How Bert and Ernie Got Their Names ~ 6/25/2014

I dreamed I was the oldest son of a very odd family. When I was nine, my parents brought home a strange, small, orange little brother. His name was Ernie, but they called him Coot. A few years later, they brought home a yellow, pointy-headed little boy, but they didn't really name him. They just called him Little Coot.

Years went by, and Big Coot was goofy as hell, but otherwise normal. Little Coot, on the other hand, was basically comatose. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him, but he rarely opened his eyes, never talked, and really didn't acknowledge us.

I was a grown man now, and I was just sick of the fact that my littlest brother didn't even have his own name. I always tried to talk with him some on my visits, even though he didn't respond. So I went and sat with him a while one day and started talking about names. I told him I was tired of calling him Coot, and thought we should try something different. He began opening his eyes and rolling them around, like he wanted to look at me, but couldn't figure out how.

This got me excited, so I tried a few names, but he got listless again. Then, I suggested Bert. His eyes snapped open and he stared right at me. He began opening and closing his mouth like he wanted to talk. So I told him his name would be Bert, and I'd tell the others.

Our old grandmother came in when I called all the family, and she was so happy, because Bert had been our grandfather's name. She seemed to drift into a contented sleep, but I thought she might be passing. Bert's mouth made a strange little O as he looked at her, then he turned his eyes to Big Coot and called him by his real name, Ernie.

That was his first word, and no one called either of them Coot again. Now they were Bert and Ernie.

Going to the Chapel and We're Blah Blah Blah ~ 6/21/2014

I dreamed they told me I needed to get ready, and I thought maybe they were throwing me a birthday party, but someone put me in a gorgeous white dress and someone else took over my hair and makeup, and suddenly a friend of mine was walking me down an aisle, past all of my friends and family, up to a waiting minister... but there was no groom.

I stood alone before the minister, waiting, then he told us to all sit, and he started talking about marriage. Then a friend of mine got up wearing a tux, but he just proceeded to give a speech, and he mostly talked about his family, who were all sitting behind him on a stage, and all the trouble and difficult history he had with them. When he was done, another friend got up and was also in a tux, but he just did a goofy song and dance routine.

The minister talked some more, and there was some music, and I could hear everyone murmuring about how beautiful I was in my white silk dress with a full, pleated skirt that could be gathered up with lavender ribbons. I remember the ribbons because I started playing with them to avoid looking anyone in the eye. A priest spoke then about it being best to abstain until marriage, but so important to enjoy fully all the gifts of God that you find in each other afterward.

Then the minister said the wedding was over, and everyone left for the reception, but I just couldn't face them, because I'd made it through an entire wedding with absolutely no groom, and I was afraid I might now be solemnly and officially married to no one, and would have to stay that way for life. So I just sat there playing with the ribbons on my dress and crying for a while.

Eventually I got up and went to game night, and thanked my friends for coming, and for their gifts. The friend who had given a speech had gone out to the town plaza and sung Sinatra as loud as he could for six hours as his gift to me. Everyone else had stuck to the registry, but I had no idea what was on there. Then we decided to play Wii Lego Game of Thrones, and I got to be the red pieces. And then I woke up.

Secret Identities and Crazy Truck Hijinks ~ 6/20/2014

I dreamed that I was at a bar wearing a Rice T-shirt, and some guys started hollering, "Woooo! Whiskey Owls!" At me. I saw they were wearing Rice shirts, and we must have agreed that whiskey was awesome, so I grinned and waved to them, but I was leaving, so there wasn't time to chat.

I met up with my dad and my boyfriend at a Mexican restaurant. We had a late lunch, then all headed for mom and dad's house in the hill country. Dad was driving a truck with a trailer attached. Somewhere down Redwing Road, that became a truck towing a semi by a 20 foot long swiveling attachment made out of six inch pipe. This was working fine until we turned down Sunrise Trail, and the cops in the police helicopter were getting really nervous because daddy was towing the rig with a small airplane flying about thirty feet off the ground, which seemed like a fine idea, until he reached the stop lights, suspended on cable, hanging above our one lane, in the sticks, cul de sac road. Then the cops started hollering through a bullhorn, but dad just went on through the red lights, and the cable and poles went down to the ground, then sprang right back to normal.

The cops flew off, and we got home with no other problems. There was a party going on, and most of the MOB, some of my New Orleans friends, and the Whiskey Owls guys were there. The trailer dad was hauling turned out to be a mobile home that he parked out by the garage for mom to do her writing in, because mom was a writer, though I didn't think she'd gotten anything published yet.

The party was doing great when one of my NOLA friends, who was also a writer, came and told me how excited she was to learn that my mom was actually Corey Flynn, author of a best selling vampire mystery series. My friend explained excitedly that she and some other writers had figured it out and she couldn't wait to tell everyone.

