A Very Curly Interruption

Okay, some background info is required to facilitate better understanding of this dream. Think of it as information given in the spirit of Valentine's Day. (Which was actually really fun this year, even without a Valentine. And I'm not just saying that to sound happy so that people will like me more.)

I've "officially" dated 3 guys in my short lifetime. There tends to be one distinct trend between them - curly hair. It's my ultimate weakness. Ex-Boyfriend, (the original Boyfriend) had curly, blonde, Napoleon Dynamite-esque hair. Prom Date Boyfriend was black, and while his hair was pretty short when we were dating, it still did it for me. Then third boyfriend, my summer fling, whom I believe I've referred to in the past as "Curly," has, as my nickname may suggest, deliciously curly brown hair. (There was also a kissing incident with a carnival worker last summer who had curly black hair, but that stays off the record.)

Now that you have what I'm sure is far more background information than is truly relevant to the dream, here goes.

While this dream was rather crazy and focused more on my general insanity than anything else, for some unknown reason it was centered around my most recent ex, Curly. I don't harbor any resentments towards any of my exes, but they tend to occasionally pop up in my dreams. It may have something to do with the fact that I found an actor in an ancient re-run of "Degrassi" who had amazing hair and it got me thinking about curly-haired boys. (That's him in the picture.)

The first thing I remember from the dream is that I've been hired by Curly's mother to help her with office-y things in her home office. I'm desperate enough for cash that I took the job even though it promised awkwardness if Curly showed up. Which was pretty likely, because it was in his house.

Understandably, I was fairly high-strung as I was working with Mrs. Curly, expecting my ex to show up at any given time and be really creeped out by the fact that I was in his house. Thankfully, according to Mrs. Curly, he was at an all-day rehearsal for the upcoming musical at the high school.

Things with Mrs. Curly were weird. Not only was I in my sad, post-college funk still (which, by the way, I'm finally out of) and she had changed drastically as well. She was acting rather depressed and saying things that didn't quite make sense and were too personal to be sharing with her son's ex. For example, she told me that Mr. Curly was gone, implying that he had either left them or had died, I couldn't figure out which. She acted pretty cold towards me, which I guess is kind of understandable for, maybe, one of Curly's friends or something, but not an adult.

Anyway, we working all evening in the home office and I kept trying get away because I was sure Curly would be showing up soon.

It kind of blurred together if this was in the same evening or the next day, but I was in his house working again and there was some kind of family party going on that evening, so I was especially anxious to leave early. Curly still didn't know his mother had hired me.

I was finally on my way out, by way of the basement. (I know what Curly's basement looks like in real life, but in this case it was rather large, tile floors, and there was either a stage or bleachers down there, I don't remember which.) Probably the most prominent (and worrisome) feature of the basement was a large, flat red box mounted on the wall that someone explained to me was a bomb. (No idea why there was a bomb in Curly's basement.)

There were some people milling around, but no one I'd ever met. I was so, so close to getting out, when Curly and his new girlfriend walked in the door on the other side of the room. I ducked down and scrambled to the door close to me, hoping he wouldn't notice me.

But of course, he did.

I don't remember what we said to each other, I just remember that the whole time we were having our awkward run-in, the new girlfriend was attached to his hip.

After leaving Curly's house, I ended up in a surreal, futuristic bookstore with a friend who I had a falling-out with and haven't spoken to in a while.


There were these pod-things that kind of reminded me of the teacup ride and the cars from the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World. They weren't on any kind of track, they were just floating around in the giant, beautiful bookstore. When I first woke up I could distinctly remember the titles of a few different books I had picked out.

If I had blogged this about six hours ago, I'm sure I would've remembered all of the details way better. At this point, I vaguely remember something about a neighbor, a dog, walking to a Subway restaurant with this girl, Linda, who I used to know (by know I mean hate) from church. And something about cupcakes... anyway, this dream was way more interesting when I woke up and I now apologize for this extraordinarily dull post this I'm going to be putting up anyway.

A Big Damn Hero

I’m getting ready for an awards show with my best friend, Nathan Fillion.

We’re at this rehearsal and he gets tired and frustrated and takes a nap on my shoulder. It’s lovely.

Then when we’re getting ready for the show and he’s trying to decide what to wear to impress his lady interest, Inara Serra. Who is apparently a real person now.

We try out a casual outfit and a suit with a red bow tie and cape before settling with a classic suit. I then have some sort of performance I’m supposed to be in onstage that involves roller-skates, but since I was helping Nathan, I arrive just as they are all skating offstage and have to run around trying to figure out where they’re sitting.

And without further ado...

Millenium Falcon

When I became aware in my dream, I found myself piloting the Millenium Falcon, (if you don't know what that is, just leave my blog right now.) and attempting to land it. I had taken off that morning with the help of an Allison Sweeney/Ms. Nicolia combination, because it was my first day flying. Unfortunately for me, the connection between our radios failed and I was left on my own to attempt to land the ship in my garage.

Luckily, I picked up the radio signal of a random air-traffic controller somewhere near my house, who helped me land successfully. We were both pleased when, after much fumbling and jostling around, the Falcon touched down safely in my garage.


As I'm leaving my garage and walking out into the outside air, it begins to seem as though the Falcon adventure had simply been a flight simulation. When I get out to my driveway, my next door neighbor John comes jogging over. (He’s a pilot.) He asks if I just finished a simulation, I say yes. Turns out, he’s the air traffic controller who helped me and he says I have a lot of promise. (To which I probably blush profusely.)

