more celebrity appearances

Well. I'm tempted to restate my lack of real interest in celebrities, but since they keep showing up, I guess it would sound like a case of "doth protest too much". Here are the latest two cameo appearances.

The other night I dreamed that I was transitioning to a group living arrangement (of course). I suppose I was in school, because it was rather dorm-like, but I don't remember the details. I was supposed to be sharing accommodations with Chloe Sevigny, which startled me a little--didn't she have enough money to live in a place of her own? After my initial surprise, I thought she might be an interesting roommate. She seemed interesting, nice enough, and I figured she would probably have interesting taste and introduce me to interesting people. Being an introvert who has a hard time meeting people, the idea of a built-in source of acquaintances appealed to me.

I was still in the process of beginning to move my possessions in when Chloe presented me with an itemized rundown of all the food that she estimated I'd consumed or would consume within a certain time period. This included groceries and eating out, and I was floored by her attention to detail. It was all listed by item, estimated serving size, and price--including estimated tax. The estimated-tax part rankled me a little, and I started to think that maybe her financial fastidiousness was going to be a pain.

++++++++++++++++++

I'm not completely sure who last night's cameo was. It was either Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, or a hybrid thereof. My husband and I were in the process of establishing ourselves in yet another group-living arrangement* (sharing a house, I think; we had our own space, at least, but it was within a larger dwelling). We had pretty much settled in, and our dogs--our real-life Doberman and a dream German Shepherd--had too, making themselves comfortable on a top bunk that our Doberman would never be able to jump up on. Despite some climate-control issues (no heat?), it was a fairly comfortable arrangement, and we took a break with a movie.

The movie was some kind of comedy featuring a gone-to-seed boys' band. They were singing a semi-choreographed song in which they wandered around a vacant lot. The lyrics included something about "until my hips get soft", which puzzled me--I wasn't sure if it was meant to be a sexy double-entendre or a wry commentary on their age (they were all 40-/50-something). They were dressed in either jeans/black leather getups or track suit/gold jewelry ensembles, and the Ben Stiller/ Adam Sandler hybrid sported a spectacularly ugly hairdo: slightly bleached (orangey) dark hair on top, curly but brushed out to fluffiness, and a darker, gelled longer layer (mulletlike but equally long all around) consisting of tiny, bouncy little curls. I was transfixed by its ugliness.



*WHAT is UP with this? What unconscious fixation keeps making me dream about group living arrangements? Am I going to have to join a kibbutz to exorcise this?

Randomness

i don't know why but i haven't been able to really remember most of my dreams in a very long time.  these probably aren't worth mentioning but i'm going to anyways...

i had gone to the doctor for some reason, i guess i must've had some problems walking or something.  the doctor cut into my heel and pulled out a comb!  this procedure didn't seem to be in a hospital, it was all done in his office.  i remember being quite surprised and apparently didn't realize there was a comb stuck in my foot.  some time passed in the dream and i don't really know what happened, i was just very aware that some other things had occured that i wasn't consciously recollecting.  the next thing i remember is walking along and thinking i needed to fix my hair.  evidently, the doctor didn't stitch up my foot where he'd cut it because i stopped and took off my shoe.  i then reached in and pulled the comb out of my heel and combed my hair.  when i was done, i stuck it back in my foot, put on my shoe and went about my merry way.  the oddest part of this whole dream is that the comb was never bloody or anything. 

*****

in real life, i volunteer at a place that hands out food to the poor and homeless once a week.  i dreamed that i was working there and had cut my pinky finger.  it appeared to be a very deep cut but didn't seem to hurt.  i went to one of the ladies that works there and asked for a band-aid.  i showed her my cut and instead of being concerned, she told me where to find the band-aids and stressed very strongly that i needed to use a "size appropriate band-aid."  since the cut was small, she wanted me to use only a small band-aid.  another worker came into the room just as i was finishing up putting on the band-aid and she showed me she'd just cut herself too.  her cut was small and she used a rather large band-aid to cover it, much larger than she needed.  i wondered why it was ok for her to use a large one but i was instructed to use a small one.

