When in doubt, hide in the crisper

Matt and I were driving around downtown Portland at night in a red convertible. We kept hearing gunfire, and instead of putting the top of the car up Matt and I would bend over to avoid the bullets. At some point we knew the gangsters were coming after us. Matt dropped me off at my office and I hid behind the stairwell so no one could see me. Some of the gangsters went into the building and were unable to find me.

When I was sure they were gone I went up the stairs and found a secret passageway, which in the dream was Oregon Children's Museum but was really The Depot in Duluth. I wound along the balconies and passageways, trying to ensure that no one would see me. I concluded that the best place to hide would be in the kitchen.

Hours had passed and more people were filing into the area. Some started to recognize me from TV reports about how I was missing, even though I had artfully wrapped a blue towel around my face. A few were sympathetic to my plight and offered to help me. One person ushered me into the museum's kitchen and told me the perfect place to hide would be the vegetable crisper. He or she removed the contents to give me room, and then arranged bananas, apples and potatoes over me and closed the door.

Diane Arbus

My legs were covered in white fur that pulled off really easily. I yanked out huge swaths of it and discovered my legs were dark purple underneath. Mortified, I vowed never to go that long without shaving again.

***

Matt and I were driving to his dad's house in Iowa. We stopped at a gas station in southern Minnesota. The cashier tried to imply Matt was gay because all he bought was an energy drink and a map of Iowa-- no porn. I overheard another girl there talking to the cashier about her boyfriend's addiction to child porn. She was planning on calling the police to raid him.

A few minutes later we got to a large city that Matt said was Des Moines. I hadn't remembered it being that close to the MN border. He pointed out that the river was low because there had a been a drought. The drought was hurting his family's farm. He pulled off to the side of the road so I could drive. The gas pedal disappeared and was replaced by a foot treadmill, which you had to run on to make the car go anywhere. We slowly trudged up the hill as I attempted to run as fast as I could. When we crested we picked up speed and I started driving like I usually do in dreams: I had no control of the car and we repeatedly came within inches of accidents.

Antebellum awesomeness

My siblings, mom and aunt were traveling in a rickety open-air mini bus up a dirt road in Georgia to the place we'd be staying. My mom and her sister were bickering the whole time. We pulled up to an enormous plantation house that had turrets like a castle. The inside was painted in corals and mint greens, and I thought to myself how ugly I'd consider it if it weren't so old. Mom exclaimed about how absolutely lovely it was-- so masculine. I didn't get it.

We climbed a huge curving staircase to go to our rooms, and I tried to imagine fancy ladies maneuvering up and down it with their hoop skirts. The first room we went into had a pretty boring white lacy bed for my mom and aunt. It had an door leading to the room I would share with my older brother. It had one glorious pink bed and another semi-OK blue bed, and it was clear who would be sleeping where. The room was huge and filled with light. A staircase led up to yet another room, this one festooned with green velour furniture, where my little brother would stay. I explored my room's nooks and crannies, and was over the moon to discover that there were still Scarlett-esque dresses in the closet.

Divas

My boss and I decided that she would have me go to the opera in the morning and write a report about it instead of going into the office. She was planning on seeing the same show that evening. I think it was Fidelio.

I had excellent seats near the front. During the second act, one of the female singers came into the audience and tried to convince me to get up on stage and dance with her. I insisted that I was extremely awkward and would probably fall down but she wouldn't take no for an answer. She pulled me on stage. She took my right hand and pulled me toward her so our fronts were together, and then pulled my backward so our backs were together. It was a very easy move, but I kept losing the rhythm and stumbling.

Up in the control room, one of the divas was watching me and seething because I was "stealing her best move."

