The Time I Met My Soulmate on a Plane and Ran from Generic Nefarious Characters

Last night I dreamt that I was flying somewhere on a plane. I sat next to this hot guy who I swear I saw on TV in real life, and we really hit it off. Next we met on our return flight. (I don't remember as much about the beginning of the dream.) Something happened, and we decided not to get back on the plane after a layover. We were running, running, running through the airport, which looked more like a Tokyo shopping mall because there were blinking, flashing red and yellow neon signs everywhere.

Finally we escaped the airport. Someone was chasing us. We were running, running, running up and down hills in a high-end beachfront Southern California neighborhood. I was so tired that I was starting to wheeze and my legs and feet screamed with every step. The hot guy and I found some college students who were sympathetic to our cause (whatever it was), and they agreed to carry us on their backs. The guy had a couple of these college guys link arms and carry him together. I had a woman carrying me, and we got so far behind the guy that we lost him.

The woman carrying me was so tired that my friend Brooke showed up to carry me piggyback. Since the bad guys were going to catch us anyways, I told Brooke to carry me to my house so at least I could rest before I was captured/arrested.
My house turned out to be a gigantic McMansion with crazy-bright 1970s yellow-patterned wallpaper. I started to rest, but then that hot guy from the plane showed up even though I never told him my last name or where I lived. He had doubled back when he realized he'd lost me (proving the power of love at least in dream situations). Then the bad guys showed up in a big black SUV and a lot of creepy scar-faced dudes in black leather piled out. Hot guy told me to hide, so I did. He was shot to death off stage. Hot guy's brother suddenly appeared and helped me escape to Mexico after lots more running.

Next I was floating down either a river or the Gulf of California in a black life-vest. The idea was that if the bad guys thought I was on a boat, they would look for me down the river days before I actually floated down there and give up. I finally got out of the water, remarkably unpruny, at a Mexican resort town for Americans. A little Mexican girl helped me get some clothes and food, though I still looked pretty bedraggled in a blue t-shirt, black puffy vest that was magically also a life-vest, and jean shorts. My hair was all tangled and my skin was super leathery tan. Magically I also started to speak Spanish with a convincing Mexican accent.
I went into the resort complex to get supplies. It was a big modern white structure with lots of blue ambient lights and fish tanks and soft techno music around restaurants and overpriced shops. Around nighttime, I saw the creepy scar-faced guy and his minions at the resort, but I hid behind a pillar so they didn't see me. I guess since I was rich in my dream, they thought I was a guest at the resort and not sleeping on the beach in a tent. I ran out of the building to hide under a white-painted deck and overheard them telling the Mexican authorities that I was a criminal looking for some papers. One of the minions dropped a couple copies of the papers, and the wind carried them to me. One was a pamphlet of HP printer instructions and the other was a small receipt with random words written on the back of it. I wanted to immediately jump back in the gulf and travel farther downstream, but I was afraid that the bad guys would see me from the picture windows in the resort that faced the beautiful beach.

I went back inside the resort to find a good place to hide until they left, but once I got inside I saw they'd left the deck. So they were someplace in the resort, and I could run into them or they could run into me at any minute. Panic! I checked the fancy Asian-fusion restaurant—they weren't there. I thought, Crap! Am I looking for them or running from them?

Then suddenly I ran into hot dead guy's brother. He tried to help me by showing me a way out of the resort where I definitely wouldn't run into anyone. I was glad that none of the bad guys had found me yet, though I knew it was only a matter of time.
In fact, just as I got out of the kitchen door, one of scar-face's minions caught my arm. He looked kind of like Wash on Firefly except scary—blond, Hawaiian shirt, sunburnt, muscular. He thought he was super charming, except he was disgusting. He said he wouldn't give me up to his boss immediately because I was obviously succumbing to his charms and would eventually have sex with him. I wrenched myself away and came to a small circular concrete pool filled with agitated green water. (It was nighttime, but there were enough artificial lights around to see it.) "This water is confusing," I told scary-Wash, "it disorients you." I kind of wanted to jump in and swim through the culvert to the gulf from which the water was piped, but I was afraid I would panic and run out of air.

Then the surreal dream part really got going: I jump in. I don't jump in. Brother talking to me again. Hot guy didn't die, but he faked his death so I wouldn't know he was alive. I could still find him! And then I woke up.