John babysat for my brother and I when we were kids and I had a huge crush on him. He actually doesn't live next door anymore, but his parents still do. That's a picture of him above.

At this point I decide to walk to Ms. Nicolia's house to tell her how things went. She lives on Benjamin or Pleasant Street I think, both of which are streets in my neighborhood.

When I get there, fellow high school teacher Mr. Lamb is in her house, talking to her at her computer.

I've always been that awkward kid that stands at the front of the classroom waiting for the teacher to finish talking to someone else before they get to me. Seriously, I don't think I've ever been a teacher's first priority. In fact, most times I had a question or issue, I just felt like an annoyance. (That's probably my distorted thought process talking.)

And thus, this dream has clinched it. My role as awkward waiting kid is set in stone because even in this scenario - when I'm a new student who the teacher lost contact with during a dangerous situation and who, as far as the teacher knows, could be dead - I still find myself waiting for assistance, fuming at the fact that the trivial conversation Ms. Nicolia and her colleague are having takes precedent over me, yet somehow feeling stupid and annoying above all.





You'd think that a dream about flying the Millenium Falcon would be awesome, yet somehow my sub-conscious turned it into a stark look at my own distorted insecurities. Ah, the joy of being Grace.

My Mom's Funny Dream

Sorry, Mom. I had to share.
Since I'm more than a little crazy, my mom has to wake me up and give me my pills every morning. (My only comfort is that someday it'll make me a better writer. Maybe?) Anyway, since I remember my dreams almost every night, I always groggily tell her all of the nonsensical details upon waking up. Today she was all excited to tell me about this extremely strange and gross dream she had, which I found really funny.

So apparently the dream began with my mom walking around a mansion, having labor pains. (Mom: "I think I must've been having gas pains in my sleep." I love that woman.)


People kept asking her if it was time to push yet, and she kept saying, "No! I'm not ready!"

Finally she decided it was time and lay down on a table to start pushing. She gave birth to an extremely tiny baby, which, according to her, didn't look entirely human. (Me: You were probably farting in your sleep.) The nurses took it away to clean up when something gross happened. (I think childbirth in general is gross, but this was actually kind of funny.)

A stream of amniotic fluid shot out of my mom - who was still in birthing position - in an arch, and hit a guy who was sitting on a couch watching T.V. a couple rooms over right in the head. He came over and started yelling at her and she got upset because it was obviously not her fault that she had shot amniotic fluid out of her vagina.

Then she kept asking about her baby, where it was and if it was okay, and the nurses weren't telling her anything, which is usually a bad sign. She was worried because it had been so small. But eventually, they brought the baby to her in a blanket and she was holding it when she woke up.

It's so interesting to think about what that dream could possibly mean. The reluctance to begin labor, the alien baby, the man angry at her for something out of her control, the concern for her child. It could relate to a reluctance to let something go or begin something new in her life, although I can't think of what. The alien baby could be me, because I've been having so much trouble lately. She's seeing a strange side of me, an "alien" side of me if you will, and she's been worried about me just like she was worried about the tiny baby.

As far as the amniotic fluid bit goes, I'm clueless. Her and my dad barely ever get mad at each other, so I highly doubt that that's it. Maybe there's some sort of tiff going on with her side of the family or one of her friends that I don't know about. It's possible, since she doesn't usually tell me things as they're happening unless it's urgent. (I can see why she wouldn't want to tell her psycho/depressed daughter about bad things until they were over with.)

Anyway, I know this is the first time I've ever blogged about someone else's dream. And I apologize for the added rant-ish stuff, I usually don't bother interpreting my own dreams, and if I do I say it in far fewer words. But I love my mom and she's worth it. (It's not that I don't enjoy writing extra, I do. I just think it turns readers off to see so much text, and I want to make sure the blog stays focused on the dreams and not on my personal life. I think they tell an interesting narrative of my experiences in their own strange way.)

If you made it this far, I'm impressed. This might just be the ADD talking, but I tend to lose interest in long blog posts about three paragraphs in. So thanks for taking the time to read!

Extremely Long and Incredibly Awesome

It's an intimidatingly long post, I know, but the dream gets more interesting as it goes and I would urge you to bear with it. I know I wrote it and all, and I'm biased, but I think it would be worth your time to read.


First I’m living with my friend Jody. I think about enrolling for classes at Macomb Community College and drive down there twice with Chewy, both times leaving him loose in the courtyard outside the registration building and both times failing to actually register for classes. When I walk out of the building the first time, Chewy is obediently waiting there for me. When I walk out the second time, I have to call his name several times, but he eventually comes running. Since I recently had a really good picture taken of Chewy and I, I'm going to display it here.

When I get back to Jody’s I get into our shared bunk bed and put on my headphones. Later, I get up and go swimming for the last time in her indoor lake.


The indoor lake is in this giant room that has big windows and a few pillars to swim around. The water has filled up the entire room with the exception of four or five feet of air at the surface, right below the ceiling. The water is beautifully blue and clear, and there are the expected seaweed beds and wildlife. I have a certain system to swimming around the lake. I swim to these two particular songs in my head, (one of them might have been "Defying Gravity") and I always go the same way at the same point in the song, interact with the water snake at the same verse every time, etc. (The water snake is pretty oblivious to me, which I think is a very good thing.) I glide through my normal routine extremely happily and calmly, which makes me wish I could do it in real life. I surface a couple times for air, although the water is a few feet higher than it usually is so it throws me off a little bit, but I don’t care very much.

