5/31/10

1. I was at a cd, cassette, and VHS movie swap. Someone was interested in some music I had and there were hundreds of cassettes in a pile. I pulled out a couple from the bottom and the pile tumbled down. I intended to lend the person the tapes to copy and not keep. In the meantime, people kept giving me tons of movies and tapes and they were piling up in a couple boxes. I suggested we make a rule for the future and only bring 10 tapes/movies each, so the sheer numbers wouldn't be overwhelming.

2. We were on a winding river and a couple tigers kept bothering us. At first we were intimidated by them but eventually, emboldened, we got aggressive and started hitting them to chase them away. They could stand up like humans and could understand English. I feared they would return and bother us again.

3. It was late evening on a cold wintery night. We were in my parent's old family room, which was all floor-to-ceiling windows, although it was in our present day house. Our asshole neighbor had set up a sprinkler aimed at our house and I noticed the ceiling was leaking. I figured they wanted the water to freeze and damage our house and I was considering calling the police.

4. To accommodate some event, we put down miles of my mother-in-law's old sheets and blankets in a hallway. After the event we were busy picking up all this material. At one point my younger daughter was helping me, only in the dream, she was only 8 or 10 years old. On the way to the office, I noticed a famous young golfer who my dad was a huge fan of. I asked him if he'd autograph his book for my dad. I looked at the book which my dad's staff had signed as a joke. It was filled with photos and every page had inscriptions on it. The golfer was being a jerk to my dad, which I didn't understand. Then the setting morphed into a wintery outdoor scene where my brother Paul and I were wading through a river on our way back to the office. We were knee deep in freezing water, and Paul would go up on the bank occasionally to get out of the water.

5/30/19

1. We were somewhere with a view of the Detroit River, A freighter came by and I thought it would be a good idea for a painting. Then we got up to go out for lunch/dinner.

2. I was at a friend's house and had to go to the bathroom. The toilet was in a hole in the ground. I lifted up the seat and started peeing. I was peeing seemingly forever and people waiting to use the toilet were getting impatient. I had a hard time controlling my aim and was peeing all over the place.

3. I was working on a campaign with Karen, my old partner and several other people. We were trying to come up with a line for a poster that had Trader Joe's employees working at the top of it, and customers having a good time at the bottom. Karen was picking the brain of another writer, which irked me. Finally I blurted out, "Here's the headline!" It was something like: We're working hard to make every day...a play day. Or something like that. Only in the dream is was very clever. Everyone loved it and I saved the day!

4. All I remember of this dream was walking around a bunch of lounge chairs surrounding a swimming pool at a resort.

5/29/19

1. This was a long dream that involved sailing on Lake St. Clair with our friend Miriam.

2. My wife was giving me a hard time about how much weight I had gained, and I said it was better than me drinking. She said that's what her friend (Julie?) said. She commented that I would probably start drinking again anyway.

3. I was thinking about dating this pretty young woman I had just met and then I realized I was married and that it probably wouldn't work out.

3. I was in the backyard of my childhood home and as I came inside I noticed my dad was all dressed up for a wedding we were going to attend. My brothers were dressed in jeans with colorful patches on them and cowboy boots. Other people were also dressed casually and in hippie-type outfits. They commented that it was a casual affair. When I went into my bedroom, my brother had completely taken it over. There were several fish tanks and the walls were covered with all sorts of art work and there was a wall of what looked like business cards. He had gotten rid of my bed and there were bunk beds for me and my brother Paul to sleep in. I told him I just wanted one fish bowl with two goldfish in it. I poured the fish and seaweed into one of the bowls and notice the tank has sprung a slow leek. I was railing at Dave about the situation when I awoke.

5/28/19

1. This one was pretty vague, but it involved being part of a rag-tag army in the Middle Ages.

2. My mother-in-law was timing a bunch of us running the around bases. It was hard to do because they were on a cobblestone street. At one point, Dan S., an old grade school friend, Caren, and I had a group hug and commented that "Life is hard.

