Huh?

A hearing aid device was inserted into my ear. I didn't have a hearing problem but needed to make my hearing louder for someone else.

The hearing aid was attached by a sharp needle which went into the outside of my ear (ie. the pinna). The needle accidently fell out and my ear started bleeding with pulsating spurts of blood. I held this huge washcloth up to my ear and sought medical assistance.

Psychiatrists in the House

Dr. Ton, psychiatrist extraordinaire, dropped me off in an empty carpeted home to watch a video with some guy. The guy was my age and was unemployed and confused about his life plan. I realized that he had written a series of children's books as a child and had been quite famous when he was 9 or 10. Now, he had no idea where his life was going.

Dr. Ton fled the house halfway though the video, saying that he was late for an appointment. Then, Dr. Cox, second psychiatrist extraordinaire/erythema's somewhat crazy mentor-type person appeared, wanting to hang out. He tried to tell me that I was in a group meeting with all these students at a particular time, but I wasn't paying attention and missed what I was supposed to do. I was instead thinking obsessively about pizza.

Boola Boola

I returned to my undergrad campus to visit my old roommate Melissa. She was still living in the dorms, studying. Notable changes to the campus included that the railings were now blue, and the doors to all the dorm rooms were made of glass. In some areas, students had covered their doors with giant white towels for more privacy. I walked around outside the campus and realized they had a display of the old orange railings that we used to know and love.

I then woke up (still in the dream) and wrote down this dream so that I could remember it.

Tidbits

My mom thought the dog was lost and someone had carried it away in a basket. I opened the door of my childhood home, and there was the dog, wearing a basket on its head.

Elsewhere, my father was fixing the bathroom and was complaining that people kept wandering in the house.

Finally, SIX people had commented on my last post, including my friend Kevin.

The Horrors of Warm Botox

My dreams continue to be vague and disappointing this week.

However, the Botox was left out too long today. They had to call the Botox people to find out if it could still be used. Four hours is the maximum that Botox can live at room temperature, so, alas, we had to throw it away. I noticed today that the Botox is stored next to someone's mustard in the clinic refrigerator. Now, that's just not right.

My parting words for you all tonight (as well as a lead-in to one of the theories about my strange and disturbing dream content) come from my father, who is working on the computer next to me, and suddenly wanted to remind me of this: "Lucifer is high, Satan is low."

Botox Territory

My dreams were boring last night, eg. not hearing my alarm and being late. However, today I witnessed nightmarish and dystopian dermatologic assault.

Injected chemicals bloated totally natural and beautiful lines. This woman was stabbed right between the eyes. A 38-year-old lady had her "frown lines" filled with bumpy hyaluronan, probably from a horse, and I couldn't even see any lines to begin with. She paid $500 for each "removal."

Apparently the top third of the face is Botox territory. The lower two-thirds are in the realm of Restylane. The FDA only approved Restylane for frown lines, but it was going into every which where. I saw the doctor mold a woman's lips full of Restylane into different shapes with her fingers.

It was the worst kind of nightmare--the kind where you're awake.

Angry Lesbians!

These three angry lesbians were harassing me. I was trying to hang out with my friends but they were hounding me, convinced that I was secretly a lesbian and wasn't telling the world the truth. The women kept following me around, and were really annoying. I was like, why are these people I don't even know haranguing me about something that's not even their business? Why should they decide what I should tell other people?

[Note: perhaps I watched Pecker, with its multiple angry stripping lesbians, too close to bedtime last night.]

Avenue Q

My brother got the part of Princeton in the new Las Vegas production of Avenue Q. He was insanely excited when he told me over the phone. [Note: My mom told me this morning that my brother did NOT get the part. The casting director thought he was "too green."]

Graduation Practice

Ugh, lots of screaming and violence.

Later, I was going to a medical school graduation rehearsal. No one knew what the plan was, and no one seemed to care except for me. My roommate was napping, and everyone else was just sitting around.

I wore a black sweater and a long, full brown skirt, and for the real graduation I planned on wearing this incredible pale blue skirt from Anthropologie. I was trying these black stockings with strange black snaking cords that looked like vines on but no one would comment about how they looked. Rini looked at them, but didn’t have a lot to say. Then we had to line up for the pre-rehearsal snacks.

