A little later, I went across the road, planning to offer my services as a babysitter, should the parents want to get out sometime. The children weren’t around; I don’t know if they were at school or sleeping elsewhere in the house, though the house was really small. The parents invited me in and I watched the dad doing some repairs for a little bit while the wife cleaned. The man was very skinny and had a moustache; he was on a stepladder, hammering something. The wife was plump; both seemed friendly.

I asked him where the bathroom was and he told me; I went to it and saw that it wasn’t entirely enclosed. The room had two walls, an open front wall instead of a door, and for the final end wall, another room’s door, when it was opened, would block the way and give a little privacy. However, the ‘bathroom’ was right across from the front door to the house, and it was open to let in the sunlight. There wasn’t a toilet, sink, or bathtub, either, there was just a small, blue-seated thing that looked like a training toilet for children. I went back to the dad and asked him if I was to use the blue toilet, or if there was a particular one for women to use. He smiled at my ignorance of their culture, thinking it was nice of me to ask, and told me to use the blue one. I went back to it and now the blue toilet was gone, but in its place was a dresser. The top drawer was pulled out and I knew I was supposed to use the bathroom in that. I heard the husband telling the wife that she ought to help me, because they knew I wouldn’t be able to reach that drawer to pee in it.

The wife came to me, carrying a small, golden chamber pot about the size of a sugar bowl. The lid and opening were maybe two inches in diameter, and I was supposed to squat over that small opening and somehow not pee all over the place. She gave it to me, saying that it would need emptying. There was another chamber pot just like it behind me, underneath the chest of drawers. I didn’t know what she meant about emptying the pot, so I started to open it so I could maybe pour its contents into the other chamber pot under the dresser, or vice versa. She stopped me, however, saying that the contents was some of the worst stuff on earth. In opening it, I sloshed some of its contents on myself. It smelled bad, but not as bad as I was expecting; it seemed as if oil had been mixed with the other contents, so as to make it less unpleasant to have around. She left me then so that I could have some privacy. I set the chamber pot she had given me down on the floor and then tried to pee in it, but it was really difficult to aim because the pot was so short and the opening so small, so I spilled some on the floor, which was a beige carpet.

After I was finished, I left the pot there and went to talk with the wife and her husband again. I watched the wife take both chamber pots and empty them right outside the front door in the gravel walkway. We all then sat down to dinner; the wife had prepared some dish with rice and maybe pork or chicken. I jokingly told them that, in my experience with other cultures, I had realized the Western World got two things right: the fork, over chopsticks, and the toilet, over chamber pots. They laughed.

I got a call from Jem, saying she wanted to bring her niece, nephew, and boyfriend to the restaurant, but didn’t know if it would be child-appropriate to leave the kids in the children’s area. I went up to a couple of servers after I got off the phone and explained that my friend wanted to bring little kids in, but worried about leaving them alone while she ate dinner. They explained that the kid’s area was just left alone, so it might not be okay to leave really little kids there by themselves. They asked if my friend was from the area, and I explained she was actually in the UK. They gave me a funny look, so I explained that we met online. I walked away from the two servers and called Jem back to tell her the news.

I left the restaurant and went outside, where I got on a bus. I didn’t have to wait at a bus stop or anything, the bus was just there and I got on it. It was really crowded with some people having to stand because there weren’t enough empty seats; I was able to perch on the edge of a seat about halfway back. Suddenly, a couple stood up behind me; it was Jem and her boyfriend. I’ve never met either of them in real life or seen photos, but in my dream, Jem was a really tall (maybe 5'9"?) brunette. She had short, spiky hair and kind of a manly jaw. Her boyfriend stood behind her and was either the same height as her or shorter; he seemed meek or shy, and reminded me of the king in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. They were friendly and we talked a bit; they were on their way to the restaurant, even though I had gotten on at the restaurant and the bus had been in motion for a while now. Despite being from another country, they had no discernible accent.

My numerical methods final yesterday went great; I thought it was a really fair test because everything she said would be on there was and we had covered all the subjects previously in class. Only one topic (linear splines) showed up that she hadn’t said would be on the final, but I kind of remembered how to do them so I think I’ll get partial credit at least.

Today’s logic final was okay, and definitely better than I was expecting after last night’s review session. I was under the impression that a “review” session should, um, review topics that you’ve already learned. Last night’s logic “review” introduced a lot of new material that we had never seen before. The students that turned up were bitching about not understanding this stuff (reductions, mostly) because we hadn’t seen it before. The book is no help, either, as we’ve learned throughout the semester. However, today’s final didn’t include but one problem for which I used a reduction, and I was able to use my notes on them from last night’s review to do it. I think I did okay on the final, probably a B.

