Fla.-J shows up at my house

I had gotten drunk at a party and apparently went up on the stage (there was a band) and started rapping. I was wearing a brown sweatshirt with my cowboy hat; someone recorded my long rap session and showed it to me later, but I had no recollection whatsoever of doing any of that.

Fla.-J showed up in my driveway at the house I grew up in; for some reason I was back there and staying for a while and he surprised me by showing up. He sat in his pickup truck (which I don't think he drives in real life) in my driveway until I came out to see who it was. I went to the driver's side and yanked open the door and when I realized it was him, he just slowly smiled and said, "Hello."

I didn't know what to say or do so I just stepped back from the open door and let him climb down. For some reason, the truck was extremely high off the ground so I had to tilt my head back pretty far to see him inside. So when he got down from the truck, I realized two things: he was carrying one of the cutest puppies I'd ever seen; and that he had a ring on his left ring finger. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that he'd gotten married, but it still threw me for a loop a little bit. I didn't say anything and just was mezmorised by the puppy, who looked like she weighed about 10 pounds, including her curly white fur. Fla.-J put her down on the ground and she started sniffing everything in sight, including me. I was taken aback by her - if Fla.-J was to get a dog this was the last breed I would have expected - but she was super friendly so I gave her some love then stood up and looked Fla.-J right in the eye and waited for him to explain why he'd suddenly shown up here.

He slowly held up his left hand in front of us and pulled the ring off his finger. He told me it wasn't what I thought and he tried to hand the ring to me. He said, "If I give this to you, will you come back to me?"

Of course, predictably, I started to freak out and ask him why now, after all these years, etc. I started to get choked up, but then I quickly got very angry. Who did he think he was?

He'd gone to the other side of my driveway to gather up his puppy and we walked inside as I silently seethed with anger. Once we got inside the door, I started to hit him with a barrage of questions, mostly calling his judgment and arrogance into question. He just smiled sideways as I ranted about how this was yet another act of selfishness on his part; just as he was about to explain why he'd shown up now, I woke up.

Visitors in my office

I had a meeting on the cubicle side of my office and on my way back through the lobby, I ran into people I knew from 6th grade (A.K., P.S., I.D. and J.P. are the only ones I can remember now, but I think there were a few more). They were still the same size as we were back then, only I was the size I am now; I high-fived them and told them how great it was to see them not that they were no longer dead. I told them they looked really good for having been dead and then coming back to life.

I got back to my office and had a blue postal bag waiting for me. As I got closer to it I could hear that there was something/someone inside of the bag, so I lifted it up as if it was a smelly pair of gym shorts and held it up to the light. Inside, I could see a miniature version of Eric Cartman from South Park. His body was painted red and was holding a New Jersey Devils mug, or cylinder of some sort that also was red. He was freaking out, jumping around in the bag and trying to get out, so I walked quickly back towards the elevator so I could take him down to the dumpsters. He was screaming for someone to let him out of the bag, but instead I just dropped him in the dumpster and got back upstairs as quickly as possible.

I had another meeting with people in the cubicles and after I got back, I saw a miniature cartoon version of my cat, Cash, and a cartoon horse sitting in the chairs in the lobby. Someone had given Cash a bomb from the Mario Bros. video games and Cash told me that whoever had given it to her told her to hold on to it for him. I started to freak out because I knew it was going to explode, so I knocked it out of her hands - she was standing up on her hind legs - towards the horse. It landed on the arm rest and the horse kicked its left front hoof and sent the bomb into the corner where the fax machine is - across the lobby, about 10 feet away - and as it landed, it exploded. It blew up the fax machine, the wall and the cabinets there, but the explosion was surprisingly small. It probably would have only caused minor injuries to Cash had she still been holding it. I breathed a sigh of relief and walked back to my office.

Yet again... sigh.

Fla.-J showed up to my softball game, it was the championship game. He pulled me aside and told me how much he wanted me... he hugged me and couldn't keep his hands off me - touching my face, my hair, etc. He told me how much he missed me and how he'd moved here (don't know where "here" was in the dream) just to be with me. He recalled the first day we met, at the sports complex at our school (which in the dream looked nothing like the real thing, but instead looked similar to the library at the summer camp I went to when I was younger). One of my teammates came up to me to tell me I was on double deck and Fla.-J looked at me and said, "Don't go back to the game, I want to be with you now." I said, "But my team is counting on me... I play thursday nights, can you start coming to my games now that you're living here?" He hesitated to answer and I didnt understand why; he looked like he wanted to explain but he didn't. I went to go play but my at-bat had already passed so I ran back out behind center field where I'd left Fla.-J but he was nowhere to be seen.

City/country dream

There was a lot more to this dream than I can remember, but here's what I've got...

I was in a place that was a combination of Rochester and Canyon, so there were friends in my dream from both those places. I was at a street festival type of event and I ran into J.R. from Rochester. She was with her mother and when she saw me, turned to her mom and whispered. I knew it was about me based on the dirty look she gave me. I kept walking, I was on my way to the ice cream/fried food shop that Wade worked at to ask if she could put in a good word for me becuase I needed a second job. It was early in the day and the festival hadn't really gotten underway just yet, so it was relatively slow. I went through the line and ordered mint chocolate ice cream, but for some reason I got the five gallon-sized cup with the biggest scoop of ice cream I had ever seen in my life. I wanted to give it back because I'd only ordered a medium, but they wouldn't let me; they told me just to eat what I could and throw away the rest. I said hi to Wade and asked her to tlak to her boss about hiring me, and instead she went into a story about how these young twins had gone missing. It was a boy and a girl and they were maybe 10 years old; they'd been missing for a long time and when they finally were found, there was evidence that they'd been raped. They were still alive, though, so the people who found them took them to the hospital and saved their lives. I wasn't sure at all why Wade was telling me this story, so I walked to one of the tables in the shop and sat next to A.Q. to eat my ice cream. I dug my spoon into the ice cream but found that it was a huge brownie covered in ice cream, kind of like magic shell. I kept digging away at it and I knew that the story Wade had told me was terrible but for some reason I couldn't get it out of my head. A.Q. and I didn't really talk, we just sat there in a comfortable silence.

