the mud-bodied dog

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was standing out, possibly on a sidewalk, behind a backyard. A chain-link fence surrounded the backyard. The ground was mostly covered in deep green grass, though muddy patches showed through in a lot of places.

I feel like there was another person, maybe my brother, somewhere nearby, maybe in the yard, or maybe behind another side of the fence from the one I was on. But I never quite saw the person.

There were two little dogs in the yard. One was white and shaggy. The other was brown, maybe a dachshund. The white dog seemed to be a little friendly with me. But the brown dog was really mean and only wanted to bite me. Somehow the dog, even though it was behind the fence, was managing to get close to biting me. Maybe it had even bitten my pants.

I was still behind the fence. But I was also now inside the yard, which was a lot muddier than it had been before.

I had decided that if the brown dog was going to be mean to me, I was just going to ignore it. I was playing around with the white dog. I was hoping to make the brown dog jealous. If it got jealous and wanted to play with me, it would have to be nice.

It seemed like the brown dog actually was going to get nice and start playing with me. But every time it got close to me, it started barking wildly. I just decided to give up on the dog and ignore it altogether.

But now I noticed that the brown dog had a really weird body. It was like mud, compacted mud, with little, occasional blades of grass poking out of it and smashed sideways into it. The dog's body also had some imprint of small diamonds on it, like the imprint of the sole of a shoe, like someone had kicked or stepped on this mud-bodied dog.

switch-clippers; dog and wrench; old boss' advice

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a bedroom with two or three other guys. We were all probably dressed the same way: in jeans, but no shirts. I lay back on a bed. One man probably lay on another bed, at right angles to me. But sometimes I may have been laying next to the man, not at right angles to him. Another man may have been somewhere off to my right, though I may never have seen him.

Another man was just walking out of the room. He was tall, wiry, but with a kind of worn-out looking body, and bald, with a young yet old face. He looked a little crazy, though he either masked or tried to mask that look with a glance of calm or serenity in his blue eyes.

The man had just bragged about something he'd done. I had called out, in a lazy voice, that I didn't believe he'd actually done the thing. The man gave me a serene, almost playful, look, groan-laughed something at me, and walked out the door. I could tell the man was really offended by what I'd just said. I myself couldn't believe I'd said it.

But now the man walked back into the room. He had a "switchblade" pulled out -- actually, it was just the nail file/nail cleaner implement on a normal pair of nail clippers. He still had the serene look in his eyes. But he also had the look of a killer. He came at me, obviously angry, and told me that he'd show me that what he'd said was true.

The man stood over me, maybe holding me down. He was running the "switchblade" around my nipples, as if he intended to cut them off. He was also running it around my stomach in a horizontal oval, as if he were searching for the correct spot to plunge the "switchblade" into my flesh. He was working himself into a greater frenzy, eventually shouting that he'd show me what he'd said was true.

I didn't struggle against the man, or if I did struggle, my struggles were weak. I figured I was probably going to die. But then the other two (?) men in the room jumped up and pulled the man off of me. The man may still have been holding onto me: I seemed to come with him as the other two men pulled him to the door.

Now I had broken free and stepped away from the man enough so that I felt like I could get enough reaction time to defend myself against him. I grabbed the man (he was like some meter-long, scrunched-up, capsule-shaped version of a man now) and threw him against the wall. I may have been hoping to smash him or break him. I shouted that now it was my turn to show him something.

I felt ashamed for brutalizing the man. I was trying to get back a feeling of strength, of being able to protect myself. But, I knew, the only reason I was now able to do this stuff to the man was because he was in an extremely weakened condition. The two other men had gotten the man to this point. If the man were still at his full strength, I wouldn't be able to treat him the way I was treating him right now. But I tried to put those thoughts out of my mind, and just convince myself that I was being strong by beating this man right now.

Dream #2

It was a brisk morning, with the sunlight probably dimmed and made pale by some wisps of clouds in the sky. I was out walking in a suburban residential area. I came to a street corner which joined with the corner of a house's backyard. There may have been a broken chain link fence bordering the backyard, with a lot of gaps in the fence. Or there may have been no fence, only a few occasional steel poles marking where the fence used to be.