Today’s statistics final was pretty sucky. There were some problems that I felt comfortable with and others that I kind of banged around on until I was sick of trying stuff. That’s the problem I’ve faced in there all semester: all the method and equation names sound the same, the problems are worded the same, and the equations all run together for me. I have the problem of never knowing what he wants for a given question, and the same thing happened today. I’m hoping I got a high C at least on the test so that I can get a B in the class, because I bombed the first exam and got a B on the second. Sigh.

Tomorrow I have databases and on Friday I have calculus. Tonight I need to make out a cheat sheet for databases because we’re allowed to have one (kind of a misnomer then, isn’t it?), but I’m not too worried about that final. I bet some stupid stuff will be on there, though, like B+ trees and memory, which I completely don’t see as being concerns of a databases class, but whatever. Calculus is going to be hell, just like the two exams in there were. Fortunately I’ll have a lot of time Thursday to work through the practice final.

I’ll be so glad when this week is over. I just want to get A’s and B’s in all my classes, go home, and zonk out for a couple of weeks until next semester starts.

I took a walk down the street where I live, only there was a park there as well, which I went through. I had a bike helmet with me, but it was actually my cell phone. I kept trying to call my voicemail so that I could change the message that people received when they called me, but it wouldn’t connect. I finally got through and changed my message to be a clip of some Audioslave song; however, when I decided I didn’t want that either, I was unable to change it again. I also tried calling Todd but he never answered. Todd was away on a trip somewhere and had been gone for several days.

I started walking to Todd’s place and on my way I saw a girl coming toward me on the sidewalk. It was a sunny summer day, and she was putting on a bikini top. She flashed some of her bare chest accidentally before getting the bikini fully on. I passed her and walked past an apartment building where a girl I knew from high school, Racheal, was smoking on the porch. She asked me if I had any food, I think it was, but I told her I didn’t. I continued on and reached Todd’s apartment.

I went inside and found him there with his friends; he had returned from his trip but hadn’t told me. They were all sitting around, watching football on TV. I was mad at Todd that he hadn’t called me while away or when he returned, and that he didn’t answer my calls. I picked up his phone and looked in his phone book, which instead of being a list of names, it was a gallery of small photos. My photo was gone and in its place were photos of a bunch of cartoony aliens. I got angrier because he had removed me from his phone book, so I threw his phone across the room, which upset him.

I left to go get lunch at McDonald’s. Todd followed me but we only spoke while waiting in line because there were two TV’s showing football games. He was hoping Cincinnati would win, but as I watched one TV, I saw that they had just lost. I told this to Todd in a very smug voice, which annoyed him. After we got our food, I ate mine very quickly and left without Todd. I was hoping he would come find me so we could talk about why he hadn’t called me, wouldn’t answer my calls, and why I was removed from his cell phone.

However, when Todd put the ring on me, Eric and Brent started coming up the hallway and Todd got distracted, so he never actually asked me to marry him. He stood up and we all went outside, though I was upset that he hadn’t asked me to marry him in his proposal. He started telling the guys about how he proposed to me and I interrupted with, “But he didn’t actually propose so it doesn’t count.” Todd got mad and stomped off in one direction, then I got even more upset that he got angry, so I went off in the opposite direction. It was nighttime and I couldn’t see very well in the parking lot, so I went back inside and trying to wend my way through the crowded tables and chairs.

Our friends were all concerned that we were fighting, so they tried to come after us. Eric and Brent were calling my name and trying to catch up to me as I made my way through the dining hall. I was worried about being embarrassed because other diners were shooting us looks for being so noisy. I had trouble getting between the tables and chairs because they were so close together, but Eric and Brent didn’t seem to have that problem because they caught up with me. Eric chastised me about how I was wandering around half drunk and treating Todd badly. I felt miserable so I just sat down at an empty table and laid my head down.

Time passed and it was later that night. I was hanging out with everyone in our group in one of our hotel rooms, but Todd and I weren’t talking. One of the girls and Todd went into the kitchen to get something to eat. A few seconds later, I decided that I was cold so I went to the kitchen as well to make myself some tea. Our friends realized that they had an opportunity to make us talk because we would be alone together in the kitchen. Todd talked to the other girl that was in there with us, I think it was Ashley, and asked her to go back to the living room part of the hotel suite and not to let anyone else come in the kitchen.

I was watching the microwave heat my water very intently, trying to ignore Todd. He came over to me, though, and stood next to me. I think he may have said something, but I don’t remember it. After a few seconds of ignoring him, I turned and hugged him, not making eye contact initially because I was worried he might still be mad at me. He hugged me back and things felt okay again; we weren’t upset at each other anymore.