The second part of the dream had me in a city and I was wearing a shiny purple dress and I had to run around - literally - looking for my friends. I was wearing black heels while running. Finally, I found the entrance to a hotel where I knew my friends were so I went inside, but it turned out that it was the right type of hotel but the wrong location, so i had to continue running around like a mad woman.

I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something, but I'll be damned if I know what it is

I know that there were a lot more to all three of these dreams, but of course this is all I can remember...

Friday night I dreamt that Boyfriend and I had been married for a few years. I was at a work function in the evening and S.R. was flirting with me; at the first opportunity he pulled me aside and kissed me. He said he'd wanted to do that for a long time. I freaked out and told him it was way too late for this, since I was married. The last image I saw before I woke up was from my perspective, I was driving a car down a dark, deserted road and it was very foggy. There were no houses or anything along the road, just me driving away.

I passed out during my road trip on Saturday and dreamt that Boyfriend and I were in the process of getting married - planning the wedding, getting my dress and his tux.

Last night, I dreamt that I was in some sort of indoor sports complex and I saw Fla.-J watching one of the baseball games that was going on. I kind of stared at him because I couldn't believe that he was there, but eventually he turned and saw me, too. I quickly walked away but he got up and followed me. He kept asking me how I was doing and I was trying to brush him off with sassy banter, but he wasn't put off in the slightest. Finally, exasperated, I demanded, "Have you even thought of me one single time since we last spoke?!" He kind of shuffled his feet but admitted that he hadn't thought of me at all. "At least you're honest these days," I told him as I walked away from him. Later in the same day, I snuck away from what I was doing for work (which is why I was at the sports complex to begin with) to pack up a suitcase so that I could fly back to Florida to be with Fla.-J.

Yet another emotionally disturbing corker of a dream

I set the alarm to wake up in enough time to board my flight at 6:39 a.m. However, I thought I'd woken up in enough time to go to class beforehand so I did that, but then I was stuck there and didn't get out until 11 a.m. Somehow I hadn't missed my flight but I had to get all my friends together so that we made it to the airport on time. I was waiting for a friend of mine, sitting on the bench outside of the building in which she lived and Fla.-J walked out.

He was going to walk right by me but he did a double take. At first I pretended not to see him but he back tracked and looked at me, silently asking permission to sit next to me. I scooted over to make room for him.

He knew that I was waiting for my friend and therefore didn't have a lot of time to talk, so he prefaced our conversation by saying something along the lines of, "I know we need to talk about what happened but that's a conversation for another day, when you have the time." Then he continued to tell me how much he's thought about me over the years and how he was in a funk for almost a year after our last conversation; he put on a little weight, he didn't shave, he wore sweatpants in public regularly, etc. He told me that he just couldn't bring himself to do anything, he wasn't motivated in the slightest, because what I'd said to him in our last conversation was so devastatingly true and no one had ever had the guts to tell him what I did previously. My eyes started to fill with tears because I'd never known how much I affected him - he never really opened himself up to me. He then said, "How did you phrase it again?... 'Don't talk to me until...'" I spoke up, then, saying, "I said, 'When you can think of just one time that you ever thought of anyone else, one time that you ever thought of me, before thinking of yourself, you just let me know.' And then I never heard from you again."

He smiled a bitter smile as we both recalled our tumultuous past. I looked into the lobby of the building then and I could see my friend stopped dead in her tracks staring at me talking to Fla.-J (not really clear on whether or not she knew that he lived in her same building). I stood up slowly and he looked at me with sad eyes. "I have to leave," I said. He leaned his elbows on his knees, looking at the ground, and said, "I know you do." He looked back up and me and when I saw the sadness and the longing in his eyes I could feel my heart breaking all over again.

I turned away as my friend walked outside. Fla.-J stood up and grabbed my hand; I turned back to him one last time and started to cry. Reluctantly, he let my hand go and I walked backwards a few steps, looking at him for the last time. I turned around and walked away with my friend.

"Basement" is the new extravagence

I was looking to move but wasn't having much success finding a new place to live in the area I wanted. I went to my softball game and my mom was there watching me play. In the middle of the game, she pulls me aside and tells me that she knows someone who is looking to rent and she made an appointment for me to see the place, but we had to leave right away. I didn't want to leave the game, but I knew I had to because my mother had stuck her neck out to try to help me.

We got to the apartment, which was in a building that was a little run down on the outside. We went inside the building and knocked on the door to the apartment, and it was the K. family (I played high school soccer with A.K., who was one grade ahead of me). They were renting out their "basement" apartment that was a five bedroom place, with a full deluxe kitchen, washer/dryer (in one appliance...?), several mini-rooms/offices, a loft, stairs (yes, the apartment was two-stories), a patio that overlooked the outside busy main street, a view of the river (which sloshed up against the double-pane windows; obviously on a different side of the building from the patio). They allowed pets, too, which was good since I had Cash and Diamond in the carrier and was cradling Raider in my arms. Each room was furnished and decorated like different rooms at IKEA - very organized and color-schemed throughout. I went to the sliding door that overlooked the patio and saw my softball game continuing without me and sighed.