I pointed out that my mother hadn't even told ME; I was pretty sure she didn't want anyone to know. But my friend insisted this was just what writers did, and she was going to spread the word. I became absolutely furious, ordered her to leave, and told her we were no longer on friendly speaking turns. Another friend that she's already told came up then to ask me about it, an I told her I had no knowledge of it being true, and if it was, my mom probably wouldn't be happy to know her secret was out, so I'd appreciate it if she wouldn't tell anyone else, and she agreed. My other friend kept insisting it would be okay, until I yelled at her to GET OUT, and shoved her out the door.

But she kept trying to explain how it was okay, and then another friend came up excited about it because she'd been told. But she agreed not to tell.

Finally my mom called me into the writing trailer, and told me that yes, she was Corey Flynn, and that it was too late, everyone knew, and she wasn't really happy, but it was done, and she wanted me to not be so angry. Then she told me that one of her characters was modeled after me, and my vampire name was Jacob Perfect, and I thanked her for not making me a really mystical sounding character, and we hugged, and then I woke up.

TBTT #4 Dollhouse Dream ~ 2/26/2012

I dreamed that I was working with Echo (and occasionally AS Echo) in New Orleans, after the Dollhouse managed to fall into obscurity before the global apocalypse that it came to on TV. They had tried to wipe and re-imprint all the actives with original personas, but it had been tricky and hadn't always gone well. We were monitoring the actives and trying to bring them in for what you might call repairs when their re-integration hit a snag. For example, Echo herself kept getting stuck at a rack of paperback books in Wallgreen's, always picking up a book in a certain position, looking at it, putting it back, and completely forgetting what she was doing there. We discovered that this action with a certain book in a certain place had happened before on her various engagements, and we were trying to figure out what memory was missing (or what fake memory we could construct) to fill that hole and get her out of that pattern.

Of course, of all the actives we were following, the one in the worst shape was Bennet (yes I know in the show she was never an active and... all...). But her repair imprint had a lot of holes, and because of her brilliance and her OCD, she absolutely could not deal with missing information in her head and kept flipping out all over the place. And I was helping as much as I could, but I always had to lie very still so I wouldn't start coughing...

Reprise on Just Couldn't Leave ~ 6/19/2014

Last night I got trapped somewhere else I just couldn't leave. But instead of a parking garage, it was an ex-boyfriend's and his wife's house.

At some point in my dream, I ran into an ex. He invited me to stop in at his house to visit and meet his wife. Then, as I was leaving, I realized I'd forgotten my sunglasses, and went back in. Then he was showing me something on the computer, and we took a long time to figure it out. Then he asked me to do a favor for him, and when I left, he called me back because he'd forgotten to give me something I'd need for that. Then I walked out the front door a few times only to find myself in a back hallway or the living room or kitchen. Then he found out someone was computer stalking him, and he and his wife decided to go to England, and they asked me to house-sit while they were abroad. Finally, they told me I should leave and go home, and I left to meet my family in Norway for a family vacation, and I walked all over the snowy streets, through a holiday-bedecked shopping mall, into an insurance office where I scolded a woman executive who was sexually harassing one of her female assistants, even though I didn't know Norwegian and she didn't know English. I couldn't seem to find my family, but I kept seeing the ex and his wife, and when I finally got to my lodgings in the evening... I was staying in their house.

The Garage I Just Couldn't Leave ~ 6/17/2014

I spent all night in a parking garage. First I was going to work, and the offices were clustered at the center of the garage. Then I left for the day, but suddenly there were huge storms coming, with enormous tornadoes, so I drove back into the garage for safety.

That's when I saw the band bus and grabbed my trumpet and my uniform and got aboard, trying to remember the show. But just as we pulled out of the garage, the trip was over, and we were pulling back in, and all the buttons on my uniform shirt fell off, so I was scrambling around after everyone had left, trying to gather up my buttons and sew them back on.

Then I turned into a brightly colored parrot, and, with my parrot companion, I flew out of the garage. But everywhere we went, we were being chased, and every time we landed, we were back in the garage.

Then we were human again, and he was a friend and ex-boyfriend. At first we were strolling around the garage, chatting and catching up like it was a scenic garden. Then we were patrolling the garage because that was our job. Then we were hiding from the security guard because we weren't supposed to be there.

Then I woke up.

Big Cats, and, Who'd Trust ME with a Gun? ~ 6/9/2014

My colleagues and I were trying to stop a dangerous, shape shifting, genius hacker who was being a terrorist. One of the guys on our team had files and files of code printed out that was like kernels of grain. He grabbed a handful and seeded the internet with it, in order to lure the hacker out into the internet somewhere we could find him.

I spent a lot of time crouching in corners with a handgun aimed head-high at closed doors in case the guy came out of them, but that would only wound him. He could only be killed when he was shifted out if human form. Finally, we had tracked him out to a wood, and we were hiding in a waist-deep stream, beneath a gracefully arched bridge. The water was crystal clear, and the surface was freckled and dimpled with yellow petals from the flowering trees above.

