Alternate title: Dogs Preserve Dreams.

I got up at 4:30 this morning to feed the dogs. I got back in bed and laid awake for 15 minutes memorizing the following dream:

We were in my Grandmother Barron’s back bedroom, the one where Nicole and I used to stay when we were kids, when we noticed the wind was picking up in one corner of the room.

We went outside to play volleyball, but noticed the wind was approaching hurricane-force. I began to notice flooding, and numerous waterspouts in the water all around. I shouted this as loud as I could, but no one seemed to hear me. Soon I realized I needed to be home, so I walked home several miles in knee-deep water.

There was a period in the dream during which I was absent, like a time gap in the movies. I woke up in poverty, which resembled 1890s England. The family in my house help saying things like, “He hates us today,” but won’t tell me who “He” is. On the floor I see a transparent plexiglass Scotty dog and realize this is the “He” they are discussing, and that he is responsible for all the suffering around us.

The dream shifts to a train station, and we are able to trap the plexiglass dog by placing sticks on top of him and beneath him so he is too tall to fit in the tracks. This allows us to board an old school bus, where it becomes clear that my family is The Waltons. I sit on the floor of the bus and color in a coloring book with Kami Cotler, the actress who played the youngest of The Waltons until I look out to see that John Walton, the father, is driving us over a huge body of water. As we enter a city, he turns to bus around and drives the city streets backward, explaining that it better allows us to admire the chrome fenders of our bus.