From The Vault #3: Numa Numa Love Story

There was this birthday party at a cheesy pizza-esque restaurant for a guy who looked like Gary Brolsma. He had a huge crush on me and thought we were going out, but I didn’t like him at all. His family and friends were surrounding me at the party; they were so happy to meet me, but I really wanted to leave.

He went into another room for a while and I was forced to painfully talk to his friends, and then, next thing I knew, he was stone cold dead and no one knew why. I was kind of guiltlessly glad that he died, and part of me wanted to dissect him to find out why.

FAQ

My faithful readership, mostly Claire, has demanded answers to burning dream blog questions. I shall answer them in the slightly-annoying pomo style of David Foster Wallace, because I have no patients to see this morning and can’t think of anything better to do.

Q.
A. No, they are not “made up.” Several of my dedicated fans, including those who have known me too long and should know better, have doubted that my dreams are “real.” I guess the answer is, yes, they’re made up, but I am not awake during the process. I and others have multiple theories about why my dreams are so strange, but perhaps we can leave that for FAQ 2: The Rage.

Q.
A. I’m only censoring my dreams in the sense that some do not make it to the publishing stage, either because I think they’re too fucked up or because I think others would not want their dream selves doing crazy shit posted on the Internet. (However, oftentimes after I check in with people about questionable dreams, eg. a certain someone who in my dream was eating handfuls of Wellbutrin out of a huge potato chip bag, they don't seem to have a problem with the dream being published for all to see.) However, since I am the blog dictator, I maintain censorship rights.

Q.
A. I usually wait until work, where I generally am underworked, to write my dreams down. They’re usually vivid enough that if I just remember one word, like “Jerri Blank” (okay, two words), the dream will come back into focus. This will likely change as soon as I am on a rotation that requires that I actually do something in the mornings.

My First Dream Blog Dream!

I was delighted to find that one of my recent posts had five comments. Two were from Claire’s brother, and one was from Scot.

Stillsuit

David Lynch was a personal advisor/coach/assistant for me and a group of friends. He was wearing this all-black outfit with lots of straps; the first thing I can think of to describe it is, hilariously, the stillsuit from Dune. It wasn’t that intense, but was actually quite similar. I also remember that he was wearing an athletic cup.

In any case, Mr. Lynch singled me out, looked at the faded white shirt with thin green stripes that I was wearing, and asked, seriously, like he was trying to instruct me, “How many times have you washed your hands today?” I realized that I had spent much of the day washing my hands, that he was trying to say something about my inner psychological struggles, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. I woke up before I could be further enlightened.

From The Vault #2: Kris' House

I was standing in front of Kris Kristofferson's house in Santa Monica. It was a small funky house with flowers and a lawn in front. That's it. I still wonder to this day why my subconscious cares about Kris Kristofferson and where he lives.

The Lost Haircut

My family went to a mall so I could get a haircut. My mom wrote out a check for $86 and gave it to the salon. However, all of my family members suddenly became incredibly annoying, and all I wanted was to get out of that mall. It wasn't until we got home that I realized I didn't get my haircut.

From The Vault #1: The Acting Contest

We were all taking part in an acting contest at the lovely Rancho La Puerta spa. Featured guests included Jennifer from medical school, and Sean and Amy from high school. Sean asked me how I recognized him with his long Nelson-ish bleach blonde hair, and I told him it was by the angles in his face.

The acting competition started, and we auditioned by sitting on a grassy hill and staring at our feet. The casting person told me to try a new look, so I leaned to the side and tried to look really bored. Apparently I did a fantastic job, but was frightened that I would be hired before they realized I couldn't act at all.

A Sports Trilogy Of Sorts

In yoga class, it was so crowded that there were only a few inches between mats. These actresses that were filming a movie about Alaska nearby thought it would be fun to join the class. They all stood with their mats over on the side, carrying on and tossing their hair, and had no idea how to do yoga. I wished they would get back to their set with fake icebergs (which yes, did appear in the dream) and get out of my class.

I then stumbled into a men's swim practice where the entire team was lined up in their suits and goggles ready to dive into a pool. I was in the middle of the pool, and this cute guy swam over and threw a basketball at me. I threw it back, and it was clear that I sucked at passing basketballs. He started giving me basketball-passing lessons, and I improved quickly. Then, we started making out in the middle of the pool with the whole team watching. At first I thought it was kind of hot, but then started feeling freaked out. Luckily, he suddenly swam across the pool and disappeared. I later found out that he was an escaped convict on the lam and had been hiding in the swimming pool pretending to be part of the team.

