So, for the record, I am aware that I'm probably boring the living hell out of my readers (reader?) out there, but my dream recall has been nil lately. What can you do?

1. (over Thanksgiving weekend) We watched Knocked Up again, which always seems to be followed by a pregnancy-related dream for yours truly. This dream was strange for me because no one in it, myself included, seemed to have any adverse reaction to the fact that I was pregnant. My parents and sisters were really amped about the situation. They occupied their time with pitching boy and girl names to me and oohing over the prospect of buying baby clothes. I had no anxiety or depression over the bun in the oven, as I would were I to be impregnated in real life (i.e., there goes that whole career in medicine thing). Instead, I was busy, running around to obtain all of the appropriate accoutrement that one must have for infants. And while I seemed largely indifferent to the tiny life burgeoning within me, I was catching a bit of the baby fever from my family. Also interesting to note: there was no father present in the dream. I don't know who he was, since he never came up at all.

2. (last night) Monsters are chasing me through a city which seems similar to New York. I am running all out, but I begin to get that ooky dream feeling of "I can't run fast enough," and the monsters are getting ever closer to me. These monsters are assumed to be an alien race, as they've been branded ETs by the media. Unfortunately for us humans, the monsters have all the intellectual acumen of the Jurassic Park velociraptors. They've got no problems opening doors, unlocking locks, and manipulating other man-made objects. Even more unfortunately, the monsters have a nasty habit of cracking human skulls and sucking out the contents with a proboscis-like appendage. I'm reflecting on the nature of these creatures while I run, which is why I've got the above information, I suppose. However, the dream ended in my sudden awakening just as the monsters were at my heels, and so we'll never know how the species fared (or even how I fared) after this particular dream's invasion.

I am at my apartment. It's the dream version of where I live, meaning that I have twice the space, the apartment is spotless, and everything in it is generally spiffier. Vito's status as primary pet is compromised, as I have a unnecessarily large pride of cats in my apartment. It seems as if most of them aren't mine, however. There are only two cats with collars; one is Vito and the other is a black and gray tabby named Turbo. I am surprised by the presence of all of these cats, and I quickly realize that the one with the "Vito" collar is not Vito, after all. I chase down every male orange tabby until I find the real Vito. Meanwhile, three cats have cornered a small mouse behind my radiator and are playing with it. My mom, who suddenly appears in the dream, is terribly disgusted by the mouse-hunting behavior.

I am on the lam. I can only vaguely recall the crime that I committed, but I do remember that it involved three separate tasks which I think were derived from a dungeon in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which I played before bed last night. Initially, Sarah is also on the run with me. As we know that a huge police force is after us, we leave my apartment (which is a snazzier version of my current place) as soon as possible. In an attempt to do the unexpected, we don't leave the building, but enter the apartment across the hallway from mine to hide. Luckily, the apartment is host to a handful of really stoned hippies and a few similarly stoned kittens, who couldn't care less about our intrusion. In fact, they're kind enough to lend us a change of clothes and help Sarah and I cut and dye our hair. I feel badly doing it, but I take a wad of cash off of a hippie's dresser. If we continue to run from the police, we won't be able to use plastic. After the theft, the kittens seem to be on to me, as they're biting and scratching me incessantly.

Over time, Sarah's no longer on the run with me, though I've no explanation for her departure. I go through a number of chase scenes somewhat similar to the Bourne Ultimatum foot chase through the city. Tightly followed by police, I'm entering apartments and houses in an attempt to lose my tail. These chases are taking place in a city similar to Madison; most of the housing I'm invading is leased to students, and later in the dream, I am being chased through buildings on a college campus. I hot-wire a few vehicles, and at one point, I almost get away with purchasing a ticket and boarding a plane with a false identity. I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of people willing to help me on the sly. Using public phones and code-speak, I am able to arrange several meetings with family and friends. One of these meetings takes place at a delicious Japanese restaurant, where I have a spread of sushi I've never before encountered. I am wary of land lines and surveillance systems.

Eventually, I illegally cross the border into Canada, adopt an alias, and emigrate to France. I run into Evan in Paris, and we talk about our blogs. I compliment him on his excellent writing. He says he hopes to continue reading about my dreams. The dream ends as I'm walking away from Evan down a beautiful Parisian street.

