NBF's DJ

Note: Subway trains and broken staircases - most often, staircases under construction - are frequent images in my dreams.

The university / multilevel shopping mall with a Starbucks is also a frequently recurring dream theme.

I'm with Karin, my best friend from elementary school, a Swedish blonde who was very popular with the boys in later years while I was her ugly friend. Two boys from our class are there. We're all adults and we're talking about going for lunch. I'm having trouble with something (perhaps parking my car?) so I lag behind as they start for a lunch place. Karin waves at me as she goes toward the university because she has a class in an hour. I decide I'd rather go to Starbucks in the university than tag behind Robbie and David to go to some fast-food place full of stuff I can't eat. So I veer off and go into the mall / university looking for the Starbucks, hoping to find it in the hour I have before class.

Unfortunately, I enter the complex and find myself in a stuffy furniture store section that appears to have no way out to the rest of the mall. I do see a staircase that seems to be under construction. I see that some steps are there. I ignore it and keep looking. I find a set of concrete steps leading down into another hallway, but as I approach the crevice I find that the steps are against the wall and I'm standing next to a vertical drop. I'll have to jump to reach the stairs. I decide to put my handbag down and try it. A passer-by is urging me on. I throw myself against the wall and land on a step. The passer-by cheers me and then makes as if to throw my handbag to me, but he considers this a moment and then runs off with my handbag. I have no way to get back up there to chase him. For a moment I wonder whether I can make him come back and throw me my handbag, but then I dismiss that as unrealistic.

I go down the steps and I'm on a subway platform. I don't know whether the train is going to take me south or north. If north, I'll end up in the Starbucks section of the mall. If south, I'm out of luck. A train comes and nearly knocks me over. I don't get on it. I leave through a doorway...

...and find myself under a very low ceiling about to crawl out through a small opening that looks like a bird's tail. In a moment I realize I'm under a plane!! I panic and scramble to get out. A worker is there and tells me I shouldn't even be anywhere near the runway. I ask the worker how to get to Starbucks and he tells me to just go through that door behind him. I head toward it. That's when I wake up.

I'm back home by the lakeside after the department-store incident. I'd backed down with the police. I have a car. I have to go to a scene study group tonight. I'm finishing watching an old episode of Little House on the Prairie (playing on my TV as I'm sleeping in real life) and hoping to finish a due report as my parents come home. I'd really been hoping to leave before their arrival in order to avoid any trouble, and I know they're going to want to "discuss" this out (yell at me, put me down and hit me) instead of letting me go out. Then I hear my parents down at the lake trying get the boat into the water in high waves. My sister Bren and her friends, and Joanne and her friends, are there playing and there are a bunch of children flying kites. Dad comes in the front of the house and collapses exhaustedly on a chair. He's present-day Dad, and he's had two full-leg amputations. I ask him if he needs anything, and he says just get that damn Little House on the Prairie the hell off the TV so he can watch the news. I can't turn the show off (it's playing in real life), so I just toss him the controls and rush out to help Mom, who I can see is face down in the water with the boat out behind her. I almost trip over Dad's prosthetic legs on the way down to the beach. They've been discarded right before the steps to the house. I get to the beach and Mom is standing up by this time and the boys are in the boat having a good time. I brave Mom's thunderous look and ask her if she needs anything. She doesn't respond. I ask her if she needs a towel or a blanket and she says yes please. Some of her friends are on the dock judging me for being an unhelpful daughter. I run to the beach house to get the towel and shake the sand and spiders out of it before I bring it to her. Then I leave her there and run back up the hill, tripping over one of the kite strings - which takes me up, flying. It's a good feeling and it shows that I'm being included in the family games. I consider not going to the scene study because being included in the family fun is huge. As I'm trying to make thiis decision, I wake up.

