I hadn’t had any memorable crazy dreams as of late, and then bam - two in a row. We had the window open, and this morning I was awakened by the garbage truck clanging around sometime near 6:00. I had trouble getting back to sleep afterwards because there was a bird perched right outside our window, who sounded like he was warning us of an imminent air-raid. My tiredness outweighed my annoyance, so sleep eventually won and I slipped right into a dream in which there were tiny birds and bugs, the size of marbles, embedded in my window screen. They were all chirping rather shrilly, even the bugs. To get rid of them, I took some chopsticks and gently pried out each of the little buggers - for though they apparently had strong lungs, they were really quite fragile and squishable - and placed them into a big plastic bag. I had the intent of setting them free outside, but I’d forgotten to empty the bag beforehand. When I opened the bag, the bug-birds had disappeared and all that remained were some old toy parts and legos.

The night before, I was really exhausted. The boy and I had made the mistake of drinking lots of tasty chai that night, which we’d made with assam (a nice potent black tea). When I finally fell asleep, I found myself being escorted into prison. As if it were mid-dream and not the start of one, I already had some plan in mind of how to escape. I was ushered into a room by two guards, and abandoned there to talk to the head jailer. I guess the head jailer was going to help me escape. My arms were tied with some rope, but I was able to drop onto the floor two ceramic chickens (which didn’t shatter in the process). I guess this was my bribe for the head jailer, but somehow I understood that these chickens were going to be instrumental in my escape. The head jailer collected them, thanked me, and ushered me into another room. I would escape! but I did have to stay awhile until I could be let free.

Then another prison guard untied me and showed me my transcript. He was enrolling me in prison school. I looked at the transcript and it showed my high school courses, but nothing about college. “But I’m in the honors program!” I protested. “Yeah, like that makes a bit of difference,” the guard sneered (quite an astute guard there). Simmering in the unfairness of having to go to regular prison school, I sulked until he pushed me into another room, which resembled a bare bones, concrete version of Emeril’s kitchen. Another prison guard (who, now that I think of it, did rather resemble Emeril), was instructing the audience (of prisoners) on how to grate fresh parmesan cheese. My alarm woke me up before we got to the marinara sauce lesson.