I am hiking to the top of a snow-covered hill. The land around me is covered in evergreen forest. I got the sense that I was trying to get away from people I was with, but these detail are lost to the dream. When I reach the top of the hill, I notice that someone has built a ski run down the hill and right into their backyard, complete with a ramshackle lift. As I am atop the hill thinking about the best way to get back home, a man on horseback rides up to me. He asks if he can give me a ride somewhere. I say yes, and he immediately asks me if I need help mounting the horse. Initially, I decline, but I realize he's riding saddleless. After one poor attempt to jump onto the horse without the use of a stirrup (and terrifying the horse in the process), he hoists me up himself. We trot down the hill.

For no discernible reason, we switch locations abruptly, and we're now riding through Sarah's dorm. As we ride down her hallways to the elevator, I see my mom and yell a hello her way. As we wait on horseback for the elevator (??), mama approaches me, furious. She tells me that it was very rude to ride by her without stopping to chat. I am very embarrassed that she'd lecture me like a child in front of my horse-owning companion.

I am at home. Tiff comes in; she's just returned from her trip to Las Vegas. Of course, I ask her how the weekend was. She says that the trip wasn't that great, and its shortcomings were due to her stepsister. Her family anticipated that the stepsister would be difficult, so they planned the itinerary around her expected tantrums. Surprisingly, the stepsister was well-mannered and upbeat all weekend, and she didn't hold them back at all. They had so much time to kill that Tiff was unbearably bored. I feel badly that the trip didn't go well, and I suggest that she should bring a book along the next time she travels.

I am with my family on an expansive spaceship. It's clear that the spaceship is not ours, as we're occupying ourselves with exploring its many rooms. We walk into a large room. As with every room we've entered, there is a time delay of about 15 seconds before the overhead lighting automatically switches on. In the near darkness, all I can see initially is rows and rows of cages. I'm frightened, as I am fairly certain that we've entered the ship's prison. However, when the lights kick in, we encounter something much stranger. The room is an exotic zoo of sorts. It's full of creatures alien to us, each in its own cage. Imagine all of the bizarre characters from Monsters, Inc. as zoo animals, and you've got an idea of what we see.

The family and I are walking the room individually, ogling the caged animals, when Sarah screams with shock. We run to her; she's standing in front of a cage that contains two tiny kittens, your garden variety domestic short hairs. We also see immediately why Sarah screamed. The kittens have collars embedded under their skin, but no one has tended to the hastily-sewn stitches after inserting the collars. The two young cats are very obviously in pain. Papa pulls out a medical kit and declares that we must help the animals. After applying a topical local anesthetic, he cuts the collars out and begins to sew the wounds back together neatly. One of the kittens starts to lose blood quickly. I'm holding his neck wounds together to stop blood flow while my dad works. Weirdly, the blood lost is purple at first. Bleeding continues for a minute or two, and then the blood turns a more pedestrian red. The kitten is much less lethargic and generally more kitten-like after its blood looks normal. We realize that the kittens have been poisoned into near-torpor somehow via the collars. Since all of the zoo animals have these collars, we begin to debate our next step. Most of the room's species are foreign to us, and who knows what the animals are capable of doing once fully awakened from their lethargy?

I only remember random snippets from last night's dream, so the descriptions below are very disconnected.

- Kori is driving a yellow school bus around Madison. It's an old clunker, and it creaks and groans as we drive it down the road. She's supremely irritated, since it's been a total bitch to find parking for her new wheels. We end up parking the beast so that we're blocking half of a Budget Bicycle driveway.
- I'm with my mom and a few other people. We're getting out of our family van in front of a bank. In front of the building is a man with a huge display of lollipops. There are bunches and bunches of Dum Dums arranged in little kiosks all around the table at which he's sitting. This is like a divine intervention of sorts, since I've got a horrible metal taste in my mouth that won't go away. However, the man with thousands of lollipops flatly refuses my request for some candy; he's only authorized to give Dum Dums away to people who apply for a loan. I am irritated, since he's obviously got plenty to spare.
- There's a wide-eyed freshman sitting next to me in some discussion section. We're nearing the end of class, and she's stressing out, worried that she won't make it to her next class on time. For some reason, she won't listen to me, though I've assured her several times that the building for her next class is directly across the street from us.