My dad, my sister Bren, and I are in a department store. I've just completely defied the family by refusing to go to an all-day Mennonite church service and opting to hang out with the backsliders in the Mennonite Social Club instead. I'm refusing to say I'm sorry, and I'm telling my father he can't boss me around. I'm trying to get them to follow me to the Mennonite Social Club to show them that it isn't sinful. My father starts chasing me and hitting me with his fists. There's nothing in the Bible that specifically says he can't do that. I cower and try to protect myself. I yell at passers-by, "Help! Please call the police!" but no one helps, they just stare. I finally get away and he orders me, "Get in the car!" I say no. I keep refusing and I leave. Then my father starts to get flirty and cajoling. He calls me his little girl. I don't like the way he looks at me. He goes off to look at the rest of the store, and then he shows up again with a sly smile, saying, "I tricked you. You thought I'd left you. But here I am." I run away. I find a clothing store manager and tell her everything that's going on. She says we'll have to find store security and they will report it to the police. I'm just trying to GET it to the police, and no one seems willing to help me so far. The store manager finds one of her bosses and I tell her the story. They all say, "You poor child," and try to console me, but I can see they're also too freaked out to want to get involved. I go back to the part of the store where Bren and my dad were waiting. I see a note from Bren about where dinner is, etc. and they've gone home. I look around and there are a bunch of presents to unwrap! It's also a living room display, so it looks like it's my own apartment. I learn from security that I'll be allowed to stay in the store overnight and to help myself to any products I may need, such as toothpaste or shampoo. I'm happy. I discover that Bren has left a stick of chocolate licorice to make up for anything my father did. I still want to report my father, but I'm enjoying the comforts of this home display and considering just letting things be and accepting the gifts of material comforts and security. Someone shows up with "sexual intent vision" glasses to spot any illicit intentions on the part of my dad during his next appearance. I wear them too when my father shows up the next day, but I worry because I'm not good at pointing the camera while hiding that I'm wearing them. I'd also be punished severely for that unthinkable level of defiance toward my parents. That's when I wake up with an intense vascular headache and feeling sick to my stomach.

Real-life note: My father hit me, but never sexually abused me. He would be horrified and devastated if he ever knew that at 14, I was generally terrified that he might cross that line. I suffer from PTSD related to treatment by my parents and bullying in school. Also, I needed extra Clonazepam (extra-dosed under medical advice) to get to sleep last night because I'd run out of Mirapex.

It's the early 80s and I'm in my late teens/early 20s. I have an assignment I'm working on for university and I need more paper for the typewriter. I go all around the house, hoping to find some paper that Dad has left beside a typewriter somewhere or stowed away in one of his heavy wooden work desks. I can find none, so I sigh because I'm going to have to go upstairs and ask for some from my parents and I know things are tense up there. I go and ask for some paper. My mother asks me to apologize first for my tone of voice earlier. I now remember that we'd been sitting on camping chairs in the forest and she'd started to slap me around, but then we'd come into the present (me 47 years old and in good physical condition; her in her mid 70s and weakened) and I'd fought back, bringing her to the ground. She'd felt humiliated and hadn't spoken to me since. She and Dad were afraid I'd gone bad and would end up a street kid. So I ask for some paper, I'm asked to apologize, and Dad and my sisters just mouth to me, "Just do it." So I frame an apology under a tight smile. I'm given some paper. I go out the front door to the street where I grew up, and I let out a scream. It's heard inside, and then my mom herds my two sisters, both under 15, out the door and into the station wagon. They're about to leave the family and leave me with Dad and she and Dad are even talking about how to divide up the dogs. I look at the dogs and know they're crying inside because they know they're about to be separated forever and it's my fault. I can't believe my sister Bren is in the car and not saying anything. I yell at her that I thought she was my best friend and that she's a traitor - and it seems someone I can't identify is beside me feeding the word "traitor" to me, coaching me along. Then I yell at my sister Joanne, who is now a tall blonde woman with a two-year-old son. I see a Sunday School schedule where my sisters and I attend a shul while my nephew attends a Sunday School class on Jesus. (We're not Jewish in real life - at least not in practice, only in partial background.)

I wake up with people vaguely whirling about me, blaming me for breaking up my family. I'm still drugged up with Clonazepam and therefore half in dreamland, so I know I have to go back to sleep and kill myself in the dream to show everybody I'm a valid person. I know it's safe to kill myself in the dream, because I'll just wake up here. So I go back into the dream and then I'm watching news accounts of myself taking Clonazepam two at a time and delaying each dosage so I don't throw up, so that the overdose'll take and I'll get to leave. But instead I see myself as a blonde teen prostitute with tatoos all over her body. The tatoos are in the form of black vines crawling over every inch of my skin. There's a documentary narration voice stating I woke up here, my name was Margaret as a kid but it's now Megit, and I'm serving fries - which men are only too happy to take from me. The way I'm serving fries is, well, pornographic, and one by one. Apparently Margaret had woken up drugged up and surrounded by a prostitution ring. The documentary goes on to say that the rest of the family - who are now African-American brothers - has reunited and the sons have their own sons, who uncomfortably remind them of themselves.

