The Time I Attended a Clockwork Mardi Gras

Last night I dreamt that I was in some sort of hyperreality that was like a mixture of the French Quarter of New Orleans and Versailles during a simulacrum of the Rococo period. It was Mardi Gras, and people were dressed up in painted faces and white wigs and elaborate mid-eighteenth-century outfits. I wore a gray dress that looked like something Madame de Pompadour would wear, and my wig was black instead of white. My group were all wearing somber colors, like deep blue, with silver braid.

There was another faction in town which dressed in red and white. A huge red-and-white carriage with red-and-white clockwork footmen (like in "The Girl in the Fireplace") rocked down the narrowish streets of the town to pick up guests for their party at a huge mansion. My group and I retreated down a dark alley to avoid being too close to the carriage. It was time for us to gather at our small celebration, so our leader, a good-looking young man wearing dark blue, dark green, and black, took us down a series of gray stone and taupe wood sidestreets until we came through an archway onto another busy street.

The red coach tore around the corner. A man in red and white and gold jumped out, grabbed me, and threw me inside the carriage. At that point, the scene cut back to the leader of our faction, who was now planning to get some clockwork explosives and sneak into the fancy red and white Mardi Gras ball with them. And then I woke up.

The Time I Was in Building A Seawall: The Musical

Last night I dreamt that I got a job at a camp for older children and teenagers with autism. The point of the camp was to raise the campers' self-esteem by having them contribute to society. They contributed by designing and building a concrete seawall. The details of the construction were very specific, except that I don't know how to describe all of the technical building stuff: first they built a skeleton on the beach made of really big rebars, and then, from large red containers, they poured jointed sections of concrete in wooden molds like people pour sidewalks, except this was vertical but for a slight concave shape that reminded me of the Hoover Dam. The inner parts of the seawall were like the Clackamas Town Center Transit Station. While we supervised the construction, we taught the campers songs and stuff. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the sand was white.

Something happened after that, but I don't remember anymore because I got up late and had to go right to church instead of writing this dream down immediately. Anyway, after the thing I can't remember, I woke up.

The Time I Tried to Get Into German Literature

Last night I dreamt that I was at a bookstore (probably attached to a college, like BYU) looking for a book to read in San Diego. This dark-haired, medium-complexioned, very hyper young man kept following me around the store because he liked me. He was talking nonstop about all sorts of things, trying to hit a subject that would interest me. He never figured out that he didn't interest me, so it was a moot point.

Anyway, this guy wanted to pay for everything I bought at the bookstore, so I started collecting gold earrings and a fancy poster of British royalty to push my tab up. Finally, I came to a desk in the book department run by a tall, large, white-haired German man. The German man asked me about my literary tastes, and we chatted a bit. Hyper guy actually got bored by this and wandered off. Then the German man recommended that I buy a book from a series written by a dead German author. The whole story about the author sounded like Stieg Larsson's, except this author was German. There were a whole bunch of books in a whole bunch of formats, and I really wanted this really large, beautiful hardcover copy that was light green and blue and had the title in shiny silver letters. I want to say the title had the word moonlight in it. (I wish I could remember all the titles—they were probably the key to my mental state or something.)

Then I remembered that the book would be too bulky for the plane. The man suggested that I begin my journey with this author by reading another of the books, which came in a smaller hardcover edition but no paperback edition. In the end, I took the book that occurred in the author's oeuvre just before the one the man wanted me to buy. It came in a used paperback edition that had been used for a class and had a few things highlighted. It was called In My _______. (I can't remember the last word, but it could have been room.)

When I went to pay, my admirer suddenly reappeared by my side demanding to pay for the sundry items I had acquired. However, when the tab rang up, he didn't have enough money and became very embarrassed. I didn't feel sorry for him. And then I woke up.

The Time I Hurredly Jotted Down a Note on My iPod Touch

Passed the Bonneville Dam listening to "He Lays in the Reins". Gray sky. Mist coming off the water falling. Low hanging clouds. Opera part of the song at the right moment.

The Time I Met the New Billionaires Club

Last night I dreamt that my parents owned several houses in their area: their real house, the manufactured home we lived in when I was in high school, and a farmhouse that in the dream I said was built in 1905. The farmhouse was a little rundown, but gorgeous and out in the country. I moved into it. The only problem was that the house was dusty and smelled moldy and it really bothered my allergies. After being there for a few weeks, I was really feeling sick. I told my parents, and they said that we could switch houses.

I couldn't wait anymore, so I ran to my nearest neighbors' house. Their house wasn't very big on the outside, but it looked very nice inside. They had shiny reddish hardwood floors and luxurious countertops. A bunch of other people were at the house. They were having a New Billionaires meeting—everyone there had either recently won a lottery or inherited a lot of money. The people were all really nice, but I felt really out of place and wanted to leave. There was a redheaded woman with a Southern Belle accent in a blue suit. I sneezed, and then I woke up.

The Time A Wheel of Cheese Tried to Take Over the World

Last night I dreamt that a large orange wheel of cheese, kind of like the wheel of cheese in that weird Cheez-It commercial, was the tyrannical leader of these three young men. The cheese told them to do stuff like rob banks and things, but it didn't have a mouth. It had some sort of telepathic communication. Usually I am one of the characters in my dreams, but this time I just sat back and watched it go down like a movie. This particular dream was probably brought on by reading about the Sims 2 Grilled Cheese aspiration in detail right before I went to bed. (The aspiration levels all refer to some type of cheese that I want to eat.) The young men were trying to break into the White House or the Pentagon or something, and then I woke up.

The Time My Cat Was My Boss

Last night my cat slept with me, which is less pleasant during the summer than it is in the winter, but I didn't want to discourage her because it is really nice in the winter when the thermostat goes down to fifty-five. I kept waking up because I was so hot or because one of us had moved a little, and I ended up dreaming that I was at work.

I was a hairdresser, and my cat was the supervisor. She didn't talk, though, she just walked around on the counters knocking over all the bottles of hair product and rubbed our legs when she was hungry. I finally asked one of the other hairdressers why our boss was a cat.

"Well, we can't discriminate against a person with catness," she shrugged. She had used person-first language to describe a cat. It was weird. And then I woke up. Again.