I had a dream

What I did: I dreamed I was in Vietnam.

What I did beforehand: bedtime has been tricky since the election. I try to get comfortable, clear my head and close my eyes and drift off. I have an old shoulder injury that's been bothering me, and it inspires me to worry about my kids, what environmental protections a climate-change-denying, pro-business, anti-regulation congress and senate can destroy, how our Supreme Court changes with one or two new members bent on the reproductive enslavement of poor American women, and then, what about all my friends who are immigrants? Not to mention the white supremacists and our broken electoral college. Who can sleep?

But last night I somehow set it all aside and found a ten minute window free of anxiety, and just as I was drifting off to sleep I could hear my old dog Cherry, locked in the kitchen, but standing by the door whining.

I dreamed last night that @justinbieber was at my house because we were the only people who took seriously his interest in fishery science

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) April 11, 2016

What I wore: a politically opinionated t-shirt, TomboyX flannel pajama pants, and my wedding ring that doesn't come off.

In the dream, I had a khaki uniform, with pockets everywhere including on my pant legs and my boots fasted with chromed latches like on my mother's old pair of 1960s black Rossignol ski boots.

Who went with me: my cat, Schwartz, who takes up half the bed when the Bacon Provider is out of town.

I dreamed I had a different husband, and I saw him even more infrequently than my actual one.

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) November 16, 2016

How I remember my dreams: they say you should keep a dream journal by your bedside and write them down as soon as you wake up. Anything on my nightstand ends up being a drink coaster. Sometimes, I tweet my dreams. 

So I dreamed last night that if you tied off your lower body parts so they'd shrivel up & drop off, your head unfolded into a bat

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) April 19, 2016

Why I saw this show: see "What I did beforehand," above.

Where I slept: because of my permanently messed-up shoulder, I sleep on my right side, and mine is the right side of the bed

I dreamed that junkies in brother's town stole all the stairs to the first floors & burned them. Folks upstairs had to call out for ladders

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) August 14, 2016

Things that were sad: I dreamed I was in Vietnam, in the early 1970s, towards the end of the war. Caravans of U.S. military trucks were taking soldiers and civilians and whatever anyone could carry down the bomb-rutted roads and out of the city. I don't know what city I was in. There were people everywhere-- women with groups of tired children, a very old man with an empty dog leash-- all walking around and looking like they didn't know where to go. 

Things that were funny: my job was to set up the children's libraries the United States was planning to leave behind, as a gift to the people of Vietnam.  

Things that were not funny: the books, housed in a crumbling warehouse that might have been a bad-guy hideout for the 1960s Batman TV show, were carefully stored in clean cardboard cartons, their colorful glossy covers like new, their pages fresh and straight. And every single book in every single box, in every one of the hundreds and thousands of cartons, stacked row upon row was in English.

I dreamed that my thesis was due next week, & I had to redo all the illustrations b/c I'd been using my mother's serigraphs as placeholders

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) September 6, 2016

Something I ate: last night for dinner we made a spicy carrot soup from a new cookbook, called "Zuppe," which means "soups" in Italian.

The night before last, I dreamed I had a Belgian-German shepherd dog the size of a duckling & I had to count the grains of rice I fed it.

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) September 2, 2016

What it is: my friend C. thinks this dream is about being frustrated.

Who should remember their dreams: people who want to forget the real world

I woke up at the usual time and somehow managed to fall briefly back to sleep. Whereupon I dreamed I had fallen back to asleep.

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) November 6, 2016

What I saw when I woke up: I got a text quite early, from 19. He was offering to walk the dogs and feed them, but pointed out that Cherry had had accidents all over the kitchen in the night. It was my turn to clean them up.

Cherry is 14