Very important note here: I'm not suicidal in real life, not in the least. I used to be. But I'm too old and too well medicated for that crap now. I had forgotten to take my antidepressant yesterday morning, but had realized and taken it at night.

Another note: Yes, my mom used to slap me around a bit. She'd get in strange moods where you could almost see a thundercloud over her head. I remember once I saw her like that and stiffened up as I had to walk by her, and then she whaled on me with four or five slaps and told me it was because I was walking with my "nose in the air" looking like I had a "stick up [my] ass". I was scared of her and my dad, who got his slaps and kicks in as well when he went through his depression, to the point that at the age of 14 I almost left home. This is just another PTSD-type nightmare. I read a story about a street kid yesterday, so that was probably what triggered the element of fear of what could have happened to me.

I'm talking with Niri, an old friend from high school. She mentions she's at this hotel in this strange city because Adam is presenting a paper at a conference here. She says she met him a number of years ago and now she wants to have a baby on her own and is hoping that he will be the father this weekend. I feel very jealous. I ask, "Can we share him?" She evaluates this, and asks how long it's been since I've seen him. I don't want to tell her it's 20 years, lest she quote a smaller number and claim priority. I realize I want to have his baby too - to my surprise. I hadn't thought I'd want a baby. But I now realize how perfect the combination of his and my DNA would be.

I'm in an apartment suite with Adam. I know I have to leave for my first day at high school, so I try to find my clipboard and a bathroom. I can only find an exposed toilet in my bedroom, and as he's coming to poke his head in, joking about how the room is in a different city and the weather is so nice at my end of the suite, he points out another bathroom behind a closed door. I go in and notice it's all stocked up with paper supplies and there's a whole cupboard of fresh bread - this turns out to be a laundry room.

I go to the school and find a table outside. The woman there says, "You're late!" I look and notice my slip is the only one left. I do the paperwork and get my list of classes. As usual in these dreams, the first class is history (that's always the class I've missed all year and suddenly have an exam in). I go to class and I'm yelled at for being late. I leave the class and decide to skip it to buy all my books and go chill in the cafeteria.

Bits of this morning's dream (last vestiges of a Clonazepam sleep):

I'm making popcorn in my wok. Clearly I haven't thought this through, because I don't have a cover big enough for it. The popcorn and the oil start flying all over the kitchen, and I'm afraid my mom's about to come in and start yelling at me again for making a mess, or slapping me as she used to do whenever she was "tired". (I've actually been living on my own for 21 years and I could certainly take down my 70-year-old mother in a physical fight. I only recently started making my own popcorn and I frequently burn it.)

As I'm trying to cover it up, we shift to an establishing shot of the building I'm in - a gas station/diner - and then to a computer screen where I'm getting an email from a guy who in real life has just asked me out for the 17th time. I'm not interested in him, and I've told him repeatedly that I'm busy, and this last time he asked me out I finally told him I had a boyfriend. (I don't, but often a persistent man will finally leave you alone if he thinks he'll have to deal with another male instead of just trying to wear YOU down.) He had responded nastily - "Okay what a weird response, I wasn't asking you out, I was just asking you for coffee!!!!!" (Creepy.) In this dream, the same email exchange occurs, but in addition to this nastygram from him, he includes a series of symbol characters (as in smileys or winkies and stuff like that) that, when looked at sideways, look like Mr. Knox from Fox In Sox with an erection.

Ew. But I do wish I could remember the sequence of characters....

I'm in my parents' old Ford LTD station wagon and I've just picked up the dogs. The strange thing is that they're two of the dogs we had when I was 12, black Labs. I drive up to our old house in Stormhaven (where we lived until I was 15) and open one of the back doors. I know there are three dogs back there. The third is from the present, my sister Bren's boyfriend's Jack Russell. The female Lab runs out and tears down the street about five houses over. The male Lab follows her. Of course, the terrier yelps and tags after them. I'm aware that I've just dug the two Labs out of their graves, and that after so many decades in the ground they must be rarin' to go. I grab the male by his collar - he's about 10 metres long - and the female follows him back with me as I command them both to come home. My cat, Miu Miu (who died in 2007), is there and is being cornered by the dogs. I don't tell her to come home because I know she will when she's good and ready. She looks hurt that I haven't included her in the command to come home, but I know you can't command a cat and expect immediate obedience the way you can a dog.

