"Accidental Marriage to a Friend"    05/24/04
I was staying at a hotel somewhere far from where I live.  As I was walking through the crowded lobby I looked at a large floral centerpiece on a table below a skylight.  The centerpiece was very colorful and was so beautiful.  Then I looked down at my hand and realized that I was wearing a diamond engagement/wedding ring combination.  I looked across the lobby and saw Fabiola's ex-boyfriend and some of his friends.  Fabiola's ex looked at me and smiled.  Then I thought that I had accidentally got married to him.  I ran back to my hotel room, worried about what to do.  I didn't even know his last name or his phone number.  I tried to remember what had happened.  All I could remember was drinking Coronas and peeling the labels off the bottles, but this seemed weird to me because I realized that the Corona logo is painted onto the bottles.  Just then my phone rang.  It was my friend M.  He was telling me that he was coming to visit me this weekend and that I would come visit him the following week.  At that moment I knew that I wasn't married to Fabiola's ex, I was married to M.  I dreaded the idea of having to travel so much because I knew that it would interfere with me finishing law school.  Nevertheless I decided to stay married because I didn't feel that divorce was a good option.  I don't know why I didn't think of getting an annulment.

"Glaze Extreme"    05/19/04
Jillian and I were at my apartment, but my car wasn't working, so we decided to walk to the shopping plaza across the street to get lunch.  I saw that a new restaurant called Glaze Extreme was being built where Service Merchandise used to be.  I asked her if we could eat lunch there, but she said she didn't know what kind of restaurant it was or if it was open.  Just then some workers began using a crane to lift a large lighted sign onto the building.  Conveniently the menu was on the sign, so we discovered that this was a fondue restaurant.  Obviously, the restaurant was not open due to the construction.  Jillian told me she'd have to ask her parents if that was a good place to eat.  I felt angry that she always relies on her parents to tell her what to do.  Here it was obvious that her parents were not going to know if this were a good restaurant or not because the place had not even opened yet.  Nevertheless, she insisted on asking them.  I wanted to point out to her that she is incapable of making decisions on her own and that she always asks her parents for advice on everything because she's seeking the love and approval that she wants but never feels she gets from them.  I decided to hold my tongue because she didn't want to hear what I have to say, and even if she listened, she wouldn't believe that I was correct.  I realized that she had lived that way for twenty-something years, so there was no way anyone could ever induce her to change her ways.


"Hanging out at a Rehab Center Train Station"    05/15/04
Waldo and I were sitting on a bench at a train station that was also a drugs/alcohol rehabilitation center.  Apparently Waldo was going somewhere by train, so I was there to see him off.  Courtney Love was nearby outside and was behaving erratically until workers pulled her back inside.  There were two senior couples sitting on either side of me and Waldo.  I decided to sit on Waldo's lap, but then one of the couples moved over and sat so that they were touching Waldo.  I tried to politely ask them if we were encroaching on their space.  I just wanted to find an excuse to move because really they were too close, but they insisted that they were fine.  Eventually I asked Waldo if he'd like to go on a walk.  We walked over to a grassy park-like area.  He ended up lying on the grass with me on top of him, sniffing his neck.  He asked me if he should have worn cologne.  That is when I realized that he wasn't Waldo, he was J.  I told him no, I liked the way he smelled.  But when I smelled his neck again I realized that his scent was somewhat diffused compared to the way I remembered it.

"Living at My Grandmother's House with a Roommate"    05/13/04
I was moving into my grandmother's house, but I don't know if she still lived there.  A very pale girl moved in.  Despite being very pale, I thought she was Jillian because they had the same hair.  I think this girl also might have been Louis' girlfriend.  We did not get along well at all.  We had several disagreements about living arrangements, although I can't remember the details of the arguments.  I always got the feeling that she was talking at me for her own enjoyment, rather than actually having a conversation for mutual enjoyment.  I decided that one of us would have to move out as soon as possible.


"My Brother Got Engaged"    05/12/04
My mother, brother, and I were shopping in a K-Mart.  It was pretty boring, so at that time my brother pulled two rings out of his pocked and asked which would be a better engagement ring.  The first ring was very large and made of pink, blue, and coral quartz and mother-of-pearl.  On the front rectangular bars were formed into a cross.  I told him I would die if anyone gave me something that looked like that for an engagement ring.  The second ring he handed me was a shiny silver.  It looked as if tiny silver beads had been slightly melted to form the ring.  I told him I liked this ring better, but it also had a large cross on the front.  I told him that I liked the ring better if you turned it around.  Somehow I thought that the rings were different sizes, even though my brother insisted that they were the same.  Then as I was admiring the ring I noticed that the engagement ring was on my middle finger of my left hand, and I was wearing a diamond encrusted ring on my ring finger.  I told him that my diamond ring, although it didn't look like an engagement ring, would have been a better choice.  I kept wondering which finger you wear an engagement ring on and which finger you wear a wedding ring on.  I decided that I would have to look this up or else depend on my husband to get it right at the wedding.  I decided that depending on my husband to get it right would lead to disastrous results.  My mother commented that she had made a lasagna for my brother to take to his girlfriend a few days ago.  I asked him if the girlfriend liked it.  He told me that she didn't like it and said that she couldn't date him anymore because her dream boyfriend had hair as dark as the ion sky.  I was pondering what the "ion sky" was.  I wondered if my brother could have just dyed his hair, but then I decided that he couldn't really maintain a relationship if his girlfriend didn't like him the way he was.  I now understood that the reason he had the rings and was asking me was that he and the girlfriend broke up and therefore he never proposed to her, although he had planned to do so.