I woke up a five a.m. after this strange dream concluded. Sadly, I know that the one dream element I really wanted to remember for the blog was lost when I went back to sleep.

I am on a sound stage hosting some Today-like morning talk program. We're doing a segment on makeup for fall, and the lady we've got on to host the piece is not Joan Rivers, but she's got the same stylist. You know the look: pink tweed pantsuit, 30-odd years of facial plastic surgery, and heavy, heavy pancake clown makeup. After filming stops, the woman begins to attack my look in a passive-aggressive manner. I wear little to no makeup on a day-to-day basis (true), and Rivers-doppelgänger is aghast that I haven't even bothered to wear eyeliner and lipliner on the air. She's walking me through the compact options that she'd recommend I immediately start implementing into my daily routine, and, much to my chagrin, my mother is walking behind Rivers-doppelgänger, nodding and smiling at her suggestions. Mama has the nerve to tell me that Rivers-doppelgänger is totally right, that I should be more aware of my appearance. I am irritated, because success in medical school has nothing to do with my makeup habits. (After writing this, I'm kind of thinking that Rivers is her own doppelgänger, but whatever. Also, interesting fun fact: when I image googled "too much makeup" in order to find a picture for this post, Tammy Faye Baker popped up everywhere, but no Joan Rivers. Since Baker just kicked the bucket, I'll keep it classy with another picture.)

After I leave the sound stage, I run into a guy I know. This guy always has beautiful curly hair (not you, Scott, though your hair's also very nice). For some reason, he's chopped his hair into a very short and wholly unappealing buzz cut. The effect is so dramatic that I don't recognize him at first. However, as soon as he opens his mouth, I can tell who he is. Years of people telling this kid he's a genius (which he is, in some respects) haven't served him all that well; he assumes that he's an authority on many subjects, when, in fact, he presents himself as pompous and extremely irritating most of the time.

I ditch the kid and take a route walking home with my mom that leads us right by St. Patrick's Parish, the church at which I was First Communion-ed and confirmed. I spot a limo in the driveway along with rows of catering tables - a wedding's obviously taking place. Mama insists that we peek inside to see who's getting hitched, so we walk in the main entrance. St. Pat's is magnificent in my dream, with a vestibule that's more like a huge reception hall. Tables are set up in here for the post-nuptials dinner and dance. Of course, my mom immediately spots a woman she recognizes and is assigned by said woman to man the guest book. I follow her to the guest book table, but she soon sees someone else she must greet, and she abandons me. I am grudgingly manning her post when a woman who looks vaguely familiar approaches. She begins to tell me a story about the mysterious disappearance and death of a man who is apparently one of her relatives. He was going out to meet a friend whose truck had stalled in an isolated area, and the last person who saw him alive was the person at Citgo who sold him cigarettes on his way out of town. I am very intrigued by her story, and I ask her questions until I've gotten all useful information about the case from her. (I had a weird in-dream déjà vu experience while the woman was telling the story of this unsolved murder. I don't know if it was a component of another dream that I'd forgotten before writing down or if the story's loosely based on reality. It was truly bizarre to feel déjà vu in a dream, in any case.)

I'm heading into my old high school with Tiffany and my sister, Sarah. For some reason, school was optional for students today, but my mother's still forced me to attend. We head to our first class, which is in some area of science. Tiff informs me that since most of the class is absent today, we're supposed to be watching a video entitled "Epidemic" which focuses on the spread of multiple diseases, including the medieval plague, polio, ebola, and AIDS. This doesn't exactly forecast a happy-go-lucky start to the day, but when Mrs. Kemp (my favorite high school biology teacher) tries to put the tape into the VCR, it breaks immediately.

We put our chairs into a large circle, intent on discussing disease spread instead of watching the film. For some reason, Mrs. Goodman (the district RN) is acting as an aide to our class of about ten students. Interestingly, after the tape breaks, the class unanimously decides that we're not staying. I begin to leave the classroom and head home with Sarah. Instantly, Mrs. Goodman is on my tail, guilting me about my decision to leave school. She follows me all the way out to my car. I remember Sarah drove us home, because she unlocked and started the Prelude while I distracted Mrs. Goodman for the time being.