On the way home, we pass our next-door-neighbour's yard - the place where I was babysat and suffered abuse at the age of three. Someone who lives there is putting their cat out as the Jack Russell and the male lab start to rush around this cat. I'm aware I'm being glared at. I finally manage to get all the dogs home and safely enclosed in the yard.

I get in the house. Someone has brought in the stinky cheese we had in the car. There's a wrestler named, simply, E.O.S. - and the message I'd been trying to carve in the cheese was, "Thank you E.O.S. for keeping (some girl's name) company" and this is as far as I'd got. The rest of the message was to be "funny" - "big nose, fat, smells like a fish" - with a caricature of the girl and labels pointing to her various and many flaws. I go into the house and find that the cheese is there and that my mom is joking about E.O.S. being on the phone. I then realize the male and female lab were the wrong dogs - I think I must be having a Clonazepam-induced half-dream. So I mention the two older dogs' names - and my mom, sure enough, looks perplexed and concerned about me - and then I correct myself and say they're actually the family's current Great Dane and Landseer, both females.

Then I'm sitting at a piano in a room full of family members talking loudly about the dogs. At one point someone, possibly my dad, makes a flip remark about how much work it must have been rounding them up. I'm upset, and I mutter - much as Toby might have muttered on The West Wing - "I had to dig them out of their graves." Everyone's head flies up and they look in my direction. I leave the gathering and go to my room. I leave the door open, knowing my mom will pass the doorway on the way to her room. I just lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.

It should be noted, for future reference as well as for this dream, that I'm on Clonazepam for sleep. Clonazepam can have a strange hangover effect, at least with me, where I can be up and walking around and mechanically functioning normally and still be in a half-dream state. If I haven't slept all the drug out of my system, this is usually what happens. Best example happened about a week ago when I was sitting on the toilet, a thought occurred to me that I was going to have breakfast, and I reached up beside me thinking my kitchen shelf was there and I was going to get some ingredients down to make my breakfast. When I could find no kitchen shelf there, I awoke more fully. The other night I dreamt I scratched the skin of someone with psoriasis; the impression remained so strong after I awoke that I actually went to the sink and washed under my fingernails with soap. I suspect Clonazepam might have some hallucinogenic or narcotic properties, but I'm not sure. But it's either put up with half a minute of that after I awaken, or suffer circadian rhythm disorder and its full impact on my life. So the choice is there.

Recurring dream fragment: Digging up long-dead family dogs and having them come out of stasis.

In this segment of the dream, I've just managed to pry a bat off my shoulderblade. (Note: I have chronic pain in my shoulderblade and last night, for the first time, I tried an Icy Hot patch on the area. It seemed to be making my bed cold and wet whenever I woke up during the night, so I was worried about it.) I've also seen a mini-bat, a sort of cross between a black bat and a dragonfly, slip under the door to try to get to me. Then I feel sharp pains in my left shoulder. (Note: The Icy Hot Patch is on my right.) It feels like something is biting me. When I turn around, I see that there is a snake looking up at me from the floor. She's a pale-orangey kind of colour, the colour of a cake baked with orange zest. (Note: I'd baked madeleines the other day and part of the recipe called for orange zest, and I'd been unsure whether that meant all of the orange peel or just the inner flesh under the peel, so that had worried me.) The snake is looking intently at me as if she's on a mission. I try to shoo her away. I try to run away. She keeps getting to me and rhythmically striking at me - in the same spot. She finally says to me, "Look, I'm trying to help you. I need to give you the scars for the electrolysis." I think about it for a moment, but I don't know what she means. I'm not even planning to get electrolysis done. So I continue to run away. She always catches up with me. When I get out of the house - which looks a lot like my grandmother's house from when I was a kid - I'm finally rid of her. I go around to the back to get into the kitchen, which I do from an upper window. The people in the cast of my film are there, cooking on the stove, and Aunt Janet from the Road to Avonlea series is there baking. Aunt Janet starts to scream bloody murder when she sees me come in. The ceiling corners above me are dirty and covered with strands of cobwebs.

I was listening to Apollo 13 on the DVD player all night while I was dreaming, and I could hear the movie in my dreams. In this dream, I'm staying at a detached guest house about 45 feet from the main residence. It's 2:00 in the morning. I'm looking up at the stars, I see Betelgeuse, and I send a wave of love to it because I know Adam is there. Then it occurs to me that we haven't advanced far enough in technology yet that he would be in another star system. I just know he's far away.