"A Bird Pyramid on my Neighbors' Balcony"    05/11/04
I was standing in my kitchen when I heard very loud chirping sounds, so I looked outside.  I noticed that there was a pile of birdseed on my neighbors' balcony and that there was a large group of birds piled on top of one another in a pyramid formation.  At first I thought that they had died, but then I saw that they were moving and chirping.  I wondered why they were in that formation.  They looked so fuzzy and young, but they all looked like different species.


"Scions with Habitrails for Cats"    05/09/04
I went to a Scion dealership to see about buying a new car, but all the cars they had looked strangely like they were from Pimp My Ride.  The salesman was showing me the inside of one of the cars when I noticed an orange cat and some rectangular tubing along the floor of the car.  At first it looked like ductwork, but the salesman explained that this model came with a built-in Habitrail for cats.  I realized that I would never buy this car.  It was just too weird.

"New Physical Education Teacher for the Elderly"    05/08/04
I got a job teaching what I thought would be physical education for high school or college students.  I showed up to work on the first day feeling enthusiastic.  But then my students entered the room.  All of them were over 70 years old.  I looked at the other teacher, confused about what kind of job I had taken.  The other teacher told me I was on my own and went to another room.  Apparently today the students were practicing swimming, but they were all wearing shorts and T-shirts that never seemed to get wet in the pool.  One lady told me that she had to go do her special water exercises and began waddling to the next room.  I followed her, worried about what might happen.  In this room there was an area with a waterfall that was about the width of a person.  All of the water ran into a deep black tube below.  The woman informed me that this device was called a water coffin and jumped in.  She never resurfaced and I went back to the first room.  By now all of the students were gone and the other teacher was standing there again.  I explained to her what had happened.  She responded by telling me that I need to be more forceful.  I then went home for the day.  I felt like a failure due to my inability to control the students and wondered if I should quit the job.


"I'm with the Band"    05/07/04
I was in a garage-like area with Ursula and some other people I didn't know.  I was watching a girl play the drums.  I told Ursula that I could do that, but Ursula seemed doubtful.  She told me that playing an instrument takes years of practice, and it's not something you can just pick up.  The girl on the drums said I should give it a try.  The band began playing and I played with them.  I was so happy that I had proved Ursula wrong.  Then I realized that this was a tryout to replace Max Weinberg in Conan O'Brien's Late Night band, and I was going to be chosen.


"Inviting Diego to a Hotel"    05/06/04
I decided to spend the weekend in a hotel, just for fun, but the hotel was somewhere cold in New England and not on the beach.  It was pretty late at night when I decided to do this.  I called Diego on his cell phone and asked him if he wanted to come stay at the hotel with me.  He sounded like he didn't want to, but I persuaded him.  I didn't tell him, but the main reason I invited him was because I didn't want to sleep alone.  We got to the hotel.  It was very gothic looking on the outside, almost like a church, but on the inside it was painted a pale blue and was decorated in an upscale style that was reminiscent of the better trends of the 1960s.  There was a problem at the desk and they didn't want to let us have the room.  I argued with the clerk, but she refused.  Diego told me that we should just go home and come back at another time.  I really didn't want to do this and pointed out that this was going to be his last week until he moved to a different city.  He promised me that he would come back to visit, just to stay in a hotel with me.  The idea made me feel weird.

"Angry About Convenience Store Coffee"    05/02/04
I rode the school bus to school with Diego, but I felt so tired that I decided I must get coffee.  I told him I would see him later and went to the convenience store that was conveniently attached to the high school we attended.  I went into several rooms where you could get fountain drinks or coffee, but in all the rooms there were no cups and there were lids, napkins, and other garbage all over.  Finally I went to the cash register and asked for a cup, but the cashier very coolly told me that they were out of cups.  There was another woman in line in front of me, but I didn't care.  I began berating the clerk for not stocking cups so that people could actually have coffee.  I felt as if I had never been so angry in my whole life, which is strange considering that I'm not even that much of a coffee fan outside social situations.  Then the customer in line in front of me and the clerk began commenting that I didn't need to "be so bitchy about it".

"Visiting the Jillians"    05/01/04
I was staying at the Jillians' house.  They put me in their guest bedroom and were all being so nice to me, although their guest bedroom looked mysteriously similar to my grandmother's guest bedroom.  There was some kind of Asian calligraphy set on the bedside table and Jillian's father informed me that I had to use it to write in their guestbook.  I attempted to write the date, but the brush had a large wooden attachment which you dipped in ink, instead of regular brush bristles.  I finally wrote the date after struggling and told him that I'd finish my message later.  Then Jillian and her sisters and I went shopping for a Mother's Day gift for their mom.  All of them were asking for my opinion about various items, but I had trouble giving them advice because I didn't know their mother very well.  Finally we decide to go back to their house.  Everyone goes upstairs to supposedly give their mother her gifts, but it turns out that this wasn't the week of Mother's Day and they had tricked me so that they could plan a surprise birthday party for me.  Jillian's mother brought out a figurine that I had seen and liked when we had all been shopping.  I began crying because the whole family was being so nice to me when they didn't have to be.