I turned to A.K. and asked how much they were asking for rent. She told me, "one grand, that's it." My eyes just about bugged out of my head. I was about to ask who had access to the apartment, as it was the "basement" of the K.'s house, but my mother interuppted my thought by pulling me aside and asking me if I was going to ask Boyfriend to move in with me. She then proceded to ramble on about the kind of wedding dress material I wanted and I cut her off and insisted that Boyfriend and I were NOT getting married, even if he decided that he wanted to move into this absolute steal of an apartment.

Ex-boyfriend rears his head

I was at my high school as a new teacher and I didn't know it, but Fla.-J was also a teacher there. I was on my way to put my purse and gym bag in my locker (don't know why I had a locker with the students, since I was supposed to be a teacher) and I saw Fla.-J walking in the front door. I sprinted away so that he woudln't see me, but the image of him wearing a pink long-sleeve button down was burned into my brain.

I reached my locker - at the corner of the first hallway to the right in real life at my high school - and dropped my stuff down in front of it, relieved that I'd avoided Fla.-J for the time being. I reached for the lock and dialed the combo: 34-34-41. As I was putting my things into the locker, the double doors behind me opened and Fla.-J walked through. I froze as we locked eyes... I guess he hadn't known that I would be teacher there, either.

Cut to the near-by town... it was similar to a college town in that there were all sorts of little shops and restaurants surrounding the streets, which were full of people walking, riding bicycles, etc. As I was walking past a tea and coffee shop, Fla.-J walks out and dang near walks right into me. He started to apologize for almsot bumping into me - he thought I was just a random stranger - and then he stopped short as he realized that it was me.

I started to brush him off and walk away, but he grabbed my arm. He wanted to know why I kept running away from him, why I wouldn't make eye contact with him, etc. I looked at him like he had three heads. It was evident that a good deal of time had passed since we'd last seen each other or since we'd last spoken, but I was mystified as to why he would even have to ask why I wanted nothing to do with him.

Then he said, with sad eyes, "I just don't want to be known for two things: being a great tea maker and breaking your heart."

I started to cry as I told him it was too late for that, too late for apologies and too late for him.

Boyfriend breaks up with me; family issues

I was talking with Boyfriend and he was trying to talk about something serious, but there were lots of people around us - we must have been in a public place. Finally, he pulls me aside and tells me that he is breaking up with me because I'm not worth all the stress he has in regard to staying with me. It's "too hard" for him to stay with me, even though he loves me and knows that I love him, so he breaks up with me... but also tells me that he will stick around for a while to make sure that I am okay. I think he was planning on moving somewhere far away but decided to stay for a few weeks after we broke up. Obviously, I was devastated, to the point where I couldn't stop crying for days on end.

Suddenly, it was about two weeks later and I was on some sort of college campus or little village with a brick walkway and I was helping my grandmother find my cousin. She was supposed to pick him up to go somehwere but for some reason she couldn't, so she called me and asked me to pick him up instead. She gave me the directions to his camp, but it wasn't the summer camp that most peple went to, it was a "safe house" because he was gay. My grandmother was obviously uncomfortable even telling me that my cousin was gay, but she insisted that it was vital that I pick him up and bring him to her. As I was on my way - on my bicycle - I ran into some people from work and took a quick detour to grab a drink with them. We went to a bar that was bicycle friendly and, in fact, people were bringing in bikes that they were going to put up for sale on the back patio. I saw this bright pink cruiser and I immediately knew it would be mine. I watched as its current owner wheeled it by me in the bar and I followed the owner outside so I could buy it... but I realized I would need my work badge to get back into the bar's back door after I bought the bike. As I fumbled in my purse fo rmy badge, this other person - someone from work that I don't know very well; she just started here - was outside talking to the owner and pointing to the MY pink bike. I ran outside and interrupted their conversation, whipped out some cash and bought the bike on the spot. I gave the other girl from work a smug look as I wheeld the bike outside and contiued on to the "safe house" to find my cousin.

As I rode towards the address my grandmother had given me, I started to think about Boyfriend and got really upset and sad because I missed him so much. I began to resent the fact that he didn't fight for me the way that I had fought for him, and then I started to cry again. I was crying as I rode through the little town on the brick walkways and past the red brick buildings, but I stopped when a saw aa little blonde boy sitting in a plaza by himself. As I wheeled my bike twoards him, I realized that he was crying. When I asked him why, he said he was lost and coudln't find his mommy or daddy. He leaned back against the tree that he was sitting next to - the tree was planted in the middle of the plaza and surrounded by a brick well, on which he was sitting - when his dad, who was wearing orange crocs, ran up to him and grabbed him into a huge hug. He thanked me profusely for finding his kid - even though I insisted that I hadn't done anything at all - and they walked away. The dad was carrying his kid so that the kid was looked at me as they walked away, and the little boy, eyes still red and blurry from crying, waved at me.

Two dreams having to do with fires/explosives and school

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was involved in some sort of spy operation but it was a double-blind - I didn't know that I was involved. Uma Thurman and David Carradine were there, they were the masterminds behind the whole operation. It involved some sort of plot to destroy an evil organization that was housed inside of my high school, even though the building that was my "high school" looked totally different than what my actual school looks like. At the end, there was a big explosion.