A white and grey, scruffy-haired dog, maybe about knee-high, came running up through the backyard to bark at me. The dog seemed to want to get even more violent with me, maybe even attack me. But then the two owners came walking up from the front end of the back yard. The husband came from the left side of the yard; the wife, from the right. The dog, seeing the two owners, stood back from me.

There was a gigantic water dish (or an old tire filled with water?) at my feet. The dog stopped at the water dish, as if it only wanted to drink the water. But it didn't even look down at the water. It just kept barking at me.

The wife stayed at a distance from me. But the husband, though never reaching me, always seemed to be advancing and approaching. The wife seemed young and pretty, with an athletic, strong body and luxurious, blonde hair. The husband looked a little older, a little more worn, and kind of prissy-faced, like a guy who took too much pride in being "fine" and "intellectual."

The husband may have said something to me about how the dog would never attack me. But something about what the man said made me think that he had given me justification, if the dog got too violent with me, to get violent with the dog.

I now had a gigantic wrench in my right hand. I was planning on swinging it at the dog. But I couldn't figure out how to step back to get enough distance to swing the wrench at the dog without hitting the dog. I didn't want to injure the dog unless I absolutely had to. But I felt like the only way for me to calm the dog down was by doing something like showing it how violent I could get and how I actually could hurt the dog. So I wanted to swing the wrench.

I was sick of hearing the dog bark. I was starting to feel like it might be good to hit the dog with the wrench, after all. The husband, still approaching me, but still distant, was talking about how the dog was just acting violent, and how he'd never hurt anybody. The man was now saying things in a way to make me feel like I should be more patient with the dog.

But now I grabbed the dog with one hand by his muzzle. The dog's muzzle was all wet, as if the dog had been drinking from the water dish. I held the dog's mouth shut, so it couldn't bark. The dog may have been struggling, but it may also, finally, have been afraid.

I probably began tapping the dog on the skull with the huge wrench, letting the dog know, somehow, that if it didn't calm down pretty soon, I'd start swinging harder and harder, until I finally began smashing the dog's skull.

Dream #3

I was walking along a stone or concrete path in a riverside park. The river, which was like the Hudson River, was on my right. On my left was a lawny area. There was an occasional tree just to the left of the path. I had probably walked out onto this path after having just crossed under a small bridge.

Just after the bridge there was a chestnut tree. The tree looked normal, but at least one of its limbs drooped all the way to the ground. The branches of this limb twisted along the ground like a grapevine or creeping ivy. The leafs of the tree looked like flowers, somehow, and a pink, coral-like network of stems and blossoms came out from the center of the leafs.

Something about these flowers may have worried me. I may have thought they were poisonous. But I recognized the characteristic look of the leafs of this tree: the palmate, five-leafed structure seemed to me to be that of a chestnut. But I couldn't tell for sure if this was a chestnut or some kind of poisonous tree that I shouldn't be anywhere near.

I called my old boss from a few years ago, BS, on my cell phone. As I spoke with BS I continued walking along the path, far past the tree, and, apparently, not coming up on any trees like that tree.

I tried not to sound worried. I simply told BS that I had forgotten whether five-leafed trees were chestnuts or whether they were something else. But BS could tell I was worried. He asked me if I was calling because I was worried about something poisoning me. He told me something like, "I'll give you the answer to this question. But, really, you have to start remembering that not everything is poisonous to you. Not everything is going to kill you."

I walked around a curve that ran to the left. There seemed to be a little more activity in the distance, like people out on a pier, putting some event together, or people sitting out on a plaza and enjoying the day.

BS was still talking to me. He began to get a little excited. He started talking about my work habits. He mentioned what had set me back, emotionally, while I was working with him, and how he felt that had hindered my chances of making it through the layoffs at my company. He then spoke about the emotional mistakes I had made at my following job, and how they could have been alleviated by a little less paranoia and a little more trust.

BS was still talking, but my phone was breaking up. I was losing reception. Finally my phone hung up altogether. I looked around. I was headed down into a tunnel. I said, "Oh, I'm going down into a tunnel, I'm going to lose you," as if I were still talking to BS and I were giving him the courtesy warning.