3. I had recently purchased either a six- or twelve-pack of beer. It was in green, colorful cans and when I opened one and had a couple sips, I noticed Jeff J. was watching out of the corner of his eye. I made a comment about looking to see if it was made according to the German Purity Law and felt guilty, thinking I would only have one beer.

5/26/19

1. I was using a phone app where you type in the name of a soldier and it told you when and where he died.

2. We were driving around and noticed signs for a store that had recently changed their names because they were no longer part of a franchise. The name change was quite clever in that they only had to paint over the last part of the name to create a new one. Like TOLE DONUTS to TOLEDOS.

3. I had some goldfish and noticed that one of the goldfish had exploded and transformed into a bunch of colorful stalactites, and I thought to myself that I needed to do a little reading up on the habits of goldfish!

4. In this dream I was strategizing how to execute a painting of tulips.

5/25/19

I was near a mountain and the soil had recently been plowed as if it was being prepared to be paved. I had some left over seeds in a brown bag that looked like fennel. I was going to give them to someone and ended up planting them in a furrow in the dirt. Then my Uncle Dan pulled up in a pickup truck and told me to hop in because some hostile gang was after me and we drove off into some small town.

5/24/19

We were in a classroom and watching a demo of visiting a website in the early days of the internet. There were funny things that only old-timers understood like parts of the code appearing and that the site was in black and white.

5/23/19

I got home from work before my wife and pounded down a beer in about 10 seconds. It was going to be the only think I drank that evening but my youngest daughter caught me and gave me an evil stare the rest of the night.

5/22/19

My dad was on the roof and I was trying to get him to crawl into an open window but he was super focused on some rose vines that were growing outside the window. I finally got him inside when he noticed one of his old friends having lunch in a courtyard down below. He thought he could just walk out the window and join him and he fell to his death.

5/21/19

I was at my old high school and was telling some kids about the classrooms almost no one knew about on the third floor, near the bell tower. We took an elevator up there and the two rooms were painted that industrial light green. I looked into one of the rooms and there were students seated in front of small art projects. They had a limited amount of time to write a review of the object in front of them. Not sure if it was a class or an extra-curricular activity. I mentioned that I had an English class there back in the day. Someone asked me what we read and I said mainly Hemingway (even though we actually read a lot of Thoreau). There were a bunch of  snobby girls at tables in the hallway--not sure what they were doing as I woke up before I found out.

5/20/19

1. This was a long discussion about whether I was going to pick up my mother-in-law's friend first, take him to our house, and then to a lecture, or pick him up, take him to a lecture and then go to our house.

2. I picked up a car I had repaired at a garage that a German guy owned. All the mechanics at his shop were women. One woman was driving a vehicle that looked like a steam shovel around that had a large, hand-painted sign in front of it.

3. We were having a discussion about making signs that had lightly painted lewd messages in between the larger letters. We discussed which combination of letters had the biggest space between them.

4. I was hanging around some guy and his daughters. We were looking at a 4-page newspaper insert that was sort of like the funny pages. It featured a parody of a guy who was a combination of Mr. Rogers and someone else. The inside spread was a map of his town and its various landmarks. They all thought it was quite funny, and although I didn't get it, I pretended to be amused.

5/19/19

1. I was working on a painting of two freighters on Lake St. Clair.

2. I was at my in-laws house. They were in the living room talking and I snuck out the kitchen door and was going to walk to my childhood home, which, in the dream, was in the next block.

5/18/19

I was in a rock band and helping promote them. They went on stage to perform but I wasn't invited to join them. The crowd went wild. My old friend "Pounder" was there but left to go downtown to hear some jazz before I had a chance to talk to him. I went backstage and was in a room a ways from the stage when someone came in with an inhaler for Holly, the lead singer. She entered the room and needed to read the label before she'd use the inhaler.

