Oh God, please NOOOOO

I have to walk into my parent's church holding a child that is not mine. I know the explanation is too outlandish to be believed about why I have a baby in my arms. Still, I sheepishly walk in (late) to the Sunday School class and make my way to the back as everyone stares.

I see faces I recognize and a few hushed whispers reach my ears.

As soon as I sit down, the damn ball of flesh starts crying. It's not loud, but oh it's there. I try to hush the child. Nothing works. I'm getting anxious and sweating a little. Makeitstopmakeitstop!

Uninvited guests

I am passed out drunk on the couch and I hear my dad's voice and realize that he has somehow gotten into my apartment despite having no key. He comes into the living room, followed by my mom and my brother — the 12-year-old version of my brother, that is — and they are looking around at the mess and I give them hugs and try to wake and sober up and am just stricken with embarrassment and guilt that they've caught me in a severely mortifying moment.

Before Disassembling...D'oh!!

I have dismembered a body under cover of night, and have wrapped each part in white garbage bags and secured them with twist-ties. I am loading each piece into an open trunk. I apparently have partners in my crime, but it's so dark I can't see who they are. When I'm done I turn around and realize that I am right in front of a Walgreen's, and there's a security camera pointing right at me. I panic, but realize that there's nothing I can do. I am caught, and I am going to jail for the rest of my life.

The More You Ruv Someone

I'm listening attentively to a kabuki-style lecture series on the persecution of Asian-Americans at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville, Tenn with my high school AP English class.

"Welcome, Engrish shittirens," the lead Asian-American says.

Right in the middle of the lotus flower presentation, a corpulent young man begins teabagging me. But it's not a fratty John Belushi-type teabag. It's more of a wink-wink type teabag.

I don't take too kindly to this. "This fat young Asian man is raping me with his scrotum," I cry out loudly.

The kabuki performers are aghast. Faces turn in the crowd.

Finally, my beloved English teacher Kristen Carwile escorts the teabagger to the nearest exit. Once outside the Belcourt Theater, a muscled Village People-esque SWAT team proceeds to beat the shit out of him.

Late May marathon dreaming

I had another night packed with insane dreams last night.

The only bits I remember clearly:

• I'm on a plane and apparently we've got to jump the interstate to get to our runway. There's no overpass; we just have to do a miniature takeoff and landing to get to the other side of the road. And then when we do, suddenly we're on the interstate itself, trying to take off from there in between those huge green exit signs. Harrowing.

• I'm in a grimy public restroom, peeing, when I see this frumpy middle-aged dude walk past me (apparently there are no stalls) and ogle me. He continues to watch as he walks away. I am simultaneously enraged and embarrassed, and as I berate him for being a creepy asshole, I tell him, for some reason, "I'm sorry." When I come out of the restroom, I find my dad and he wonders what took me so long. I tell him about creepy asshole guy and dad gets so pissed off that he is shaking. He wants to kill the guy for treating his little girl that way.

• A very portly gentleman is telling me something about America and colonial political theory. He says, "Benjamin Franklin felt that everyone should be able to fly whatever kite they wanted, but that no one should be able to see your key." He leans back and begins unbuckling his belt, and I freak out, thinking he's some kind of perv. He reassures me that no, he just wants to show me his belly, which is portly because there's a baby in there. He cups his right manboob and tells me that he's lactating.

I wake up to the sound of a loud thud and realize that one of the five books on my bed has made its way to the floor. There's no one in my bedroom but me, so perhaps I was thrashing around and knocked it off.