1. I am with my immediate family members and Aunt Patty (my father's sister). We're walking through a very scenic rural area. I hear my father and Aunt Patty pointing out places as we pass and reminiscing about their youth. I figure that we must be in the Rouses Point area, where my father was raised. He points out his favorite place to swim as a kid and his father's fishing spot. We enter heavy woods, and, although it's midday, we can hardly see in front of our faces. My father and Aunt Patty lead the way, since they've obviously been through these woods many times before. After a good 15-minute hike, we emerge in Rouses Point; we've returned to civilization, kind of.

2. In my second dream, I was having my car repaired by an untrustworthy mechanic. Working as a one-woman Better Business Bureau, I aimed to catch him in the act. I hired a private investigator to track the mechanic's shady repairs and even shadier price inflations. I remember feeling incredibly self-satisfied, though there was no recompense for my suffering at his hand in the dream.

1. I am with my sisters at home. We're going to a birthday party later on in the day, and we're trying to think of a suitable present for the kid. The kid whose birthday we're celebrating is in L&E's class, a real pain whom we can't stand in real life. For some unknown reason, the most befitting gift we can think of is a nose ring piercing. He doesn't yet have his nose pierced, so we're going to get a gift certificate for the cost of piercing and buy him a nice ring to go along with it. Most of this dream was spent with me trying to get everyone involved in the van to go to Wal-Mart and buy the piercing. Once there, we agonized over jewelery choices for some time, finally deciding on a black ring.

2. I am a detective on an inner city beat, and my team and I are investigating a series of similar murders. In each case, the victim's skull has been cut away and specific brain areas have been removed. We're on the scene of another murder which appears to be associated with the same serial murderer. This victim, a young, pretty blonde woman, has had her amygdala removed, with other brain regions virtually intact. (Due to my BS in neuroscience, I've been a real boon to the team as of late.) Near the woman's body, we find a man's skull. This skull has been picked clean to the bone -- whether by time or actual cleaning, we don't know yet. The skull's got a characteristic circle cut away over the posterior portion; we know that this man is yet another victim of this bizarre brain-coveting killer. We go through the backlogs of unsolved murders, and we match the skull to the body of a victim recovered in the mid-nineties. Apparently, this killer has been at work for over a decade and has just now chosen to be more forthright with his methods. We ponder his motives as we begin to pore over the crime scene.

I am with my family and Scott. We are in Asia, possibly the Himalayas, and we are bound and determined to climb to the peak of a mountain. However, compared to the surrounding mountains, the mountain we aim to climb is rather puny. For some reason, we climb a large portion of the mountain inside the mountain, like it's the Statue of Liberty or something. The pathways inside the mountain are treacherous, with plenty of falling rock and tight passages to squeeze through. When we're about halfway up the mountain, Papa opens up a hidden trap door, and we surface. The rest of the climb is difficult, in part because I've worn running shoes instead of hiking boots. Scott walks behind me to ensure I don't slip and fall a few hundred feet.

When we reach the summit, I realize what my parents didn't tell me; we were involved in a race to this mountain's peak. Our method of climbing the mountain's interior has put us far into the lead, and we've won the race. As I woke up, I remember that I was racing to descend the mountain and claim my prize (and I never knew what the prize was).

I am cooking in a woman's kitchen. One of my friends had volunteered to help this woman, but he backed out at the last minute, leaving me to pick up the slack. The woman is cooking for a large family, and she is an Iranian-born Muslim, so I'm unfamiliar with all of the recipes and some of the ingredients. Trying to help this woman is a complete nightmare; she's so bossy and she likes to emphasize all of the things I'm doing wrong, all of the problems I'm having. However, when we serve the finished meal to a table of twenty-five, I feel pride ... and relief.

I only remember snippets of my other dreams last night, but:
- I am hanging out with a crowd from my old high school, and we are walking in Madison. Even though I know the city better than anyone, no one will listen to me when I try to give them better directions.
- A huge storm is brewing off in the distance. The clouds are making gorgeous formations -- everything looks incredible. I want to take pictures of the sky, but no one with me has brought a camera.
- I think I reinvented one of my fellow high school graduates as an incredibly attractive man. We were flirting nicely with each other, hanging out. It was fun.

