July 23
*2:28 a.m.
I’m riding in a car with a man I don’t recognize from RL… he has thick, dark black hair… cut short but just long enough to show the slight wave. He is wearing a black leather jacket. I’m in the back seat, he is driving (right hand drive car?) I’m leaning from the back seat with my head on his left shoulder, looking out the front window my left hand is moving absentmindedly up and down his arm as he drives. He pulls into a kiosk to buy tickets for an event (a party?) paying for my admission as well as his own. He speaks with a thick accent… French/Spanish/Italian… something European. I see a lot of semi-trucks parked around here. We are supposed to take a ferry over to an island for the event. I can picture myself at the party, drinking… I can imagine sitting next to him on a couch with one leg draped over his lap, laughing. I check my watch and I see that it is already 9:30 p.m. I’m expected home by 10:30 or 11:00 – we are supposed to be going out for a business dinner, an interview, and as I calculate the time I realize there is not enough time to take a ferry ride anywhere. I feel bad turning him down, he has already paid for the tickets. I have him pull over on the side of the road so we can talk. I explain to him the time, and how I really can’t be gone that late into the night. Though my watch says it is 9:30 p.m., it is bright daylight where we are at… parked on the side of the road across the street from my jr. high. He is pacing back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the rec center, sighing… running his hand through his hair (looks like he uses a lot of gel or mousse or something… his hair is shiny in the sun) He looks up, smiling… he is understanding about the time constraints. He claps his hands together, and says in his thick accent… “That’s OK… I was kind of in the mood for pizza anyway. Where can we go for a really good pizza? I haven’t been able to find one in this part of the US yet.” I smile, relieved that I haven’t upset him. I put my finger up to my lips and look around, trying to recall where the pizza places are in this part of town. “I know of a great one if you want to drive downtown… otherwise… there is one that is down this street that most everyone around here goes to for a “nice night out” – though I’m not sure it’ll be nice compared to what you are used to.”
*I’m planning a dinner to celebrate my birthday… we have a grill and a bbq already going with food cooking. The neighbors are invited over… I’m opening the wide gate on the side of the house to let a car drive through (in or out? I can’t recall) I see people gathering, piling into cars to drive out to a restaurant we are meeting at for lunch. My parents are here, unexpected. They knew we’d be having company over the weekend, so they showed up a day or two early so they could be involved without interfering with the other company. I’m in too big of a hurry to stop and talk for very long, I give them the directions to the restaurant. They leave, and I think about the stuff I needed to mail to them, now I can just hand it to them (though it’s not ready to be sent to them yet… I debate about going back inside and prepping the stuff… I wonder if I have time)
S and I are in a fabric store, picking up some last minute items. He needs 4 yards of a certain kind of fabric for something… I see him at the register ready to pay, waiting for me to come up with my items. We are in a terrible hurry… everyone is waiting for us. I go up to the counter and ask him what he did with the slip… when you have fabric cut at the store they print out a slip to bring to the register, explaining how much of what yardage was cut and how much it costs. He didn’t know he had to keep the slip, he’s not sure if it’s in his pocket or not. The guy behind the counter seems annoyed at our mistake, so I ask if I can just run back to where the fabric came from and yell the price to him. I know we had 4 yards cut, I run back to see the fabric is on sale for $4.00 a yard.
*I’m walking through an apartment, I’m in a hurry. I have my son with me… he is about 7 or 8 years old, bowl cut brown hair, his jacket is off one shoulder and he carries a lunch box and maybe a backpack? Looks like he is ready for school. I’m in the apartment to get some information. I see a woman (looks like Candace Bergan) talking to the resident of the apartment – a man – she is explaining to him how the divorce was never legal… because he hadn’t paid taxes in one state, but moved to New York and switched his cell phone plan to that state. When he did that, the cell bill included taxes for the state of New York, and by paying those taxes he was considered a resident of the state. That means the divorce paperwork they’d put through was no longer legal, because of his change of residency. He seems to feel bad about all the mistakes he has made, and wants to make it up to her (us) so she says she’ll redo all the divorce paperwork if he would just pay her $2.00. He agrees quickly, and she says “fine, it’s done” and walks out of the apartment.
