(Interesting, the conversations and interactions when practically asleep. Saturday or Sunday night Ben and I were quietly talking while drifting asleep and he had been talking very coherently about something (I don't even remember what now), glided right into "... and the commuter train..." and slid right back into what he was talking about earlier. One time with Brian #2, we were both asleep when suddenly he bolted straight up in the bed and shouted "sperm count!", and then went right back to sleep - he had no recollection of it at all. Then one time not long before leaving the louse (I feel as if I ought to capitalize the phrase: Leaving the Louse), I woke up suddenly with stars in my eyes and in excruciating pain - he had punched me in the nose in his sleep. Though I still wonder about his intent, even if he really were asleep.)

So, anyway, this crazy dream.

I had just moved to Staten Island, although my dream version of Staten Island was admittedly cooler than what I've seen of the borough during my treks on the ferry and the bus to Torrid . But still - Staten Island! I had moved there because I was going to be going to school there (although there was this subplot about me also being a school principal at the same time - screwy), and the room I'd moved into was big and spacious and really neat.

Ben was with me, although I got the impression that he was just hanging around, spending time with me, not that he'd moved in with me. I had gone into the shower and when I came back into my room he had found all of my sex toys and scattered them all around the room (I had a lot more that I do in real life!) and we happily and very noisily proceeded to get a whole lot of use out of them right before I was about to go to class.

The whole time I had been thinking, yay, my class is right down the hall, not even five minutes away. I was taking a full course load, but on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I was taking an introductory film course that I was so excited about. (The funny thing is, I remember the instructor for the class was a reviewer who posts at the Cinemarati Roundtable - there are a bunch of posters there whose reviews I absolutely love, but for some reason my brain pulled out the name of someone I rarely even notice.)

So I left with about ten minutes before class when I realize that oh no, the class is much further away! I need to take the bus! So I hop on a city bus - never having been on that line before - and read a book and I look up and realize, oh now, I've gone too far on the bus! So I get off to look at the map at the bus stop, when I realize that I should have stayed on, that the class was close to the very end of the line.

So I go to the seats on the bus stop when I come upon the weirdest looking animal - it was a cat/turtle hybrid. The cat looked a lot like my childhood cat Nefertiti - white with brown tabby patches - but the neck and four legs were like very long, thin spoons, like sundae spoons, and its head was the shape and size of a spoon, and it had a shell covered in fur, and it was lying on its back, flailing, unable to get right side up. I went up to it to get a closer look, to decide if there was anything I could do to help it, when suddenly it flew at me and bit into me, latching onto me with its teeth, drawing blood, and it wouldn't let go.

The people at the bus stop somehow got it off of me - the attack took mere seconds - and I was only bleeding from the thumb, but everyone got into a panic because they either thought or knew that the animal was rabid. So somebody got ahold of my phone and called 911 and EMS arrived in just a moment - just as my mother showed up! "Mom, what are you doing here?" I asked her, and she replied, "well, actually, I've never left, I've been outside of your door the whole time, to make sure you'd be okay" (and I remember being supremely embarrassed, remembering how vocal I'd been during sex, and how she must have heard me.)

She wound up pushing my stretcher into the hospital, faster and faster, and my unease began deepening into real panic, because it was clear that I had rabies, and I was going to die if we couldn't find help, and we weren't finding it, and she was wheeling me around and around, and then suddenly she started yelling, "They found Saddam Hussein, they found Saddam Hussein!!" and she let go of my stretcher to run off to the news and that's when I woke up.

Weird, eh?