Last night I dreamt that I was at the school where Boyfriend teaches, but instead of Boyfriend being the teacher, it was my dad. It was a private school that was on the edge of the woods (oddly similar to my high school in real life) and the building was tall, rectangular and tan-colored. My Dad was teaching and I was a student. I had a lot of classes with some boy that I apparently had a crush on; he and I were at least friends because we always sat next to each other in class. We helped each other in the subjects that we struggled in, respectively. We were in study hall and a few older boys came in and sat down at our table and started talking to me, befriending me, but I was skeptical, naturally. After they left, my crush told me to ignore them, they obviously were only interested in "one thing" and I shouldn't give in to that, I was better than that. One of the older boys had seemed really genuine, though, and I coudln't stop thinking about him. All of a sudden, the fire alarm started going off in the school and all of us had to evacuate the building. There was more to this one, more plot advancement, but I can't remember now... I think it was that I coudln't find my dad and was convinced that he was stuck somewhere inside the school so of course I started freaking out and tried to go back inside to find him, but there was something blocking my way, so I started to get hysterical.

Current events, shaken not stirred

I was in a park that looked a lot like the gold discovery site in Coloma, Calif. The softball team that I coach was there, and they were annoying me quite a bit by making immature jokes. We were waiting for someone to come pick us up and take us to the airport (presumably we'd just finished playing in a tournament).

An airport employee came up to me then (not sure why an airport employee was at the park instead of being at the airport) and handed me a credit card bill, as if she was delivering a telegram. I tore open the envelope and balked as I saw that there was a charge for $108,000.00 dollars. Immediately, I freak out, wondering where in the world this charge came from. A light bulb went on in my head then, and I realized that someone must have stolen my identity.

I remembered that there had been a person standing uncomfortably close to me in line at Safeway the day before, and figured that they had snapped a photo of my credit card as I was holding it, waiting to pay for my food.

I reported it to LifeLock and breathed a sigh of relief because I knew that LifeLock would set everything straight.

You know it's my hectic time at work when...

I hadn't finished the media guide on time so I loaded the files I needed onto my flash drive, packed up the work laptop and was planning to head to the Rush Rhees Periodical Reading Room; I saw a very clear image of the room from the back of the room on the right side when you walk in, lots of students were in there studying/sleeping as always. I decided I wanted to buy a laptop mouse - you know, the kind that you can plug into one of the USB jacks - because that would make it much easier for me to edit in InDesign, so I was going to go to Best Buy to pick one up. Mel stopped me on my way out of Arco, though, and asked if I wanted to take a ride w/her and Jill to go pick up our GM... in New Mexico. I said I'd go, but only if it was a quick trip because I had a lot of work to do. They promised it would be fast, so we all got into Mo's car (a white Escalade) and drove off.

We were driving around in Albuquerque when I realized I had to stop at Bank of America, so Mel drove into a drive-thru in a minimall. I went inside with Jill because we both had checks to deposit. We asked the clerk if we needed to sign and he said, "No, you jsut need to write the account number on the back." We did that and he deposited the checks for us, then we went back outside and as we were pulling out of the drive-thru line, I started filling out a country music survey. Some of the questions (that I can remember) were: What's your favorite country song?; Who is your favorite country singer?; What was Shania Twain wearing at the CMT Awards this year?; What's your favorite outfit that Shania Twain wears? I wanted to fill it out as accurately as possible because the prize that I could win was something I really wanted, but I can't remember now what it was.

All of a sudden, I realized that I needed to get back to the library to finish the media guide, so I started freaking out, telling Mel and Jill that I needed to leave immediately to get back to Canyon, Texas, so that I could finish the media guide.

Probably one of the weirdest dreams that I have ever had

Preface: I typed the majority of this within moments of waking up on Friday morning, but didn't post it until today because I had to edit it just a little (lots of typos at that hour!) and also I was hoping that I might remember more detail as time went by. I didn't, really; in fact, I can barely remember some parts of the dream now were it not for this blog post.

Mom and Dad, Mom shoots someone between the eyes and tries to cover it up. Dad brings mom out into back yard and does the same to her, except I see it through his eyes. Then I'm back to me, I think "You two are prefect for each other." Overcast scene, like in The Watchmen.

Mom driving a maroon Porsche with California licence plate, I'm following her out of the short hills Pingry parking lot and I notice she has a Kings license plate frame. we go to cross the Golden Gate bridge but there is massive traffic rounding the corner, or so we think. Turns out it's just a person walking along the bridge so people are driving cautiously and then traffic starts to move.

The government wants to take a million dollars from every citizen; president - female! - says what about the poor? they don't have a million dollars for us to take. A photographer takes zoomed-in pictures of her eyes, president asks if the picture is for a magazine. In war room, like in The Watchmen.

I'm back at high school but high school was apparently in someone's house. The Corvino family was there, they gave me a birthday card with a long poem on the inside. Each kid had written a short note, even Bobby, who I've never actually met. Amy's said "I l u" and I dind't know what the "l" stood for. Teddy and I hung out, talked about the good old days and how kids today were crazy. Boyfriend shows up, he is wary of teddy until I explain who he is.

Boyfriend and I go to visit this family and they are really, really tall. Really tall. They can't fit out a normal doorway and to get out, they can't just duck a little they almost have to squat down to get out of the door. We go into their house which is really a large hotel-sized apartment building. I get a glass of water from their kitchen and sit at their table in the foyer of their floor. A woman shows up and immediately I know She's evil. I put my drink on the white table - no coaster - and walk around the floor to check out the other areas and there is a section of "houses" within this hotel/apartment bilding. Someone tells me that the houses also have tables out in the open because it's required by law. I look down the hallway to my right and see a large group gathering at one of the picnic tables and a middle-aged, balding man standing on the table. People are cheering him on, he looks nervous. He takes a sip of his vodka drink then pours the rest over his head to cool himself down as he turns his back to me and readies himself for whoever is going to slide down the vertical slip n' slide and fly through the air and land on him. Boyfriend and I go to leave the hotel/apartment and the evil woman makes fun of my toy that I'd left with my glass of water.

