Grimace

I was at a party and Deb showed up in a Grimace costume. I loved it and wanted it for myself.

All roads lead to Target

I was driving through the mountains in Appalachia with a group of people. We were on the run from the feds. Something shook the truck and I thought it was a monster. As a diversion, we stopped in a town called Midway. We wandered around and got separated, and some of us almost got left behind. It was confusing--no one was sure what truck we were driving or where we were going or even who we were.

I was in Target in the back corner looking at CDs, but the lights were dim and I couldn't see the shelves very well. Chris Ward was with me. He wanted to shop for something alone, so he gave me the kitten that was our child. I walked around the store with the kitten in my arms. It was sleeping and was heavy and warm and I loved carrying it. After a long time, I knew Chris was looking for me, so I went to the customer service desk. The kitten needed to pee, so I put it on the floor, and helped it to balance on its hind legs by holdings its front paws over its head. Then I heard Chris's voice over the intercom asking me where I was. I asked the clerk at the desk to page him back and tell him, but she said No. I thought she was kidding, so I waited, but when I realized she wasn't kidding, I went back up to her and told her I was shocked at how rude she was. I went back to the corner where I had been looking at CDs and found him waiting there. He had made a pallet so we could spend the night, but I told him I'd rather go to my house. Next we were in my house and Chris was in the kitchen. He was very tall. He had shaved his beard so that it was a thin line but still thick, and then when he came out of the kitchen, the rest of it was gone, too. Adrienne and I laughed at him behind his back.

Thumb sores and hats

I had deep fissures on the inside of my right thumb, one every few centimeters down to the base. They were crusty and yellow around the edges and deep red on the inside.

I was talking to Mom about my relationships. I kept telling her that Donovan was a good choice--boring but kind, and a great writer. But I was just trying to convince myself so that I could get over Brad. I put on a ripped black dress and tights, then started trying on straw hats. Mom tried to show me how to wear two at the same time--one was tan with a large brim and I put it on over a small red brimless one.

New skis

Christmas-time, and the whole family was getting together in Texas in a huge multi-story mall. I had been given a pair of skis. They were black and had a detachable metal strip that kept coming off. I was late to the get-together and kept getting stuck in weird kiosks and dropping my skis.

Astrid's Apartment

Astrid picked me up at the bus station in the city and took me to her apartment to spend the night. We walked through the city, past book stores and sky scrapers. To get into her building, we entered through a dress shop. The owner was a young woman with blond hair. We went up the stairs and into Astrid's apartment. There was an old man with a beard and a young woman there. The man suggested we play a game to name as many feminist authors as we could. Their lists all got long, but I couldn't think of a single one. I told them that I had never been a detail a person and was more of a synthesizer of ideas.

Meth Lab

I lived in a huge house in the mountains, and I was having a party. I was sitting on the couch in the living room. I looked across the room and saw a man sitting by a TV stirring white liquid in a pot. I walked over to him and asked if he was making meth, and he said that he was. I went back to the couch and asked this guy sitting there if I could use his phone to call the police. He handed me a three-foot tall device with a large purple glowing globe on top. The numbers were on the globe, but they moved back and forth and disappeared as I tried to punch them in. The guy wouldn't show me how to do it even though I begged and told him it was an emergency. I gave up on him and walked around to find another phone. Most people wouldn't let me use their phones, and when they would, the keypad wouldn't work, or I would mis-dial, or I would get put on hold. Meanwhile, the meth guy left.

The Veronica Cabinet

I was at a lake in the countryside. There was a woman who was part rabbit, and she lived there in the lake with her tribe of people-rabbits. I saw a geyser and two stones out in the lake that I wanted to explore, and I asked the rabbit-woman to swim there with me. There was a small moat, about two feet deep, filled with gravel between the lake we were in and the one with the geyser and the stones. When we got near the geyser, it became a rock sticking out of the water. I went under water to take a look and saw that it was a wooden cabinet, like a china cabinet but without glass in the doors. I knew it was called the Veronica Cabinet. I sat in front of it, and even though I was underwater, nothing was wet and I could breath. I opened the doors and saw that it was full of things. There was a framed black and white photograph of a woman with short dark hair playing basketball. I don't remember the other things in there, except for a letter. It said how this woman had died--there had been a riot on Jackson street, but it wasn't the Jackson street here in Corvallis. I don't think the woman's name was Veronica, but whoever she was, this cabinet was her memorial. I think the woman had died as a teenager in the 1950s. I couldn't read the letter very well because I was running out of air, so I came up, but when I did it made the cabinet fall forward on top of me. I was worried about the things inside falling out and getting wet, and I asked the rabbit-woman, who had been swimming around in circles as I looked through the cabinet, to help me. We rotated the Veronica Cabinet back around and set it back where it had been.

Love Wheel

All I remember is singing "Love Wheel."

Spaghetti Horror

There was a mad man on the loose who was made of spaghetti. He wanted to kill people. If you let his spaghetti-tentacles touch you, you died.

Bus

I was at a festival. I was hanging out on my bed in the back of a large city bus. I went to a different part of the festival, and when I came back, the bus had left. I felt bad because I had promised to take my bed out before it left. I went to the bus terminal and talked to someone who worked there. He said I could get it out the next day.

Something about music and walking around outside...

Coast

I went to a party somewhere in western Oregon near the coast. The town was called Harney or Harvey. The party was in someone's living room, and there were only a few people there. Everyone decided to go on a run, and I got in my car to drive home. I didn't know which highway I was on or which direction to drive in. I saw a large body of water, so I assumed I was on the coast and should drive east. But then I saw a map in my head and realized that the body of water was a large inland lake. I went south.

Bad Teacher

I was an adult but in elementary school. My class was putting on a play, and I had drawn the background scenery. It was an abstract mural of a road and a river with lots of yellow triangles and shiny tiles. All the children, including my class, were in the audience, looking up at a stage where my teacher stood. She had short yellow hair and was skinny with glasses. She was going to introduce the play and she was supposed to start with my mural, explaining what it was and who did it. But she didn't like me or my mural so she just waved her hand at it and rolled her eyes. I was enraged. Then she and I were in the classroom, and I told her that I thought she was a bad teacher and a bad person. I knew I was scaring her because she was small and she thought I was going to attack her. I let her think this because it was satisfying. Finally she lay down on the carpet with her knees under her and her hands over her head. I screamed at her and threw a blanket over her to hide her shame.

Later I was in a group of people at the bottom of the ocean. We were all children and some sort of sea mammal at the same time. We looked like children but had long tan spotted deer legs. We had been part of an experiment and we were now waiting to be matched up with our mothers, except the mothers were men. There were only two of us left and no more mothers. The teacher walked by and told me I would have to pick a mother from somwhere else. Then I was in a house, and I was going to drive to Portland to meet some friends. It was Portland, but I called it Pennsylvania. The phone rang and it was my teacher. I didn't pick up the phone, but I could hear her talking anyway. She was obsessed with me and wanted to make me feel bad for pointing out to her what an awful teacher she was. I pulled the phone cord out of the wall.