I had a dream. In it, I was playing hide and seek with a little girl. I have the sense she was a grandchild. She had a frilly dress and thick pigtails both of which flowed behind her when she ran. Her melodic giggle bounced off the walls and brought life to the whole house. I was hiding behind a french door in the nest (where Marty and I sleep). I heard the small voice running from room to room, c...

good friend bookpimp called me recently to tell me i was in a dream of his. he described it as such: the next day he called me to tell about my place in history. he said that when he read this in his dream, he chuckled. and the worker even asked him why he laughed. he played it off saying he knew something about one of the sites. i could totally see that playing out as there are few things sweeter in this world that a genuine bookpimip chortle.

dreaming my work is not only in the top 10 of pivotal sites to mankind, but third on the list, should definitely earn you top-billing on the super-fan list. vp at the least.

and i don't think we need to hire a fancy dream analyst to gauge bookpimp's mood on the current state of affairs.

in both of the summer trips we just took we were invited to join families on their standing summer vacations. we've spent time with both of these families before so knew them well. for me, the truly special thing was getting to benefit from their experience and knowledge of the areas we would be visiting as that, in my opinion, tends to be the hardest part to figure out regarding new places. when ...

marty dreamt about an obnoxious student, fictional, in her class that came and spread out a bunch of electronics on his desk at the start of class. she repeatedly told him to put his toys away. after not complying she walked up to his desk and had the following exchange:

MARTY
i've told you four times to put that stuff away.

OBNOXIOUS KID
i guess now you're going to have to tell me five times.

to this unexpected response marty held up her hand as if to point a finger at him, but magically clutched in her grip was a butter knife. using this opportune dream-development she brought the flat edge of the knife down sharply hitting the boy on the forehead. shocked and mildly hurt the boy said:

OBNOXIOUS KID
hey! you can't do that. i can get you fired. i'm going to get you fired.

MARTY a little stunned
well ... well ... not if i quit.

marty then promptly went to her desk, dashed out a quick resignation letter, grabbed her backpack and high-stepped out of the room.

the next day marty shared this dream with another teacher. he lit up and said he recently had one of those (it turns out these sorts of dreams may be more routine than one might expect). in his he got so frustrated with a student he strangled him, like to death. the curious thing he said was that after it happened he wasn't shocked or alarmed but turned away with a sense of satisfaction as if he'd just graded a huge stack of papers. it wasn't until his co-teachers in the room chastised him and said he shouldn't have done that before he felt bad about what had happened. it is important to note that he recalls not feeling bad about the limp student but he felt bad that he had disappointed his friends and co-workers.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. dream fail

marty, the boys, and i (and a dog we were sitting) were on our way to a weekend hike. during the drive, i told the boys i'd seen the latest star trek movie and it was awesome. and as soon as we finished watching the original series (we're currently on 32 of 82) we could work our way through the movies (and then onto subsequent series).

after a quiet moment, anthony asked how spock was able to pinch people's necks and make them knock out. alex explained, circuitously, that it had to do with the way they, vulcans, were made and similar to the mind meld trick. marty reached across from her seat and feigned a mind meld on me while i drove. through a highly focused face she slowly relayed the words, "i ... wish ... i ... had ... a ... gigantic ... penis". hysterics were grand and since bella opted to hang back at the house, our groin-centric foolishness came without a severe group chastising from our twelve year old.

marty's comment sparked a memory in anthony of a dream he had a few nights back where he was being chased by hundreds of running penises (running as in jogging, not running as in dripping with disease). they tried to drown him in a lake of pee but he woke up before they succeeded. i told him i thought i remembered seeing an episode of leave it to beaver where the beaver talked of a dream like that. both marty and alex looked at me suspiciously. i shrugged my shoulders saying i've been trying to convince anthony to watch leave it to beaver but he's never shown much interest. he's still not asking to watch the series but i think i have him closer now that he thinks beaver too may have done combat with an army of rampaging, urinating penises.

bella keeps a dream journal.

most mornings you'll find her in bed, freshly woken, leaning on her pillow and furiously scribbling in a spiral bound notebook. if you walk in, she'll sharply hold her hand up so you don't talk to her. once you nod your understanding, the hand darts back to the page and continues its mad dash.

the other morning while i was showering, bella came into to go pee. she started telling me about her dream.

BELLA
i had this babysitter. and she was hot. and then a second babysitter came and she was also hot.

TROY
are you saying hot like hot-pretty or hot-sweaty?

BELLA
hot-pretty.

TROY
ok. that's what i thought.

BELLA
well, then they got into a catfight over who was supposed to babysit me. and, oh, they were wearing swimsuits.

i don't want to say this dream was wasted on bella, but seriously, in a just universe, the ten year old girl doesn't get this dream, her father does.

i just had a dream. it was less than ten minutes long as it occurred between snooze alarms. bookguy and i were standing in the middle of a serengeti-like plain. bookguy was putting his shoes on and i was wordless standing over him. a small plane erratically flew overhead, sharply banking and turning as if evading something. as it passed closely over us, we could see a man standing in the lowered freight door opening at the plane's rear. he was holding onto cargo netting on either side of him and swaying to the plane's dips and dodges. i commented on what he was doing and how crazy it looked. bookguy said the crazy part was how much those rides cost, adding that the man probably paid upwards of $60,000 for that ride. i gasped at the amount and asked why it was so much. as bookguy finished tying his shoes and stood up, he casually said they were probably taking him to the indian ocean. i asked what he'd do when they got there. i was told he would jump in. i asked if that was dangerous? bookguy confirmed it was because of the sharks and said that excitement is what made it so expensive.

