As I drifted off for a nap tonight, I was thinking about a piece I’m working on about first meetings and first impressions. I have no idea how it lead to this.

I dreamt that I found a mouse in a combination of my basement and attic. I wanted to take care of it, so I got out my old hamster house, and he initially tried to drown himself in the water bowl. Once I set up a more complex system of tubes and stuff for him, he seemed to love it. For some reason, to be able to get water to the mouse in one of those upside-down drippy things, I had to cut down all sorts of wires and stuff in the basement that were really hard to get to. I had to climb all over the place and at one point, I saw 2 wolves in a hidden alcove (perhaps symbolic of those 2 lupine brothers I once knew?) Helping me with all this was my Latino family- parents and aunts and uncles. I was living with the pajamas, but in my house, which was somehow also the store. Poppy told me I didn’t have a bed anymore so I threw a fit saying that I’d have to go out and buy a bunch of twin beds. I think this was because of my Latin family. Liam was even there, giving me a hard time when I cut the wrong wire, which ended up being the one to the video games he played. Oh and while I was looking for the hamster house, I found a bunch of my old toys (that I never actually had), like an R2-D2 remote control toy.

I initially thought the mouse thing was a biological clock issue, but now I think the whole thing was what’s stored in those weird, seldom used nooks and crannies in my noodle. Some fears, some insecurities, some coded concerns...

At some point in the dream, I was asleep in my bed and woke up after dreaming of the people in The World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina. In the dream, I went downstairs to my couch and sobbed and sobbed for all those people and lost track of rational thought and seriously lost my mind for a bit.

It was at this point that I popped awake drenched in sweat after 2 hours.