October 2003
october 2
We're at the old house and I'm sitting on the couch with Rose. There is a scorpion on the floor, next to the front door, and I start screaming. My mom comes in the room and is trying to nudge the scorpion into the dustpan using her foot. My mom and Gina are in Kaiser, and Rose and I are sitting in the van in the parking lot. The van is full of stuff, as if we're still moving. I turn the car on because I want to use the air conditioner, but there is something wrong with the brake and the car starts to move backwards. Rose comes up to the drivers seat, moves the car back up, and puts the brake on. Claire walks by and we talk for a few minutes. I think she is going to ask for a ride but then her a bunch of her friends drive up, so she says thanks for hanging out and leaves. I go into Kaiser and my mom says that the doctor wants to give me some blood tests. I'm annoyed but say okay, and try to follow the doctor into a room but my mom says I have to wait until he does some other operation (?) that is going to take a long time. I get in this line that I think is for the doctor, but it turns out there is some race going on. They give each person this weird leather badge that has a star on it. The race takes you through tunnels and up and down stairs. At first I am not doing well but soon I catch up and near the end of the race, I am one of the first people. There is a girl who is not going to make it and she gives me her badge. She says her badge is a fake, but it looks just like the others. For the very last part of the race, I have to climb up this wall that has different parts sticking out. I have my eyes closed almost the whole time. When you finish that, you go into the building and register with some nurses. In order to win you have to tell them who is your doctor, but I can't remember the name of mine. I say one that I think it is, but it turns out to be a fake name that my mom gave me. The woman gives me this book that has the pictures and names of all the staff, but I still can't find him.
october 8
My mom and I are leaving the house in Pittsburg, and on the front lawn is Oscar the Grouch in his garbage can. I talk to him for a few minutes, and then we have to leave. He says goodbye to me, and I say it to him but I accidentally call him "Elmo" and he gets really angry at me and starts throwing rocks. I am trying to crouch over in my seat, telling my mom to hurry up and start the car, and one of the rocks breaks a car window. I'm upstairs in the new house and it's very late at night. I go downstairs to use my bathroom and then go to bed. I am scared even though I don't know why, I tell myself I shouldn't have to be scared in my own house. I go in the bathroom and it's turned into a public bathroom. I go into one of the stalls and then I hear these two guys come in and start talking, and pounding on doors, checking to see if anyone is in the bathroom. I stand/crouch on top of the toilet so they won't see my feet under the door, but then I realize I didn't even close the door all the way and they can see me. A bunch of other people (both guys and girls) come in the bathroom and they all get into some big discussion. They seem to want my advice but I don't know what about.
october 9
It's Thanksgiving and we're over at my grandparents house. Jonathan wants to play, but I have to take him back to my house. To get in we have to go through our neighbors backyard, and they have those sprinkler/mister things on. Later we go back to my grandparents house, and there is almost no food left. Everyone keeps telling me that I need to vacuum my carpet, that it is really dirty, and I get annoyed and tell them I just vacuumed it last week. I am over at Mary's house and she has a kitty (black) that is running around all crazy and hyper because it got into Mary's mothers medication (?). I find it pretty amusing and try to play with the cat even though she likes to scratch. I find out I'm going to have to stay at Mary's house overnight, and I'm wondering where I'm going to sleep (on the couch or in this scary extra bedroom they have).
october 13
Rose and I are going shopping at what looks like the mall, but it is much larger and very old-looking. As we're walking up to the doors we pass by this group of people and one of the guys calls me ugly. I ignore him and we just keep walking. Inside I find my way to the jewelry section and run into Dana and Maria. I am looking at a whole bunch of bracelets and try a lot of them on. Dana says that if I were too many heavy bracelets I might hurt my wrists, and I laugh and say "I'm used to doing lots of things with my wrists when I'm wearing bracelets" and then walk away. I'm exploring and I run into this blond girl, who was part of the group with the guy who called me ugly. As she walks she is bouncing this big red ball (like a dodgeball). She tells me that the guy is sorry he said I was ugly, that he didn't know what I was really like. I'm following behind her and I start to ask her a question. The ball gets away from her and bounces down the side of this weird hill that is just a big solid mass of dirt. She goes down this steep little path after it, and I follow her because I think it's my fault that she lost her hold of it. I can't walk on the path and I have to slide down, which annoys me because I'd just washed my jeans. Starting near the bottom of the hill, the path gets all muddy.