I go to the house, which I usually do at 2 in the morning when it's quiet just to sit in the living room. This time, it's filled with young science students who are trying to figure out a project. There is a lot going on. They're trying to save one of their buddies who is stuck on a spacecraft. I say this would make a good screenplay and one of them smiles, but they're all clearly more serious than that.

They keep working on it, and I notice a green messenger bag that John has given me. He's taped the notes for a theatre project onto the flap. I remove the paper with the notes, and it occurs to me that when John sees that I've done this, it'll be a daring move.

The guys in the spacecraft are eventually saved, everyone cheers, and one young man in the next car gives me a Spock "live long and prosper" sign. I smile and give him one back, conscious that anyone who sees this will think we are geeks! He smiles back, and shows his other hand (his left hand), which has only three fingers that are naturally arranged in the Vulcan peace sign - and he says, "This is the only way I can make my hands look even." It's clearly a joke. I smile in acknowledgement and then drive away with whoever's driving the car I'm in.

For one of these rare times, I simply haven't a clue what any of this means in my life. Edit: Oh, except the thing with John's messenger bag. Removing the theatre project notes symbolizes removing the guise of working together on a project. The simple messenger bag, without that embellishment tacked on, symbolizes us simply being together without a reason other than plain, simple desire. That thought is so scary that it had to couch itself in the symbolism of the green messenger bag. By removing the theatre notes, I'm boldly giving him the message that the messenger bag is a personal gift, not a utilitarian one. Brassy move. I'm sure I couldn't say something like that to him in real life...or possibly even say it to myself.

I have a principal role in a film (not the lead, but a major supporting) and the crew has suddenly decided they’re going to put everything in helicopters and go to shoot the rest of the film in Scotland. I realize I don’t have all my wardrobe!! I left it at home! We’re in Stormhaven, my home town, so I tell the production manager and she immediately gets behind a wheel and drives me out to Quartz Beach. We still only have a cottage there, not a full home (in real life we built a full home in 1979 when I was 15). I’m fretting the whole time because it was simply my negligence; I had the wardrobe for a play I just did and I guess I was so tired after the last performance that I threw it over a chair and forgot to put it in a bag to bring to set. Anyway, we’re on the clock, because in four hours, at midnight, we have plane tickets to Scotland.

Then it’s my sister Bren behind the wheel. Bren is the problem solver of our family. First she goes through all the tops I have with me and we find one that’s reasonably close to the top I was wearing in earlier takes, but not by any means an exact match. Same colour, different cut. I try to explain to Bren that it’ll be quite noticeable in jump cuts because it’ll appear as though I’m wearing a different outfit from one second to the next in the same conversation. We do have the tights I wore on Total Recall, my Mary Jane shoes, underwear, and the sweater I wore on Total Recall, but not the top I need. All we need is a rose-coloured button-down top.

We get to the cottage and I rifle through everything and can’t find the top. Then suddenly there’s a party full of my parents’ relatives and friends, so I can’t leave yet until they all catch up with me. Bren, unsympathetic, is beside me saying, “Smile.” (In other words, the family's concerns for appearances are more important than my career in the film industry.) I manage a tight smile. Bren, unconvinced, gives me a disgusted look.

Then I notice we’re in a school. An idea occurs to me and I voice it: “What if they held the Academy Awards in a school like this?” (I think I meant I’d like to bring my ideal world into my real world.) Bren thinks this is a great thought and shares it with Mom, who is on the other side of her. No one seems aware that I need to be on a plane in two hours.

We get into Stormhaven and for some reason, we need to stop off at our town home. I’m getting more and more frustrated and scared of production’s reaction to me if I miss the flight and hold up shooting. There’s something I need to get. Yes – it’s the top, which as it turns out is in the house in town, not the cottage. I find it and throw it in my bag, which already has a twin-size mattress in it so there’s not much room.

Then we’re in a Canadian Tire store and we’re looking at huge old-fashioned brick-like cell phones that can only call one number. (They're set up like one of those cylindrical devices on The DaVinci Code, mechanically rather than electronically programmed, where certain tabs are depressed and others aren't, so when you press the one button it only dials the one number.) Everyone wants one. I get one so I’ll have it on the plane and be able to update production on where I am.

Then we’re cartoon characters bouncing along a sidewalk feeling guilty for all the evils in the world. We’re children playing. I realize by this time that I’m not getting to Scotland. All my friends bounce away and I lose track of them. I yell, “Hey! Consciences! Come back!” – but the only one who hears me is a funny-looking cartoon character in a top hat with a cane. He isn’t one of my friends, so I ignore him.