Now I was actually in a car. I was heading quickly down into the tunnel. At first the tunnel just looked like some long airplane hangar, with tall corrugated-steel walls and ceilings. I could even see light peering through from the cracks between the walls and the ceiling. But as we plunged deeper and deeper downward, at a faster and faster rate, the walls became thick and solid, like heavy concrete. I may eventually have plunged into total darkness.

I now stood in a huge, stately, but somewhat worn-down or neglected, train station. I stood near a row of tall-backed, hefty, wooden benches. The floors and the tall walls were made of heavy stone. Windows lined the tops of the walls, letting in a bit of pale, blue-grey light. There was no other light in the station.

I knew I was now back where I could get some phone reception. I thought I would call BS back. I pulled out my phone, which may have looked like an old BlackBerry. As soon as I looked at the screen, a new email message popped up. It may have been popping up "in real time," like I was actually watching it as it was being typed by BS.

The message looked crazy. The typing was wild, with all kinds of frenetic expressions and strange uses of punctuation to accentuate a feeling of excitement and importance. I may possibly have thought that BS was writing me this wild email because he had lost contact with me and he was now worried that I hadn't wanted to listen to his ideas in the first place.

Instead of reading the message, I decided to call BS, like I had originally planned. But, possibly, before I had even picked up the phone, BS may have been on the phone. I told BS something like, "I lost reception. But I have it now. So I can listen to you again."

BS started talking to me again about how I needed to be more trusting and less paranoid. But it seemed like the context of the conversation had changed somehow. I no longer felt like the context BS was using applied to me anymore. He wasn't really talking about my working situation. And that, I think, was what I really wanted to hear about.

little dog bites; punk club and fast food; guitar chords

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

It was daytime. I was with my brother in some outdoor area like a stone plaza dotted with small garden planters. A lot of the planters had nothing growing, or very little, growing in them. My brother crouched in front of a planter a few meters away from me. I crouched in front of one of the planters that had only a few flowers growing in it.

I was playing with a few small dogs. There were two or three dogs on my left and one dog on my right. I was letting the dogs wrestle around with my hands. Then the dogs started biting my hands. I didn't mind it very much. They seemed to be biting me as hard as they could, but it wasn't really hurting me at all.

My brother told me I shouldn't let the dogs bite me like that. He said the situation could get out of control, and I could end up getting hurt. I didn't listen to my brother. I seemed to be too happy seeing the dogs having fun to want to think about caution. Another two small dogs ran up to me. They looked like puppies rather than full grown dogs. They were all white, except for a patch around one of their eyes and one of their ears, which were a brilliant blue.

The dog on my right, a poodle-like dog, now began biting me really hard. I could tell I was just keeping my skin from being broken and my fingers from being bitten all the way through. But I couldn't hold back for long. I was trying to pull my finger out of the dog's mouth. But the dog had its teeth clamped down so hard on my fingers that I couldn't even move them.

I grabbed the dog's muzzle with two hands (I'm not really sure how that's possible...) and began prying the dog's mouth open. It was really hard, and I was afraid that the dog would find new strength and snap back down on my fingers, chomping them right off. But now I noticed that the dog actually hadn't had any of my fingers in its mouth. I had actually had my fingers curled around the dog's muzzle, so that it only looked like I'd had my fingers in the dog's mouth (???).

The scene shifted a bit. I was now sitting at the edge of the garden plaza, in some kind of porch-like area that also almost felt like horse stables made out of stone instead of wood. My brother and I were sitting close together, and there were small dogs playing all around us.

A woman, maybe in her late twenties, stood near us. She was like our guardian or supervisor. It was almost like, even though my brother and I were probably our current age, we were also kids. My brother had done something wrong, possibly having injured or killed one of the dogs.

The woman wasn't acting angry toward my brother. She may have been afraid to show her anger. She may have felt like my brother was dangerous, so that showing anger toward my brother might lead my brother to react toward the woman with violence. But the woman was planning to eliminate my brother from this situation somehow, or at least to limit his action in the situation, so that the woman would feel like my brother was less of a threat.