The Time I Started Going Blind and Almost Ran Over Some Pirates and Also There Was a Dragon

Last night I dreamt that my left eye, which has been all achy and red for a few months, got even redder and achier, so I drove to the Student Health Center. It looked more like a one-star motel with brown industrial carpet and a TV and double bed in each exam room, but it was the Student Health Center.
My doctor was a beautiful Ethiopian woman who smelled faintly spicy. She shone a light in my eye but didn't tell me much. She said I should come back if it got worse, and I drove home. On the way home, I saw some pirate day-laborers waiting at a bus stop by Morrill Middle School (San José, California).
Then something happened with my friends, who were something between Hogwarts students and young Camelot residents from the series Merlin. We had a dragon, who was sometimes like the dragons in the Harry Potter series and sometimes like the dragon in Merlin and sometimes like Dragon from the Shrek series. I don't remember much about that subplot.

Anyway, a few days later, I woke up in my Hogwarts/Camelot dorm room, and I could barely see. I had some sort of tunnel vision, except the tunnel was white instead of black. If I blinked and then concentrated really hard, I could see clearly for a second or so. I stumbled over some clutter to the mirror, got so close that my nose was against the glass, and did the blink-squint thing. My left iris had this thick white filmy ring around it that nearly covered the pupil, and my right iris was starting to get a white ring too, but it was only around the outside part of the iris. Needless to say, I felt a little panicky.
I went to my friends to ask them if I could have a ride on the dragon to the Student Health Center, but they were busy saving a kingdom or something. So, I had to drive myself, going blink-squint-blink-squint to gather intermittent information about the road and the cars around me. I prayed. A lot.
Somehow I made it to the Health Center, and I was called into the exam room by the same Ethiopian doctor. She ushered me in and asked me to sit on the edge of the bed like last time, but now there was a suspicious-looking wet spot on the worn brown cotton bedspread. The spot smelled like urine. I tried not to sit on it, which was hard because I couldn't see very well. The doctor examined me and told me I was going blind because I hadn't come in early enough for the original redness-soreness thing that is actually happening during my waking hours.
I got in the car and started driving back, blink-squint-blink-squint. I got closer to where I'd seen the pirate day-laborers before, but then I didn't blink long enough and I missed a cycle and when my vision finally cleared again, the pirates had moved onto the road and I was going to hit them. Of course, then my vision whited out again so I had to blink. When I squinted again, the pirates were all holding their arms up and shouting at me, "Are you blind?!" but they had moved out of the way of the car. I drove home as quickly as possible and curled up in my bed. That evening I had to tell my friends on the dragon squad that I was going blind and that my eyes looked all milky and gross, but I never heard their reactions because then I woke up.

The Time I Was Married to the Son of a Mafia Don

Last night I dreamt that I was married to the oldest son of an Italian mob boss. My husband and I lived in an Italian mansion with his younger brother and his wife and their parents. Even though my father-in-law was large and Italian and wore pinstriped suits, my mother-in-law was the real boss of the mob operation and of the house.

There was some kind of rivalry between me and my brother-in-law's wife. She had two children, and I didn't have any. She liked to wear shiny teal dresses.

One evening, after a big Italian dinner, my father-in-law called a meeting, which his wife conducted. The whole household sat on rustic-style couches in a whitewashed room decorated with bougainvillea and a stone fountain in the center of the red tile floors. My mother-in-law told us that since my husband's sister, Belisama (Thanks, The Sims 3: Late Night!), had moved out, she was giving her old room to my brother-in-law and his wife. My husband and I felt slighted because we should have gotten the room, as my husband was the heir to the mob family. However, my husband and I simply looked at each other and thought these things. I felt bad that I hadn't been able to get pregnant yet because my mother-in-law was obviously slighting me for it.

After my brother- and sister-in-law got the room, we all went to the room to check it out. It was beautiful. The room was connected to a courtyard that was full of gurgling fountains and vines and flowers. Looking up, I could see the clear sky filled with stars. I shivered and buttoned my cardigan—it was a cool night but not chilly. A large bed was under a wooden awning covered in vines. One could lie on the bed and fall asleep to the sounds of birds and bubbling water.

"What if it rains?" I asked no one in particular. Then I saw a little shelter with another bed and a door to a beautiful bathroom. This should be mine, I thought, and then I woke up.