I haven't posted here in some time because of concerns about my being in the entertainment industry, where you're in danger of becoming well-enough known that any of your Internet postings are summarily outed. I was advised to stay off the Internet as NavyBlueFlower. I'm back on now, inspired by the immortal words of Dr. Emmett L. Brown: "Well, I figured, what the hell?"

Background to the following dream segment: I'm a lifelong sufferer of OCD. It's been diagnosed, but never directly treated. I am approaching 50. My therapist believes I'm an early-arrival Indigo Child.

Sounds about right to me.

The dream segment: I wake up in a house in England. I don't know the area. It's the home of a friend of my sister's, probably in Wimbledon or thereabouts. I have no idea really where I am - I've just been shuttled over there. I wake up and it's just before sunrise - and I feel a malevolent, sickly-evil presence in this room! I can't see it - I can feel it as if it were an invisible oil slick creeping and hovering through the air about me - an oil slick made of thought. Terrified, I try to turn on a light - but the lights aren't working. I jump out of bed and tear through the house - none of the lights are working. It's pitch dark. I run out of the house and down the street - the sun's beginning to come up and the pre-dawn twilight is softening the world. Birds are chirping shyly. The presence stays in the house.

The next thing I recall is being in the house next to the presence. It's about to enter me, but I muster all my thoughts and point them at the thing, and it balks. It rolls away. Victory.

Trouble is, it enters into the head of my 93-year-old grandmother. (She was 93 when she passed away in 2003. She'd be 101, had she lived 'til today.) I can't prevent it from doing her harm.

I know this dream has to do with my OCD. My OCD has to do with fear of loss of control, fear that things will hurt me and I can't do anything about it (except come up with childish "magical" rituals to prevent it), and "butterfly effect" anxiety that everything I do must be very specific or it may cause harm. This ties directly into fear that if I push evil away from me, it has to go somewhere, and it might harm someone I love. Which is directly related to the Christ-complex I had as a little child, that I'd be a good person if I took on as much evil as I could just to take it away from the world and save everybody else the pain. That, my toddler self felt sure, was a sure way to earn my ticket to heaven!

This dream may have sprung from my recent re-examination of that old belief - and my tentative wonderings that I may not be responsible for others' happiness, and that I may DESERVE good things to come my way in this earthly life and they WON'T bar my way to heaven. Obviously there'd be a lot of fear associated with a change like that in one's thinking.

Or... was there really a presence?....

I'm asked out by someone who's exactly my type and I'm ecstatic about it. He kisses me and says he can't wait. When the day arrives, he shows up at the dinner place with his girlfriend, who has surprised him by dropping into town. They keep smiling dreamily at each other and can't seem to unwind their arms off each other. I know his locker is next to mine, so I'll either have to suck it up and be just friends with him and wait out the relationship, if it ends, or I'll have to give in to my feelings of jealousy and anger. The latter prove too powerful and I walk away from the situation, venting to my friend Carol from high school. I notice a lot of people staring at me, particularly men with headsets (workers on a film crew) - it's the film production department of a university. I've suddenly become the shrill, unreasonable woman who yells, to anyone within earshot, "I really thought he liked me. He kissed me and everything. And then he shows up with his girlfriend??" So Carol is continuing to try to be sympathetic, but I'm looking like comic relief and I know it.

We go into a classroom where a well-dressed woman is sitting at a piano. I walk up and ask if I can practice singing a jazz number I know. I feel I need to do this just to feel better. She just stares, so in order to reassure her I pull the sheet music from my bag. It's at this point that she tosses me one of those icy uppercrust smiles and says, "I'm sorry. Our soloist is performing and I do have to get ready." (She'd just been sitting at the piano before I'd tried to do anything.) I say to Carol, who is seated, and for all in the room to hear, "Now, you see how that just took me down a few notches socially?" Carol and the others pretend I'm crazy. I reassure Carol, "Don't worry. This is a dream, so these people aren't actually real." Carol sinks further into her chair. "I'll prove it," I continue. "Watch this." Then I address the room: "Freeze!" Everyone freezes in their spot, including Carol. I bend forward and address Carol, "Unfreeze." She does. But others are slowly starting to unfreeze as I speak. I continue, "When the pianist refused to play my piece, especially since she did it in front of the entire room, don't you see how I was left standing foolishly and holding the bag? No one wants to acknowledge it and I don't know why, but that's the way it is. She does it because she can."