When I finish and get out of the lake, there are several of my friends including Jody (but the rest I don’t really recognize) waiting for me. They tell me we were going to run a marathon down the length of the train.


Now I realize that we’re on a train that I’ve been on several times before, a train that travels between the dozens of districts that make up our country, and we utilize the last car to get on and off of because we live in the final district, a sandy, Tattooine-esque farmland with a few lakes.

My friends are now people who I don’t recognize but who I know to be my sisters. Me and my one older sister are both married, and she is pregnant while we’re doing our marathon. We also have several younger sisters, but none of them too much younger, all in their early or late teens. We open up a bunch of the train car doors and start jogging down the line.

When we’ve run a fair amount, we turn around and run back to the last car, which we get on and off of because, again, we’re the last district in what I now realize is a post-apocalyptic America. (I’ve been reading the Hunger Games… deal with it.)

The last car has a small covered area but is mostly exposed. There is an attendant in it because it can be dangerous while the train is moving.

Our attendant is young, dark-haired, and attractive and I notice he has a fake leg. At a certain point in the train-ride where we seem air-borne, there is a sort of energy field surrounding the last car and we can run outside of its boundaries and onto the air, and still stay held up by some unknown force. My sisters, the cute attendant, and I run out past the last car and play catch with a ball for the time we’re able to be standing on the air.
When we arrive back at our district we get off the train from the last car and return to our home, where our mother (who I don’t recognize either) is waiting.

Our district is very simple, like most of them, doesn’t have much of a government, and doesn’t have vehicles or technology except for the train. However, I know that all of the districts are just as simple, we just have different specialties. (Again with the Hunger Games, I know.)

My sister has her baby in one of the lakes near a buoy. It’s pretty gross, but not any different than regular disgusting childbirth.

Then I get back on the train to take a normal, everyday trip to one of the other districts to grocery shop or something. I get on the last car, as usual.


When I get off into a grocery store in an Asian district, I run into my best friend Jordan and we shop together. (That's him in the picture with me.) We talk about getting an apartment together soon, and when we get back on the train we part ways.

I start to return to the last car as usual, and I’m looking forward to seeing the attractive one-legged attendant again. But I realize quickly that something is going wrong.

The last several cars (and there are hundreds of cars on this train) are jerking around, unmanned. When I get to the last one, there is no attendant in sight.

Someone who works on the train is searching around for an attendant to fill in, because someone must control the last car or we will lose control of the back several cars. Finally they find three people, two guys and a girl, who are apparently somewhat experienced and will help conduct the last cars back with the rest of the train safely. One of the two boys is very tall and wide and has dark hair and heavy dark eyebrows. He’s quiet and grumpy-looking and seems to be the only one who has compliance with safety standards whatsoever. The other boy has wild curly hair and a mischievous gleam in his eye, and the girl has the same look about her. I blow a kiss to the boy because I find him cute, and he accepts it with a wink. They take charge of the back cars recklessly, and before the small crowd of passengers and I know what’s happening, the back cars have separated from the rest of the train and are flying along the tracks wildly.


I get sucked in with the two crazy attendants along with several other passengers, and before we know what’s happening the cars are flying through the air and then splitting, then the tracks are splitting, and then I’m left lying face-down in the sand, who knows how far away from my district or a train boarding site, with several other passengers.

The group of us slowly get up and begin wandering in the direction the train had been going, towards our back districts.

We walk for the whole day, not really with each other but just as a loose group. When it gets dark out, people start dropping down to the ground to sleep, but I decide I’m going to walk as far as I can before I’m absolutely too tired to continue. So I keep walking into the night, with a few other people who are pushing through with me.

As it gets darker it gets colder and before I know it, it starts to rain. Luckily we have found a small portable overhang/tent–looking thing and the few of us huddle under it as it rains. As we’re huddled there, a woman in a dark trench coat comes up to us.

Apparently what little leadership there is among the districts has become suspicious of the large group of people wandering towards the farthest districts and sent someone to check us out. Me and my little group under the tent explain what happened and insist that we’re not up to anything, even digging into our pockets to pay the woman to believe us.

However, after minimal convincing she does seem to trust us. She tells us that she believes the train will come back to pick us up for one reason – because I blew the attendant a kiss and he won’t forget me because of it.

Sure enough, the next morning the train pulls up to us as we’re struggling through the sand, and the crazy curly-haired attendant calls out to me dramatically and operatically, obviously joking, but I go along with it so that we can all get back on the train were we belong.

Once we’re back on the train, we’re in a section of it from which we cannot get to the back car. So we have to get off at a stop far before the ones we were meant to get off at.
At that point, there is a small, uncovered, people-mover-style train that will take us some of the way through some of the more technologically advanced (though not by much) districts.
I get on it along with several of the other passengers who are still journeying towards their districts. At this point it seems that a few weeks have passed since I initially got on the train.

We pass through several districts that I’ve never been in before, the Asian supermarket district, and a Hawaiian island-style district where everyone is dark-skinned and large. (It seems that race and dialect are all according to district - there are no melting-pot style districts like America. And I’m obviously from a Caucasian/European district because I’m white, as usual.)


