High Tide

I was attending a basketball camp in New Orleans. Which surprised me because I'm really terrible at basketball. We had some down time so me and these two other campers were hanging out on a swing set overlooking the Gulf Coast.

One of them asked me if I thought New Orleans was pretty. She was from Louisiana. I told her about how it could be prettier if there weren't so many down-and-out poor people trying to fix their homes after Hurricane Katrina and that the government is too caught up in paperwork to help these people.

As we were talking and watching the tide come in I saw what I thought was a baby being drowned by the water as it was playing in the sand. I ran over to it and into the water and found out that it was really a baby doll sitting in a tupperware container that was being taken over by the tide. I was a little embarrassed as families were looking at me like I was a crazy Yankee.

Image Note: I realize that this is a poor depiction of my dream -- that the tupperware is sub-par and the Gulf of Mexico near Louisiana is more brown than blue. Forgive me.

I do?

My friend Kevin asked me to marry him and I felt that I could not say no. He took a job in Newport to be close to me and we were going to get a house in between his job and mine.

My whole family was heading to the coast to have dinner with his family but no one knew it was really going to be a wedding. I was very sad about it. Marrying Kevin meant that I could no longer be with my boyfriend who I had been dating for a while. But I just couldn't bring myself to call the wedding off. Three of Kevin's friends, who were the groomsmen, gave me the engagement ring Kevin had picked out. It was gold. It had a purple, green and pink stone (which looked like jagged pieces of crystal) on it. It was hideous.

Throughout the day Kevin has us do little games and my family realized that we were there for a wedding. I was hiding my ugly ring, not wearing it around my parents and grandparents. No one could believe it. The only one who was happy about it was my sister. Luckily I woke up before the nuptials.

Wedding Warts

My lovely friend Caroline had just gotten married. I went to visit her a few weeks after the wedding only to find her in a severely depressed state. She had Post-Nuptial Disorder -- with nothing more to plan or get ready for, she had lost her zest for life.

She had also developed these long, stalactite warts on her hands that she was trying to cover over and wrap up in band-aids. Another side effect of the Post-Nuptial depression. They were blue. They were gross. She was sad. I was disgusted.

Note: I did not include a photo on this post because all the warty ones I found online were disturbing.

Missed the Boat

Two people from high school that would never hang out in real life (Kendra Sewall and Heather Dekanich) and I went to Acadia National Park for a vacation. We took Kendra's car and decided to stop in for a bite at the Jordan Pond House. It was packed! So packed in fact that I decided to serve ourselves our drinks -- which were half hot chocolate and half hot tea and called a Tea Milky. I decided that I was going to try to get a waitressing job there next summer since I was so good at it!

After our trip we decided to take the ferry off of the island and back to Ellsworth. We were walking towards the water taxi to take us to the other side of the island where the ferry was when it started to pull away from the dock. We tried to jump on but we all landed in the ocean. Not happy.

As we crawled out I saw the bus that takes you to the other side of the island and started running after it, desperate to get on lest I miss the ferry. By this time I wasn't worried that my friends were keeping up. My parents saw me chasing the bus and decided to give me a lift. There were about 100 docks and finding the right one where my ferry was at was hard. I had my parents running after me, up and down the street trying to find #51.

Success! Once I got there I gave them my ticket only to find out that I really needed #91, which was on the other side of the island where I started from. I started rocking back and forth, obviously having an "episode."

I woke up in the fetal position.

Freezer Eating

I was working at a grocery store with the entire staff from the University of Maine Bookstore. Every morning when I got into work I would pull down my pants and underwear and sit in one of the big freezers in the frozen food aisle and eat a raspberry turnover.

I knew this was against health codes and morally wrong. But I continued to do it because my coworkers would walk by and not say anything to me about it.

I did this for about three weeks before Colleen told me it was unacceptable. I told her my plot all along and that I was just WAITING for someone to call me out on it. I actually thanked her for saying something so that I didn't have to do it anymore.

I think I had to pee in real life...

Human Chicken

I got knocked up by the guy I am dating. And at almost 31 years old I had decided to keep my babies. All six of them. Three girls and three boys. They were growing inside of me in turtle eggs.


The strangest part (like this isn't strange enough so far) is that they were growing in a pouch. I could lift up my belly, take the eggs out, look at 'em, and put them back in. My babies were black tadpole looking things. And I thought keeping them was a good idea.