The guy finally pulled out a syringe. He was going to inject some chemical into my neck that would make me pass out, and when I woke up, I would be very confused and clumsy. Todd apparently wanted to fight me when I had weapons, but not when I had my wits about me. However, someone in the crowd told me that if I wanted to not wake up for a long time, to just not relax my neck muscles after being injected. I figured that if Todd couldn’t kill me when I was awake and trying to fight, he wouldn’t kill me at all, so that’s what I decided to do.

I heard the girl from behind us say something about, ‘what a pretty plane’, so I looked around at her. She was pointing at a large commercial plane in the sky behind us. I turned back around and saw that it looked very low to the ground. I asked Trin, “Are they supposed to be that low?” She said something about ‘not normally’ but, as we watched, the plane pulled back up and seemed to be leaving. We shrugged it off but then saw it double back. This time, it looked like it was going to crash into the ground. “I don’t think planes bank like that,” I said in a very anxious voice. Things then began to fall from the plane as it swooped over our heads; they were bombs. People around us started to scream and run around.

Suddenly, the plane and bombs were gone, and people were once again playing in the water, hanging out, and enjoying the day. Trin was back at the pool ladder, climbing in again. The plane scene had never happened; it was a premonition. I yelled at Trin, upon realizing this, that we had to get out of there, we were in danger. She seemed surprised enough by my urgency that she listened and came with me. I yelled at the guy and girl and everyone else I passed; I was now running down the hill. My parents’ house was at the foot of it; people who had been on the hill were now running everywhere. I heard the plane in the sky above the hill and I knew I didn’t have much time. I ran to the side of the house and pulled out a insulated board from the concrete foundation. I was going to get under the house because it seemed the sturdiest, most covered place.

I got inside and was grossed out because I thought there were bugs on the ground, but I sure wasn’t leaving. I pulled the ‘door’ back into place and stayed there because there was another concrete wall making a corner, even though I had entered the foundation in the middle of one side. I did that tornado drill maneuver they teach you in school: kneel with your head down and your arms over your head. I heard the bombs start to drop outside and hoped people were safe. I smelled something burning and turned my head to see part of the floor of my parents’ house, several yards behind me, was on fire.

The plane screeching and bombs dropping didn’t last long. I lifted my head but planned to stay under the house for a while longer. However, a group of people came up outside the foundation opening next to me. They pulled the board out and I saw it was a bunch of men dressed in big hazmat suits, carrying lots of weird equipment. They climbed in the hole and laid some other man down next to me. He looked injured in some way. They stuck an oxygen tube in his mouth and poured water down over top of the tube; he fainted. One of the hazmat guys wanted to do the same thing to me, but I protested. I don’t know if they wanted to test me for something or what, but they eventually convinced me to allow them to knock me out. I laid down, they stuck the tube in my mouth, and then the same guy poured water down the back of my throat. Things went black and I could feel my right arm flop down across my chest.

I woke up in the middle of a bus filled with Asians. I looked around, confused, and the people around me looked back at me. Everyone seemed dirty and tired. I noticed we were driving through some residential neighborhood that looked poor and rundown. I stood up and cried, “What’s going on?” Some older woman at the front of the bus was standing up. She looked Italian and had long, curly black hair. She wanted me to sit back down and be quiet, but I wanted some answers. I also didn’t want to be on the bus, so I made my way to the side emergency door that was behind my seat. The woman at the front saw what I was doing too late, and I hopped off the bus, which fortunately wasn’t moving quickly.

The bus stopped as I ran up to one of the houses. The woman got off and screamed at me to stop; I was about to knock on the door. “What’s going on?” I demanded again, not leaving the front porch of the house. “Where are my parents and husband?” The woman wouldn’t answer me, but instead kept yelling for me to come off the porch, that it was breaking the agreement. The people still on the bus were watching out the windows with scared expressions on their faces. The woman seemed to be debating coming after me, so I quickly turned and pounded on the door.

The next part was a blur. Some man opened the door but he didn’t look normal. He instead looked like a zombie, with his face all contorted and rotting. I backed off the porch toward the woman, who was now screaming for us to get back on the bus. I didn’t have a problem this time, so we quickly got on the bus as the zombie man came shambling toward us.

The dream skipped and the bus had pulled up to a very dusty patch of grass leading to a bar down the side of a hill. There was a junkyard next door and it was twilight. We were all getting off the bus; I still didn’t know what had happened to everyone, particularly my parents and Todd, who was apparently my husband. We all kind of stood around in the yard for a few minutes. I was looking around because a lot of other people were already here. None of them were like the creepy zombie man who had come out of the house.

I felt some presence behind me and started to whip around out of fear. It was Todd, and he was smelling my hair. He was looking blankly off into space but he wasn’t a zombie. He suddenly grabbed me in a hug because he recognized me. I was so shocked that it took me a minute to hug him back. We both started crying and he started going on about having worried and missed me. I said that I had been worried, too. I pulled back to look at him again and realized he was blind. I cried harder and hugged him again.