I met up with Nicole at the grocery store and I was very excited to see her until I realized that she'd brought Jena. It was a little awkward at first and I was really, really surprised when Jena started asking me what I'd been up to since leaving Rochester, asking about my job etc. She realized I was hesitant to answer her questions so she got closer and gave me a hug, saying "let's let bygones be bygones. I did some stupid shit when we were in college I want to forget all that and start over, let's be friends." I gladly agreed, hugged her back, and said this is the best day ever. The three of us walked around the store finding things we needed - it was more of a CVS at this point than a grocery store - all the while Jena and I were catching up on lost time.

I'm in trouble for two different things

I was with people from work and the president of our company was out for the day (not the president of my company in real life). His daughter was visiting and it turned out that she needed help because she was pregnant. I ran into the president's office to grab a tampon, but I left my drink - a Jamba Juice or something similar - in his office, but the door locked behind me so I couldn't get it. Everyone was freaking out because then the president was going to know that someone had been in his office while he was gone.

Then, I had to go to the dentist to get my annual teeth cleaning and I went to Dr. Mark for the first time. He kept bragging about how his office was the coolest and most decorated - not with dentistry recognition but instead with guitars and rock n' roll memorabilia. Scott was there for some reason, lying on the dentistry bed - yes, it was a bed and not a dentist chair. Mark sprayed down Scott with some sort of antiseptic spray so that I would feel safe, and then he took a look at my records to see what he was dealing with. He started to shake his head while he was reading and I told him that I hadn't been to the dentist in about a year because the dentist I'd gone to when I first got to California said that I only needed to go once a year. Dr. Mark readied all his tools as he explained that I needed to see a dentist every six months, no excuses. Finally, I got onto the bed and laid down next to Scott, and right before Dr. Mark was going to start, I asked him a question - was he on my insurance? He said no, he was on some different one, so I jumped out of the bed, got in my car and drove downtown to his office. No idea why his office and the dentist room were half an hour away. I parked my car up the street about a block from the office, so I had to cross at a roundabout; a woman had crossed the street before me with two of her kids, but she left the stroller with her baby in the middle of the crosswalk and didn't appear to be coming back for her third kid. I gently gave the stroller a push so that it at least would be out of the way of cars driving by, but only after I pushed it did I realize that I should have walked it across the street because it was going to hit the curb kind of hard. All it did was wake the baby up and get the attention of the weird mother; she turned around and seemed as if she was in a daze as she retrieved her baby and thanked me. I caught the eye of a driver in a white car who had stopped so as not to hit the stroller and we both rolled our eyes at her ineptitude. Then, I walked into Dr. Mark's office through a round facade which stood out from the rest of the buildings on that block and Dr. Mark's girlfriend in real life was there, answering phone calls. I thought she wasn't going to recognize me at first but she did; when she got off her phone call she started to vent about how she was going to quit because Mark couldn't keep a schedule, she never knew what hour he was in or what patient he was seeing. I tried to calm her down, but she just asked how she could help me. I asked her if any of the other dentists within the practice were on my insurance, and she said unfortunately, no.

Six dreams from the past month (don't ask how I even remember all of this)

Night 1: I was in some sort of craft show or something similar and all my friends were there. Then I was in a restaurant, walking from where the tables were to the kitchen and through it (with the perspective of a video camera). I then was walking back into the craft show and there was a Dr. Seussian archway - like in Oh! The Places You'll Go! - to walk through in order to get back to the booths. I could see all the patrons milling about and I somehow knew that walking through the archway would change my life. I took a deep breath, exhales and stepped through the archway.

Night 2: I was in an old, black/dark gray Jeep Cherokee driving through winding roads that wound through a public park. It was somewhere hot and dry (Arizona or New Mexico, I think). There were little tufts of dry, brown plants along the road's edge as I drove. I occasionally looked around, taking in my surroundings and thinking about how beautiful the canyon's landscape looked bathed in the pinky orange glow of the setting sun. I slowed down because I was coming up on what looked to be a broken down car on the left side of the road. As I got closer, I saw that it was two green aliens - they looked like cartoons. Before I could ask if I could help, they approached my car. I had my window down and I stopped fully. We stared at each other for a few moments before I realized that they'd turn into balloons; they looked exactly the same except shinier. They swayed left and right in the wind, knocking into one another, creating that finger-tips-dragged-across-a-balloon-surface noise. Through my window, I head butted them - first the one on the left, then the one on the right, in a quick one-two succession - then laughed as I drove away with the wind blowing through my hair (it wasn't my normal laugh, though). A little further up the road, I pulled over onto a half-moon-shaped shoulder and left my car. I grabbed a duffel bag from the backseat without opening the door and walked the rest of the way. The perspective changed to my personal view; I noticed that the plateau in from of me looked kind of fake - like a Hollywood set or a museum background - but as I continued walking, the road curved to the left and I saw that the plateau, now to my right, was real. After the road curved left, I saw my friends waiting for me up ahead. I reached a stop sign as the road I was walking on intersected with a perpendicular road; I crossed the street and go to where my friends were. It was a parking lot and apparently we were going to a carnival or state fair of sorts. The guy I had a crush on walked up from behind me - me and the rest of my friends were looking slightly to the right of where I'd just come from, at the carnival rides, lights, etc. so I didn't see him until he was already past me on the right. He said hi to the group as I stood back a few feet away, watching and clutching my bag to the my chest with both hands. As everybody started walking towards the fair, my crush turned around, smiled slightly at me and stuck out his left hand. I smiled and stepped forward to take his hand as the perspective changed to move camera again. As our whole group crossed the street in the direction of the fair, I could see that I was wearing cut-off jean shorts (not short shorts, though) and a pinkish purple halter top. I threw my light gray duffel bag over my left shoulder and smile again at my crush; he looked down to me on his left side and smiled back.