weird miscellany and zombie shooters

I had the weirdest and wildest dreams last night, but I won't be able to do them justice, partly because my memory is a little hazy. Of course there was a group trip, a rather epic one involving travel on a giant bus with my mother and various random people from my past. I tried to find a seat, but each option presented problems. There was a very back row facing backward, which I thought would be okay although I don't like facing backward in a vehicle. But when I tried to sit down I discovered why the seats were empty: it really only worked if you hunched over or lay down across several seats, because of the combination of window and ceiling heights. Then my mother pointed out that there was a row of seats running up and down the left/driver's side, facing out sideways. I didn't like that option either because I thought it was dangerous. I was worried about the lack of seatbelts and what would happen in the event of a side collision*.

I finally sat down (in a rear-facing seat, but in the middle of the bus) next to a guy with a baby. The guy looked vaguely like Sean Bean, and I didn't really interact with him because I was distracted by the baby, who was dangling in front of me without any apparent support (although this didn't seem odd). Acting on reflex, I took the baby and set him on my lap, at which point I realized that he was actually a small freckled boy, maybe 6 or so**. I started talking to him rather animatedly, which surprised me since I'm not normally one of those people who makes over small children (not that I have anything against them, I'm just not the one who runs over and starts talking baby talk to them).

I'm not sure if this was the trip destination, but the next thing I remember I was at a house on a very steep wooded hillside. This was surely inspired by watching several historical British dramas recently featuring those long-term (by modern standards) visits in which a group of random highbrow people would descend on a manor house. There were a lot of people around, a few of whom I knew but most of whom I didn't, and I was trying to navigate the bathroom-use system because I wanted to take a shower.

I had laid claim to a bathroom (one of a pair in an odd layout: they were on a stair landing near the entrance, and had white louvered Western Saloon type doors) and was just about ready to take a shower. I don't remember all the details, but the owner of the house (who I think was the Sean Bean lookalike from the bus) arrived and made it clear that his routine was to use this bathroom at this exact time for his ablutions. So I apologized, gathered up my stuff, and went to wait outside.

I don't know if I ever got my shower, because the next thing I can remember was being outside. I realized that something odd was going on, but it took me a while to grasp the basics (I never did understand the details). In a nutshell, there was a shootout between some people, at least one of whom was a doppelganger of the host. This doppelganger had been activated by some action or event, but was apparently a chronic presence who appeared every so often--locked in semi-permanent conflict with the host.

The most fantastical moment involved a zombie-like young man propped up against the exterior wall. He had appeared to be dead, actually nailed to the wall by a gunshot. It became clear, though, that this was just a disguise to hide in plain sight--as the doppelganger (or maybe the host, I couldn't straighten out their identities) rounded the corner, the young man practically exploded from his position flat against the wall, shooting the doppelganger/host. I finally realized that this was a dangerous situation, and I started running/rolling down the hill. I'm not sure how I managed to avoid all the huge conifers, but the pine needles made a forgiving surface on which to roll, and when I had gotten to the bottom of the rather deep ravine I looked around and appreciated how beautiful it was, even though I didn't know how I was going to get out of there.

At some point a couple from my parents' church made a cameo appearance. In real life, this man has very straight, wiry hair that grows straight out from his head in all directions, and he favors a buzz cut of varying length. In the dream, he had curled his hair in a foppish late-18th-century/early 19th-century style***, and had caused some kind of unnamed scandal of medium-level seriousness. In real life, his wife has a rather old-fashioned haircut styled in a way that might be described as marcelled. In the dream, my sister informed me that he shared her husband's hair woes and that was why she always wore it quite short and curled in a standard "old lady" helmet style.



*I don't want to delve too deeply into this recent dream concern for vehicular safety.
**Nor am I going to meditate on the recurring theme of small boys.
***Thank you again, British historical dramas.

Bits and Pieces

I haven't remembered any full dreams lately, just bits and pieces. 

I dreamed about this guy with spiked hair and he was clean shaven. Later on in the dream, his hair was long and straight but he had what looked like dreadlocks hanging down from his mustache. It sounds pretty gross but in the dream, I thought it looked pretty cool.

