The Convention

You and I are attending a shipbuilding convention at a hotel in Dallas. We have each been allowed to bring a guest. Yours is some guy who keeps slapping you on the back of the head; mine is a girl who bursts into tears frequently and for no reason.

Bear Attack, Family Drugging

1. You and I are in a train depot with a borrowed Golden Retriever. We are perusing the wares: wooden toys, hammocks, and fireworks, when a man enters with a black bear on a leash. I try to warn you but I've lost my voice; catastrophe is averted as the bear is very well-trained and ultimately just sniffs our borrowed dog and leaves.

2. Ronnie's mom and my mom are encouraging the two of us to do whippits on Christmas. They explain that we will have more energy to open presents and that it will be a fun family activity we can all be a part of. The drug seems to have no affect on me, but Ronnie speaks in a helium voice for the remainder of the dream.

Shopping

I am looking through a shoe box full of a stranger's prescription pills for Christmas presents for my family. The box is predominately made up of varieties of medication to help one quit smoking and I am annoyed by this since my family is already smoke-free. Ultimately, I take a stack of nicotine patches to use as gift tags and a painkiller called Galavant for myself.

Birthdays Begone

A revolution involving the abolishment of birthday celebrations is set to take place in Jersey City on a fake mountaintop with real snow. I am loosely assigned catering duties. I take advantage of my vague orders by repeatedly throwing forks over the mountainside and sliding down to pick them up, one by one.

One Sentence

A series of interconnected nightmares: you die, you are alive but you hate me, I die but it's exactly like being alive only everyone hates me, I hate you because you love everyone more than me, I am wearing an itchy blue sweater, I am someplace very, very hot, I am punching you in your face, I am pregnant, certain brownstones project negative thoughts onto my brain and verbally remind me of my many shortcomings as I walk past them, you are moving to Korea where the seasons are more satisfying, all of my teeth have fallen out.

Dr. Adams, Lost

1. I have secured some kind of television production job for which I am completely unqualified. Two of my superiors stand to the side of my desk and criticize my voice, the way I type, the way I turn knobs, the way I sit in my chair. Ultimately, I break down crying and blame my poor performance on some mysterious orthodontic procedure I had 14 years ago.

2. You and I are trying to find a bar in Manhattan with a waterfall inside, but both of our maps are invalid because the grid system runs oppositely on the weekends. The Lower East Side has also been condensed and edited, with parts of it relocated somewhere in the Bronx. To complicate things further, the bones in my feet are broken, making walking difficult; you assure me that once they heal, my feet will be stronger than human feet.

New Pet

I am in elementary school and my parents allow me to have a ring-tailed lemur as a pet. I take it over to a neighborhood kid's house to show it off, but everyone is freaked out by the fact that its pupils are diamond-shaped. The lemur keeps changing sizes and forms and gets really slippery; I drop it into my neighbor's garden where it is immediately eaten by a pack of toads.

Collision

I physically run into you on a crowded street and when we realize who we are, our collision morphs into an embrace. It is so good to see you but you are almost unrecognizable: you have shaved off your eyebrows, bleached your hair blond, grown your fingernails into talons. I squeeze you as hard as I can and smash my face into your windbreaker, which smells like Bounce laundry detergent and sea salt.

Secret Song, Secret Dog

1. I have the only copy of a secretly-recorded New Order and Mott the Hoople collaboration track on my ipod. I am receiving a lot of attention for this in the music world. Though the song is pretty amazing, the chorus is lyrically-lackluster; Andy Bell gets in on the action somehow and sings in falsetto, "Sometimes I have to be so sweet/And then other times I don't."

2. While grating a particularly hard block of parmesean cheese, I grate the palm of my hand*. My blood somehow triggers my landlord's arrival at my door. He is furious with me and demands to know where I am hiding my Micro-faced Terrier.

*This really happened.

True Redheads

You are the caretaker for a sweet Muppet-faced old man who may or may not be Jimmy Carter. He tells me that true redheads have red hair, "on the eyebrows, on the east coast, on the west coast*, and down south." As he talks, you daub his face with a little lace handkerchief.

*Armpits?