The dream shifted again and everyone was inside the bar; it was nighttime. Todd and I, along with several others, were sitting on the floor along one wall. Some guy was behind the bar, cleaning out a glass and dressed like a bartender. Some of us were sleeping, a few of us talking. I hadn’t found my parents, but I had found out what had happened. Apparently, when the plane dropped the bombs, it crashed shortly afterward. A lot of people had been killed by it, others like us had survived, but also a lot had been turned into the zombie creatures that we normal people were calling ‘Planers’. (My subconscious totally took this from Cell by Stephen King, only in that book it was cell phones and the mutants were called ‘Phoners’.) The Planers wanted to kill us normal people. Apparently, some kind of agreement had been made shortly after this was discovered, though, that we would all leave each other alone. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious between being under the house to being on the bus.

Suddenly, a group of people came to the bar door outside; Planers. People around me started standing up and grabbing for weapons. Todd and I remained sitting, Todd on my right with me closest to the door. A metal broom handle was shoved into my hand. The Planers came in and yelled to see “the dissenter;” they meant me, because I had knocked on that guy’s door. I waved my broom handle kind of tiredly and refused to get up. One Planer caught my attention; it was Bentley. The other Planers hung around the door but Bentley came up to stand in front of me; he was also holding a broom handle. He took a hard swing at me but I was able to meet him, so our brooms just clacked together. They bent a little bit. Bentley and I talked for a bit over top of the broom fight. He finally stopped swinging at me and tossed his bent handle at me. He turned to leave and I called his name; when he turned around, I tossed him my broken, shorter broom handle. He and the other Planers left.

I started walking back to my cart and heard my mother yelling that I needed to come and get the cactus. I ignored her but got annoyed myself. When I got to my cart, the sales clerk I had spoken with earlier said snidely, “I knew you weren’t going to pay for all those plants yourself.” I got really angry and shouted at her, “Yes, I was! Why do you think I have this?” I started digging around in my cart for my purse, so that I could show her credit cards and cash. She didn’t look like she believed me, so I went up to her and pointed my finger at her head. I then yelled, “This is the worst clerk ever and this is the worst service I’ve ever had. I won’t be coming back here again.” I then left the basket filled with plants, took my purse, and left.

When I got out to the parking lot, I was still fuming and didn’t want to wait around for my mother. Lowe’s was in a small city with residential houses lining the streets nearby. I started jogging down the sidewalk and crossed the road to go down a residential street. I came to one of the houses and went in. A narrator’s voice come out of nowhere and started talking about picking up a new life with a new family. The voice said that, if one did that, the “first” memory that person would have would be of the last thing that happened in their old life. I did that and some amount of time passed, though I didn’t experience what happened, I just knew it was suddenly a few months later. I had yet to meet my new family, even though I had been living with them. It was nighttime and I was wandering through the house. I came to just outside the kitchen and I heard a low, hissing voice in the kitchen saying something about being lied to. I collapsed on the floor, crying, saying, “They did that to me, too.”

The dream shifted and I was back in Wal-mart. This time, I was hanging around with Jessica, who was browsing clothes or something, I don’t remember. She got very catty with me and advised me to be nicer to Todd, then said something about some problem I had told Todd about that she shouldn’t have known about, and I got very angry because Todd had been telling private things to these girls. Jessica left and I went to find Todd. I found both him and Jenny together, so I had them sit down and I started to yell at them both. They would try to interrupt me and I’d cut them off, telling them I didn’t want to hear it. Jenny pulled out a binder with note paper and started to write a journal entry about “Todd’s crazy girlfriend.” I grabbed that sheet and all the other sheets, also journal entries, and ripped them up. She jumped up, angry, and yelled about getting me back.

I told Jenny that I liked her just fine, but I didn’t trust her and I didn’t want her around Todd all the time. Todd started to say something but I cut him off by saying, “And you. I don’t even know what to say to you. I trusted you!” I told them it was through with me and Todd and that I didn’t want to see either of them again. I then left, going through more racks of clothes. They chased me, trying to talk, wanting me to stop and listen to them. I tried to hide sitting down behind a rack of little boys’ clothes but they found me. At this point, I just jumped up and left the store.

I walked out through the parking lot. It was night outside and I was wearing a teal sweater with jeans. As I walked, I was singing some song about not needing anybody and standing on my own. Todd came out behind me and tried to get me to stop so we could talk, but I kept walking.

Analysis

I never heard much from Todd at all during the dream. It was mostly me and the girls talking, probably because every time Todd would try to talk, I would interrupt him. I don’t even know if Todd was cheating on me because I never let him explain anything. I don’t know why almost every scene took place in a Wal-mart, either, and always in the clothing sections.