Finally , I was leaving the lovely Rancho La Puerta spa after a not-very-relaxing time spent with these unknown women in their 50's and 60's, and realized I had this crazy ashy, hyperkeratotic, erythematous, vesicular third-degree burn all over the backs of my arms and shoulders. I kept trying to get into enough light to take a better look at it, but there wasn't enough sunshine.

Ohio

It was Sunday, and in a panicked fugue, I drove from California to Ohio. It took me two hours. I got on the Interstate 80 East, and before I knew it, I had passed through Chicago on a very high-rise freeway and entered Ohio. Later, I looked at a map, and many of the intervening states, including Indiana, had become one state, labeled “Western Territories.”

I pulled off the highway into a small roadside town, entered a café, and climbed a staircase to the roof. Somehow, my car got there too. A waitress found me and told me I had to stay put for a while, as great rains were approaching (and indeed, the sky was darkening). I tried to find the best place to hunker down, but multiple dark puddles and soft grassy areas made finding a safe area of the roof difficult. My car was magically moved into a parking lot (at J and 1st street) below. The waitress abandoned me there, saying she’d come get me after the storms.

Jerri Point Blank

On the first day of my new high school teaching job, I walked through a door into a long hallway and held the door open for a student behind me. He hesitated several times and didn't follow me through. Instead, he pulled out a small pistol and over my shoulder SHOT JERRI BLANK, the star of the now-cancelled Comedy Central show Strangers With Candy, who was on her way to class.

She was hit multiple times and fell to the floor. After screaming "Oh my God!", I rushed to Jerri's bedroom (conveniently located next to the school) and started maniacally writing in her diary. I figured it was up to me to continue Jerri's commentary on high school or else the sitcom would die with her.

Anorexic Girl

We were back in high school, and not only was I bitchy towards this smart anorexic girl in my class, I told her my name was Jessica as a joke, and she believed it. A faculty member found out, was furious, and the faculty got together and wrote a musical about what a jerk I was. They performed it in front of the entire school and then role-played how nice I should act towards her instead.

They then took me into an empty room, brought this girl in, and left us alone. I apologized, confessed that my name wasn't Jessica, tried to be nice, but was angry the whole time that the stupid school had to interfere with my personal affairs.

Chinese Accordion

I took an elevator to China. The elevator packed people in by folding each person into a canvas pocket; it felt like being pressed into the side of a folding accordion. There were hordes of us in there. The doors opened and we filed out onto an enormous beach of reddish sand. The tide was coming in fast, and it was getting dark.

I turned around and entered a beachfront mansion, walked down red-carpeted hallways that slanted upwards. I reached a banister, and my dad was around the corner, talking on an old fashioned phone. The air was heavy with premonition, and I realized that World War II had started. Someone had just told my dad over the phone.

Oops

I was driving around the suburbs dropping my mom and brother off at work before heading to my job, and realized that not only had I forgotten to put on my makeup that morning, but that I was heading to work in my pyjamas. Classic.

Garlic

I was surprised to find a tumor growing on my medial left ankle that looked like a large fleshy garlic bulb. It was squishy and attached to my ankle with a thin stalk. I grabbed it and pulled hard to pluck it off, but it hurt like hell. I pulled again, and capillaries broke and started bleeding. I realized that surgery was in order.

The Noose Was Thick

My old roommate Katrina was found hanging in the basement of a dingy building. The body had been removed but I knew that she had been hanging from a thick, thick noose. The basement was muddy, metallic, and covered in graffiti. Certainly not the type of place where Katrina would go.

The Clouseau-esque investigators were wiping off fingerprints and moving evidence. I knew she had been set up by the mafia, but they wanted to close the case as a simple suicide. I yelled at them "DON'T YOU KNOW HOW TO WORK A CRIME SCENE?" and decided to take the case into my own hands.

Mom

My mother started up a coke habit. She was getting shit done left and right. I was freaked out but didn't say anything, haunted by visions of a hand-held mirror with two lines.

Plastic Knife

My friend Sharat was playing pool on my pool table without asking. The worst thing was, he was using a plastic knife instead of a cue. I knew he was going to ruin my pool table, but by the time I found out he was playing without my permission, he was already slowly angling the plastic knife, about to scatter the racked balls without even first striking the cue ball.