***

I was blogging and noticed that I had 9 unmoderated comments.  For some reason, Blogger no longer sent comments to your email so I had to go to the website to read them.  Blogger had changed things around quite a bit and I wasn't familiar with how to navigate through the website.  I clicked on the link I thought would allow me to view and approve the comments but it just took me to another screen with yet another link.  I clicked on that link and it took me to a third page with another link.  I clicked on that and it took me back to the first page.  I kept going through the same three pages repeatedly but I couldn't ever seem to get to the comments moderation page.  I eventually became frustrated and gave up.

***

I think I was volunteering at an old folks home.  I'm not sure what my duties were there specifically but I witnessed this sad event. 

There was an old man and an old woman sitting in chairs across the room from one another.  The old man sat on the edge of his seat leaning forward, and the old woman did too.  The man asked the woman to marry him.  She excitedly said yes and the man got up and walked over to the woman.  They embraced for a moment and may have even shared a kiss.  I don't really remember there being a ring given.  The woman's chair suddenly turned into a small sofa with just enough room for the two of them to sit on.  They sat together holding hands.  Then man put his head on her shoulder.  I thought at first it was a sweet gesture of his affection towards her.  I seemingly got distracted by something and looked away for several minutes.  When I turned back to the senior couple, I realized the man was dead. 

Mascara

I was supposed to go somewhere--breakfast, I think--with a cute boy, but I wasn't quite ready, so we came back to my place so that I could freshen up. I was just going to put on some mascara, but for some reason it ended up taking me forever. I felt awful, because not only was I making us late, I has lost my sort of fresh-faced charm, both by appearing to be super high-maintenance by spending so long on my makeup, and for actually putting on too much. I knew I had disappointed him and felt like a total failure.

Unrelatedly, in the dream I had straight, dark brown hair that reached to my shoulders, and longish bangs. In real life, my hair is much shorter, curlier, and multicolored.

ugh

I seem to either be only having unpleasant dreams lately or only remembering the unpleasant parts. Last night I dreamed that I was driving somewhere on an important work-related errand. I was coming up to a place where the two lanes merged, with concrete barriers on each side, and I was behind one of those large Old People cars, driven by a man in his late 60s or early 70s, accompanied by his wife and a somewhat younger woman. I was in a hurry and supposing that they were driving at around the speed limit, but it turned out that they were going about 10 mph. As I approached the spot where the lane ended, I realized that my speed/distance calculations had been way off. They were going so slow that I slid into both their car (on the left) and the concrete wall (on the right). It was a terrible, slow-motion, sinking feeling.

Of course we all got out of the cars, and the guy was furious. He was yelling and going on and on about what an awful person I was, what a reckless, selfish driver, etc., and he of course went on to some blanket indictments of almost all drivers (apparently everyone who dared hope to drive over 10 mph). Of course I felt both terrible and stupid about the accident, but got more irritated as he kept on railing. His wife seemed to share his opinion, although she didn't really vocalize, but the younger woman (sister-in-law was my impression) was more sympathetic.

I don't know how the whole thing played out, but somehow the whole driver's side door had come off of my car. I was also stressed about not getting whatever the work-related task was done, stressed about some wardrobe-related issue (I think I had been intending to make a critical outfit change while running the errand). To top things off, as the guy was yelling and waving his arms I realized that I had recently [in the dream] rear-ended someone. The whole thing was extremely unpleasant and insecurity-inducing.

Then, while mulling that over this morning, I remembered an unpleasant dream from last week. I don't remember what was going on, but I was in some social setting when I suddenly realized that my neck was covered with 1/2-inch to 1-inch hair! It was light blond, but that didn't help much. I was mortified, wondering how long I had been hairy-necked without noticing, and mortified when I realized that I was out in public with no good way of getting rid of the hair.