Suddenly, he was on the bank above us, in the form of a huge tiger. As he lunged down into the water, my partner turned into a tiger, too, and they fought as I scrambled out of the water and out of the way. My colleague held the bad guy under until he was drowned.

That job over, we went to work security at a sort of junior Olympic basketball tournament. It was being held on the seaside in a partially submerged and buried building complex that looked like the inside of a huge submarine. I crawled all over and through the upper bleachers to make sure everything was safe, then went to stay the night at my grandmother's house, which was tucked into a garden on the facility grounds.

I couldn't get to bed for a while, though, because people kept getting lost in the garden trying to find their own lodgings, and I had to keep them out of my grandmother's place. Then my mom came and told me my boss had called and asked me to patrol the beach at first light.

The next morning I walked down to the shore and began walking, past the facility, up a sandy rise. I could see, about another mile off, the bridge where the highway lifted up from the mainland to go out to one of the large barrier islands. Closer to me, just ahead, the beach broke up into dozens of sandy islets.

The islets were thick with otters and nesting gulls. Nearby, on the shore, I could see a largish wild cat. It was something called a sand lion, shaped and colored like a puma, but only about the size of a coyote. They were mostly shy, but could also be friendly and playful, and were definitely not dangerous. It had seen me, and was loping up a sandy ridge to see what I was, but when I looked past it, into the dunes below, an enormous golden head lifted up in a cleft between dunes. It was a lion, a real lion, not a sand lion, but gigantic. It was a lioness the size of an elephant, at least, staring up at me with eyes like molten gold.

I froze. The lioness stood to watch me, the sand lion was still headed my way. I hadn't been issued any weapons for this assignment, so I was completely unarmed. I began to back slowly away, stumbling a little in the sand. When I was out of sight down the other side of the slope, I turned and slogged faster through the sand, trying not to look back too much, or break into a run.

I did make it back to the arena, and scrambled through a heavy side door that I shut and locked behind me. I turned to go report to my boss about the huge lioness, and found I was in a deserted hall with no obvious way out. The walls were pale tiles that looked sickly in the greenish light. They had depth marking on them, like this had been a stories-deep diving pool.

That gave me an idea, so I looked and found a rusty ladder up to a terrace. I climbed up that, and could hear the sounds of basketball and crowds from the other arenas, and I realized the whole thing was a renovated set of these deep diving pools. I climbed in and out of courts looking for my boss. I finally just reported to a colleague and left.

I met up with some friends for pho, but after everyone else had ordered theirs, when I began to place my order, the waitress told me they were now out of pho. So I decided I wasn't hungry, and I left. Some other friends pulled up in a school bus, and said they were going to my high school, so did I want to make a visit. I said sure, so an odd mix of my New Orleans game night and my college band friends headed to my small town high school.

A lot of the buildings had been replaced, but the band hall was the same. I went in to visit my high school ban director, then met up with my sister, who explained that what looked like apartments where the tennis courts use to be were dorms for student athletes, and that high school basketball especially was getting to be a big thing. We had turned in the bus, and now we were headed home, and all had to squeeze in a huge old Crown Victoria. We got on the road, and then I woke up.

Where Am I and What Am I Doing Here??? ~ 6/2/2014

I was visiting southern England. I was lying on a headland looking out across the Channel, and I was enormous. I must have been reclining along several miles of coast, my body nestled comfortably in the dips and furrows above high cliffs. I listened to the waves crashing below and gazed out over the deep blue water. I decided I should take a day trip over to France, so I stood up and I was normal sized again.

I got in my car and decided I would drive to the Louvre, which was housed in a palace on a hill in a deep forest an hour north of Paris. Some American tourists I met on my way said it was really crowded, and that standing in line for the Mona Lisa was a bigger waste of time than waiting for rides at Disney World, but I pointed out that I was on vacation, and there was no such thing as wasted time as long as I was relaxing and not stressing about work.

I never did make it to the Louvre, though. I might have woken up and gone back to sleep, because then I was driving in the US, and I'd stopped for lunch, and was working a crossword puzzle. One of the long clues was a quote by Roger Rabbit that I couldn't remember. I knew where to find the answer, though, because there was a particular brand of cream soda in a gold and white can, that, when you popped the top, played quotes from that actor. Even after you drank the soda, you could put the end of some headphones in the empty can and listen. So I bought some soda, found the quote, and continued driving home.

Home, when I reached it, was our old house in the hill country, and Mom and Brooke still lived there, too. I went to bed, then got up the next morning, sure I was about to be late for the first day of my senior year of high school. I threw a change of clothes in my truck and started driving into town.

About halfway down our cul de sac road, I realized I was no longer in high school, and I was still in my nightgown, and now I was DEFINITELY going to be late for work. I made a three point turn and drove back home. I thought for a moment, since I was back from vacation but not back at work yet, and possibly just out of high school, maybe I could just take another week off and sleep. But that didn't seem right. Still, Mom and I decided I must be sick, since I tried to leave the house in my jammies, so she called my boss and I went back to bed.

When I finally woke up for real, I was very confused.