october 17
I'm going to this boarding school, and Dana goes there too. We're at PE and we're on a track that looks exactly like the one at Pitt. Sometimes everyone is on bicycles, and other times we're walking. There are two blond girls in our class that Dana and I don't like, and they don't like us either. Sometimes we will turn around and they're a couple of feet behind us, and when we look at them they will pretend to be distracted with something else. At the end of a lap, we finally get into a fight - Dana with one of the girls and me with the other. At first the blond is winning, but then I take over. I'm lying on the ground, on my back, and I'm pulling her hair with one hand and also kicking her in the head and shoulders. She wins in the end, though, and I'm left lying in this weird little room. It is painted white but there is blood splattered all over the wall. I can see Dana slumped over behind this weird barrier, and when I ask everyone how she is, they don't want to tell me. I ask the headmaster if I can go home a few days early, seeing as the term is almost over, but she doesn't seem warm to the idea. She (the headmaster) is throwing this huge fancy party and I'm locked in this little bathroom. I must have gotten sick because there is vomit everywhere. I take a shower and I accidentally get my cell phone wet, and the time messes up. It says 10:17 but there is a clock in the room that says it's 10:53. I manage to ruin the woman's party by calling the police, and when they come, they arrest this guy for being in the pool while he's turned on (???) I'm in this movie theater for a class. I'm the first one there, and the usher makes a big deal about me and gives me a menu. More people come and most of them are guys. The professor finally shows up, and Dana comes in a few minutes after him. The professor is not the teacher of our class, but he is telling us about a message board that we'll be using. He says that the class is mainly in English, but if a student needs to use another language than the teacher has a translating program she can use.
october 22
I'm walking down east Leland and I'm smoking a cigarette. I'm really amazed because I know it's the first one I've ever smoked but I'm not having a bunch of coughing or anything, and also it tastes really good. When I finish it I have a really serious discussion with myself about whether I should keep smoking or not. I think that maybe I can just smoke when I'm hanging out with friends or on special occasions or one a day, but I'm also worried about smoking a lot.
october 23
I'm in the shower and there are a bunch of these really pretty seashells. A couple of them are much larger, and so I open them up to see them. They have these weird things inside them that I'm not sure but may be a weird fish-type animal (or like an oyster). I take the weird thing out and think about taking the boxes, and decorating them to give to people as gifts. I turn the two big shells over and see that they have writing on them, and the weird stuff inside was soap. So I decide to decorate the boxes anyway and put the soaps back in (even though one has no smell at all and the other smells kind of bad). There are these four people that my mom and I are keeping an eye on, because they (especially this one blond girl) had done something to me in the past that was really bad. (Something like she had herself, or gotten someone else, to do something sexual to me but I didn't know about it until later) We get this weird video of the four people and these other two groups of friends in these cars, doing doughnuts around this weird sculpture. Two of the cars crash into it and start this huge blue fire but the four main ones just walk away laughing. They come over to our house and I am sitting on the couch eating chocolate-covered cherries. I offer one to the blond girl and she takes two, laughs and says something like "Whenever I have these they make me think of you." There is this older man at the house that is there to help my mom and I get back at her, and they are all making out in this bed and about to have sex. He says they need to go to her "teenage bed", this other bed in a back room. There are cameras there so we can tape what they're doing and then humiliate her later.