Snippets

This morning I have a nasty cold--curse distance-run-induced immune-drop, coupled with sleeping only on planes/in airports the next day! Anyway, I ended up sleeping about 11 hours last night, and here are a few of the fragments of dreams I remember:

• I was at the beach with my nuclear family. I had a bunch of stuff on the sand by the shore, including a rolling suitcase, and as the tide came in, my stuff started to get wet. My sister and I went to clean up and change our clothes. There was a little shower up from the water; I remember thinking of it as a "freshwater" shower. We walked down a long hallway to the bathroom, where I waited for her while she got ready.
• At some point, my brother came back down the long hallway, with a new haircut. It was pretty strange--kind of like what you might get if you crossed maybe 90s-era Elton John with Edward the Vampire--but I thought it was cute. I asked who had done it, and he said "Guess." I realized that my sister must have cut it for him in the bathroom. He wasn't exactly thrilled with it, but it had a lot of product in it, so I encouraged him that it would all work out and be attractive.
• I went to my friends' house, and when I got there she was trying to get the baby (much smaller than she is in real life) to sleep. She motioned for me to be quiet and said that she needed me to help, and that I should sit down on the couch. I did, and she put the nearly-sleeping baby into my arms, where she did fall asleep.
• I was online, looking at some sort of strange uber-Facebook/Myspace/iGoogle/blog/chat thing. I was surfing through people's very elaborate, visually overstimulating pages, and realized that my ex-boyfriend was online, too. I could tell this by posts he'd made in the past few minutes, or by the stat counter on my blog, or by comments he'd left on other people's walls. I was online, too, so he could see that. I was thinking about how I maybe felt ready to talk to him again, though I wasn't sure I wanted to take the initiative. I just wanted him to contact me. Then I heard him say, over some strange voice-chat thing, my name, and something to the effect that he knew I was online. I woke up before I had fully decided whether or not I wanted to talk to him.
  

A Rough Transcript

When I woke up this morning, I tried to describe last night's dreams to David. It went something like this:

We were being chased by someone like the Dollhouse people, because I had helped free some of the other people and I had pulled my own Matrix jack-thing out of the back of my head, but had been faking it. They discovered that I didn't have it, and I ran away and they started chasing us. You and I went to the Riverview to hide and watch a movie. (David: "Hiding and watching a movie sounds like a great idea!")

And there were zombies at some point. (David: "Dreams are always better with zombies.")

...And... I was going to get married! (David: "Hmmmmm.") But to a girl. The wedding was going to be in three weeks, and we were experimenting with how my hair was going to look. It was going to look pretty awesome, actually. But I was already thinking, "Okay, I can just go ahead with this, because clearly I've thought out this decision, and it will probably be fine. And divorce is not that big a deal, anyway, if it doesn't work out. Or I could call the whole thing off... I still have three weeks..."

mafia!

Last night's dream was the scariest in recent memory. Somehow my husband and I had gotten embroiled in the Mafia. I don't know how it happened, but we had been roped into helping them safeguard a huge amount of money. The money was stuffed in one of those bank envelopes* and put into a safe deposit box in a very fancy little bank, and we had the combination.

There were a lot of complicated details involved in the deal, but it was coming to a close and it was time for them to retrieve their money. I had been supposing that our involvement with them would end at the time they took the money away, but it was slowly dawning on me that we were in a very dangerous situation: we knew what they had done, and it wouldn't be wise of them to leave us around on blind trust that we wouldn't spill it to anyone.

The main three or so guys showed up at our house (a second-story apartment) with wives, children and aged relatives in tow. They were all milling around, the guys with gigantic firearms, and it seemed like the big crowd was a show of force. One of the Big Shots gestured to me and said that his wife was now going to give me instructions on how they were going to retrieve the money. She was a nondescript, skinny, washed-out blond with messy shoulder-length hair** and an air of resignation--like she might once have objected to all this mafia stuff but had become hardened over the years and was now not at all likely to help me get out of the almost-inevitable rubbing-out. She gave me a rundown of the procedures and asked me for the combination for the deposit box. I thought desperately, "Hey! I'll give them a made-up code and then we can go get the money for ourselves and run off with it." Then I realized that 1) the minute I had that thought, I simultaneously forgot the actual code; 2) she probably was asking me as a test--they couldn't possibly have been so stupid as to not take note themselves of the code; 3) my "forgetting" the code was going to look really suspicious. I recited a number that sounded familiar, but I said that I wasn't sure I was remembering it right. To try to look cooperative I said, "What happens if it's not right? You'll still be able to get it from the bank, right? Because I'm sorry, I'm really not sure if I'm remembering it right, and I can't find the paper I wrote it on." She just gave me an inscrutable look, which freaked me out even more.