I knew my brother hadn't purposely done anything wrong. He may actually not have done anything wrong at all. I was trying to comfort my brother. At this point a dog, either the dog the woman thought my brother had injured or killed, or a dog very like that dog, came running up to us and playing around with us and the rest of the dogs. I thought that I should probably point this out to the woman, to vindicate my brother.

Dream #2

I was sitting on the floor at the front end of a punk rock club. My brother-in-law sat near me, leaning up against a wall. He looked weird. He had olive colored skin, instead of his usual golden-tan skin, and he had really shaggy, black-brown hair. He was also kind of leaning over to the left a lot of the time, so that his head was almost parallel to the ground. And he may have been sitting huddled under some beige or tan blanket.

The area my brother-in-law and I sat in was lit with a bright, but dingy, incandescent light. The walls were dirty. They looked almost like old stucco. The real activity of the club was behind us. There was a dark area full of people. Some kind of performance, either music or stand-up comedy, was also going on. I felt like my brother-in-law and I were being excluded from the activity in the club.

My brother-in-law may have been telling me how he felt excluded as well. As he spoke, my vision wandered off to my left, to a part of wall near the entrance to the club. There was a marker drawing along the wall, drawn perpendicular to the floor, of a few cartoony figures who represented either famous band members or famous club patrons from the 1970s.

My brother-in-law told me that in the 1970s this place had a real reputation for being a hardcore club for punks. People could come in here and be weird and wild and innovative. But nowadays the club was really a punk club in name only. The music was never very heavy. Sometimes they even did stand-up comedy. And the clientele were all very mild. If anybody -- such as my brother-in-law or myself -- looked like they might be wild, like people in the 1970s were, they were immediately shunned.

My brother-in-law seemed to be taking this exclusion harder than I was. I tried to console him. I said maybe we should go somewhere else. There still were, I said, places where wild people hung out. We just had to wander around and find them.

We were now outside in the dark night. The streets were lit only by very dim, orange streetlamps. I was separated from my brother-in-law by at least a few meters. I may also have been floating through the air, probably bodiless.

We went through a block full of small, kind of old-style shops. We went past some fast food restaurant. It was like an old-style burger joint. The building had a huge red roof that sloped almost all the way to the ground.

In front of the building were rows and rows of tables like picnic tables. The tables all seemed to be full of people. The people all scared me a little. They seemed like drug addicts, gangsters, and troublemakers. But I felt like this was the place where my brother-in-law and I should hang out. So I decided to act calm and friendly toward everybody here. I told my brother-in-law that this was a really cool place.

I now remembered another cool thing about this place. Late at night, the owner of this hamburger stand, a middle-aged man of Southeast Asian descent, would turn the front of the inside of the building into a kind of mini-bazaar. There he would sell all kinds of Southeast Asian merchandise. Other Southeast Asian people in the community would come to the hamburger stand and buy the merchandise. I told my brother-in-law that this was really cool, and that we should check it out.

I was now walking around, probably without my brother-in-law, inside the building. The front of the building now felt like it was just a frame-booth with sheets or tarps for ceilings and walls. It was very spacious. It was empty of people, almost like it was shut down -- or incredibly unpopular!

There were a lot of tables, all piled up with Southeast Asian merchandise. Each table bore a different kind of merchandise. It was even darker in the "building," though, than it was outside. It was hard for me to see the merchandise.

I walked around a corner to my left, into a kind of back area of the "bazaar" that few people knew about. In this back area was a table with a bunch of religious books. Even in the dark I could see that all of the books had colorful, intricate designs on their covers. The books seemed to be about a religion like Hinduism or maybe Buddhism.

But suddenly I had a flash of apprehension. I had a feeling that the man who owned this store was really a violent person. I had a feeling that this whole bazaar was a front for some kind of violent activity the man was staging. I had a feeling that if the man found me in here, I'd become a target for whatever kind of violent activity he was planning. The fact that I was looking at the religious books seemed like it could put me into even more trouble with the man.

I felt like the man could be just around the corner, waiting to do something like stab me. So I walked back around the corner, just to make sure the man wasn't there. The front area was still empty. I felt a little more secure. I turned and walked back toward the religious books, still a little afraid, though, that the man might come attack me.