Night 3: Boyfriend was wearing what he wore the very first day we met - faded black jeans, black t-shirt, motorcycle jacket - and he was angry at me. He was raising his voice and telling me that he was angry with me for two reasons, the first of which was that I always insisted that what he was wearing now was what he wore the first time we met. I can't remember the second reason.

Night 4: I dreamt that I was at my high school and I walked downstairs and underneath the staircase to where my locker was. It was the first day of school. The lockers were bright yellow and I when I dialed my combination, the locker opened up and was empty inside - it was just the facade of a locker. The bell rang though and I had to run off to calculus, which I had for the first two periods of the day. I was the last one to settle in my seat and I was in the front row of tables; the classroom didn't have desks and chairs but rather it had black science lab tables set up in rows. As the teacher, Ms. Cassidy (one of the math teachers I had in real life), began teaching class, I started whispering to the boy sitting next to me about tennis. Ms. Cassidy came over and asked me if tennis had anything to do with calculus. When I admitted that it didn't, she told me to quit whispering and take notes. After second period ended, I stormed back to the center of the school building - which actually was laid out like my high school - to the administration office to ask them why the heck I didn't have a real locker. There were several secretaries in the office, one of which was Boyfriends' aunt (Francine) in real life, and so I went over to hear and asked why my combination didn't work. She told me that the lockers come from San Francisco and sometimes some of the lockers don't get there in time, so I would have to drive to San Francisco to get my locker. I was outraged, and told Francine so; I told her that it wasn't my responsibility, I couldn't believe that the school wouldn't set up my locker, etc. I stormed out of the admin office and back down to my locker and proceeded to try to combination to see if it would turn into a real locker this time. I heard someone laughing so I turned around and it was a kid I'd actually gone to school with in real life (Panos). He was pointing and laughing at me because I couldn't open my locker, so finally I turned to my left and started talking to a girl friend of mine who had just walked up to say hi to me (Ashley A., a girl who in real life was a few years younger than me and friends with my friends; she and I were not friends).

Night 5: I was at the airport waiting to get on a flight but everything was delayed. For some reason, all the planes had to do emergency landings in the water so instead of the passengers getting off the plane and me and the rest of the new passengers getting on, we had to put our luggage onto a raft and row from the docks we were on to the planes, then have a deplaning passenger row back to the dock, and so on. Micki walked by in our full high school softball uniform and she was carrying a softball bag, looking for her parents. She didn't see me, though, so I didn't have to worry about having an awkward conversation with her. Also, Rebecca was there - she either had just gotten off the plane or was taking the same flight as me. All around there was chaos of people wanting to know why the planes had made the emergency landing. Then, Boyfriend's parents appeared a little to my left, and so did my mom. My mom was there to help me get on the plane so she was trying to help with my luggage. As I was walking towards the raft - I guess it was finally my turn - we had to pass Boyfriend's parents, who were standing there expectantly. But my mom just walked by, barely glancing at them, and I didn't introduce them.

Night 6 (last night): I was at my high school again, walking around... I know I had a purpose but I can't remember what it was now. All of a sudden, I was in a hotel with the team I work for because it was their training camp, which for some reason was held out of town. All the players were walking out of their rooms with their bags to go wait in front of the hotel for the coaches to pick them up in vans so that they could go to practice, and of course I forgot something so I had to run back inside (it turned out to be one of my green DC sneakers that I forgot... not a pair, just one). When I opened the door, one of my cats (Cash) was trying to sneak out but I grabbed her and firmly placed her back inside the room, grabbed my shoe and headed back outside. By the time I got back outside, everyone was in the vans and the first van had just started to drive off, so I hopped in the front seat of the second van... which Foody was driving. As we drove off, Foody put the pedal to the metal and everyone kinda of screamed (a happy, crazed scream) as we rounded a curve. I turned around and told the players in our van, "If you've never ridden with Foody before, get ready! She is a crazy driver!!" And Foody just laughed.

A visit with old friends turns disastrous for my mother

I was in a small-ish lobby where I was supposed to meet Q.; I was surprising him by dropping by on my way driving through the state of Texas. I ran into Denny - but it wasn't how he looked in real life - before I saw anyone else I knew, though, so he and I went into a back room, sat on one of those athletic trainer tables and had a long conversation to catch up on what we've been doing with our lives since I left.

I heard voices out in the lobby so I wrapped up the conversation with Denny and went out there to see who it was. Q. was there so I ran up to him and gave him a huge hug, he was totally taken aback and really surprised to see me. Then, around the corner to my left, Wade walked in and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw me. She was shocked to see me and asked what I was doing there; I told her that I'd traveled with a friend to drop her off in San Antonio (no clue who, though) and decided to stop here on my way back to visit with everyone. She was happy to see me but her surprise just made it kind of awkward, so I turned around and Brock and Nowlin were there, oddly. They seemed mad that I was standing next to Q. for whatever reason so I went to go park my car.

The valet told me that he could park my car, no problem. I tipped him, and walked back inside. Denny had come out of the back room and was talking to Q. and Wade, who seemed to have gotten over the surprise and was now happy to see me. She and I caught up for quite some time, then my phone rang. It was my mom wondering where I was, why I wasn't on the road en route to home yet. I told her I'd stopped to see some friends and she got angry because she wanted me to be home immediately. We hung up, then I continued to talk to Wade for a bit before deciding it was time to leave.