Murder and Botox

I am working in a hair salon with Alicia and another woman, who is the only one allowed to "cut" hair. I think to myself, wow, I finally got into a creative career I can get into. And then I think to myself, but it's hairdressing. I walk in and am having fun goofing off with Alicia and fluffing the locks of happy clients. Then I am at the Hippy Shack, and I am alone playing pool, but I feel like Jeff is around somewhere. I am waiting, hoping someone will show up. I raise the cover of my piano and look at the strings. Inside is a compartment. I open it and my Dad has a secret CD stash there. I wonder why they're secrets and open the padded, zippered pouch to inspect them. I look at the first one, which is a purple disk, and I hear people on the porch. I thrust it back in, quickly, and wince when I realize that Dad will notice it's unzipped. It's Mom and Carolyn, although Carolyn looks like someone else. "What are you guys doing here?" I ask. "We's wantin' to see if you and Jeff wanted to play some pool," Mom answered. I said, "I'll ask him - he's just over in the main house." But I meant another segment of the Hippy Shack that wasn't attached to the pool room, not my parents' actual house. I opened the front door to the Hippy Shack and it was pouring down rain. "Oh, wow," I said, and Mom answered, "I know." I jumped off the front porch and made for the carport but it seemed to take longer than it should've. Mom was in the background, screaming, "Faster, Tamara! Faster!" But when I got under it I was in the middle bathroom of my parents' house. Jeff said, "No, I don't want to play pool." He looked like he was in serious mode (like last night at his high school band's concert). "The last thing I have time for right now is playing pool with you and your mother." Then Mom was beside him, nodding at me as if to say, "Duh, Tamara, why would you even ask him?" Then I realized that I was sitting on a toilet, needing to pee. "Could you guys get out? I'm trying to use the bathroom." Then I was locking up the Hippy Shack, and on the way out I noticed a large blue planter with a coat of maroon paint on the inside. I remembered trying to take it with me once, and a policeman wouldn't let me, saying they were using it to look for evidence of a murder. He was laughing, but I wasn't, because I realized that I had killed my late uncle with an electric drill, drilling a hole in his head, and then chopped it off and faked a car accident. He was still all jokes, staring at me in the rain in his soaking wet police uniform, "You shoulda said to 'em, 'Djew find a head inside of it? Alright, then, I reckon I'm taking this planter.'" I faked a brief smile and headed for my car. I knew he was suddenly suspicious of me, but I looked up at the pear tree's leaves swaying in the rain and thought, I guess these are the feelings you deal with when the choices you make in life include drill-killing and beheading your uncle. Then my dad's friend Hop pulled up in his truck and I tried to rush into my car but he jumped out and said, "Tamara, I need your number. I need to talk to you about this." [In my last dream, my mother told me not to talk to Hop, and I remembered this.] "Let me give you my mom's number," I said. "This is really between you two." Then Mom appeared and they were talking out of my range. I started to drive away, but I thought Dad would be mad that I left her. Then I started to just get in my car and wait to escape the rain, but I thought that would be rude. Then I'm sitting outside of my hair salon, and I inject myself with Botox, right on the chin. I didn't want to - my mind was telling me how I didn't need it and it was poison and there was no rational reason for me to do it - but I just uncontrollably stabbed myself with the needle and pressed the plunger. Then I thought, Oh great, I am SO going to have a bad reaction to this. My mind answered, "You? You of all people will have a terrible allergic reaction to this. There's no way your body will tolerate it. You'd better take supplies." I dig in my purse, realizing with embarrassment that Other Lady in the salon is swamped, and staring at my car outside, wondering what the hell I'm doing. I'll be even more embarrassed when I tell her. I open a set of instructions, like it was a haircolor kit, and notice that what I injected was malleable, and I was supposed to manually sculpt it inside my skin. I look into a mirror and think, Great, just what I need - my lip area to be BIGGER. Then I hop out of the car and hurry around to the passenger seat to grab my stuff. It's dark and raining. I think, Well, Alicia isn't here yet, either, but then I see her maroon car parked there. I think, Shit.