I have a companion with whom I’ve been traveling for a while now. He’s about my height, a little taller, with tight red curls and a nice face. He looks kind of like Evan Peters but a ginger and a tiny bit uglier.

We have a mutual attraction to each other, and at one point when it seems like we’ll never get back to our districts, I hit a significant (although extremely belated) milestone in my dream life – my first sex dream.

(May I remind you that I do not censor my dreams, but I won’t go into too much description. Everyone know what constitutes having sex, I don’t have to be specific.)

The curly red-head and I are passing through some sort of industrial warehouse when we take the opportunity to duck behind some sheet metal. We strip down and hold each other naked, and then we have sex for the first time, standing up. (That's pretty kinky for my innocent brain.) At first I’m not sure if I like it, but it starts to feel way better after a couple seconds. I don't know if he was well endowed or just really good at what he was doing, but it was pretty amazing.

I know I said I was married earlier in the dream, and I still am. I even told my ginger companion this. But it didn’t make a difference to us because we were both unsure if we’d ever make it back to our districts.

Before we could finish, so to speak, someone came too close to us for comfort and almost discovered us. We quickly got dressed and continued on our journey, although always keeping an eye out for somewhere else to sneak off to and consummate.

A little while after this, we’re walking along some tracks when a rescue team from Ginger Sex Buddy’s district shows up and throws down some blue and white ropes for him to grab onto so they can bring him back to his district, which is closer than mine, safely.

He’s reluctant to leave because he doesn’t want to have to say goodbye to me, but I tearfully tell him that it’s the best thing for him to go back to his district and forget about me. We sadly part ways.

I continue my journey on my own, encountering a large sand dune raining chunks of sand down on me, forcing me to wade into a neighboring lake to avoid getting buried. According to one of the natives of the sandy district, it's because of a recent and serious ant problem.

I’m following the road through the Asian supermarket again when I come across my husband, a big, decent-looking-but-not-really-my-type Asian guy, working at the supermarket. We hug each other happily and he accompanies me the rest of the way home, although Ginger Sex Buddy remains in the back of my mind.


My husband looked a lot like this guy, except Asian.





On the rest of the way home, I start seeing strange vehicles that I don't recognize and hints of pollution in our previously pure home district. As we get closer and closer to my house and the sights get more and more worrisome, I realize with a sinking heart that this peaceful new world we had created after the apocalypse was slowly reverting back to the old America that had eventually destroyed itself, and that our world would continue in an endless cycle of death and re-birth.

Out of all of the profound, sexy, interesting dreams I've ever had, this one took the cake.

Watching too much "Walking Dead."

Something about zombies.

The Windows to the Soul - A Nightmare

First nightmares I've had in months.

From what I can gather, this is the basic plot of the dream.

I live in a town that has some sort of extremely prestigious high school quiz bowl/jeopardy type team. The team qualifies for each level of competition every year and wins every year. In the current year, I am on the team with two other people, a tall, dark-haired guy about my age, and a shorter blonde boy who looks about fourteen.

There's an underlying fear throughout the team, however, that has to do with a legend about the quiz bowl team. Any year that the team hasn't gotten a high enough score to qualify for a tournament or has lost a tournament, the team members mysteriously disappear when the season's over.

Unfortunately for the three of us, our quiz bowl team doesn't qualify for a tournament because we haven't done well enough during the beginning of the season. Shortly after finding this out, I have some sort of flashback.

There was a young, red-headed woman. Her hair was a little longer than chin length, and she looked very sophisticated for a high-schooler. She had been on the quiz bowl team during one of the years it had failed.

In the flashback, she was being pursued by an older man, he looked about fifty or so. He had thinning brown hair and was kind of fat. He was about to catch her.


When he had successfully captured her, he took out a knife and cut a curved line along the bottom of each of her eyelids, cut across the bridge of her nose, and then above her eyes. As I watched in horror, he began to gouge her eyeballs out. I snapped out of the flashback before it got too graphic.

Upon returning to the present, I realized that the man in my flashback was a man whom the team was currently familiar with. He was either a coach or a sponsor, I don't remember which. The worst part of that realization was the fact that my two other team members and I were currently in the man's house.

He had left us alone for a few moments and I immediately started looking for a way out. My teammates had been quickly realizing that something was wrong as well.

We began running around the first floor of the house looking for a way to escape when the young redhead from my flashback, her eyes fully intact, appeared to me and told me to get in her car, she'd help me escape. She seemed to be some sort of spirit.

I got in the car with her and we began driving, but something went wrong (I don't remember what) and I ended back in the house, the redhead nowhere to be found.

Me and the boys found a staircase leading down to the basement and ran down there. (Probably not the best idea. Dream Grace doesn't make good decisions.)

The basement was horrendous. It smelled horrible, and there was slime everywhere. The weirdest part was that there were several cats here and there, big, stinky, disgusting cats that seemed foul and mistreated.


We ran through a doorway into what was unfortunately a room full of reeking litter boxes. We closed the door and started examining the small window to see if we could escape from it.

As the older boy and I were standing against the wall and the younger boy was in front of the window, the door to the room swung open and the man charged in. The older boy and I were hidden from view by the now-open door, but the man ran right at the younger boy, his arms out and ready to attack.

And that moment, my heart pounding as I feared not only for my teammate's life but for my own, seeing as the door could only do so much, is the moment at which I finally woke up.

A Series of Unfortunate Dream Events

Our family gets in a car accident while going on a family trip. However, my dad is not my dad, he's guy who kind of looks like this. (Hopefully I will have remembered to put a picture in here.)