I am at home with my family. We're driving somewhere, so I hop in our new (used) car, a five-year-old Honda Civic. I begin to drive with Mama and Papa in the car; Laura, Emily, and Sarah are following behind. I stop for a desperate-looking female hitchhiker. Suddenly, the cars are undergoing a game of musical chairs. All of the girls get in my car, and Mama and Papa take over the other vehicle. Soon after we start driving again, I realize that I've got little to no braking power going on. I'm doing all kinds of crazy donut moves trying to stop the Civic without getting into a crash. When I ask Mama and Papa what's going on, they shrug, saying that the brakes are a little tricky on the new car. Apparently, "tricky" means "nonexistent."

1. (Sat. 5/26) My family and I are in a high rise apartment building. We're up on one of the highest floors -- I would venture to guess that we are 30 stories up in the air. We're in one of the apartments, just standing around chatting and enjoying the view of some city we're in. Suddenly, a coach bus careens down the street, followed by multiple police cruisers and a fire engine or two. The bus swerves to a halt, and a man exits, brandishing a large shotgun and strapped with ammunition. It's obvious at this point that he's taken the bus hostage. As SWAT teams assemble, police negotiators attempt to talk him down.

The building begins to shake. It's an earthquake, and we're in a high rise. This is a less than thrilling development. I remember that we're supposed to stay where we are and just get in a doorframe or hallway, but my family sprints for the stairs, as the elevators are disabled. We run out of the building in time. The earthquake has all but stopped.

Mama decides we need transport and hijacks a rather awkward van. We all jump in, and soon enough, the police are chasing us instead of the guy with hostages. We go on a long and dangerous chase through residential neighborhoods. At one point, Mama dodges the police for long enough to force us out of the van. She doesn't want us to be caught as well. Eventually, the police nab her. We feel guilty and decide to turn ourselves in. If she's going down, all of us are going down together.

2. (last night) I'm on the UW-LaCrosse campus for unknown reasons. I'm at some sort of party, and many, many people from my high school are present. Most are my age and older: friends that I graduated with. I see one individual who I dated. I know that I'm looking better than him, so I decide to try and make him jealous with tales of my success in college, loving boyfriend, blah blah blah. He knows that I'm trying to bait him and elects to ignore me. I move on.

Soon, I'm running with another high school crush across campus. No word on why we're running. We duck through a construction site. There's no work going on, but I'm definitely aware that this is some sort of punishable offense, and I don't appreciate that this dude forced me along on his shortcut. At the other end of the site, we run into one of my mom's friends. She says that she's supposed to take me home instead of my mom today. I am suspicious; I ask her what the password is, and she doesn't know. Since she's obviously making an attempt to kidnap me, we escape from her clutches before she has a chance at me.

My family and I are all training to use guns. We're at a firing range taking shots at targets downfield. I remember that accuracy was very important; all of us are trying to be very reliable with our weapons. Mostly, I thought we all looked silly with the big noise-damping headphones on. I never thought we'd be able to pull this off (although I never knew what "this" was; all I knew was that our training was vitally important.).

1. My friend Joe and I are walking in the woods (Joe is someone invented by my subconscious). We're some sort of gypsy people who leech off of others, a la The Riches. However, right now, we're wandering through the woods and we're getting concerned. Nothing looks familiar, and we can't find a path or anything to follow. I'm getting disoriented very quickly; everything looks the same in this area of woods. There are many animals in these woods. I see a group of monkeys about the size of house cats playing around, and I want to mess with them. As soon as I grab one, they all begin screeching and clawing at me violently. Joe and I work together to pull the attacking monkeys off me, and we have to sprint away to avoid further attack. As a result, we're now really lost. A few unnerving minutes pass, and finally we see a group of people walking through the forest. We follow at a distance, and they lead us to a clearing in the woods, in front of which is a paved road and a row of houses -- a normal city street.

We join the group of 20-odd people. They are headed to the waterfront and board a large cruise boat. We soon learn that we're going on a cruise with other students from Alaska to Vanilla (In my dream state, Vanilla was an actual place name). Joe and I find it easy to assimilate with the other students, as we're the appropriate age and have similar interests. We have no problem convincing everyone that we, too, have dropped several thousand dollars on a cruise dream vacation. I find myself very attracted to my friend, Joe, and we share some picturesque smooches on the deck of the ship (think Titanic, without the tragedy part).