5/17/19

1. We were in a building and then proceeded into another wing of the building where it was an alternate reality. Then we were outdoors and there was a huge snake that was hibernating. We sprayed it with water to wake it up and return to the alternate reality. Then an old woman drove by in a food truck. She was a young beautiful woman in the alternate world.

2. We were out in the country attending an event of some sort. Some of our nephews were leaving and were going to drive one of the two vehicles of ours. I noticed Zander, who I hadn't seen at the event. Some animal was bothering a large rabbit that was tied up out in the yard. There were hundreds of dead salmon scattered about and I noticed one of them was alive and eating one of the dead fish. I commented that I didn't know salmon were carnivorous.

5/16/19

I was trying to put together a lemon meringue pie and my wife showed me one that came frozen. She said you only had to bake it for eight hours! Needless to say, I was shocked at the length of time it needed to bake.

5/15/19

1. I was at the Olympics and was invited to try a device that was similar to a trapeze, where you could swing back and forth by using subtle wrist motions. I turned out to be extremely good at it. A sports broadcaster wanted me to demonstrate how to do it and I was going to use a shorter version of the device. There were some kids on it, only they were in a sort of cart, hanging by wires. I told them they needed to center themselves to make it swing straight.

2. I was going swimming with my dad and my younger daughter. We had to take a shower first. Then, as we entered the pool area, I noticed there were a couple of huge fish in the water.

3. I was at my dad's office and was trying to leave. There was a large display of presents in the waiting room that one of his renters set up, and I accidentally knocked a couple boxes over trying to leave. Then I was in a van driving around East Detroit with someone and we passed by a popup farmers market. We found an alley that was fairly deserted and we were going to drive down it.

4. I was in a make shift studio during a recording session. The singer asked me to hold a piece of paper in front of the ceiling-mounted microphones to muffle the sound a bit, because he was trying to get a certain studio ambience.

5/14/19

I was hanging out with several people who were running for city council with me in Marshall Michigan. My friend Tony was the mayor. We were at the train station and were going to take the last train back to Detroit, and someone commented that we should go out to dinner and figure out transportation later.

5/13/19

1. I was in an alley in Hamtramck and my junker car had a flat tire. I removed it and was wondering where I could take it to have it repaired. An Arabic man walked by and I asked him. He didn't speak English and the only words of his I could pick out were "Miller Garage" and he pointed out the direction. I noticed the other rear tire was completely wrapped with duck tape to keep it from leaking and I decided to have that one repaired as well.

2. We were eating dinner and my oldest daughter stopped by with some of her friends. They helped themselves to some of the food which was on the counter in the kitchen.

3. I was looking at homes in Brooklyn with our realtor friend Randy. We were walking through a home that was in terrible condition, with paint peeling off the walls and junk everywhere. The owner was there. I was shocked to find out it was on the market for over a million dollars.

5/12/19

It was my second to last day at work from a job I had been let go from. I was wandering around around wondering if I should just leave or tell my co-workers that I had been fired. There were a bunch of empty bosses in my office. As I walked around the office I noticed several doors were closed and I couldn't figure out which office was mine.

5/11/19

I had two dreams that were totally vague except they had musical themes to them The first dream had "The Creator has a Master Plan" running through it. The second dream had a John Coltrane tune behind it. My wife was sitting at a dinner table and I reached over her shoulder and dripped some water on her head and then on the table, and it was somehow related to the song.

5/10/19

My wife and I were riding down Mack Ave. in Grosse Pointe woods There were a bunch of riders out and somehow we got separated. I ran into a woman who wanted me to help her build a website for her company which was called either FontFit or FontForm. I asked her if she already owned the domain name and she said she did. She handed me a big pile of artwork and told me she wanted it uploaded to the site. We eventually went to her office and in the conference room were a bunch of artists sitting around a conference table working on their art work.