Third Wheel

I dreamt I was asleep in my bed in my apartment. Then Jordan Cox, from Scrubs, came walking in like she lived there and said, "Perry was masturbating in the shower! Let's pretend we're having sex." So then the bed was on the opposite side of the room and she was on top of me and we were making out. We got tired of waiting for him to stumble upon us, and then the bed was back in its place. Just as she was getting up and saying, "Maybe he'll," Dr. Cox came sauntering in in sweats with a towel around his neck and said to his wife, "Your friend needs to get the hell out of here. She's not paying rent and this is ridiculous." I realize suddenly that this isn't my apartment after all, and I haven't been paying rent, and I wonder what the hell I'm going to do. I accurately recall the balance of my bank account and realize that it won't cover a security deposit on a new apartment and still cover my bills, but I still start to get up out of bed and collect my things.

High school candle caper

I'm having a shit ton of dreams lately. This could be because I'm sleeping in shifts now that I'm going to the gym late at night. First round of sleep comes between 3 a.m. and 8. Second round comes after I've gotten up, fed my whiny-ass cats, checked my e-mail, farted around, and then gone back to sleep from 9:30 to 12:30.

Today's naptime dream featured me and everyone I ever went to high school with plus everyone I work with now (roughly), at work — only it's a hugely expanded version of work. I've got two candles lit: a little Glade Scented Oil candle that I fancy in real life, and a little cinnamon tea light. I blow them both out before realizing that doing so is going to set off the sprinklers.

So I grab just the tea light and try to cup my hand over it and rush it to the bathroom, where I figure I can extinguish some of the smoke under the tap. It works, sort of, but the damage has already been done. Plus I left that other candle smoking on my desk. D'oh.

I return to the newsroom to see that the sprinklers have, in fact, been triggered, although the alarm's not going off. People are trudging away from their desks and evacuating the room. I notice that most people are in their Sunday best. This makes me feel really bad. I'm no doubt ruining a lot of nice clothes.

I feel embarrassed that I made such an obvious blunder — the candles were contraband for this reason — and can't decide if I should just shuffle out with everyone else and pretend to not know what's going on, or if I should make sure everyone knows I did it and I'm sorry. I go with the latter, figuring it's more honest.

We evacuate to some sort of large auditorium where some kind of elaborate kindergarten pageant is going on. The kids and adults on stage are wearing ridiculously fancy sequined getups with huge headdresses. Their show fades into the background as people I went to high school with fill up the auditorium steps around me (no seats, just curved steps).

Cary Duncan (whom I've not seen or spoken to in years) comes up to me with a baseball cap turned backward on his head and a stupid nerdy fratboy swagger in his step, his posse surrounding him, chuckling. I am clearly the butt of a joke. He asks me to sign this big swatch of cardboard that says something about labor (as in work, not baby labor). I can see that others have signed this thing a la a yearbook. I circle one of the big words in the phrase and draw an arrow out to the place where I'll make my signature. I write something snarky and sign my name. Except I misspell my last name and have to scribble it out and try again. I'm slightly humiliated, and I want to kick Cary in his teeth.

(I blame Cary's appearance in this dream and, hell, the entire high school scenario on the fact that the last song I listened to before I fell asleep was a Weezer song off of Pinkerton.)

I see police officers working their way through the crowd now. I suspect they're looking for the perps of the great office sprinkler caper. I decide to 'fess up. I find an officer and see that she is confiscating everyone's candles — big, fancy expensive ones among them — and I feel horrible. Candles aren't cheap. "Are you going to give them back?" I ask. She says no. Instantly I know some people are probably very pissed at me.

I follow another officer — another girl I went to high school with, except she looks nothing like I remember, and her hair is pink and silver like Jem's, but short and in a bob — into a long, spiraling staircase that you might see in a castle ... if it had a dungeon. Luckily, the officer tells me to sit on the stairs. She's holding a baby, and tells me she's keeping it for someone, and asks if I can hang on to her for a while. I oblige, and sit there holding this big baby on these steep stairs, thinking how unsafe that is.

(I think I dreamed of a baby because just before falling back asleep, I looked at some pictures of me and LP with Luke.)

I look at the baby's face and see drool pooling on his/her chin. In it I can see the spiderweb pattern of my black Nightmare Before Christmas pillowcase. And then I'm awake.