When we reach the next port o' call, the people in charge announce that they're going to go through our payment vouchers individually. We'll need proof of payment, photo ID, and proof of vaccination (I'm not sure exactly what disease we were planning to catch in Alaska, but whatever). Since Joe and I have none of the above, we invent a scheme to get off of the boat. I invent a sob story about my family and have the head woman in tears. She lets Joe and I go without a hitch. We're disappointed that we have to miss out on this amazing-sounding cruise with some great fellow travelers. Joe and I resolve to have a better back story and forged papers the next time we board a cruise ship.

2. I had another dream starring my family, but I only have fragments:
- My dad lines up all of the debit cards of all my family members in a row on a table. Mine is missing, and I'm distraught. I go on a mad search for the card. It turns up eventually.
- My entire family is being towed behind a large motorboat. We're going out to some island owned by a family friend.
- This "family friend" has some sort of plot to kidnap us and force us into a life of hard labor / sex slavery. We foil the plot, of course.

Scott, Courtney, and I are going into a convenience store which we frequent. It's early in the morning, and we're surprised to find the front doors unlocked and wide open with no employees on duty inside. Nothing in the store seems out of place, but after a look at the employee schedule in the break room, we realize that our friend Hassett is supposed to be working right now. We quickly go to the front doors and deter potential customers from entering. A few minutes later, Hassett shows up. He apologizes, says he's been working far too much recently. Then he notices that the store's already unlocked, we're already inside. He's shocked, and after a second check of the employee schedule, we know the guilty party who failed to lock the doors to the store last night is none other than my 11th grade precalc teacher (Kori and I, and probably everyone else, just loathed this guy).

It's time to go to school, so I jump into the van with Mama, who's waiting in the store's parking lot. She drives me to my old high school. My first class is precalc, and I'm so thrilled that I can blackmail my precalc teacher. The next time he's a dick, I'll just threaten to bring the hammer down on this whole convenience store irresponsibility, and he's have to back the fuck off.

1. I'm at home and Mama tells me that Laura and Emily are going on this cool canoe trip. It's been organized through my old high school somehow and, from the sound of it, the trip's going to be a couple of days long. She asks me if I'd like to go. I haven't been in a canoe for a while, and this trip sounds like a great idea. I get busy packing for the trip. Among the items packed are half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and my pink bikini (which seems ill-suited for use on a canoe trip). Everything's packed in this black backpack that I bought at Afterthoughts when I was a kid.

Anyway, we get to the launch point and there's a handful of kids and our guides there. For some reason, someone brought a monkey with us. This monkey is the polar opposite of the gorilla in the last post; he's playful and friendly and just mischievous enough to keep us interested but not piss us off. I'm really into the idea of this trip and am ready to get rolling. Just then, my mom asks me if I brought the money for the trip. She drops this bomb on me that the canoe trip costs $1700. Since I definitely don't feel like emptying my checking account for a trip I thought was free, I can't go. Laura, Emily, and the monkey push off and leave me.

2. I am in the Sparta library (I haven't been there in years, on account of I owe them a chunk of change in fines from high school). I walk into a side room that's used for meetings. In the room are a dozen or so naked people, mostly couples. They're engaging in a raucous partner-swapping orgy. I'm not really into the whole orgy scene, but I do see one guy I'm attracted to. He's delivering a news broadcast in the corner of the room and looks suspiciously like the guy who played Doogie Howser, MD. While he's on camera, I go under his desk and begin having sex with him (I don't understand the mechanics of this, either). I'm amazed at his composure; he continues to deliver the news without much ado. Fast forward a few minutes, and we're all dressed, sitting in on a Q&A session for the people who organized the orgy. They're asking questions to its patrons -- what did you like, what didn't you like, etc. A woman gives me her business card and says that we have to do this again sometime. She looks like one of the women on Real Housewives of Orange County, but the name on her business card is the same as the name of the dean of students here.

I go upstairs in the library and look for a journal article about Dickens. They keep all the journals behind the desk in the library, and I'm struck at how few there are here compared with the libraries at the UW. Instead of my article, the librarian mistakenly hands me a stack of papers that Kori wrote in middle school. Included is the one she wrote about the kid who painted his car with a illustrated version of "American Pie", including "The day the music died" scrawled over the hood. I'm excited to show the papers to Kori, but the librarian won't let me keep them, says they're a matter of public record now. I resolve to break into the library later and get them.