The wife went off somewhere else, and the three or four Main Men lined up in a line in our dining room. They raised their huge machine guns toward the ceiling, and everyone reacted in a way that indicated that this was a traditional mafia way of celebrating the clenching of a deal. They fired several rounds into the ceiling, which I could see really made my husband mad (up until this, he had been somewhat excited about working with the mafia and impressed with their Coolness, which annoyed me because he was being juvenile and foolish; now I could see him mentally calculating the cost of replacing the drywall).

After that the extended family members started leaving. I saw the wife who had given me the instructions, and her hair had changed from messy, youngish and unintimidating to a frosted, stiff helmet. I thought that didn't bode well for our survival and that it was symbolic of a hardening of her attitude [for some reason I was still hoping that she might be the key, maybe convincing her husband to let us go].

The emptier the house got, the more freaked-out I was, because the main mafiosi were still hanging around in the dining room, glowering and posturing with their guns. There were still some scattered relatives around, and I realized that when they were gone the mafiosi were going to rub us out in a hail of gunfire. I briefly thought about trying to hide in the oven, in case the metal walls would be protective, but that was hardly the solution since they were practically in the kitchen [and for numerous other reasons that didn't occur to my dream incarnation; the only other objection I had to the oven idea was that the bullets would make shrapnel of the metal and the shrapnel would kill me if the bullets didn't].

My husband had disappeared into the bathroom just after the ceiling-strafing ceremony, and I went and knocked on the door. It seemed like he was either in the shower or getting ready to take a shower, and he didn't want to let me in. I persevered and opened the door a crack to see him dancing exuberantly and without a care in the world, in a pair of "eurotrash"-y jeans that he had gotten from the mafia guys, apparently having gotten over his anger about the bullet-riddled ceiling. I was really annoyed, and desperate to communicate the urgency of the situation. I said, "They're going to kill us!"***

He was pretty unimpressed. I tried to go very quickly through the whole scenario so he would see that the only logical outcome was that we were going to die if we didn't leave right now. I knew we didn't have much time, but saw that he was determined to keep dancing in the bathroom and then take a shower. I finally said I was going to try to get away, adding "I'm so scared I want to take a gun". I hoped that would finally alert him to the danger, since he knows I hate guns and wouldn't want to carry one unless it was really necessary. He seemed excited that I was taking an interest in weaponry and said, "Oh, in that case take the pistol. That's the best option for you." [Apparently we had a stash of guns in our freezer.]

I woke up around then, completely freaked out and also feeling guilty that I was going to bail out and leave him there to face an almost certain rubbing-out at the hands of the mafia guys.

*How can it have been that much if it fit in that small envelope? I'm disappointed in your reasoning process, subconscious!
**Interesting detail: all of the mafia women had the same shade of washed-out blond hair.
***Actually, I remember it was a mixture of French and English: "Ils vont nous SHOOT!" I think I was thinking they wouldn't understand French--so why did I say "shoot", the most tipping-off word of the sentence, in English?

[Once again, here I am using all the unsavory labels.]

miscellaneous husband dreams

I dreamed I was on some kind of group outing, and the female part of the group was supposed to all be getting haircuts. I was waiting around for mine when my phone rang. It was my husband, and he sounded extremely stressed and not like himself. After some digging to find out what was wrong, he said that he had gotten into an altercation with someone at work and ended up punching the guy. I was somewhat relieved, because he sounded so upset I was afraid it would be something much worse.

He was freaking out about losing his job and maybe even going to jail over this [apparently somewhat-merited] punch, but I was pretty calm about it. I tried to remind him that he had a very good record at work, that there had been witnesses to the situation, and that probably they would just discipline him somehow instead of firing him. I figured that we were going to have to hire a lawyer, though, and that we were probably in for a couple of years of expense and complications before the whole thing got ironed out.