just then on the other side of a tuft of trees about hundred feet away, two giraffes came charging by us. they were so close you could see the strain in their faces and the muscles in their neck contorting and working from their body's mad dash. i pointed and yelled, "whoa! look at those things. oh, how cool is that. they're truckin'. ohh, they're so big, i feel like i'm seeing real-life dinosaurs." bookguy wordlessly took in the scene as his eyes tracked their passing. as they moved into the distance i asked him what he thought they were running from so fast. in turning back to bookguy my eye caught two flashes in a bunching of trees. in squinting harder i noticed three lions crouched in the underbrush. i pointed in their direction and said "those lions might have something to do with it." before my sentence was complete, one of the lions sprang from hiding. she charged toward us in gigantic, darting, bounds. matt and i took a few thoughtless steps backward and just had time to mutter, "what do we do now?" before the lion was on us. i turned to move out of her path but before i took a single step, i felt her teeth sink through my right thigh's muscle like it was soft butter.

with that my eyes mercifully opened to the quickened beating in my chest.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. get your ass out here

it was 12:30 at night. marty was reading in bed. her hand lazily reached to her right softly scratching my back as i drifted towards the ether. in the night silence came a wooden thump on the other side of the house. and then another. and another. they were steps. heavy, labored steps that neared our room. i opened my eyes to see the sweet tea in the mason jar on my bedside table dancing like the puddle in Jurassic Park moments before the t-rex arrived.

in our doorway appeared a sleepy isabella, pushing wild hair out of her face and rubbing her eyes. once her face was fully visible, she said ...

Mother! Go To Sleep!

she then turned and heavily-marched back to her bed. you could hear her collapse into bed two rooms away. back to silence.

the next morning alex reported having a dream where his toes got cut off with a pair of scissors. i said it was a weird night all around. i asked him who cut his toes off. he said in an exasperated voice ...

i told you already dad, my dream did.

last night i listened to a show discussing dream analysis on npr. as i took in the eruditic ponderings of the panel i thought of a dream marty had earlier in the week.

in the dream she woke up in the morning and smelled poop. she called into the kids room asking if anyone needed a diaper change. none did. she then marveled at the proximity and strength of the aroma. she threw the sheets ...

these were the first words said to me after waking up yesterday morning ...

my high school was doing a production of the little mermaid. i was the mermaid but was replaced when i became too difficult to work with.

and, here is the second thing said to me after waking up yesterday morning ...

ivana from the apprentice was there but i couldn't remember her name so i kept calling her maggie.

and, this was my first thought yesterday morning ...

i would pay some serious jack to have marty and ivana in the same room getting haughty with one another.

you just don't know how a day that begins with such beautiful randomness is going to turn out. life excites me.

imagine a man sitting on the front porch of a house. in his hand is a plastic bottle of bubbles which he is dipping a neon green wand into before bringing it to his lips to blow a shiny-wet bubble. the man's bubbles are large and elaborate and it's easy to see he has been making such bubbles for many years.

after blowing a bubble the man would lean back in his chair and watch it slowly ro...

i've realized, only recently, that i have been abducted by aliens. i'm not sure how long it has been going on, only that is has been awhile. the signs were numerous but the course of events began so rapidly and mildly i was impotent to put it all together. but, this is how they want it.

the epiphany began after waking up from a dream where i was being escorted around by someone who knocked on doors after passing through them. i was then suddenly sitting in a diner, eating alone with my father. for those of you who know my father and i, know the plausibility of this, but you see, the aliens don't. they just know that this should be a viable combination. but we're unique like that. then a waitress moved to the middle of the serving floor raised one foot and passed some very audible gas. all the patrons in the restaurant looked up from the plates or conversations to stare at her and her looking back at them standing with one foot square on the ground and the other slightly raised, bent at the toe. has flatulence woke up bella. not in the dream but in real life, which woke me.

when i went to get up to get her i could not bend my arms. it was as though the joints were soldered and hence swollen and since rusted. but the elbow joint wouldn't give. i laid there for a moment, bella crying and me looking at my arms as they were magically held in invisible plaster paris, up and away from my body. i kept working them until the hold broke and i was able to begin slowly moving them. they were ginger all that day but getting better by the next.

after this, things started becoming more apparent to me.

first, this journal, for the last several months has primarily focused on aspects of the body. while this has long been a pastime of mine, it has been a little unbalanced as of late.

next, i bought an electric toothbrush. you see, this pulsating device of insertion had unknowningly become comforting to me, because of the experiments plied to my body by the guys who welded my elbows.

then there was the startling change in my behavior where i started getting up at 6:30. yes in the morning. to say this is unprecedented would be an insult to every instructor and employer who ever talked to me alone in their office about my loose definition of punctuality. (what is punctuality, really, if we think about it, is it real or is it simply imagined, and in the big and evolutionary picture, i'm really way early, all things considered?)

there's more, but i fear if i delve much deeper into my symptoms you may actually begin to believe me but i will mention one other aspect of this all just so you know the serious nature of my situation. i am actually doing work at work.

scared yet?