Grace's Excellent Adventure

There was more to this dream than what I can remember, but regardless of the short length, the concept was intriguing.

I walked into my bedroom and saw my cat, Rosie, as usual. However, things got weird when I saw another cat, then another, then another, until there must have been upwards of twenty cats in my room. It was if they were appearing out of thin air.

It took me a minute to gather my thoughts, understandably, but I soon noticed that every single one of the cats was identical. In fact, they were all identical to Rosie. Small, calico, skittish, et cetera.

Next, an elderly dog appeared before me. He was obviously a brittany spaniel, red and white, but I could tell by the way he moved and by his eyes that he was old, and his fur was long and curly. (Which isn't something that brittany fur does, usually.) He was my dog Chewy, actually, but somehow it was Chewy from the future.

That's when I realized what was going on. The numerous Rosie-s and Chewy-s that were appearing in my bedroom were traveling back in time from the future.

Of course, I was pretty sure that with all of the Rosie-s and Chewy-s bounding around my room, a Future Me was going to show up eventually. And I was right!

Me from the future was generally the same, skinny, anxious, large feet. However, my hair was longer, not quite shoulder-length but not chin-length, either, and it was wild and dry, with the brittle consistency of gray hair, although I'm not sure if there was gray in it or not. It would make sense if there was, but I think that the point of how old I looked was not to emphasize my old age but to emphasize the ways I had aged myself.

Anyway, Future Me was wearing these big, round, wire glasses, Professor Trelawney style, and yet she still didn't appear to be able to see much of anything. Which is really unfortunate, since most of my plans and ambitions kind of depend on the fact that I'm not blind as a bat.

Somehow I was intuitive enough to realize that this bony, crusty, half-blind Future Me was a version of myself that I could have avoided had I lived my life differently. Out-of-control anxiety and constant worrying and fidgeting had made me skeletal, my hair had gone prematurely gray-ish from stress, and I'm assuming I did something that strained my eyes, I don't know what. Probably spent too much time on my laptop.

Anyway, I don't know how this scenario concluded, if and when all of the future Grace/Rosie/Chewy-s got back to their own time, or what exactly the purpose of their time travel was, since I never actually interacted with Future Grace, I just stared at her.

Quick side-bar, I LOVE stories/books/movies about time travel and so does my dad. We're time travel nerds. However, while this dream was kind of awesome regardless of the cautionary tale, it mostly just reminded me of this scene from Family Guy.

Dr. Grace, DVM

When I first became aware of what was going on, I realized that I was in a veterinary hospital. (Not a huge surprise, I'm an assistant at a vet hospital.) It was one of those situations where I knew it was a familiar place but it was a little off.

I was going about my business as usual when my supervisor, Mary, called me into a room I didn't recognize to train me for something new.

When I walked through the door I found Mary, a tiny little dark-haired lady, restraining a giant brown horse.

Which was startling for many reasons, including but not limited to the fact that I work at a SMALL animal hospital, and the fact that I'm a little skittish around horses. For some reason, nervous or easily startled animals tend to make me increasingly nervous and easily startled, which is something I really need to work on because we usually just end up feeding off of one anothers' anxiety until everything falls apart. The difference is that it's usually an animal that is at the most, 80 or so pounds heavier than me. Not a huge horse.

This picture alone freaks me the hell out.




As close a pic as I could find to the one horse I've ever liked - an old, fat, grey Clydesdale mix who never moved faster than a walk and wasn't phased by anything. (I tried horse camp when I was little. Spent my time cleaning stalls and playing with the stable dog to avoid riding.)


So I stood there for a while, hanging around the doorway and not really listening to anything Mary was saying.

Luckily for me, one of the Dr.s poked his head in and said he needed me in treatment.

When I walked through the double doors into treatment, I was met with an even more startling sight. There were human patients everywhere, on stretchers or operating tables and the like.

I quickly asked a fellow employee what was going on. He looked at me like I was crazy, and reminded me that when there isn't enough room in the people hospital, the veterinary hospital takes on the patient overflow and does the needed treatments and operations. Then one of the techs asked me to operate on a human patient, and I made a second realization, that apparently I was a vet med student already. (Right now I'm just the veterinary version of an orderly.)



I knew that I was a vet med student and I knew how to operate on animals, but I had all the knowledge of my real-life self, which is almost none. Thus, while a request to operate on an animal would've scared me shitless, the fact that it was now a human life was so much more nerve-wracking. (Not that I don't value animal lives. I do.)

I stood there like an idiot for a couple minutes, looking around to try and find another vet student who could assure me that I wasn't a huge loser, that it was a legitimately crazy situation.

Of course, the first person I found was Napoleon*, in surgery scrubs, in the middle of an operation on a human patient's forehead.

I gave him an inquiring glance, and may have said something like, "What's going on?"

He smiled sheepishly and shrugged and said, "I'm just going with it."