Also on the subject of husband-related dreams, I dreamed the other night that he offered our larger, unrulier dog to my sister (who is not in the market for such a high-maintenance beast). She was interested, but then he started to have second thoughts and specified that he only wanted her to take the dog for a couple of years--until he [the dog] calmed down and got older and easier to deal with, basically. I told him that he couldn't just try to pawn his dog off on someone for his unruly years and want him back when he was better-behaved.

Chocolate

I was in a cafe somewhere in the gray Northwest, near the Sound. I had been sitting at the bar, with my book, and had gone to an automated kiosk to buy a ferry ticket. I suddenly realized I didn't have my wallet, although I'm not sure in retrospect how I was able to buy the ticket without it. I rushed back to the cafe, and my wallet was sitting right there on the bar, open, but not missing anything. There was a fragment of mirror there, and I realized that the mirror in my wallet had broken (although in real life, it doesn't have a mirror).

I don't remember if my dad came in after I had arrived, or whether he'd appeared while I had been gone. In any case, it was unmistakably my dad, but he looked extremely young, with unlined skin, a halo of wavy light brown hair, and huge eyes with dark eyelashes. He looked sort of like he did in the pictures I'd been looking at in my grandma's photo albums, and also kind of like my brother.

He talked to me animatedly and enthusiastically, as though he was really trying hard to communicate some point, but I couldn't understand what he was telling me. I do remember him saying that he had accidentally eaten "about six hundred dollars' worth" of chocolate; apparently the tiny candy covered gourmet chocolates were $20 (or was it $2?) per ounce. He showed me a few in a little box, but they had somehow been priced in bulk instead of by the box.

He thought this was kind of funny. Eating that much chocolate is totally something my dad would do; paying that much for it is not.

the haircutting copier repairman

I dreamed last night that I was very busy at work (as I actually am) and that I needed to get a haircut (which I actually do). Since I didn't have time to leave work during the day to get a haircut, I made an appointment for a house-call haircut in the evening. Apparently the guy who fixes our constantly-breaking-down printer at work also cut hair on the side! So I made an appointment, he came and cut my hair (we were living in a high-rise apartment building, weirdly), and he had just finished with the haircut when my husband came home. My husband started throwing a huge fit about this strange man being in his house and my having made this after-hours haircut appointment without letting him know. It was understandable that he not be completely happy about it, I suppose, but his fit-throwing was really out of proportion to the situation. The poor copier repairman/hairstylist (who, by the way, is not AT ALL "my type", although I couldn't seem to convince my husband of this) was pretty disconcerted and, instead of staying to eat, as we had talked about, I think he hightailed it out of there. Weird. I don't even think I got a chance to look at my hair and see how the new haircut looked.

Primping Ain't Easy

I was trying to go on the date before I had to meet with friends for a study session. I called one friend - had her on speakerphone trying to get the time we were meeting to study. She went into this long explanation about why we had to start at a certain time. I was half-listening to her while standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom doing my hair for the date (my hair was long and relaxed). I twisted the back of my hair into a French roll using Bobby pins to secure it down. The front part of my hair I swept up into a ponytail, twisted the hair to meet the roll in the back, then secured it with Bobby pins. I didn't like how the the front of my hair looked, so I took the Bobby pins out, redid the twist, and then secured it again with the pins. Just as I finished my date, Michael (never seen him before in real life), came into the bathroom to get me. I took his hand and led him toward the front door. I thought about telling my mother where I was going, but then realized I was an adult and didn't need to say anything. We walked out the front door, but I had trouble closing the screen door behind me.

Driving, mountains, hairspray

I was in the car with my parents, and we were driving by what I recognized as Mount Rainier. It was much smaller, though, and I could see a path leading up the side of it with people climbing. It was sunny outside, but the summit of the mountain was shrouded in clouds. My dad was talking about how it was his mountain and he had a favorite special spot, and how he loved climbing it. But we passed two exits and didn't stop; I think it had something to do with the fact that although it was a nice day, it would be cold and cloudy at the top.

