I can’t even breathe, it’s like I’m looking from a distance, standing in the background. Everybody’s saying he’s not coming home now. This can’t be happening to me, this is just a dream…

I don’t usually remember my dreams.

But sometimes I do.

And I have noticed a pattern to it.

The only dreams I remember are the ones where I’m about to die.

I just can't look at it the same way....

Like that time I dreamt that my house was being broken into and explosions were going off and there was a hostage situation. Or that time I dreamt that a man lived down the street had lured me into his creepy-as-fuck house only for me to find my loved ones and close, beloved family friends all dead, hanging like marionettes (read: *NSYNC-style) in boxes in his giant living room and him chasing me around his property with a sawed-off shotgun and machete. Or that time I dreamt I was being locked in some type of school gymnasium with a fuck-ton of people because wherever the hell we were was on “lockdown” and we were all safe in the gym but then some man told us we have “two minutes to get out because this place is gonna blow the fuck up” and I woke up in a panic.

 

SEE?! This is not okay!!

I woke up this morning and my face was wet and I couldn’t breathe.

I woke up and realized I had been crying in my sleep.

This time was different. I wasn’t dreaming I was dying or about to die. I dreamt that Drew had died.

Why the fuck?! WHY?!

Do you know how disturbing that was?!

That’s my baby brother. That cannot happen. Ever. He can never die.

I was a mess in my whole dream. I was running around like a ninny, completely out of control and inconsolable. I was completely irrational and out of my mind. It was awful.

I can’t even talk about it.

I’d take another chance, take a fall, take a shot for you. I need you like a heart needs a beat, it’s nothin’ new…

It was never really a mystery to us why it seemed like our entire floor in the dorms in college hated us.

Sarah and I lived in the room at the very end of the hallway. Our perfect square of a room was the gathering place every Thursday night to watch The OC and later Grey’s Anatomy. Our room was the meeting place of the whole group of us for those three or four nights a week we went out to parties. And later, our sophomore year of college, our room was next door to two of our good friends, whose room would blare with the latest Justin Timberlake song or One Republic’s “Apologize” before it was cool and overplayed on the radio.

We did dumb shit, like dress up like the some cracked out version of the Spice Girls and sing really, really loudly after 2 in the morning. You know, when the whiners on our floor were sleeping, and had been since 11 pm.

As a group, we’re loud. I mean, I scream and screech a lot, I laugh loudly, and I shout when I’m happy or excited. Multiply that by at least four and you’ve got my core group of friends in college. And we were together constantly.

Add in the fact that we lived in an all-girls dorm. In the really, really old dorms. As in, I lived in the same dormitory my grandmother lived in. The same dormitory my mother lived in. It’s old. We also lived in the dorm mostly populated by the college of music kids. They’re all artsy and hipster-y and obviously too smart and better than us to get loud and crazy all the fucking time, like we did. The best part about our dorm is that it was the closet to the street with all the bars on it. And it was relatively close to a lot of the off-campus housing and greek life. (And let’s get real: I loved me some fraternity parties before I was of the legal drinking age.)

I think this photo adequately demonstrates the potential Le Le and I have when it comes to getting crazy. lolz (Ps. Le, does that headband look familiar? bahaha)

My point is, our floor hated us.

We were constantly hushed and asked nicely to be quiet. And when all else failed, we were told on. When we realized that the RA’s were about to come bust us, we’d quickly finish the shot glass full of five o’clock vodka on Leah’s or my desk, turn the music off, grab our coats and fly out the door.

I mean, we didn’t want to get written up. Again. Or have to pour our alcohol down the bathroom sink. Again.

Even when we weren’t drinking (illegally) in the dorms, we were loud. And probably really, really obnoxious. I’ll leave you with this one memory I have, a memory that really reinforced the fact that everyone on our floor just did not get me, or my friends.

You know how in college dorms there are all kinds of random-ass signs for random-ass shit? Like, sign up for ballroom dancing in one of the rooms by the cafeteria, or do you need a tutor for some really hard singing class you’re taking? Well, I can’t remember why we decided to make a sign but one night we did, and we hung it on the walls all over our hallway, and all of the doors to the bathrooms, and the mirrors, and the door to the stairs.

It was a nice sign. It didn’t ask anyone to donate their first born to some demonic cult or require anyone to spend any money on anything. It was just a nice little sign to remind people to have a good day and to provide a little pick-me-up. Sometimes people just need that. Classes are hard. It’s really hard to walk fifty feet to a building across a nice little field to go sing for a couple hours a day. And it gets cold in Michigan.  And sometimes blowing off class on a Friday to play Ultimate Frisbee in Adam’s Field is just really… hard. So we posted our sign to let people know we cared.

Our sign was not appreciated. When we woke up the next morning, every single sign had been torn down and thrown away.

The people on our floor were dicks. And they hated us.

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true

I remember in the fifth grade, we had to write a memory or something for our silly little yearbook. I remember that I was sitting in the middle pod of desks, next to the boy I had loved since the first day I saw him in third grade. He had broken his arm. Again. Now, I can’t remember what happened to make him break his arm this time. I can think of the time my friend broke her arm by falling off the monkey bars on the playground at recess in elementary school. And I can remember the time my other friend broke her arm when she fell on her rollerblades when we crashed loverboy’s birthday party in sixth grade, but I can’t think of why he broke his arm that time.

That is neither here nor there.

What I wanted to tell you was my memory.