I have to go back to my locker at that point and there's a produce aisle right near it. Dream date and his girlfriend are there, ogling. I see a note scrawled in the dust by Dream Date: "Sorry, didn't mean to hurt you. " It only makes me angrier because I know that means he knows I liked him and this means he'll never be interested in me in any case. Anyway, the last scene I remember in the dream is of me walking quickly with my head down, trying to stay ahead of the Dream Couple, bounding across stairways so I can just get to my locker before they do and get the heck out of there.

Risperidone ran out three nights ago, so I guess the nightmares are back....

I'm in a university lecture hall tripping over things, and I am selected to get a psychic reading and healing with a crystal headdress. When the headdress is on, I palpably feel a buzz of healing go through my body.

I'm in a college hallway with friends. I need to go back to the lecture hall. I get a message on my cell phone that I've won two tickets to go meet Jennifer Aniston and ask her for some career advice. Several friends have "Liked" my status on Facebook about this. I need to get back to the lecture hall to claim my tickets. I realize not exactly that I'm dreaming, but that I can walk through solid barriers; I do so through a glass wall and see my reflection. I think maybe I can teleport instantly into the university lecture hall, but I decide I'd rather walk.

I'm in a field with javelins stuck into the grass. I see a broken javelin point. I see its stalk flying toward it and I try to manoeuvre it so that the stalk lands right on the point. It does, and the two parts fuse back into one single javelin. I pick it up and try to aim it at a point 50 yards away. I try to get the point in its crosshairs. I have difficulty, as if I'm trying to take a handheld shot with a deep-zoom lens. I finally get it steady and throw the javelin, but it pushes back as if it's a rifle and flies wide toward the side.

I'm by the shore of one of the Great Lakes and I realize I'm dreaming. I decide to dance and sing, as it's morning and no one's around and I'm only dreaming anyway. I notice the suntrail over the lake is coming from the south; yet I've recently seen a clock and it's 8:45 AM. I conclude that I have the directions wrong and the lake and suntrail must be to the east after all. I dance out onto the pier and decide to try jumping and gliding over the sun-golded ocean. I fall beneath the surface, realize the water must be cold, and feel the cold water all over my body. A huge fish, which looks like a catfish and is the size of a small dog, comes and looks at me suspiciously.

At this point, I get the spookiest feeling that I'm not entirely in a dream - that this is somehow real. It's hard to describe. It was a sudden sense of reality.

Real-life situation: I've just found out my lifeboat dayjob is drying up (no more rent-paying work for me).

Recurring dream theme: I'm still working at my old regular-hours job in a hospital psychology department while doing tech writing on the side. (In real life, I left the hospital job 11 years ago and now pay my rent through tech writing for one client only while building up a resume, reel and contacts as an actor - which is scary but it's what I love to do.)

The dream: I've just come back from two weeks' vacation where I'm on set. I'm swimming from central Toronto back to the outlying area where the job was. I'm in a lake swimming close to shore, with a swimming coach calling out that these waves can be high - four feet high! - and to watch out for whales. Suddenly I feel a slimy, living presence pressing upward against me as I'm swimming. It seems to be a whale, but then I notice it's a manatee. Only I don't think of the word manatee - I think "cow-fish". This cow-fish follows me and rubs up against my leg like a cat.

The cow-fish follows me out of the lake. I climb up and find a towel hanging on a hook and dry myself off. I'm at the doorway to the hospital. I go in - discreetly, because I know I didn't tell Human Resources that I'd be off for two weeks - and try to find my office.

My office walls have been torn down and when I open the door, I'm outside in an enclosed courtyard. There are plants and carefully cultivated soil. I decide to go by the office of Joni, the receptionist there in the 80s, and try to find out what's going on.

On the way, Dan comes out of the men's washroom. I say hi to him. He stops me. "Navy," he says, "in this department, we have a policy concerning attendance. So far this year, you've been delinquent in attendance for 1057 days."

"What?" I answer. "No - look, I just got back - I'm looking for Joni. I can't deal with this at the moment. I'll talk to you about it later."

I find Joni, about to talk paperwork to the chief psychologist in the corner office. Meanwhile, I'm looking for my cats. Gonzo, the male cat, is in my office growling at the cow-fish, which now looks like a black foot-diameter cross between an angelfish and a terrier.