And my mom looks like this.









And I have several sisters and a brother. We’re going to some sort of joke museum, which my mom and I are upset about because we had had something else in mind. The exit we take off the highway to get there (in Indiana, I believe it is) has two and a half lanes. We got into one of the lanes, but all of the other drivers were confused and people were going different directions in the same lanes. We swerved around, trying to avoid the oncoming traffic, but finally got hit head-on by another car. Dad is badly burned over a lot of his body and my sister has a head injury. An ambulance arrives almost immediately and we get taken to Seattle Grace Hospital from Grey's Anatomy.



George and Izzy, two characters on the show, take away my dad and sister to take care of them. The rest of my family, my mom and sisters and I, are waiting around anxiously for news. (My brother seems to have disappeared.) Myself and one of other sisters, a short chubby girl, go down to the hospital gift shop, which bears a near-exact resemblance to the market that was underneath my dorm back at college.

When we pick out some junk food to buy, she tells me she's going to pay and pulls out an unfamiliar wallet from her purse. I grab her bag and look in it and see several unfamiliar wallets. She has apparently been pick-pocketing people since we got here. Rebecca/Ava, another character from Grey's (who was a patient on the show but is in nurse's scrubs here) walks up from farther back in the line at the register and asks if her wallet is in there, because it's missing. I pull out a handful of wallets from the bag and show them to her, and she identifies a brown leather one as hers.



At this point there are two nonsensical breaks in the story line. (After these deviations, it returns to the original dream.) The dream moves to a hallway full of practice rooms. Owen Hunt, another Grey's doctor, is in the hallway, and several young men are attempting to play string instruments. Hunt takes a violin from one of them and begins to play it as a demonstration. It's amazing.


That part ends quickly, and the scene shifts to my paternal grandmother's living room, on her beige couch with red and green stripes. (Sounds ugly - actually the most comfortable couch in the world.) My real-life mom and I are watching this whole dream thus far play out on a Grey’s Anatomy episode on my laptop, and she is actually enjoying it. (I say "actually" because my mom thinks TV dramas are stupid.)

Then we get back to the original story line. My dream mom, my sisters and I are out in one of our other cars, driving along that same stretch of highway exit and get in another car accident hit head-on again. We lasted slightly longer swerving around the lanes than we had with Dad driving. When we all become aware again, I realize that my legs and hand are broken. They feel weird and heavy and achy and we have to wait forever for an ambulance to come.

I try calling 911 again and again, but I can't push the right buttons, and when I do the call doesn't go through. An ambulance finally comes with an old childhood friend of mine, Courtney, calls 911 when her and her mom drive by and see us lying in the ditch.

We get in the ambulance and it has 2 rooms. I’m lying on a stretcher in the main room. I can’t find my cat or my bird, Blake, and this is suddenly the biggest problem in my life. (I don’t have a bird named Blake, and I don't believe my cat was with us.) I'm freaking out and trying to search everywhere, despite my multiple injuries. When we get to the hospital I refuse to get out of the ambulance for a good fifteen minutes while I was looking for them until finally Izzy makes me get out and takes me into the hospital.

The next thing I remember is having another ambulance ride, this time back to my house. None of my family is with me, except, inexplicably, Stewie Griffin.

The ambulance drops me off, completely immobile in three casts, in my front yard. It drives off, leaving me lying there in the grass waiting for the rest of my family to return home.

In conclusion, I am not proud of how much television I watch.

Saved by Senõr Chang

In the beginning of this dream, I'm walking down a hallway and I come across the new rising star of my nightmares, Ex-Boyfriend. (First Ex-Boyrfiend. Original Ex-Boyfriend.) He's with an old friend of mine, Fran.

I go over to talk to them, and they say they have something to tell me. They inform me that right after Ex-Boyfriend and I broke up, he and Fran slept together.
I don't know what to say, so I try to punch Ex-Boyfriend and fail. Then I leave.




I find myself in a grocery store, and I'm floating high above the ground, only a foot or so below the ceiling. It's a huge store, so the ceiling is tall.

At first I'm enjoying myself, because I can clumsily direct myself around in the air, and I discover quickly that nobody can see me.

After a few moments of exploring my new-found abilities, I see a group of people walk in through that glass doors. I realize that it's a group of my good friends. I know there were more than three of them, but the only three I remember were my real-life friend Luke, and the high school equivalents of Meredith and Christina from "Grey's Anatomy."

When I see them, I realize immediately that I'm dead.

They're here together to support each other, because I've only been dead for a couple of days. I can see it in their faces, and it starts making sense to me why no one can see me, why I'm floating, and why I showed up in this store just as my closest friends arrived.
You'd probably think I'd want to be with them, or fly over near them.

I start drifting towards them, forces out of my control seem to be pulling me against my will. But surprisingly, I don't want to go near my friends. I don't want them to feel my presence. I want to see them sad, I don't want them to know I'm here.

I'm struggling to fly away from my friends, trying to get back up to the ceiling. I like it better there.


Unfortunately, I get close enough for my hand to brush against Luke's arm. He gasps and looks up at the rest of my friends, and says he can feel my presence. I scoff and try harder to get away. My friends start freaking out, trying to see me and trying to talk to me. I don't want to be with them, I don't like the attention, but I can't get away. They're chasing me now, and it's as if I'm swimming through molasses back up to the ceiling.