Ding Dong! The witch is dead! Which old witch? The Wicked Witch! Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead!!

I was little, and my parents were still married. We still lived at the house on the lake, the one I remember as my first home even though it wasn’t the first house I lived in as a child. We were outside, and Maggie, our golden retriever, was outside in the driveway with me and Dad. I can’t remember if Mom and Drew were outside with us.

I must have just watched the Wizard of Oz.

Standing at the base of our driveway, by the wooden fence in the front yard, I stood. Though I’m not sure what I was doing down by the fence and the road, I’m sure it was something awesome, like picking grass, or licking rocks, or climbing the rickety, not-made-for-climbing fence. Out of nowhere, I heard something hit the ground with an odd jingle-smack. When I turned to look what it was, I saw that a set of keys had hit the ground behind me. From the sky.

I looked up and saw that the once perfect blue sky was dark, and there were words written in the sky. Don’t ask me what the sky said because I sure as hell can’t remember.  I could swear I saw that mean old, green-faced witch ridin’ off into the sky.

Yeah. That was my memory. That’s the memory I chose to write down to be published.

Really?! I think about that now and just think, Really, Katie? REALLY?! What the hell!?

The best part about this is that I swore that this memory was legit. I would have bet my life on the fact that this actually happened. Of course, when my mom read what I had written down (of course, once this silly little booklet was printed), she had no idea what the hell I was talking about.  The other best part is that I didn’t have a doubt in my mind about the validity of this memory. I didn’t believe I had anything to be embarrassed about by sharing this memory. I believed I had experienced something paranormal, g-d it! I had encountered a physical object falling from the sky! I had seen a witch writing words in the sky!

That was fifth grade. In fifth grade, I still believed  that this memory existed. Who am I?!

I was a weird kid.

Oh, remind me to tell you about the time I ran into a moving van on my bike. Or the time I got my fingers stuck in a wiffle ball. Or the time I found a power tool (drill) and put it to my forehead, turned it on and left a cut in the middle of my forehead. Or the time I played the piano with my face and cried every time I banged my head too hard against the keys.

I bet you’re glad you stuck around to read this.

‘Cause you’re hot then you’re cold you’re yes then you’re no you’re in then you’re out

My mother has come to Grandma’s for the evening. She and Grandma were meeting with the kitchen designer and then going to see some houses to steal ideas on the Parade of Homes today. They will also be doing the Parade of Homes tomorrow as well while I’m at work, sweating my proverbial nuts off because the airflow in my place of employment is less than ideal. It would be just my luck that I find somewhere to work that allows me to freeze my tits off during the frozen tundra we experience here on the west side of the state and then burn the hell up during the summer months.

I don’t think there is anything on this earth I hate more than being hot. I just complained about freezing my tits off this past winter, but I would gladly take that over what I currently experience at work. I mean, sometimes it’s just not professional to hang out with no pants on to keep cool. Sometimes it’s not professional to cry and dry heave and behave like a pissed off infant because you’re uncomfortably warm.

Also, I don’t know if it’s that I have some freak genetic mutation or if it’s something else, but, dude, my feet get freakishly hot. Then, because that’s not sexy enough, they swell like three sizes larger so they’re, like, squished all up in my normal-sized, under-regular-conditions-these-shoes-fit shoes. So, when I can finally bust my feet out and get them back in shoes conducive to my way of life (i.e. flip flops), they’re all red and sweaty and sore and generally offensive. It’s embarrassing!

(I know this makes no difference because it’s only my own time that I’m wasting, but I’m currently taking a face-memory test from BBC (or something?). I found the link by playing one of my favorite online games. The game tests your reaction speed to sheep running across your screen and you shot tranq darts at them. It’s fun. Anyway, I had a five minute break in between faces, so I gotta go take the third test. Brb.)

(Okay, I was just gonna carry on with my original thoughts, but my face-memory test results have pretty much astounded me. And, I’m pretty impressed with myself. So, I suggest you take the face memory test, ACTUALLY ABIDE BY THE 5 MINUTE BREAK RULE!, and tell me your results in a comment! My scores were as follows:

Recognition score
( if you saw it )

Your score: 100%
Average score: 92%

This is a measure of your ability to remember the photos you’ve seen, regardless of the part in which you saw them. From all 24 photos shown in Parts 1 & 2, you recognised: 24 photo(s).

Temporal memory score
( when you saw it )

Your score: 91%
Average score: 68%

This is a measure of how often you recognised a photo and matched it to the correct part, instead of just remembering which ones you’d seen. From all the photos you recognised, you matched: 22 photo(s) to the correct part.

Yeah.  I’m kind of a big deal. Check that memory out. What an excellent skill!)

I guess my point is that I would rather be cold than hot.

Oh, that, and my grandma makes egg salad for me. I like it on triscuts. It’s cute because she’s trying so hard to make food she knows I like slash will eat. And I actually do like egg salad, despite the fact that it smells foul and I’m embarrassed to eat it front of others.  The only thing is, I hate dill.

Grandma puts dill in her egg salad. And I just never have the heart to tell her that I can totally make it myself. Actually, it’s that I never remember I like egg salad until she tells me there is some in the fridge, and by then it’s already made and I can’t tell her I hate dill. Hello, it’s not like I can just pick it out. (I tried.)

But really, it’s sweet. So, i eat it. And then kinda forget about it, and let her eat it.

Do you like egg salad? How do you eat it? Are you embarrassed to eat it around others, too?