I grab a big tupperware container and go into the supply room to find Mimsie, the female, Gonzo's littermate. She's nowhere to be seen. Finally my sister Berta shows up and says, "I hope you don't mind - I substituted your big tupperware containers with these smaller ones. I didn't - you know - (shudder) - want you to - put a cat into something that food would be stored in later - you know?"

Ahhh, got it. I made another mistake.

A 12-year-old boy spots Mimsie in the supply room. "She's on top of the cow-fish!" he cries.

I put Mimsie into the small container, which has a bit of water in it. It's a tight squeeze, but she's only a five-month-old kitten. Then I go to talk to Joni. She's been crying. I ask her what's wrong and she says, "I'd only show these tears to you. I didn't get the kids."

I have no idea what she's talking about, but I sympathize and squeeze her arm. I offer any help I can. Then I tell her Dan just pretty much fired me. She smiles through her tears and says, "Great!! Now you can throw yourself full-time into what you've always wanted to do." We're hugging. She continues, "I mean, you're in your late 50s..."

"Late 40s," I correct her smilingly. I'll fight for those extra ten years!

I pass by Dan, who is sitting in one of the very informal meetings we're having, and he's shushing me. He starts talking about how I show up whenever I please and wear jeans and bring my cats to stay at work. "Aw, for God's sake, Dan," I retort, "Seth shows up carrying a bat and wearing a baseball cap! And Brianna with that piano in her office? Things have never been strictly protocol around here!!"

We get into a physical fight. I pull some martial arts moves on him. Someone pulls us away from each other.

I yell after him, "So you really are the Frank Burns of this Mash unit!!" Pause. "I said that to Seth 20 years ago during my first week!"

He's ignoring me. I go into my office to find Gonzo. By this time, Mimsie's head has swelled with water and she's turned into liquid. I quickly open the container, find her chest, and to CPR on her. The swelling in the head turns out to be a waterlogged white mouse that's stuck to her forehead. As soon as I remove the mouse, she stirs and awakens. She sees Gonzo, who is a full-grown cat, and she immediately grows to adult size.

My mom shows up from where she works in administration. I let her know what's going on. "I'm not in the mood to hear any whining," she says. "We have to go."

I'm in an open-air theatre play and I know there are bullies in the audience from when I went to public school. I have to be dressed as an antebellum Southern belle and skip in, climbing up a hill near a pier, and then somehow blithely run down the rickety steps onto the pier where a handsome gentleman is waiting, without getting my shoes caught in the boards. We haven't had a dress rehearsal (think of this as the classic Exam Nightmare for actors). It's the Fringe, and the whole cast keeps saying that as one might say, "Meh - it's only a rental car." I have: the dress, my hat, my hair to keep done up, an umbrella, and a Bo-Peep cane to keep track of while skipping down those stairs!

The audience is filling up with rampantly patriotic Americans and I'm not even confident I know all the words to their national anthem! I'm in the dressing room trying to get my hat and hair on straight, let alone prepare for the scene, when a bell rings and someone cues me to just go. I do, grasping my hat, umbrella and cane, and I discover I have to jump over a bunch of nets to get to the performance space. A bunch of animated Disney characters pop up in my path, so I improvise: "Oh, hello, little piggy! Isn't it a fine day?" and such, in a comically exaggerated Southern drawl.

I come to a net attached to a rope at the end of which is the American flag. I try to cross it, and get my shoe caught in it. The audience is getting restless and I have to go now! I rip the shoe out. A tough-looking female Homeland Security officer follows me and gives me a hard time: But this is broken, ma'am, we can't fix it, it's the flag, ma'am, someone's going to have to pay for that, etc., as long as I don't move out of her sight.

I have to go. I just run. I get to the pier, and there's my leading man, but the lights are blinding me and I can't see him to playfully poke him with my cane and then act all nonchalant as the opening gag. The music for "My Old Kentucky Home" is playing and I'm supposed to sing along. I don't know the second line, so it comes out, "...and the caissons go rolling along." Then it turns into that song about the flag, not America the Beautiful but the other one that they sang very frequently after 9/11, the one the heavy lady is famous for - Kate Somebody. I don't know it!

I wake up trying to remember it. It's been 25 minutes with this iPad beside my pillow and I still can't.

I know one trigger is that I saw the musical "The Parade" the other day - the one about Leo Frank. I thought I might play Lucille in the future. My coloring often gets me cast as Jewish, Italian, Greek or Middle Eastern women.