I'm finally free of the pulling forces and I start flying around the store near the ceiling again, trying to get as far away from my friends as possible. However, they keep catching up to me.


I find my way out after a little while of being chased around the store - there are a bunch of grocery store workers - two of which are Jeff Winger and Senor Chang from "Community" - and they're loading these cheese-pastry-things into a truck by pitching them out a giant open window. I take the opportunity and shoot out the window with the cheese pastries, leaving my friends in the store alone.

As soon I'm out the window I'm free. I fly over some rolling green hills, but I encounter another friend of mine who's dribbling a soccer ball on one of the hills, and get pulled down towards her, too. She senses me, but I get away before she does anything.

I end up in Detroit.


I'm flying around and I see a bunch of billboards advertising an Aubrey Plaza stand-up show. (She's April from "Parks & Rec," but the signs specifically said "Aubrey Plaza.") I end up on the roof of a red brick building, either a club or a restaurant I believe. I perch myself on the four or five-foot high ledge around the roof of the building. When I look down, I see an iPhone in a pink case sitting on the ledge next to me. I unlock the screen and look through a couple of pictures of a kind-of-slutty-looking dark-haired girl, then spontaneously throw the phone off of the roof, because who cares what I do? I'm dead.

That's about it. I think there was some stuff with my mom, but I don't really remember it very much. All in all it was a pretty awesome flying dream, even though I was dead the whole time.

Here's a little bit of Chang for the masses.

Darren Criss-mas.

Before all the Darren Criss business, I was chasing golf balls for my Uncle Bob and cousin Pat. It was snowy and cold, and I rode away from the course in the back of my mini-van. I distinctly remember my aunt taking the highway exit towards my hometown. I even remember seeing the big green sign that said the highway name.

Next I was at this Christmas caroling concert with Uncle Bob and my cousin Katie. In the hallway, we saw a sign about the program that said there would be a special guest appearance by Darren Criss.

I was working there or something because I was wearing what looked like a boy scout uniform or a UPS uniform with a skirt and it looked kind of 50s and cute. At one point in the concert, Uncle Bob dragged me up onto the stage to sing along with a bunch of carolers who were up there and the audience was joining in, so I went up with him and we stood at the edge, near the curtain. Suddenly, the middle of the stage cleared and Uncle Bob disappeared and Darren Criss strode out, singing the rest of the carol.


I was completely starstruck and I kind of sank back into the edge of the stage, but then Darren turned and looked directly at me. I stared right back, and he was still singing and he came over and grabbed my hands and pulled me out with him and was singing to me, holding both my hands. Then he spun me around or something and then hoisted me up in the air, and so I played along and spread my arms out blissfully. When the song ended he put me down and we got separated in the crowd, but I looked over to my uncle and he said he’d been taking pictures on his crappy camera the whole time, so I had proof of my amazing experience to show my friends.

Of course I, along with so many other young women, share a crush on Darren. But I don't publicize it. This fantastic dream is about the closest I'll get to admitting puppy love for a random celebrity.

Here's a little Criss for my reader(s). (Yeah, I knew him pre-Glee. All of the cool kids did.)

Classic Thanksgiving Dream

I had this dream a few years ago. It was absolutely lovely.

In my dream, it was my mom's side of the family's dinner, and for some reason the turkey was lost.

So instead we cooked and ate my cousin Patrick.

The end.

Hannah

First, I was on The Biggest Loser, and I'm not a large person, so that was confusing. Also, since my new kitten has been pooping all over my room lately and it's really disgusting and stresses me out, there was a bunch of human feces everywhere on the Biggest Loser ranch.


This is my favorite Biggest Loser, Olivia.





This is a lot cuter than what my cat has been leaving around my room.




After the ranch, I went to a small neighborhood close by with a few friends. We took a walk and then I left again to go make a movie.

When I arrived at the movie-making venue, I made a shocking discovery. (On a side note, I don't think it was shocking for my dream self, it was shocking to my real self. My dream self obviously had already known about this.)

I had a daughter.

She was six years old, blonde, and her name was Hannah.


My dream self was only taken aback a slight bit about the sudden appearance of my daughter Hannah. We found ourselves in the little girl's section of a department store and I was like a kid in a candy store, running around and picking out outfits for Hannah. I found a little shirt-dress thing that looked like Rapunzel's dress from "Tangled."

After collecting Hannah and the clothes, we went to make our movie. However, we got side-tracked once again at an indoor public pool. I decided to teach Hannah how to swim.

Much to the astonishment of myself and the Hispanic family that was in the pool with us, Hannah caught on after less than five minutes of instruction, bravely pushing off the wall and swimming laps back and forth across the length of the pool. I was so proud of her.

We finally made it to the movie site. My old friend Kyle from high school was directing the movie, and I remember my friend Brian was in the movie with us.

We were all seated in an auditorium, getting ready to deliver our lines. Hannah and I were a few rows and several seats apart.

When filming began, most of the actors performed flawlessly, including my very gifted daughter. I, however, forgot my lines over and over again, and never managed to deliver them successfully before waking up from the dream.

And that's the story of Hannah.

College Nightmares

Since leaving college, I've had several different anxiety dreams about my experience there. I'm remembering only bits and pieces of each, so I'm just going to summarize a couple of the interesting parts.

The first stress dream I remember having involved me getting literally stabbed in the back by my orientation leader.