Sex and the City and Melanie

In dreamland Sex and the City is real and I am Carrie's neighbor. In fact, I live in the apartment across the hall from her.

We had a nice relationship going, us both being writers and all. Our other writer friend, Kate Ghiloni, lived downstairs from us, and we would hang out looking fabulous and being smart on a regular basis.

I was having a drink with Samantha on the roof of my apartment when we realized the building next door was on fire. The building was the Times Warner building and the window panes were falling out of the offices because of the heat.

Samantha and I scurried down from our perch and grabbed Carrie from her burning apartment, grabbing Kate on the way out before the building fell down. We lost everything. EVERYTHING. All we had were the clothes on our backs which were, of course, designer and chic.

We sat on our stoop watching the entire Times Warner building lose it's walls. The building, for some reason, didn't fall. We could see right through to all the floors and marvled at the technology they used over there.

When we got tired of watching the destruction we all went out for blueberry pancakes. Ce la vie.

The Wrong Guy

I was waiting for my new online boyfriend to show up at my apartment for a weekend of camping and fun. We had been talking on the phone all week and I could tell that he was just a doll. But the guy who showed up at my door wasn't who I was expecting...

Gareth from the BBC's The Office!? What? How could this be? How had I invited him by mistake?

I went back through my phone records and realized I had gotten people mixed up. Instead of inviting the hot nice guy I invited Gareth! In a panic I called who I thought was the hot, nice guy to see what he was doing that weekend. Instead I got ahold of Putty from Seinfeld and he wasn't free that weekend -- he had plans with someone else and the best I could get was brunch with him on Sunday.

Confused as to what happened to hot, nice guy I tried kicking Gareth out of my apartment. He was surly, apparently drunk, and making a mess of stuff. There was no way I was going to ditch him without hurting his feelings and I was really stressed out about it.

Luckily my cell phone woke me up.
It was the hot, nice guy.

Things I do when I'm sleeping....

Last night my friend Ian texted me and I got it late at night. I read it and went back to sleep. In my dream I was on the phone with Ian and I couldn't hang up with him. My cell phone was on the fritz. I could hear him say my name over and over again but couldn't hang up. The only way it would work was if I took the battery out of my phone.

When I woke up this morning I saw that my phone was in pieces and I thought "did I really call Ian last night?" Sure enough I did. Twice.

I hate when my realities get messed up by my unconscious habits.

Wicked Chickens

I was a member of the new season of Survivor. My tribe wasn't faring so well. In fact, we were really really hungry. A crate of three chickens shows up and everyone rejoyces -- food at last. But as they were slaughtering the birds, strange liquid and puss was oozing out of them. These chickens were poisonous.

I tried to warn my fellow teammates but they wouldn't listen. They were starving. After the chickens had been cooked their meat looked more than wrong. The meat of one of the chickens looked like crystals and when bit into they crunched. Another chicken's meat looked like sour cream. But did this stop my teammates from eating the chickens? NO!

So they got sick. And I didn't because I didn't partake in the meal. While everyone else went to the hospital I was left behind. The last to survive -- I won!

Babies Galore

Salvador and Miosotis were married (in real life they are not) and had two adorable kids. They decided to try for one more. Instead they got 8 more. Holy babies! While I was happy for him I was also worried at how they were going to afford all these kids. I told Miosotis that she would have to stay home and take care of them and she got pissed that I told her she would have to quit her job. Sal made more money -- it just seemed obvious.

In any case, I decided to create a family sculpture of Sal, Mio, and their brood of children. Using red clay I created a modernist sculpture that really wasn't any good. But it was my tribute to them and it seemed ok enough. Had I been a better friend I would have purchased them a truckload of diapers.

'She's my cherry pie...'

As Mimi's sister, I'm obviously prone to 'interesting' dreams myself. She's asked me to post a few, so here's a brief one I had last night:


I was dating the D.J. of a swanky club. He had his dog with him, a black lab named Cherry Pie, and everyone kept tripping over her because she was laying right outside the booth. Imagine trying to see a black dog in a dark club! Being the good girlfriend that I am I told him I'd take Cherry Pie home and he could meet me later... and not to worry, I knew he was sleeping around. Apparently I'm more forgiving in my dreams than I am in real life.

-jbs