Dream #3

I was in a bedroom with my brother. My brother sat on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed. I stood very close to my brother, playing a guitar, probably an acoustic guitar. I was playing a song I thought was an original song, or even a song I was making up right then and there.

I really enjoyed the song I was playing. But at some point I lost track of the song. It was either like I had forgotten what chord progression I was using or like I had lost track of where I was in the song altogether. For a moment I was strumming blindly along, trying to find the right sounds for the song, while also hoping that the "wrong" sounds I was currently making weren't too horribly wrong.

Now my brother pulled out a sheet of notebook paper. He held it on his lap, but at a kind of odd angle, so I had to focus really hard to make out what was written on the paper. I saw a series of chords written down, kind of in verse and chorus form, like a series of blocks or grids going down the page.

I remember G and C being one combination, and possibly G and D and G and F. But I can't remember the order of these progressions. There may also have been a sharp somewhere, maybe on the F. I began playing as well as I could according to the chord progressions on the page. I may have been pretty satisfied with the music, like I was nearly, but not quite, playing what I'd been playing before. I may also now have begun singing along to the tune.

my own private quilp; searching for a presentation

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in the living room of an apartment. But it was also like I was in a doctor's office. The office was my mother's office, as if my mom were a Doctor.

Somebody buzzed into our apartment from outside of the apartment building. I knew it was an annoying, little man. He had an appointment with the Doctor. But I also knew that he always came here, and that every time he came here, he came up with a new reason to complain about the service he received from the receptionist.

Today I was acting as receptionist, even though I usually didn't even have a role within the office. Acting as the receptionist, I got really afraid of what the man might do this time. I tried to have everything arranged so that the man would have absolutely nothing to complain about. And the first thing I'd do would be to buzz the man into the apartment and open the door for him as promptly as possible.

I was sitting on the floor. I had to stand up and press a button near the front door. I quickly did so. But as soon as I pressed the button to let the man into the apartment building, the man bashed in the door of the actual apartment! He was only about waist-high to me. He was bald, with a wide, misshapen head and huge eyes. He was dressed in a nice business casual shirt and khaki slacks.

The man looked angrily at me. But I could tell he was really getting enjoyment out of the whole situation. I knew he had been waiting right at the door, hoping I'd think he was downstairs, just so he could surprise me by being upstairs. I felt completely out of control of the situation. I felt totally defenseless against the man. And he loved it.

Dream #2

I was at some event, probably with one of my family members, maybe my mom or my sister. The event was being held in a large building, something like a modern church, with a lot of hallways and stairways leading to a few major (but not very big) lobbies and auditoriums.

I and the person I was with had something to do with the event, either the running or the organizing of it. But the turnout for the event was kind of disappointing. We walked up a stairway and into a lobby area where a white man with copper-tan skin and red-blonde hair was giving a presentation to a scattered, but kind of densely packed, group of people. The presentation was being given just outside an auditorium that had doors like the doors to a sanctuary.

I and the other person may have understood that we had something to do with the presentation, or with a presentation somewhere. We may have gone in search of something to do with whatever presentation we had something to do with. We wandered through a number of hallways, and maybe even a couple of small rooms, like Sunday school rooms, which may also have had a decent number of people in them.

We ended up in a lobby-like area, one wall of which curved out, like bay windows, with a wall of windows. The curving-out space was bounded on the opposite side (forming an ellipse or football shape) by a series of green, carpeted steps which could also serve as seats, so that this area was like a mini-auditorium with the window walls as a backdrop.

A presentation was going to begin here in just a few moments. But now I saw, outside the building, my nephews and niece walking down onto a series of concrete seat-steps that mirrored the seat-steps inside the building. There was a show about to begin outside as well. But before the show began, some person was down on the "stage," showing off two or three of his dogs.

I wanted my nephews and niece to see me, so I stealthily crawled up to the window-wall, hiding behind one of the dogs outside the window. I then popped my head up from behind the dog just in time for my nephews and niece to see me. Only one or two of them saw me. They screamed, "Preemie!" They may even have tried coming up to the window.