I glanced at my watch, saw that it was 8:02 p.m. and sprinted to the valet station outside, but there was a handwritten sign on a piece of neon pink construction paper that said that the valet station closes at 8 p.m. and any cars still parked not only would be there overnight but the owner of cars still parked with them would be charged $80. I freaked out and ran back inside, tried to find someone to see if there was any way that I could get my car - my mother would kill me if I didn't get home, and FAST - but the only people left inside were Wade and Q. They tried to calm me down but they didn't have a solution for getting my car back. Q. pulled me into a hug and told me it would be okay, I could stay with him that night and just tell my mom that I was too exhausted to drive so far to get home and thought that it would be safer if I just stayed where I was for the night. Wade reassured me that this was the best solution.

A new meaning of the word "softball"

I was in a small village with cobblestone roads searching for my coworkers because we were on a work-related retreat and I had to find them for the softball game. I'd designed t-shirt uniforms for us to wear - black with silver or gold writing, I'm not entirely sure - so I stopped in to the store I'd ordered them from to pick them up. The owner of the store showed me one and I told him it looked great and thanked him for his hard work. When I left the shop, I immediately went to the softball field thinking that they were all there; I found them all there (I didn't recognize anyone from real life, though), waiting for me. Somehow I'd gotten my wires crossed and didn't realize that I was supposed to meet them there. Also, somehow they all had the uniform on except for me - I was wearing jeans and a white/navy baseball shirt. I picked up my infielder's glove and ran out to the pitcher's mound, where the umpire and other team's captain were waiting for me. As I jogged to the mound, I realized my glove was so dry that it was cracking; I wondered how that happened, how I allowed that to happen, as the umpire went over the lines, etc. Then the umpire went to drop the softball into my glove and I almost missed it because my glove could barely open, but I caught it and looked at it. The softball was covered in long, white animal fur.

Banana Republic shopping and Addison Montgomery

I was in Banana Republic trying to use a gift card to purchase a bottle of perfume. The bottle was square-shaped and small - it was BR's smallest bottle. It cost $48 dollars and I had two $15 gift cards and one $10 gift card, so all I had to do was give them $8 cash, or so I thought. Apparently, one of the $15 gift cards had expired one day prior to my trip to the mall and I was trying to rope them into letting me use it anyway because I just hadn't had the time to use it before right then. They didn't seem to be budging, though. Boyfriend was there, buying his own bottle of cologne but the smallest size they had for the men's fragrance was larger than the smallest size they had for the women, so I started to make some passive aggressive comments to the cashiers (for some reason two were helping me) and neither of them picked up on it. Nic also mysteriously disappeared.

After I'd finally made my purchase (not sure how it was finally resolved), I walked out of Banana Republic but it was located where the large department stores usually are in the mall - at the very end. The escalator to go to the lower level of the mall was on the right and I saw myself walking towards it by myself. Suddenly, the angle of the dream changed and I was looking through my own eyes into the sea of people walking towards the end of the mall, in the opposite direction in which I was going to be walking after I got off the escalator. Two redheads stuck out from the crowd, they were much, much taller than everyone else. I got really excited and turned around, where my dad suddenly was and said, "Dad! Look! There's Kate Walsh!" I pointed as Kate Walsh and some other redhead (at first I thought was a friend of hers but then I realized there were two Kate Walshes...) walked by the escalator, talking on their cell phones. My dad was too far up the escalator to see them before they passed, though, and so I ran up the downward-moving escalator to tell him about it so I didn't have to yell over the people in between us.

A truly strange visit to my doctor

I had an OB/GYN appointment in midtown Manhattan but it actually was in Astoria and the doctor's office was in the building that WFAN is in. I couldn't find a parking space close to the building so I had to walk a few blocks to get from where I parked to the building. I was walking towards the front door and this really good-looking guy started walking next to me and smiled at me. I smiled back but then I reached the front door and went in, and he kept walking.

I had to walk through this maze of hallways to get to the doctor's office - hers was one of many types of offices in the building - and when I finally got there, the doctor was waiting for me. She was standing in the front of what looked like a cross between a science classroom (not tiered, the seating was flat) and a pharmacy waiting room. There were those huge chalkboard sliders (like the ones in a college science classroom) at the front of the room and every square inch of them was covered with scientific equations; the pharmacy-looking part was towards the back and there were several people waiting for their prescriptions to be filled. For whatever reason, the doctor started to do her checkup and I complied with this, even though there were people in the same room. She had me take off my pants - I kept my underwear and my light blue button down shirt on - and do a series of exercise moves and I distinctly remember looking at the chalkboards and trying to figure out the equations as the appointment went on because I was embarrassed that this had to happen in front of a group of people. She then gave me an ointment similar to IcyHot and told me to put in on my thighs and jog in place. I did that, and then the doctor got called away to see another patient, but I didn't know what to do so I ran after her.

We ran through the maze of hallways and finally came to room at the back of the building which was a coffee shop. There were two girls (one of whom looked like Busy Phillipps) sitting at a high round table next to a spiral staircase that led to lower levels of the building. I heard someone running down the stairs and assumed it was the doctor so I sprinted to the staircase and leaned over the banister to make sure that it was her that I was about to follow. When I confirmed that it was my doctor, I began to descend the staircase when I heard one of the girls say, "Well, another one bites the dust." Her friend said something in response and I got so angry, I stopped to tell them that my disease (?) was a serious disease and that although it's rare for people to survive, I'm going to do whatever it takes to do so and comments like theirs are detrimental to all females (??), etc. They were surprised that I stopped to say that to them but then got all snotty with me, as if I were the one who was being rude, when they were the ones talking about how I was a goner.