The next morning I went to the office to present to my boss my eight-page report. I know I showed it to her but it got lost between all of my various drafts. She got upset with me for showing her anything but the finished product so I rushed back to my desk to go through the numerous papers I had in my arms to try to find it. Right then the office coordinator came in to tell me about some hand modeling jobs she thought I should apply for. I was scared my boss was going to start to yell at me so I ignored her and ran back to my desk. I sifted through mountainous piles of documents and couldn't find my final draft for the life of me. I searched my computer for "opera" but couldn't find anything there. I couldn't remember if I'd written it at home or at work.

The office coordinator interrupted me again to ask me to be a foster parent to a girl who had just wandered into our waiting room. She had her face painted like a cat. I said that I guessed I could while I continued to frantically sift through papers. Before we could introduce ourselves to each other she left.

Nostalgia

I was on campus riding a bike that had special tracking powers. You could put in the four digit code of the building you wanted to go to and it would automatically steer you there. I put in the same code I saw someone else use and took off. I attempted to steer against its intended path but found it impossible. I was riding on the sidewalk, and I wondered if I was going to get in trouble for not riding it in the bike lane instead.

I ended up at the Daily. I thought maybe I should have called before coming, but I had intended to visit anyway so I thought now was a good a time as ever. A female reporter was having trouble with an interview she'd done with Drew Barrymore. She had done the interview via email, which I frowned upon. She wanted to know if she should just do straight Q-and-A or try to weave in some information about Drew's travels. I recommended the latter. I took a look at the copy and was horrified to see that the reporter kept exclaiming, "OH, BARRY!!!!!!!!!!!" after nearly everything Drew said. So unprofessional.

I went downstairs to say hi to Vadim. He asked my opinion on something and it felt good to know that my opinion still had value there.

An evening with Parse

I was in a gas station. We set up chairs to watch the TV, which had groups of scantily clad female dancers about to play football. Rachel Maddow was the attendant there. I was helping her set up, and she asked me if I ever listened to her radio show (which she was about to do live from the gas station). I told that honestly, I hadn't, but that I watched her video podcast every day. She was upset that I didn't listen to the radio show, so to butter her up I told her my favorite part of her TV show was when she interviewed people who didn't know what they were talking about and she hit them back with, "What about this? What about this???" She looked like she had just come from taping her show-- she had a lot of make up on.

I was settling into my chair, ready to watch the football game when Jake P. walked into the store. I was so excited to see him and rushed up to him to give him a hug. We left the gas station together and went walking along a long hallway. We turned into a room that was usually used by a bear trapper. I busied myself sewing a shirt more securely to a giant stuffed bear while Jake slept. The trapper's alarm clock awoke him with Israeli music. We both jumped up and started doing Israeli dancing around the room.

He peeked out the door to ascertain no one was coming and then ran across the hallway/road to a tex-mex restauarant. There were a lot of chiles roasting on a huge grill in the front. Jake decided he was going to try to work there. He started filling out their application while I inspected their ready-made sandwiches. Some of them, like the roast beef and horseradish, were priced at $17. Others, like the Oregon Special, were priced at $4. I opted for the latter.

Home invasion and boss evasion

I was in the house of a family I used to babysit for, except with a wider staircase, and it was my house. I was there with two siblings. A man and later a woman repeatedly tried to get up the stairs, evidently to murder us, and we had to try to fight them back. I flipped the woman over the railing.

***

I knelt on my bed facing the headboard and started taking a shower with a nearby hose. "This is weird," I thought to myself. "Do I always do this? Don't I get the bed really wet? Won't Matt get mad at me?" I got dressed and drove to the mall. It was 8 in the morning but it was bustling. I made my way over to Macy's, where I wanted to look at some dresses. First I had to wander through the kids' floor, where the cashiers were dressed as if they worked at Wal-Mart. Disgusted, I gave up and went back to the car. I parked it several blocks away from the apartment and called my boss as I walked home. I told her I was too sick to come into work-- I had a sore throat, chills, fever and body aches. She asked why there was so much traffic in the background. I lied and told her I had just been to the store to pick up medication.