The show outside was now beginning. A Pastor-like man was beginning to speak. I didn't really want my nephews or niece to see me now, now that the presentation was starting. But it was right at this moment that all my nephews and niece saw me. They all screamed, "Preemie!" They ran toward the window. I felt really bad. I hadn't consciously wanted to cause a disruption. And I was kind of embarrassed by what was going on. But I also kind of liked the fact that my nephews and niece wanted to give me so much attention.

diphtheria house; customer complaints; how's consumer sentiment?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

A view of the backyard of the house of a family. It was daytime. There were a lot of workers in the backyard, along with at least the mother and the father of the family. The house was a nice, two-story house. The mother and father were white, attractive, and kind of wealthy looking. The workers may have been dressed in yellow, pale green, or white, plastic protective suits.

The house was being worked on because the family had all suffered from some disease. The disease had probably been called diphtheria. The disease was apparently like scarlet fever because, when you had it, you had to burn everything you'd touched while you had it. So the workers were working, not on burning everything in the house, but on sanitizing it in some way.

One of the things the workers were doing was to plow up the ground all around the foundation of the house. Then they sprayed something all over the plowed up soil. This stuff looked like the white smoke that comes off of dry ice. It would do something like freeze the ground. But it was also adding a chemical to the ground that caused the soil to do something like freeze itself.

I understood that the diphtheria germs had come from the soil. The soil had been disturbed, releasing these old germs. Now the soil had to be chemically frozen, to kill the germs.

But now the workers began to ask about other items the family had been around in the house while they'd had diphtheria. In particular they began asking about the family dog. My view, which had been really close in on the soil that was sprayed, now backed away. I got a pretty full view of the back of the house. And even though the dog wasn't back there, I got a pretty good image in my head of the dog running along the back porch, in the shade of the back wall.

The mother of the family knew that if the workers knew the family had touched the dog while they were sick, the workers would want to spray the dog with the freezing chemicals, too. But the mother knew that that spray would kill any living thing. So the mother said that the family had not touched the dog while they had been sick.

Dream #2

I was in some kind of small store, like an old-style office supply or stationery store, or an old-style furniture store. It was pretty dim inside, and everything was grey, like even the walls and carpet were the same colors as the old, grey-painted, metal shelves.

I stood, or even sat, before some grey counter. The counter made a kind of L-shape that connected with the back wall and the left (my left) wall, making a kind of big square of space for the workers. There was at least one office-style desk behind the counter. The space felt like an old office overall. But at the back wall was a kind of window, like one might see for a service area between the cooks and the waiters in a diner.

Behind the counter sat two workers. One of the workers sat pretty close to the counter. The other worker sat at the desk, off in the back, left corner of the worker's space. The worker close to the counter was pretty young. He had been dealing with me in some way or another. But he had been rude to me, and he hadn't done what I'd needed at all.

I had told the young man that I was going to complain. The young man didn't seem to believe me or even care if I did complain. But I knew that if I spoke directly with one specific man: the other man sitting at the desk. He was the young man's boss, and he didn't seem to like the young man too much to begin with. He was looking for a reason to fire the young man. And I knew I could give the man a good reason.

The young man knew I was serious. So he decided to listen to me. But he was really mad at me. He asked, "What do you want me to do for you? What do I have to do?" in a kind of angry, but desparate tone.

It was now like we were talking on the phone instead of standing face to face. I could see the young man's angry face on the phone. At first he looked like he was a young, kind of skinny, black man. But his face morphed into a young, bald man with a kind of olive-colored to light brown complexion. His features were really sharp but smooth at the same time. He had a tight skull and sharp cheekbones. And he looked really sullen and angry.

I was through dealing with the young man, though, and I told him that I wanted to speak with the older man now. The young man didn't have a choice but to put me through to the older man. The older man was a kind of fat, white man with pale skin and hair in a spiky cut that looked like it was dyed blonde. He had kind of red cheeks. He wore a black polo shirt and black shorts. He was obviously in his forties, but his clothes and style made him look younger.

The older man knew he had to take my call, and he was already mad at the younger man. But the older man was on a phone call at the moment, so he told me I had to wait. The younger man stood up and walked into the back area, the area behind the back wall.