He is something of a dead beat dad… hasn’t paid child support through the divorce. I’m here to get him to finish some tasks he said he would do for me. There are several computers throughout the apartment. I have my laptop with me, but he says he can get on the computer and finish filling out paperwork for our son. We need some information for a doctor appointment, and also need to register him for school. I see the man writing information on a piece of paper instead of entering it on the computer. As we leave I ask for confirmation on some of the information, and he admits that the computers are not real… they are props. The place is set up for show (he works in real estate maybe?) I start yelling at him, why didn’t he just SAY the computers aren’t real? I had my laptop with me, I could have gotten on it and done the registration myself and it would have gone through on time! He was trying to look like he was helping. I’m highly irate, yelling about how it would be more helpful if he were just upfront about what he could and couldn’t do for me. He leaves, feeling dejected. I take our son by the hand and tell him it’s time to go, we are already late for the doctor now that the registration fell through. The foyer is narrow… I walk around a very tall wall (more of a room divider added on later… looks very much like a fence made from pine) I reach forward for the front door, which has hinges but no handle or latch of any kind. The foyer is a narrow arched hall… white stucco… we are in the South. The door is arched, bright wood (pine?) and has a small window cutout about peep-hole height which is carved in the same shape as the door… it has a mini-door on hinges as well. The mini-door is open so I can reach up and put my hand through the cut-out to get ahold of the door and swing it open. There is an alien standing in the hall, hand raised to knock on the door. He is wearing khakis and a green? short sleeved shirt (I can’t recall the color well, but it seemed to be in the cool color pallet, not dark) it’s some kind of polo shirt. His form is largely human, though his head is oversized… no neck… reptilian? looking… his head is shaped like a light bulb… his skin is somewhat translucent/yellow/golden colored… large fish-like eyes, no nose, mouth very small with tentacles?… he reminds me of an octopus, but sitting on the shoulders of a human body. I know he is looking for the man, and that the man owes this alien money. I shrug when I see him, and say “I don’t know where he’s at. I need something from him too.” I swing the door open and walk past the alien, down a flight of stairs that ends in a ramp of some kind. The apartment building has a busy 4 lane road behind it, a divider runs down the middle of the road with small trees/greenery planted in it. The property the building sits on is all park on the other side… a wide expanse of extremely green lawn, dotted with a few trees (oak?) here and there, stretching on to a forest looking area. There are a lot of people here, it is a nice sunny day, the air is warm. There are families setting up for picnics, people walking dogs, I hear children playing in the distance. As we walk under the stairs to the apartment, I turn my head for a moment, looking at the alien who is picking a place to wait… he casually leans about halfway along the corridor, under the stairs, bending one leg and placing his foot against the wall, he crosses his arms over his chest. He will stand here and wait for the man to return. I turn towards my son and he is nowhere to be found. I yell his name, looking across the park… a few people turn their heads to my yelling, but turn back to what they were doing a second later. I only turned my head for a second, he should be within ear shot. I yell again… I should be able to see him. I shriek his name, I’m in a panic now… he couldn’t have gotten that far. I cup my hands over my mouth and shriek again… this time repeating his name over and over and over again. My heart is racing in my chest. I turn towards the road… it is heavy with traffic. I scan the curb to see if he crossed the street and then I spot him. He looks bewildered… he is standing on the far side of the 4 lane road, in between the furthest traffic lanes… he looks confused… holding his lunch bag high with his right hand and looking around trying to get his bearings. I yell at him to get the hell out of the traffic… the cars are moving… he’s not in a crosswalk. He dives across the road towards me, dodging cars on this side of the road, reaching me out of breath. I ask him where he went. He says he wasn’t here… he doesn’t know how he got there or how he got back, but he was just in Austin, Texas. I’m surprised… Austin? We are in Tuscon, Arizona… how did he get to Austin?