october 24
I am going to be in a play at LMC, and I realize on the day of our first show that I have not done any rehearsing or even looked through the script. It's a play version of Jackie Collins "Hollywood Wives." I go through the book looking for stuff about my character (named something Tarasoff) but I'm only mentioned a few times and I realize that my book is incomplete. I'm supposed to be at the school at 6:30, and it gets to be around 6:20 and I'm just starting to get dressed (we have to wear our own clothes). I choose what top I want right away, and I want to wear my skirt but I haven't shaved my legs so I'm going through all of my knee highs, trying to pick out the darkest pair. I keep debating on whether to actually go to the school and finally I do. I get there and I want to get my hands on a copy of the play so I can memorize as much as I can but since I'm late we have to start right then. The first scene starts with me and two other girls, and they don't seem to know their lines either since they're holding a copy of the script. I try to read from it but the words are really small and I can barely make them out. I'm at home changing the water in Cuthbert's bowl, and when I try to scoop him into a cup I discover there are a bunch of other fish in the bowl with him, between about 5 and 7. Just as I think I've finally gotten all of them into little cups, one last one floats up and I think it is dead.
october 26
I'm at the old house with Rose, and we're sitting in my parents bedroom just hanging out. I look out the window into the backyard, and I see this huge Save Mart truck parked in the grass there. Suddenly the truck starts rolling, goes through our fence and to the yard and house next door. I see this weird thing that I know is a ghost - it is this very solid human-type shape, all brown so that no features can be made out. The head is a perfectly round globe. I duck down below the window so that it can't see me, and I tell Rose not to peek out but she does through this weird little window. I'm waiting for a long time, hiding, to make sure the thing goes by. It starts to get dark and I wish it would hurry because there is something I want to watch on TV. Then it changes to where I'm watching this on TV but I'm also there as a kind of unseen observer. This guy and his wife are being hidden away by this man (gangster type) who has control over the ghost that made the truck move by itself. The guy and his wife have to stay in one room all the time, and both the men are really mean to the woman but it all kind of goes over her head (she looks like Edith Bunker). She has a whole bunch of books there she wants to read, but the gangster will only let her read these dorky children's books. Then he sees a cookbook and tells her that if she can manage to make an onion soup as good as his wife once made, she will get to read the other books that she likes.
october 28
My family is at the old house, and everyone (all of us, a bunch of our other family members, and some other random people) is out on the front lawn. There is this weird guy who comes along. He is first white, then black, and eventually turns into an indian. He has decided to make everyone there (there are exactly 20 of us) fight - each of us has to fight everyone else. If we don't, he will make something bad happen. He tells us we have just two hours, but no one seems that into it and we all just kind of mill around, talking. I talk to this one guy and I'm thinking that someone is going to be moving into a house on our street. I say to him, "Wouldn't it be funny if these people were driving down here just as we're all fighting, and they crash their moving van into their own new house?" I go into the house to use the bathroom. This old woman had been in there before and there was a walker by the toilet. While in the bathroom I'm trying to think of some way to get out of fighting, and wonder if lying to the guy and telling him I'm pregnant will work. I think it probably won't. I go to this weird back room of the house that looks like a restaurant, and run into the indian and this blond woman who had done some work with his tribe a long time ago. I tell her about what he's making us do, thinking she'll be mortified, but she laughs and says "I'm not surprised, I'm just surprised that this didn't happen sooner!" I go back into the front yard and Rose's mom is kind of batting at this one woman with a net (like a pool cleaning net) and so I kind of help her but soon give up. I go to the movies with two women and this little boy, who is one of their sons or possibly a son of one of their friends. He leaves to go use the bathroom and is gone for quite awhile (the movie never starts). One of the women touches me on the arm and tells me to look up at the ceiling. The little boy is there and waves at us. He is not really on the ceiling, but in a weird back room or balcony, and it is just his reflection we see. He disappears and after a few minutes the two women go to look for him. One says there was a group of 4 bullies around earlier and she doesn't want them to hurt the boy. They tell me to stay in the theater and I do but I am scared. Dana comes over to the house to give me a birthday present. She hands me this box and says "I hope you can wear these." It's a pair of these pretty pink tourmaline earrings. They are magnetic so I don't have to get my ears pierced. I go to try them on and I'm shocked at how strong their magnetic pull is. When I put them on, it squeezes my earlobes really hard and twists them up. It's so strong that I wonder to myself if they could pull out my brain.
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