I spent the rest of the dream searching around the parts of campus my sub-conscious remembers to try and find the leader and get revenge. I remember she had short, dark brown hair and was wearing a navy blue polo shirt when the stabbing occurred, so that's what I was looking for.

There was also the standard "can't find the classroom" bit in that same dream. I was frantically trying to find my piano class in the hallways of the music building, and I had almost driven myself completely mad when I remembered - I dropped out of college. I didn't need to go to piano class anymore.


The second college nightmare was far more interesting, and far less stressful.

In this dream, my classes were strange and warped, some even life-threatening. We did inexplicable things, and I know for a fact that either I or what I think was a foreign exchange student soiled a pair of pants and I had to run to my car to get a clean pair.

The exchange student was in one of the classes with me, and in the class we had a challenge that if we lost, we were eaten by a giant monster-machine. We were designing some sort of statue or figurine or something, it was really trippy. There was a lot of the colors green and pink involved.

The exchange student hadn't completely realized what was going on and so lost the challenge, but the student who was in charge (I don't think we had a professor) decided to spare her life.

Later on in that dream, around the time that the pants were soiled, I came across my old music theory professor, who I used to think was a huge dick but more recently found out that he's actually a sweetheart after he did something very nice for me.

He's late-middle-aged, and has a long, grey ponytail. He isn't necessarily attractive, but in my dream he was significantly hotter than I remembered. Also, he was dressed as Captain Hook from Peter Pan.



On a side note, I know exactly where my brain got the Captain Hook thing from. I was watching Ellen the other day and Neil Patrick Harris was on for the Halloween show, and he was dressed up as Captain Hook and it was adorable.



Also, his partner David dressed up as Peter Pan and their kids were Tinker Bell and Smee. Seriously, how cute is that?!?! I can't even stand it! Look at how cute they are!

Anyway, back to my dream. My Captain Hook Professor and I went on some sort of an adventure together and shenanigans were carried out. I do not remember any details.

Then, in a very shocking and disturbing surprise ending to the dream, Professor Hook dramatically threw himself off of an iceberg and into the freezing ocean in order to freeze himself permanently in a block of ice.



After that, my dream took me several years into the future to my future self, who was completely insane and had returned to the iceberg that Professor Hook had thrown himself off of.

I dove into the icy water and found Professor Hook's body, and the dream ended with me dragging him up to shore in an attempt to revive him so that I could have some sort of a companion in my lonely, spinster-y life.

And the Killer is...

My great-uncle, Jim.

I'll start by describing my great-uncle Jim. I really wish I had a picture to post. Maybe I'll upload one sometime in the future and tag it onto the end of this post. We'll see.

Uncle Jim is old and kind of looks like Ebenezer Scrooge.



He has a potbelly, bushy eyebrows, puffy cheeks, hair on only the sides of his head, and he smokes a pipe. He's never been anything but nice to me, but for some reason I've always had this weird feeling of uncomfortable dislike towards him.

In the dream, he was my father and about ten times creepier, and an annoyingly, overbearingly conservative christian. (The kind of person who really, really bothers me.)

My great-uncle-father Jim was raising us (I know I had siblings, I'm not sure who they were) with unnecessary strictness and regularly made me feel guilty for doing things that he didn't think fit into his "moral code." Also, we were all living the other side of my family's cottage.

I was particularly frustrated with him one day when I walked into the bathroom to pee. To my disgust and astonishment, I looked in the toilet only to find a severed human leg floating in the bowl. (I guess it was a really big toilet.)

I don't know why I thought this would solve the problem, but I flushed the toilet. The water started to rise and I stepped backwards cautiously, knowing it was about to overflow.



As the toilet overflowed, several body parts poured out of it and into the water-logged bathroom. I ran out to the main room and brought my family in to see the dead body parts. We realized that Jim had committed the murder and dismembered his victim, trying to hide her by flushing her down the toilet.




(Dexter? Ice truck killer? Anyone?)

With that discovery, I completely lost it and freaked out at Jim. (The climate of the situation implied that this was the first time I or anyone else had confronted Jim.)

I started screaming about hypocrisy, demanding to know how Jim could make us feel guilty day after day for doing completely normal things when he was a murderer.

I actually remember part of what I yelled word for word.

"Do you not claim to live by the ten commandments? How about DO NOT KILL? DO NOT LIE? Or DO NOT STEAL, how about that? Because you stole that girl's life!"

And that's all.

Ps I think that last part about "do not steal" was a throw-back to when we read The Kite Runner in AP Lit - Baba's philosophy about how stealing is the only sin one can commit, and murder is "stealing" someone's life.

edit - I found Great-Uncle Jim in the background of a group picture at my graduation party last summer. He's not as fat as I remembered.

Turkey Leg Blues

This is actually my SECOND anxiety dream about the Renaissance Festival. That's how crazy I am.

I missed the RenFest this year, unfortunately, because I was too busy failing at college. So a few weeks after the festivities were over, I had this dream.

In the dream, I found out that they were extending the RenFest for one more weekend, so I decided to drive all the way to Nowhere, MI and attend the festival alone.

So I pulled up to the front entrance of the festival only to realize that not only was I completely alone but I was also not in costume (which is very uncharacteristic of me) and did not have any money for a ticket.

For some reason, however, there was a vendor selling turkey legs outside the entrance. They were only a dollar, so I decided to scrape together some of my loose change and have at least a turkey leg to make the experience memorable.