We continued up a winding road that is a recurring theme in my dreams. There were concrete barriers along the side, and in addition to some nicely done graffiti, there were huge oil paintings hanging, like a gallery. They weren't all that great, but they also weren't terrible, and I wondered if people ever just took them.

We got to a hotel, and in the bathroom I looked at my hair. It was very short, somewhat straighter, and kind of awesome. My red streak was particularly prominent. My mom had left some hairspray on the counter, which had an aerosol nozzle attached to kind of a structured mylar bag. I used some to preserve my totally awesome hair day.

I left the bathroom and found a birthday present my brother's roommate had sent to me--sort of a homemade scrapbook. I realized that she was quite poor, and that this was a thoughtful gift.

Hair Dye

I dreamed that I had dyed/bleached my hair a white-blond color. I had also cut it shorter, in a cute, stylish way. In the dream, the bleached hair looked really neat and it contrasted well with my darker eyebrows/eyelashes. I kept running my fingers through it and noticing how soft and tousled it was.

Slimed

I was in the bathroom of my childhood home, getting ready for school. I had thick, straight, dark hair, and it looked great! The options all seemed good as I was playing with it and pulling it up. At one point, I had this awesome whitish blond streak that gave a really interesting dimension to twisted styles. Then, for some reason, I ran my wet fingers through my hair, and it started to curl up a little bit and get distinctly less cool.

And THEN I realized I apparently had some sort of terrible cold. I blew my nose and there was all sorts of green snot. And then it started coming from my mouth, too, filling it up, and I had to spit so that I could breathe. This was definitely one of the grossest dreams I've ever had.

Hair

I was styling my hair in the mirror. It was somewhat longer than it is in real life, but approximately the same color--except for the streaks. I had a big chunk of bright fuchsia where my natural red streak is, and as I continued to play with my hair, a purple chunk appeared, too. I had this cool overlapping effect going, kind of messy and very hip. But as I messed with it, it suddenly seemed to have too much product in it and just to look greasy and weird. I sort of slunk out of the bathroom hoping my family wouldn't think it was too strange.

Teaching

For some reason, Ellen and I were sleeping by the side of the road in a city. There were beds there, and even a toilet in the middle of nowhere--which I used, right out in the open, with a sense of something being slightly out of place, but hardly even of shyness.

Later, I was in the TA office at school, where I saw one of my friends with huge dark rings under her eyes. Instead of asking her if she was okay, I asked her if there was anything I could do to help her. She brightened up, and said that actually I could help cut out all of these little figures out of colored paper. But as I was about to help her, I got a call from one of my students. In real life, this student's name is Evin, and I think she's a girl, but in the dream it was a boy. Partly due to the connection, and partly due to his circuitousness, I couldn't figure out what he wanted from me. I kept giving him generic tips about being a better student and trying to reassure him, but I wasn't sure it was working.

When I hung up with him, another student wanted to talk to me. She had very curly hair and skin that actually looked like porcelain. I couldn't remember her name, but I glanced at her paper, and said, "Do you go by Lyligia?" She did. I had apparently given her a C+ on this paper, and she couldn't figure out why, because she'd worked so hard and "shared some really meaningful things." So I looked at the paper, and remembered that although she had presented some very personal details, the essay overall was fragmented and non-cohesive. "And how long is it?" I asked. "Seven pages, single spaced," she answered. "The assignment was for three pages, double-spaced," I responded, "so this doesn't fulfill the assignment requirements."

I guess I was dreaming about grading since I've so far managed to do so little in my waking life. Sigh.

Truckin'

I got back to my car after doing something, and it wouldn't start. I rolled down the hill I'd parked on in the alley, but because it was an automatic I couldn't compression start it, and came to a stop by a gas station. I figured I either needed a jump start or some gas, so I went in to the office to check about a jump first.

The man who came out to help me was named Stovlos, and he was old and short and round, with an accent. He went right to work on my car, which at some point became a huge U-Haul truck. He and his crew of young helpers were taking things apart and welding other things on while I wandered around the gas station.