It's been quite a while since I remembered any dreams

In the past week, I dreamed two corkers:

1) I was married to Ben Affleck's brother, only it wasn't Casey Affleck; instead, it was a guy who was a little younger than Ben but who looked very much like him. My boyfriend (whose name I either can't remember or wasn't divulged in the dream) and I were going out to dinner with some friends - I think it was a girl friend of mine who also was dating someone quasi-famous - and it was supposed to be just the four of us, but Ben showed up. He pulled me aside and told me how he was so happy that I was keeping his brother out of trouble, that his brother was finally settling down with a great girl like me. He gave me a huge hug and then he and I went over to the table. I think I said something cheesy like, "Look who I found!" and my girl friend and her boyfriend gushed over the fact that BEN AFFLECK was coming to eat with us. My boyfriend gave Ben a brotherly punch in the shoulder as we all sat down to eat.

2) This one had several parts.
a) I was on a mountain bike and I was riding on a slight uphill on a dirt road. I missed where I was supposed to make a right turn so I made a U-turn at the next intersection so that I could go back and be on my way. There were no buildings on either side of the road; it was like an old Texas dirt road with only two other bikers on the road.
b) I was in the backseat of a car and Nic was driving. We were headed somewhere but we took a slightly longer route so that we could look at these gorgeous houses that we along a main road. It kind of reminded me of Montclair, except that these houses were very narrow and had several (three-plus) stories. All of the fronts of the houses were glass so that we could see inside and see how the inhabitants had decorated their homes. There must have been someone else in the car otherwise I would have been in the front passenger seat and would not have had as clear of a view of the houses as I did.
c) I was at a softball field watching a very competitive slow-pitch team play, except that it was more like baseball just in that the pitchers pitched overhand. I was standing along a ballpark-green wooden fence along the first base line in right field. There was a set of bleachers where they normally would be in order for fans to see the game and the bleachers were pretty full of spectators. I distinctly remember seeing the pitcher deliver a pitch and the batter swinging and making solid contact with the softball (even though it was pitched as if it were a baseball), but then my dream cut to the final part, before I had a chance to see what happened next in the game.
d) I was driving an old white two-door car and I was taking Boyfriend's mom somewhere, I think to work. Again, I missed the turn I was supposed to make only this time it was a left turn, so I had to go to the traffic light to make a U-turn. Before I reached the light, though, Boyfriend's mom told me that it was okay to just drop her off on the side of the road, she could cross the street to get to work. I was kind of wary but she insisted, so I pulled over to the side of the road and put my flashers on while she got out of the car and thanked me for the ride. I waited for her to cross halfway and get safely to the median strip - apparently this was a two-lane highway that we were on - before putting my left blinker on and pulling back into traffic. I got into the left lane and all of a sudden this tire-popping sound erupted and a light went on on my dashboard, but since the car wasn't favoring any of the wheels, I knew that I hadn't actually blown a tire. I thought it was strange then that I'd heard the sound of a tire exploding so I looked down at the light on my dashboard and it was a green light in the shape of a tiny island with one palm tree on the right side and a road with a dotted line in the middle marking two lanes coming out the top of the island. The light road was very curvy and tapered, showing that it went off into the dashboard distance. I was definitely concerned so I looked up and lo and behold, there was the rental car dealership - apparently this car that I was driving was a rental - off to the right. So, before I got to the traffic light that I initially was going to U-turn at to drop off Boyfriend's mom at work, I pulled over to the right and turned into the parking lot of the rental car place, which looked suspiciously similar to the Saab dealership that my father goes to in real life.

Very strange amalgation of real life and fiction

I was going to visit Ilana in L.I. because for some reason she had moved back there instead of staying in Manhattan. When I got to her apartment, it was carpeted with that gray carpet that is in a lot of computer labs; her bedroom was at the far end of the apartment and there were a few steps leading into a living room followed by a few steps leading to the foyer. I have the movie camera perspective of Ilana when I rang her doorbell so I saw her get up off of her bed (I think she'd been reading while waiting for me) and as she walked towards the front door, I realized that I had morphed into her and the perspective changed to my eyes, which were formerly Ilana's eyes, so I was looking at the front door. I opened it and looked out to the courtyard that was in the middle of the apartment complex. I lived on the second floor so I had a good view of the barbecue that was going on, so I locked the apartment and went down there, where I met up with a nondescript friend.

At the courtyard barbecue, we climbed up onto the table part of one of those picnic tables that has the benches attached and sat in the shade of a big oak tree chatting with Trace Adkins and his wife.

In the distance I saw two people I thought I recognized so I excused myself from the picnic table conversation and followed after the people - turned out that it was Foody and Marg, although I didn't realize it was Marg until much later in the dream. I thought it was her, but she had on makeup, her hair was styled (although just as short as it is in real life) and she was much shorter than she truly is in reality so I kind of ignored her at first because I was entirely certain it was her. Oddly, it most certainly was Foody in my dream although she was significantly taller in the dream than in real life and she didn't look like an athlete at all. After catching up with Foody for a little bit and repeating how coincidental it was to run into them, I finally looked at Marg and realized it really was her and explained that she looked different and that's why I didn't immediately recognize her. She was wearing a red t-shirt with some sort of sparkly writing on it and sitting on some sort of counter top with her feet dangling and her palms on the edge on her sides with her elbows straight, making it look like she was shrugging. I told her that it was great to see both her and Foody then ran off to find Nicole to tell her what had just happened.