5/9/19

1. A coworker, Mary G. was ont he phone telling me we had just won a new account. I had to come up with some headlines for her and I quickly gave her three ideas. One of them was the headline "Another reason Florida is so appealing"and the visual was an orange peal laying on top of a book. I had two other ideas which seemed clever in my dream state.

2. A couple kids were holed up in a hot, stuffy bedroom with the windows shut. I tried to pry the windows open a bit to let some air in. Someone was cleaning the house and I kept jumping around talking like a pirate, for some reason.

3. I was in charge of some street urchins in Paris. I went up to the counter of a fast food joint and ordered a pop. I figured I could keep refilling it for the kids until their thirsts were quenched. The owner figured out what I was up to and he handed me a big stack of paper cups, some of which were shaped like large tubs. I thanked him in French and handed him all but two of the cups back, and tried to explained that they would be sufficient.

5/8/19

1. I was a Canadian politician (Brian Mulroney?) and was giving a speech about my rise to power. I mentioned that my dad was American and my mom was Canadian and joked about playing baseball on ice. I was speaking at Windsor Arena and while I was speaking a bunch of the crowd left in protest and I was left with a small audience.

2. In one level of my dream I was a black oracle who could grant people their wishes. A woman came to me and asked for tiny cups and I said they could be used on her head for extra hair-I guess like hair plugs. The a man asked for small pieces of chocolate , like tiny Dove chocolates. I couldn't[t decide what they'd be used for when I woke up out of that dream into another level. In this level, my friend Robert G. was lying on a bed and we were writing songs based on the dream I just came out of.

5/7/19

I woke up late and when I looked out the window I saw there was a blue running track on our block. I rummaged through a pile of laundry in the bathroom closet and then went downstairs and there was a babysitter for my younger daughter and her friends. She was scheduled to come a couple days a week.

5/6/19

1. I was stying at a hotel complex that looked like the Grosse Pointe Academy. I was laying down in a large bath area with my clothes on and someone was about to turn the water on. An old neighbor, Mr Leonard was there along with a young girl/woman. I decided to go to my room and change into my bathing suit and walked toward my room in the snow.

2. Several of us had four bags of money that felt like small sandbags. We were trying to get them into a car so we could escape.

5/4/19

I was hanging around the Class Corridor in Detroit and I had a stack of boxes of cigarillos in various flavors. The top one had a Marlboro label on it and I was smoking one. I saw Terry A. and asked him if he wanted one and he mentioned that he didn't smoke. I said you could just light in and pretend you were smoking.

5/3/19

Our friend John & Mariam's daughter was in a Jeep parked in from of their house. In the dream, she was about 8 or 10 years old. I ran over to make sure the parking brake was on. She said, "you never let me do your laundry anymore." When I said "what?" she responded, "you know, your pants, shirts, sox." Later on in the dream, I retold the story to John and Mariam.

5/2/19

1. A bunch of us were doing a leisurely bike ride through the Grosse Pointes. My dad and I were riding double and at one point he got off the bike and was left behind. I ran into a couple of his old dentist buddies and they were playing golf with their wives at a golf course in Detroit (Chandler Park?). I told them they should try a course that was down near the Detroit River.

2. I was in Ann Arbor trying to get back to Detroit. It looked like a quaint old French town. remember seeing a sign for Shorts Brewery. I saw a young woman who was drumming her fingers to an amazingly complex beat. Then I was in a room with a bunch of people sitting around a table that had  craft projects of some sort on it. Eventually, I was back outside in my car and I stopped a heavy set professor to ask for directions. He asked me what freeway I was looking for and I told him I-94. He said go up a block and turn right. As I headed that way I woke up.

5/1/19

Although it was a night of heavy dreaming, I only remember a small fragment of one of the dreams. There was a small mound of sugar and yeast. To get it to proof, I spit on it and mixed it together. I mentioned that a friend of ours was an excellent cook, although she's never had any luck making bread. Someone said, the only way to learn how to make bread is to make it with someone else.