That was all I got from him. Around the time I was waking up, I think I had decided to go ahead and operate. God help whatever poor soul was going under my knife.



*My new name for the dude previously known as "Ex-Boyfriend," since I no longer consider it relevant that we once dated.

Grace vs. the Soul Mate

I was on the toilet at my house, the one by the front door, and right when I was mid-poop my grandpa Jim walked in on me. I did the usual "Oh my god! Get out! Grandpa!" and he bumbled around for an awkwardly long time trying to get his bearings and leave me to defecate in peace.



The occasion that had merited the presence of my grandfather in my home in the first place was, from what I could tell, some sort of family-gathering-type get-together with a grad-party kind of vibe that implied the inclusion friends of the extended family.

Anyway, in classic Grace style, after a couple hours I got bored silly/annoyed/restless and went down to the basement to look around. We were no longer in my house. We didn't switch locations, it just slowly turned into the house of someone else in our family-friend-circle. Specifically, the basement looked just like my friend from high school Rachel-the-Mellophone-Player's basement. To be brief - one large room with a few couches, some random exercise equipment, a television, lots of open space. Several other rooms with closed doors branch off of the large one, including (in Rachel's house, at least) a bathroom, a storage room, and a bedroom which one of her family members always seemed to be sleeping in so we had to be quiet.

Anyway, I snuck down to said basement hoping to entertain myself, and it was dim and shadowy with the exception of light shining from underneath the crack of the bedroom door. I wandered around the four or five square feet at the base of the stairway, not wanting to go sit on a couch in the dark and not wanting to admit to myself that I wanted to go peek into the occupied room.

After some squinting and precariously leaning forward, I finally figured out (regardless of my horrific night vision) that the door was also slightly cracked open.


Keira-Knightley-Pride-and-Prejudice-style, I crept up and peeked into the door crack, under the mistaken impression that I was being inconspicuous. I saw pretty much exactly what I'm always hoping to see when I peek into a room, the bare back and jean-clad butt of a tall, attractive dude with a mop of curly brown hair. Of course, inevitably, he turned within seconds and saw half of a face creepily watching him through his door.

I'm assuming there was some exclamation from both of us, a door either tentatively opened or thrown open, depending on who took the initiative, followed by some hasty explaining on my part that was probably mostly babbling and over-sharing, because I was very true-to-life in this dream. However, I don't clearly remember that awkward moment.

What I do remember is that the guy was pretty much Zach Levi, who is admittedly one of my rare celebrity crushes. He seemed taller and skinnier, which is totally my style, as well as significantly younger - around my age, I'd guess. (I'm getting ahead of myself, but as the dream progressed he seemed to begin looking rather Sacha Baron-Cohen-y. Which, again, is totally cool with me.)

Getting back to the current point, my Zach-Levi-look-alike - whom I'm going to refer to as Henry because I can imagine myself falling in love with a man named Henry although I do not actually remember what his name was in the dream - seemed completely un-freaked-out that I had been peeking into his room, in fact, he told me that he could absolutely relate to my ever-present urge to sneak out of parties and search for adventure elsewhere.
He was really friendly, and had this great honest, eager smile. Like Chuck from "Chuck." Which is great because Chuck from "Chuck" and I would be an awesome couple.

Anyway, the level of attraction was high on both ends. Since my automatic flirtation method (a nerd mating call, if you will) is sarcastic humor laced with geeky sci-fi references and goofy faces, (okay, so it's just me being normal) the chance is usually slim that the victim of my flirtation will respond positively. Luckily for me, Henry found my silliness and blatant honesty refreshing. We connected immediately and spent the rest of the party sitting on his bed together, getting to know each other and making each other laugh. Henry genuinely wanted to know more about me, I could tell. I'm not used to that. It was wonderful.

At some point during our flirtatious conversation I must have mentioned that I was a marching band enthusiast because Henry invited me to an event at which the marching band he was a member of was performing.


Thus, the next thing I remember was arriving at an outdoor concert. The uniforms were pushing my limit of finding marching unis sexy, they were pea green with red detailing and had those horrible coats that were belted at the waist and then had more material underneath the belt, threatening to look like a skirt but being just short enough not to. Now, as a rule, I am the most attracted to my significant others when they are in marching band uniforms, and I like to think that this was a test of my love, both for the article of clothing and for the man in question. And thankfully, I remained true to both - Henry was considerably more appealing to me in his awkwardly-belted green uniform. It got even better, he was playing a tuba.

Sidebar - it's true I have a romantic history with a tuba player. However, I found men who play brass instruments sexy long before Ex-Boyfriend's time.

Back on track, Henry was playing a tuba that was not quite a sousaphone because it wasn't physically around him, but it wasn't a concert or marching tuba either. He was holding it like a concert, but it looked like some sort of mutant sousaphone. It may or may not have been an instrument from a Dr. Seuss book. Regardless, I was instantly hooked and got a good position slightly behind Henry so I could hear how he sounded.