The older man fiddled around with his phone for a moment while talking. Then the call was over. But the older man acted like he still had a number of things to do, probably making phone calls, before he could finally get to helping me. He actually stood up and walked toward the back area himself.

I was still in the office. I was standing at the counter. But now the counter was more like a stainless steel counter. And behind the counter was now a small area like in a small bakery. The whole place still felt old, grey, and dingy. But now there were kind of fancy pastries everywhere. The counter ran in an L-shape. But now the L-shape faced away from the wall, so that the area behind the counter was also L-shaped.

The older man was working on putting all kinds of pastry orders together. He was completely avoiding me and any of the complaints I had, acting like he had to take care of all these orders first. I'd even ordered some pastries. And even though my order was small and simple, he was taking care of all the bigger, more complex orders first.

A group of Latina women walked in. A couple of them were maybe in their late twenties or early thirties. They looked like mothers. They were all happy. They all made orders with the man. The man put their orders together and gave them to them almost instantly, still completely ignoring me.

I looked at the women's orders. One of the women had a kind of bright pastel, sweet, delicate, bready, but dry-looking cake. The other had some kind of syrup-topped, pie-like thing that I told myself was made with guava. Both of the items looked good. But I was more intrigued by the guava item.

The women seemed to be leaving the store already. I had been shy while they were in front of me, because they were all pretty. But now they were all passing me to get to the door.

One of the last women to pass me must actually have been a girl. She was kind of short and very skinny. But she had a flat chest. She wore tiny, black jean shorts and a tiny, black bikini top with silver fringes. But the girl's chest was so flat that the bikini top was a little bunchy and loose on her in spots, even though it was drawn pretty tight around her back and neck. But despite the fact that the girl was so young, I was really aroused by her.

Dream #3

I was at "my office," sitting at "my cubicle." The walls of the cubicle were tall. I seemed to be sitting pretty close to the right edge of the wall, my face very close to the wall. To my right, and also pretty close, was a window with blinds. The light coming through the window seemed to be filtered through some kind of UV coating. It was greyish-brown, but still kind of sparkling somehow with the whiteness of bright sun.

Between the cubicle wall and the window was a little walkway. I knew that beyond me were one or two other cubicles, then a more open space for people to walk through. I knew that my boss BB was walking through that space, even though I couldn't see him. I could barely see another co-worker, SW, walking into that space.

My boss had just been out on some business trip through a few big cities. SW asked my boss, "Hey, so, while you were out there, how was business sentiment looking? I mean, how was the consumer outlook? Are people looking more positive?"

I thought this was a strange question to ask. It implied that my boss had actually been out to enough towns to actually get a good sampling of business sentiment in all of America. And it implied that my boss had actually been out talking to all kinds of people on the street.

But my boss had only been in a few cities. And those cities were pretty isolated, probably geographically, from the rest of America. And my boss had only been speaking to higher-up business people, about very specialized topics. I didn't think my boss' answer could really indicate a big picture view of the American economy.

But SW was going to take my boss' answer and use it to reflect the American economy. SW was like an economist for our company, as if our company were something other than it was, something more like an investment firm or an investment advising firm.

dad in surgery; nephew reading menu; singing and dogs barking; acquaintance's voicemail

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was sitting on a bed in a hospital room. My dad was laying on the bed. I had my phone on the bed and the headphones in my ears.

I was talking to my dad. But at the same time, I was walking backwards away from him. The hospital room was large. It took me a long time to move backwards all the way to the door.

I stood right on the threshold of the door. I now saw a stereotypical "sexy nurse" standing in the room with my dad. It suddenly occurred to me that my dad was going in for surgery. I had a feeling it was a pretty critical surgery.

My dad had been given some sort of tranquilizer pill. It was already making him groggy, making him talk weird. My dad saw me leaving the room and kept saying, "Goodbye, Charlie," as if I were some guy named Charlie he'd known from his past. I took this to mean that not only was my dad groggy from the medicine he was taking, but that the disease he was in the hospital for was badly affecting his mind.

