some cheesy soft-core beach movie. I was on the end of a couch, my friend Melissa was next to me, my cousin 1000yregg next to her, and Powers on the other end. I fell asleep during it, but hoped that the teacher was too far away to notice.

After that movie, he said we were going to watch 2 more film versions of the same archetypal story - one good film, and one bad film. I had 2 thoughts - 1) there was a plot to the movie we just saw? and 2) there's a film version out there that's worse?

His co-teacher then joined us. She looked like Thandie Newton and she wore a red cosplay Gothic Lolita outfit - red and flouncy with big white ruffles, a white bonnet and white apron. She sat next to me on the couch and started bouncing up and down. I said to her, jeez you're like some yappy little dog that humps everything it sees.

Virtual Reality Movies?

Continuing in the vein of being within a movie while not really being it, but rather still being a viewer, this time I was in a Charlton Heston movie. He played a Roman gladiator, and after an amazing feat of heroism, he walked right up to me (my character), looking the character I embodied right in the eye. I was supposed to be an elderly woman (his mother perhaps?) and Heston leaned in and kissed my character on the cheek. The whole time, I was in the character amazed at how lifelike the movie felt.

I had also heard about a project for a touch screen virtual reality experience with Brigitte Bardot. I thought to myself, hmm, no one's going to want to have virtual playtime with today's Bardot, so they must be using CGI and old footage to create this game/movie.

How I Met Your Mother

I was friends with all the people in How I Met Your Mother. They weren't real, they were still characters, and I wasn't an actor on the show, yet I was still there.

The premise of the show involved some forgotten events, and clues that reminded them of what actually happened. For instance, the fact that Ted found 3 plates of birthday cake reminded him that he had Barney were having cake in the hallway, when Robin came out with her own piece of cake. In my version of the show, everyone seemed to live in the same apartment building, so it was kind of like a dorm where people hung out in the hallways. Ted also had a set of another guy's clothes, and then he remembered meeting a cute curly-haired girl who had given him the clothes.

Vague Recollections

Haven't been writing them down right away, so have not been remembering my dreams too well lately. But here are some things I remember:

Robert Downey Jr.
kissing Johnny Depp
Being in Japan and packing with my brother there.
My 13-year-old niece being little again.
Eating and feeling a little nauseous.

Euro House

Dreamed that I lived in my current apartment with 2 European guys (one blond guy with a black eye, one dark-haired with scruff - both Germanic/Scandinavian types). We had 3 single beds in the current bedroom, and there were always people hanging out in the living room constantly day and night. There were also multiple apartments on the floors above, and I couldn't keep straight who actually lived in the building or not. People were constantly coming in and out while I tried to sleep. I moved from my bed to one of my roommates, but didn't like it because it was a waterbed. At one point, I came out to the living room, looked out the large windows on our front porch - the sun was near the horizon, and I asked "Is the sun rising or setting - I've lost track of time..." Someone told me the sun was rising, and as I was staring out the window contemplating that I had stayed up all night, I noticed a guy taking my picture from outside.