Another Journal Stress Dream*, Amanda Strips

1. This time, the journal cover is not the mixed media collage I've chosen but a very commercial iStockPhoto approximation: a picture of a naked woman holding peacock feathers to cover her lady parts. She has a surprised expression and a clown nose. The back cover is an iStockPhoto of a group of blond** children sitting behind desks, making the thumbs-up sign.

2. Amanda and I go to a crowded bar together. Upon our arrival, she stands on a bar stool, puts her hair in pigtails, and begins a striptease. I am embarrassed, but also kind of impressed.

*They arrived in real life today and are exactly as they should be, thankfully.
**Nerdy Google Search Leads to Awesome New Pretend Band Name: Blond vs. Blonde

Donuts, Shorty, T.V. Guide Control

1. You and I are going on a road trip. To travel light, we lock our stuff in a freestanding locker on West End Avenue. The majority of the actual trip is spent inside various Dunkin' Donuts shops, with you waiting in line while I run through the aisles in an attempt to find the one true donut*.

2. I give birth to an 8 lb., 3 oz. baby who is only 14 inches long. I am pissed off because I am so tall and Ronnie is tallish and I don't understand how this could have happened. The doctor tells me, "the ball's in your court," but offers no other commentary.

3. People everywhere are being controlled by some massive T.V. Guide-based collective. Somehow I have escaped the brainwashing, but you have not. I understand that the only way to be safe in a world like this is to be totally anachronistic, and I reflect this by wearing burlap-centric clothing and whistling a lot.

*I never found it.

Truman, I Presume (Special Nap Edition)

Copies of the literary journal I edit come in the mail, but instead of the cover art I've selected, there is only white space. I am very angry and indicate this by faxing sketches of my physical discomfort to the printing company. They fax back a drawing of a hand to indicate that "every decision is made by Capote."

Fearless, Third Grade

1. I am drowning in a river and three firemen save me by pulling me up on a raft. I recover and get ready to leave but it is clear that the firemen are annoyed because I am not grateful enough. "What do you want me to say?" I tell them, "Sorry to ruin your victory because I'm not afraid to die.*"

2. You and I are able to return to the third grade, along with other adults who 1) have unresolved issues with their childhoods or 2) want to be closer to their own children. The teacher is giving us cursive lessons and we find them really helpful. Later, a bikini-clad woman with self-inflicted cuts all over her body sits in the center of the room and tells everyone that since she's been in the program her son is "bursting to read."

*I am totally afraid to die, especially by drowning.

Prenatal Fun, Accusations

1. My stepbrother's pregnant wife is doing rails of coke off my mom's glass coffee table on Super Bowl Sunday. "Erica," I ask, "do you think you should be doing that?" Annoyed, she says her doctor told her "the thing's brain is already formed," and that I should mind my own business.

2. I am hosting a group of North Korean refugees, one of whom is Julian Casablancas, in my Upper East Side penthouse. Julian wants to sleep in my bed with me but I deny him because I am worried about the other refugees sensing favoritism. Later, someone shits on my pillow, but when I bring Julian in for questioning the evidence is gone, so I apologize profusely.

Travels

1. I am in an unfamiliar airport looking for the restroom, which I learn is down the longest, steepest escalator I've ever ridden. The escalator spits you right into the women's restroom, causing much confusion among the men who seem to think it is a unisex restroom. Also causing confusion, the restroom seems to be modeled after a Las Vegas casino, filled with flashing, buzzing, ringing islands of toilets/games-of-chance; unable to determine if the seat I have chosen is a combination game and toilet or just a game, I play the game without peeing.

2. I am observing a teacher's classroom with several other teachers when I interrupt the class to show the teacher whose classroom we are observing a fun way to teach grammar and sentence construction involving legos of different sizes and colors. Since I don't have any legos, I demonstrate using all the cassette tapes I have brought with me. The teacher's major concern with the activity is that her students are not ready for gerunds.

One in Five, Electrocution Lies

1. Ronnie and I are watching a movie online called "One in Five*" starring Laura Linney. It is super cool and involves Faustian deals with the devil, Gene Wilder on a horse, deadly poison and Scandinavian antidotes. I am sad when I wake up and the movie is not real.

2. I am using an electric mixer in my bathtub to make more bubbles. I realize at some point that there is a plugged-in hairdryer under the bubbles I have been making. I understand that the whole electrocution thing was some kind of government propaganda.

*No movies with this title, but I found this.