He was actually pretty awful. I know what a well-handled tuba sounds like... he was sloppy and sounded like what poorly informed people THINK tubas sound like. To the Grace of the past, this could've been an issue. Could I love a man who doesn't take pride in the pursuit of musical perfection? However, Dream Grace (and Current Grace too) didn't give it a second thought. I recognized that he was playing poorly, acknowledged that he was aware of his mediochrity and was still having a lot of fun, and loved him for it.



He did have one saving grace. The band was gathering to walk back to their bus and everyone was goofing around and yelling and playing, all of the things I would probably have screamed at my high school band for doing and then after five minutes or so just given up and let it happen, but in this situation, being solely a spectator and not a drum major, I just stood there and soaked up the residual happiness. Henry had switched instruments with a saxophone player, and as I watched from a distance, briefly played something impressive and appealing, just to show off. Which is a habit that I usually find incredibly irritating. But I was rather relieved to discover that he was not quite as musically challenged as I had originally assumed. (I want to clarify quickly - the impressive music in question was not impressive because of a ridiculous amount of notes crammed into a brief amount of time, it was the tone and the lilting, ear-catching style that he played with. It sounded effortless - that's what was so cool.)

When they were ready to walk back, Henry was wearing the sousaphone, which was now actually real-looking, and his red beret. He saw me and waved me over, then pretty much stopped my heart by taking my hand and not letting go as we walked together.

As we were walking, I said to him, "I know that it's not something I should mention in a new relationship, but I just find it kind of funny that you play the sousaphone because my first boyfriend was a tuba player." Of course, being perfect, Henry did not care at all that I had brought up an ex, and found the anecdote interesting rather than intimidating. We continued chatting and giggling until I heard a voice behind me that was strangely familiar, so I looked over my shoulder to see - who else - Ex-Boyfriend walking behind us with an identical sousaphone and uniform. We made eye contact but didn't say anything, and turning back around I realized that Henry and Ex-Boyfriend were at least acquaintances, if not friends. I decided not to tell Henry that the tuba player in question was one of his peers, and that was the end of the matter. We got back to the trailer and Henry put his tuba into its case alongside Annette, the tuba player from my old high school. Apparently she had been subbing for someone, playing 2nd part to Henry's 1st. (If they had both been regular band members she would have been on first part, she's talented.)

At some point between this rendezvous and the next, Henry and I hung out and I found out several more things about him - he was a virgin, (Hey, nothing wrong with that.) he was christian, (another thing that past Grace may have gotten hung up on, my religious opinions are, to say the least, multiple and unorthodox.) and I distinctly remember him telling me he wanted me to "de-virginize him," which is really dorky and absolutely something I would say.


Now towards the end of this dream, the location of Henry's home became clearer to me. I was in the car with my mom and brother, driving down one of the streets in my grandmother's neighborhood in Midland, MI. It seemed that Henry lived in the same neighborhood as she did. I stared out the window at the Dow-designed houses we drove past until we pulled up to this flat-roofed, olive green house that for some reason looked like it was made out of felt.

I knew it was Henry's house. We were just stopping at the end of the driveway so my mom could run in and drop something off for his parents. I was very true to myself in that I had a long internal debate about whether or not I should take the opportunity to see Henry, fearing that it was too soon since I last saw him and I didn't want to come off as needy, clingy, et cetera. I finally decided to get out of the car so I didn't look like I was hiding, but I didn't go actively looking for Henry.

And then the most wonderful thing happened.

Henry walked out of his front door and headed towards his pick-up truck. His normally wild curly hair was slicked back for work and he was wearing a dark blue work shirt, which I can't remember clearly but I believe was a button-down with rolled-up sleeves. Now I don't normally find slicked-back hair attractive at all, I'm very much a wild curls kinda gal, but now that Henry was about 70% Zach Levi and 30% Sacha Baron-Cohen, he actually looked really, really good that way, with the darker complexion and more angled eyebrows.

Before I could stop myself, I called his name and waved, expecting him to be creeped out that I was at his house, second-guessing myself with every syllable. (The usual.)

When he saw me, his face lit up in the most amazing smile - just this completely, truly happy and honest smile. Like I was the person he most wanted to see right at that moment. Like I had made him so happy just by being me. It was the best feeling in the world.

All insecurities forgotten, I smiled back as he ran down the asphalt driveway and grabbed me in a tight hug followed by a heart-melting kiss.

We lost our balance and fell sideways, giggling madly, onto the green grass. He rolled over so that I was lying on my back on the cool grass and he was bracing himself above me, his palms on the lawn on either side of my head.

He leaned down and kissed me, then let his body weight settle onto me so that the pressure was practically just short of orgasmic. My legs were slightly spread in a way that his hips and pelvis were pressing against my crotch in the absolute most pleasing way so that I got those instant stomach-butterflies.


That's where we stayed, on the lawn, in love, completely entwined, and I awoke deliriously happy.