The vendor was an older guy, very tall and kind of fat in an old, tough man way. He was bald and had a grey/white mustache/beard combo. I think he was wearing a chain mail shirt. I gave him my dollar and he handed me a turkey leg. We made a little small talk, and he was very friendly.

I walked away and bit into my turkey leg, expecting juicy goodness, but instead got a horrifying mouthful of fat and gristle, which I immediately spit out but could somehow taste even into the next day after I woke up.

The entire turkey leg was fat, gristle, and bone, and I was not only feeling rather puke-ified but generally feeling like a failure, standing alone in street clothes outside the Renaissance Festival with no money and a piece of bone covered in fat in my hand.



Turkey legs. Fuck yeah.

Wedding Crashers

In this dream, my 16-year-old most-recent-ex-boyfriend announced he was getting married and sent me an invitation. Why he was getting married at 16, I don't know. Why he invited me, I don't know.

I decided to attend, with my younger brother as a date. (Keepin' it classy.) We showed up at the wedding, which was at my old church, in less-than-formal attire and went into the service well before it started.



I imagine this is what we looked like.



For some reason there was a lot of Halloween candy lying around, as if that was what they were serving at the reception later. (It was, after all, a 16-year-old's wedding.)



A few minutes after making this observation, I saw my ex in his tux, getting ready for the ceremony, and I decided we were leaving. My brother and I gathered up all of the candy that we could carry, I believe I shouted a few offensive things in the general direction of the sanctuary, and we left the church before I ever had a chance to find out who the bride was.


It would've been a dramatic exit if I had been able to find my car in the parking lot. However, my brother disappeared when we got outside and I was left alone in the cold for hours, baffled over where my car could be, my hands full of candy, until the wedding was over and everyone came outside to find me still there.

Rain After a Drought

Guess what? I dropped out of college and got a cat.

And I started remembering my dreams again.

Huzzah.

I've had a series of four dreams that I have remembered since returning home, each increasingly disturbing. The first took place at my old high school.

At my high school, the funding for a band director had been cut and so my arch-enemy, Mr. G, was fired from his position and they selected my almost-tone-deaf librarian mother to take over his job.

However, knowing only what she has learned second-hand from me about music, (which consists mostly of me complaining about other musicians) my mom was in need of some outside help. Thus, three young women were selected by some unknown high power to assist her - myself, my good friend Jami, (not to be confused with Jaimie) and the assistant drum major from the CMU Marching Band, Julie.

Out of the four of us, I was under the impression that Julie or I were the most qualified to run the marching band, as I had been the drum major in high school and she was a drum major in college. However, Julie was given the top music group, Jami was assigned to the marching band, and I was stuck with the freshman group, also known as "Kadet Band." Yes, "kadet" with a "k."

I freaked out and started screaming my face off at my mom, yelling about how unfair it was that I was stuck with the shit band when I obviously deserved the marching band, it meant so much more to me than it did to Jami, I was more experienced, I'd marching in a college band and she hadn't, a was a far better musician, etc. etc.

This went on for a while until I finally decided that if I couldn't direct the marching band, I wasn't going to direct any band at all. So I stormed out of the school.

I woke up angry and frustrated, which is how I feel most of the time now, and the dreams just get stranger from here.


Everyone's favorite college drop-out, signing off.

The Best Dream I've Ever Had

Interrupted, of course. As all good dreams are sooner or later.

The dream took place at my graduation party, which was a very, very good day. In the dream, everything was going as planned, as everything did the day of my grad party.

One of the boys across the hall from me, Joey, who has appeared in my dreams before for no apparent reason, was there and decided to buy me flowers and candy in an extremely nice and completely platonic way.

I got bored about halfway through my grad party, even though there were lots of people there and I was getting tons of presents. I decided to go online to a Relient K fan page thing, and I somehow acquired Matt Thiessen's e-mail address, to which I emailed something, I'm not sure what, but to my intense surprise, he emailed me back.



We set up a place for us to meet that was actually not too far away from my house, and we met and started chatting. I was completely star-struck, and hadn't realized that I was wearing a Relient K shirt and so felt really lame, but Matt didn't seem to mind and we actually hit it off.



I told him how I've gone to a ton of concerts and I've met every member of the band except for him, and how I liked Dave Douglas better than the new drummer, Ethan. I got to meet a bunch of his friends and his grandmother.



Then things started to get really weird.
One of his friends had recently gone to the Renaissance Festival and had two of those giant pickles that you can get from barrels, and he gave me one because I love pickles.

I was eating the pickle with Matt, who thought it was a cute quirk, and we were at some sort of performance at an old folks' home.



The pianist started playing an accompaniment and I began absent-mindedly singing along with it, then suddenly realizing that I knew the piece because it was written for piccolo and I am a piccolo player.

To my surprise, a guy I knew from high school, Noah, came out next to the pianist and started playing his piccolo, but everyone began boo-ing. I felt awful for him, because he was an okay musician, so I decided to save him because he could no longer perform.

I ran up to the front of the room and started playing the rest of his piece on my pickle. Which is pretty funny, if you think about it.

I finished out the piece and Matt was really impressed with me. We went back to his place and were about to start making out, which I was totally cool with because having sex with Matt Thiessen would be awesome, but then my roommate made a weird noise in her sleep and I woke up.

Which made me very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very sad. I love Matt Thiessen. With all of my heart.

I woke up happy, though. :)