At one point, there was a huge, maybe 10-foot high pile of pale tan teddy bears, with the movable joints, and all of these young people in bright green and red jackets (embroidered, I think, with the words Happy Holidays). Then the kids carted off the teddies before I could get a picture on my camera phone. But then the kids were walking through these tents, perusing tables like at a bazaar. I saw one pick up a paintbrush, and another pick up a blank wooden palette. I think they were supposed to be some sort of elves!

There was a display of sunglasses, and I tried on a huge pair with transparent pink frames, the lenses dark at the top and pink at the bottom. People who walked by laughed at (with) me. I looked in the mirror, and they were terrible! They made me look all squinchy. I was putting back a second pair when one of the young workers, the dark-haired one, came up to me, and I leaned back against him. He put his arm around my waist, and I let him walk with me until he went for the hem of my shirt, at which point I shook him off and went back to the truck.

Back at the truck, things were really apart, and I was nervous. It looked like they had cut some sort of hole in the ceiling in back--I guess to get to the attic! But as I was standing there, they managed to start the truck up. So we all got in; I think we were going to get some lunch and/or return the trailer. I figured I would treat since they had all worked so hard. Stovlos was driving, and I was sitting in the back of the truck with the blond helper, who wasn't as attractive as the dark-haired one, but was friendly in a shy way. I guess Stovlos couldn't turn the truck around, because he decided to back out of the alley, at top speed. The blond guy and I had windows we could look out of, and we seemed to be the only ones who could really see what was going on. At the end of the alley, before we hit the road, were gigantic--20 foot--asphalt hills and valleys, like a roller coaster. Stovlos hit them at high speed, and I was sure we were going to get high-centered or otherwise stuck, and screamed the whole time. Until we hit the road, and were fine. I looked over and the blond boy had tears in his eyes, so I hugged him and put my head on his shoulder and he reached up and played with my hair.

Once we hit the road, Stovlos kept driving backward, although it was easier on a smooth surface. Looking out the windows, we saw dolphins jumping out of the water! I think we were driving by Lake Michigan, so I don't know how there were dolphins there, but there were. We seemed to be heading north, but I had no idea where we were going or why, and decided just to go with it. I asked what time it was, and the blond guy told me it was 8:30. "Eight thirty a.m.?" I asked incredulously. "Cross my heart!" he responded, and I think he was actually serious. It was dusky outside, and I couldn't figure that one out. As we drove through the city, outside eateries were packed with people.

We finally stopped so that Stovlos could drive forward instead of backward. He came up to where the blond and I were sitting, which was then the front, and I scooted into the middle so that he could drive. He immediately started going, and nearly got us squashed between two lanes of traffic, as the right lane was ending. "The light was blue when I started," he said by way of explanation.

My exams start today at 10:00, and for an anxiety dream, this one wasn't actually so bad!

Lindsay Lohan

I don't think I could pick Lindsay Lohan out of a line-up, but I know that the GFY Girls don't like her leggings, and that yesterday I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt bearing her mug shot. Actually, I just looked at GFY's Lohan archives, and she looks nothing like she did in my dream.

In my dream she was gorgeous: very tall, and glowingly tan, with very long, honey blonde hair with straight bangs. Her hair came down to about her elbows, and I think she may have been wearing it instead of a shirt, for some acting role, and that the boys loved that.

And then somehow we ended up sharing the same bed. I'm still not sure why, except that I think we were sleeping over at a mutual friend's house.

Anyway, the next day, her security was back in force and we couldn't be seen next to each other. I was trying to take a picture of a display of teddy bears, and had my camera up and waiting. She and her man-friend came by to look, and security made me put my camera down in case I might take a picture of her.

I was telling my family about it later, how ironic it was that we could sleep in the same bed but then I couldn't take pictures of her. I was thinking about blogging about it, but then realized that I could be found out, and that maybe that wasn't a good idea.

Later I tried to buy tickets to a double-feature at the movie theater. They were $9, and I got a bill back from my 10, but the counter person took forever trying to explain to me how the double-feature tickets worked, and I don't think I ever actually got it. I went to another counter, where somehow we ended up looking at pictures on my laptop. There was one shot of tall trees in the snow, with the sun shining through a few falling flakes, and it was beautiful and made me want to cry, missing that scene.