I probably thought that it was possible that my dad could die very soon. I also probably started feeling bad for not having spent enough time with him, and not having let him know that I cared about him.

Dream #2

I was in my family's kitchen. It was daytime, and greyish-white light shone in through the windows. My third oldest nephew stood at the edge of the kitchen counter, reading a big, white, paper card. My nephew held up the menu at a slant by leaning it up against my mom's laptop computer, which stood open on the kitchen counter.

I looked at the card. Apparently it was a menu. The menu was probbably at least partly written out. But everything in the menu was so divided that it looked like a depiction of a TV dinner. And there did seem even to be drawings of TV-dinner-like food.

My nephew took the menu and walked away from me, up the kitchen, and toward my mom, who was standing by the sink.

Dream #3

I had walked into a backyard. It was night, but there seemed to be yard lights on everywhere. The sky was the only thing that seemed really dark.

I was sat down on the lawn. The grass was tall, thick, and green -- maybe even a little dewy. I may have had my headphones in my ears. I was singing a song.

A dog in an adjacent backyard started barking at me, as if my singing had annoyed it, or as if my singing had alerted it to my presence, and it had just decided to bark to intimidate or annoy me.

The dog did surprise me, and I did stop singing. I looked up to see where the dog was. It was in the yard at the corner of this yard.

I suddenly got mad that that the dog had barked at me. I wasn't going to take it. I started singing again, but the dog started barking again. So now I stood up and yelled at the dog in the loudest voice I could, "Stop your bullshit! I'm sick of it! I'm not going to take it anymore!"

I could see that in the yard directly back of this yard, behind a tall fence, there was another dog, behind a tall fence. This dog had been running up to the fence to bark at me, too. But I now went crazy, yelling at both of the dogs. I had the idea that I was going to jump back into the yards and fight the dogs.

The dogs seemed to have stopped barking. But I had pretty much gotten distracted from singing. There was a tall, wooden-slatted fence inside the yard I was in. It seemed to enclose some special-purpose area just behind the house. For some reason, I flew up and landed on the top of that fence. I stood balancing on the fence, keeping a lookout for something.

My sister walked into the backyard. She looked a bit younger, like she was in her late teens. She was kind of skinny. She wore a long, baggy, green hooded sweatshirt. She had long, blondish hair and was wearing black mascara.

My sister said hi to me. She may have asked me how I was doing. She may have been really concerned about me for some reason. I may have tried to ease her mind by saying something not relating to what I'd just been through. But I said, "Yeah, I'm just standing up here to keep an eye out for strange people. This one strange guy has been following me home on the bus lately, I think."

Dream #4

I was sitting on a couch in a living room, probably with my mom. It was probably night. The living room was lit with slightly dim, incandescent light. I couldn't see much of the living room. Most of my view was taken up by a mountain of clutter that stood on a coffee table in front of the couch.

I knelt down on the floor and grabbed my cell phone off the coffee table. I probably put the right headphone in my ear. I'd decided to call a female acquaintance of mine, a really good friend of my old friend R. I had this woman's number in my phone.

The woman's voicemail picked up. There were some strange sounds at first, as if the phone had actually been picked up by some living person, but the person had just not realized they'd picked up the phone. I heard a number of women talking. Then, finally, one of the women came to the phone and started leaving a voicemail greeting.

The woman said this phone was the phone for the house of herself and two other women, who would take any messages anybody left for them.

But my acquaintance was the fourth woman in the house. The woman on the voicemail greeting said that my acquaintance was not taking any messages, especially from me. The voicemail woman said that I'd either done something really crazy to my acquaintance or that I'd acted so interested in the woman that she now feared I was stalking her. So she was not going to take any messages from me.

I think I hung up the phone, upset that I couldn't leave a message. But I picked up the phone again and either dialed the same number or a different number that also belonged to my acquaintance. I knew there had to be a way for me to get in touch with this woman.

I now got a different voicemail. This time, my acquaintance was speaking. But it was almost like she was leaving a voicemail greeting just for me -- like the voicemail greeting was a message she'd left on my personal voicemail.

My acquaintance sounded really panicked. She said that she needed my help really bad. My friend R had her in a compromising position, and he was also putting her in physical danger.